The Missing Hours (29 page)

I am staring into space, I realise. ‘Yeah, fine. What’s up?’

‘Oh, nothing. Just doing the call logs.’

‘For Dominic Newell’s mobile?’ I pull my chair closer to hers.

‘Yeah. Done the office. God, that took for ever. Nearly finished with the mobile.’

‘Anything interesting?’

‘Ah …’ Christa scans her notes. ‘Bunch of calls throughout Monday. Isaac was apparently quite keen to talk to him. We have about eight missed calls from his mobile to Dominic’s, a couple from their home phone as well.’

‘No answer?’

‘Nope. We also have Orla Britten, calls him … one, two … four times on his mobile. Again, all go unanswered.’

‘Maybe he wasn’t feeling chatty.’

‘Well I guess that would depend who you were. He took a number of calls. Three of them we traced to clients. He spent about fifteen, twenty minutes apiece talking with them. Then we have two, one lasting ten minutes, another thirty, from a mobile number that we have linked back to Seth Britten.’

‘What time was that?’

‘What? Those calls? Um … one was at 4.02 p.m., the other at 4.30.’

‘So Seth was calling from New York?’

Christa looks up at me, shrugs. ‘I guess. Then we have a final outgoing call made from the phone at 6.02 p.m.’

‘Must have been right after he left the office.’

‘Just before his murder, based on our timeline. Lasts about fifteen minutes.’

‘Who did he call?’

‘A landline in Endleby.’

I stare at her. ‘Selena Cole’s house?’

‘Um … number is registered to an Ed Cole. So, yeah.’

Bugger.

I turn away, without explanation, pull out my mobile, press speed-dial one.

‘Hey.’

‘Hey, it’s me. She lied.’

‘Who?’ Leah’s voice is echoing, sounds like she is in a concert hall. Then there is a tinny voice, a tannoy announcement.

‘Are you at the train station?’

‘Yes. Who lied?’

‘Selena. You said she told you she didn’t know Dominic. Well, we have him placing a call to her home phone – private number, not the business line – at 6.02 p.m. Orla says she left at five. Seth was in New York. Dominic and Selena talked for fifteen minutes.’

Leah has stopped walking. I can hear it in the rhythm of her breath. ‘I’m going back,’ she says. ‘You need to get the search teams up there. Now.’

‘On it.’

I turn to Christa and do what my rank tells me to do. Delegate. We need the search team to head out to the Cole house. As soon as. Then I pick up the desk phone, punch in the number from memory.

It takes five rings before it is answered, long enough that I have begun to question whether it will be.

‘Hello, Hartley and Newell. Fae speaking. How may I help you?’ She sounds like someone jolted from a deep sleep, answering the phone in a dream.

‘Fae, it’s DS Finn Hale. You okay?’

It takes her a moment to place my name. I am strangely insulted by this.

‘Finn. Yes. Sorry. I didn’t … I’m fine. I didn’t sleep last night, what with everything.’ A shift and her tone changes, as if she has sat up straighter. ‘What can I do for you?’

‘Ah, is Bronwyn there?’

‘Sure. Let me just connect you.’

A minute. Two. I watch Christa as she organises the search teams. Give her a patronising thumbs-up when she glances over. She grins. Returns the gesture, only with two fingers. Okay, then …

‘Finn. To what do I owe the pleasure?’ Bronwyn sounds husky and hoarse. She also sounds as if this is anything but a pleasure.

‘I need to ask you something.’

‘Okay.’

‘We have a call on Dominic’s phone log that we’re trying to make sense of. At 6.02 p.m., he called a Dr Selena Cole. Name ring any bells with you?’

‘No.’ The single word is thrown at me. ‘But then it wouldn’t, would it? Because apparently I had little real idea as to what was going on in Dom’s life.’

‘Ah, right.’ I look at the phone and try to roll back time so that I never picked it up in the first place. It doesn’t work. ‘So you don’t have any idea …’

‘No, Finn. I have no idea who that is.’ A long pause and I think she is done, then, ‘Perhaps he was shagging her.’

The line goes dead in my hand.

I sit there, thinking.

Perhaps he was.

Lies

DC Leah Mackay: Friday, 3.30 p.m.

IT HAS COME
full circle.

