‘Well?’ he asked, in a dull monotone that barely sounded like a question. ‘Do you know how it happened? Not that it makes any difference now, but I’d like to see the sick fucker who did this and smash his bloody face in.’
The words sounded robotic, as though he had rehearsed them so often they no longer held any meaning for him.
‘We’re following several leads,’ Geraldine assured him blandly. ‘I just called to enquire whether you had remembered anything else that might help us, and to let you know that a team will be here shortly to search your house.’
‘What?’ he burst out, momentarily startled out of his dejection. ‘What for? You already took her DNA. You know it’s her – Oh God!’
He broke off, seemingly overcome with emotion. Geraldine was inclined to believe his reaction was genuine, but it was impossible to determine whether he was overwhelmed by grief or guilt; possibly both. Before Geraldine could continue, the search team arrived. They set to work briskly, removing any electronic devices for scrutiny, and sifting through the house looking for evidence.
‘What are they hoping to find? Some kind of murder weapon?’ Greg asked Geraldine. ‘Why not just arrest me and have done with it? You’ve made up your minds I’m guilty. What makes you think I care a toss about what happens to me now?’
She shrugged. ‘It’s possible your wife had a friend you didn’t know about,’ she suggested.
Greg shook his head. ‘No way.’ But he didn’t sound convinced.
‘And there might be something that could lead us to investigate a contact who doesn’t appear on the list of friends you gave us.’
‘You think she was having an affair!’ he snapped. ‘Angie wasn’t like that. We were happily married. I’m telling you, we were happy.’
Leaving the search team to their work, Geraldine went to speak to Greg’s neighbours. There was no response to her knock at the house on the left, but when she tried the house on the other side, the door was opened almost at once by a white-haired woman with a youngish face. Geraldine judged her to be in her fifties.
‘What’s this about?’ the woman demanded, glaring at Geraldine’s identity card. ‘Are you here about Angie next door? I saw something on the news. It’s her, isn’t it? She’s dead. Is that why you’re here?’
‘What can you tell me about Angie?’
‘I haven’t seen her for about a week. I asked him if she was all right, and he just said she’d gone.’
‘Gone?’
The woman nodded. ‘That’s all he said.’
‘Please, think very carefully, when did he say that?’
The woman shrugged. ‘I can’t remember. It was at the weekend, Sunday morning I think. I saw him going out and asked because he was on his own and I hadn’t seen her going to work for a few days. I thought she might be ill. I only wanted to help. Just being a good neighbour,’ she added, as though concerned that Geraldine might think she was a busybody.
By Sunday, Angie had been missing for four days and Greg had already reported her absence. His admission to his neighbour that Angie had ‘gone’ proved only that he wasn’t keen to share his concerns with his neighbour. If that was the case, Geraldine could sympathise with him.
‘What sort of neighbours are they?’ she asked.
But the woman had become circumspect, and began demanding answers to questions of her own.
‘What’s going on? Who are all those people? They can’t all be police.’
‘We’re looking into what’s happened to your neighbour,’ Geraldine replied.
She tried to say as little as possible, while still avoiding antagonising the woman by refusing to tell her anything. Since a press release had gone out, she could hardly deny what had happened to Angie.
‘Is she really dead?’ The woman pulled her cardigan more tightly around her waist and took an involuntary step backwards into her house. ‘Did he kill her?’ she asked in a dramatic whisper.
‘What makes you say that?’
‘She’s dead, and the police are looking into it, so what other explanation could there be? That’s why you’re asking about him, isn’t it?’
‘We have no evidence to suggest her husband has killed her,’ Geraldine said truthfully. ‘Now, it would help our investigation into her disappearance if you agreed to answer a few questions.’
The woman nodded.
‘Can you tell me what they were like as neighbours?’
Geraldine waited.
‘They argued a lot,’ the woman said finally. ‘He was always raising his voice, and probably his fists too.’
