‘All right,’ Little said. ‘I’m afraid this is a bit of a difficult question: is there any possibility Eden could have a lover — someone she might have run off with, perhaps even abroad?’
There was a long silence before he answered. Both officers watched him intently. ‘I don’t think so, no. To be honest, she’s never been like that. Mind games are more her thing.’
‘What do you mean by mind games?’ Alldridge asked.
Niall pointed at the chessboard, then, after a moment’s thought, raised an arm towards the bookshelves. ‘She loves puzzling things out. That’s why she likes detective novels and crime dramas. She’s always trying to get ahead of the detectives in them — and mostly does.’
‘OK,’ Holly Little said, and gave her partner a subtle nod for confirmation. ‘I think we’ve covered everything for now, sir.’ She gave Niall Paternoster her card, on which she had written her mobile number. ‘I’d appreciate your calling me, any time, if you hear from Eden or if there are any other developments. What we would like to take with us is a recent photograph of her that we can circulate.’
‘Sure,’ he said. ‘I’ll find something.’ He jumped up again and went out of the room. The two officers exchanged a glance. But Little signalled her colleague not to say anything and walked through into the kitchen, followed by Alldridge. She pointed down at the skirting board and he nodded, picking up on it, also. It looked a good deal cleaner than the ones elsewhere in the house, and there was a faint whiff of bleach. The floor around it looked very freshly cleaned, too.
Paternoster returned with a photograph of Eden standing in front of a Christmas tree, champagne glass in her hand. ‘This is a really good one,’ he said, handing it to Little. Then, his voice slightly choked, he pleaded, ‘Please find her.’
‘Nice-looking lady,’ she said.
Eden was wearing a short emerald dress, her centre-parted brown hair, elegantly cut, fell just short of her shoulders, and, like Niall, she had perfect teeth.
‘She is,’ Niall said. ‘She’s beautiful, she’s the love of my life.’
‘But this was taken at Christmas?’ Alldridge questioned. ‘Don’t you have anything more recent?’
‘Well, yes, but I particularly like this one.’
‘It would be helpful to have something more up to date, sir,’ Alldridge pressed.
‘OK, right.’ Niall tapped his phone and studied it for some moments, flicking his finger. Then he looked up with a broad smile. ‘Stupid me! I took a great one of her yesterday at Parham House.’ He handed the phone to the PC.
Both officers studied the photograph of the attractive woman, brown hair pinned up, in a pink top and white shorts, with a lake in soft focus behind her.
‘If we could take the one of your wife in front of the Christmas tree and if you could email us this one — to the address on the card I gave you — right away—’
‘Yes, yes, of course. Please, please find her for me,’ he repeated plaintively.
As he walked them to the front door, Holly Little said very formally, ‘We’ll do everything we can. And be sure to call me if she comes home or if you hear from her.’
‘Of course.’
Suddenly, Alldridge bent down and said to him, almost conspiratorially, ‘Black Queen’s Knight to King’s Pawn three.’ He tapped the side of his nose. ‘Don’t let on I told you.’
As soon as he had closed the door on the officers, Niall hurried back into the lounge before he forgot what the tall copper had said.
Queen’s Knight to King’s Pawn three.
He feigned the move. Shit, it was one he had not spotted! The copper was right. Eden had totally missed it! If he made the move, she’d be in check. The only choices she’d be left with would be losing her King — game over — or her Queen — pretty much game over, too.
He looked forward to seeing her face when she came home and finally, for the first time in countless games, he would win.
Checkmate!
15
On their way out to the car, Alldridge stopped by the bin and raised the lid. Among the smelly detritus lying inside he clocked an empty bleach bottle, but said nothing until they were back in the car.
‘Nice man — not,’ Little said quietly, after making sure the car windows were closed. ‘Cat litter?’ She shook her head.
‘Bleach bottle in the bin,’ Alldridge murmured.
‘Who’s the house-proud one, then?’ she quizzed with a wry smile.
He nodded.
A rust-bucket of an old Vauxhall Viva with no apparent silencer shot up the road at high speed, two youths in it, baseball caps the wrong way round. Ordinarily they would have pulled out and stopped it, but not now.
‘It’s usually the small things people have the biggest arguments about, isn’t it?’ Holly said.
‘Tell me about it! Barbara whacked me over the head with a pillow the other night because I was snoring! And last week I was trying to sleep in on Saturday morning after being on nights and she decided to hoover the bedroom!’
‘Hannah and I had a row a couple of weeks ago because I’d put half a tin of baked beans in the fridge instead of pouring them into a bowl and covering them. Apparently, the tin reacts with them, so she said.’
He scratched the back of his head. ‘I was scene guard on a house, some years back, where a guy had bludgeoned his wife to death with a cricket bat because she’d rearranged his sock drawer without his permission.’
They sat in silence for some moments. ‘What do you think’s really going on here?’ she asked.
‘Clean skirtings, smell of bleach and empty bottle? Has his wife disappeared — done a runner — or did he kill her, is that what you’re thinking?’ Alldridge asked.
‘Aren’t you?’
He nodded.
‘Her passport missing might be significant, don’t you think?’
He didn’t reply straight away, then he said, ‘Yes, but perhaps not in the obvious way.’
‘Meaning, John?’
‘That he wants us to think she’s gone away, perhaps?’
She nodded. ‘Good point. Your time as a detective wasn’t entirely wasted!’
‘It did open my eyes.’
‘And anyhow,’ she said, ‘I’ve never been able to trust a bloke who appears to resent his wife’s wealth.’
Alldridge concurred. ‘Let’s move away from the house.’
‘Food?’ she asked. ‘Try for breakfast again?’
‘Good plan.’
Half an hour later, with the residual reek of curry from the last crew out in this vehicle replaced by the much more appetizing aroma of egg and bacon sarnies, they were both feeling better. Parked on Church Road, in front of the cafe, they ate hungrily in silence. Alldridge finished ahead of Little, wiped his mouth with a paper napkin and suggested they inform Golf 99 — the duty Inspector at Brighton nick — of their concerns.
Little agreed.
Alldridge radioed the Control Room and was told, to his dismay, the day’s duty Golf 99 was Andy — ‘Panicking’ — Anakin. In his long experience, Anakin was the last person you’d want to involve in a crisis, but all the same, he had no option. The Inspector wasn’t always totally useless, just mostly.
Moments later, they heard his voice, a little too high-pitched and highly strung, through their radios. ‘Inspector Anakin.’
‘It’s PC Alldridge and PC Little, sir.’
‘What is it? I’m in the middle of a situation.’
From the hysteria in his voice, it sounded like he was the man, at this moment, single-handedly responsible for keeping Planet Earth on its axis and preventing it from spiralling off and sending all its inhabitants into oblivion.
Alldridge was long enough in the tooth to not take any crap from his superiors. ‘We have a situation, too, which we need to discuss with you, sir,’ he responded calmly and firmly, giving him a brief outline. From Anakin’s response, it didn’t sound like he’d absorbed much of what he’d been told.