by Adele Parks
‘But there’s no indication that she planned to leave,’ Clements points out. ‘Neither husband can recall anything out of the ordinary in her behaviour before she disappeared. Neither man believes any clothes to be missing, both her passports are in the drawers that they usually lived in.’ One of the husbands could be lying, though. Probably was. Maybe both of them. The thought skitters across Clements’ mind.
‘Two passports?’
‘Yes.’
‘One in each name?’
‘Yes.’
‘Well, she’s clearly wily.’ It isn’t a compliment. ‘It takes some cunning to have two passports, two names on the go. If she ever does turn up, that charge will need to be answered to as well.’
‘How do you think she managed it, sir?’ Clements has already considered the matter, she’s drawn her own conclusions, but she wants to draw in the Detective Inspector, get him to engage in the case. Not actively, just enough for him to give Clements the nod to continue investigating.
‘It’s tricky but not impossible if she had deed poll documents, wedding certificates, household bills in different names. If a person creates enough confusion around such matters, then they can generally find a loophole. No system is infallible. She probably benefited from appearing middle class, middle-aged, female, respectable.’ Clements knows her boss is currently going through a divorce, his middle-aged, middle-class, respectable wife is taking him to the cleaners. He resents it. Everyone resents everything nowadays.
‘Or perhaps she simply bought a second passport. Kai Janssen probably has enough money to find fraudsters, even if Leigh Fletcher doesn’t. Who knows who she knows?’ Clements suggests, wanting to haul the woman out of a comfortable, familial setting just for a moment and place her somewhere more terrifying. It isn’t a comforting thought, but it has to be looked at. Kylie Gillingham might be mixed up with the wrong sort of people. All possibilities deserve an airing. Clements presses on with the facts that strengthen her belief that the woman has been taken rather than done a runner. ‘No money has been withdrawn from any of her bank accounts since Monday morning when she paid for coffee and cake at a café in the park. A contactless transaction. That fits in with what her best friend told us. That was the last time anyone saw Kylie. The last time this made sense to anyone. What is she doing for money if she’s run away?’
‘She probably has several bank accounts. There’s probably a complex trail of cash moving from one account to another, criss-crossing freely.’
‘Well, I’d like to request the bank statements for all accounts going back some years, to unravel it. To see if it came to an abrupt halt on Monday.’ The Detective Inspector raises his eyebrows, sceptically. Clements changes tack, puts an alternative on the table, one with which her boss is more likely to hold truck, anything to be given permission to request the bank accounts, devote a little more time. ‘Or to see if there is evidence of an escape fund being established.’
‘Yes, you’ll probably find money has been siphoned off to fund a flit.’
‘But what if I don’t? I mean, sir, questioning has not revealed any reports of obvious signs of stress or anxiety. There were no fluctuations in her routine, no sudden eruptions of temper. She was organised, controlled, careful. A cool customer, that much was certain. Mark Fletcher talked about some strain between her and their oldest boy, but that seemed pretty standard stuff in terms of parenting a teen, nothing that strikes me as a reason for a woman to bail on her life.’ The DI looks uninterested. He keeps glancing at his screen, checking emails.
Clements cannot believe a woman who immaculately planned her life – her lives – with such precision would have left without money, passport, clothes if she could have helped it. So, even if she has done a runner, it is most likely impromptu. Under threat or fear? Possibly? Probably? What was the straw that broke the camel’s back?
The Detective Inspector sighs. ‘Not sure if you are aware, DC Clements, but we are facing a global pandemic. Things are going to get rough imminently. There might be riots and revolt once the government announces plans to curtail the nation’s movements. There will be those who will use this to cause a fight, gain a foothold, exploit the vulnerable. We will be waist-deep in looters, thugs, gangs, pushers. They’ll all come creeping out of the woodwork soon enough.’
Clements knows it is true. ‘But, sir, if we go into lockdown like the Europeans, any leads we have will go cold.’