There had been no indication on the body to suggest that Angie had been physically abused before she was killed, so Geraldine was inclined to dismiss that allegation. All the same, she followed it up with a question.
‘Did you ever see Greg hit his wife?’
‘No, of course not. He wouldn’t have done it outside, where anyone could see, would he? But they were always shouting at each other. We hear them – we used to hear them – at it in the summer, when the windows were open, yelling and screaming like they were at each other’s throats.’
Along with repeated accusations of violent arguments, she indulged in wild supposition about how Greg could have lashed out at his wife with a kitchen knife, or hacked her to death in the garden with an axe.
‘You need to search the house and garden for blood,’ she suggested. ‘He probably did it at night, as there were no witnesses, but the evidence must be there in the garden, under the earth, right now.’ She shuddered. ‘You need to find out what happened to that poor woman and then give her a proper Christian burial. It’s only right.’
After listening to some more wild speculation and inappropriate advice, Geraldine took her leave.
‘And you will keep me updated, won’t you?’ the neighbour asked eagerly.
Geraldine wondered whether it was worth requesting her not to speak to any reporters about Greg and Angie, but decided it would be a mistake to introduce the idea of media interest to a neighbour who was likely to welcome such attention. She left, after thanking the woman for her assistance.
When Geraldine was back at her desk and had completed her report, Ariadne suggested popping along to the canteen for a coffee.
‘So I take it there’s nothing new about Angie yet,’ Ariadne said, when they were seated with their drinks.
‘Not that I’ve seen.’
‘Well?’ Ariadne went on, leaning forward in her chair and lowering her voice. ‘Have you got anything else to tell me?’
‘Like what? I can’t say the neighbours were very helpful, although it does seem that Greg and Angie argued a lot. But that’s hardly unusual, is it?’
‘I’m not talking about the case,’ Ariadne replied impatiently, glancing around to make sure they could not be overheard. ‘I’m talking about Ian.’
Geraldine frowned. ‘What about Ian?’
Ariadne grinned, her eyes shining mischievously.
Geraldine took a sip of her coffee. ‘What about him?’ she repeated.
‘Geraldine, don’t be coy. It’s obvious you like him.’
‘He’s a nice guy,’ Geraldine answered cagily, adding, ‘and we’ve been friends for a long time.’
‘He’s divorced, isn’t he?’
‘Listen, Ariadne, if you’re suddenly so interested in Ian’s marital status, why don’t you ask him about it yourself? I’m sorry to sound dismissive but really, you seem to know as much about it as I do, and right now I’m not thinking about anything much unless it has something to do with the case we’re investigating.’
‘Ooh,’ Ariadne replied, still grinning. ‘That’s a very feisty response to a simple question!’
Ariadne laughed, but Geraldine did not join in and the conversation turned to Angie and her relationship with her husband. The search team had finis
hed looking around in the house, and both Angie and Greg’s laptops had been removed for examination, along with Greg’s mobile phone, despite his angry insistence that he needed it for his work. Angie’s phone had not been found, and the river was being dredged in hopes of recovering it. That evening Geraldine returned to speak to the neighbours on the left side of Greg’s house. A young couple lived there. Although they seemed willing to help, they knew little about their neighbours.
‘We only moved in three months ago,’ the man explained.
‘We did introduce ourselves when we first arrived, but since then we haven’t really spoken to them, have we?’ his girlfriend added.
‘Have you ever overheard them at home?’
‘Overheard them?’
‘Yes, any loud music, raised voices, that kind of thing?’
‘No, we keep ourselves to ourselves and they seem to like to do the same. But, like I said, it’s only been three months. It’s not as if we’re deliberately being unfriendly, but we’ve been busy moving in.’
Geraldine thanked them for their time, asked them to contact her if they thought of anything that might help the police enquiry, and went home slightly irritated. It seemed the first next-door neighbour she had questioned had exaggerated the rows she had overheard between Greg and Angie.
