The Disappearance of Emily Marr

by Louise Candlish

  The receptionist had finished her call and turned her attention to Tabby. ‘Sorry to keep you waiting, Miss…?’

  ‘Dewhurst.’ Tabby could see at once past the pleasant, capable exterior: this woman was used to handling VIP arrivals, she’d be vigilant to a fault, immune to persuasion – and was therefore best approached with honesty. ‘I don’t have an appointment, but I’ve just arrived from France and I’m trying to get hold of Arthur Woodhall. I thought he might still be at St Barnabas’, but apparently he left some time ago. I’m hoping he might still be working here?’

  ‘Are you a former patient of his?’

  ‘No. I’m a friend of a friend. I know that sounds a bit vague, but I do have a good reason to see him. I’m only in the UK for a few days and it’s quite important.’

  The receptionist gave Tabby a look that said, ‘If your reason were good enough, you’d already know where to find him,’ but she continued to give every other impression of cooperation. ‘He is still working here, yes, but only a few days a month and today is not one of his days. He won’t be back down until next Monday now.’

  ‘Back down’: he’d left London, then. It was her first clue, scarcely useful in itself. ‘Are you his secretary?’

  ‘No, that’s Mrs Herne. Though she works mostly for Mr Ali now.’

  ‘Could I have a quick word with her?’

  ‘I’m afraid she’s on leave for two weeks. We have a temp in but to be honest she’ll probably know less than I do.’

  ‘Do you know where he’s living now?’

  ‘I’m afraid I’m not authorised to give you the home address of any member of staff. I’m sure you understand that.’

  Tabby felt the day’s first vibrations of dejection. It was becoming clear that she was not suited to private detective work. ‘Could you at least tell me if he’s working anywhere else? You said he comes down just a few days a month, so has he moved to a hospital up north? Or does he not have an NHS post at all now?’

  Faint surprise crossed the other woman’s brow. ‘Well, it’s public knowledge that Mr Woodhall divides his time between here and the Mapleton Eye Clinic in Leeds. I can give you the phone number if you’d like it?’

  ‘Thank you.’ Tabby was so pleased with the break that she took her leave at once, as if delaying would give the woman the opportunity to repossess the information from her brain. It may have been public knowledge that Arthur had taken a job in Leeds, but it had not appeared on the first four or five pages of search results for him she had worked her way through the previous afternoon.

  In the street she rang the number, discovering that it was a new, private offshoot of the General Infirmary located to the north of the city and that Arthur would be seeing pre-op patients there that afternoon. At King’s Cross, she bought the cheapest train ticket on sale and began the two-hour-plus next part of her journey. She tried not to worry about money, the fact that the three hundred euros she’d brought with her was disappearing fast. There was more cash in her room in Saint-Martin. Leaving the house two mornings ago, she had not wholly trusted herself to return and had left the fund there as a kind of insurance, a secret promise to Emmie that she would come back.

  Lord only knew what she would bring with her – and what she would find – when she did.

  Chapter 24

  Tabby

  On arrival in Leeds, and with little hope of tailing a man by public transport, she plundered her shrinking fund to hire a car and drive to the quiet suburb in which the eye clinic was located. She took her time to circle the car park and vehicle access roads before parking in the near corner of the visitor car park, as close to the exit as she could get and facing the main doors. She turned off the engine. Again, she had learned from Emily’s past mistakes and did not plan to attempt to bluff her way into Woodhall’s consulting rooms in the guise of patient or friend. She would simply wait until he had finished for the day.

  The question was, how long? It might look suspicious to walk in and ask the receptionist outright. Might they tell her over the phone? Watching a taxi pick up a patient and his companion from the main door, she had a better idea, and headed to the doors herself.

  ‘Car service for Arthur Woodhall,’ she announced to the receptionist, hanging back slightly, as cab drivers did.

  The receptionist looked up the extension on her database and made the call. ‘Car for Mr Woodhall.’ There followed the mildly perplexed attitude that Tabby had been expecting. ‘No, that’s what I thought. Thanks.’ She turned back to Tabby, who kept her body language easy, her expression guileless. ‘Are you sure you’ve got the right name? That particular surgeon is in theatre until seven o’clock.’

  Tabby frowned. ‘Must be some sort of mix-up. Not to worry. I’ll check with my controller.’

  ‘Which cab firm are you from?’ she was asked, but she pretended to be out of earshot, on her way out of the door. Outside, she toured the staff parking bays and noted a Mercedes among the vehicles. Of course, Arthur might have changed his car since Emmie had known him, but there was a good chance he had not needed to. Given the excitable emphasis on Emmie in the press coverage, Tabby suspected that his relocation owed less than his former lover’s to harassment – after all, the name of his new place of employment had been freely given by London staff – and more to overwhelming grief. Possibly he had not registered the public furore, not in a real sense; surely it would have been meaningless in the face of the losses he had suffered? He probably didn’t give a damn what he drove or where he worked.

