‘It’s just spending it with you she’s not so keen on.’
Leah laughed. ‘Maybe. The thing is, it should be pretty straightforward. New Zealand’s a lot more liberal than many places. As long as I’ve got the skill set they’re short of, and healthcare’s one, I can get a visa easily enough and Ellen can get one as my partner. We don’t even have to be legally married, but we do need to have proof we’ve lived together in a stable relationship for at least one year.’
‘Which doesn’t exactly leave a lot of time.’
‘Tell me.’
‘And if she doesn’t agree to go, all that means, you’d go ahead anyway? Go on your own?’
‘If I had to, yes.’
‘She knows that?’
‘I think so.’
Kiley broke off a piece of pita bread and used it to wipe up what remained of the sauce. ‘Faced with all that, I just might do a runner myself. Give myself a little more time and space to think, at least.’
‘If it were just that, then fine. I’d understand. But not to go off without a word. Leaving me worried silly.’
‘You’ve spoken to the husband? Derek, is it?’
‘I’ve tried. All I get’s a stream of abuse. And when I went round a couple of days ago, he slammed the door in my face.’
Kiley eased away his plate. ‘You know, if you’re right and she’s really gone missing, the police have got a lot better resources than me.’
Leah shook her head. ‘One step at a time, eh?’
‘Okay. I’ll need a photograph. Addresses. Anything else you think might help. And we ought to take a look inside that flat. Camberwell, you said?’
‘Like I told you, I haven’t got a key.’
Kiley grinned.
At the end of his first month in the Met, walking the beat in North London, the netherland of Colindale, a wily old sergeant, close to retiring, had taken Kiley aside and tutored him in the art of gaining access to whatever, within reason, had been locked against intrusion. From petty cash boxes to shuttered windows and burglar-proof doors. The technology had changed but the methods were the same.
The entrance to the building was a cinch. Ellen’s bike was safely chained up in the shared space beneath the first flight of stairs. In a matter of minutes they were inside the top-floor flat and Leah was reaching round for the light.
Bed-sitting room, bathroom, kitchen. Single bed, neatly made; two-seater settee; swivel chair; a folding table that doubled as desk; concertina file to one side, angle lamp to the other; a shelf unit Kiley recognised as coming from IKEA; a three-high chest of drawers; clothes hanging from a long metal rail on wheels. Inkjet printer, retro-styled radio, small-screen TV. Half a dozen photographs Blu-Tacked to the wall: Ellen and Leah on what looked like Brighton Pier; Leah on stage somewhere soloing on saxophone, bell of her instrument close up to the microphone, eyes tightly closed; a young man, Kiley presumed to be Ellen’s oldest son, flourishing his certificate on graduation day; the other boy, sandy-haired, smiling a little shyly at the camera, and then, younger, twelve or thirteen, standing close by his mother, the pair of them happy, laughing, sea and sky behind.
In the kitchen the sink and draining board were empty; everything washed, dried, put away. Towel folded over the radiator in the bathroom; shampoo, conditioner, and moisturiser in a line. Whenever, wherever, Ellen had gone, she had not done so in a hurry.
‘Your place as squared away as this?’
‘You’re kidding, right?’
‘Notice anything out of the ordinary?’
‘Not so far.’
‘How about clothes? Anything missing?’
‘I’ll check.’
It didn’t take long. Ellen’s padded down jacket was no longer to be seen; denim skirt, one pair of jeans, assorted tops—Leah couldn’t remember which—underwear, tights, socks; one—no, two pairs of shoes. Enough for a week away, two at most. The pull-along case usually kept beneath the bed was no longer there; nor the makeup bag Leah knew Ellen liked to take for overnights, weekends. Her passport, however, was still in the concertina file, under P.
‘Any idea where she might go, this country, if she fancied some time away? Anyone else she might go and see. Old friends? Family?’
‘No one I haven’t already been in touch with, no. As for places… Dorset, maybe? The Jurassic Coast, is that what it’s called? Lyme Regis, round there.’
