A minute or so later and he’s back.
‘I think you’ve done the right thing,’ he says.
I ignore that. Anyone who gets their own way thinks the other person has done the right thing. I go to stand but Dini coughs in a way that sounds fake. When I look to him, he’s smiling grimly.
‘It might be best if we wait together,’ he says.
‘Why?’
The smile remains. That annoying, cocksure confidence. He doesn’t reply because we both know the answer.
I make a point of crossing the room and switching on the Christmas tree lights. Pink and green bulbs wink into existence and continue flashing on and off as I retake my seat.
‘Is that okay?’ I ask. ‘Is there anything else I shouldn’t be doing in my own house?’
Dini says nothing – and then neither do I. We sit in silence for probably ten minutes until there’s a knock on the door. I go to stand – but Dini moves quicker. He strides across the living room, into the hall, and opens the door. I’m a few steps behind and arrive as a uniformed officer waits on the precipice. She passes Dini a wedge of forms and he turns and gives them to me.
‘Can you sign this?’ he asks. ‘It gives us permission to search.’
I scan the page, though don’t read it properly. I don’t think I’d be able to focus on the words anyway. It seems legitimate enough, so I head for the kitchen, grab a pen, sign the form, and then hand it back to Dini – who has, of course, followed me.
‘Are there any outbuildings on your property?’ he asks.
‘There’s a shed at the end of the garden.’
‘What’s in there?’
‘Not much. A couple of chairs. Sometimes Richard goes there for a bit of peace in the summer. I don’t think he’s been down there in a couple of months. It’s mainly gardening tools. There’s a key by the back door.’
‘Thank you.’
Dini returns to the front of the house and mentions the shed to the person who’d brought the papers. With that, he leads me back to the living room and then a parade of officers pour into the house. I watch through the living-room door as anything up to a dozen people pass by one after the other, like clowns getting out of a comedy car. There’s the sound of footsteps going upstairs and then of people moving around above. From the kitchen, it sounds as if cupboards are being opened.
‘How did you get so many officers together so quickly?’ I ask.
Dini shrugs the question away and mutters something about ‘resources’. It’s nonsense, of course. He’s been ahead of me since the moment he turned up on my doorstep this morning.
He presses back into the armchair. With his rolled-up trousers, he looks like a granddad on a beach. With little other choice of what to do with myself, I curl into the corner of the sofa.
It’s not long before there are shadows of people funnelling back through the house, past the front windows to where I presume their cars are parked. The front door opens and closes with such regularity that it might as well be left open. The house is draughty at the best of times and I find myself holding my arms across my front.
‘Do you need something warmer?’ Dini asks.
‘I’m fine.’
He glances towards the laptop at my side.
‘You can’t take that,’ I say. ‘It’s mine. I do all my work on it.’ I open the lid and turn around so that he can see my stupid picture of a dog in a high chair on the welcome screen. ‘Richard doesn’t even know the password. I can’t get things done without it.’
‘The blogging?’
‘Yes, the blogging.’
He looks to the computer one more time as I close the lid. ‘There are a few more things I need to ask you,’ he says.
‘Will you let me keep my laptop?’
‘I can’t say yet.’
‘Richard has his own computer. It’s a desktop in his office upstairs.’
Dini doesn’t react to this. It’s not as if the search team are going to miss it. He purses his lips. ‘I don’t suppose you can remember the name of the friend your husband was visiting, can you? I know sometimes things can slip the mind. It certainly happens to me…’
It’s a second chance that I probably don’t deserve. Phrases like ‘perverting the course of justice’ and ‘aiding an offender’ bounce around my mind. I still can’t believe Richard is involved in whatever’s happened. He’s my husband. He’s not that sort of man. If Alice did get into his car, then there’s an innocent explanation.
I know him.
I also know that Dini won’t give me a third chance…
‘It might have been someone who’s name begins with a K,’ I say. ‘Like Kevin, or… Keith.’
It’s an odd situation in that Dini must know I’m putting on something of a show. He goes with it, though.
‘What would Kevin or Keith’s last name be?’
‘A longer name. I don’t know Richard’s friends. If you let me look at his rolodex, I could probably work it out.’
‘Where’s the rolodex?’
‘In Richard’s office.’
Dini examines me for a moment, perhaps wondering if I’m lying. Perhaps knowing that I am, even if it’s not about anything serious.
‘Wait here,’ he says.
Dini crosses to the door and calls across one of the officers who is in the process of returning from the cars. He says something that I don’t catch and then waits in the doorway until the officer appears a minute or two later with Richard’s rolodex. He hands it across and I flip through the entries until I get to Keith Etherington’s card.
‘I’m pretty sure this is him,’ I say.
Dini unhooks the card from the rest of the mechanism and then takes a photo of it with his phone. He then takes a see-through bag from one of the officers in the hallway and drops the card into it, before letting them take it.
‘Who’s Keith Etherington?’ he asks.
‘I don’t know. Richard works too far away for there to be much crossover between his colleagues and anyone here.’
