by T. M. Logan
But she couldn’t shake the feeling there was something more. She knew Jason had been worried. He had given her the reassurance she was asking for, but behind the façade there was genuine concern. Jason knew this was way out of character for his friend.
There had to be things she could do, places she could go. She felt worse than useless sitting at home. And there was certainly one place nearby that her husband liked to visit now and again, even though he never told her anymore when he was going there. She knew anyway, of course.
She grabbed her car keys and drove the mile to Wilford Hill Cemetery.
Parking in the pull-in on Loughborough Road, she walked up the hill through the forests of stone, past long radiating rows of graves, up the path then cutting left to reach the cemetery’s highest point near the back. It was late in the day and there were only a handful of other people here, dotted across the hillside.
Ed was not among them today and the bench nearby was empty. He had been here recently though: red and yellow tulips had been laid at their son’s grave, and it looked as if they had only been there a day or two. She laid her fingertips on the top of the smooth white marble headstone, the sudden weight of grief for her baby boy returning as if the intervening years had never happened.
Her boy Joshua, who would always and forever be three years old.
Standing on the hill beside her son’s grave, looking down on the city spread out across the river, Claire checked her phone for the tenth time and called her husband’s mobile again.
The call went straight to voicemail.
58
Claire
Claire slept fitfully, finding herself awake every half-hour to check her phone in case Ed had called or texted. Skimming the surface of sleep, confused and fractured half-dreams blending with the reality of the half-empty bed. She used to tell Ed sometimes that she loved having the bed all to herself when he was away, so she could spread out like a starfish and sleep right in the middle if she felt like it. That he wouldn’t disturb her with his mumbled sleep-talk or his gentle snore when he’d had too much to drink. She teased him about them getting separate beds, like Basil and Sybil on Fawlty Towers.
But now she wished more than anything that he was there, turning over in his sleep and murmuring to himself. Sometimes he would have nightmares and cry out loud enough to wake her and she would ask him in the morning what he had been dreaming about, but mostly he said he couldn’t remember. Sometimes she wondered if he did remember, but just didn’t want to tell her for whatever reason. He had certainly remembered the dream about Abbie drifting away out to sea.
She stretched out a hand to his side of the bed, hoping to feel something of him, the indent of his body in the mattress, the shape he had left behind when he had last lain here.
There was nothing.
She stared into the dark, thinking about calling the police. Googled ‘missing person’ on her phone and scrolled through pages of search results, trying to find out how long someone had to be missing to merit police attention. Some said twenty-four hours, some said forty-eight or longer, depending on who the person was and their state of mind. The last text she’d had from Ed was yesterday evening, but it seemed that Jason had been the last one to actually see him, and that was on Wednesday last week. She switched to the keypad, her thumb hesitating before hitting one nine, then another. She stopped. Was it an emergency? She cleared the screen just as the phone buzzed with a text, a pulse of hope making her hands shake.
It wasn’t from her husband.
Jason:
Heard anything from Ed? Just thought, maybe check his computer.
Squinting at the message, she sighed and typed a short reply.
No. Why computer?
She glanced at the time on the clock radio: 3.23 a.m.
Probably worth a look. You never know. I can come over in the morning if that would help? Feel a bit useless here.
OK will let you know if I find anything. Thanks.
She lay there for another hour or so, drifting in and out of sleep, finally waking fully as the first light of dawn found its way around the curtains. 4.48 a.m. She pulled on her dressing gown and slippers and went downstairs, the creaking of the stairs loud against the silent house. She went into Ed’s study and switched on his PC. It had always nominally been the family computer for everyone to use, so he kept the password stuck to the side of the monitor on a yellow Post-it note.
She logged in and selected his profile. There was nothing obviously weird or out of place on the desktop. She clicked on Documents, went into Recent Files, already uncomfortable with the feeling that she was snooping on her husband, checking into his private things. She looked at an unfinished covering letter and CV, job applications that he’d downloaded but not filled in: Cancer Research UK, the University of Nottingham, Loughborough University, some smaller companies that she wasn’t familiar with. PDFs of job descriptions and person specifications.
Nothing that seemed relevant to him dropping out of sight and refusing to answer his phone.
She clicked on Downloads. A PDF of a London tube map, a couple of Ordnance Survey walks in Derbyshire, something from a law firm about inheritance tax. Nothing of note beyond that in the last few weeks. The Pictures folder was just family snaps from their holidays together, organised by year. The Videos folder was empty. She scanned the icons arrayed at the bottom of the screen and clicked on a browser. The BBC News homepage appeared. She went to the ‘history’ tab to look at the web pages Ed had visited most recently. There was nothing from Sunday or yesterday, the most recent being from Saturday evening – almost seventy-two hours ago now.