‘Somewhere you’ve been together?’
Leah shook her head. ‘She talked about it, that’s all. Wanting to go. Ever since that film. Meryl Streep? We saw it on TV.’
Kiley took a last look round the room. ‘You think someone else could have been here, taken just the right things, left it just how Ellen would have done herself?’
Leah hesitated. ‘Someone who knew her well, yes.’
‘Her husband, he have a key?’
‘Not as far as I know.’
Back on the street, Leah stopped him, her hand on his sleeve.
‘When Ellen finally plucked up courage to tell Derek about us, he pushed her back against the kitchen wall and held her there with his arm across her neck. So tight she could hardly breath. The bruise was still there, more than a week later.’
Kiley wasn’t sure what to expect when he rang the bell at 25 Forester Road a little after seven-thirty the following morning. The car, a grey Audi Saloon, was still in the drive and the dew still on the grass. A light showed faintly through the glass above the door. It had taken him no more than twenty minutes, Kentish Town to Finchley Central, five stops on the Northern Line. Now all he needed was for Derek Carpenter to still be at home.
He heard approaching footsteps, then the key turning in the lock, the bolt sliding across.
‘Yes?’
The question was testy, just short of belligerent, the door open no more than halfway. Carpenter was medium height, stockily built, fiftyish, fair hair growing thin; dark trousers, striped tie, toast crumbs littering the blue of his shirt.
‘Jack Kiley. I wonder if I might have a word?’
‘A word about what?’
‘Your wife, Ellen.’
‘What about her?’
‘She seems to have disappeared.’
The door opened a little wider. ‘Who the hell are you?’
Kiley gave him his card. Investigations. Private and Confidential.
‘What is this? Some kind of joke?’
‘It’s just a simple matter of wanting to get in touch with her. Make sure she’s all right.’
‘Why shouldn’t she be?’
‘I thought you might know the reason for that.’
Carpenter tore Kiley’s card in half and let the pieces fall. ‘I’d like you to leave.’
‘Maybe not quite yet.’
Carpenter swung the door closed but Kiley’s foot was quicker, wedging it open with the sole of his shoe.
‘Five minutes, Mr Carpenter. That’s all I ask.’
After a few moments’ deliberation, Carpenter relinquished his hold and took a pace back into the hall; Kiley moved his foot away and Carpenter slammed the door shut and thrust the bolt into place.
Tugging at the collar of his overcoat, a man came out of the house next door, cast a glance in Kiley’s direction, and hurried past and up the street towards the tube. Out of sight a dog was barking, impatient to be off on its morning walk.
Kiley crossed the street and took a seat on the low wall opposite. Seven forty-five. Two cars went past, one closely following the other, big four-by-fours, young mums ferrying the kids to school. An upstairs light in the Carpenter house went on then off. A trio of youths slouched grudgingly by, hands in pockets, shoulders hunched, the tinny sound from their headphones just audible as they went past.
Ten minutes more and the door to number twenty-five opened and, careful not to look in Kiley’s direction,
Carpenter stepped swiftly out, and into his car. Another moment—seat belt, ignition—and the Audi swung out of the drive and away, small plumes of greyish smoke rising behind it in the air.
Back home, Kiley made coffee, switched on the computer, and set to work. Hospitals, hostels; a contact at the National Crime Agency’s Missing Persons Bureau charged with unidentified body identification. More coffee and then a slow trawl through hotels and bed-and-breakfast places within a twenty-five-mile radius of Lyme Regis. Nothing. His back was beginning to ache and the air in the room was dry. He’d twice earlier called the place in Southwark where Ellen rented workspace and got the engaged tone both times. He picked up a sandwich in Pret, a flat white from Bean About Town and took it to the Thameslink train going south to the river.
The building was a converted warehouse, its guts torn out and refitted: rows of open-plan desks, cubicles, pods for private meetings. Natalie Joseph’s office was on the second floor, a view out across Tooley Street towards Tower Bridge and the Thames.
