The Missing Marriage

by Sarah May

  Laviolette had left three messages for her since Erwin’s death – nothing to do with Bryan Deane, just well intended enquiries after her general health and state of mind, neither of which were good.

  She hadn’t returned any of them, but he didn’t bring this up – he didn’t ask her how she was feeling either, he just said, ‘Can you help me with something?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I’m heading to fifty-one Perry Vale, Whitley Bay – following up a Missing Persons.’

  She laughed. ‘They’ve assigned you another one?’

  ‘OAP – sixty-two – reckons his wife’s gone missing. He says she went out for a walk yesterday morning and never came home. Uniforms went round yesterday and took a statement, but there’s something . . . I don’t know.’

  ‘I don’t work for Northumbria Police, Inspector.’

  ‘I just want you to observe, Sergeant.’ He paused. ‘Where are we now? September? You’re into month six of your one month’s compassionate leave – that’s very understanding of the Met.’

  ‘They want me to have an evaluation before I go back to work. At the moment I’m not even up to the evaluation.’

  ‘So what are you going to do?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Come on – it’s a beautiful day. You need to get out more – it’ll help you sleep at night.’

  Anna knew she was going to go.

  Laviolette knew she was going to go.

  She walked heavily over to the windows, her back and upper arms aching from the position she’d fallen asleep in on the sofa. She’d become dependent on the North Sea being outside her windows, and even though the Thames flowed past the new development in Greenwich where she rented a flat, it had none of the angry restlessness or empirical unpredictability of the North Sea.

  ‘How do you know I’m not sleeping at night?’

  ‘I can hear it in your voice.’

  ‘What did you say the address was?’

  ‘Fifty-one Perry Vale, Whitley Bay.’

  It was Constable Wade who answered the door.

  She looked surprised to see Anna.

  Laviolette obviously hadn’t said anything, and Anna wondered if this was the way he worked – keeping people in the dark. In evaluations it was the kind of behaviour they linked to paranoia and an inability to communicate – she’d worked in an investment bank’s Personnel department running employee risk assessment profiles for six months when she first left university.

  ‘The Inspector wants me to observe,’ Anna explained, trying to put Constable Wade at her ease.

  Constable Wade would never have openly criticised the Inspector – and made an effort now to neutralise any facial expressions – but she couldn’t help repeating, ‘Observe?’

  Anna smiled and nodded, and the next minute DC Wade – who could only have been in her mid twenties – was grinning back at her.

  Fifty-one Perry Vale smelt as if old people lived there. Anna followed DC Wade into a lounge where the Inspector and an elderly man – Mr Larcom – were sitting on a red three-piece covered in raised velveteen flora. There was a red and gold coffee table with a plate of Rich Tea biscuits on it and some cups of tea.

  Sergeant Chambers was standing by an electric organ in the corner of the room, holding a cup of tea awkwardly in his large hands, and looking unhappy.

  ‘You made it,’ Laviolette said, smiling at Anna and introducing her to Mr Larcom simply as, ‘another colleague – Anna.’

  Anna didn’t look at Chambers and Wade, instead her eyes swept quickly round the room and the thing that struck her was the lack of photographs. There was a sideboard, but there were no photographs on top of it.

  ‘D’you want to take a look round the house?’ he said to her over his shoulder before turning back to Mr Larcom and helping himself to another biscuit.

  This time Anna saw Chambers and Wade exchange glances, which the Inspector also saw but chose to ignore.

  ‘They searched the house yesterday,’ Mr Larcom said, aware that Anna was watching him. ‘And these two,’ he jerked his thumb at Chambers and Wade, ‘they did it just now.’

  All the Inspector said in response to this was, ‘Don’t worry – we’ll just carry on talking down here.’

  Anna went into the kitchen and started opening cupboards as quietly as she could: instant coffee, Bistro gravy granules, mustard powder, Oxo cubes, Saxo salt – the war generation’s staple store cupboard ingredients. She wasn’t enjoying herself – why had she agreed to come?