She scrolled down the list of sites he’d visited and searches he’d made, from Saturday and the previous week. Weather, BBC Sport, Amazon, Google maps, Facebook, the NHS, LinkedIn, The Guardian, Barclaycard, Indeed, Lloyds Bank. And on and on, a bottomless list of web pages and search terms, but nothing particularly out of the ordinary. Although it looked like he had spent a lot of time on the internet over the last week, while she’d been away. Her eye scanned further down the page, scrolling as she went. Finally slowing to a stop, she felt the hopelessness settle on her chest like a block of lead, the sensation that this was another dead end in finding—
Wait.
At the bottom of the page, a four-word search term that stood out from the rest.
Peak District isolated places
A shiver touched the top of her spine.
The search was from five days ago.
She scanned the list above it, searches clustered together on the same day last week, eight Google searches and resulting visits to at least a dozen relevant pages.
Her eyes skipped from one search to the next, the breath stolen from her throat.
Peak District isolated places
Peak District Dark Peak
Amitriptyline combined with alcohol
Amitriptyline overdose
Ladybower Reservoir depth
Ladybower Reservoir suicide
Suicide life insurance
Suicide by drowning
59
Claire
‘Oh my god,’ Jason said, his voice still rough with sleep. ‘You found that in his search history?’
‘Just now,’ Claire said. She could feel panic tightening her chest and tried to swallow it down. ‘Did he ever talk to you about any of these things? Derbyshire, the Peak District, life insurance? Hurting himself?’
There was a pause.
‘Never,’ Jason said. ‘Not once. And I don’t want to freak you out but I think you need to get the police involved at this point.’
‘I’m going to call them next.’
She heard a door open on the other end of the line, and then he asked: ‘Do you want me to come over?’
She was pulling at a long thread from her dressing gown, wrapping it around her fingertip until the flesh went a dark pink.
‘No,’ Claire said. ‘You have to go to work, don’t you?’
‘This is more important, Claire. I’m going to check out a few more places where he might be. I’ll be on the phone if you need me, OK?’
‘Thanks, Jason.’
‘Take a picture of the screen and send it to me, will you?’ he said. ‘And promise me you’ll call if you need anything. Anything at all.’
They hung up and she did as he asked, taking a picture of the search history with her mobile and sending it to him on WhatsApp.
She called Ed’s mobile again. Voicemail. There was a fluttering in her chest now, that painful feeling in her throat. For a moment she felt close to tears, the panic inside threatening to burst its banks as her eyes returned to the computer monitor.
Suicide by drowning.
She swallowed, took a deep breath and went back to the phone keypad, index finger hovering over the numbers. She hit nine three times and pressed the phone to her ear. It rang once before a woman’s voice came through, crisp and precise.
‘Hello, which service do you require?’
‘Police, please.’ Claire felt as if all the air had been sucked from the room.
‘Connecting you now.’
There was a click in her ear, then a new voice: ‘Nottinghamshire Police, what’s your emergency?’
‘My husband’s missing,’ Claire said, almost stumbling over the words. ‘He’s been out of contact for more than thirty-six hours and he’s not been seen since—’
‘Is your husband in immediate physical danger?’
‘I don’t know, he might be, that’s why I’m calling.’
‘And is there reason to believe he might represent a danger to himself or others?’
‘Normally I would say no, but I found some internet searches on his computer,’ she hesitated, not wanting to say it. ‘That suggest he’s been thinking about suicide.’
‘Are you his partner, madam?’
‘His wife. His name’s Edward Collier, he’s forty-eight years old and he’s never done this sort of thing before.’
‘Has he threatened you with violence or do you feel he might do so in the near future?’
She frowned. ‘No, of course not, that’s not why I’m calling. It’s just totally out of character for him to be missing and I’m really worried about him.’
‘I’m transferring you to one of our 101 operators, madam, they can take all the details and advise on the best way to proceed with your report.’
‘Hang on a moment—’
There was another click and a new voice, a man this time, who took all of Ed’s details and said an officer would call her back within two hours.
The operator rang off and she imagined Ed’s details being typed into a police computer somewhere, disappearing into the ether with all the other missing persons reports they must receive on a daily basis.
There had to be more she could do. Among the mess of books and papers on Ed’s desk, her eye fell on a black and white business card, with a Nottinghamshire Police crest embossed in the top right corner. Mark Preston, Detective Constable. She didn’t know why Ed had his card, but maybe he knew the detective somehow.
She called the landline on the card and left a message.
As she hung up, her phone buzzed with a text.
Jason:
What’s the amitriptyline all about?
She texted back.
I wish I knew.
Holding the business card, she dialled the detective’s mobile number and cleared her throat to leave another message, reminding herself that she needed to sound calm and rational and composed. Not a nuisance caller to be fobbed off again. She needed him to take her seriously.
To her surprise, he picked up after two rings.
To her even greater surprise, he sounded like he wanted to talk to her.
‘Listen,’ Preston said, after she’d given him the brief version of Ed’s disappearance. ‘I’m due to be working out of the West Bridgford station today, I’ll come by your house on my way in. I was going to give you a ring anyway.’
Claire started to ask him why he’d been planning to call, but he had already hung up.
