The Perfect Couple

by Jackie Kabler

  Helena nodded. The Crown Prosecution Service would want a lot more than they currently had to make a charge stick to Gemma O’Connor, and the forensics report had been another blow. Traces of Danny O’Connor’s DNA, along with his fingerprints, had been found in numerous parts of the Clifton house, although in vastly smaller quantities than those of Gemma’s. They had already known from speaking to the letting agency that Danny had spent a night there with Gemma in mid-January, so that wasn’t unexpected. But the lab had been unable to give any firm answer on exactly how much time he’d spent in the place.

  ‘It’s impossible to say. Depends how often the house is cleaned, what cleaning products are used. He’s been there, that’s all we can say for definite. Can’t tell you how recently, or for how long, unfortunately.’

  It was something they wanted to speak to Gemma about, but as they’d been about to contact her earlier, she had unexpectedly phoned the incident room, saying she needed to speak to them. She was due to arrive any minute, and just as that thought crossed Helena’s mind, her desk phone rang.

  ‘She’s here,’ she told Devon when she’d replaced the handset. ‘You coming?’

  ‘Definitely.’

  ***

  When they were settled in one of the interview rooms, Helena decided to let Gemma speak first. The woman looked better than she had on their last meeting, she thought – a little more rested, hair freshly washed, and a determined expression on her face.

  ‘Look, I’ve been thinking, really thinking, about Danny’s behaviour over the past few weeks,’ she began. ‘And I’ve been talking it over with my friend Eva too. Eva Hawton? She’s an investigative reporter on The Independent, and she’s really good at getting to the bottom of stuff like this. She’s been a big help.’

  ‘Has she indeed?’ said Helena. ‘So what does Miss Hawton make of all this then?’

  She tried to keep the scepticism she was feeling out of her voice. Bloody reporters, she thought, thinking again about the latest newspaper headlines.

  ‘Well, she thinks – and so do I now, it just didn’t occur to me before, but the more I think about it the more it makes sense – well, she and I both think now that Danny must have been in some sort of trouble, and maybe had been for a while, before he … before he disappeared.’

  ‘What sort of trouble?’ asked Helena, glancing sideways at Devon and raising an eyebrow.

  ‘Well … I don’t know, not at the moment. But our theory is that whoever Danny had got himself in trouble with met him at our place in Chiswick that morning after I moved out. And this guy attacked Danny, didn’t manage to kill him but hurt him somehow. I still don’t know how there could have been so much blood, but I’ve thought about it and in retrospect I don’t think I actually saw Danny totally naked after he moved to Bristol. We didn’t have sex …’

  ‘Ohh-kaaay.’ Helena couldn’t help it – her scepticism was growing exponentially.

  Gemma ignored her and carried on.

  ‘We didn’t have sex after he moved down, and I just wonder now if he might have been hiding an injury on the lower part of his body. He didn’t seem hurt or in pain, but it’s the only thing I can think of to explain the blood.’

  ‘Unlikely, but go on,’ said Helena, resisting the temptation to roll her eyes. She wasn’t buying this ‘theory’ for a minute.

  Gemma flushed.

  ‘I know this sounds far-fetched, but please, bear with me. I don’t know how it ties in with the other murders, or why the victims all look so alike, and so like Danny, I can’t explain that. But leaving that aside, it does make some sort of sense, honestly. So Danny got hurt, and went somewhere to recover for a week before joining me here as planned. I don’t know where – maybe a hotel or something. Or, if he was seeing someone else, some other woman, which I don’t really want to think about, but you know …’

  She paused and swallowed hard, then took a breath.

  ‘And then when he did move here, he was terrified that this guy would track him down, finish him off. So he hid, basically – never answered the door to deliveries, made sure the neighbours never spotted him, didn’t even get a new mobile phone. I still don’t know why he pulled out of his new job before any of this would have happened, or where he was spending his days when I thought he was at work. But … can you not see that it’s sort of logical? He’d have been scared. Really scared. And then, maybe he just got so scared that he ran. And he’s still running. Either that or …’ She paused again. ‘Either that or he got caught, and he’s dead now too,’ she said quietly.