13
During her lunch break the next day, Geraldine stepped outside to phone her twin sister, Helena. It was difficult to call her privately from home now that Ian was there, and she suspected he disapproved of her relationship with her twin. It was chilly outside and she had left her coat behind, but their calls never lasted for more than a couple of minutes, so she would be back inside soon, and well before she had to return to her desk. Despite being identical, she and her twin could not have been more different. When Geraldine had been adopted by a prosperous professional family, Helena, a sickly baby, had remained with their birth mother. Against all expectations, the delicate baby had survived. It was not until she was an adult that Geraldine had traced her birth mother. To her horror, Geraldine had discovered not only that she had a living twin, but that Helena was a heroin addict. Worse, Helena was in debt to her dealer who was threatening to kill her if she did not pay up.
Helena had been too terrified to face her dealer again, so Geraldine had reluctantly agreed to meet him in her place. As Helena’s identical twin, she had planned to pay the dealer off masquerading as Helena, and so free her sister from his clutches. In exchange for Geraldine rescuing her, Helena had promised to go into rehab. But in the event, Geraldine had been arrested handing a substantial amount of money over to a known drug dealer. She had been released without charge, but had sacrificed her own career prospects. Although Geraldine had done everything in her power to help her destitute sister, their relationship remained rocky.
‘What’s up?’ Helena’s gruff voice came down the line.
‘I’m just calling to see how you are.’
‘My saintly sister checking up on me. How nice,’ Helena replied, her voice heavy with sarcasm. ‘I’m still clean, if that’s what you want to know.’
‘I just called to see how you are,’ Geraldine repeated quietly.
In the background she heard a man’s voice, and Helena remonstrating.
‘Got to go. I’ll speak to you later,’ Helena said suddenly.
‘Sorry, have you got someone there?’ Geraldine asked, but Helena had already hung up.
Shivering, Geraldine went back inside and even a mug of soup in the canteen failed to warm her.
‘Are you all right?’ Ariadne asked when she returned to her desk.
‘Just got a bit cold going outside for a breath of air,’ Geraldine replied.
Ariadne looked faintly puzzled, but Geraldine turned her attention to her screen, with a pretence of being focused on a document, and was soon genuinely engrossed in her work.
Later that afternoon, Eileen summoned the team together for a briefing so that the family liaison officer, Susan, could update them on Zoe’s disappearance. Her impression of Zoe’s parents did not match Geraldine’s.
‘I didn’t see the father on this visit,’ Susan said, ‘but mother was clearly very distressed. She told me she had been to speak to Zoe’s best friend, Laura, but she had not been able to learn anything new from her. We went over the list of belongings Zoe took with her, and she confirmed that it seems to be complete. So there’s nothing new to report from her home.’
‘We just have to hope there’ll be a sighting of her soon,’ Eileen said. ‘It’s time to alert the media and find out if any members of the public have seen her.’
‘Missing persons have heard nothing from any of the shelters or hospitals,’ Susan said, ‘and there’s no record of her using public transport. As far as we can tell, she disappeared voluntarily and completely.’
‘We have no reason as yet to think her missing status might be in any way related to our murder enquiry,’ Ian said. ‘Without any evidence she’s been done away with, the chances are she’s just hiding out at a friend’s house, as teenagers do.’
‘Done away with?’ Eileen echoed, her eyebrows slightly raised.
Ian seemed impervious to the implied criticism of his choice of words, and Geraldine warmed to him. His self-assurance stopped short of arrogance, and his confidence was somehow reassuring. Eileen questioned Susan about Zoe’s parents, and seemed satisfied there was no reason to suspect them of anything untoward.
‘I thought Bella seemed a little in awe of her husband when I went to speak to them,’ Geraldine hazarded.
‘How do you mean, in awe of him?’ Eileen asked. ‘Do you think there was anything going on that we should know about?’
‘She seemed afraid, not of him, perhaps, but of what he might tell me, almost as though she couldn’t trust him, as though there was something they didn’t want me to know.’