I stand on the pavement, close the car door softly behind me and watch Selena Cole as she stands in the playground on the brow of the hill. Tara is in the swing, just where she was on the fateful day. But this time, the older girl, Heather, stands beside her mother, so close that there is no air between them. She too has been here before.

Selena bends down, says something to her daughter, her words tugged away by the wind, and then I see her catch sight of me, her body reacting like an electrical current has been sent through it. She stands up straight, turns to face me.

I don’t bother attempting a smile this time.

‘Heather,’ she says as I draw nearer, ‘will you take your sister on the slide for me?’

The little girl looks from me to her mother, opens her mouth to protest.

‘It’s okay. I promise. You’ll be able to see me the entire time.’ Selena rests her hand against her daughter’s cheek. ‘It’s okay.’

‘I only need a quick chat with your mum, honey,’ I say. ‘We’ll stand right here.’

Heather stares at me, and for perhaps the first time in my life I feel that I have been warned off by a seven-year-old. Be nice to my mother or else. I’ll try, I think. But my God, is your mother making it difficult.

Selena lifts the smaller girl out of the swing, plants a swift kiss on her forehead and then places her hand within her sister’s. ‘Go on, Tar. Go with Heather. She’ll take you sliding.’

Tara’s face balls up, chubby arms reaching for her mother, and I know that she too is afraid that the vanishing act will be repeated.

‘Come on, Tar,’ says Heather. ‘We can slide together.’

It appeases her, her sister’s willingness to leave the stronghold undefended, and Tara complies, allowing Heather to lead her away. But she glances backwards every few feet, just in case.

Selena looks at me, waiting.

‘Was Orla here on Monday night?’ I am done with preamble, with politeness and pretext. I have my own kids I want to go home to.

‘I wish I could say she was. But no. She left about five o’clock.’ She is square on to me, challenging almost. ‘She didn’t kill him, you know.’

‘Who? The guy you claimed not to know?’

Selena looks away.

‘You’ve been lying to me, Selena.’ It is a statement of fact, and yet I am dimly aware of a faint flicker of hope buried within it, that she will deny it, that she will clarify. Do I still somehow hope that she will turn out to be who I thought she was? Why? So that I may feel vindicated? Somehow less foolish?

I went to the train station, marched in, so confident that it would all unspool before me, that they would have CCTV, that the cameras would be pointing just the way I needed them to point, that then I would understand and all that had been opaque would become clear. So sorry. Our internal system is down. We’re waiting on engineers. Budget cuts. Everything takes forever now. Sorry about that.

Selena looks back at me and I am surprised by how calm she is, how cool in spite of my accusation. ‘It is not always as simple as lying or telling the truth. Sometimes it is merely a matter of perspective.’

‘From my perspective, Selena, when someone lies to me, particularly in the midst of a murder investigation, I am forced to question why they would feel the need to do that. What bad thing they have done that they are afraid I will find out about. So,’ I say, ‘just to clarify – you do know Dominic Newell, don’t you?’

She lets go a breath, and I think of resignation, perhaps relief. ‘I didn’t know him well. But yes, to a certain extent, I did know Dominic.’

‘Why did you lie to me?’

She opens her mouth, closes it again, watches her girls as they careen down the slide, the smaller in the lap of the bigger.

‘Okay,’ I say, making little effort to hide my irritation, ‘let’s try this. A call was placed to your house at 6.02 p.m. on Monday. Who was that?’

I can see her weighing up, making the decision whether to tell me the truth or to try another lie.

‘Selena,’ I say, ‘my patience has run out. Let’s not worry about perspectives. Let’s just stick to facts. A call was made to your home phone at 6.02 p.m. on Monday. Who called you?’

‘Dominic.’ She says it quietly.

‘Excellent. Who received that call?’

‘I did.’

‘How long did you talk for?’

‘About fifteen minutes.’

‘What did he want?’

She waves her hands. ‘Some legal stuff. Wasn’t really my thing. I told him Orla handles all that.’

It is strange how I have come to know this woman, how the lies she tells now seem to be highlighted in a painful, vicious yellow.

‘And that,’ I say, ‘took fifteen minutes?’

She glances at me. ‘Well, there were pleasantries, chit-chat, you know.’

I could confront her with the money, tell her that I know what she has done. But I don’t. I hold it, for now.

‘Tell me some more about Beck.’

She blinks at me, seems genuinely surprised by my detour. ‘Beck Chambers? What else do you want to know?’

‘What is your relationship with him?’

