The Perfect Couple

by Jackie Kabler

  But three …

  Three, and she might just have a serial killer on her hands.

  Chapter 3

  ‘Where the hell are you, Danny? This is getting ridiculous.’

  I stopped pacing up and down the kitchen for a moment to stand and stare out of the rain-streaked window into the elegant courtyard at the back of the house, willing him to suddenly appear, my fists clenched, nails digging into my palms. It was late Saturday afternoon and, despite my best efforts all day to track my husband down, I’d come up with precisely nothing. I needed to make some more phone calls, but I’d have to calm myself down first. I took a deep breath, trying to slow my racing heartbeat, and rested my forehead against the cold glass, eyes flitting across the yard. On two levels separated by a row of pleached hornbeam trees, the beautifully designed limestone-paved space had enthralled me from the moment Danny and I had first come to view the place. In the centre of the top level nearest the house, water bubbled gently from a polished metal sphere perched on top of a stone plinth, next to which sat a huge glass-topped table, six wrought iron chairs tucked underneath it. The outdoor dining area had been given an exotic, tropical feel more reminiscent of Bali than Bristol thanks to artfully planted bamboo, phormiums and tree ferns, the space illuminated at night by hundreds of tiny lights dotted among the foliage. At the front of the top terrace, steps led down to the lower level, where on either side of the back gate bay trees swayed gently in the wind in tall graphite pots, and raised herb beds lined the walls; our very own kitchen garden in the heart of the city. Even on a wet Saturday in March, and even when I was feeling so utterly miserable, a tiny shiver of pleasure ran through me.

  ‘A fountain! There’s a fountain, Danny!’ I’d squeaked when we’d first walked in through the back gate, and he’d laughed and squeezed my hand. We’d wondered why the letting agent had suggested meeting at the back of the house instead of at the front door, but it suddenly made perfect sense. It was stunning.

  ‘It’s more of a water feature, but OK. You and your fancy courtyard fetish,’ Danny had whispered as we were led indoors, both of us knowing instantly that no matter what the interior was like, this place already had me hooked. He was right; I’d always yearned for a courtyard garden. A peaceful place to entertain friends, to sit in the sun with a glass of wine on a summer evening, to lounge with a book on a Sunday afternoon, and no lawn to mow? Pretty damn perfect in my book.

  We’d had a lovely home in London, but as so often in the capital, a place in a central location with any sort of decent outside space was hard to find. We’d made the small roof terrace of our apartment as beautiful as we could, but the Bristol courtyard had seemed huge in comparison.

  ‘There’s even a proper bicycle shed, look, down there in the corner of that lower level. I can finally stop having to chain my gorgeous bike to the front railings and you can finally quit moaning about how it lowers the tone,’ Danny had said, and I’d clapped my hands and done a little happy dance, making him laugh.

  That Saturday though, as I stared out of the window, I could see that, just as it had been since I came back from my trip, the smart wooden lean-to where his beloved bike usually stood was empty. I looked at the blank space for a few more seconds, my vision blurring, then jumped as a cold, damp nose nuzzled my hand.

  ‘Hey, Albert. Where’s Danny then, eh?’ I whispered, and he cocked his head, eyes fixed on mine, and whimpered. I didn’t blame him; I felt like whimpering myself. My stomach churning, my eyes dry and scratchy from crying and lack of sleep, I glanced at the empty courtyard one more time then turned from the window and started pacing again. Albert stood watching me for a moment, then whined softly and trotted off to his bed in the corner of the kitchen.

  On Friday night I’d finally ordered pizzas, picking at mine as I constantly refreshed my emails, expecting an apologetic message from Danny to pop into my inbox at any moment. When nothing came, I’d finally, grumpily, assumed he was pulling an all-nighter, and had gone to bed, noticing as I crawled under the duvet that he’d even changed the bedding while I was away, the pillow case fresh and crisp against my cheek. His bloody job, I thought. He loved it, but I wasn’t always so keen. Danny was an IT security specialist, analysing and fixing systems breaches, defending companies against online hacking.

