The Missing Hours (31 page)

Becoming unstuck

DC Leah Mackay: Friday, 11.01 p.m.

THE LEFTOVER FROZEN
pizza is congealing beside me, the strings of mozzarella forming icicle shards. I push at it with my fingers, watch as a layer of oil weeps on to the plate, swamping a lonely olive in a slick of sunshine. I should wash up or – I glance at the clock – go to bed. But I don’t do either. Instead I sit, prodding at the long-dead pizza with the nub of an overbitten nail. My kitchen has transformed. Has morphed into my office. There are papers strewn across the table, confetti at a wedding. The Cole Group case files.

I stayed later than I needed to. The DI released me at seven, told me to go home, spend some time with my kids. But it was seven. My kids were already in bed, settled there by my long-suffering mother-in-law, and he wasn’t thinking about my family life but about his overtime budget, the man-hour numbers ratcheting ever upwards. I made a show of smiling, looking appreciative, then went back into the office, printed off every single one of the Cole Group’s case files.

Alex texted a little while ago, said that he was on his way. A business in Worcester, its entire IT system crashing at the worst possible time. But then, he had laughed, isn’t it always the worst time? He’s been there since early, trying to repair the damage that I can’t even begin to understand.

I look at the littered papers. I should probably gather them up, but I don’t. I just sit there.

I pick up a printed sheet, my fingers turning the white paper transparent. Case number 38. Aria Theaks.

Was this it? Was this what happened to Selena? A drugging? A disappearance.

Shuffle further back.

Case number 8. The Arthurs children. Dubai. That hovering question mark, the residual uncertainty between who was taken and who did the taking.

Case number 25. The Venezuelan housekeeper. There is the post-traumatic amnesia. So it is possible. But then Selena Cole would know that better than I would. And so, if she wanted to lie …

Then the kidnapping that was not a kidnapping, case number 41. The victim not a victim. Not really. Proven a liar. Am I closer with this one?

But I think of the CCTV footage, Selena withdrawing all that her company has in the bank and walking away. And I pull free case number 55, the Villier case. The express kidnapping in São Paulo, Brazil. Was this it? Was this what filled those missing hours?

I don’t know. I sit, rest my head in my hands. The answer is here, somewhere before me. What happened is hidden in these files. I know it. I just can’t find it. Can no longer see the forest for the trees. This whole thing, this vanishing, this disappearance, the world of kidnap and ransom constantly intruding where it has no place. And Dominic, lying dead.

What the hell am I missing?

We stood together, in the playground, watched as the search teams climbed out of the police cars, moving in steady concert towards her house. I looked at her, trying to read her face, but she had already vanished, locking herself away behind a stoic wall. Watching the children playing, their air distracted, their attention hooked on the police cars parked outside their house.

I reach out, begin to gather together the case files, stacking them in order. There are ninety-one. Ninety-one different stories. Ninety-one tales of tragedy, loss, sometimes redemption.

What do I take from them, now that I have them all gathered here together? That I cannot even begin to imagine the life and mind of Selena Cole. That what she does, what her husband did, extends so far beyond my realm of experience that I simply cannot fathom what it is to be her.

I take a sip of wine, a rich red Merlot.

Concentrate.

The answer is here somewhere.

I pull my pile apart again, reshuffling it now so that I have grouped all the cases involving Beck Chambers to one side. Now I lay them out, one beside another, a poor man’s jigsaw. There was a lot of work in Latin America, in many of the cases drugs a common theme. That must have been tough for him. He had a history, had already had problems with substance abuse when Ed took him on. I study the addendum to case number 68 again. The kidnapping of Harold Bayliss.

What about this? Was that what happened? Did the proximity to drugs simply become too much, the promise to make big money fast too alluring for Beck?

I make a note on an A4 pad. I need to check on Beck’s travel history. Has he been flying into and out of Latin America, perhaps making up for his lost wages by ferrying drugs into the UK?

And then what?

Think.

Did Dom find out? Did Beck lose his temper? Stab him? No. Beck wasn’t in Cardiff at the time of Dominic’s murder, was he? He was in Hereford.