‘What leads do you have, Clements?’ he asks impatiently. Clements doesn’t reply. He answers for her. ‘None, just hunches. What’s your plan? Knocking on every door in London and asking if they’ve seen her? Stop wasting police time. You know that’s an offence, right?’ Her boss chuckles at his own joke, trying to show her he isn’t entirely unsympathetic to her, one of his key team members, just pushed for resources: time, man-power, funding. ‘Look, when lockdown begins, we’re going to have more than enough on our plates without chasing around looking for a grown woman who doesn’t want to be found. Conversation over.’
Non-religious bigamy cases are rare. Clements has come across just two in her career, in both instances the men had more than one wife; her online research last night suggested that was the pattern. The jokes those cases spawned when being investigated were along the lines of, ‘He wants to plead insanity,’ or, ‘What is he going down for? Didn’t realise sadomasochism was a criminal offence.’ Had a female bigamist created an unarticulated but tangible sense of resentment? It annoys Clements that sexism drips into every part of her world. She wonders whether her boss’s reluctance to invest any time in this missing persons case was a misplaced sense of indignation against a woman who had dared to break not just the law, but the rules too. How dare Kylie Gillingham dupe men?
Clements returns to her desk and starts to fill out a Section 28 Data Protection form that would give her access to the bank records. Morgan comes to find her and takes it upon himself to offer an uninvited opinion. ‘It’s obvious, isn’t it?’
‘Is it?’
‘She was no longer able to maintain the deception. Perhaps she was even bored of it.’
‘Bored?’ It just doesn’t sit right. Clements can’t imagine getting bored of either man, let alone a situation where you had access to both. She is slightly annoyed with herself for having this thought, it is shallow, slick, borderline silly. Yet it came from her gut and Clements has learnt to trust her gut. The life Kylie had constructed was many things: illegal, complex, dangerous, challenging but it was not boring.
Only young Tanner has a differing view. ‘Which one of them do you think did it?’ he asks, not quite able to hide his excitement. ‘The frazzled dad or the hot he-man?’
‘Do you operate exclusively in stereotypes, Tanner?’
‘I try to,’ Tanner affirms with an unselfconscious grin.
Clements huffs irritably, even though she has been asking herself a variation on that same question. Did either of them know more about her disappearance than they were letting on? Were either of them responsible? If they had discovered her betrayal, there would be motivation. Humiliation, fury and desolation fuelled many crimes of passion. Jealousy was a poison.
Both men were insistent that they had no clue that she was betraying them. But that in itself blew Clements’ mind. How was it possible that they had no clue? She thinks perhaps the issue is that healthy, rich, white men are dangerous because they are disinterested in everything other than themselves. Women, people of colour, poorer men are still trying to work out the world. They are still asking why it is unfair. What can I do to make it fair? How do I ask for a pay rise? How do I get heard? Or believed? The people still asking themselves these questions observe what is going on around them, because everything around them is a potential threat. Clements has a theory that handsome, rich white men have nothing to work out and so they rarely bother with introspection, let alone inspection. The husbands assumed she was fine: busy, happy, trustworthy. And in this instance the self-absorption of the handsome, rich white
man worked in Kylie’s favour.
Until of course it didn’t.
Everyone in the station is playing a waiting game. The air is electric, like it is just before a storm. Despite orders to drop the case, Clements decides to make some more phone calls. She calls Kylie’s mother in Australia, who says she last saw her daughter last year, they had a three-day break in Dubai. Kylie paid for it. ‘I wanted it to be longer. It was a long way to travel for just a few days,’ the mother complained. Clements – who was guilty as charged and did operate on hunches, although not instead of facts but as well as – thought the mother was self-involved, hard work. If Kylie wanted a sanctuary, somewhere to escape to and cut free of the mess she has created, Clements doubted her mother would offer that. ‘You’ll get in touch if you hear from your daughter? It’s important.’
‘Of course, poor Mark. How could she do this to him? And those boys. They’ve always been like grandsons to me. She’s an ungrateful girl.’