  ‘I fight cybercrime. I’m basically a security superhero,’ he’d announced with a theatrical wave of his arms on our first date, and I’d rolled my eyes, grinning and, if I was honest, not quite understanding what he did at all, while still being secretly impressed.

  What the job meant in reality though was long hours and frequent emergency call-outs, and although this would be the first such occasion in this new job, it wasn’t that unusual for him to have to work through the night if something had gone wrong with an important client’s computer system. When we first met he’d been working for a company in Chiswick, in west London, earning a healthy six-figure salary. When we’d talked about leaving the capital, I’d assumed it would mean Danny accepting a lower wage, but that hadn’t been the case, something that had surprised me until I realized that his new firm, ACR Security, had itself relocated from central London a couple of years back, taking advantage of the lower rents in the UK’s eleventh biggest city.

  ‘Makes sense,’ Danny had said, when he’d first floated the idea of us moving out of London. ‘There’s a great job up for grabs in Bristol, and the internet’s the internet, my job’s going to be the same anywhere, same pay too. And think how much further our money will go without London prices, you know? And you can do your job from anywhere too, can’t you, Gem? You’d love it, I know you would, the quality of life would be so much better. Bristol’s a lovely city, and you’ve got Devon and Cornwall just a few hours down the road, and the Cotswolds not far in the other direction, and it’s a uni city so there are plenty of good bars and restaurants, and the architecture’s gorgeous …’

  ‘OK, OK, you’ve sold it to me, let’s do it!’

  In truth, he hadn’t really had to work very hard to convince me. He was right that as a freelance journalist, I could pretty much work from wherever I wanted to, and London didn’t have any great hold on me anymore. It was too busy, too stressful, and in recent years I’d often craved a gentler life, more greenery, less noise. And so he took the job he’d been offered, and we’d packed up our modern apartment just off Chiswick High Road and moved into this lovely, high-ceilinged Victorian semi with the wonderful courtyard in the leafy Bristol suburb of Clifton. We’d only been married a year, and had still been renting in London, not wanting to commit to a huge mortgage until we’d decided where we wanted to settle. Even though Bristol felt right to both of us, we didn’t want to jump into buying there too soon either, wanting to give ourselves time to make sure we were both still happy with our jobs and the Bristol lifestyle and to find the perfect forever home.

  ‘We’ll rent, just for a year or so. Somewhere nice though. Best part of town,’ Danny had said as we’d scrolled excitedly through the property listings online, amazed at how low the rents seemed compared with what we’d been paying in Chiswick. And so it all came together perfectly, and after just a few days, I knew I was home. Danny appeared to feel the same, even if his working hours were just as long as they’d been in London, something I hated but had grown to accept.

  Even so, I’d been so looking forward to seeing him on Friday night that I’d felt miserable, sleeping badly, waking every hour to see if the empty space in the bed next to me had been filled by his warm, weary body.

  When he still hadn’t called by nine o’clock on Saturday morning I’d started to really worry. This wasn’t right. Pushing aside my reluctance to appear the nagging wife, I’d looked up the switchboard number for his company and dialled it. It had gone straight to voicemail, informing me that ACR Security was now closed and would reopen at 9 a.m. on Monday, and advising that clients with an urgent issue should call the emergency number on their contract.

  ‘What about wives with an u
rgent issue?’ I’d shouted down the phone, then ended the call, my heart beginning to pound. If his office was closed, where the hell was Danny? Had he had an accident on his way home? That flipping bike. I’d always thought it odd that he didn’t drive, but he’d shrugged cheerily when I’d asked him about it.

  ‘Never needed to. Plenty of good public transport in Dublin when I was a student. And then London … I mean, who drives in London? Congestion charge, parking is ridiculous … ah, bike’s the way to go, Gem. And we’ve got your car, haven’t we, when we need it? No point wasting money on two.’

