I couldn’t wait to be in that hospital to meet my kid for the first time. And to be honest, I was even a little bit envious of Charlotte and what her body was able to achieve, while mine couldn’t even finish its part without my helping hand and a fertility expert’s syringe.
I soon changed my mind. Some women take to pregnancy like a duck to water, but after the first month, Charlotte really struggled. Morning, afternoon and evening sickness sapped all her energy levels and she was constantly feeling crappy. It became so bad that she was forced to take a leave of absence from the job she enjoyed. She spent much of her day mooching around the flat, and never too far away from a toilet bowl. But as we approached the final part of our third trimester, she turned a corner.
I glanced at the time as I continued on my way home – I reckoned I’d have half an hour to shower and spruce myself up before we headed to her favourite Thai restaurant to celebrate our fourth wedding anniversary. And it was there that I planned to give her the surprise of her life. I patted my jacket pocket just to reassure myself that the gift-wrapped box was still inside. I couldn’t wait to see the look on her face when she opened it.
Charlotte’s car wasn’t in its space in front of the flat when I drove in through the gates and pulled up onto the driveway, so I called her mobile to see where she was. It went straight to voicemail. I’d spoken to her at lunchtime while she was running errands, and hearing her voice sounding so chirpy had given me butterflies. ‘I love you, Ry,’ she’d said before she hung up, the first time I’d heard her say that in weeks. It felt like the tightest and warmest of hugs.
I climbed two flights of stairs and opened our front door to the overpowering scent of cinnamon and spices. She’d always been fond of air-freshener plug-ins, but now that she was pregnant our home smelled like Christmas all year round. She’d also had a thorough tidy-up. There were no dishes draining by the sink; tea towels were neatly folded on the worktop; the bathroom reeked of bleach; dried toothpaste had been rinsed from the electric toothbrushes and magazines were neatly arranged on the coffee table. She’s nesting, I thought, and smiled.
I phoned her again when I climbed out of the shower, but when she didn’t answer I began to feel a little uneasy. If she’d gone into an early labour, I was sure I’d have been told by now. I checked my phone again after drying my hair and trimming my stubble and then, just to be on the safe side, I called the maternity unit. I also called her friends, but when they hadn’t heard from her either, something inside me tightened and turned, like the wringing of a wet dishcloth.
Suddenly the front door buzzed.
Thank Christ for that, I thought, and hurried to it.
‘Have you forgotten your keys?’ I began as I opened it, only to be confronted by a stony-faced man and woman.
‘Mr Smith?’ he began.
‘Yes. And you are . . . ?’
‘My name is DS Mortimer and this is my colleague, PC Coghill. May we come in, please?’
CHAPTER TWO
ONE DAY AFTER CHARLOTTE
My distraught parents sat either side of me, asking the questions I couldn’t bring myself to.
They’d rushed to the flat with my brother Johnny within half an hour of the police turning up at my door. It was uncharted territory for everyone in the room. Mum and Dad had no idea what to say to me to soften the blow. The best the police could do was offer me their condolences and reassurances that an investigation had already begun to find out what had happened to my wife.
All they could tell me was that Charlotte’s body had been found at the foot of some cliffs in East Sussex. A witness had spotted her in the company of someone else and they’d fallen together. They’d yet to identify the other body, as it had been swept away by the sea. Charlotte had landed on rocks.
‘Why would someone want to murder my wife?’ I eventually asked.
The officers glanced at each other, and DS Mortimer wanted to say something, then thought better of it.
‘I really don’t know. I’m sorry, Mr Smith.’
Before leaving us to grieve alone, they explained that their colleagues investigating the case would visit the following day.
The case. Charlotte had gone from being my wife and the mother of my unborn child to the case in under an hour.
The trauma of losing Charlotte overpowered everything. It was too much for me to take in all at once. For the rest of the night and the early hours of the next morning, the four of us concentrated on trying to comprehend that we’d never see her again, while aching at the loss of my baby.
Two fresh police officers appeared the next day to learn more about Charlotte. DS O’Connor was a chubby man, forty-something, with broken red capillaries across his nose and cheeks, and awkward body language that suggested he’d rather be anywhere than in my company. I shared his sentiment. DS Carmichael was considerably younger, with a sympathetic smile and red hair scraped up into a tight bun. I imagined that in an interrogation scenario, she’d be the good cop.
They suggested it would not be in my best interests to identify Charlotte’s body, based on the height from which she’d fallen and the position in which she’d landed. I took that to mean head first. She’d been airlifted by helicopter back up to the clifftops, but it was clear she was long dead. I felt selfish for being relieved that I didn’t have to see her in that state.
‘Do you know why my wife died yet?’ I asked.
‘We don’t know the exact circumstances of what happened yesterday,’ said DS Carmichael. ‘So we’re working from eyewitness accounts.’
‘Who was the person who abducted her?’
DS O’Connor shifted uncomfortably in his seat. ‘Again, we can’t answer that yet until his body is washed up or retrieved from the sea. We’re hoping it’ll turn up soon.’
‘So it was a man?’
‘We believe so.’
‘It doesn’t make any sense,’ I continued. ‘Why would he kidnap Charlotte and drive all the way down there to kill her? Surely it must be someone we know, or she’d never have got in her car with him. And why isn’t this flat being treated as a crime scene? Shouldn’t you be looking for evidence?’
Mum clasped my arm tightly. Johnny, two years younger than my thirty-one years but always the more pragmatic of us, looked like he wanted me to guess what he was thinking. DS O’Connor glanced at all of them and then at me, but nobody said a word.
‘What am I missing here?’ I asked.
‘This isn’t going to be easy for you to hear, Ryan, but from our initial investigation, it appears Charlotte was a willing participant in what happened yesterday.’
‘Don’t be stupid,’ I replied. ‘Of course she wasn’t. She was taken against her will, or that man coerced her into going there for some reason—’