  Seven o’clock. It was only three now. She bought something to eat and drink from the nearest shop and settled in the car. She had an excellent view of the doors and of the staff parking bays, and was able to position the book she was reading against the steering wheel in such a way as to keep peripheral note of them as she read.

  She knew what Arthur looked like from the internet images. Yes, there might be several senior staff of similar age and appearance, but she would have to trust to memory and, if necessary, instinct. She couldn’t miss this opportunity, for the simple reason that she would not be able to afford another; by her calculation she had enough money left for only one more night in a budget hotel, preferably with breakfast included, so she could fill up and not waste funds on expensive snacking. But so far, so good, she told herself. She’d had some lucky breaks today. The clinic was on the outskirts of the city, with free parking and, so far, no CCTV surveillance that had brought any security staff scurrying her way. It was a fine, dry day and the light would be good till late; she would easily be able to see which car was his and start her own in time to follow him in suburban traffic, a manoeuvre that would be almost impossible in London or in Leeds city centre.

  She watched, she read, she watched. She closed her eyelids and then forced them open before she could lose muscular control of them. She watched some more.

  It was close to seven-thirty when the man she identified as Emmie’s lost love came out of the building, not by the main doors but by a rear one situated closer to the silver VW he now approached. He wore a dark suit and white shirt, and moved with a lithe dynamism that caught her eye even before she’d matched the short, ash-grey hair and rather solemn features to those in the images she’d committed to memory. By the time she’d started her engine and pulled out, a third car and a shuttle bus had put themselves between him and her, which made it difficult to see if he, at the head of the queue at the first lights, was indicating left or right. But she was lucky: the vehicles in between turned the opposite way and soon she was directly behind him, keeping sufficient distance so as not to strike him as too eager a constant in his rear-view mirror.

  After a short while he turned on to an A-road and travelled at careful speed past a large golf course and into countryside, exiting and following a quieter road for a few minutes before pulling up at the gates of a detached brick new-build. They were electronic gates, Tabby saw, and without wasting a moment she parked at the kerb opposite, dashed across the road and sli
d inside the gates before they had fully closed behind the VW. It was a short driveway and absurd to imagine Woodhall had not seen her in his mirrors. Sure enough, a moment later he was out of his car and looking straight at her. ‘Who are you?’ he called. If he felt at all threatened, he didn’t show it.

  She took a single step forward. ‘My name’s Tabby.’

  ‘Tabby who? Do you have a surname?’ He spoke in fine-grained, patrician tones, but there was no mistaking the cold intolerance of his manner.

  ‘Tabby Dewhurst.’ Surveying the car park that afternoon, she had considered little else than how she would introduce herself, how best to gain his confidence, but now the time had come she found she had forgotten her lines, was intimidated by him.

  ‘Right,’ he said, ‘listen to me, please. I know you’ve just followed me from the hospital. I assume you are also the woman who pretended to be from a taxi service earlier. You may be surprised to hear that that trick has been used before. I suggest you just tell me right now what it is you want, otherwise I’m going to go phone the police. Don’t run off: you won’t be able to scale the gates and in any case I’ve made a note of your registration, so you’ll be easily tracked down and questioned.’ He had his phone in his hand, ready to carry out his threat. He was not like Nina, displeased to be ambushed but by nature intrigued; he was unambiguously enraged. She’d been wrong to think him impervious to unwanted attention. He’d gone to some lengths to separate himself from his old life – other than the form of work, none of the original elements remained – and now here she was, determined to reassemble them.

  He’d also been performing surgery for hours and was plainly exhausted. She should have waited, she realised, come in the morning when he had more energy and patience.

  ‘I’m waiting,’ he said.

  ‘I’m here on behalf of Emily,’ she said, finding her voice at last.

  This did not perturb him as much as Tabby might have expected. But then, as Nina had pointed out so scathingly, she was not the first to try to plead Emily’s case and, as he had just told her, she was also not the only one to try to trick her way into his company.

  ‘You’re a reporter?’ He regarded her with a new attitude of distaste. He had, she saw, extreme self-possession and in that respect he was not so different from Nina. He was accustomed to having his commands obeyed, used to setting the agenda; he was going to be just as resistant to her cause as Nina had been and, very likely, much briefer about it.

  But she couldn’t allow herself to think of lost causes, not yet. ‘No, nothing like that,’ she said. ‘I’ve come from France – from near La Rochelle, actually.’

  ‘La Rochelle?’ He looked surprised; this, then, was a new line for him.

  ‘I know it’s late, I know this is your private home and I’m trespassing, but I really need to talk to you about Emily.’

  ‘Look, Miss Dewhurst, there is very little you can tell me about her that I won’t already know, and even less that I’m prepared to tell you.’ There was gentleness in the way he spoke Tabby’s name – gentlemanliness, perhaps – and a reserve to the statement itself that gave her sudden hope. He didn’t spit at the thought of Emily, or sneer at the idea that she should be worthy of discussion.

