The Perfect Couple (ARC)

by Jackie Kabler

  four people, four people who could tell the police they’d seen him here in Bristol a couple of

  weeks ago. Four people who could confirm that he couldn’t possibly have been badly injured

  163

  in Chiswick back at the end of January, because he was fine. How could the police think I’d

  hurt him, how? It made no sense, any of it.

  We’d done some googling on the London murders earlier, using the dates the police had

  mentioned to me, and had found various news articles, although at the time it appeared the two

  deaths hadn’t been linked. I could see why they were trying to connect them in retrospect

  though, and why they were being looked at in connection with the Bristol murders too; the

  photographs attached to the news stories had given me shivers. Men with dark hair, dark eyes.

  Men who looked alike. Men who looked like Danny.

  Eva gave me a small smile.

  ‘My friend, the serial killer,’ she said. ‘Now that would be a story.’

  I couldn’t help smiling back.

  ‘Oh, shut up. Seriously though, what am I going to do, Eva? I feel like I’m in some sort

  of nightmare. And do you really have to leave today? It’s going to be so awful being here on

  my own.’

  ‘I know. I’m so sorry, I really am, I hate to leave you like this, but you’re not totally on

  your own, are you, and I’ve stayed too long already. I’m needed back in the newsroom, just for

  a few days. I’ll try and come back on Friday night though, OK? Stay for the weekend. And I

  need to go and get dressed, now. The train leaves at one.’

  ‘Go on. I’m OK.’

  She leant over and dropped a kiss on my cheek, then leapt from the sofa and ran from the

  room. I leaned back on the cushions, trying to ignore the low hum of chatter from just metres

  away outside the front gate. We’d closed the lounge curtains so they couldn’t snap any photos

  through the window, and I’d made sure the back gate was locked so they couldn’t sneak into

  the courtyard, but even so, their continued presence was hugely unsettling. Karma, I thought

  yet again. The number of times I’d been part of a press pack, staking out the home of a politician

  164

  or a paedophile, desperate to get that shot, that interview. I’d barely given a thought to how

  awful it must be for those trapped inside their homes. Well, I knew now, didn’t I?

  We’d turned on the radio as we’d eaten breakfast in the kitchen first thing, tuning in to

  the Saturday morning news show on BBC Radio Bristol. They’d talked about me of course. I

  was all over the front of the papers, and not just the local ones. The nationals were reporting

  the story too.

  WIFE QUESTIONED IN BRISTOL SERIAL KILLER MYSTERY

  THIRD MAN MISSING – WIFE ‘HELPING’ POLICE ENQUIRY

  No mention of the London murders yet, but surely that was only a matter of time, I

  thought. My phone, which had been buzzing with messages for the past couple of days, and

  which I’d largely ignored, had started ringing again at 8 a.m. Friends, former colleagues, of

  both Danny’s and mine. And finally, Danny’s mother, as well as my own parents. I’d answered

  each call this time, each message, fobbing them all off, telling them, as I later told Tai and

  Clare, that the press had put two and two together and come up with seventeen, that I was

  simply giving them more background information about Danny in an effort to help them track

  him down. My friends, many of them journalists themselves, were aggrieved that I’d found

  myself in the papers, sympathizing and offering help if I needed it. Our families though were

  a different matter. Bridget had been icily polite, weirdly so, as if she was ringing to enquire

  about something mundane like the times of a theatre performance, not about her eldest son

  who’d seemingly vanished into the ether.

  ‘And have the police any theories as to where he might be?’ she said.

  Clearly whoever had called her from the police station hadn’t given her many details.

  ‘Not yet, Bridget,’ I said. ‘I’m just hoping he’ll come back, and all this will be over. It’s

  just been so awful.’

  There was a pause on the line, then she said coldly: ‘Right. Well, fine. Goodbye, Gemma.’

  165

  The line had gone dead, leaving me staring at the phone feeling slightly stunned. What

  sort of reaction had that been, from a woman whose son was missing, possibly dead? OK, so

  she and Danny didn’t get on well, weren’t close, but even so. She was his mother. What the

  hell was wrong with her? Why wasn’t she in tears, in a panic, offering to come over here to

  support me, to help find him? I shook my head in bewilderment, but then a thought struck me.

  Was there any way … could she possibly be so casual about it because she wasn’t actually

  worried at all? Because she knew where Danny was? Was there any chance at all that he might

  have gone home to Ireland? But no, he couldn’t have, could he? His passport was still upstairs

  in the bedroom. Was there any way of getting to Ireland without a passport? I wasn’t a hundred

  per cent sure, but I didn’t think so. And anyway, surely however bad things were, whatever

  trouble Danny might be in, his mother would be the last person he’d turn to. And so I dismissed

  the theory, beginning to feel too overwhelmed by the barrage of callers and messages to think

  about Bridget for too long. It was my own parents I was more concerned about. Moments

  before I’d spoken to Bridget they’d been on the phone too, both of them together, my mother

  sobbing quietly, my dad’s voice wobbly with emotion.

