He nodded. ‘My wife filed for divorce, but the girls still want to come visit so at least that’s something. I was in a bad place for some time, but I promise you that I’m over that now and I want you to feel that you can come to me if you need anything work or personal wise. I’ve already spoken to Ben and apologised, and when Amy is up to it, I’ll be speaking to her too. You are now officially back in the Rydal Falls CID team, no more moving departments.’
‘Is this the real Marc talking or are you going to change your mind next time someone puts you in a bad mood?’
He looked at her then laughed. ‘I deserve that, in fact that’s a lot kinder than the reaction I was expecting. This is me; I’m not saying I won’t annoy you ever again because there’s probably a very good chance I will. What I’m hoping is we can put the last couple of months behind us and move forward.’
‘I guess we can.’
She stood up to leave.
‘I also wanted to ask your opinion about someone I think would be a great asset to our team, but I didn’t want to ask in front of the others in case it was a bit awkward.’
‘Who do you have in mind?’
‘Cain, I’ve seen how well he works. How you all seem to get on with him. He’s going to have to sit his exams before he’s a detective, like you did, but I think he’d be okay with them. What do you think, would he be interested and would you all like to have him on board if so?’
‘He would be amazing, he’s practically one of us anyway. Have you asked him?’
‘Not yet, I wanted to run it past you.’
‘Why me and not Ben?’
‘Because you and Cain get on well, and I didn’t know if it would interfere with you and Ben. You know how complicated office dynamics can get; it can turn into a nightmare. I don’t want to upset things any more than I already have.’
He looked genuinely remorseful, and she found herself warming to this improved version of her boss, hoping this time he was being honest.
‘There would be no problem, Cain and I are friends, and there is nothing between us and never has been. In fact, he is seeing someone at the moment and is really happy. I think he’d be very interested in joining us.’
‘Thank you, Morgan, that’s great. I’ll go and find him, see what he says.’
She opened the door. ‘Actually, it’s not Ben you need to worry about, Mads will be furious if you steal Cain away from him.’
‘I can handle Mads, I need to put my team first, and anyway Cain might not be interested. But I wanted to give him first refusal. Maybe don’t mention it until I’ve spoken to Cain; if he says yes, I’ll check with the others if they’re happy to have him on board too.’
She walked out of his office with a huge grin on her face, thinking Cain would be fantastic, someone she could work with easily and even Amy liked him. There would be no friction or the feeling that he was replacing Des because Cain was Cain. She just hoped that he hadn’t decided to transfer to Wales to be with Bella just yet.
SIXTEEN
The shop was always busy on Saturdays. They passed the day splendidly and they actually focused on their work because Natalie didn’t visit the café across the road on weekends. For the last ten minutes for example, they’d been busy mopping the floor after a customer had managed to drop an entire bottle of shampoo everywhere. It had exploded into a hundred pieces of plastic, green, gloopy slime and it was taking forever to wash away the bubbles that kept forming every time they added water. They were proud that they hadn’t told the customer to get out. It had been on the tip of their tongue, but they couldn’t. For a start it wasn’t their shop, they’d upset the supervisor if they did that, and they couldn’t afford to put her in a worse mood than she was already in. Taking the mop bucket outside to pour down the drain they caught sight of a familiar Porsche pulling up outside the coffee shop. Lifting their head they watched as Natalie climbed out of the passenger side, laughing at something her husband had said. This was interesting, a deviation from her usual routine. All thoughts of pure hatred towards the dopey customer were obliterated as they realised they’d have completely missed this opportunity without them. It was almost lunchtime, they could take a break and go over the road to grab something to eat, see what she was doing there. They had to know. Natalie was their obsession; they were drawn to her for the same reason they’d been drawn to Sally – her husband and kid were an unfortunate part of the game plan. Necessary to make her realise that you don’t get away with the things she did, at least not to them.
Going back inside they slipped on the wet floor, almost breaking their neck, and realised they forgot to put the ‘wet floor’ sign out. Good job the supervisor was busy chattering to a customer, otherwise she’d have gone crazy. They rushed to the cleaning cupboard, grabbed the yellow sign and stood it in front of the wet floor. Then grabbed their jacket and pointed across the road.
‘Is it okay if I go grab lunch, I feel a bit faint? Do you want anything bringing back?’
The supervisor didn’t, but she nodded with the smallest look of concern showing in her eyes, then her attention was diverted away as she carried on whatever gossip she was in the middle of. She could grab her own lunch, the lazy cow, they were just being polite to her so they could escape for thirty minutes.
The café was busy. Lady Natalie wasn’t sitting in her usual seat, which pleased them a lot more than it should have. A family were sitting there, eating toasted sandwiches, and she was at a table next to the breakfast bar that ran along one wall, meaning there was one stool left at the bar, so they threw their jacket across it to snag it before anyone else, then went to order something. This was perfect: they couldn’t have planned it any better if they’d tried. Their stomach was jittery and their hands were a little shaky but that was okay: they’d calm down once they were sitting next to her with a slice of cake and a pot of tea. They weren’t a tea fan, but they could make a pot of tea last longer than a mug of milky coffee, plus tea was cheaper. Another thing that made them rage at Natalie. They had to scrimp and scrape to pay the bills, and buy food and live, whilst she was splashing the cash around as if she was printing it herself. They were sure she’d never done a solid day’s work from the day she married her wealthy husband. Ironic really, they were convinced she’d stalked her rich husband so she could live a trophy wife life, and now they were stalking her so they could finish what she started that day thirty years ago when she made the worst decision of her life.
SEVENTEEN
Morgan let Ben drive to the Royal Lancaster Infirmary to attend Tim Lawson’s post-mortem, and neither of them spoke much on the way. Ben had updated her earlier on the findings from Sally’s and David’s autopsies. Now the thought of watching the PM of a healthy teenager who should not be in one of Declan’s freezers weighed heavy on their minds. When they got out of the car Ben reached out for her hand, squeezing it.
‘Thank you.’
‘For what?’
‘This, agreeing to come with me. I could have asked Amy.’
She shrugged. ‘I think Amy has enough to deal with at the moment, although she seemed a bit brighter this morning. Of course, I’d come, I’m not going to wimp out on you. I know this is going to be hard for you. Did you know Tim?’
