by James, Peter
She had four really close friends. Close as hell. In the last couple of years, since their disagreements had become more and more frequent, he was sure she’d started turning all of them against him – he could tell, he wasn’t an idiot. Always a slight frostiness when he met any of them.
In the morning, if she still hadn’t turned up, he would call them. And her mother. Her sister. And anyone else he could think of. But he was pretty sure she’d be home sometime soon. Totally trolleyed and apologetic, like the last time she’d done this to him.
He finished the drink and the cigarette, then had another of each.
Quarter past midnight.
No Eden.
Where are you?
He went to bed.
9
Monday 2 September
Niall Paternoster was woken with a start by the clatter of the letter box. The orange glow of the street lighting had been replaced by daylight. From the brightness around the edges of the curtains it looked like a fine day. He glanced at the clock radio by his bed: 7.03 a.m. The morning paper delivery, he realized.
Then he realized something else as he became more awake.
The right-hand side of the bed was empty. Undisturbed.
Hauling himself up against the headboard, he reached over to the table, grabbed his phone and peered at it. No texts. There were a couple of emails, which he opened. One was from a newsfeed he subscribed to, the other was spam his filter hadn’t picked up. No word from Eden.
He slipped out of bed, padded out onto the landing and checked the spare room, where she sometimes slept on the few occasions when they’d had a really bad row. But the bed was clearly unused. ‘Eden!’ he called out in the forlorn hope she was somewhere else in the house. But the only reply was a plaintive miaow from Reggie downstairs. No doubt hungry, as ever.
‘I’ll be down soon, Reggie!’ he called out.
The cat responded with a noise that sounded like he was being tortured to death.
Niall went back into their bedroom, sat on the edge of the bed and ran his fingers through his hair. Thinking hard. He rang Eden’s mobile, but nothing. Was its battery completely dead? He had to keep trying. Who to call next? Her four best friends, Georgie, Dem, Helen and Sharon? Her sister? Her mother? The local hospitals, Worthing and the Royal Sussex, in case she’d been in an accident or taken ill?
He went downstairs, threw a handful of dry pellets into Reggie’s bowl to shut him up, made himself a strong coffee, then began phoning each of Eden’s girlfriends in turn, telling them what had happened. What he got back from each of them was concern for Eden, but not much sympathy, nor surprise. No, they hadn’t seen her. Would he please let them know when she turned up?
Of course.
He rang the hospitals. No patient by the name of Eden Paternoster had been admitted during the past twenty-four hours.
Next, he rang her elder sister, Evelyn. She and Eden were close, too. Evelyn hadn’t seen her either. Nor had her brother, Adam – her parents sure had referenced the Bible for their children’s names. He rang her mum, who had never liked him, and was interrogated by her for a full ten minutes.
Ending the call, Niall continued thumbing through the book. Who the hell else might she have contacted?
He made more calls. Finally, all out of ideas, he looked at the ridiculously modern and stupid clock on the wall. The one she had chosen, which had no numbers on it, so you had to look at your watch anyway to be sure of the time.
8.55 a.m.
The house phone rang. Hardly anyone rang that these days. He dived over to the dresser, where it sat, and snatched the receiver off the cradle. Eden?
It was her mother, wondering if she had turned up.
‘No, Margaret,’ he said. ‘Not yet.’
‘Will you tell me when she does? I’m really worried about her.’
‘Of course I will, Mags,’ he assured her in his warmest, most wonderful and caring son-in-law voice. ‘You’ll be the first.’
‘Have you called the police?’
‘No, but I’m thinking about it if she doesn’t turn up soon, as I just told you.’
Ending the call, promising again to let her know the moment he heard anything, he stared at the address book. There was no one else he could think of. He’d exhausted all the possibilities. Hadn’t he?
Who hadn’t he thought of? What hadn’t he thought of?
Through the window on to their small rear garden, he could see a bird drinking from the ornamental birdbath that Eden topped up with water every day. Then Reggie began whinging. ‘Way past breakfast time, eh?’ Niall said. Reluctantly slipping off his stool, he walked over to the cupboard where Eden kept the pouches of cat food, took one out and opened it. Reggie leaped onto the draining board and carried on whining and trying to eat while he emptied the contents into the red bowl.
He put the bowl on the floor, went back to his bar stool and sipped his coffee. Then he noticed that the finger he’d cut last night was bleeding again – he must have done it opening the cat food. Sucking it, he decided maybe it was time to call the police. On the other hand, perhaps he should give her a little longer. See if she turned up to work today, first?
He decided to get some exercise, go for a bike ride down to the seafront, and give her time to make contact. If not, when he came back he’d call her work number. If she hadn’t gone into work – she’d told him she had a really busy day with a new computer system being installed – then he would really start to worry.
10
Monday 2 September
An hour later, shortly after 10.15 a.m., with still no sign of Eden, he ate a few mouthfuls of cereal, called her mobile once more – no dice – and then her direct work line. It went to voicemail. Next, he called the main switchboard of the Mutual Occidental Insurance Company and, when it was answered, asked if the operator could locate his wife, telling her he’d already tried her direct line.
