The Man She Married (ARC)

by Alison James

  ‘Not drinking while with child, I hope Ms Palmer?’

  ‘It’s not for me,’ I say hurriedly. ‘Would you like some though?”

  He shakes his head. ‘Let’s sit down a minute.’

  We sit at the kitchen table and he removes a file from his messenger bag. ‘You know I’ve been looking for this Slovakian girl, Irenka?’

  I nod.

  ‘I’ve got a contact – a former colleague from the force – who works at the Missing Persons Bureau. DS Margaret Ewell. So I called in to have a chat with her about Irenka and she did a trawl of all unidentified deceased females who’ve been found who might possibly fit the description. And one of the victims she came up with was this one.’

  He hands me a print-out of a web page from the Evening Standard.

  BODY IN SUITCASE IDENTIFIED

  The body of a young female found in a suitcase in the Thames has been identified as Australian Holly Galea, aged 31. Galea, from Sydney, was on a visit to friends in London in March 2018 when she went missing. Her parents raised the alarm when she failed to return home and they could not make contact with her. Police confirm that she was the victim of a homicide, but as yet do not have any leads.

  ‘It was her surname that jumped out at me. That was the name of the fund your husband claimed to be making payments into, wasn’t it?’

  I nod, slowly.

  ‘She washed up near where Dominic Gill’s body was found, which strikes me as significant. And it seems a coincidence too far that she was Australian. Do you think he might have known her?’

  My mouth feels as though it’s filled with cotton wool. ‘I don’t know,’ I mumble.

  Jim reaches into the folder again, and this time pulls out a photo. A chilly tremor of shock thumps through my insides, making my heart race. My hand flies to my mouth.

  ‘That’s her,’ I gasp. ‘The woman who came to the house. That’s Shona Watson.’

  * * *

  The next morning, I phone Jim, but only once my decision has been made, and I’m perfectly sure. I’ve rehearsed my speech.

  ‘Can you give me any details your ex-colleague gave you?’ I ask. ‘An address for Holly Galea’s family, or a contact in the Sydney police?’

  ‘Hold on one minute!’ At the other end, I can hear Jim move the phone away from his mouth, as if to make space for his exhalation of disbelief. ‘What would you need those for? You’re surely not—’

  ‘I’ve just booked a seat on the Qantas flight to Sydney tonight,’ I tell him calmly. ‘Don’t try and talk me out of it. I realise that you’re busy with your new case, but I really think one of us needs to go out there and get some answers. And if it can’t be you, then it will have to be me.’

  ‘But what about your health? For God’s sake, you’re pregnant. A high-risk pregnancy. You almost lost the baby a few weeks ago, remember?’

  ‘I’m aware of that, Jim; trust me. But it’s okay to fly at this stage. I checked with my GP and I don’t even need a medical certificate before thirty-four weeks. Anyway, I’m in Business, so I get to lie down all the way.’

  ‘How will you handle the heat? Your feet will blow up.’

  I snort with laughter. ‘Jim! It’s June, which means it’s mid-winter there. I’ll be fine, don’t worry about me.’

  ‘Not bloody possible, woman!’

  He eventually runs out of bluster and agrees to email me as much information as he can gather before I leave.

  I’m still checking my phone for the email as I walk down the jetway to the plane that evening. I hear heavy footsteps behind me, gaining pace and then slowing as they reach me.

  ‘Aren’t you supposed to be switching that off now?’

  I look up and Jim is beside me, dressed in a bomber jacket with his aviators perched on his head and a bag slung over his shoulder.

  ‘What the hell are you doing here?’ I demand, even though the question is completely redundant. I’m trying so hard to disguise my delight that I end up sounding shrill.

  ‘We found Irenka,’ he says. ‘Her parents phoned me this morning. She’d taken herself off to the South of France, and then her phone was stolen…’

  We’re blocking the narrow walkway, and people are trying to move around us, tutting under their breath and barking our shins with their wheeled carry-on suitcases.

  Jim carries on talking as he takes me by the elbow and steers me towards the door of the plane. ‘She found herself a job in a casino, and soon as she got her first pay packet, she bought a new mobile and made contact with her family. Turns out she wasn’t happy in the au pair job, which is why she was a bit secretive about her plans.’

