by James, Peter
Next, they went into the kitchen. ‘Wow, this is nice – I’d love a kitchen like this!’ Little said.
‘It’s very nice but it sure wasn’t cheap,’ Niall said.
Alldridge eyed him with growing discomfort. Holly stopped and stared at the island unit, and then at the floor. ‘Blood?’ she asked, noticing the red blotches.
‘From the damn potato peeler,’ Niall replied. ‘You’re thinking I murdered her, aren’t you? I saw you looking at all the crime books and DVDs in the living room. If I’d murdered Eden, do you really think I’d leave bloodstains everywhere?’ He shook his head. ‘I’m not a complete idiot.’
Both police officers smiled. But there was no humour in their expressions. ‘Can we see upstairs?’ Holly Little asked.
‘Sure. Then after that I’ll give you a tour of the garden – sorry, the grounds – to see if you can find evidence of a freshly dug grave, eh?’ He half smiled.
They carried out their check of the house, then went out into the well-tended garden. The immaculately mowed lawn was lined on either side with a riot of colour. Flowers and shrubs, all weed-free. There was a potting shed and a little wooden summerhouse, both in good condition, sited attractively between two mature fir trees at the far end.
As they walked along, Holly Little observed, a little enviously, ‘Someone has green fingers, what a beautiful garden – all we have in our flat are window boxes.’
‘That’s me,’ Niall said proudly. ‘My hobby – passion. I do all the beds and Eden looks after the lawn.’
Little stopped to admire one dense plant that was chest-high, full of bright-red flowers that were in the shape of long, narrow brushes. Part of one side of it was missing – it looked like it had been broken away. ‘This is stunning!’
‘Callistemon citrinus,’ Niall said. ‘Or in English, a bottlebrush plant. One of my babies. Unfortunately, Eden got rather distracted the other evening when she was mowing the lawn – she said our new mower ran away with her – and she took a chunk out of it.’
‘Will it grow back?’ Alldridge asked.
‘If disease doesn’t set in.’
Both officers noticed the slight anger in his voice as he said it.
He led them out to the front to the bike storage unit and unlocked it. Alldridge and Little scanned inside. Other than a dark pool of dried oil on the floor, it was spotless, a Honda motorbike, a posh road bike and two paddleboards propped against one another.
They went back indoors and sat in the lounge again.
‘Can you think of any reason at all why your wife might not have come back to you in the car park of Tesco yesterday, sir?’ Holly Little asked.
‘No, none. None at all, it makes no sense.’
‘Do you or she have any enemies that you are aware of?’
‘Enemies?’ Niall looked genuinely surprised. ‘No, none – other than her mother.’ Then he quickly added, ‘Joke!’
‘Your mother-in-law?’ Alldridge probed. ‘Is there some animosity between you?’
‘Oh, plenty,’ Niall said with a tinge of bitterness. ‘She always felt her daughter could have done better.’
‘You’re sure your wife isn’t with her now?’ PC Little asked.
‘I told you, I’ve checked with everyone, including all the local hospitals. I’ve had three texts from her mother this morning asking if I have any news of her – want to see them?’
‘If you don’t mind.’
He showed the officers each of them, in turn.
‘Has your wife ever experienced any mental health issues?’ Alldridge asked.
‘Other than she must have been mad to marry me?’ Niall said with a grin that fell from his face as fast as his comment fell flat. ‘No.’
‘All right,’ Little said. ‘I’m afraid this is a bit of a difficult question: is there any possibility Eden could have a lover – someone she might have run off with, perhaps even abroad?’
There was a long silence before he answered. Both officers watched him intently. ‘I don’t think so, no. To be honest, she’s never been like that. Mind games are more her thing.’
‘What do you mean by mind games?’ Alldridge asked.
Niall pointed at the chessboard, then, after a moment’s thought, raised an arm towards the bookshelves. ‘She loves puzzling things out. That’s why she likes detective novels and crime dramas. She’s always trying to get ahead of the detectives in them – and mostly does.’
