Yvonne reached into her briefcase and produced an envelope which she handed to Simon. “Here is a medical record of her injuries, described and photographed.” She reached again into her briefcase and pulled out a legal file which she also gave to him. “And here is the statement I took from her that morning of what had happened.”
Simon nodded grimly.
Yvonne nodded at Julia to continue.
“I told Anne what I have to tell everyone, which is that it takes a little bit of time to arrange a safe house. We offered her a temporary place in the shelter until we had something more permanent for her to go to. She refused, saying that she needed the few days to get herself and Tommy sorted. We agreed that she would be ready to leave Thomas the following Monday, the 19th, at nine in the morning. She would leave the house as usual, as if taking Tommy to school, and we would pick her up. From the car she would ring the school and say Tommy was sick, so he wouldn’t be missed. That would give us until at least half past three when school finished and maybe until five or six o’clock when Thomas got home from work before he realised she was gone. That’s a very good head start. The women can take only what they can easily carry, and they must not contact close family and friends as that’s the first place someone would look for them. Anne didn’t turn up to the rendezvous on Monday the 19th.”
Claire grasped Isobel’s hand and squeezed it painfully. Mindful of her own vulnerabilities, Isobel gently freed her hand and put her arm around her.
“To be honest, that’s not that uncommon,” Julia said. “It happens because the woman changes her mind. There’s nothing we can do about it. But I was surprised that Anne didn’t show as she was so frightened and understood the danger she was in, but we have to respect the woman’s right to choose.”
“Did you ring her?” Simon asked.
“No. If a woman changes her mind we wait for her to contact us again. We can only encourage the women – the choice has to be theirs.”
“When did you last talk to Anne?”
“I last spoke to Anne on that Friday when she rang me to confirm the final details. She rang from a burner phone which she then got rid of so Thomas wouldn’t find it.”
Yvonne said, “That would be the 16th of February.”
There was silence except for the stifled sounds of Claire crying. The silence lengthened.
Eventually Simon cleared his throat, but then lapsed back into silence.
Eventually, Isobel spoke. “So Thomas could have found out and killed her?”
Simon stirred to life. “That’s a massive jump in deduction.”
“But it is a possibility.”
“It’s a possibility but we have no evidence of that. At the moment he’s calling this woman Mrs Banks. Yes, it’s suspicious but they haven’t committed a crime yet. On Wednesday when she signs the divorce, then she will have committed a crime and he will be an accessory. But there’s no body, so murder is a bridge too far. Anne could have decided to run off herself, she could have got Brian to help her instead of going with Julia. Thomas may have no idea where she is and he could be doing this to sort out his financial situation. A crime yes, murder no. We don’t even know when she definitely disappeared. Maybe they talked that weekend, maybe she went to rehab to give them a breather. Maybe they decided to divorce and after that Anne fell off the wagon and rather than cancel everything he decided to see the process through. Who can say when Anne disappeared?”
Isobel was outraged. “Whose side are you on? That is like a defence for Thomas.”
“I’m a policeman, Isobel. I follow the evidence, build a case and if I’m lucky the perpetrator is brought to justice. Sometimes I build a case and he still gets off on some technicality. I have to follow the evidence.”
“You have to find the truth, protect the innocent!”
“Yes, and I need to make sure the guilty face the consequences.”
“But once you find the truth surely it’s not so hard to …” Her voice tapered off.
Simon looked at Yvonne and Peter and shrugged. “It is, Isobel. From the minute I start a case I have to think of the questions I’m going to be asked in court. I have to prove everything, every little thing.” His tone was weary.
There was a long silence.
Isobel, knowing that she needed Simon’s help and also as a part of her acknowledged that he was right, dialled it back a little. “Well, we need to decide on our next steps. What do we need to find out? To prove?”
Again, there was a resounding silence.
Isobel looked at Peter. He shrugged.
Simon said, “I can talk to a detective in the Fraud squad. We’ll probably have to co-ordinate something for after the signing on Wednesday. I’ll meet him today whenever he can fit me in.”
“Julia, what do you think?” Isobel said. “Surely something can be done in a case where there has been this level of violence and he could have killed her?”
Julia looked at Yvonne who shook her head.
Julia looked back at Isobel. “Of course he could have killed her but, to be honest, anything is possible. The stress of what happened affects women in different ways. Many stay, but Anne may have run away herself, not able to cope. She could have started to drink heavily. Any of these scenarios is possible.”
Isobel frowned. “But you said it yourself. With him strangling her, she was at huge risk.”
“She was at risk, yes.”
A thought struck Isobel. “A few people have told us how controlling he was. He wouldn’t want Anne to leave. If he killed her because she was leaving, he would definitely want to keep her body at his home, to prove she could never leave.”
Simon shook his head. “That is pure supposition but, even if it were true, as yet we have no grounds to search legally. But if we catch Thomas on the fraud claim we may be able to persuade a judge to allow us to search.”
Isobel could hear the doubt in his voice, and she could feel her impatience rising.
“We have a special unit for that,” Simon continued. “My friend Jason Watkins works with that unit. With cadaver dogs. When the time comes and we have a warrant, I will personally get Jason.”