This gets little reaction, although Dini must see that it’s the truth. He returns to the armchair and takes out his notebook.
‘Your husband’s forty-eight,’ he says. It’s somehow a question, even though it isn’t.
‘We married three years ago,’ I reply.
‘And you’re, what, ten years younger than he is…?’
‘Is there a problem with that?’
‘No problem. I just want to make sure all the facts are correct. Are you Richard’s first wife, or…?’
‘Why are you asking if you already know?’
I want a reaction – even if it’s a demand to answer the question. Instead, Dini remains passive and calm, his pen poised. It’s so annoying.
‘India died about six years ago,’ I say. ‘She was Richard’s first wife. I never knew her. I didn’t know Richard back then.’
‘How did you meet?’
There’s a bang from upstairs and we both stop.
‘Are they trashing my house?’ I ask.
‘Not purposely.’
‘What happens to the things you’re taking?’
‘You’ll get a receipt for everything. Once we’ve run any necessary checks, everything will be returned unless it needs to be held as evidence.’
More shuffled footsteps come from the stairs and then the front door sounds again.
I don’t know why Dini wants to hear about how Richard and I met. It can’t have any bearing on now – and yet, as I consider telling him that it’s none of his business, I realise that I want to talk about it. I miss my husband and, for now, memories are all I have.
‘I was a mature student,’ I say. ‘I’d gone back to university to study English. I ended up dropping out because I didn’t like the course – but I guess something clicked between Richard and me.’
‘He was your lecturer?’
‘Yes.’
It sounds worse than it was. People hear ‘teacher–student relationship’ and it
has connotations. It was hardly love at first sight but Richard and I were both adults. Are both adults. I knew what I was doing and so did he. I’m not embarrassed by any of that, even though, every time I talk about things, it feels as if I should be.
‘What happened with India?’
Hearing the name of Richard’s first wife sends me spinning back into the room. I’d been temporarily back in the university building.
‘I don’t know for sure,’ I reply.
‘But you must have some idea.’
‘So must you…’
It gets no reaction and we sit quietly for a moment as the bangs continue from above.
‘She fell off a cliff,’ I say. ‘I don’t know exactly where. She and Richard were hiking somewhere in Scotland. You can google her name. It’s all online.’
‘Have you googled her name?’
‘Not recently. Why would I?’
Dini notes something on his pad but doesn’t expand. I’m not sure I like the insinuations – because there’s definitely a question there that he didn’t dare ask.
He looks up abruptly and traps me in a stare: ‘I read about what happened to your father.’
‘I—’
I’m so taken aback by the change in direction that I can’t breathe. The air is trapped somewhere on the way out and I launch into a series of small coughs until it’s passed. It’s already clear that Dini’s done his homework, so no particular surprise that he knows this. It’s still shocking that’s he’s mentioned it.
‘I don’t see how it’s relevant,’ I reply.
‘It could be.’
‘My dad is dead – so I don’t see why it would.’
He opens his mouth but then closes it again, perhaps thinking better of whatever he was about to say. It doesn’t matter anyway because his phone starts to ring and he removes it from an inside pocket. He checks the screen, then holds it up and says, ‘I’ve got to take this.’ With that, he hurries into the hall and pulls the door firmly closed.
I’m alone in my living room, even though it doesn’t feel like mine any more. Perhaps it never did: it’s almost entirely Richard’s things in here, after all. I moved into his house after we married. He said it was ‘ours’, but I’m not sure it’s ever quite felt like that.
I’m still stuck by the mention of my father. I don’t like it when people bring him up. Richard learned this early enough and never does. Not even Kylie knows the full truth. I wonder how much Dini knows for sure…
It’s another five or six minutes until the door opens and Dini reappears. There’s a cardboard folder in his hand, which he passes across without comment. When I open it, there’s a large photograph inside.
‘It’s from the CCTV camera at the garage just up the road,’ he says. ‘If you check the timestamp, it’s from 19:54 on Sunday night.’
It takes me a moment to process the twenty-four-hour clock. Six minutes to eight on Sunday – and it’s as plain as anything could be. Little Alice Pritchard is in a red coat, with a red Alice band across her head, and she’s getting into Richard’s black Toyota. His hand is on her shoulder as he stands next to her on the passenger side.
I didn’t believe Harriet was lying, not really, but here it is for certain.
‘Madeleine…’ Dini speaks my name with such softness that it makes me want to cry.
I look up, partly because I’m not used to hearing my full name. ‘What?’
‘Can you think of any reason for your husband to be helping Alice Pritchard into his car?’
I turn from Dini to the photo. My fingers are trembling. ‘Perhaps he was giving her a lift back to the village so she didn’t have to walk…?’
When I next look up, Dini’s lips are pressed together. ‘Perhaps…’ he says – although it sounds as if doesn’t believe his own reply.
Eleven
The search takes most of the afternoon. Officers started drifting off in ones and twos, almost without me noticing. Eventually, only two were left – and they went through the living room as Detective Inspector Dini and I sat in the kitchen. At least Richard’s part-time hoarding is no longer an issue, seeing as the police have now relieved him of his papers, computer, files and journal. His office is more or less bare.
