The Missing Husband (11 page)

‘I think you’re scared I’ll challenge you to a race again and you’ll lose … again.’

Jo wouldn’t look at him as she waited for the train door to open. Choosing her moment carefully, she grabbed his arm to steady herself and quickly pulled off her shoes. ‘You’re on,’ she said and made a run for it through the half-open door before he knew what was happening.

The memory of David giving her a piggyback halfway home was one that would have had them in fits of laughter but Jo wasn’t even smiling now. She kept her head down as she put one perfectly booted foot in front of the other. But if David had walked along the same cracked pavement on Wednesday evening then his trail was as invisible as the man himself.

Walking downhill from the station, Jo’s steady pace belied her racing pulse. So far she had left it to others to retrace David’s steps and she hadn’t intended on making the trek herself, not today. It had only been when she had stood in front of Steph, defending her husband, that she felt compelled to follow him home, but when she reached a narrow path that led away from the main road, she came to a juddering halt and questioned her sanity.

There had been only a handful of occasions when David had been brave enough to tell Jo what to do, but he had been very firm when he had told her she must not, under any circumstances take this shortcut home in the dark when she was on her own. Not that he would heed his own warning, Jo thought as her coat snagged on the overgrown brambles that partly obstructed the entrance.

The only light to guide her came from the rear windows of houses running along one side of the path while on the other she glimpsed distant floodlights from the railway track beyond a high mesh fence and an equally impenetrable wall of tall trees. Both sources of light were too far away to offer any real illumination and, barely able to see where she was going, Jo stumbled over potholes a couple of times.

She wished she had brought a torch, but then wondered if she would have had the courage to use it. The path was less than ten feet wide in parts but much wider in others and there were plenty of places to hide her worst nightmares. Without warning, an image of David’s dead body lying in the undergrowth flashed in front of her eyes. Her heart was pounding and she felt hot and clammy in spite of the cold weather. She wanted to unbutton her coat but instead wrapped her arms around herself, drawing herself and little FB in together, against the unknowns that lurked in the dark.

Common sense told her that those particular fears were unfounded. Even though the police were still deciding whether or not it was necessary to conduct a fingertip search, DS Baxter had assured her that his officers had carried out a thorough search of the area already and had found nothing untoward. Which beggared the question, what on earth did Jo think she was trying to achieve? A little peace of mind, she hoped.

At the halfway point she came to a large clearing about forty feet wide. There were vague outlines of perhaps half a dozen boys playing football, their dark hoodies all but obscuring their features in the dim light. It was only the glow from a couple of cigarettes that gave some away.

A football shot past her and clanged noisily against the mesh fence and a moment later a boy ran over and retrieved it while the others looked on. All eyes were on her. She wanted to give them the benefit of the doubt and told herself that they were halting the game to let her pass, but fraught nerves allowed darker thoughts to seep into her consciousness. She quickened her pace only to stumble and, reaching out blindly, grabbed hold of the metal fence, making it rumble angrily. One of the boys passed a remark in a low voice, inaudible to Jo, and a couple of the others laughed.

Jo felt a sharp sting where the rusted mesh had scratched her but she was more concerned with the panic bubbling up like lava from the pit of her stomach. If David had been with her, they wouldn’t have given the boys a second glance and his absence weighed heavily on her chest. For a moment she couldn’t catch her breath and her lungs began to burn.

‘Are you all right, love?’ the boy holding the ball asked.

He was about Lauren’s age and it was entirely possible that they went to the same school. The deliberate thought was meant to calm Jo but her body had a mind of its own. ‘Yes,’ she gasped, with what little air she could squeeze from her lungs.

She managed to collect herself and, placing a protective hand over her bump, scurried past as someone accused the boy of fancying her. An argument broke out but their voices quickly receded into the distance and she focused on reaching the end of the path. With a cry, Jo burst out of the shadows on to a brightly lit road only two streets away from home. She tried to catch her breath and slow her pace but fear continued to prick the length of her spine. She had an unshakeable conviction that someone was stalking her and kept looking behind until eventually she couldn’t resist the urge to run. She must have looked a sight as she hung on to her bags and her belly for dear life but she didn’t care.

