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She messages Jen:Should I offer a reward for information?
Jen replies.We would advise you against that. It can lead to an excessive amount of public interest and bring out the crazies. This investigation is already complex.
Nicole considers this. ‘They don’t want me to,’ she says.
‘They can’t stop you. But it’s up to you to decide if you think it will help, or not. Sometimes, it’s nice not to feel helpless.’
She thinks about it. She doesn’t want to annoy the police but she’s ready for something to happen, so she’s not stuck in this limbo of not knowing. Surely, money can help. She opens Facebook and begins to type. She makes an appeal for information, offers £50K for any that leads to a resolution of the case, and hits ‘Post’.
62
FRIDAY
Jen
Jen sits at her desk, feeling fretful. Earlier this morning she had a worrying message from Nicole Booth, asking if she should offer a reward for information. She told her not to do it but didn’t mention it to Hal, and now she wonders if she should have. She’s been preoccupied with trying to dig up some background on Anna Creed. Now she wonders if she should go to see Nicole just to make sure she’s not going to go ahead with it.
The research on Anna hasn’t turned up much. Jen wants to know more about why Anna allowed herself to be suckered in by Olly and Sasha but hasn’t found out a lot apart from some sparse details that piece together a picture of a quiet life. Anna’s husband Nick Creed started a company that made them some money. They used it to buy the Manor House and settle down there, so far as Jen can tell. And that’s it. But what she has learned about the couple reminds her of Nicole and Tom Booth’ssituation. They came into money and moved here, too, and Jen gets the impression that integrating hasn’t been easy for them either. Anna and Nicole might have more in common than they know. Jen wonders if that makes Nicole a possible target for Olly and Sasha and if that means they could have had something to do with Tom’s death.
Finn appears by her desk, and she switches screens. Hal’s told her not to spend too much time on Anna Creed while the focus is on finding Patrick Young.
‘Hal wants to see you,’ Finn says. Jen glances at his office. He’s putting the blinds down. That’s a bad sign. Hal only shuts himself away when he wants to give someone a dressing-down. She crosses the room with trepidation, knocks softly. In the Incident Room the phones are ringing as if something has happened.
‘In,’ he says and gestures to her to take a seat.
‘Boss.’ Her heart is thumping. She was hoping to find someone else in here, but it’s her he wants to talk to. He looks pained, as if he doesn’t want to do this, and hands her a piece of paper, a printout of an email sent to him by Nicole Booth. Jen reads it:
I’ve decided to offer a reward for information about Tom’s death. £50K. I’m not unhappy with what you’ve done, and I want to work with you, but he was the love of my life and if this can help us discover who murdered him, I don’t see why we wouldn’t do it. There are tips coming in already. I’ve attached a link to the post on my Facebook page. It’s spreading fast.
Jen groans softly and swears. She looks at Hal. ‘She called me earlier to ask about offering a reward and I advised against it, but clearly, she didn’t listen. I thought she had. I thought I’d put it to bed. I’m sorry.’
‘Why didn’t you tell me?’
She stares at him, her face reddening. ‘I should have. I got distracted. I made a mistake.’
‘The point of your role is to support Nicole Booth, to watch her closely and also to make sure she’s working with us.’
Humiliation creeps through her veins. She’s mortified that she’s let him down. It’s obvious that he’s feeling the pressure. ‘I thought I was doing my job,’ she says. ‘There’s been so much going on. I let this slip.’
He looks as if he’s deciding what to say next and she barely breathes while she waits. Is he the type to defend her or throw her under a bus for this? She knows what she hopes.
‘Alright, I know you were doing your best,’ he says. She nods tightly, and exhales with relief. ‘The boss is furious,’ he says. ‘There are already so many calls and emails coming in that they think we’re going to have to take manpower from elsewhere to handle it.’
‘And most of the calls are the crazies, I bet,’ she says. ‘I told her they would be.’
He nods.
‘I’m so sorry, Hal. I didn’t have her pegged as being so headstrong. I should have.’
He doesn’t reply to that, and she appreciates him not making her squirm any more than she is already.
‘The £50K is going to bring every single worm out of its hole,’ Hal says. ‘And the story is already on the online news sites so it’s only going to get worse. Anything on Patrick Young?’
She swallows uncomfortably and decides to come clean about what she was doing. ‘Finn is on it, and I know I should have been concentrating on Nicole, but I was looking into Anna Creed and—’
‘I told you we don’t have time to look into Anna Creed now.’
‘I think what happened to her might be connected to Tom Booth’s death.’