They let me keep my laptop. I’m not sure if that was always going to be the case, or if it’s because I answered all of Dini’s questions. I think he might have felt sorry for me, although perhaps that’s what he wanted me to believe. It’s hard to be sure of anything at the moment.
Dini left me the photo from Fuel’s Gold – and I’m glad he did. Without looking at it every five minutes, I’m not sure I’d be able to comprehend what was happening. It would be bad enough if it was just Richard missing – but the double hit of him being gone and Alice being found in the stream has left me floored.
I’ve not eaten today, but, as I look through the cupboards, I see only Richard. There’s the Shredded Wheat that he has for breakfast every day, the peaches he eats straight from the can, the Diet Coke that he drinks all the time, the extra-mature Cheddar because he doesn’t like any other cheeses.
Richard is everywhere around me, but he’s nowhere.
I’m not sure why but I take the key from the hook by the back door – and then head down the garden and into Richard’s shed. The house is a patchy mess of things the police took and things they didn’t – but, here, as far as I can tell, it is untouched. There wasn’t much in the first place. It’s mainly tools for the garden that I’ve never used and with which Richard has only patchily bothered. Last summer, he got a gardening company in to keep everything in order.
The rocking chair remains in the corner of the shed, along with the pile of blankets that have been out here since before I moved in. There’s a wide hamper built into the back wall that’s filled with things like boxes and manuals for various electrical items in the house. I don’t know why Richard keeps everything.
I sit in the rocking chair and let it bob back and forth.
The rain has stopped now and the cold has descended once more. I have to clamp my jaw together to stop my teeth chattering. Despite that, I close my eyes and lean back. I can see why Richard spends time here. The silence is perfect and beautiful. There’s nothing: not even wind or chirping birds. It feels like another place. It gives me the space to consider everything that’s happened.
I lied, maybe, to Dini – although I suspect he knows.
Of course I’ve searched the internet for the name India King. After filtering out the obvious results about Asian monarchs and takeaway shops, there’s quite a lot about Richard’s ex-wife. Which second wife wouldn’t read every single word available on the first? Definitely not me.
Richard only told me he’d been married before after we’d been to bed for the first time. Not that there was a bed involved.
It was the next morning when I went home and spent the best part of a day reading up on the woman who came before me. I still remember almost all of it, certainly the important parts.
It was six years ago that India King was hiking with Richard in the Cairngorms, Scotland. She was forty-one, older than I am now, when she slipped and fell. There was a line in one of the reports that I can recall perfectly – ‘Mrs King’s devastated husband watched but could do nothing’. I thought about the word ‘devastated’ for a long time afterwards. Anybody would have been devastated if they’d seen such a thing.
Apparently, the air ambulance attended but they couldn’t land. Richard was left at the top of wherever they were, waiting for someone to come and retrieve India’s body. He must have known she was dead because of the height of the fall – but he was stuck and alone, not able to be certain.
Who wouldn’t be devastated?
Eighteen months had passed from then to the time I started viewing Richard in a different way than simply a lecturer. After reading the article, it was hard not to wonder if his love for his first wife would impact on whatever he might end up feeling for me.
There was on
e other thing I wondered about, too. I’m only human and who wouldn’t have those thoughts? It was covered by another line at the end of the report, almost as a throwaway, even though I’d bet anyone who read it had that as a first thought.
‘Police say there are no suspicious circumstances involved.’
I wondered if it was alluding to there actually being suspicious circumstances, like some sort of police double bluff. Or if it was to do away with the snidey whispers that would accompany any story of this type.
It probably sounds strange but in the end, I kind of… forgot. I fell in love and Richard was in love with me. What went before didn’t matter. It’s not as if he’s ever shown any sort of violent or abusive tendencies towards me or anyone. I’d have to really think as to whether I’ve heard my husband raise his voice to a person. It isn’t his way.
Back in the shed and it’s too much effort to stop my teeth from chattering any longer. The cold feels as if it has seeped all the way into my bones. It’s tiring just to keep my eyes open – and yet, at the same time, I’m too exhausted to move. I want to stay here, in this small space, and wait for everything to go away.
The only reason I don’t do that is because my phone buzzes with a text. My body aches to move and my fingers are stiff and arthritic.
Theresa: Where are you?
I think about ignoring the message – and the only reason I don’t is because I’m not sure I’m going to have many allies in the coming weeks.
Me: At home
Theresa: Answer the door then!
My joints creak as I push myself up and attempt to hurry back to the house. I lock the back door and then move through to the front and open up for Theresa. She presses inside quickly, blowing cold air into her hands.
‘I thought you might want some company,’ she says.
She’s wearing the kindly smile of someone who’s heard all about my missing husband and the way Alice was last seen getting into his car. If it wasn’t already the case, then everyone in the village will know by now.
What My Husband Did: A gripping psychological thriller with an amazing twist Page 8