“Fred had an alibi until four p.m. the day Joanna went missing, but Bev told us Joanna didn’t leave work that day until five thirty p.m. . . .”
“Fred’s neighbor Arthur Malone gave the police a statement to say he saw Fred on and off all day on Saturday, September seventh, and Fred’s car didn’t move from outside the house until later that evening, around seven thirty . . .”
“Which is when Fred got concerned why Joanna hadn’t come home from work, and he drove into Exeter to go to Bev’s flat,” said Kate.
Tristan was looking through another file and whistled. He held up a contact photo sheet with four images taken from a CCTV camera.
“What’s that?” asked Kate.
“The police took a statement from Noah Huntley, the MP Joanna did the exposé on,” he said. “These are photos of them meeting at a petrol station.”
Kate took the contact sheet from Tristan. “Look at the time stamp; the CCTV is dated August twenty-third, 2002 . . . ,” she said.
“Two weeks before Joanna went missing.”
“And the CCTV images were taken from the Upton Pyne Texaco petrol station. Why would Joanna be meeting Noah Huntley two weeks before she went missing, and so close to home?”
“Noah Huntley says in his statement that Joanna asked to meet him because she had applied for a job at the Daily Mail newspaper and he was on the board of the company, and she wanted to make sure that there wasn’t any bad blood between them,” said Tristan. “He also had an alibi for when Joanna went missing. He was away at his house in France.”
He handed Noah Huntley’s statement to Kate.
“We need to talk to Fred and get his side of things. Bev mentioned none of this. It makes me wonder what else she hasn’t told us.”
6
Fred Duncan agreed to talk to Kate and Tristan on the following Monday afternoon. He still lived in the same house he’d shared with Joanna, in Upton Pyne, a village twenty minutes from Ashdean, on the outskirts of Exeter.
The house was on a narrow lane of cottages and houses set back from the road and bordered with high redbrick walls and hedges that were bursting into leaf. Fred’s house looked very different from the run-down, grimy little place they’d seen in the case file pictures. The thatched roof and windows looked new, and the brickwork had been sandblasted, cleaning away the staining from years of smog to reveal the original deep-red color of the bricks. There was a large front garden surrounded by a high redbrick wall with a curved top. A giant tree dominated the front lawn, its enormous bare branches reaching out over the garden to create a canopy. The spring sun was warm, but in the shade cast by the branches, the air felt chilly.
Kate pressed the doorbell, and a distant clanging bell rang inside. Moments later, Fred opened the door. In the case file photos, he’d been a thin, wiry man who wore baseball caps and casual clothes and had a permanent dark stubble. The man in front of them looked filled out and healthy with a light tan. He was barefoot and clean shaven, and his thinning hair was cropped close to his head. To Kate, he looked like a new-age guru. He wore loose white linen trousers and a baggy linen shirt open at the neck, showing a hairy chest with a chain of rosary beads and a small silver cross around his neck.
“Hello, welcome,” he said, smiling broadly. “Please take off your shoes. Do you want slippers?” he added, indicating a rustic wooden box by the door filled with identical sheepskin slippers. Kate and Tristan both removed their shoes but declined the slippers.
“I’ve got the underfloor heating cranked up, so you should be fine in your socks,” he said. “My wife, Tameka, didn’t want to be here.” He led them through to the kitchen. “She’s taken our little girl, Anika, into the city.”
On the wall above the kitchen table was a collage of wedding photos. At the top was a large group photo of Fred’s wedding. It had been a traditional Indian affair, and the guests looked to number a hundred or more. Fred and his pasty-white elderly parents stuck out among Tameka’s Indian family and friends. There were two photos of Fred and Tameka in brightly colored traditional Indian dress. She was taller than Fred and strikingly beautiful.
“When did you get married?” asked Kate.
“We just had our third anniversary,” said Fred, following Kate and Tristan’s gaze over to the photos. “Tameka has a big family, lots of relations came over from Mumbai. Would you like coffee? I’ve only got soy milk,” he added. “We’re vegans.”
“I’ll take it black,” said Tristan.
“Me too,” said Kate.
“Have a seat,” he said, indicating a long wooden kitchen table with a bench on each side next to a patio window.
Kate and Tristan perched on the bench facing the window. The back garden was large and dotted with silver birch trees, which were still small. A soft, undulating path of white gravel led to a huge wood-framed structure with glass walls at the bottom of the garden. It was empty inside, and the floor was covered in dark-green mats.
“That’s Tameka’s yoga studio,” said Fred. Kate noticed the gate in the wall at the bottom of the garden. Tristan noticed it, too, and glanced sideways and raised his eyebrow. It was the gate Famke had used for their affair.
Fred came over to the table with three steaming espresso cups on a little tray. “Tameka is an Ashtanga yoga teacher, and she does lessons from home.”
“Do you work now?” asked Kate, taking two of the cups off the tray and handing one to Tristan. “The case files say you were unemployed when Joanna went missing.”
“Yes, I work now,” he said with an edge of sarcasm in his voice. “I’m a website designer. We both get to work from home and share the responsibility for Anika.” He pulled a packet of biscuits from the pocket of his baggy trousers and opened it with his teeth, spreading out the plastic packet on the tabletop. The biscuits spilled out. “Damn, I didn’t think that through, did I?” he said. He went back to the kitchen and started searching through the cupboards to find a plate. Kate sensed that he was a stranger to food preparation and the kitchen in general. He returned with a plate and tipped the biscuits onto it. He then fussed around some more, clearing up the crumbs and then checking to see if any mess remained. Kate presumed that Tameka ran a tight ship.
“Right,” he said, sitting down opposite them. “Joanna . . .”
“Yes. Bev said she contacted you,” said Kate.
“Yeah. She sent me a text,” said Fred. “Do you think you’ll find her?”
“I hope so,” said Kate. “Do you support Bev’s decision to hire a private detective?”
Fred rubbed his eyes. “I’m not against it. I’ve mourned for Joanna. And I think I’m lucky that I’ve been able to move on. I had to, for my sanity. I think Bev’s still trapped in the same place she was the night Joanna vanished. Just talking about it again is giving me the shivers. Look at my hands—I’m shaking . . .” He held them out. He had long, thin fingers, but his fingertips were slightly bulbous.