A gasp of relief burst from her lungs the moment she slammed the front door shut and pressed her back against it before sliding down on to the floor. The quick gulps of air slowly amassed enough breath to let out an anguished sob. The sob caught in her throat as the sound of the house phone ringing cut through the darkness.

‘It’s looking like he’s left you then.’

‘Thanks, Mum, that makes me feel a whole lot better,’ Jo said, her hand on her chest as she tried to remember how to breathe. She was still letting the disappointment sink in that it hadn’t been David. Even a call from the police with news of a sighting would have been more welcome, but on a positive note, a conversation with her mother was guaranteed to rile her enough to put the fight back in her belly.

‘Sorry, love, I don’t mean to sound blunt but even if he did turn up now with his tail between his legs, it’s been three days without so much as a word. I don’t know about you but I won’t forgive him for what he’s put you through.’

After picking up the phone, Jo’s subconscious had guided her to the armchair that had the best view of the clock above the fireplace. ‘We all do things we regret, Mum,’ Jo said, unsure if it was a dig at her mother for her own past indiscretions, or a reminder that Jo carried her own guilt. ‘And right now I’d forgive him anything if only he’d come home safe – and I would expect you to do the same.’

There was silence on the other end of the line. They would have to agree to disagree so her mum changed tack. ‘Have you checked your bank? You have a joint account, don’t you?’

‘There’s nothing wrong there. It hasn’t been used since last weekend.’ Jo withheld the fact that they both also had separate accounts. They each contributed to the joint account to pay all the household bills, but their salaries were paid into their own accounts to be used for their own pleasures and shared luxuries. While Jo’s savings tended to be spent on more homely pleasures like a new kitchen, David’s money had funded their holidays and satisfied his wanderlust. She didn’t have access to that account but she imagined it would be enough to keep her errant husband in food and shelter for a good few months if that was his intention.

‘Put a block on the account if you can,’ Liz warned. ‘Or better still, empty it before he does.’

‘Mum, I’m not about to draw battle lines until I know there’s a war to be had.’

Liz’s breathing quickened, giving away her agitation. ‘Well, more fool you. Maybe I should come down and help for a while.’

‘There’s nothing to do, honestly. Steph is looking after me just fine.’

‘Change the locks too,’ her mother blurted out.

Jo welcomed the rising anger that formed a barrier against the tidal wave of fear that had carried her home. ‘At what point did your beloved son-in-law become the devil incarnate? I may not be in a position to argue against the possibility that David has left me, but I don’t and won’t believe that he would leave me destitute.’

‘Your dad’s back on Wednesday so if David hasn’t appeared by next weekend, I’m coming down. No arguments, Joanne.’

Jo didn’t argue. Next weekend was a whole week away, and judging by the last seventy-two hours, that was an eternity. When she finally got her mother off the phone, Jo couldn’t draw her eyes away from the starburst clock, its sharp points stabbing at her heart. She didn’t know how she would get through the next hour let alone the next seven days.

When the phone rang again a few minutes later, Jo was holding two small batteries. She let them roll off the palm of her hand and into the waste bin and, as she took the call, glanced up only briefly at the clock which was now frozen in time at ten minutes past seven.

‘Steve’s been interviewed by the police again,’ Irene said before Jo had a chance to say hello.

David’s mum had been following the police investigations obsessively. She hadn’t waited for DS Baxter to contact her but had turned up at the police station with Steve on Friday morning and by all accounts it had been Irene conducting the interrogation. After years of being lost in the wilderness, her mother-in-law had found a new purpose in life: to find her son or at least find out why he had left. That ought to have comforted Jo – she wanted someone to keep the police on their toes, but it was making her uneasy. When Jo and David had announced that they were having a baby, they had told everyone how it had been a surprise to both of them. It was only a matter of time before Irene discovered who she could blame for David’s disappearance.