Glancing at his card, she smiled. ‘If you’re looking to rent a space, Mr Kiley, I’m afraid, just at the moment, there’s rather a long waiting list.’
She was late-thirties, small-featured, blue-eyed, fair hair cut short. A look Kate had once told him was made fashionable by Jean Seberg in a film by Godard. Funny how the mind can cling to the inconsequential.
‘Is there anything else I can do for you, Mr Kiley?’
He slid a photograph across the desk.
‘Ellen Carpenter. Yes. Her partner called asking about her. She seemed worried. I told her, the last time Ellen was here was… Wait, I can check…’ Her fingers moved fast along the keyboard. ‘See, here…’ She swivelled the screen round so that he could see. ‘Over two weeks ago. Friday.’
‘And there’s been no contact since then?’
‘None.’
There was something else, though. He could see it in her eyes.
‘Anything you could tell me that might help to find her would…’
‘I don’t know, it might be nothing. And I don’t like to…well, gossip, I suppose.’
Kiley smiled encouragingly.
‘That last day she was here. Ellen. I just happened to be looking out onto the street as she was leaving. She was just fitting her pannier onto her bike when this man came up and they started arguing. I couldn’t hear what they were saying, but you could see he was getting really worked up and angry, and at one stage he pushed her up against the wall, shouting. There was some sort of kerfuffle, Ellen dropped her helmet and he booted it out into the road and stormed off. Another cyclist retrieved it and gave it back. She was still standing there some minutes later, recovering, I suppose. I thought I might try and talk to her about it, the next time she came in. But like I say…’
‘This man,’ Kiley said, ‘fifties, stocky, going a little bald? Most likely wearing a suit?’
‘That sounds like a lot of people round here. But, yes, it could have been.’
‘Thanks.’
She held his hand just a moment longer than strictly necessary. ‘If you do ever find yourself in need of desk space, I think you’ll find our rates very reasonable.’
‘I’ll bear it in mind.’
The Audi was parked on the second level, a block away from where Derek Carpenter worked. Kiley leaned back against one the columns and checked the messages on his phone: a friend encouraging him to join his local walking football team; his insurance company trying to convince him of the need for extra cover in these uncertain times; a selection of attractive young Ukrainian women, all good English speakers, seeking marriage; and an invitation from Kate to join her at the Almeida to see a newly translated version of Ibsen’s Ghosts. He thought he might give the walking football a second thought.
Carpenter exited from the lift, paused to light a cigarette, then headed towards his car.
‘What the fuck?’
‘Good to see you, too.’
‘How did you…how’d you know I’d be here?’
‘I’m a detective, remember?’
‘And I’ve got nothing to say to you, remember that?’
He made to brush past Kiley and reach his car door but Kiley had his feet firmly planted and wasn’t budging.
‘Your wife, Ellen, she’s still missing.’
‘Yes, well, she went missing a long time ago. Her decision, her choice, not mine.’
‘And you were seen threatening her the day before she disappeared.’
‘Bollocks.’
‘On the street in Southwark, near where she works. You pushed her up against the wall and were this close to hitting her. There are witnesses. CCTV as well, I daresay, if I search around.’
Carpenter’s shoulders drooped as the bluster drained out of him.
‘What d’you say,’ Kiley said, ‘we go and get a drink?’
The pub was busy with after-work drinkers, outside and in; smokers blocking the pavement, spilling out into the street. The majority men, white men between twenty-five and fifty; a sprinkling of women drinking and smoking hard to keep up and laughing too loud at jokes that were often at their own expense.
Kiley found space on the upper floor, a corner table wedged between a grimy window looking out onto a blank wall and the secondary toilet door.
‘I didn’t realise anything was up,’ Carpenter said, ‘until she texted me, her, that…woman…’
‘Leah.’
