He flinches. Did something dark just stab his eyes? But he yanks his shoulders back.
“If you think I’m a Mono, Mr. Evans, I’m clearly not doing my job very well. Which is a shame, because I hope to pin down the person who murdered Sophia Ayling before the end of the day.”
I gulp.
“Have a good afternoon, Mr. Evans,” he continues. “I’ll be sure to keep you posted on my investigation.”
“Very well, Inspector.” My words tumble out in a squeak.
“I hope you’ll make it to Waterbeach at some point, by the way. Shame you didn’t manage to get there yesterday morning. But bad things sometimes detain us at home, don’t they?”
Sweat now pours down my forehead; the detective has somehow managed to wriggle his way under my skin. How on earth did he find out that I didn’t go for my usual run yesterday morning?
I take in a deep, ragged breath. I will not panic. Even though terror is thumping at the back door of my mind, begging to be let in. I ought to concentrate on the task at hand. Do what Rowan insisted I do. Save my marriage before it’s too late. Stop my wife from destroying herself and us.
Claire must surely be in the master bedroom, because I can’t find her anywhere else in the house. I stagger to the closed bedroom door, rearranging my face into a suitably contrite expression. The roses are still swamping my arms, filling up my nostrils with their cloying miasma of scent.
“Claire.”
She does not reply.
“Please, Claire. I’m sorry.”
Still no answer.
“Please talk to me.” I decide to beg. “Please. Let’s start all over again.”
I can’t hear anything. Not even the slightest muffled breath or rustle. Perhaps she isn’t inside.
I turn the doorknob. It yields at once.
The room is shrouded in darkness. The curtains are still drawn, although a tiny gap separates them. A triangular shard of afternoon light streaks across the floor in a forlorn dash. The bed’s still unmade. The duvet is tossed in a large messy stack on one side.
My wife has vanished.
I walk over to the curtains and drag them apart before yanking open the wardrobe doors to check that she isn’t inside.
Horror scenarios flash through my mind. Claire having coffee with that Daily Mail journalist (the one with the four ex-husbands) while I stand here next to our rumpled marital bed in helpless silence, a hundred nauseating roses in my arms. A heartfelt afternoon tête-à-tête between two wronged women, culminating in a front-page exposé of Mark Henry Evans’s nocturnal misdemeanors. The newspaper’s largest scoop of the year, with my disheveled, wild-eyed mug shot plastered across the front page. Or the equally alarming scenario of Claire holding court in a press conference of her own, reiterating that a divorce is most certainly in the works and that she has no intention of taking her straying husband back. Especially since he’d been sleeping with a woman whose body has just been fished out of the Cam.
I must find my wife.
I pull out my mobile phone and speed-dial her number.
There’s no reply. Her phone switches into automatic answer mode:
“You’ve reached Claire Evans—”
I terminate the call.
Where the hell has she gone?
I should scour the possibilities. Use them to pin down my wife’s current location before it’s too late. Beg her to forgive me before these twin evils of divorce and a dead body get out of hand.
Emily Wade. Of course. My wife could be pouring out her grievances to her best friend. Fact: Emily is an ex–Varsity Blues waitress who lives in a council flat somewhere along Grange Road. I marveled in my diary that Emily packed away seven éclairs when she dropped by for tea with Claire three weeks ago.
I pull out my phone again to search for Emily’s number. But she is not on my contact list.
I groan.
Yet all is not lost. Her number—or home address—could be stored on the computer in my study. I could have written these details down somewhere. Abandoning the roses on Claire’s dressing table, I hurry out of the bedroom, down the stairs, and out the door leading into the garden. The wind outside has turned into a howling shriek, one painful to my ears.
I approach my study. The door is ajar.
Shit.
I swear I locked it after Claire came to fetch me this morning.
Could the police have raided the room in my absence? Richardson, after all, was lurking about on Grantchester Meadows when I got back. But he surely would have needed a search warrant to do so. It must have been Claire. She must know where we keep the spare keys to all the rooms in our house, including my study.
I push the door open. A screen saver featuring a photograph of the aurora borealis is playing on my laptop. Damn it. I forgot to turn off the computer when Claire knocked on the door earlier. I hit several buttons to check if she has been snooping through any of my digital files, including my e-mails. But it appears not. Fact: My e-mail account, like my iDiary, self-locks after two minutes of inactivity. My writing table also appears untouched. At least my papers, files, and stationery look pretty much as I’d left them earlier.
But my intuition tells me that Claire was looking for something else. I scan the rest of the study. Nothing seems out of the ordinary. My gaze settles on the built-in bookshelf at the other side of the room.
Damn it.
I keep my file folders—as well as the spines of all of my books—aligned neatly on each shelf. It bothers me if they are not in perfect order (Richardson must suffer from a similar form of OCD, judging by the immaculate contents of his office). One of my file folders is jutting out on the bottommost shelf. Someone must have removed it and shoved it back again with unthinking imprecision.
I don’t even have to check the label of the folder to know what’s inside. Fact: Some of its materials have haunted me for twenty years. That’s why I keep it on the lowest shelf, so that it stays out of sight and out of mind.
I pull it all the way out and peer inside. The folder’s empty. Someone has removed its contents.
Hell. I think I’m screwed.
Just as Rowan had predicted.
“The brain that accompanies you to bed each night is never the same as the one that wakes you up in the morning,” Rasmus said, fixing an earnest gaze on Gunnar.
Gunnar had to suppress a groan. His best friend had a tendency to state the obvious.
—Mark Henry Evans, On Death’s Door
Chapter Eleven
Sophia
11 November 2013
Bloody exhausted.
Head fucking hurts.
Private investigation is damn overrated, as it turns out. The past two weeks of “surveillance” have been excruciating. Especially if one ends up loitering behind an inert steering wheel for hours on end. A run-down Fiat with dodgy climate control. I should have bought a nice little BMW. But shiny BMWs attract too much attention. I need a nondescript vantage point from which to spy undetected.
Fuck this Fiat.