‘No, that’s quite true.’
And Cooper meant that sincerely. He’d often wished there was a way of seeing inside someone’s head and learning what they were thinking. He was wishing it now. He would love to know what Naomi Heath really thought about the disappearance of her partner. The only thing he was sure of was that she wasn’t telling him everything.
‘How long have you two been together?’ asked Villiers.
‘About four years.’
‘And you have children?’
Naomi Heath smiled. ‘Yes, we’re one of those complicated families.’
‘Complicated?’
‘I have a son from a previous marriage. His name is Joshua. And Reece and I have a younger son together, Daniel. And of course Reece has a daughter from his marriage.’
‘That would be Lacey,’ said Cooper, recalling the detail from the files.
‘Yes, Lacey. So, you see — it’s complicated.’
‘Your previous marriage—’ began Villiers.
‘We were divorced,’ replied Naomi quickly. ‘It didn’t work out. We separated not long after Joshua was born. He’s nine now.’
‘There must be quite a difference in age between Lacey and Daniel.’
‘Thirteen years. Lacey is a young woman. She doesn’t live with us any more. She’s eighteen now, and she’s at college. She doesn’t really want to be bothered with small children.’
Cooper nodded. He could see how the relationships in this family might be quite complicated. So Lacey didn’t want to be bothered with her step- and half-brothers? But how did she feel about her stepmother, the person who’d taken her own mother’s place and claimed her father’s affections? That could be one of the most difficult and complicated relationships of all.
‘Miss Heath,’ he said, ‘I have to ask you: I assume you know about what happened ten years ago — the disappearance of Mr Bower’s wife?’
‘Yes, of course I know. In fact, I already knew about it when I met Reece. It had been in all the papers. It was big news in this area. But Reece made a point of telling me about it anyway. He didn’t want there to be any secrets between us.’
No secrets? Cooper thought that was unlikely. But it was the sort of thing that people said to each other, especially in the early days of a relationship.
‘Did he say what he thought had happened to his wife?’
‘He said he didn’t know, any more than anyone else did. He’s always felt that way.’
‘A witness claimed to have seen her alive,’ said Cooper.
‘I know. This must sound strange, Detective Inspector Cooper, but that was one of things that upset Reece the most. He’d begun to harden himself to the fact that Annette was probably dead. Then, to have the possibility raised that she was still alive, was hard for him to take. It means, of course, that she disappeared deliberately and has not been in touch for more than ten years. Reece has no idea what he did to deserve that treatment.’
‘On the other hand, it was that witness statement which resulted in the case against Mr Bower being dropped.’
Naomi smiled coldly. ‘It’s a difficult one to understand, isn’t it? None of us can imagine how we would feel in those circumstances. I’m just telling you what I gathered from Reece. He’s always been conflicted about it, but I think that betrayal by his wife was harder to bear than the prospect of a conviction for a murder.’
‘I see.’
‘By the way, I’m really Mrs Heath,’ she said. ‘I kept my husband’s name after the divorce. A lot of my friends thought I was mad, but I did it for Joshua’s sake. He was already at school by then. It didn’t seem fair to change his name or give myself a different surname from him. It would just have confused him more, and he was upset enough after the separation.’
She turned to Cooper and gestured out of the front window at the other houses in Aldern Way.
‘I do get called Mrs Bower, though,’ she said. ‘Some of our neighbours have only moved into the area in the past few years, and they have no idea about what happened ten years ago.’
‘So they don’t know you aren’t married? And they don’t know about the court case?’
‘No. Life is complicated enough, isn’t it? I’d hate having to explain it to everyone I met in the street.’
Cooper followed her gaze out of the window, the trimmed hedges and neat conifers, the well-mown lawns and integrated garages. So there were secrets, after all. That was no surprise.
Then he turned the other way. The back garden of the Reece Bower’s house looked neat and bursting with colour. Beds of dahlias and carnations were in flower, a couple of apple trees were growing heavy with fruit, planters were filled with petunias and begonias.
‘Reece said the police dug this garden up ten years ago,’ said Naomi. ‘And they didn’t find a thing.’
‘No signs of Annette, anyway.’
Cooper was thinking about Lacey Bower, eighteen years old now. It was difficult enough handling a relationship with a stepmother. But what if she really wasn’t a stepmother at all? Not legally, anyway. It might be tempting for an embittered teenager to regard the interloper as temporary, someone who could be separated from her father at some point in the not too distant future. In Cooper’s experience, teenagers were capable of anything. They hadn’t learned to control some of the most powerful emotions — hatred and jealousy, the feeling of betrayal.
‘Is there anyone you can think of who might want to harm Mr Bower?’ asked Villiers.
‘No, no one.’
It was a standard question, but the answer came too quickly. It always did. People thought they were so likeable that nobody could possibly hate them enough to harm them. It was rarely true.
‘And what about you?’ said Cooper.
She frowned. ‘What about me?’
‘Is there anyone who would want to harm you, Mrs Heath?’
‘What sort of question is that, Inspector? It’s Reece who’s disappeared. No harm has come to me. I don’t understand.’
‘Losing your partner would seem to have caused you some harm,’ said Cooper calmly. ‘Don’t you think so?’
She shook her head. ‘I don’t know what you’re suggesting. It doesn’t make sense.’
‘All right.’
He could see she was beginning to get annoyed now. Her fingers fiddled with a spoon from the table, her knuckles whitening as if she was trying to bend it like Uri Geller.
‘I hope you’re doing something to find Reece,’ she said, ‘rather than just coming here asking me all these meaningless questions.’
‘Of course we are.’
‘I’m really very worried that something has happened to him. He wouldn’t just have gone off like this.’
‘Yes, you said that.’
But she hadn’t quite said that, had she? A few minutes ago, she’d said ‘We’re all worried about Reece’. Now, when the same sentiment came out under pressure, it had become ‘I’m worried about Reece’. One sounded like the proper thing to say. The other sounded more like the truth.
‘He may get in touch,’ said Villiers.
Naomi Heath turned to her, a sudden spark of something in her eyes. Hope? Excitement? A challenge?
‘Do you really think so?’ she said.
‘Yes. I can’t help thinking he’ll be in touch soon, when he’s got whatever it is out of his system.’
‘I hope you’re right,’ she said.
‘We’d better get back to the office now and see what progress is being made,’ said Cooper, hoping she didn’t recognise a lie. There would have been no progress, since there wasn’t really an inquiry.
‘Yes, perhaps you should.’
Cooper followed Villiers back up the drive to the road. Of course Reece Bower couldn’t have married Naomi Heath if he’d wanted to. They could only marry if Annette was officially declared dead. And since the case against him was dropped because of evidence she was alive, how could that be? It was the possibility Annette was alive that was keeping him out of prison. And it was also preventing him from getting married again to the woman he now loved.