So …

Okay, he’s in the clear for one case. But what about the other? In Hereford, he was right on hand for Selena’s vanishing. He had easy access to scopolamine, the means of drugging her quickly, quietly. She knew him; he could get right up close to her without her raising the alarm. And fifty thousand pounds … that would be handy for a guy out of work.

I think of Selena in the playground, putting her best smile on for her children as they screech down the slide, their gazes flicking back, again and again, to their house, to what is going on inside.

She was lying to me.

I sip the wine, know this fact like I know my own name. Selena Cole is lying. The only problem is, I have no idea what she is lying about. Does she know something about Orla, is she trying to protect her? But if she was going to lie for her, surely she would give her an alibi?

Orla.

I wonder how she is coping alone in the police cell. I try to imagine her sticking a knife into Dominic’s neck, but I come up short.

But then murderers are rarely who you imagine them to be. And I understand betrayal, the fury it brings with it.

I turn, look at the kitchen wall, fancy I can still see the mark of the pasta as it slid inexorably downwards, my husband standing before it awaiting his sentence.

And now I’m there again.

I put the wine glass down with a thump, the Merlot lapping at the rim. ‘No. I can’t do this any more.’

As if on cue, the front door opens, closes, Alex’s footsteps soft on the hall carpet. He looks tired, his dark hair standing on end, eyes heavy. I rub my hands across my face, try to wipe away the recollection, arrange my features so that he will not see. Attempt a smile.

But he walks into the kitchen and instantly I see fear, and I know that my poker face is nowhere near as good as Selena Cole’s.

‘What’s wrong?’

‘Nothing.’ I don’t think before I say it. I don’t need to. It is, after all, what I always say. I say ‘nothing’ and he accepts it, and then the conversation drifts on to the children or food or the weather, and what is wrong gets buried beneath a mountain of life. And then one day you realise the foundations are all eaten through, cracked by the weight of what you did not say.

I look at Alex. I open my mouth to tell him that his dinner is in the oven, that there is wine on the counter, and instead I say, ‘I don’t know that I am ever going to get over it.’

I don’t need to define ‘it’.

He rocks on his feet, like I have delivered a blow. Then, nodding slowly, he slides into the seat next to me, so that we are not looking at one another but instead looking outwards in the same direction.

‘I’m sorry,’ he says.

I shake my head. He has said this before. Once, twice, a thousand times. There is nothing that this sorry will fix that the last one could not.

‘What can I do?’ he asks.

‘I don’t know.’

‘Do you want me to go?’

I don’t answer right away, because the future has split before me and I think of a lifetime of this, of silence where there should be words, of an etched memory of a betrayal that you never, ever thought you could survive, of missed communications and scars. And then I think of the other lifetime. Myself alone at the kitchen table, a vacuum where once he was.

‘No.’ I am surprised at the quality of my voice, the sturdiness of it. Am equally surprised to realise that I am telling the truth. I do not want him to go.

‘So …’

‘So …’ I say. ‘I want to be different. I want us to be different. I can’t stay here, stuck like I have been. I need things to move on.’

Alex nods, his expression one of relief and fear combined. His hands are resting on the table, pressed tight together, and I reach out, take one in mine. He stares at it for a moment, then at me, and again I am back there, the pasta sliding down the wall, the guilt standing stark on his face, and I want to stand up, to walk away. Instead I lean in, kiss him.

I don’t remember the taste of my husband. Isn’t that strange? I don’t remember the way that his lips slot against mine, even though they must have done it hundreds of thousands of times before.

After moments, hours, I release him, and he looks at me, his eyes damp.

‘Are we …’

‘Yes,’ I say. ‘We’re okay. But Alex?’

‘Yes?’

‘I hate that damn shirt.’

Square one

DS Finn Hale: Saturday, 8.36 a.m.

NO ONE SAYS
a word. I lean against the desk, look out across the major incident room, think that I have never seen it so full and so quiet. Leah sits at her desk, her arms folded, her gaze locked on Willa’s. The others, well, they’re just waiting to know if we’re nearly done here, if we’ve got what we need to lock down a murderer and if, finally, life can begin its slow return to normal.

‘Willa,’ says the DI. ‘You want to brief the team on what you found in the victim’s car?’

Dominic. In Dominic’s car.

Willa stands up. She’s wearing little make-up, has her hair pulled back into a high bun. She looks tired still, but she smiles at me as she passes.