  ‘It’s very important. Couldn’t you just give me five minutes?’

  ‘I said no.’

  ‘Please. Please. Five minutes and I’ll never bother you again, I promise on my father’s grave.’

  As he turned from her, she regretted instantly the invocation of graves of any sort, following him to his front door in hope rather than expectation. He let himself in and left the door half open, the invitation to enter quite wordless, as Nina’s had been, a shared acknowledgement that no matter how they tried, they could not close this business of Emily; she was owed a last hearing. Inside, he ushered her into the first room on the left, a small lounge, blandly furnished, curtains already drawn. Tabby could not help noting the difference between this modest place and the huge period residence on Walnut Grove she’d peered into the previous day.

  ‘Wait here, please,’ he said. He closed the door after him and she heard him go upstairs. When he returned a few minutes later he had removed his jacket and was drinking from a bottle of mineral water. He offered her nothing and was still openly suspicious of her. Seeing him at closer quarters, she registered a disappointment in him that may have been connected with the ordinariness of the interior, even the withholding of the offer of water. Though she’d known what he looked like, she realised she’d been expecting an obvious handsomeness, a magnetism of the type Grégoire had. But this inveterate womaniser gave the impression of not caring if he never set eyes on another female again. In that respect, he was changed fundamentally from the man Emmie had described, and it occurred to her that if Emmie were to understand this, she might be able to start to let go.

  He sat at the end of the sofa nearest her armchair and regarded her in a way that said, without words, ‘You’ve got a nerve,’ before commenting aloud: ‘Right. Five minutes.’

  Tabby didn’t intend to waste a second. ‘I’ve been talking to Emily about everything that’s happened and —’

  Almost at once he was interrupting. ‘Hang on, you are a journalist?’ He placed the water bottle on the coffee table, ready to spring up and show her the door.

  ‘No,’ Tabby told him, very firmly. ‘I said I wasn’t. I’ve never met a reporter in my life.’

  ‘Well, if you’re a therapist you know as well as I do you shouldn’t be sharing confidential material.’

  ‘I’m not a therapist either.’ Tabby wished he would just let her speak, otherwise her five minutes would be over before she had begun. ‘I’m a friend of hers, a good friend.’

  Looking as if he’d need some convincing on this definition, he nevertheless resettled and gestured for her to continue.

  ‘I’ve been talking to her and reading her journal and I’ve come to ask if there’s any chance you might be able to forgive her. I don’t mean you have to see her in person, though it would be wonderful if you could, but just let me know you don’t hate her, so I can go back to her and tell her she doesn’t have to go on punishing herself the way she has been. I mean, she knows it’s all over between you, but she can’t move on while she thinks you still blame her. She’s in a terrible, terrible state and I’m scared she might do something serious, something self-destructive. I wouldn’t have come all this way if I weren’t extremely worried, I promise you. No one knows I’m here, not even her. This is a completely secret appeal.’

  As she came to a halt, having run out of breath rather than words, Arthur gazed at her, perplexity having given way to a kind of enthralment. The growing silence was no less disarming than his initial quickness to jump to conclusions and interrupt.

  ‘Where is this journal?’ he asked finally, and his tone was suddenly so pleasantly mild as to be almost sinister. Emmie had written that his intensity was in his stillness, and she was starting now to sense that power. He had something, certainly, but whatever it was he was going to use it to defeat, not to seduce.

  Trembling slightly, she removed the laptop from her bag. Having known it would be necessary to prove her claim and not having access to a printer, she had taken it from Emmie’s house, her justification to herself being that it contained nothing that Arthur didn’t already know and much that might remind him of things he’d once known but had come, in the darkness of grief, to forget. The strength of Emmie’s devotion, for instance, the purity of it. To have banished her from his life so categorically, to have given her no chance to defend herself, not even the five minutes he was permitting Tabby now, to have cut her dead at the inquest, he had to have suffered some kind of post-traumatic stress, a stress that might by now have begun to subside. She did not allow herself to think how Emmie would react if she knew her former lover was at that moment being offered the contents of her heart and soul; nor had she allowed herself to imagine what Emmie’s behaviour would be if she discovered th
e laptop missing.

  ‘It’s not a diary, exactly,’ she told him, noticing him eye the laptop with circumspection. ‘She wrote it after the inquest. But it’s like a diary. It’s everything that happened from her point of view. It’s Emily’s story.’ She clicked open the file and slid the laptop across the coffee table towards him. He did not touch it and nor did he ask further questions. He seemed not to know what to say, not to know whether to accept her offering or dash it to the floor in indignation. ‘It’s quite long,’ she added. ‘It took me a couple of hours to read. I could leave it with you overnight if you prefer, and then we could talk again in the morning?’ She would sleep in the car, she decided. She could not expect him to let her watch him read, but would have to trust him not to delete or remove it.