  ‘So you decided you’d come with me? Am I paying for this privilege?’

  We’ve reached the member of cabin crew with her hand outstretched to take our boarding passes.

  ‘I’m sorry, but I couldn’t let you fly halfway round the world alone. But don’t worry, I’m travelling cattle class.’ He hands over his boarding pass and the flight attendant points him towards Economy. ‘See you on the other side.’

  Part Three

  Forty

  Alice

  Now

  Someone knocks at the door of my Sydney hotel room.

  I haul myself off the bed and go to open it, finding only an envelope propped against the door frame. I glance up and down the corridor, but there’s no one there. I pick up the envelope.

  Inside it, is an engraved platinum ring.

  To the love of my life.

  My blood runs cold, then scorching hot, burning behind my eyes. It’s my wedding ring. The one I put into the coffin.

  Only one person could have that ring. Or, at least, only one person could have it and have followed me halfway across the world.

  My husband. He’s still alive.

  * * *

  ‘This is nuts.’

  Two days earlier, I’m facing Jim over a metal bistro table, outside a coffee shop in the western Sydney suburb of Ultimo. Even though it’s mid-winter, the weather is mild and the sunny skies so bright, they’re making me screw my eyes up.

  ‘What the hell are we even doing here?’

  ‘That’ll be the jet lag talking,’ Jim says sagely. ‘Maybe you should bend the pregnancy police rules and have some caffeine?’

  ‘Maybe you should let me go back to the hotel and have a nap.’

  Our flight landed early that morning, and despite having dozed on the plane, all I wanted to do was go straight to bed. But Jim insisted that staying awake until the evening, local time, was the only way to beat the jet lag. So, at two in the afternoon, we’re round the corner from the New South Wales Registry of Births, Death and Marriages, with him drinking double espressos and me sticking to mint tea.

  A helpful woman on the reception desk at the Registry tells us we can do an online search for a birth.

  ‘I already tried that,’ Jim explains patiently. ‘But I don’t know the name of the child or the place of birth, so I can’t pull the record. We only know the parents’ details.’

  ‘And a rough idea of which year,’ I add. I’m so tired, I’m leaning on the front desk for support.

  The receptionist tells us we need to make an email request to one of their family history researchers and gives us a slip with the details. ‘They can use our databases to access linked records for the mother, if her details are correct.’

  ‘How long will it take?’ asks Jim.

  ‘I’m sorry, I really couldn’t say. It will depend on how many enquiries are ahead of yours in the queue.’

  We walk to Wentworth Park and sit on a bench. I give a long, guttural groan and rest my head on my knees. ‘So what do we do now?’ I mumble.

  Jim reaches for my hand and pulls me to my feet. His skin feels smooth and warm against my palm. ‘We get a cab back to the hotel and you take a nap. And then, when your head’s cleared a little, we’ll talk about where we are and what we need to do.’

  ‘I thought napping wasn’t allowed. I thought we were sup
posed to “power through”. Your words.’

  ‘Yes, but I forgot that I was dealing with an expectant bloody mother.’

  He holds on to my hand for a few seconds as we head towards the park gate. I feel the tiniest bit sorry when he lets it go.

  * * *

  It’s only early evening when we meet in the hotel bar, but it might as well be the middle of the night. I’ve slept for a couple of hours, but it’s only made the cotton wool feeling in my brain worse. Jim was right about trying to keep going until bedtime, but I don’t tell him as much.

  ‘I really fancy a cocktail,’ I sigh, as a waitress passes with a tray of stylish drinks in pale pink and acid green. ‘Only another nineteen weeks to go.’

  We sit in leather armchairs, at a low table. I order a passion fruit and ginger mocktail and Jim has a local lager. The bar area is busy, mostly with Asian tourists, and in the corner, a man in a white tuxedo is playing classic lounge music on a grand piano.