‘Thanks, boss. Okay. Car was a mess. We’re pretty sure it’s the murder scene. It didn’t hurt that we had this.’ She holds up a photograph of the penknife, its blade black with blood. ‘Matches the wound and we’re confident in saying that this is our murder weapon. We’re in the middle of processing fibres as we speak, but as to fingerprints, we got a high number. Mostly Dominic, as you would expect, some from Isaac. Again, not a surprise. And then a fairly large number of third-party prints. We compared those to the suspect we have in custody …’

There is an audible intake of breath. This is what they have been waiting for. To hear that Orla is the murderer, that we have the evidence, that the mania of a murder hunt can begin to slow, that we can move on to building a case and, perhaps, you know, sleep.

‘I’m sorry to tell you that none of the prints in the car was a match to Orla Britten.’

You can feel it, the sinking that follows the pronouncement. That not only are we not over, we are back to square one.

Willa looks a little like she is going to cry. ‘The prints on the handle of the murder weapon are clear, but they also are not a match to the suspect.’

The DI looks grim. ‘Willa brought this information to me first thing this morning. In the light of this, Mrs Britten was released half an hour ago.’

There is an outbreak of mutters.

‘What about the boyfriend?’ asks Oliver, a hint of desperation in his voice that almost makes me smile. ‘Isaac Fletcher. His DNA was on Dominic, prints in the car. Shouldn’t we …’

‘We did a search on the apartment,’ I say, trying not to sound smug. ‘We got nothing. As things stand, we have nothing on him.’ I think of Isaac, head in his hands, tears flowing, and finally relax into it, the thought that he is a victim. ‘At this point, I think we have no reason to think he is anything other than a grieving family member.’

‘So,’ says Oliver, ‘why the hell didn’t he report Dominic missing? Wouldn’t you? If your partner didn’t come home one night?’

‘They were having issues,’ offers Leah. ‘Perhaps he thought Dominic had simply left him.’

‘Did he say that?’ asks Oliver.

Leah gives him a level look. ‘Perhaps you should go chat with him. Give those excellent interpersonal skills of yours a leg stretch.’

‘Look,’ says the DI. ‘I know. We’re all tired. We’ve all been working hard. Take five minutes. Have a break, have a bitch, and then let’s get back to it. We may not have the suspect yet, but we have eliminated a number of people from our enquiries. We are getting there.’ He looks at us, willing someone, anyone to believe him. ‘All right, everyone back to your assigned roles. Thank you.’

We sit, trying to look obedient long enough for him to return to his office.

‘Dammit,’ says Christa.

‘Yeah,’ agrees Leah.

‘Are they done processing the evidence from the Cole house search?’ I ask. I am, admittedly, grasping at straws.

‘Just came through,’ says Christa. ‘As you might expect, nothing tying Orla to Dominic’s murder except what we already knew about. Although interesting to see how families work, isn’t it?’

‘What do you mean?’ asks Leah.

‘That Selena, she really doesn’t trust her brother-in-law, does she?’

‘Her brother … you mean Seth?’ Leah frowns. ‘Why? What did they find?’

‘Apparently she’s been e-mailing people, checking up on him. Wanting to make sure he was where he said he was going to be.’

‘Perhaps she had an idea he was having an affair?’ I offer. ‘Maybe she was doing some detective work of her own before she took it to Orla?’

‘Yeah,’ says Leah. ‘Maybe. Hey, what time did you say those calls to Dominic’s mobile came in from Seth? You know? The ones on the day of the murder.’

Christa looks at her computer screen. ‘Ah, 4.02 and 4.30.’

‘And we’re sure they were from New York?’ asks Leah.

I frown. ‘What are you thinking?’

Leah looks at me. ‘I’m thinking that if Selena suspected Seth was a liar, why are we so confident he’s told us the truth?’

I nod. Pick up the phone. ‘You make an excellent point. Who did he say he was flying with?’

‘Atlantic Air.’

I pull their website up on the screen, find the number, dial quickly. I often think it would be far easier to book holidays if I could simply tell the operator it was part of a police investigation. I look at Leah, roll my eyes, as I am quickly transferred through three ranks of airline staff before finally landing at a supervisor. Leah grins.