The Perfect Couple

by Jackie Kabler

  I slumped onto the unmade bed, breathing heavily, and Albert hesitated for a moment – he wasn’t usually allowed on the bed – and then clambered up to join me, seemingly correctly assuming that I was currently too distracted to tell him off.

  Is Danny’s stuff all still being here a good thing or a bad thing? I didn’t know, couldn’t think straight, panic taking hold, and suddenly I felt very alone. If we’d still been in London at least I’d have had old friends nearby, people who could just pop round, people who could support me, but here, in this new city …

  I took a few deep breaths, my heart racing again, and wondered if I should reconsider my decision not to burden the couple of new friends I’d made so far in Bristol with all of this. I’d met Clare on Clifton Down just days after we moved in. I’d actually arrived in the city a week before Danny, who’d had work to finish up in London before he joined me, and I’d abandoned the mountain of unpacked boxes for an hour to clear my head and give Albert a decent walk. Clare had a Standard Poodle, a white curly bundle of energy who had bounded up to Albert, nuzzled him enthusiastically and then run off again, looking coyly over her shoulder. Albert had hesitated for a moment and then raced gleefully after her, leaving me and Clare standing helplessly, leads dangling from our fingers, awaiting their return.

  ‘She’s called Winnie. Winnie the Poodle. Get it?’ She’d grinned, and I’d liked her immediately. Clare was tall, five eleven in her bare feet and slender as a hazel twig, with a mass of blonde curls.

  ‘And yes, I did choose a dog who looks just like me,’ she added.

  We’d sat on a bench and chatted for a full half an hour on that first day and, when I told her I was new to Bristol and was planning to look for a yoga class somewhere nearby, she insisted I come to hers the following evening.

  ‘I go twice a week with my friend Tai. It’s Ashtanga and it’s quite full-on, but you feel great afterwards. And we sometimes go for a drink in the wine bar across the street when we’re done, if you fancy it?’

  I did fancy it, and I’d loved the class, although I’d only returned to it twice in the few weeks since, too busy with trying to get the new house sorted out in the evenings when Danny was back from work. I’d met up with Clare and Tai – a beautiful, petite Chinese woman with an infectious laugh, who’d moved to the UK to attend university and never gone home – several times for drinks or coffee though, and I could already sense a solid friendship beginning to form. They were my kind of women, feisty and strong, kind and funny, and I could tell they liked me too. But it was still early days, and to call them and land something like this on them, to tell them my husband had suddenly gone missing and ask for their support? No, I just couldn’t.

  I groaned. Where was he? And how soon could you officially report somebody, an adult, missing? Wasn’t there some rule? I dragged myself off the bed and back down to the lounge and grabbed my iPad, checking my email inbox again – empty – before doing a Google search.

  No, there wasn’t a rule.

  It’s a common belief that you have to wait 24 hours before reporting, but this is not true. You can make a report to the police as soon as you think a person is missing. Most people who go missing return or are found within 48 hours, with only around 1% still remaining missing after a year …

  A year? Fear swirled in my stomach. But most people came back within forty-eight hours. I checked the time. Nine o’clock. That was forty-six hours then. Forty-six hours since I’d last heard from my husband.

  Come on, Danny. You’ve got two hours. Be like most people. Come home. Please, Danny.

  And if he wasn’t, if he didn’t come home? What then? I’d have to do it, wouldn’t I? Yes, I thought. I’d do it, first thing in the morning. I’d go to the police and report him missing.

  Chapter 4

  ‘Boss, sorry to disturb but there’s somebody just called in downstairs you might want to have a quick chat with.’