After putting him on hold while she tried several different departments where Eden might be, the woman told him that no one had seen her yet, although, she added helpfully, she had been expected in for an 8.30 a.m. meeting.
Niall thanked her and ended the call. Shit. He tried to think back clearly to yesterday afternoon. But his mind was in turmoil. Cat litter. Was he going crazy? They’d been squabbling in the car, hadn’t they, just petty stuff? He’d dropped her off at Tesco to buy cat litter. Hadn’t he?
His nerves were in tatters. He took an energy drink from the fridge and downed it. Just as he finished, a text pinged in on his phone. Eden? He looked at it and saw to his dismay it was from her mother.
Any news?
Time to call the police, he decided. But on what number? Two weeks ago, a drunk shitbag he’d picked up in his cab in the centre of Brighton, who he’d driven to north of Gatwick Airport, had done a runner on him in a Redhill housing estate, leaving him with forty quid on the meter. He’d called the police 101 non-emergency number the following morning to report it. It had been seventeen minutes before it was answered. He’d been assured by the operator to whom he gave the details that someone would be in touch. But no one had.
To hell with that.
He dialled 999.
It was answered on the third ring. ‘Emergency, which service, caller?’
‘Police, please.’
There was a brief wait, then he heard a polite, assured voice.
‘Sussex Police, how may I help you?’
‘Hi,’ he said. ‘I’m worried that something’s happened to my wife. She’s disappeared.’
‘May I have your name and address, please, sir?’
He gave the details to her.
The call handler asked him for his wife’s name, age, date of birth and address, which he gave her, struggling for a moment to remember whether Eden had been born on 2 or 3 March 1988. He settled on 3 March.
‘Can you please give me a full description of your wife and the clothes she was wearing when you last saw her?’
He repeat
ed the description he’d given to the security guy at the store the day before, adding in a few extra details. ‘She’s thirty-one, five seven, shoulder-length, straight brown hair, wearing a pink T-shirt and white shorts.’ Then, remembering, he suddenly realized he’d given the security man a wrong description. She’d been wearing her hair up yesterday, pulled back and clipped into a kind of bun, the way she wore it when she couldn’t be bothered to wash it. He corrected the description to the call handler.
Continuing, sounding as if she might be reading from a script, she asked Niall what he thought might have happened, and if he could describe in as much detail as possible the circumstances of her disappearance.
He told her all he knew.
Next, sounding even more like she was working off a script, she asked him for information about her family, friends and work colleagues.
He answered in as much detail as he could.
When he had exhausted the list, she asked him, ‘Does your wife have any previous history of disappearing?’
‘No, never.’
‘She’s never gone missing before?’
‘No – OK, she did do something about a year ago, when we’d had a row. She went into a supermarket and bumped into a friend, and asked her to give her a lift home, leaving me waiting in the car. She did that just to get back at me.’
There was a pause, during which he heard the tapping of keys. Then she asked, ‘Was that just a one-off situation?’
‘Yes.’
‘Do you and your wife argue often?’
‘No – no more than any other couple.’
More tapping of keys, then, ‘Does your wife have any history of mental health problems?’
‘No, none.’
‘Has she ever self-harmed?’
‘Self-harmed? Like cutting herself, do you mean?’
‘Any instance where she might have deliberately injured herself?’
‘Absolutely not,’ he said.
There was a brief silence, punctuated with more key tapping, then she asked, ‘Has your wife, Eden, ever talked about suicide with you? Have you ever considered her a suicide risk?’
‘No, no way.’
‘So you wouldn’t consider it a possibility?’
Niall nearly shouted at the woman. ‘Not remotely. I cannot in a million years believe she would do that. And all we’d been bloody arguing about was cat litter. You think she’d go and kill herself over cat litter?’
There was no response for a moment. Just the sound of a keyboard again. Then the woman said, ‘If you can remain where you are, sir, I’ll dispatch a unit to you as soon as possible.’
‘Sure,’ Niall said. ‘I’m not going anywhere. How long do you think that will be?’
‘I’ll do my best to get a car to you within the next hour. If anything changes in the meanwhile, please call us back.’
Niall said he would.
11
Monday 2 September
‘Tell me I didn’t hear you right,’ Glenn Branson said. He had barged into Roy Grace’s office, as usual without knocking, and perched himself in front of the Detective Superintendent’s desk, chair the wrong way round, so that he was leaning, arms folded, across the back as if he was in some Wild West saloon – the position he regularly favoured.
Just when he thought that Glenn Branson’s ties could not get any brighter or more lurid, the thing knotted to the DI’s pink shirt this morning, now flipped back over his shoulder, looked like an angry, striking cobra.
Grace sipped his coffee, both irritated and pleased at the same time by his colleague’s uninvited appearance in his office. Irritated because he was trying to concentrate on writing an update report on his experiences in the Met with the Violent Crime Task Force, which the Chief Constable had asked for in order to see what Sussex Police could learn to help them with the surge in knife crime in the county. And pleased because he always liked Branson’s company, and he could do with a distraction from two hours of fierce concentration.
‘You heard me right.’