  She went upstairs.

  The lilac bathroom was as clean and tidy as the rest of the house, the bathmat damp still – with talcum powder impressions of what must have been Mr Larcom’s feet.

  The Larcoms’ bedroom was silent and gloomy despite the sun outside, and the spare room smelt damp, and felt as though it hadn’t been slept in for years. The whole house, in fact, felt strangely vacated.

  She thought about Mr Larcom downstairs. There was no urgency to his worry over his wife’s disappearance. He only seemed mildly disorientated and confused – probably at the number of strangers he’d had in his house over the past two days.

  The Inspector was right, there was something . . .

  Her mind had picked up on something here upstairs.

  She went back onto the tiny landing and looked around her then, distracted, went downstairs again – smiling encouragingly at Mr Larcom, who’d been too busy listening to her move around upstairs to respond to the Inspector’s questions.

  Still smiling, she squeezed between Sergeant Chambers – who didn’t move – and the sideboard, and looked out the single patio door at the garden, which couldn’t have been more than three metres square – laid to lawn. There was a shed at the end and a wheelbarrow balanced against it.

  ‘Mind if I take a look at the shed, Mr Larcom?’ she said, opening the patio door before he had time to respond.

  ‘We did the shed just now,’ Chambers put in.

  ‘I’ll only be a few minutes. Is it locked?’

  ‘No – it’s not locked,’ Mr Larcom said, sounding sad for the first time as he said this.

  The Larcoms clearly weren’t gardeners.

  The shed was used as more of an overflow attic than anything else.

  She paused, noticing a heap of blue harnesses on the floor in the corner behind an old push mower – the only piece of gardening equipment there was in the shed. They were the type of harnesses used by removal companies for large items of furniture.

  She shut the shed door, crossed the lawn – and saw Mr Larcom watching her through the patio door.

  Laviolette smiled placidly at her as she went back inside, his mouth full of biscuit, looking like he’d just informed Mr Larcom that an insurance premium was due to be paid out.

  Constable Wade looked sombre, professional and solidly alert.

  Sergeant Chambers looked like he was itching to rip someone’s head off and play football with it.

  Mr Larcom just looked surprised all over again to find these strangers in his house.

  ‘D’you mind if I take one last look upstairs?’

  It was Laviolette she was looking at as she made the request. He seemed pleased – with her request? Himself? The situation?

  She went back upstairs, stopping on the top tread, her hand on the banister.

  There was something wrong here on the landing; a humming sound – dull, electrical – coming from the ceiling, which her eyes ran over now. A white cable running out of the loft hatch had been messily pinned across the ceiling and down the wall where it ran into a plug socket in the skirting board.

  There were marked impressions in the carpet from where – Anna guessed – a ladder must have stood.

  She stayed motionless at the top of the stairs for a few minutes more, her eyes fixed on the loft hatch, before calling down. ‘Inspector? Inspector – d’you mind coming up here for a moment?’

  The Inspector and Mr Larcom appeared at the foot of the stairs.

>   ‘It’s alright Mr Larcom, you can stay down here. Constable Wade!’ Laviolette called out, waiting until she had lead Mr Larcom back into the lounge before joining Anna upstairs.

  ‘I’ve got a feeling that’s an extension lead,’ she said, running her fingers over the cabling, ‘going up into the loft. He’s got some sort of electrical appliance plugged in up there. Can you hear that?’

  They stood listening until their ears picked out the faint humming sound.

  ‘I think we need some ladders.’

  ‘I think we do.’

  They smiled at each other and went back downstairs.

  ‘Mr Larcom,’ Laviolette said brightly as they walked into the lounge where everyone was in the same position as before, ‘d’you mind if we get your ladders out the garden shed?’

  Mr Larcom stared at them. ‘My ladders?’

  Laviolette nodded. ‘We just want to take a quick look round the attic.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because we didn’t do that this morning.’

  ‘I’ll get them,’ Mr Larcom offered wearily, hesitating before stepping through the garden door onto the patio.