“Great,” Isobel said.
“I should probably go,” Simon said. “I need to start to run basic checks on Thomas. Jeff, will you check all the databases to see if ‘Anne’, the imposter, is in the system?”
“Sure, Simon, it’s being done as we speak. I’ll phone the minute we get anything.”
Simon and Jeff left together.
Claire was very distressed. “I cannot believe this is happening. My sister was an abused wife, was nearly strangled, decided to run away. Now she’s missing, at the very least, and at worst has been murdered, her husband is trying to pretend that nothing happened and none of you can do anything about it.”
Isobel knelt in front of Claire’s chair. “Look at me, Claire.” She waited until Claire met her gaze. “I know this is terrible but we’re all doing our best. We are going to find out what happened to Anne, I promise you that. But you have to stay calm and you need to think about Tommy. Ultimately we need to make sure that Tommy is with someone safe, who will love and support him.”
Claire paled. “Oh God – Tommy! You’re right. I have to stay calm. Sorry I lost it. I feel so guilty that I didn’t know how bad things were for Anne. I should have been more there for her.”
Isobel’s face softened. “Claire, you have to be there for her now. Now, you need to make sure that what happens to Tommy is what Anne would have wanted.”
Claire, with tears in her eyes, nodded determinedly.
“You have to hold it together, be smart. Look how many people were at the meeting. Everyone is on Anne’s side. I promise you that we will find out what has happened to her.”
Patricia came over and crouched down too.
Claire nodded slowly now. She took a deep breath. “I can do this, don’t worry.”
Patricia squeezed her hand.
Isobel said, “Claire, go
back to work. Be as normal as you can. We’ll ring if we need your help. Please bear with us and don’t tell your mother anything yet until we know more.”
Taking deep breaths, Claire got ready to leave. “Ring me any time, day or night, if you need my help or if you find anything.”
“We will.”
After Claire left, Yvonne and Peter conferred for a few minutes, arranging for him to have copies of all of the documents, then Isobel walked the two women down.
“Thank you both so much for coming. Without your help, well . . .”
“Isobel, I think you could be right,” Julia said. “It’s very possible that the reason that Anne wasn’t there on the Monday was that Thomas stopped her. Despite all the other possibilities she could be dead.”
Isobel nodded.
“What are you going to do?”
Isobel tilted her head. “I’m going to find out if the body is in the garden.
“How?” Julia asked, then as realization dawned she smiled. “You’re going to find Jason Watkins.”
Isobel nodded. “Now I need to persuade Jason to do an unauthorised check.”
Julia reached out. “Any help I can give you about any of this, just ring. I want to know what happened to Anne.”
Isobel gave her a quick hug and they parted ways.
Chapter 24
Since he was a solicitor, Isobel felt that it was better if Peter didn’t know of her plans to find Jason, so she told him and Patricia that she was heading off for the rest of the day on her own. She decided the best thing to do was get online and do some research. She found a café nearby with Wi-Fi to speed up her connection, ordered a coffee and settled down to see what she could find out about Jason Watkins – more particularly, how to contact him.
To help her in her understanding of what cadaver dogs could do, Isobel looked up newspaper articles which discussed the use of dogs for finding bodies. There were a number of stories and Jason and his canine helper were even mentioned in a few centred in London. Isobel then did some general reading about the success of specially trained dogs in finding cadavers. Her last search was of the police website. It didn’t take long to realise that finding Jason was not going to be easy.
Isobel had a huge sense of urgency. Perhaps her dream had something to do with it but it seemed to her vital to know if Anne’s body was in the garden. If not, then she could rule that out and start looking at other possibilities, but for her this seemed the most likely possibility – in fact, she was sure of it. She needed to prove it or eliminate it and move on to an alternative. Maybe, she thought, it was her impatient nature, maybe she just hated not knowing and maybe she just was worried that somehow Thomas Banks was going to get away with murder. If the body wasn’t in the garden then Isobel realised it could be anywhere. That was daunting. Maybe they would never find it. But for her this seemed the most likely and even if no one agreed with her she had to pursue it.
The one place Isobel could probably get Jason’s number was from Tracey, but she had reservations about involving Tracey without Simon knowing. However, there seemed to be no other way. Feeling guilty but going ahead anyway, she gave Tracey a ring.
“Hi, Tracey.”
“Isobel, how’s it going? Your little favour seems to have morphed into a much bigger case for Simon. He’s just called to tell me he had to have a dinner meeting with another officer.”
Isobel was nonplussed. “Oh, I know he was hoping to speak to someone in Fraud. He thought he could persuade them to liaise with us. I’m ringing because at the meeting Simon mentioned another friend and colleague we might draw on, Jason Watkins. I meant to get his number from Simon but in the busyness of everything I forgot and I’m reluctant to bother him when he’s obviously busy. So, I was wondering if you had Jason’s number? He said Jason was great, that the work he does is amazing.”
Tracey laughed. “You should hear the two of them when they get going. He’s a lovely man, Jason, the one of Simon’s friends that I most like.”