  For a few moments there was silence.

  Then Devon said: ‘Just assuming for a minute that this is what happened – and there are a lot of holes in this theory, as you’ve just pointed out yourself. But just assuming … so you really think your husband could have been going through all this, I mean being literally scared for his life, without you noticing a thing? Without you noticing any change whatsoever in his behaviour? Nothing?’

  She stared at him for a moment, dropped her gaze to the table, then raised her head again.

  ‘I don’t know. But I didn’t. I didn’t notice anything. He was acting perfectly normally, and I’m struggling with that too. And I know, I know how unlikely this all sounds. But all I know is that I didn’t do anything to hurt my husband, that he did move to Bristol and lived with me here for three weeks despite what you think, and that now he’s gone. And there has to be a reason, and with everything that we know so far, this is the only thing that makes even half sense to me. Can you not … can you not go with me on it, even a little bit?’

  There were tears in her eyes now, and the earlier determination Helena had seen in her face had been replaced by an expression of deep distress.

  ‘Look, Gemma …’ She paused, unsure of quite what to say. ‘It does sound highly unlikely, yes. It’s a very elaborate theory, with nothing to back it up, I’m afraid. And the only way to prove or disprove your theory – well, any of the theories we have about this case really, is to find Danny. Alive or dead.’

  Gemma nodded, and a fat tear rolled down her cheek.

  ‘I’ve tried to tell myself he’s still alive. Tried not to give up hope. I thought I’d somehow know, deep down, if he wasn’t alive anymore. But I honestly think he might be dead, now,’ she said, her voice barely a whisper. ‘Just in the last day or so. I just don’t think he’d go this long without contacting me, if he was still alive. Because, and this is going to sound stupid, really stupid, after what I’ve just said, after he’s obviously lied to me and probably cheated on me … but I do think he loved me, despite all this. And he’d know how desperately worried I’d be. He’d have found a way of getting in touch, if he could.’

  There was silence for a few moments again, then Helena cleared her throat.

  ‘Well, we’ll bear in mind what you’ve told us. However, now I just want to share with you the outcome of the forensic examination of your home on Friday.’

  Gemma wiped her eyes with the backs of her hands.

  ‘OK,’ she said.

  ‘We did find some of your husband’s DNA and his fingerprints throughout the house. You are still claiming he lived there with you for three weeks, which as you know we aren’t sure is true. However, we are aware that you and he spent a night together there in January, before you moved down here properly. So that alone might account for the presence of his DNA and fingerprints there. But the report does say that the quantity of your DNA present outweighs the quantity of his found many times, which adds some weight to our theory that he didn’t spend much, if any, time here in Bristol since January. Any thoughts on that?’

  Gemma shook her head and groaned softly.

  ‘He lived here for three weeks,’ she said wearily. ‘But he was out all day, and I work from home so there’d naturally be more of my DNA around, I suppose, wouldn’t there? I don’t really know how it works, but that would make sense, wouldn’t it? And well, I mean, he’s been gone now for what, nine days? I’ve obviou
sly cleaned the place since then, several times. Maybe I cleaned his away? I don’t know how it works with DNA – can you clean it away?’

  She looked at Helena, who didn’t respond.

  ‘I don’t know then. I can’t help you,’ Gemma said.

  They let her go soon after that, and as Helena and Devon walked slowly back upstairs to the incident room, Helena sighed.

  ‘Her theory is bollocks, isn’t it? I mean, she’s just tried to come up with something that vaguely works with what we already know. Trying to make it fit in with her lies. Isn’t she?’

  ‘Probably.’ Devon didn’t sound quite so sure. ‘I mean to be fair it does sort of work. But only sort of. There are big holes. Like, why would he pull out of his new job in Bristol before he was even attacked? That just doesn’t fit.’

  ‘Because she attacked him. And it was planned, so it was her who sent that email pulling out of the new job, not him at all,’ Helena said firmly. ‘And yes, I know I still don’t have any proof of that. Damn that DNA evidence from the house. It’s just not strong enough to help us. But I’ll get there, Devon. She’ll slip up one of these days, you just wait and see. And when she does, I’ll be waiting right there to catch her.’