Another couple of calls unearth the fact that Kylie did not have a high-powered job as a management consultant. She had done until four years ago, when she resigned. ‘We were surprised when she resigned, sad, you know. She was really good at her job. Great team member,’ explains her old boss.
‘Did she give any explanation?’
‘She said she wanted to spend more time with her family. Said it was getting too much for her. There is a lot of travelling. Women with families often find it hard to strike the balance.’ Clements bites her tongue to avoid asking if men with families also struggled to find the work/life balance. She considers her jab is less likely to score considering Kylie had two lives to balance with work. That sort of ambition is hardly laudable.
Obviously, both the sick mother and the flash job were fictions, created to allow Kylie to move between the two men, the two homes. Clements wonders how she financed it if she wasn’t working. Mark Fletcher had said that there was a salary going into their joint bank account every month. Daan Janssen isn’t stuck for cash, but was Kylie going as far as to allow Janssen to pay for the mortgage with her other husband? Was this what it was all about? Money? That thought turns Clements’ stomach. Weirdly, she sort of admires the woman who independently flouts the rules, flicks the finger to the patriarchy and finds her own path, but if it is just for money it somehow seems more layman, normalised. More criminal. Was she simply exploiting one man to prop up the other? That position was pitiful. Understandable, but lacking the exciting notoriety of rebellion.
Clements and Tanner pore through the bank accounts and phone statements. They discover that Kylie is independently wealthy. Her father had died very close to the time she met Daan Janssen. The father left her a fortune. Clements is immediately intrigued once again. This woman wasn’t doing it for the money. She didn’t need Daan Janssen to prop up the Fletcher household finances. She didn’t need either man at all.
She wanted them.
Clements calls both husbands again to bring them up to date on her findings. Mark Fletcher sounds fraught, broken. Daan Janssen sounds maddened, peeved. They both claim that she hadn’t told them the truth about the timing and circumstances of her father’s death. Mark knew he had died, but had no clue about the inheritance she’d benefited from. ‘They always had a very difficult relationship. She barely spoke of him. Why would he leave her money? Are you sure?’
Daan thought the father had died many years ago, when Kai was a child. ‘She didn’t often speak of him. She said she couldn’t remember him. Hardly knew him.’
Kylie Gillingham carried around alone the grief of losing her father in order to finance her double life. Clements doesn’t know whether to be disgusted by the woman, pity her or what. She marvels at the case. She has seen the weird and wonderful in her line of work – well, mostly weird really – but this! The audacity of the woman was almost admirable; the planning involved certainly was. Clements sometimes struggled to keep her one, relatively straightforward life ticking along, she can’t imagine the logistics involved in being two women.
Clements is aware that she feels something faintly unsavoury towards this woman too. Unlike the male officers, it isn’t judgement, it is something she tries to avoid in her life – jealousy. Not full-blown, tie-you-in-knots, green-eyed-monster but something akin to what she might feel when she saw a picture in a magazine of a celebrity with a perfect life and a perfect figure, a couple of perfect kids. And Clements would ask herself, why her? Why that woman? Why not me hanging out by a swimming pool?
But then DC Clements reminds herself that Kylie Gillingham’s life wasn’t perfect, was it?
It couldn’t be if she’s run away from it. Or worse, been taken from it.
Clements calls two of Kylie’s three half-brothers (she can’t yet track the third, apparently he’s on holiday in Malaysia). They don’t have much to add. They haven’t seen Leigh since their father left her the bulk of his wealth, they offer assurances that they will contact the station if she gets in touch. They sound remote, disinterested. Again, Clements doubts that these family members would offer a sanctuary to Kylie if she needed one.
Clements rings a few of the numbers recently dialled on both phones she had owned. Leigh’s last tracked phone calls included a call to the school secretary to ask if she could rummage through the lost property box to try to locate Seb’s missing school coat, she’d also rung the dentist to book regular check-ups for both the boys. They were scheduled for next week. Kai had called her hairdresser, to make an appointment for a trim, an appointment she’d failed to show up to. ‘Is that unusual?’ Clements asks the woman who answered the phone.