‘Yes, Leah. And I thought, bloody great, she’s coming to her senses at last, keeping her distance. But then, just today, Andrew phoned. Rang me at work. He never calls at work. Wanted to know had I heard from his mum. Seems they’ve been in touch pretty regular since he went down to Bristol…’
‘Bristol?’
‘Uni. Classical Studies. Don’t ask me why.’ Carpenter lifted his glass, didn’t drink. ‘Like I say, they kept in touch. Facebook, Twitter. He hadn’t heard from her in—what?—getting on for a couple of weeks. Wanted to know had I heard anything? Was she ill or something? Told him I’d be the last one to know.’
‘But that’s not true, is it?’
‘How d’you mean?’
‘From what I hear, you’ve been keeping pretty close tabs.’
‘Want to stop her making any more of a fool of herself, that’s all.’
‘Fool?’
‘This…’ Carpenter made a face like his beer had gone abruptly sour. ‘This pathetic…I don’t know…cry for attention, whatever it is.’
‘The relationship with Leah, you think that’s what it is?’
‘What else? Hanging round with that…She’s not gay, for Christ’s sake, Ellen. She’s no more fucking gay than I am. If she was, twenty-five years of fucking marriage, don’t you think I’d know?’
Several heads turned in their direction and the toilet door banged.
‘The argument that Friday,’ Kiley said, wanting to bring things back on track, ‘what was that about?’
Carpenter drank, wiped his mouth with finger and thumb. ‘I’d been…what was the expression you used?…keeping tabs on her. Following her, I suppose. And she said if I stopped, kept right away, then she’d agree to meeting, sitting down somewhere, just the two of us, civilised, talking things over. Everything. And I agreed. Agreed and kept waiting for her to get in touch and say okay, you know, a date and everything, and she never did. So I went round there, when I pretty much knew she’d be leaving work and said how about it, this meeting you promised? And she said she wasn’t ready, things were happening, I don’t know, some new stuff she had to consider, and I said, well when the fuck are you going to be ready? And she said she didn’t know, I’d have to be patient, and that’s when it kicked off. I lost my temper and for a minute, just for a minute, it all got nasty.’
‘You pushed her up against the wall.’
‘I pushed her up against the
wall and it was all I could do to stop myself taking a swing at her. But I kicked that stupid fucking helmet of hers out into the road instead and got away from there as fast as I could.’
He took another drink, a quick swallow, and looked toward his own reflection in the grime of the window.
‘I didn’t hit her, if that’s what you’re thinking. I’ve never hit her. Never would.’
He set down his glass and Kiley could see his hand was trembling.
‘I just fucking miss her. All the fucking time. And, no, I don’t know where she is and I wish I did.’
He met Leah on the Heath, close to the hospital where she worked. A pale November morning from which the mist had never quite cleared. The occasional leaf still falling, the rest turning to mulch underfoot.
‘I talked to Ellen’s husband,’ Kiley said. ‘I could be wrong, but whatever might have happened to Ellen, I don’t think he’s responsible. And I don’t think he knows where she is. But, like I say, I could be wrong.’
They sat awhile on a bench in the lee of the hill, walked, then sat again.
‘When I don’t think something awful’s happened to her,’ Leah said, ‘I keep getting this picture of her lying ill somewhere, some room, just four walls and a bed and no one to help or hold her hand or…’
She stopped, her breath like grey smoke upon the air.
‘I remember the first time I touched her, Ellen, other than—you know—professionally. Just my fingers brushing her arm at first, like it could almost have been accidental. Then, when she didn’t move away, running my hand along the muscle where it rises from the shoulder up into the neck. All the while thinking she’s going to tell me to stop, ask me what did I think I was doing. But she just stood there, her face turning slowly towards me, and beneath my fingers I could feel her starting to tremble.’
She looked away, as if not wanting Kiley to see her face.
‘What I felt then, those first weeks, first months, it was something I thought I’d never feel again.’
Ten Year Stretch Page 16