  ‘Darling, your mother and I can’t understand it. If Danny has walked out on you, why are

  you the one who’s in trouble now, being dragged into the police station? Why didn’t you

  mention it when you called last time? You haven’t done anything wrong, have you Gemma,

  please tell us you haven’t? And what about these murders, these men who look like Danny?

  Your mother’s in a terrible state about this, she’s had the neighbours knocking on the door and

  the WI women phoning, and she doesn’t know what to tell them, neither of us do …’

  ‘Dad … Dad, it’s OK, I promise.’

  I’d tried to explain that I hadn’t been arrested, that the police had simply invited me to

  come in for routine questioning, but when I finally ended the call I could tell he was still

  166

  distressed, uncomprehending. I felt a sudden fresh wave of anger. It wasn’t just me under siege

  now, my parents were too.

  ‘It’s wrong, just fucking wrong,’ I’d shouted, making Eva jump, her freshly poured coffee

  slopping over the edge of her mug and onto the table.

  As I slouched on the sofa waiting for her to pack her bags, eyes closed, exhaustion taking

  hold, the images the police had shown me of the blood-soaked bedroom in Chiswick floated

  into my mind yet again, making my stomach churn. If that really was Danny’s blood, blood

  from many weeks ago, as they claimed, there had to be an explanation. But what? How could

  it have happened, how? Come on, Gemma, think. Think.

  I stood up, and started pacing the room, my mind racing.

  OK, so let’s forget about the other murders for now, the other dead men. Let’s just

  concentrate on Danny and assume that he’s in some sort of trouble, big trouble. What if the

  per
son he’s in trouble with came to see him the day I moved out of the apartment? And then

  got violent with him, really violent, hence all the blood? Danny didn’t join me until a week

  later, so maybe his injuries had time to heal? But there was so much blood, and no serious

  injury could heal in just a week …

  I stopped pacing, suddenly feeling a little dizzy, and reached out a hand to lean on the

  mantelpiece to steady myself.

  Think, Gemma, think.

  Had I actually seen Danny naked, totally naked, since he moved down to Bristol to join

  me? We hadn’t had sex in the three weeks he’d been here, I knew that. It hadn’t bothered me

  at the time, not really – we’d both been tired, busy, and we’d had dry spells in the bedroom

  before when things were a bit crazy. But had I seen him with his clothes off? Could he have

  had injuries after all, ones I hadn’t seen because he’d kept them covered up?

  167

  I started walking again, up and down, up and down, my temples starting to throb. The

  central heating hadn’t been working properly in the house for the first ten days or so, so we’d

  been bundled up in jumpers, sleeping in tracksuit bottoms and T-shirts. Even when the letting

  agent had finally arranged for someone to repair the boiler, the bedroom was still chilly enough

  to stop us going to bed naked. I’d definitely seen Danny with his top off, I could remember

  that, but … I stopped dead, staring at myself in the mirror over the fireplace. He could have

  been hiding an injury, or even more than one, if it was below the waist. His legs, his lower

  belly … he could have been. My stomach lurched. Was I completely on the wrong track here?

  There had been so much blood in those photographs, and Danny hadn’t seemed to be in any

  pain, had never flinched noticeably when I’d touched him, had been walking and riding his

  bike normally. But didn’t injuries on some parts of the body bleed a lot, even when they weren’t

  very serious? Head injuries tended to, I thought I vaguely remembered someone saying once,

  but did the same apply to cuts on other parts of the body?

  Feeling decidedly wobbly now, I staggered back to the sofa. So, continue this line of

  thought. How would the timing have worked? I left Chiswick early on the morning of Friday,

  the first of February, and the keys were dropped off at the landlord’s office later that day. So

  this attacker, whoever he was, must have come round to see Danny not long after I left, that

  morning in fact. Something went wrong, and he attacked him. Danny somehow survived,

  fought him off, but he was scared. Maybe the guy threatened to come back and finish him off?

  So instead of staying on in the apartment for a week as planned he moved out that day, went to

  stay with someone else, went to hospital even, or possibly stayed in a hotel or bed and

  breakfast? And then, a week later, he moved down here to join me, and didn’t tell me a thing

  about it. He didn’t want me to know about the trouble he was in, so he simply kept quiet about

  all of it.

  168

  I took a deep breath. Did this work, as a theory? Almost. It didn’t explain everything –

  why Danny had pulled out of his new job on the thirty-first of January, for example. That would

  have been the day before any of it had happened. But even so … I knew I was speculating

  crazily, but on most levels, it did make some sort of sense. Danny had been through something

  horrifying and was scared something even worse was going to happen to him, and he needed

  to hide, and so he did. He hid, in plain sight, hid without me even realizing what he was doing,

  because he was terrified. Terrified that this man, this person who’d attacked him so viciously

  in London, was going to track him down in Bristol. And then, maybe it all got too much, so he

  ran. Or … nausea rose again, my body growing clammy, little beads of cold sweat running

  down my face. Did he run? Or was he caught? Had whoever he was so scared of finally found

  him?