‘I … I don’t really have one.’

‘No? You know he’s been watching you, right?’

‘Watching me?’ It is the first time that I have seen her truly wrong-footed. ‘What do you mean, watching me?’

I suddenly feel unsteady again, the solid ground uncertain beneath my feet. Perhaps it
was
a kidnapping, perhaps he took her and she genuinely does not remember.

‘He was parked outside your house. On the day you vanished. I was just wondering how long that had been going on.’

‘I genuinely had no idea. I … I don’t know.’

She is telling the truth.

‘Have the two of you ever had a relationship?’

Selena pulls herself up, a flash of anger distorting her features. ‘You’re asking me if I cheated on my husband with him? No. No, I did not.’

‘Then or since?’

Selena lowers her voice, leaning into me, and I fight the urge to take a step back. ‘My husband has been gone for a year.’ There is a tremor in her voice. ‘And every day has felt like the first day. Do you genuinely think that I have had any thoughts, any whatsoever, of sleeping with Beck Chambers? Or anyone else, for that matter? He was Ed’s protégé. He was Ed’s friend. That is as far as it goes. As to what he’s doing parked outside my house, you’ll have to ask him that.’

‘Could he be in love with you?’ She opens her mouth and I hold up my hands. ‘I’m not saying that it is reciprocated. But I am asking if there is any possibility that he has feelings you haven’t been aware of?’

‘I suppose.’ Selena watches her girls. ‘No. Look, I can’t know the answer to that. How could I? But I truly do not believe that is the case.’

‘Which then returns us to the question, why was he watching you?’

She doesn’t answer, doesn’t look at me, and I realise that there is something there, that the blankness in her expression is a forced one and that she is thinking of something that she will not tell me.

There is the sound of an engine, two engines, the police cars pulling up before the Cole house. I watch Selena as she turns, catches sight of them, watch her as she begins to process the implications of this.

‘Oh,’ I say, ‘we have a warrant to search the house. You know, because of Orla. You don’t mind, do you?’

That blankness again. What is she calculating?

‘No. Of course. That’s fine.’

We stand together, looking down the hill towards the search team as they begin to tumble out on to the quiet street.

‘Selena,’ I say quietly.

She looks at me, braced.

‘What happened to you? When you disappeared? Where did you go?’

She studies me. Then, ‘I’m sorry. I still don’t remember.’

It’s funny, when you get to know somebody, just how obvious their lies become.

The car

DS Finn Hale: Friday, 6.11 p.m.

I PUT MY
foot down, speed along twisting country roads, going way too fast. They found the car. The DI came marching into the office. ‘Uniform found Dominic Newell’s car. Lay-by on a B road, couple of miles from Hay-on-Wye. Finn, get your backside there now.’ I take a hairpin bend fast enough that I end up on the wrong side of the road. Ease my foot off the gas.

Killing myself isn’t going to make Dominic any less dead.

My headlights catch a plastic bag trapped in the hedging, and for a fleeting moment I think it is a face and feel my breath catch in my chest. I need to sleep more. Eat more. Everything more. Apart from work. That I do plenty of.

I reach the crest of the hill, feel the car picking up speed as it swoops into the valley below. Then I see it. A pool of light in a sea of darkness. The car. Dominic Newell’s car. It looks like a star in a puddle of spotlights, the focus of everyone’s gaze. The white light is tinted by the flash of blue from the uniformed car, shadowy figures breaking the beam as they surround the vehicle.

I slow, slow, slot in behind the patrol car with the dizzying flashing lights, turn the engine off. I cannot see the car from here, but the hum of activity tells me it’s there. Can see white-suited CSI, uniform behind the cordon. I slide out of the driver’s seat, begin to pull on my white forensic suit, my movements so rapid that they are destined to fail, fingers becoming thumbs.

Inside the cordon, Willa withdraws her head from inside the Audi A6. Her face is flat, less made up than usual, like even she has finally buckled under the pressure. Her lips are pursed as she makes quick notes, throwing choppy instructions at her colleague, a girlish-framed man I have never seen before.

‘How is it?’ I ask, as much to announce myself as anything else.

Willa looks up at me, and I can tell that I have pulled her back from miles away. Frowns as if she’s trying to place me. Then she shrugs. ‘Awesome.’ Her voice is throaty, like she too needs sleep. ‘Inside is a complete nightmare.’