  ‘Okay,’ says Jim, digging his huge fist into a bowl of peanuts. ‘Let’s not worry about tying your husband to Malcolm and Ellen Henderson. Not for now at least. I’ve emailed the family archivist at the New South Wales Registry, and we’ll just have to wait and see if they can help us. We need to focus on Holly Galea. She’s the one who’s brought us all this way.’

  I take a sip of my drink to try and clarify the fog in my brain. It’s icy cold and delicious.

  ‘We know that your late husband knew her – Holly. She came to your house, and your husband pretended she was called Shona Watson to throw you off the scent.’

  ‘Well, it worked,’ I sigh. ‘Of course, it’s obvious now that the accent was Australian. I couldn’t quite place it at the time. I’m kicking myself about that.’

  ‘Well, don’t,’ says Jim bluntly. ‘It doesn’t achieve anything. But given you only saw her briefly, in the dark, are you sure it was her?’

  ‘Quite sure.’

  ‘Did anyone else see her?’

  ‘No… oh yes, wait, they did. My neighbour, Jeremy, came out to see what was going on.’

  ‘Right. That’s good.’ Jim helps himself to more nuts and waves over a passing waitress to ask for a bar snacks menu. ‘I’m so hungry I could eat a scabby kangaroo… Right, where were we? We also know that your ex made regular payments to a fictitious fund, which he gave Holly’s surname. There’s no way that’s a coincidence; it’s not exactly a common name.’

  ‘D’you think he was making the payments to her?’ I ask, helping myself to the olives that have just been brought to our table.

  ‘I think that’s highly likely, yes. What we don’t know is why. But there aren’t that many reasons if you boil it down. Either she had a legitimate claim on him, like alimony or child maintenance, or she was extorting the money. Which wouldn’t be much of a stretch, given how much he had to hide.’

  I exhale slowly, placing my glass down on the table. I’m so reluctant to ask the question that I can’t even look in Jim’s direction, but there’s no avoiding it. ‘Do you think he killed her?’

  Jim leans forward, his forearms on his knees. ‘It’s got to be a strong possibility, given how and where she died. But more than that is just speculation at the moment.’

  ‘And what about the police?’ I’d been worrying over this as I lay on my hotel bed in a shallow half-sleep. ‘When your friend Margaret put you on to the discovery of Holly’s body,’ I stumble over the words, pushing the images from my mind, along with the sound of footsteps pursuing in the darkness, ‘did you say anything to her about the possible link to my husband?’

  Jim shakes his head. ‘It was only the vaguest hunch until I showed you the photo and you identified her as the girl who’d been to your house. Twenty-four hours later and we were on the plane.’

  My mind lurches back to that night, to her words: ‘…all the stuff your husband’s been up to!’

  ‘But surely we should? We need to share what we know. It’s only right.’

  Jim is tucking into a plate of sliders. ‘Look, don’t worry, we will,’ he says, speaking round a mouthful of cheeseburger. ‘Just as soon as the opportunity arises. But first I want to talk to Holly’s parents, up in Queensland. I completely understand if you don’t want to get on another plane. It’s fine if you just want to hang out here, while I go on my own.’

  Every cell in my body is screaming out to go to bed and stay there, for days. But I give a brief shake of my head. ‘No,’ I say firmly. ‘Not now we’ve flown halfway round the globe. I’m coming with you.’

  Forty-One

  Alice

  Now

  A taxi drops Jim and me at the entrance to the private estate where the Galeas live, and we walk the rest of the way. It’s a humid eighty degrees Fahrenheit and I’m clammy and uncomfortable in my twill maternity trousers and long-sleeved top.

  ‘Someone forgot to tell Queensland that it’s mid-winter,’ Jim observes. He’s wearing chinos and a short-sleeved shirt, but there are sweat patches appearing in his armpits.

  We head down a slight slope, following the edge of a golf course. Senior citizens in brightly coloured clothes trundle along the links in their golf carts, beneath palm trees swayed by a breeze from the river. The network of streets has broad pavements and identical bungalow homes, their front gardens colourful with jacaranda and hibiscus.

  Jim consults his phone’s GPS. ‘Calandra Gardens. It should be down here on the left. We’re looking for number 43.’