  Laviolette jerked his head at Chambers to follow him.

  They returned a couple of minutes later with the ladders.

  ‘You want to watch when you put them up – the spring’s starting to rust. Sometimes you think they’re fully open and they’re not.’ Mr Larcom paused. ‘And the hatch to the attic is hinged.’ He paused again. ‘The hinges are on the right, and there’s a light cord hanging from one of the rafters – you can’t miss it.’

  Leaving Mr Larcom downstairs with Constable Wade, they went upstairs – Chambers carrying the ladders.

  ‘D’you want me to go up?’ he offered when they got to the top landing.

  ‘You and Anna. Anna first – this is her lead.’

  Anna hesitated before starting to climb. The hatch opened easily and she realised that it was easier than most lofts to get into because the hatch had been widened in a way that hadn’t been immediately obvious, standing beneath it.

  She stood up, found the light cord and pulled it, looking round the illuminated attic space while she waited for Chambers.

  There was a large chest freezer two metres away, filling most of the space. This was what the extension cable was for.

  With a grunt, Chambers swung himself up and was soon standing beside her, looking at the chest freezer while trying to suck a large splinter out of his left index finger.

  He turned round and spat among the rafters, shaking his hand. ‘Got it. Shit,’ he added.

  Anna wasn’t sure if he was referring to the splinter or the chest freezer.

  ‘How the fuck did he get that up here?’

  ‘Those straps – in the shed.’

  ‘I didn’t see any straps,’ Chambers said, aggressively.

  Anna ignored this, crossing the boards that had been laid across the three rafters separating them from the chest freezer.

  ‘We used to have one of these,’ he said.

  ‘So did we.’ Anna thought about the chest freezer Erwin used to have in the side passage at number nineteen Parkview for overflow from the vegetable patch.

  ‘Can’t think what the hell my mum used to put in it.’ He sighed, looking behind him at the open hatch where the Inspector’s head had appeared. ‘Seriously though, how the fuck did he get this up here?’

  He was about to say something else when Anna opened the lid of the freezer.

  They looked down then up at each other as Anna let the lid drop with a bang. She started to laugh.

  Chambers looked at her, concerned, then started laughing himself – the back of his hand over his mouth. ‘Shit,’ he said, laughing even harder as Laviolette finally managed to haul himself up into the attic, picking his way awkwardly across the boards towards the chest freezer. ‘Sir, you’d better come and take a look at this,’ he said.

  ‘What am I looking at?’

  Anna, no longer in hysterics, managed to say, ‘Mrs Larcom.’

  And there lay Mrs Larcom, on top of a surprising amount of frozen food, twisted on her side, and fully dressed – the hem of a flesh coloured slip showing beneath a green skirt. There were wrinkles in her tights, at the ankle, and she only had one slipper on. The other slipper was resting on top of a box of arctic roll. She was wearing a pair of clip-on earrings, and a necklace and her hair was full of frozen peas and sweetcorn. There were peas in the hollows of her face. It looked like she’d been dropped into the freezer in a hurry, and the force of her landing had burst the bags of frozen vegetables.

  Even looking at her from this angle they couldn’t see any wounding and, shutting her eyes, Anna gave in to an impression that she’d probably been drugged by Mr Larcom – there may even have been accomplices. He could have got her to climb up here on some pretext, given her a paralytic then pushed her into the freezer, shutting the lid and leaving her to freeze to death. Possibly.

  Mr Larcom was waiting for them, expectant, when they got back downstairs. He looked sad – as though he’d given things his best shot, but wasn’t all that surprised that he hadn’t quite pulled it off.

  ‘We found your wife, Mr Larcom,’ Laviolette announced.

  ‘You did?’ He nodded slowly to himself then said, ‘We’ve been married forty years. What’s forty years? Silver? Diamonds?’ For some reason he appealed to Anna at this point. ‘We were never close though. I’ve been planning this ever since I retired twelve years ago. Oh well, I suppose it’s kept me busy. I needed the money, you know?’