‘OK,’ Holly Little said, and gave her partner a subtle nod for confirmation. ‘I think we’ve covered everything for now, sir.’ She gave Niall Paternoster her card, on which she had written her mobile number. ‘I’d appreciate your calling me, any time, if you hear from Eden or if there are any other developments. What we would like to take with us is a recent photograph of her that we can circulate.’
‘Sure,’ he said. ‘I’ll find something.’ He jumped up again and went out of the room. The two officers exchanged a glance. But Little signalled her colleague not to say anything and walked through into the kitchen, followed by Alldridge. She pointed down at the skirting board and he nodded, picking up on it, also. It looked a good deal cleaner than the ones elsewhere in the house, and there was a faint whiff of bleach. The floor around it looked very freshly cleaned, too.
Paternoster returned with a photograph of Eden standing in front of a Christmas tree, champagne glass in her hand. ‘This is a really good one,’ he said, handing it to Little. Then, his voice slightly choked, he pleaded, ‘Please find her.’
‘Nice-looking lady,’ she said.
Eden was wearing a short emerald dress, her centre-parted brown hair, elegantly cut, fell just short of her shoulders, and, like Niall, she had perfect teeth.
‘She is,’ Niall said. ‘She’s beautiful, she’s the love of my life.’
‘But this was taken at Christmas?’ Alldridge questioned. ‘Don’t you have anything more recent?’
‘Well, yes, but I particularly like this one.’
‘It would be helpful to have something more up to date, sir,’ Alldridge pressed.
‘OK, right.’ Niall tapped his phone and studied it for some moments, flicking his finger. Then he looked up with a broad smile. ‘Stupid me! I took a great one of her yesterday at Parham House.’ He handed the phone to the PC.
Both officers studied the photograph of the attractive woman, brown hair pinned up, in a pink top and white shorts, with a lake in soft focus behind her.
‘If we could take the one of your wife in front of the Christmas tree and if you could email us this one – to the address on the card I gave you – right away—’
‘Yes, yes, of course. Please, please find her for me,’ he repeated plaintively.
As he walked them to the front door, Holly Little said very formally, ‘We’ll do everything we can. And be sure to call me if she comes home or if you hear from her.’
‘Of course.’
Suddenly, Alldridge bent down and said to him, almost conspiratorially, ‘Black Queen’s Knight to King’s Pawn three.’ He tapped the side of his nose. ‘Don’t let on I told you.’
As soon as he had closed the door on the officers, Niall hurried back into the lounge before he forgot what the tall copper had said.
Queen’s Knight to King’s Pawn three.
He feigned the move. Shit, it was one he had not spotted! The copper was right. Eden had totally missed it! If he made the move, she’d be in check. The only choices she’d be left with would be losing her King – game over – or her Queen – pretty much game over, too.
He looked forward to seeing her face when she came home and finally, for the first time in countless games, he would win.
Checkmate!
15
Monday 2 September
On their way out to the car, Alldridge stopped by the bin and raised the lid. Among the smelly detritus lying inside he clocked an empty bleach bottle, but said nothing until they were back in the car.
‘Nice man – not,’ Little sai
d quietly, after making sure the car windows were closed. ‘Cat litter?’ She shook her head.
‘Bleach bottle in the bin,’ Alldridge murmured.
‘Who’s the house-proud one, then?’ she quizzed with a wry smile.
He nodded.
A rust-bucket of an old Vauxhall Viva with no apparent silencer shot up the road at high speed, two youths in it, baseball caps the wrong way round. Ordinarily they would have pulled out and stopped it, but not now.
‘It’s usually the small things people have the biggest arguments about, isn’t it?’ Holly said.
‘Tell me about it! Barbara whacked me over the head with a pillow the other night because I was snoring! And last week I was trying to sleep in on Saturday morning after being on nights and she decided to hoover the bedroom!’
