by Linda Coles
“Here’s what I want you to do.”
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Reluctantly, Julie had called Marcus and arranged for them both to go around and talk to him. There was certain information that he might know as her husband that could help Chrissy in her search, and it would also give them the opportunity to tell him what their plan was. Surely he wouldn’t mind. Julie pulled up outside Marcus’s place. He was still in the country, though he was due to leave the following day. Julie wondered if he actually would do in the midst of the chaos. It seemed odd that the man would hurry back to Hong Kong and his business interests, but that was his decision not hers, and since his wife wasn’t dead, there was no funeral to hang around for or organise. Even so, it struck Julie as odd. She hoped Richard wouldn’t act similarly if she were to run off. But then maybe Marcus was the reason Susan had run off.
The house seemed different somehow as Julie and Chrissy approached the gate. Marcus opened the door and let them in wordlessly, showed them both through to the kitchen at the back and offered them a bar stool each. “Can I get you two ladies a drink?” he enquired. “Tea? Coffee? Wine, perhaps?”
“Not for us, thanks,” said Julie. It was a bit early, only just coming up to twelve o’clock and while she might partake in a glass of wine over lunch with the girls, she certainly didn’t drink alcohol at lunch as a rule. But Marcus wasn’t in his normal routine and quite possibly his body clock was still in another time zone. The two women watched as he poured himself a glass of red. They sat quietly, giving him space to speak first. After all, it was his kitchen, his house, his wife.
“So, what’s this about?” he asked somewhat tiredly.
Julie spoke first, “Since we now know that Susan isn’t lying in a mortuary, I thought I’d hire a private investigator to find her, with your blessing. Chrissy here,” she said with an open hand as if displaying an auction exhibit, “is a private investigator. She also happens to be my sister.”
Marcus turned to Chrissy and Julie watched as his eyes took her in, from her forehead down to her knees and back up again, and she wondered what he was thinking. His inspection wasn’t suggestive in any way, not like he was looking somebody up and down in a nightclub, say, but he did appear to be checking her credentials by what she was wearing and the way in which she presented herself. Satisfied, he returned his gaze back to his drink, taking a long mouthful before speaking.
“I thought about that idea myself,” he said, “but I’ve got to get back to Hong Kong so I haven’t done anything about it. I thought I’d leave the initial investigation up to the police. They’ve got to be in the best position, surely?”
It was Chrissy’s turn to take that one. “That may be your impression, Mr Smith, but since she’s obviously gone off on her own the police simply don’t have the resources to look for her as an adult. They barely have enough to look for missing at risk children. Literally hundreds of thousands of people go missing in the UK every year. So please don’t set your hopes on what the police will do for you right off the bat. But there are things that a private investigator such as I can do. But let me also say don’t feel that it has to be me if you prefer to use somebody else.”
“That’s very good of you to give me the option,” said Marcus sarcastically. Chrissy bristled visibly and Julie started to speak.
“Marcus, whichever way you choose to go, there are some basic questions we need to ask you.” Chrissy caught the ‘we’ again and made a mental note to talk to Julie about it later. There would be no ‘we’ during this investigation – not after today anyway. If Marcus gave his permission, and even if he didn’t, Julie was her client, sister or not. So whatever Marcus wanted didn’t really matter, but they certainly needed his help. His approval would be nice too.
“So we’ve got a couple of questions to ask.”
“Fire away,” said Marcus, without raising his head. He couldn’t have looked any less interested if he’d tried.
“Lots of families have tracking devices for members of their families even if it’s only Find My iPhone. Did you and Susan share anything like that? Did you monitor each other’s movements, maybe, just to make sure each of you was safe?” Chrissy thought she’d wrapped the question up rather nicely, didn’t make it sound like he was snooping but that they were watching out for each other. She did notice the slight smirk appear on Marcus’s face, his lips creasing at the edges even if it wasn’t intentional. The answer to that particular question was a definite ‘yes’ but he still hadn’t spoken. After a long moment, Chrissy gave him a nudge. “Which one did you use, Mr Smith? Just so we know what we’re dealing with.”
“What makes you think that we used one?”
“Come on, Mr Smith, I wasn’t born yesterday.”
Marcus let out a deep sigh but still didn’t speak. He wasn’t making it easy.
Chrissy ploughed on, “The most common one is Mspy. I suspect if it wasn’t Find My iPhone it was something like that, am I correct?”
There was no mistaking the glare directed at Chrissy. Finally, he spoke.
“Yes, okay, yes. I liked to know what she was up to, that she was safe. No harm in that, is there?”
“So you have the control pad on your own phone then?”
“Yes. I guess your next question is what was on her texts and emails?”
“Well, I was coming to that, but since you mention it, what did they contain?”
“Nothing out of the ordinary. She wasn’t seeing anybody, if that’s what you’re thinking, but since the time of the crash there have been no more texts or emails or phone calls or anything. I’ve checked: her phone is not responding, offline. I can’t even find the location of it, and the battery is almost certainly dead.”