  Chapter 19

  I wiped the cloth one more time across the cooker top and stood back, satisfied. Cleaning the house again had, for a few minutes at least, focused my mind on something other than Danny, and even that brief respite from the constant, confused clamour in my head had made me feel calmer, more in control. The press were outside my door again, and although I’d kept the curtains closed, I could still hear them, the low hum of their chatter, the occasional shout and burst of laughter. I was trying to ignore their presence and keeping busy helped. I had now temporarily given up on work altogether, calling the various editors who were waiting for articles from me, all of whom had been in touch in recent days anyway as the news about Danny had hit the newspapers, and telling them that the situation still hadn’t been resolved and that I needed a few more weeks without a commission. I had somehow managed, in snatched moments here and there over the past few days, to finish the spa feature for Fitness & Style – definitely not my finest work, but it was done – but writing anything new seemed impossible. All of the editors had been understanding, and I was deeply grateful, but I assured them I wouldn’t be unavailable for long. I had to. The world of freelance journalism was a fickle one, and I knew I’d be replaced as a regular if I was away for too many weeks, maybe even lose my Camille column, although thankfully that was always written several issues ahead of time. But surely, this would all be over soon? How much longer could it go on, for goodness’ sake? And how long would it be before my neighbours came round to complain about the press invasion of their street?

  Earlier, I’d swept the courtyard, whipping the broom backwards and forwards, sweat beading on my forehead from the physical effort. I’d stopped for a moment to wipe my sleeve across my face, and had seen Clive again, standing motionless at an upstairs window next door, looking down at me. Unsure what to do – would a wave look too cheerful, too casual, in the circumstances? – I nodded at him, then looked away and started sweeping again. Thirty seconds later when I glanced back at the window, he was gone. I hadn’t spoken to him or his wife – or indeed to Jo, my other neighbour – since the night I’d popped round to ask them if they’d seen Danny. It was just too awkward, too impossible, with the press camped on my doorstep: what on earth must they think of me? They’ll be ruing the day I moved in, and who could blame them? I thought, as I picked up the wire basket I used to cart cleaning products around the house and headed up to the bathroom, my thoughts drifting back to the previous day and my latest encounter with the police. They’d humoured me, but I had the feeling they hadn’t believed my theory about Danny’s disappearance at all, and in many ways I didn’t blame them. Faced with a bizarre collection of facts and odd behaviour, I’d pieced them together as best I could to come up with something that sort of, vaguely, made sense. And yet, when it was said out loud, in the cold light of a police interview room, it did sound like something a half-crazed person would say to cover up a crime. It wasn’t really logical, and there were big holes in it. It was all I had though, for now, I thought, as I sprayed cleaning foam around the hand basin and vigorously wiped it off again. I loved this bathroom, with its huge double walk-in shower and the clawfoot, cast iron bath in front of the window, trailing plants cascading down one wall from a high shelf and scented candles dotted around. Since Danny had gone, the pleasures of our bathroom had passed me by, a cursory swipe of a toothbrush and quick, joyless shower all I’d been able to manage in the past few days. Yes, the half-baked theory I’d shared with the police was all I had, but it was something to cling onto now, something to work on, on my own if I had to. At least they hadn’t kept me in custody.

  ‘Thank goodness for forensics,’ I said out loud to my reflection in the mirror, as I wiped a spot of toothpaste off the smooth glass. ‘At least they know you were here at some point, Danny. At least they know I’m not making everything up.’

  Their findings bothered me though – the fact that they’d found so little of Danny in the house. Yes, he’d been gone for a while, and yes I’d cleaned the place since he’d vanished, as I’d told them. But was it that easy, to destroy DNA? I didn’t know much about it, but I’d always somehow thought that it was harder than that – that DNA was tough stuff that could hang around for years. And then, as I twisted the cap off the bleach bottle and poured some of it into the toilet bowl, I stopped dead, staring at the bottle suspended in mid-air. Bleach. That Friday night, when I’d arrived home to an empty house. Danny had cleaned the place, hadn’t he? I remembered the shiny surfaces, the clean bed linen, the used bedding damp in the washing machine, the bathroom towels in there too, the faint smell of bleach in the air. What if …? But why would he?