‘Hannah and I had a row a couple of weeks ago because I’d put half a tin of baked beans in the fridge instead of pouring them into a bowl and covering them. Apparently, the tin reacts with them, so she said.’
He scratched the back of his head. ‘I was scene guard on a house, some years back, where a guy had bludgeoned his wife to death with a cricket bat because she’d rearranged his sock drawer without his permission.’
They sat in silence for some moments. ‘What do you think’s really going on here?’ she asked.
‘Clean skirtings, smell of bleach and empty bottle? Has his wife disappeared – done a runner – or did he kill her, is that what you’re thinking?’ Alldridge asked.
‘Aren’t you?’
He nodded.
‘Her passport missing might be significant, don’t you think?’
He didn’t reply straight away, then he said, ‘Yes, but perhaps not in the obvious way.’
‘Meaning, John?’
‘That he wants us to think she’s gone away, perhaps?’
She nodded. ‘Good point. Your time as a detective wasn’t entirely wasted!’
‘It did open my eyes.’
‘And anyhow,’ she said, ‘I’ve never been able to trust a bloke who appears to resent his wife’s wealth.’
Alldridge concurred. ‘Let’s move away from the house.’
‘Food?’ she asked. ‘Try for breakfast again?’
‘Good plan.’
Half an hour later, with the residual reek of curry from the last crew out in this vehicle replaced by the much more appetizing aroma of egg and bacon sarnies, they were both feeling better. Parked on Church Road, in front of the cafe, they ate hungrily in silence. Alldridge finished ahead of Little, wiped his mouth with a paper napkin and suggested they inform Golf 99 – the duty Inspector at Brighton nick – of their concerns.
Little agreed.
Alldridge radioed the Control Room and was told, to his dismay, the day’s duty Golf 99 was Andy – ‘Panicking’ – Anakin. In his long experience, Anakin was the last person you’d want to involve in a crisis, but all the same, he had no option. The Inspector wasn’t always totally useless, just mostly.
Moments later, they heard his voice, a little too high-pitched and highly strung, through their radios. ‘Inspector Anakin.’
‘It’s PC Alldridge and PC Little, sir.’
‘What is it? I’m in the middle of a situation.’
From the hysteria in his voice, it sounded like he was the man, at this moment, single-handedly responsible for keeping Planet Earth on its axis and preventing it from spiralling off and sending all its inhabitants into oblivion.
Alldridge was long enough in the tooth to not take any crap from his superiors. ‘We have a situation, too, which we need to discuss with you, sir,’ he responded calmly and firmly, giving him a brief outline. From Anakin’s response, it didn’t sound like he’d absorbed much of what he’d been told.
‘I’m at the cell block doing a vital custody review, I can’t do anything at the moment – I’m dealing with a matter of national security.’ Then, turning more antsy, he said, ‘Surely you know normal process for a misper is not to do anything until a twenty-four-hour review, John, unless there are other factors?’
‘I do, sir,’ he replied, trying to be as respectful as possible to someone he considered a total moron. ‘But neither PC Little nor I think this is a matter for normal process. We need to step it up now proportionate to the risk.’
Anakin’s voice increased in pitch again – the human race was clearly in severe and imminent peril. ‘If that’s your assessment and you need to action now, call the duty DI – it’s Bryce Robinson today. I’ve got to go.’
The radio went dead.
The two PCs looked at each other, shaking their heads. ‘Know about the Peter Principle?’ Alldridge asked her with a grin.
She frowned. ‘The what?’
‘Some guy back in the 1960s or 70s came up with a theory that sooner or later in any hierarchy people get promoted to the level of their incompetence.’
Holly laughed. ‘Oh my God, so true about him!’
‘Just a shame that Anakin doesn’t rhyme with wanker.’
‘That doesn’t stop him from being one, though, does it?’
‘Nope.’
16
Monday 2 September
It was just gone midday when John Alldridge decided to contact the duty Detective Inspector at Brighton police station.