  Helena dragged her eyes reluctantly from her computer screen, where she was once again reading through the latest on the two murder cases. The usual incident room buzz had dulled to a low hum on this grey Sunday morning, and she suspected that she wasn’t the only one feeling disheartened and exhausted. It had been a long, and largely fruitless, weekend, and she’d slept badly the previous night, waking every hour, her mind racing. In the end she’d crawled out of bed at 5 a.m. and gone for a long run on The Downs, making sure her route took her past the scenes of both murders, hoping for some flash of inspiration, some inkling as to why on earth two young men had been bludgeoned to death for no apparent reason. She rubbed the aching small of her back – I really need to go and see an osteopath or someone if I’m going to be able to keep running, she thought – and sighed. Forensics had come up with nothing on the latest killing, and while she still didn’t know for sure if the two deaths were linked, the similarities between the two men were just so damn striking …

  She knew it wouldn’t be long before the papers picked up on it too, and she was dreading the possible Monday morning headlines:

  TWO SLAIN – TERROR ON THE DOWNS

  DOUBLE MURDER: THE LOOKALIKE VICTIMS OF THE DOWNS KILLER

  She shuddered. She needed sleep, and a decent cup of tea, but neither seemed to be forthcoming any time soon.

  ‘What is it, Devon?’

  She turned to her DS, trying to keep the irritation out of her voice.

  ‘It’s a woman who wants to report her husband missing. She says—’

  ‘A missing person? Shit, Devon, I’ve got a double murder on my hands here. Why the hell would I be interested in a missing person? Give me a break.’

  She saw him flinch, and immediately felt guilty.

  ‘Oh, mate, I’m sorry. Knackered, you know. Go on, tell me.’

  He gave her a small smile.

  ‘No worries, I had the same reaction when the front desk called me. But I’ve had a quick chat, and honestly, there’s something … look, can you just trust me on this, and come down and have a quick word? It’ll take five minutes, tops.’

  Helena stared at him for a moment and then sighed. He was a good copper, Devon – a good friend too – and she trusted his judgement. He’d been through a bit of a tough time in his personal life recently, but not once had it affected his work, and she wondered if he realized how much she appreciated that, and him. Probably not. She’d have to tell him, one of these days. For now though, if he thought she needed to see this bloody woman, then fine. It would do her good to get out of the overheated incident room for a few minutes, if nothing else. She pushed her chair back from her desk and stood up.

  ‘OK, you win. But you’re buying me a large mug of the canteen’s finest on the way back up.’

  He grinned, his teeth white and even.

  ‘Deal.’

  ***

  The woman, waiting in an interview room, was probably in her early thirties, slender with shoulder-length, wavy brown hair, her pretty face pale and drawn. She shook hands nervously, her palm clammy, and introduced herself as Gemma O’Connor.

  Across the table, Helena smiled, trying to put the woman at ease, noticing that despite her obvious distress she’d made an effort with her appearance, a slick of crimson lipstick matching the oversized red leather bag on her knee, her smart black wool coat accessorised with a leopard print scarf draped around the neck.

  ‘And you want to report a missing person? Your husband?’ she said.

  Gemma nodded.

  ‘Yes. His name is Danny. Full name Daniel Ignatius O’Connor.’ She grimaced slightly. ‘His parents are Irish, Catholic. Ignatius is some obscure saint, apparently.’

  Helena smiled again.

  ‘I got Muriel as my middle name, after my grandmother. I feel his pain. Go on.’

  Gemma gave her a small smile back, then took a deep breath.

  ‘Right, well, I was away on a business trip on Thursday night; we had breakfast together that morning, and last thing that night he emailed me to say goodnight. When I got home on F
riday evening he wasn’t there, and I thought at first he’d just had to work late, because he sometimes does, you know? Has to pull an all-nighter. But I couldn’t get hold of him, and when I woke up on Saturday morning, yesterday, and he still wasn’t home and I still couldn’t contact him I started to panic. I spent all day calling everyone I could think of, his work, the hospitals, friends … even took Albert out and we walked along his route to work, to see if I could find him, in case something had happened. That sounds silly, I know, but he cycles to work, and this is just not like him, not at all, and he hasn’t taken anything with him, just his bike and his laptop and the usual stuff he’d go to work with, and now it’s Sunday and I still can’t get hold of him and I’m just … I’m just so scared …’ Her voice cracked, and her eyes filled with tears.

  Helena, feeling for the woman but still wondering why Devon had asked her to leave her double murder investigation for this, looked around for tissues, saw a box on a side table and got up to retrieve it.

  Offering it to Gemma, she said gently: ‘OK, try not to get upset. We’ll need to take some more details, if that’s all right, and then we can start looking into it for you. But there’s every chance he’ll turn up in a day or so, most missing people do, OK? So take a breath, and then we’ll do a bit of paperwork. Who’s Albert, by the way? Your son?’