‘Chicken husbandry? Excuse me, just what is that? You’re not getting weird on hens? I mean, there are some pretty kinky websites out there – but chickens?’
‘Matey, I can’t help your warped mind. But this isn’t going to feed it. Cleo and I are doing a course in chicken husbandry at Plumpton Agricultural College tomorrow. A one-day course. Bruno’s taken a big interest in our hens, he really seems to love them – two in particular, the ones with the fluffy feet. Bruno’s named them Fraulein Andrea and Fraulein Julia. We want to encourage his interest.’
Branson leaned forward, frowning quizzically. ‘Fraulein Andrea and Fraulein Julia? What kind of names are those for hens?’
‘You have a problem with them?’
He grinned. ‘Whatever floats Bruno’s boat, I suppose. His U-boat.’
Grace shook his head at the comment about his German-born son. ‘Not funny.’
Branson raised his arms apologetically. ‘Yeah, sorry. So, this chicken husbandry thing, does it have a forensic application?’
Grace grinned. ‘I’m taking a day’s leave – OK? I’m owed a ton of leave. What is your problem?’
The DI shook his head. ‘Detective Superintendent Grace, Head of Homicide for Surrey and Sussex Police, takes day off to learn how to look after chickens.’
‘And your issue is, exactly?’
Branson laughed. ‘Farmer Grace.’ He shook his head, smiling. ‘I can just see you rocking up to the next murder investigation in green wellies, chewing on a piece of straw.’
‘And what if I do?! Which do you think came first – the chicken or the egg?’ Grace asked.
‘The rooster, obviously. Typical male.’
It was Grace’s turn to smile. Then his phone rang.
It was Alison Vosper.
‘Ma’am,’ he said respectfully. ‘Can you hold for just one moment, I’ve got a weird-looking creature in my office.’
He waved a dismissing hand at Branson.
Branson took the hint and headed to the door.
‘OK, I’m with you now, ma’am.’
‘Nothing too nasty, I hope, Roy?’
‘Just one of those bitey insects you get this time of year, but it’s gone now.’
When Alison Vosper had been an ACC at Sussex, one of Grace’s colleagues had nicknamed her No. 27, after a sweet and sour dish on the local Chinese takeaway menu that they frequently used on long shifts. You never knew quite what you were going to get with her. Sweet or sour. But something in her tone indicated sweet right now.
‘I’m calling you with an update,’ she said. ‘I’ve already spoken to your Chief Constable to put her in the picture. I’ve also raised this with the Commander in charge of Anti-Corruption in the Met and he’s picking this up straight away as a matter of urgency.’
‘Thank you, ma’am,’ Grace said. But the news didn’t fill him with elation, rather the reverse – it made him feel flat. However much he despised Pewe, and all corrupt police officers, the knowledge that what he had told her would destroy Pewe’s career – and probably the rest of his life – was still a tough one on his conscience. As well as Cleo’s warning words from last night.
First dig two graves.
And the knowledge that all he had told her was on the word of Guy Batchelor, a disgraced former police officer in prison, and the contents of his notebook.
But despite all Batchelor had done wrong, he trusted him on this.
Enough to gamble his career on, should this backfire?
He just hoped, as Guy had assured him, that the genie was already out of the bottle, and Pewe was on borrowed time.
‘Just remember, Roy, this stays strictly confidential.’
‘Of course, ma’am, absolutely. Thank you for the update.’
The moment he put the phone down, it rang again. It was Norman Potting, sounding worried. ‘Chief, I’ve just had a call from the quack – I rang the surgery about some symptoms I’ve been having for over a month n
ow.’
‘Your prostate?’
‘No, touch wood, that’s all tickety-boo now. No, it’s something else. He wants me to come in this morning, which I guess is not good news.’
‘Norman, I’m sorry to hear that. Let’s hope it’s just something minor. Will you call me as soon as you’ve finished with the doctor? And, of course, if you need to take any time off, that goes without saying.’
‘Thanks, but it won’t come to that, chief, I’m a tough old bugger!’
Roy put the phone down and sat back in his chair. With the DS’s age and his previous health issues – plus the knowledge he didn’t really look after himself – he was worried about just how serious this might be. The old warhorse was not a man to wear his heart on his sleeve.
He was fond of the sometimes curmudgeonly detective and, if his news was bad, he and Cleo would support Norman all they could, both as a friend and as a long-time colleague.
Shit, he thought. What was it about bad news coming in threes?
12
Monday 2 September
One of their colleagues on B-Section of the Brighton and Hove Response, who was a bit of a comedian, had once named them Little and Large, and the moniker had stuck. It wasn’t an entirely unjust description. PC Holly Little, who was known to her colleagues as the Pocket Rocket because of her short stature but feisty nature, was always the first to dive head first into a brawl or any other kind of dangerous situation. Her much older colleague, PC John Alldridge, with whom she was regularly partnered, was a six-foot-four, eighteen-stone former rugby forward, known as the Gentle Giant. He had recently transferred back to Uniform from CID because he missed the adrenaline rush of response work and wanted to spend his last couple of years before retirement back where he had started his police career, on Response.