  He had a point. But I still worried about him commuting on that thing. And so when I couldn’t track him down at his office, and after I’d tried to Skype him half a dozen times only to find he was offline every time, I started to ring the hospitals. There seemed to be only a few in Bristol with accident and emergency departments, and after I’d ruled out the children’s and eye hospitals there were only two left, Southmead and Bristol Royal Infirmary. My hands shaking, I called both, but neither had any record of a male with Danny’s date of birth or fitting his description being admitted in the past twenty-four hours. For a minute, a wave of relief washed over me, before fear gripped me again. If he wasn’t at work, or hurt, where else could he be? If he’d decided on a last-minute trip to see a friend, he’d have called me, wouldn’t he? But that was just so unlikely, when he’d promised to be there when I got home, cooking dinner for me. So maybe he was at work, after all, and the office switchboard had just been left in weekend mode. But why hadn’t he answered my email, or contacted me to let me know where he was? Surely, however busy he was, he’d have had time to do that? He’d know how worried I’d be.

  Breathing deeply, trying to keep on top of the anxiety which was threatening to overwhelm me, I tapped out another email.

  Danny, where are you? I’m seriously worried now. I’ve tried your office but it’s just going to voicemail. PLEASE let me know you’re OK? Gxx

  I pressed send and checked the time. Midday, on Saturday. I hadn’t heard from him since the goodnight email he’d sent me at about eleven on Thursday night, the one I’d read in my hotel room. Just over thirty-six hours. It just wasn’t right, wasn’t normal, not for us. Should I call the police? But what if he really was just frantically busy at work, trying to fix some sort of online disaster for a major client, totally losing track of time? Imagine his mortification if the police suddenly turned up at his office, the sniggers of his new work mates, the mutterings about neurotic wives. No, I couldn’t call the police; it was too soon. I was being silly. He’d reply to this latest email any minute now, and everything would be fine, I told myself. By this evening we’ll be snuggled on the sofa drinking wine and laughing at me and my stupid over-reaction.

  I’d gone out briefly to collect Albert from the nearby kennels – I’d dropped him off on Wednesday night before I left on Thursday morning – Danny’s long and unpredictable working hours not compatible with dog care – desperately hoping that by the time we arrived home, my husband would be back, wearily brewing coffee in the kitchen or sprawled, exhausted, on the sofa after a long night in the office. But he wasn’t, and so at lunchtime, and uncharacteristically for me, because doing it too often made me feel fearful and anxious, I turned on the BBC Radio Bristol news. I’d worked in newsrooms for years before going freelance, covering so many stories that had shocked and sickened me, and although I’d become harder and tougher as time had gone on, more able to handle the horror of reporting on yet another stabbing, yet another senseless murder, there had come a point when the life I’d led back then had all become too much for me, and I’d simply walked out and left it all behind. I’d stopped watching the news completely for months after I quit, stopped reading the papers, finding solace in my ignorance about the true state of the world, switching to lifestyle journalism when I returned to work, leaving crime and politics behind me. But now my husband had vanished, and so I turned the radio on, feeling shaky as I listened for stories about accidents, car crashes, unidentified bodies.

  There weren’t any, but in the afternoon, and feeling a little foolish, I slipped Albert’s lead on and went out to walk Danny’s route to and from work, some vague idea in my head that maybe he’d been knocked off his bike by a car and had been tossed, unconscious, into a hedge or alleyway. Ridiculous, even I knew that, in a big city where he’d surely have been spotted within minutes, but I did it anyway. I’d realized before we set out that I didn’t even know his exact route to work, or even if he took the same route every day – as a cyclist, there were so many options, so many shortcuts you could take. So I studied a map, picked what looked like the two most likely routes, the most logical roads to take to travel between our house in Monville Road and Danny’s office in Royal York Crescent, and did both, one one way, the other on the return. His office was clearly closed when I got there, but I rang the doorbell anyway, and peered in through the windows at unlit rooms empty of people, before turning round and heading home again, my sense of desperation growing. I found nothing on either route, of course. No bike, no helmet, no Danny.