  Gemma, who’d ignored the proffered tissues and had started fumbling in her handbag, looked up with a surprised expression and shook her head.

  ‘Oh, sorry, no! We don’t have kids yet, we’ve only been married less than a year. Albert’s our dog. He’s a black Miniature Schnauzer. Bit like a child though, I suppose. They’re super clever.’

  Helena smiled.

  ‘Ahh, I see. Cute dogs, yes. A friend of mine has one.’

  Gemma, who was rooting in her handbag again, didn’t seem to be listening.

  ‘Where is it, dammit! This bag … sorry. I wasn’t sure what you’d need, but I thought a photo …’

  She raised her eyes to Helena, finally pulling an envelope from her bag and sliding a picture out of it.

  ‘I showed your colleague here when he came down earlier. I don’t know why I put it away again, I can never find anything in this stupid bag at the best of times. This is the first one I could find. I’m in it too as it’s a wedding photo, obviously, but I can get you a better one, one of him on his own, later, I have loads on my phone, I just need to look through them and find a good one, but I thought you might need a hard copy one and I just wanted to get the ball rolling, do something …’

  Her words came out in a rush, tumbling over each other, and she stopped talking abruptly, eyes still glistening with tears. Devon reached out and took the photograph, placing it on the table between himself and Helena.

  ‘Thanks, Gemma. Guv, take a look.’

  He looked meaningfully at Helena, and she glanced at the photo, then looked again, properly. Shit. SHIT. Now she understood. Her stomach lurched. There was Gemma, glowingly pretty in a simple white satin shift dress, hair piled high in an elaborate up-do, one hand clutching a bouquet of white lilies, the other gripping the hand of a smiling young man. Dark hair, curly. Thick dark eyebrows, dark brown eyes. A man who appeared, like his wife, to be in his early thirties. A man called Danny O’Connor. But a man who, at a quick glance, could quite easily have been Mervin Elliott. Or Ryan Jones. Or their brother, at least. The same build, the same colouring, the same look. Christ, what’s going on here? She took a deep breath, trying to stay calm. No point in jumping the gun, she thought. Danny O’Connor was, according to his wife, missing. Not dead. There was no body, no evidence he’d come to any harm. So, treat this as a standard missing person, then. For now, anyway. She pushed the photo aside and turned to Devon, nodding slowly.

  ‘Thanks for calling me down, Devon. OK, Gemma, let’s get some details. You said you last saw him on Thursday morning, the twenty-eighth? What time did you leave?’

  Gemma took a deep breath.

  ‘About seven. We had breakfast together at six, got up extra-early to make it a special one, before we both went off to work … Danny cooked a fry-up. I had to go on a press trip, to a new spa hotel in the Cotswolds. I’m a journalist, a feature writer, freelance. I used to do hard news, but I prefer mostly lifestyle stuff nowadays. You know, fashion and beauty and travel, that sort of thing? I have a monthly column in Camille magazine but I do other bits and pieces too. It’s mostly from home but a few times a month I get a chance to get out for a bit, go away for a night, so I’d really been looking forward …’ Her voice tailed off, and the animated expression that had appeared briefly on her face as she talked about her work faded, the anguished look back in her eyes.

  ‘OK, great. So you said goodbye and headed off and then what? When did you next speak to Danny?’

  Helena was scribbling in her notebook.

  ‘Well, I didn’t speak to him, not exactly. We only moved into our new place a few weeks ago, we just moved down here from London, and we haven’t got a landline phone, and there was a delay with Danny’s new company getting him a mobile, so he hasn’t got a phone at all at the moment. So we’ve been communicating by email for the past few weeks. Bit of a pain, but it works most of the time. He emailed me late on Thursday night, about eleven, just to say goodnight. Reminded me he’d be cooking dinner when I got home on Friday, that sort of thing. Just a normal email. I replied, told him I loved him, and that was it. I haven’t … haven’t heard from him since.’

  The tears were back. She reached for a tissue, her hand shaking.

  Helena nodded.