  I swallowed hard. I didn’t know if any of this was true, but it worked. It made some sort

  of weird, twisted sense. But who could I tell? Could I take this to the police? How would I get

  them to believe it, to start investigating my version of events, when they thought Danny died

  weeks ago, in our Chiswick bedroom? When they didn’t believe he ever moved to Bristol at

  all? How could I prove he was here? How could I get them to stop looking at me, and start

  looking for the real perpetrator?

  I could hear Eva banging her suitcase down the stairs. I needed to talk to her about this,

  run all of it past her again with all the detail I’d just added. And then I needed to find some sort

  of evidence that I could show the police. Somehow, I had to prove to them that Danny had

  been here, living in this house with me, until just over a week ago. I needed to find out where

  he’d been spending his days, work out what he’d been doing. Where he’d been hiding. And I

  needed to do it myself, because the police were, it seemed, on completely the wrong track and

  unless I could somehow prove all this, unless I could convince them … and I could do this,

  couldn’t I? I’d been an investigative journalist for years, and a good one. And after all, Danny

  169

  was my husband. I knew him better than anyone, didn’t I? I stood up, walked slowly to the door

  and stepped into the hallway. Then I stopped again, gripping the doorframe for support as a

  fresh wave of dizziness struck. Who was I kidding? I knew my husband better than anyone? I

  didn’t know him at all, did I? I had absolutely no idea what had been going on with him, for

  months. Maybe longer. Maybe, for as long as I’d known him, Danny had been lying to me. He

  was getting himself in trouble, he was using a dating app so presumably seeing other women

  while he was married to me, he was making passes at my friends. And now he was gone, and

  now it was me that was in trouble. Potentially huge, life-changing trouble. As I stood there, my

  whole body starting to shake, Eva appeared, walking down the hall towards me, her smile

  fading as she got closer.

  ‘Bloody hell, Gem, you look terrible! Has something else happened?’

  I shook my head. My lips felt dry, cracked, and I moistened them with my tongue.

  ‘Gemma? What is it, you’re scaring me?’

  She reached towards me, her hands warm on mine.

  ‘I think my whole life with Danny has been a lie,’ I whispered.

  170

  18

  On Sunday, the headlines were still all about the so-called serial killer, but the press had finally

  made the London connection, the photos of the four lookalike men emblazoned across the front

  pages.

  TWO MORE VICTIMS OF WEST COUNTRY KILLER?

  LONDON MURDERS – WAS BRISTOL SERIAL KILLER RESPONSIBLE?

  Helena pushed the Mail on Sunday and the Sunday Mirror off her desk with a groan. They

  landed on the worn carpet with a soft thump, and Devon, who’d been scribbling some new

  notes on the board, crossed the room and picked them up.

  ‘Shit. They’ve linked the four murders. How?’ he said.

  ‘Don’t ask me. There’s a leak somewhere now, presumably, because this certainly hasn’t

  come from anywhere official.’

  Helena ran both hands through her blonde crop, her eyes narrowing.

  ‘And that leak had better be
in London. Because if I find out that one of our team is talking

  to the press …’

  ‘It won’t be from here. No way. They wouldn’t.’

  She sighed.

  ‘I bloody well hope so. What were you putting up just then? Anything new?’

  He shook his head and began tossing the marker pen he was still holding from one hand

  to the other.

  ‘Nope. Just adding what the Met told us this morning. Which is sod all.’

  Helena sighed again. A senior detective from the Metropolitan Police had called an hour

  ago, to inform the team that they had now taken a fresh look at the two murders in London and,

  other than the previously unremarked upon fact that the two victims did indeed closely

  resemble each other physically, they could find no other connections between the two cases.

  171

  ‘The two men didn’t know each other, lived in different parts of London, had no friends

  or hobbies or anything else in common,’ Mike, who had taken the call, had said.

  ‘The victim in Richmond Park – his name was David Reynolds – had no criminal record.

  But the Hounslow tube station car park guy, name of Anthony Daniels, had a bit of a past – a

  few burglaries, some low-level dealing. That was one of the reasons they didn’t even think to

  link the two cases at the time last year – they thought Daniels’s death was probably related to

  his drug connections. Both did die from head injuries, attacked with some sort of blunt object

  which was never found in either case though. So similar MO to our two cases here. And

  obviously, there’s their physical appearances. The guy I spoke to didn’t sound entirely

  convinced though, and they can’t help us with any forensics or anything – they didn’t have any.

  But they say they’ll keep an open mind about a possible link. We’ve agreed to keep in touch.’

  Now that the press had decided to link the cases regardless though, and had splashed their

  unsubstantiated musings all over the front pages, Helena knew that the pressure on her to come

  up with some sort of result would become intense. She’d already had a terse phone call from

  her boss, Detective Chief Superintendent Anna Miller, earlier that morning.

  ‘Miller’s been on,’ she said morosely to Devon, who was still skilfully juggling his pen.

  ‘She’s a very angry Geordie today. She wants an arrest, pronto. Wondering why we haven’t