The Perfect Couple

by Jackie Kabler

  ‘Definitely one day,’ said Clare, who was on my right. ‘Positive thinking, right?’

  We all fell silent for a few moments, then Eva said: ‘It’s such a shame that you didn’t meet him. We’ve sort of been struggling to find people who did, you know, since he moved here with Gemma? It might have been useful to see if anyone had picked up anything that Gemma might not have noticed, about how he was behaving and stuff before he went missing.’

  Clare nodded.

  ‘Well, we tried!’ she said, with a little laugh. ‘We invited him to join us for drinks but he couldn’t make it, could he, Gemma? So the mysterious Danny remained a mystery.’

  ‘Seemingly so,’ said Eva. She glanced at me as she spoke, and I thought I saw a strange expression cross her face. A shiver ran through me. Surely Eva wasn’t starting to doubt me now, too? Surely she wasn’t beginning to think I was making it up about Danny being here with me in Bristol, like the police did?

  Tai and Clare left soon after, hugging me hard in the hallway and grimacing as they prepared to face the camera flashes once again. When it was just me and Eva again, I turned to her and asked her straight.

  ‘Eva – you do believe me, don’t you, that Danny was here? It’s just that when Clare talked about having never met him, you looked … I don’t know, you looked a bit strange.’

  Was I imagining it, or was there a moment of hesitation before her reply came?

  ‘Gemma, of course I believe you! Don’t be ridiculous. All this is making you paranoid. I’ve got your back, OK? Always had, always will.’

  She’d wrapped her arms around me then, and I’d taken a deep breath, burying my face in her shoulder. Of course Eva would never doubt me, of course she believed me. She was right, I was getting paranoid. But if only my new friends had met my husband. It would have meant 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 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 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.’

  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 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 on
to 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 person 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?

  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.

  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 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.

  Chapter 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.

  ‘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 got Gemma O’Connor in custody. I told her we just don’t have enough on her … well, anything really. Nothing that would stick.’

  ‘Agreed. Nowhere near enough for the CPS, that’s for sure,’ Devon agreed. ‘Pity the forensic report on her house wasn’t more conclusive. That would really have helped if it had backed up the theory that she’s lying about Danny ever having made it to Bristol.’