Susan shook her head. ‘I didn’t get that impression of them at all,’ she said firmly. ‘Do you have any reason to suspect them of not being straight with us about Zoe’s disappearance?’
‘It’s just a hunch,’ Geraldine conceded. ‘And in any case, their uneasy relationship might have nothing to do with their daughter.’
‘It probably has,’ Susan replied. ‘I’m guessing they may have had a few arguments about the way they’ve been behaving towards Zoe. Teenage girls are notoriously difficult to handle, and parents don’t always see eye to eye about how to treat them. More often than not, one parent is in favour of imposing strict rules, and the other thinks they should give their child greater freedom. With the pressure of their current trouble, they’re quite likely to be at loggerheads. But, like I said, that’s just a guess in this case. They struck me as caring, concerned parents.’
‘Yes,’ Geraldine agreed, ‘I’m sure there’s nothing more to it than that. She’s a teenager, which is bound to be causing some perfectly normal friction in the household.’
She still had a feeling that Bella and John had been hiding something, but there was nothing she could say to substantiate her impression, and she was beginning to regret having mentioned it.
‘Susan has seen a lot more of them than I have,’ she conceded, ‘and they must be stressed about their daughter.’
‘Well,’ Eileen said cautiously, ‘Susan is the family liaison officer, and she has spent more time with them than anyone else. But let’s keep an eye on them all the same.’
With a brisk nod, Eileen turned her attention to the murder enquiry. The search team had completed their scrutiny of Greg’s house and had found no leads to anyone who might have held a grudge against Angie. Greg remained the only suspect for Angie’s murder.
‘Just because we can’t find anything to incriminate someone else doesn’t mean he did it,’ Geraldine pointed out once the meeting was concluded and Eileen had returned to her desk. ‘We can’t accuse a man of murder merely because his wife is the vict
im and there are no other obvious suspects.’
14
On Friday morning, Geraldine got up early to make breakfast which they ate on the balcony, bundled up in warm clothes. It was a sunny day in late autumn, with a faint breeze blowing up from the river. There would not be many more such bright fresh mornings that year, when it would be mild enough to sit outside. They sipped fresh coffee and crunched toast, as they sat watching the dark grey river below them, and by an unspoken agreement neither of them mentioned work until they had finished. Geraldine wanted to be at her desk early, so Ian offered to clear the breakfast things away.
Leaving him on the balcony, Geraldine walked to the underground car park where she kept her car overnight. She reached a bend in the stairs that led beneath her block of flats when, without warning, a hood was flung over her head, her bag was snatched from her shoulder, and her hands were tied behind her back. The smell of stale cigarette smoke inside the hood made her retch. It flashed across her mind that whoever was assaulting her knew the exact spot on the stairs where there were no CCTV cameras. Endeavouring to control her panic, she yelled and tried to kick out, and nearly lost her footing. Her alarm increased when she felt her phone being taken from her pocket. Struggling and shrieking inside her muffled hood, she felt herself lifted bodily off her feet, carried rapidly down the last few steps and shoved on to a hard surface, hitting her shoulder and hip as she fell.
She realised she had been thrown into the back of a van which had been waiting at the foot of the stairs, concealing her descent from the nearby cameras in the car park. The engine started up and the vehicle jolted into motion. As she lay trussed up on the floor, she wondered whether her abduction could possibly have been spotted on any CCTV camera, but the slick operation had been conducted swiftly and discreetly enough to avoid leaving any trace. Doing her best to remain calm, she tried to work out the direction in which they were travelling, but her mind was in turmoil and the vehicle seemed to be driving round in circles. Her first task was to free herself from her handcuffs, but the metal was unyielding. However hard she tried, her hands would not fit through the bracelets, which cut into her flesh when she tried to force herself free. At last, exhausted and bleeding, she gave up. There was nothing she could do but conserve her energy and focus on keeping her wits about her. That was challenge enough in her present circumstances. She hoped it would not be long before Ian noticed she was missing, and discovered her car was still in the car park, but by then she might be miles away.
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