‘Yeah, I can’t remember her no-showing before. She’s really nice, tips well. Is she OK? I hope so.’
‘Most likely. Did she seem OK when she spoke to you?’
‘Yes. Totally.’
Everyone Clements talks to agrees that neither version of Kylie Gillingham was showing any obvious signs of stress, nothing out of the ordinary.
Finally, at just before 7 p.m. Clements calls the best friend, Fiona Phillipson; 7 p.m. is her cut-off on a Friday for making enquiries. She plans to stay for a few more hours at the station, get a takeaway delivered, there isn’t anything to rush home to because she isn’t mid-season on any TV show at the moment, but she doesn’t like calling people too late on a Friday because other people have lives.
‘You didn’t see any change in her behaviour?’ Clements asks. As the person who last saw Kylie, Fiona’s testimony is key.
‘No, none, but then we’ve established that she has quite the poker face,’ Fiona comments sharply, not able to hide her anger. ‘Who knows what she was thinking.’ Clements gets it, Fiona is hurt. She thought they were close. Besties. All Kylie’s friends and family are reeling, coming to terms with the fact they don’t know her, no one knows her. They are, naturally enough, enraged. Clements is just sad. In her experience, the unknown are the most vulnerable. And dangerous.
‘Leigh is one of those really busy women – you know, never still for five minutes, two minutes, always dashing about, somewhere to go, someone to see, something to do,’ offers Fiona. ‘It made the rest of us feel left behind. Sort of rooted.’
‘Being rooted can be a good thing,’ comments Clements.
‘True, yes, of course it can,’ Fiona rallies. Her voice has a defensive edge to it. Clements recognises it, empathises with it. A single woman exhausted with justifying her choices. Her lot.
‘I suppose it must have finally got to her. The deceit and everything. Years of it, from what you say. Maybe she just couldn’t handle it anymore,’ murmurs Fiona.
‘So, you think she’s run away?’
Fiona falls silent. Clements wishes she was conducting this interview face to face. She is good at reading people and knows that often a lot is said inside silences. ‘I don’t know. It’s one thing to think, isn’t it? Possibly the best thing.’ Fiona’s voice cracks. Not just angry then, worried for her friend too? The police are unfortunately used to bearing the
brunt of people’s worry in the form of aggression. It doesn’t surprise Clements when Fiona throws out the heated challenge, ‘Isn’t it your job to take the educated guesses?’
‘It’s our job to find out everything we can.’ Fiona sighs. It isn’t clear if the sigh is one of frustration, anger, grief. ‘Is there anything at all you can think of that may be relevant? Anything to help us understand her state of mind?’
‘She was depressed.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘No, not certain. Maybe you should check with her doctor. I think she was on tablets at some point.’ Fiona admits this reluctantly, aware she is betraying a confidence, not wanting to paint her friend in a bad light. Clements doesn’t judge, half the people she knows are on antidepressants, popped them like vitamins, but if Kylie was depressed and taking antidepressants, she would be classed as vulnerable and maybe the missing persons case could be escalated.
‘That’s helpful, I will.’
‘I remember her talking once about how she couldn’t see any joy anymore. That she was blind to it.’
Clements doesn’t know how to ask the question but doesn’t know how she can avoid asking it either. Time is running out. They might be locked down by Monday. Other cases might come along and take precedent. It is a sickening thought, but lockdown is bound to lead to an increase in domestic violence. She wouldn’t be able to solely focus on this once lockdown was announced. Not without a body. But she doesn’t want a body. A body is so final. ‘Do you think she could have taken her own life?’ Clements probes. She tries to keep her tone neutral. Any hint of sympathy, empathy, shock, or judgement can be leading. She wants to know what the best friend thinks.