In contrast to Andy Anakin, who’d made them feel almost idiots for troubling him, DI Bryce Robinson was calm and sounded immediately concerned by what they told him. With his background as a former school teacher before joining the force, he was a good listener.
‘You’ve done the right thing,’ Robinson said. ‘Do you have any hypothesis about what we’re dealing with?’
‘We do, sir,’ Alldridge said. ‘We have a few.’
As he spoke, Alldridge could hear the tapping of keys, which indicated the DI was taking notes. ‘Our first is that, following their argument, Eden Paternoster met someone she knew in the store and left with them, scared to remain with her husband. Or simply, afraid to go back to the car, she went off on her own accord to seek refuge with a friend or member of her family. Her husband claims to have called everyone he can think of who she might have gone to, but if he has any history of violence, they might be shielding her and denying she’s with them.’
‘Very possible,’ Robinson said. ‘But I’ve just checked the name and address you’ve given me, and there’s no record of police having ever attended. No complaint or apparent history of domestic abuse. What’s your next hypothesis?’
‘That Mrs Paternoster has a lover. Her passport is missing. Could they have gone abroad together?’
‘You’ve got a recent photograph of her?’
‘Yes, sir, a couple – one taken yesterday. I have it digitally.’
‘Good, send it over to me as soon as we’re done and I’ll have it circulated.’
‘Our next hypothesis is that the lady might have tried to make her own way home and something happened – perhaps she was involved in an accident and is unable to make contact. But her husband says he’s called all hospitals in the area, so this seems unlikely. Our next is that she’s had some form of mental health episode and is now disorientated and lost.’
‘From the information you have,’ the DI asked, ‘how do you rate that on a scale of one to ten?’
Alldridge and Little looked at each other. He held out his hand, holding up his forefinger. His colleague nodded.
‘One,’ he said.
‘And your next?’
‘She’s been taken against her will.’
‘Is he wealthy?’
‘No, sir. He told us his business went bust and he’s now driving a friend’s cab.’
‘So, we can rule out kidnap for monetary gain?’
‘I think so, sir, quite safely.’
Robinson was silent for a short while. ‘Beyond these hypotheses, do you and PC Little have any views on what may be going on here?’
‘We both noticed a very cleaned-up kitchen skirting board and floor area, and the smell of bleach,
’ Alldridge responded.
‘Sir,’ Holly Little added. ‘Neither of us were comfortable with Mrs Paternoster’s husband. It seemed to us he might be hiding something.’
‘Such as?’
‘Well, we’d like someone to look at the Tesco store’s CCTV footage to see if she did actually get out of their car, as he claims, or ever went into the store at all.’
Robinson was silent for some moments. Then he said, ‘She’s been missing since shortly after 3.15 p.m. yesterday. According to her husband, she’s not with any of their known contacts, and she failed to show up for work today, despite an important meeting?’
‘Correct,’ Alldridge confirmed.
‘And while the missing passport might indicate she has left the country, or is planning to leave, you feel it could be a double-blind?’
‘We do, sir,’ confirmed Little.
‘OK, I’m not at all happy about this situation, from all you’ve told me,’ the DI said. ‘You are right to be concerned. I’d like to run this by Major Crime and see what they think. You’ve done good work, both of you.’
17
Monday 2 September
Just gone midday, Roy Grace was reading through his completed draft report for the Chief Constable and was starting to think about lunch when he was interrupted by his job phone ringing. He answered it.
‘Sir, it’s Bryce Robinson. I have you down as the on-call SIO?’
Grace had been so absorbed in the report, and his thoughts about Guy Batchelor and Cassian Pewe, that he’d forgotten he’d assumed the role, from 7 p.m. last night until the same time next Sunday, as the duty Senior Investigating Officer for the Surrey and Sussex Major Crime Team.
‘Yes, that’s right, Bryce,’ he said to the DI, trying not to sound too thrown. ‘Tell me?’
Robinson talked him through the disappearance of Eden Paternoster and his concerns.