  ‘Right. So you came home on Friday night, that’s the first of March, and there was no sign of him? And you said as far as you know he hasn’t taken anything with him? Passport, clothes? Nothing he wouldn’t normally take on a work day? No note left or anything, I presume?’

  Gemma shook her head.

  ‘No note. And yes, everything’s still there, passport, clothes, the lot. So he probably hasn’t skipped the country at least.’

  She smiled weakly.

  ‘And you said you’ve called his office, his friends, family? And the hospitals too?’

  Gemma nodded.

  ‘Yes, everyone I could think of. I couldn’t get hold of anyone at his office, it’s closed, and I don’t have numbers for all his friends, but I called all the ones I had. Nobody’s seen or heard from him. I didn’t call his family though. Most of them live in Ireland and his mum’s elderly and … well, I didn’t want to worry them, not yet.’

  ‘Yes, probably a good idea not to panic his family, for now at least.’

  Helena gave the woman a brief smile.

  ‘I’ll get a list of the hospitals you’ve tried and Danny’s work address from you in a moment, Gemma, and we’ll need his date of birth, what he was wearing when you last saw him, your current address and where you recently moved from, some specifics like that, OK? But first just a few more general questions, if you can bear it? Did Danny’s behaviour change at all recently? I mean, did he seem worried about anything, distracted, anything like that? Was he having any problems – medical, financial, that sort of thing? Was he misusing drugs, or alcohol?’

  Gemma was shaking her head and frowning.

  ‘No, nothing like that at all. We’ve been really happy – it was his idea initially to move here from London, and I can work from anywhere so I was fine with it too, delighted in fact, and he’s been really excited about his new job, and a better lifestyle. We’ve been busy non-stop since we moved in, of course, just getting the house sorted, but it’s really lovely. We’re renting for now, just until we decide exactly where we want to live, but it’s such a great place, big rooms and this beautiful courtyard, we both love it, and … well, no. None of those things. He was fit and healthy and happy, and I honestly can’t think of a single reason why … why …’ She stopped talking and swallowed hard.

  Helena was still making notes.

  ‘Does he use social media? Facebook, Twitter, Instagram? A
ny of them?’

  Gemma shook her head again.

  ‘No. Neither of us do really. He doesn’t at all, and I have an Instagram account for work purposes but I don’t post very often. Danny’s quite anti-social media actually. Says it’s damaging, that people end up comparing themselves to all these other people who seem to have these perfect glamourous lives, and it’s all rubbish really. I’m not so extreme – I think it can be quite useful, if you follow things you’re really interested in. And it’s kind of part of the job when you work in the media, it’s expected. But to answer your question, no, I’ve never known Danny to have a social media account.’

  Devon, who’d been sitting quietly, cleared his throat.

  ‘How long have you been together, Gemma? You said you’ve only been married a year or so?’

  She turned to look at him.

  ‘We haven’t been together long at all really. It all happened quite quickly. I hate the term “whirlwind romance”, but it was, kind of.’ She gave a little laugh, her cheeks flushing. ‘We met online, about eighteen months ago. We’d only been dating for four months when he proposed, and we got married three months later, in March last year. It’ll be our first wedding anniversary in a couple of weeks. So, as I said, all pretty quick really. But when you know, you know, I guess.’

  ‘I suppose so, yes.’ Devon smiled, then his face turned serious again.

  ‘So … well, I hate to ask this, but … is there any chance that he was seeing somebody else, having an affair? It’s just that sometimes when people go missing …’

  Gemma was shaking her head again, vehemently this time.

  ‘Absolutely not. One of my friends asked me that too, and I’ve really thought about it, you know; even though it’s an awful thing to think, I’ve tried to genuinely consider it as an option. But no, no way. He was at work all day, sometimes until quite late, but he pretty much always came straight home afterwards, and we haven’t had a single night apart since we moved, or a single weekend – I didn’t have a press trip booked until Thursday, so that was the first night since we came to Bristol. And we were together most of the time in London too. I mean, we’d both have the odd night out with friends, separately, do the occasional thing on our own, you know; he’d go off on his bike and so on, he’s a keen cyclist. But we spent the vast majority of our time together. I’d know, too. I just would. Nothing’s changed between us, we’re the same as we’ve always been, better in many ways since we moved …’