60
Claire
‘What was the last contact you had from your husband?’ Preston asked.
The detective sat in her lounge, notepad and pen in hand. He had arrived twenty minutes after the phone call, but still wouldn’t tell her exactly why he’d come out to her house.
‘I’ve been ringing and ringing since I got back,’ Claire said, nervously picking at the cuticle around her thumbnail. ‘Sending him texts, asking him to let me know where he is.’
‘But when was the last time he responded? When you actually had a call or a text from him?’
‘He texted me and my daughter on Sunday evening, the same message, just after 6 p.m. But he never came back to either of us when we replied.’
She scrolled through her phone and held it out to show Preston the text from Ed, her hand shaking.
Sorry, for everything. Love you xx
‘I texted him straight back to ask if he was OK, but he never replied. After a bit I rang him, but his phone was off.’
‘Did that concern you?’
‘It did, but he’s like that sometimes, sometimes he forgets to charge it or leaves it in his jacket. I thought I’d just talk to him when I got back, and sort things out.’
Preston made a note of the time stamp on the text: 6.12 p.m.
‘So you’ve had no contact with him of any kind in over thirty-six hours?’
‘No. I’ve called around his friends and colleagues and none of them have heard anything either.’
‘What did you think he meant, by this apology?’
‘We’ve had a . . . difficult time recently. I interpreted it as a bit of a peace offering.’ Claire dabbed her eyes with a tissue. ‘I thought he was just trying to apologise for us falling out recently. But now all this has happened it looks like it might have been him saying . . .’ she tailed off, her eyes suddenly filling with fresh tears.
Preston gave her a sympathetic smile. ‘We don’t know that yet.’
She picked at her thumbnail again until it began to bleed. She sucked the blood away then gripped the thumb in her other hand.
‘So are you going to tell me why you’ve come over?’ Claire said quietly. ‘I’m sure you’re not in the habit of making house calls without good reason.’
‘That’s true enough. But I don’t want you to jump to any conclusions.’
‘Just tell me.’
The detective sipped his green tea before placing the mug carefully back on the coaster.
‘Derbyshire Police have found your husband’s car. Abandoned.’
61
Claire
Claire felt all the strength leaving her.
‘Where is the car?’ she said finally. ‘What do you mean, abandoned?’
‘In circumstances that give them – and me – cause for concern.’ The detective clicked his ballpoint pen with his thumb. ‘Did he go to the Peak District National Park very often?’
‘Derbyshire?’ She felt a flutter of panic, remembering the search history on Ed’s computer. ‘We’d go occasionally I suppose, for walks around Matlock and Bakewell. But he’d done internet searches recently on the area.’
‘Does he know the area around Castleton, up towards the Dark Peak?’
Claire shook her head. ‘I don’t think so. He certainly never mentioned it to me. Is that where you’ve found his car?’
The detective nodded, his expression softening. ‘At a small parking area at the side of the road. You’re not allowed to stay there overnight, so when a patrol car noted it there early on Monday, they took a closer look and found it was unlocked and the driver’s side door was ajar.’
‘You’re sure it’s his car?’
Preston read out the number plate from a sheet in front of him.
‘Yes,’ Claire said. Her voice sounded strange in her own ears, as if it belonged to someone else. ‘I think that’s right.’
/> ‘The Derbyshire officers pulled his home address and fired the query over to us, to follow up with family. And so here we are.’
‘What else is there, in that location? I mean, is it just in the middle of nowhere?’
‘It’s beside Ladybower Reservoir.’
‘Oh God.’ Claire covered her face, wanting to scream.
‘We’re still trying to confirm a timeline,’ Preston said. ‘That car park is not a popular spot, there’s no facilities and it doesn’t have a particularly good view of the reservoir. There’s no CCTV in the vicinity, so we don’t know for sure when he parked up.’ He consulted his notes again. ‘What we do know is that ANPR logged his car registration as he travelled north on the M1, early Sunday morning. We’ve got another hit from a camera in Chesterfield soon after, and the data we’ve pulled on his mobile phone shows he was in Edale and the surrounding area for just over an hour before his phone dropped off the network and never came back up, possibly because it ran out of charge or he went up onto the moors north of Edale. Or maybe both. My colleagues in Derbyshire tell me the signal up there is virtually non-existent across large parts of the high moorland. It’s pretty remote.’
‘But his car wasn’t found on the moors?’
‘Impossible to get a vehicle up there, only really accessible on foot. But it wasn’t far away. Ladybower is about three miles from Edale as the crow flies.’
‘Oh God,’ Claire said again. She just wished she’d had one chance, one minute with her husband, to shake him, hold him, tell him he was loved and needed and that he didn’t have to do this. That she would always be there for him. ‘Not this. Not Ed.’
‘So you’d have absolutely no idea what he might have been doing up there?’
‘No, not until I looked at his computer this morning.’
She took him through to Ed’s study and showed Preston the search history she’d found.
The detective made another note on his pad. ‘Does anyone else in the family use that device?’