  I slammed the bleach bottle down onto the cistern and ran from the room. In the kitchen I found my iPad, opened Google and tapped in ‘can you clean away DNA?’. And there it was.

  … oxygen-producing detergents destroy all DNA evidence …

  … oxygen bleach tested on bloodstained clothing for two hours completely destroyed the DNA …

  Oxygen-producing detergents? I did another quick search. There were dozens of them on the market. I ran my eye down the brand names, recognizing most from the cleaning aisle at the supermarket, then ran back to the bathroom. Our bleach was on the list. Our innocent-looking household bleach could destroy DNA. And Danny had, it seemed, cleaned the house from top to bottom before he left. Did he know that, about the DNA? Yes, he wanted to disappear, that much was abundantly clear now. But did he want to disappear to that extent? To literally try to wipe away all evidence of his very presence in his own home? Or was he just carrying out a final act of kindness and leaving the place clean for me? Was I totally overthinking this? I groaned and slumped down onto the closed toilet lid. For a few moments I simply felt sad, worn down, exhausted. And then, unexpectedly, a shiver of anger. Yes, Danny was probably dead now, because surely, surely, he wouldn’t have let me go through this agony alone, without some sort of contact, some sort of apology, some sort of explanation. But if – IF he was still alive …

  ‘You BASTARD!’

  I screamed the words. Did he know that I was getting the blame for his disappearance, was the police’s prime suspect, was likely to be dragged into custody any day now? That I’d been questioned, not just about him but about four other murders? That I’d been humiliated, stalked by the press, photographed? If he was alive, he knew it, he knew all of it. How could he not, when it had been front page news for days? And still, to do nothing?

  ‘Bastard. FUCKING BASTARD.’

  I was on my feet now, and I kicked the waste bin next to the basin so hard that it flew into the air, landing with a clatter on the tiled floor, disgorging its contents. I stared at the plastic wrapping, toilet roll tubes and cotton wool balls stained with mascara scattered across
the floor for a moment, then turned and walked out of the room. I thought Danny had loved me. I would have sworn it on my life, on my mother’s life. We had spent days, weeks, months, planning our future, totally wrapped up in each other. Could he have been that good an actor? Was I really that stupid, to have let him fool me for so long? And then, just as quickly, the anger subsided. Because however he felt about me, however much he’d lied to me, the simple truth was that I loved Danny. And, regardless of what he’d done to me, I was scared for him, so terribly, horribly scared.

  I don’t care if you’re in trouble, or what you’ve done. I don’t even care about what you’ve done to me. I just want to know where you are, Danny. I just want you to be alive and well and safe and here.

  And so I sat down at the kitchen table, taking deep breaths to clear my head, and I began to think. Danny had been here, with me, for three weeks, but for hours every day he’d been going somewhere. Somewhere, presumably, that he felt safe. Where? Where would he go? Where can you spend hours, every day, without anyone questioning you? Somewhere you can just do your own thing, and be left alone? A park? But it had been February and freezing. No, somewhere indoors. A library? Maybe. People sat all day and worked in libraries, didn’t they, without anyone thinking it was weird? But Danny, in a library? I couldn’t see it. He wasn’t a reader, and I’d never known him to even contemplate walking into a library. So what else? What about a gym? You could spend all day in a gym, couldn’t you? The big ones nowadays had pools, saunas, coffee shops – was that a possibility, even if he was nursing a hidden injury? Danny had always liked to look after himself. In London he’d been a member of a local gym in Chiswick and had worked out several mornings a week, squeezing in an early session on his way to work. I often told him he put me to shame – forever thankful that I was naturally lean, I’d always said I got enough exercise walking Albert, and although I enjoyed my yoga or Pilates sessions, that was only once or twice a week maximum. Working out really wasn’t a big priority in my life, but Danny loved it.