He took another long mouthful of his wine and Julie remembered how he sounded the previous night. Perhaps he hadn’t been sleepy but maudlin drunk instead. He was headed that way now.
“Well, that’s helpful to know there’s been no activity on her phone. I could do with checking your credit-card statement. We need to know if she was actually in a Business Premier carriage or further back. Given the state of those front carriages, this is important. So we just need to know what ticket she bought.”
“I’ll get it for you.”
“Actually,” said Chrissy, “it won’t show on the paper printout yet. They’ll be on your online banking on your phone. You could check for us now.”
Both women watched as Marcus took his phone out, entered his passcode and hit the banking app. He scrolled through. There hadn’t been much activity since he’d been back, he hadn’t been anywhere himself, really not in the mood for shopping, so there were only a handful of transactions over the last few days. They were all Susan’s. And they stopped on the day of the crash.
“This one here,” he said, pointing. “That’s the train company and that’s a business ticket judging by the amount.”
“So we know that she went through passport control,” Chrissy said, “but we don’t know what happened after the crash and that’s where our investigation should start.”
“Do you think you both can find her?” It was the first time Marcus had seemed genuinely interested.
“We’ll do our best,” said Chrissy and smiled inwardly for saying ‘our’ best not ‘my’ best.
It looked like she had a tag-along apprentice after all.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
“I really don’t understand that man,” said Chrissy. They were back at the car and were both well out of earshot of Marcus, who was no doubt finishing off the rest of the wine at the kitchen counter. “He seems so disinterested. I mean, he even said he was going back to Hong Kong for heaven’s sake. He really doesn’t have his priorities in the right order. Unless Susan never was a priority of course. I’ve never met anybody so arrogant and dislikeable in all my life.” Chrissy thought about Julie’s Richard: at least he wasn’t arrogant, but he wasn’t the most likeable soul either. Still, you couldn’t pick your in-laws; they were acq
uired for you.
“What now?” said Julie.
“Well, we need to find out if she is still in the country. She went through passport control at this end, but it would be good to know if her passport was pinged somewhere else. Because if she decided to get herself somehow to an airport or a ferry port, she’d need a passport to get out of the country. And I also need to know if they’ve found her handbag. Is she carrying ID with her and in what form? If her passport is still in her bag, and it’s stored somewhere with the rest of the luggage and belongings from the accident scene, she has to be still in the UK somewhere.”
“And how are you going to do that?” enquired Julie. “You’re not exactly a policeman. I mean woman.”
“I know that. I might need to use one of my contacts. Not entirely legal but then that’s the joy of being a private investigator – I don’t have to play by the same rules the police do.” She started the engine, pulled away from the kerb, and headed back towards home. “Maybe Marcus needs the distraction of going back to work, and as long as we can get hold of him and ask questions, it’s not a biggie really.”
“So, do you have a contact, someone that can find out if her belongings have been found?” Julie asked.
“Not on the local police side, not yet, but that’s not to say I can’t get one.”
“What can I do?”
Chrissy glanced across at her sideways, and slyly asked, “What you mean is what do I want you to do?”
“Well, I’m obviously going to be helping,” Julie said indignantly. “She is my friend and I’m going to help find her.”
“And how do you propose you do that? Follow me around like a lost puppy?”
“Noooooo.” She drew the word out like a child, making it painfully longer. “There must be something I can do, flutter my lashes somewhere, perhaps.”
She had to concede that one. “You might come in handy on that score.” Chrissy’s idea of expensive face cream was when Nivea was full price and not on offer. “We should head back home then, and write out all the things that we would do if we were running away ourselves. How would we do it? How would we survive moneywise? How would we travel? All those things. Because even if she did this on a whim – because, let’s face it, no one would have expected the train to crash – she’s surviving somehow and somewhere.”
“It’ll be fun,” said Julie. “Like kind of making it up as you go along.”
“Well, if she did do it on a whim, that’s exactly what she will have done. What we don’t know is if she is still in this country or if she’s rattling around Europe somewhere.”
“What do you think to Marcus tracking her for heaven’s sake? Why on earth would he do that to her? Because I can tell you it wasn’t to keep her safe, he’s not like that. And I bet she didn’t know about it either. Talk about breach of her privacy.”
“All part of him being an arse, I think. Maybe their relationship was somewhat more controlling than you first thought. He doesn’t need to leave a mark on her skin to be abusive. I wouldn’t like to cross him.”
“And that house,” Julie said with a shudder.
“Not my cup of tea,” said Chrissy. “I like my sofas to be comfortable, not like something you’d find in a royal palace. I can’t imagine swinging my legs up and spending a Sunday afternoon reading on any of that furniture.”
“Maybe that’s why she had a room down the bottom of the garden,” said Julie. “Surprising, isn’t it? You think you know somebody until something like this happens and you don’t know them at all.”
“I guess we’re going to find out an awful lot more about Susan Smith if we’re going to find her. Are you ready for that?”