  Mr Larcom seemed much calmer now – relieved almost.

  ‘What did you need the money for?’ Sergeant Chambers asked, genuinely curious.

  ‘A woman I’ve been seeing – Romanian woman; she cleans down at Jesmond Dene . . . those big places down there. I wanted to make a go of it with her.’ He was speaking slowly, looking at them all in turn, and hoping it all made sense. ‘Seventy-seven’s not so old these days, is it?’ He grinned suddenly then, looking upset for the first time, ‘She won’t get into trouble over this, will she? She had nothing to do with any of it. I’ve got my pension, you see,’ he explained patiently, ‘but I needed the money settled on Brenda.’

  ‘Life insurance?’ Laviolette prompted.

  ‘That’s it,’ Mr Larcom nodded, pleased that they were following him.

  Laviolette leant against his car, which was parked half way up Perry Vale.

  ‘What was that?’ Anna demanded.

  ‘Life.’

  ‘I’m not talking about Mrs Larcom. Mrs Larcom . . . shit.’ Anna started laughing again.

  ‘It’s good to see you laugh. It’s good to see you.’

  Ignoring this, Anna said, ‘I’m talking about you getting me over here.’

  ‘You weren’t picking up your phone.’

  ‘I’m grieving.’

  ‘I was worried about you.’ Laviolette smiled at her.

  ‘Stop smiling.’

  ‘Okay.’ But he didn’t stop smiling.

  ‘You’ve got no right – to be worried about me.’

  ‘I wanted to take your mind off things.’

  ‘With Mrs Larcom?’

  ‘I’m looking for a new Detective Sergeant.’

  ‘You’ve already got one.’

  ‘Skipper here is relocating to Teeside.’

  She glanced behind her at Sergeant Chambers, who gave her a brief consenting nod.

  ‘Can I ask you something Inspector?’ he said. ‘When you call me Skipper – is it because you’re fond of me or because you can’t stand the sight of me?’

  ‘It’s because I can never remember your name.’

  Chambers nodded thoughtfully.

  ‘You knew, didn’t you?’ Anna said suddenly to Laviolette. ‘When you phoned me – asked me to come over – you’d already seen the extension lead running up to the loft hatch.’

  ‘What makes you think that?’

  ‘You knew about the extension lead –
you wanted to see how long it would take me to notice.’ She paused then said again, ‘You knew.’

  Laviolette shrugged. ‘Neither Chambers, Wade or any of the uniformed officers noticed the lead.’

  ‘So it wasn’t their day.’

  ‘Do you want a drink or something?’

  ‘You knew about that extension lead,’ she insisted.

  He smiled suddenly at her, and it felt like the first real smile she’d seen on his face. ‘Come on – a drink.’

  She hesitated, about to accept – she did want a drink – when her phone started ringing.

  It was Martha Deane.

  ‘Some other time,’ she said, pulling herself away from the moment – with relief, she realised afterwards as she got back into the familiar Capri, her phone ringing again.

  Laura had been looking forward to her meeting with Bryan’s old colleague, Greg Bolton at five that afternoon, but now she was distracted by the fact that for the first time since they’d started meeting there in the afternoons, Tom hadn’t been at the marina flat. She’d arranged the meeting with Greg the day before after a brief, flirtatious call to him. Their encounters had always been mildly flirtatious, and although initially Greg had been sombre because it was only the second time they’d spoken since Bryan’s disappearance, he soon found himself responding to her habitual flirting.

  Greg Bolton had been made acting Branch Manager – not that Tyneside Properties were exactly going to advertise this fact, but they did need somebody to run the branch in Bryan’s absence.

  Greg was coming to value the house because Laura was thinking about putting it on the market – selling the house was something she and Bryan had talked about before his disappearance on Easter Saturday. It was something she’d been afraid of for the past two years, but now it was actually going on the market the only thing she felt was an incredible sense of relief.

  Greg knew the house – him and his wife, Patsy, were frequent guests at number two Marine Drive – but he enjoyed the guided tour Laura gave him.