  The slatted blinds are half shut, but there’s a car parked on the drive. We walk up to the door and ring the bell. It’s opened by a stout woman with curly hair dyed vivid auburn. A grey-haired man in pale blue slacks and a sports shirt appears at her elbow, and a dog inserts itself between them, its anxious expression mirroring that of its owners.

  ‘Are you Russell and Audrey Galea?’ Jim asks.

  ‘Yes,’ says the woman. ‘Who wants to know?’ The croak in her voice and the deep lines in her skin betray a lifelong cigarette habit.

  ‘And you’re the parents of Holly Galea?’

  The man clenches his jaw tightly and blinks. His wife’s expression shifts from wary to miserable.

  ‘Our daughter passed away over a year ago,’ she says.

  ‘I know,’ says Jim, with a smile of sympathy. ‘I’m very sorry. Could we come in and have a quick word about her?’

  ‘You’re from the UK?’ Russell Galea pipes up. ‘Are you the London police?’

  Jim shows his business card. ‘We’re conducting some private enquiries, in conjunction with the Metropolitan Police,’ he says smoothly. So smoothly I can tell he’s done this many times before. ‘This is Alice, an associate of mine,’ he adds vaguely. We had agreed beforehand that we would not, at this stage, divulge what we knew about Holly’s extorting money from my late husband.

  ‘I guess you can come in,’ Audrey Galea says. ‘The police in London said they’re still investigating who killed her.’ She clutches the doorframe for support, and her husband rubs her shoulder. ‘We’re just so devastated. The whole family. We don’t know what the hell to think.’

  We’re led into the open-plan living room, which feels oppressively full of large furniture, serried china knick-knacks and arrangements of silk flowers. Audrey sits down heavily in an armchair and fumbles in her bag for a packet of cigarettes, lighting one with trembling fingers. Russell goes into to the kitchen, the dog trotting at his heels, and reappears with a tray of cold drinks.

  ‘Do you know why Holly decided to travel to London,’ Jim consults his notes, ‘back in March 2018?’

  ‘She’d had a car accident and couldn’t work for a while, but she did have some compo money from that. And she decided she may as well use it to travel, didn’t she, Russ?’

  Russell Galea nods.

  ‘And before that – did she live in Sydney?’

  Audrey nods. ‘She did. She trained as a lawyer. She was ever so smart was our Holly.’ A beam of maternal pride lights up her lined face, and she reach
es for a framed graduation portrait, handing it first to Jim, and then to me. The girl clutching her degree certificate is a lot slimmer than the one I met, her hair a lot longer, but there’s no doubt it’s the woman I saw in Waverley Gardens that night.

  ‘Did she say anything about meeting up with anyone in particular while she was over there?’

  ‘Well, you know, she had friends from school and from uni who were living in London. I know she planned on trying to catch up with a couple, as well as seeing the sights. But I don’t have specific names, if that’s what you mean. She didn’t give names, did she, Russ?’

  He shakes his head with a sigh, scratching between the dog’s ears.

  ‘Did she tell you where she planned to stay?’

  ‘We knew she’d booked a hotel, somewhere reasonable. But we only found out the name of it when they sent her tablet back to us.’

  Jim and I exchange a look.

  ‘Her tablet?’ Jim asks. ‘As in a hand-held device?’

  ‘Yes,’ Audrey confirms. ‘We don’t have a charger for it, so we haven’t used it or anything. We put it in her room with the rest of her things.’ She exhales a long trembling breath that threatens to break into tears.

  ‘The police took the rest of her stuff from her hotel room,’ Russell says, ‘They’ve kept it as evidence now… now they know she was killed. The tablet must have been separate.’

  Jim frowns. ‘And you haven’t shown this to the police? Over here?’

  Audrey and Russell look at each other, as though they’ve been caught doing something wrong. I feel sorry for them, and try and reassure them with a smile.

  ‘It’s perfectly understandable if you didn’t want to,’ I say. ‘Especially if you don’t have the rest of her things.’

  ‘We weren’t sure what to do, to be frank,’ Russell mumbles. ‘The shock was something terrible. We weren’t really thinking straight.’ He gets to his feet. ‘Let me fetch it for you.’