But that was for the future. In the present, Irene told her that Steve had been asked to return to the police station, only this time without his mum.

‘Have they come up with something new, then?’ Jo asked but without any real hope. She wasn’t surprised the police would want to speak to Steve without Irene shadowing him and didn’t suspect any ulterior motives. They would get a far better insight from David’s brother without his mother there to monitor any revelations, but if that had led to any significant development, Martin Baxter would have been in touch with her by now.

By way of an answer, Irene asked another question. ‘Did the police ask you about David’s state of mind?’

‘Yes, sort of,’ Jo replied, slightly taken aback by the question. ‘I told them he wasn’t happy because I’d refused to give him a lift to Lime Street.’

‘But did they ask you if he was depressed?’

Irene spoke so softly her voice was slurred and it took Jo a moment to realize what she was asking her, or to be more precise, what the police were considering. Her grip on the phone tightened and she became aware of a pain in the palm of her hand. ‘No, not really. They asked me some general questions about David’s health and his state of mind but I didn’t think it was something they would pursue,’ she said as she tried to think back to the night before last when she had laid bare the faults in her marriage to DS Baxter. She had thought the conversation had led them both to the conclusion that David had walked out on her; but had it been leading the policeman down another route?

‘Do you think he could have been so unhappy that he would …? You know …’

‘No, Irene,’ Jo said quickly. ‘No, it never entered my head; not once. He wouldn’t. He
loves
life.’ Jo stopped to take a breath and in that moment an internal voice asked if he loved life quite so much after she had clipped his wings. She pushed the thought away and tried to sound convinced as she said, ‘He wouldn’t give up without a fight, Irene. Not David.’

‘I keep asking myself if there was something he said, some kind of hint he might have dropped that might explain what was going on inside his head.’

Jo squeezed her eyes shut. Stop this, Irene, she pleaded silently. Stop giving me new ways to torture myself, new ways to blame myself.

‘I try to remember,’ Irene continued, ‘but my heart’s pounding so hard I can’t hear his voice any more. Only endless questions.’ On the other end of the phone there was a series of thumps and Jo pictured Irene banging her palm against her chest. ‘Questions, questions, questions. No answers.’

The slur in Irene’s voice had become more pronounced and only now did Jo realize that her mother-in-law had been drinking. She wasn’t a heavy drinker by any stretch of the imagination although she did like a nightcap these days to ease her loneliness as she adjusted to life without Alan. It was apparent that her usual tipple had been more generous and earlier than usual.

‘It’s good that the police are considering every possible option but David wasn’t suicidal, Irene. I won’t even consider that possibility.’ Irene started to say something else; something that would pull Jo down into the murky depths of her despair where she imagined finding the bloated body of her husband after he had jumped into the river; so she cut in quickly, ‘Why don’t you have an early night and I’ll speak to you tomorrow?’

‘There’s no point; I can’t sleep. I won’t be able to rest until we’ve found him.’

‘Try,’ Jo pleaded, as much to get her off the phone as anything else. ‘And I really should go. I don’t want to keep the line busy in case someone’s trying to get through.’

It was a trick Jo had been using for two days and, for the time being at least, it still worked and she managed to persuade Irene to hang up. When she replaced the phone on the receiver Jo considered unplugging it. She’d just about had enough for one day, but there was no real choice, not when the next call might be David.

Her thoughts and emotions had been spinning faster and faster since leaving Steph’s and now they were no more than a blur. The only thing that did come into sharp focus was the smear of blood on the handset. She checked the palm of her right hand and saw that it was grazed and muddied with a mixture of dried blood and rust. From her hand she looked up at the frozen hands of the dial. There was blood on the clock too and on the wall. She hadn’t even noticed that she had cut her hand on the rusted fence in the cut-through.

When she moved, everything appeared to be in slow motion including her thoughts. Her steps were measured as she headed to the kitchen to clean her wounds. The antiseptic stung but it was a pain she welcomed because it was something she understood and she focused on it until it blocked out everything else.