“Damn right I am,” said Julie, smiling.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Detective Alan Davies wanted to see Susan Smith’s belongings, what she was travelling with that day. Maybe there was something in her purse, her handbag, maybe, something to tell them where she’d been headed and what she might now be doing. While it was easy enough to see her credit cards hadn’t been used, cash was the only way to go if she was going to disappear properly. Unless of course the whole escapade was a planned one. Maybe not from the crash, but she could have had an alternative ID set up and ready to go, along with the funds to look after herself. It wouldn’t be the first time he’d come across a person with separate identities. He remembered an individual, a bigamist with two wives and two sets of children, living two very separate lives. It must’ve been a complex set-up every day, but he’d pulled it off. For more than fifteen years he’d led both families astray with his tales and excuses, neither any the wiser to the other’s existence. It had all come out at the man’s funeral. He hoped Susan Smith wasn’t going to turn up at her own funeral. But having spent a few minutes in the presence of her husband he could fully understand why a woman might want to leave and not tell him where she was going.
The crash had happened days ago and the tracks were now clear, trains moving freely again, with all the debris taken to a hangar, though luggage and personal belongings would be elsewhere. He needed to track them down and liaise with the disaster commander no doubt. It was his first major disaster in his career as a detective and protocols changed when something like this happened. Since the local constabularies hadn’t got the resources to look after the incident on their own, the DVI units were set up to run at a moment’s notice. He made the call back to his DI and asked who was looking after the belongings and where there were currently being stored. As soon as he had the answer, he headed straight over. They too were in a hangar at a nearby airbase, which was also the site of the makeshift mortuary. There wasn’t much of a rush to get the belongings back to individuals, it wasn’t a priority, and for many of the items it would be hard to know who they belonged to anyway. Unless ID was on each bag or each laptop, they would have no way of knowing whose was whose. In the end everything would be disposed of, forgotten.
Upon arrival he made himself known to the attending officer and explained what he was looking for: a lady’s handbag and maybe an overnight case from the business carriage. The man, somewhere in his early sixties, looked doubtful. Resignedly, he said, “Best of luck, mate, it’s carnage in there. I hope you’ve got some help?”
“I’m on my own, I’m afraid, so let’s see how far I get before it goes dark.”
“I’ll bring you a coffee in an hour then, shall I?” the grey-haired man chuckled as he went back to his position at his makeshift desk.
Alan Davies stood in the doorway looking at the vast collection of belongings. There was no order to it. They had literally been dropped into the room to be sifted through at a later date – if ever.
“Let’s get going then,” he said as he walked further in, scanning as he went, looking for smaller bags, looking for an overnight case, looking for a lady’s handbag. He pulled on latex gloves and opened the first bag that he came to. And then the second, and then the third, and then the fourth. By the time he’d found handbag number fifteen, he felt like giving up. But instead he thought of the detectives that had searched for the Yorkshire Ripper all those years ago, those that had undertaken the manual task of searching through reams and reams of paper records trying to locate a single vehicle among many thousands, and how they finally discovered it in the last few pages that were left. That’s where they got their result.
“Bingo,” he said into the darkening room. He hadn’t realised how long he’d been searching until he’d glanced up at the fading light. In his hand he held Susan Smith’s handbag, complete with phone, passport, wallet and other items that she’d carried that day. It was all in there. But would it reveal further clues as to where she’d gone? Maybe, just maybe, she’d still made it to Paris, though by somewhat different means than she’d originally intended.
Chapter Thirty
He knew he should have gone back home for some much-needed rest before he had to be back in the following morning, but pathologist Dean had a hunch grumbling in his stomach, though
what about he wasn’t sure. But it was there and it was causing him a degree of inner unrest. He couldn’t place what it was but, like an intense thirst, it needed quenching. He’d arranged to meet DS Alan Davies at a pub nearby, and was sitting with a pint of lager in front of him when he spotted the man’s unruly mop of hair bobbing its way through the crowded bar. Friday-night drinks after work were in full swing as the big man approached the tiny stool at the table. It had been a while since he’d seen him and he hadn’t changed a bit. Dean stood to greet him and shake his hand.
“Good to see you again, Alan. You keeping well?”
“Not bad, thanks. And you?” Alan always had a pleasant way about him that made him popular with most. He was like a giant teddy bear, his curls disarming people somehow.
“Always. I see too much death in my job to let myself or my mind slip,” he said, patting his hard stomach. A weekend warrior, he enjoyed his off-road running and competed locally when events didn’t coincide with his heavy schedule. Death, unfortunately, had its own timetable. “What can I get you to drink?”
“Lager, thanks.”
Dean stood to place the order. “Back in a minute,” he said, gently easing through the crowd towards the bar. A moment later he was back and conversation resumed.
“Thanks for coming out here,” Dean said as the detective wiped creamy froth from his upper lip, almost half the pint glass gone in one long swig.
“You sounded like something was on your mind and, in my line of work, when something gives you cause for thought, it’s worth looking at. Gut feeling doesn’t win juries over, but if your gut is talking, it’s always best to listen.” He took another giant swig, leaving only the bottom two inches of amber fluid. Maybe he was taking a taxi home.
