It was ten to one. Joan needed to hurry or she would be late for work. Instead, she stood still for some minutes, staring out of the window. Anger was boiling inside her. Victor had cheated on her. He had been going to a tart! For how long? How much money had he spent on this tart?
She marched over to the internal door to the garage and unlocked it. She opened it and stared down at the smooth cement screed covering the floor.
‘YOU BASTARD!’ she shouted.
Chapter Twenty-One
DS Brett drove the Focus. They were heading back towards the police station. DC Badger stared at the photograph of Victor Smiley on his lap. It was the one that had been circulated, and was being put on Missing Persons posters in police stations around the county.
‘It didn’t feel right to me. What about you?’ the detective sergeant said.
‘She was nervous about something. She kept looking at the doorway,’ Badger replied. ‘The feeling I got is that she has something to hide. If she’s reported her husband missing, and he was lurking in the doorway all the time we were there, someone’s having a laugh at us.’
‘So what do you think she’s playing at?’ the DS asked him.
‘Could it be an insurance scam? We should check to see if there are any life insurance policies on him. There was a couple who did that a while ago. What were they called? Darwin. The husband faked his death in a canoe and they got a life insurance payout. He hid in the attic for five years.’
‘Why didn’t you ask her about it?’
‘I didn’t want her to think I was suspicious. She said there was no one in the house, right?’
Brett nodded. ‘So you think her husband might be alive and well, and hiding in the house?’
‘Possibly, chief. We know she’s been lying to us about the phone. What else has she been lying about?’
‘I see where you’re coming from,’ DS Brett said.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Shortly after six o’clock that evening, Joan edged the purple Astra into her driveway and stopped in front of the garage. She had two bottles of wine in the boot, which she had bought from the supermarket. She also had several packets of biscuits, some prawn cocktails at the end of their best-before dates, and two steaks.
Don was coming over. He said they had to drink a toast. She wasn’t really keen to see him at the moment, but she didn’t want to be alone in the house. She had decided to make him supper. It was strange, she thought, that he had exactly the same taste in food as Victor. She had read that when a man leaves his wife for a younger model, he often chooses someone who looks like his wife. Maybe a woman chooses a new man who has the same tastes as her old one?
She was thinking about all the police she had seen in the past couple of days. She was trying to work out if she had said the right things. It had been tricky. But she felt she had kept calm. She would talk through it all with Don tonight. They should check to see what they had missed and what they needed to do.
As she got out of the car in the fading light, a strong wind was blowing. She noticed several of her neighbours’ curtains twitching. They were watching her. She decided it would be safest to put the car in the garage, so they would not see her unloading the bottles.
Don had told her not to drive on the new garage floor for a few days to let it harden. But it seemed pretty hard now.
She lifted the door, stared at the smooth cement and tested it with her feet. It was fine! Hard as rock!
She drove in and pulled the door shut behind her. It closed with a clang that seemed to echo for ever. Then she carried everything through into the kitchen. She put the wine straight into the fridge. Then she switched on the television and all the lights in the house, because she was nervous that Victor’s ghost might suddenly appear again. After that she went upstairs to the bedroom and stepped out of her work clothes. She freshened up, sprayed herself with the perfume that Don liked, and laid out her short black cocktail dress on the bed.
At that moment, the front doorbell rang.
She frowned. It was only a quarter past six. Don wasn’t due until seven.
Dressed only in her knickers and bra, she hurried into Victor’s den and looked out of the window. Her throat tightened. There were two marked police cars out in the street, and a white van with police markings on it. The two detectives who had come round earlier were standing at the front door.
The bell rang again.
‘Coming!’ she called out, trying not to sound anxious.
She took a deep breath and hastily put her work clothes back on. Then she hurried back downstairs.
As she opened the door, Detective Sergeant Brett held up a sheet of paper. A group of police officers in yellow jackets stood behind him and Detective Constable Badger.
‘Mrs Smiley,’ DS Brett said, ‘we have a search warrant for your house.’ He showed it to her.
She was shaking as she looked at it, but it was just a blur. ‘A search warrant?’
‘Yes, madam.’
‘What is this about?’
Half a dozen policemen walked past her, followed by the two detectives.
‘Would anyone like tea or coffee?’ she asked. Then she added, ‘I’ve got some biscuits now!’
No one replied. Suddenly, every room in the house seemed to have a police officer in it.
‘Expecting company, are you?’ DS Brett said, looking at the two raw steaks on the kitchen drainer.
‘Just me and the cat,’ she said.
‘Lucky cat. Prime rib steak!’ he replied, snapping on a pair of latex gloves.
‘He’s very fussy,’ she answered lamely.
‘Have a seat,’ DS Brett said, pointing to a kitchen chair. ‘We’re going to be a while.’
Upstairs, DC Badger pushed open a door into a tiny room that looked like a spare bedroom. There was a cold draught, and a strong smell of fresh paint. There was also a fainter smell of bitter almonds, which he did not notice.
He switched on the light. The room looked like it had been freshly decorated. The walls were painted a deep blue colour. A crisp white blind flapped in the wind that was howling in through the wide-open window. He noticed a single bed with a cream candlewick counterpane. The bed was made up but not slept in. There was a bedside table with a lamp, and a small chest of drawers. He began to check through them.
Downstairs in the kitchen, Joan stared blankly at an episode of Poirot on the television. She switched channels. It was another Agatha Christie, this time a Miss Marple. Hastily, she switched again. John Thaw, in Morse, was standing at a grave being opened. She switched once more. Now it was the actor Basil Rathbone playing Sherlock Holmes.
‘Stop it, you bastard!’ she mouthed silently. She switched to BBC 1. It should be the end of the six o’clock news.
Instead, she saw Victor’s face smiling out at her from the screen. She was about to change channels again when she heard the voice of a newscaster saying, ‘Sussex Police are gravely worried about Victor Smiley, a diabetic who has not been seen for several days.’
She switched the television off.
Her heart was crashing around inside her chest.
Moments later, DC Badger entered the kitchen still wearing the latex gloves and holding a small, dark-red booklet. ‘This appears to be your husband’s passport. I found it in a desk in the front bedroom, which I presume is your husband’s office.’
‘Well done!’ she said. ‘What a relief! I searched everywhere for it.’
‘Not hard enough,’ he said.
Before she had time to reply, another officer came in. He was wearing a black vest with the letters POLSA on a badge on his chest. He was holding Victor’s mobile phone. ‘This appears to be your husband’s mobile phone, Mrs Smiley. I just checked the number.’