Isobel cringed in guilt and realised that she couldn’t do this. It wasn’t fair to her friend who’d helped her when she reached out. “Tracey, it’s not fair to put you in this position. I’ll talk to Simon at the next meeting. I was just getting impatient, silly of me.” They chatted for another few minutes about general things and Isobel rang off.
She breathed a sigh of relief. She couldn’t repay her friend by betraying her. Turning to her computer she brought up the general article again and got on the phone. By assuming a number of guises – young person doing a project, dog-care enquirer, mother asking about a future career for her son – she gradually found out that the dog unit was a specialised unit and operated out of a certain police station. It was still not six o’clock and Isobel decided to go there and see if Jason was at work.
It was nearer six thirty when she got to the station. Going in, she asked the desk sergeant if she could speak to Jason Watkins, adding that she was a friend of Detective Inspector Simon Jones. She held her breath, hoping that he was at work. He was.
The man who arrived into the foyer of the police station had abundant grey hair and was very tall and broad – not fat, just brawny and strong, a man mountain, definitely not a man to mess with.
Isobel extended her hand. “My name is Isobel McKenzie. I’m an old acquaintance of Tracey and Simon Jones. Simon has kindly been helping me with a problem. I was wondering if I could talk to you as well. It’s in relation to a crime.”
Isobel often found that if you could engage someone’s curiosity then they wouldn’t say no immediately which allowed time to persuade them to say yes. Jason looked at her assessingly. After a moment he nodded and, without saying anything, turned and led the way through a security gate to an interview room.
From all the police shows she’d watched, Isobel thought it would be a bare room with a table and three chairs that smelt of urine and sweat and stale drink. It wasn’t. It had four soft chairs and was furnished with curtains and a carpet.
When she’d chosen a chair and was seated, he picked one opposite her, dwarfing the chair. Crossing his legs casually, he said, “Shoot.”
Isobel launched into a description of everything that had happened to date. Throughout her discourse he said nothing, his face neutral, giving nothing away. Isobel imagined that Jason would be a good poker player and no doubt he would be very good at interrogation and that was without saying anything.
She lapsed into silence, having reached the conclusion of all the facts.
“So why are you here?” Jason asked.
That was the million-dollar question, she knew. How she answered would determine what happened. Bullshitting this man was not an option.
“I’m here because I want you to let your dog ‘escape’ –” here she used finger quotes, “into Thomas Banks’ garden and in the course of retrieving it I want you to see if there is any body buried in the garden. This will give us an idea of where the case could be going and also whether or not we need to start looking for Anne elsewhere.” Isobel kept her voice steady, sounding confident, and met Jason’s gaze.
“Simon doesn’t agree.”
“How do you know?”
“I’m a detective.”
“No, so I’ve gone behind his back. I believe we need to do this sooner rather than later. Look, I was right about the imposter. Maybe I’m wrong about this but I have to know. I’ve met Thomas’s neighbour. She, I’m sure, would let us visit and your dog could escape over the fence and you would then have to go over and get her. Thomas is at work all day so hopefully he’ll never know this has happened. I was hoping we could do it tomorrow morning – then we would know as soon as possible and if I’m wrong I could start looking for Anne. You probably think like everyone else that I’m jumping to conclusions, but we have so little time. I feel as if no one believes me that this is, or could be, murder. They’re all focused on fraud right now. I would feel more confident fighting for Anne if I knew the answer to this. To be honest, sometimes I feel
as if they think I’m neurotic, but my intuition tells me I’m right and I would never forgive myself if I didn’t see this through.” She finished, having said more that she wanted to and now feeling vulnerable.
Jason tapped his hand on his knee. “Look, I think you and you solicitor friend have done fantastic work uncovering this. I can understand how you feel.”
Isobel felt as if he was working up to letting her down gently. She felt deflated and tired as if she was pushing against the current and it was just too hard. Her shoulders sagged and she bowed her head.
Jason fell silent. After half a minute he suddenly sat up straight in the chair and waited for Isobel to look at him.
“OK, here’s what we’ll do. You need to phone this next-door neighbour and see if we can visit tomorrow. If she agrees I will introduce you to my old mentor in the unit, who is now retired – Malcolm Carr.”
Isobel’s face fell but Jason talked on.
“His dog Bella is also retired but is still one of the best in the business. Malcolm and Bella do a type of pet therapy where they visit homes for old people and sick children. Tomorrow they might go and see your friend as a surprise for this old lady, a kindness, and if Bella gets attracted over the fence, well, Malcolm may have to retrieve her.”
Isobel almost whooped with joy.
“I’ll meet you in the morning and introduce you to Malcolm and then you’re on your own. How does that sound?”
“Great!”
“Get on the phone and see if it will work.”
Isobel pulled out her mobile and called Grace.
Grace wanted to talk and ask questions, but Isobel quickly forestalled her.
“Grace, can I come and visit you tomorrow morning?”
“Yes, of course. I would love to see you again.”
“Grace, I may want to look over the hedge into Thomas’s and I don’t want him to catch me. After he leaves Tommy to school does he come back home?” She guessed he didn’t but there was no point wasting Malcolm’s time.
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