  I spent the rest of the afternoon pacing around the house, staring out of the windows, yelling pointlessly at my absent spouse and intermittently bursting into tears. Finally, I checked the time – almost six o’clock – and made myself sit down and start making some more calls. It had been too long, and I needed help; I couldn’t handle this on my own, not any longer. I’d met a few people in the short time we’d been in Bristol, a couple of whom I already felt could potentially become good friends, but the relationships were too new, I thought, to burden with something like this. In terms of old friends, most of the couples we hung out with had originally been friends of mine, and I didn’t think that any of them would be able to help, not at that stage; if Danny had gone away to visit someone without telling me, unlikely though that seemed, it would probably have been one of his own mates. I didn’t have contact details for any of his Irish friends, but I found numbers for two of the colleagues he’d been palliest with in his old job in London, and for his former boss. They all sounded a little bemused – no, they hadn’t heard from him since he’d left, but … you know what this job’s like, he probably has no idea what time it is or how long he’s been head down at his desk, he’ll probably turn up in a couple of hours, don’t worry, Gemma. Keep us posted though, OK?

  I wished I had an out-of-hours number for Danny’s new boss, just in case, but I didn’t, and I couldn’t even remember his name. So – family, then? Danny had a cousin in London, but the rest of his family lived in the west of Ireland, and after some consideration I decided against calling them, for a while at least. I’d never felt that comfortable around his cousin Quinn, and his mum, Bridget, was tricky at the best of times. His dad, Donal, had died not long before we got married, and Danny had never been close to either of his parents; there was no point in sending Bridget into a panic if, in the end, there was nothing at all to worry about. I didn’t call my parents either – they were nervy types, both of them, and I couldn’t handle their distress, not on my own, not while I was feeling so horribly anxious myself. And so I kept dialling other numbers, and when Danny’s friends couldn’t help, I decided to phone a few of my own after all, not so much to ask if they’d heard from my missing husband but for advice, for comfort, although I found little of the latter.

  ‘Shit, Gemma, that’s worrying. I’d be calling the police, if I were you.’

  ‘Oh Gem, darling, how awful! Do you want me to come down? Just say the word. But I’m sure he’ll turn up soon, it probably is just a work thing …’

  ‘Bloody men. But Danny’s usually so reliable, isn’t he? I don’t know what to think, Gem. Maybe give it until tomorrow and then report him missing? You don’t … well, I hate to ask, but you don’t think he’s got another woman, do you?’

  It was something that hadn’t crossed my mind until then, and when I’d put the phone down after speaking to Eva, one of my closest friends, I sw
allowed hard, trying to consider the possibility. No, it just couldn’t be true. Since we’d moved to Bristol we hadn’t had a night apart until Thursday when I’d gone on my press trip, and we’d spent every second of every weekend together too, sorting out our new home. When would he have had time? We’d been pretty much inseparable most of the time before we moved too … we were still virtually newlyweds, after all. Well, not entirely inseparable; we’d obviously had the odd night apart, work trips and ‘girls’ and ‘boys’ nights out, and Danny was the type of guy who sometimes just wanted his own space, but … I shook my head. If he’d been having an affair, I’d have known, wouldn’t I? Whatever was going on, it wasn’t that. Could he have left me for some other reason though? I stood up, pulling my cashmere cardigan – the baby blue one Danny had bought me for Christmas – more tightly around me, and walked slowly from the lounge and down the corridor to the kitchen to peer out into the dark, empty yard again. Albert jumped up too and followed closely behind me, his nose butting my shins. He was almost as anxious as I was, I could see that, his doggy senses always keenly attuned to mine, and I crouched down beside him, stroking his soft head, looking into his dark brown, intelligent eyes, muttering soothing nonsense as my mind continued to race.

  If Danny had left me, what possible reason could he have? And he hadn’t taken anything with him, had he? I realized with a shiver that I didn’t know. I hadn’t looked, hadn’t even thought to check. Suddenly light-headed with fear, I rushed upstairs to the bedroom, pulling open drawers, clawing at the clothes in his wardrobe, searching frantically through his bedside cabinet, not even sure what I was looking for. But everything seemed untouched, neat, there. His passport, still in the drawer where he always kept it. All his clothes, his underwear, his watch collection. No gaps, nothing missing, as far as I could tell anyway. Everything looked the way it always looked. So what was gone? Just his coat, his laptop, his tablet, the black backpack he carried them in, his bike and helmet. The usual things he’d go to work with. Everything else was still there, waiting for him, like I was. Like Albert was.