‘No! That would have been easy. Easier. It was a very bad time. For both of us. We lost…there was a bereavement…our daughter, Lucy…’
He could feel the effort she was making to keep herself together. Oh shit, he thought, me and my big boots. He’d have known about this presumably if he’d listened to Purdy on the phone.
On the other hand, not knowing meant he was getting everything up front, no pre-judgments.
He said, ‘I’m sorry, luv. Didn’t know. Must have been terrible.’
She said with unconvincing matter-of-factness, ‘Yes. Terrible just about sums it up. Certainly not the best of times to have this other stuff at work start up. Not that it seemed to bother Alex. He just didn’t seem to care. About anything. I got angry with him. I needed someone, but all he wanted was to be left alone. So I left him alone. I didn’t abandon him…we were in it together…except we weren’t…so I thought if left him alone…no I didn’t think that, I didn’t really think anything. I just had to be with people who would listen to me talking, and going into a room where Alex was felt like going into an empty room…’
She was off again. Dalziel could only see one thing in this turmoil that might have anything to do with him. If it helped the woman to focus, that would be a plus too.
‘This work stuff, what was that about?’ he interrupted.
She stopped talking and took a deep breath. Refocusing from her bereavement to her husband’s work problems seemed to bring a measure of genuine control. Her voice was stronger, less tremulous as she said, ‘They called it a leak enquiry, but it was actually about corruption. Alex was second in charge of a team targeting this businessman. It was called Operation Macavity. That was a joke. From T.S. Eliot’s poem. You know, Cats, the musical.’
Dalziel was untroubled by the presumption that the only way he was likely to have heard of Eliot was via Cats. There were a lot of smart people spending a lot of hard time behind bars because they’d made similar presumptions.
‘Yeah, loved it,’ he said. ‘Because he was never there, right?’
‘Yes. But this time they had high hopes of getting to the man. It didn’t work out. I don’t know any details, but he always seemed to be several steps ahead of them. And while things were going wrong at work, at home things went into a nose dive…’
‘Yes, yes,’ said Dalziel, determined not to drift back towards the dead child. ‘So the powers that be started wondering how the hell this Macavity always knew what was going on.’
‘I suppose so. Why the rat pack-sorry, that’s what Mick Purdy calls Internal Investigations-why they focused on Alex, I don’t know. But they did.’
‘Did they suspend him?’ said Dalziel.
‘Didn’t need to. This all blew up at the same time as…the rest, and he was on compassionate leave, so he wasn’t going into work anyway.’
‘So he’s at home, on compassionate leave, he’s in a state, the rat pack’s sniffing around, and eventually you leave him. Then…what? He takes off?’
‘That’s right.’
‘And you looked for him?’
‘Of course I looked for him!’ she exclaimed. ‘I got in touch with his friends, his relations. I talked to the neighbours. I checked out everywhere I thought he was likely to have gone, places we’d been on holiday, that sort of thing. I rang round hospitals. I did everything I could.’
‘Including telling the police, I suppose?’
‘Obviously,’ she snapped. ‘They were just about the first people I contacted. Why wouldn’t I?’
‘Well,’ said the Fat Man, ‘for a start, they’re investigating him, right? It must have crossed your mind maybe they’re the ones he’s running from. Not sure, in your shoes, they’re the first buggers I’d tell.’
She said tightly, ‘I knew Alex. I believed in him. He was confused, desperate maybe. But he certainly wasn’t corrupt. All I could think was he was out there somewhere, alone. So I called Mick Purdy. They were friends, so naturally I called Mick.’
He’d anticipated this was probably Purdy’s connection. How had he reacted to the news? he wondered. Like a friend or like a cop?
‘And what did good old Mick say?’
‘He said to leave it with him, he’d make sure everything that could be done to trace Alex was done. Look, Mr Dalziel, I’m not sure how relevant all this is. We’re talking seven years ago. It’s here and now that I need help.’
‘Aye, seven years. And there’s been no sign of your husband all that time?’
‘Not a whisper. Nothing from his bank account, no use of credit cards. Nothing.’
‘Did he take his car?’
‘No, it was still in the garage. In fact, he took nothing, so far as I could see. No spare clothes, not even his toothbrush. Nothing.’
‘And the police? They turned up nothing?’
‘The police, the Salvation Army, every organization I could think of, none of them found any trace.’
‘So, apart from being kidnapped by aliens, what did that leave you thinking happened to him?’
He watched her reaction carefully and let her see he was watching.
She met his gaze straight on and said, ‘You mean it seems obvious to you he was probably dead, right?’
He shrugged but didn’t speak.
She said, ‘That’s what Mick thought too, but I couldn’t get my head round the idea. Even when I’d finally accepted he was never going to come back, I found it hard to contemplate applying for a legal presumption of death. That seemed…I don’t know, disloyal almost, even though I really needed it.’
‘Oh aye. Why was that?’
She said, ‘Lots of reasons, mainly financial. The house we lived in is Alex’s family house. It’s in his name, so I can’t sell it. There are various insurances that I can’t access without proof of death. Even his police pension is being paid into a bank account in his sole name, so it piles up and I can’t touch a penny of it.’
‘So they’re still paying his pension?’
‘Why wouldn’t they? Nothing was ever proved against him, no charges were brought,’ she said indignantly.
Dalziel glanced at his watch. The organ was still burping out bits of tunes that chased each other round and round without ever catching up. He knew how they felt.
He said, ‘I’ve been listening to you for a quarter of an hour, luv, and I’m no closer to understanding what any of this has got to do with me. What the hell are you doing up here in Yorkshire anyway?’
She said, ‘It’s simple. Next month it will be seven years since Alex vanished. My solicitor told me that after seven years we’d get a presumption of death on the nod. That made up my mind for me, so I said, let’s do it. And everything was going fine, then yesterday morning I got this.’
She opened her shoulder bag and took out a C5 envelope which she passed over to Dalziel. He put his glasses on to study it. It had a Mid-York postmark and was addressed in black ink to Gina Wolfe, 28 Lombard Way, Ilford.
The envelope contained a sheet of notepaper headed The Keldale Hotel, attached by a paper clip to a folded page from the September edition of MY Life, the glossy news, views and previews monthly magazine published by the Mid-Yorks Evening News.
On the notepaper were typed the words The General reviews his troops.
A good half of the page from MY Life was occupied by a photograph recording the recent visit of a minor royal to the city. She was shown receiving a posy of freesias from a small girl across a crush barrier during a walkabout. A thick red circle had been drawn around the head of a man just beyond the child.
‘This your husband?’ guessed Dalziel.
‘Yes.’
The photo was very clear. It showed a man somewhere between late twenties and mid thirties, his blond hair tousled by the breeze as he observed the Royal with an expression more quizzical than enthusiastic.
‘You sure?’
‘It’s Alex or his double,’ she said.
‘Right,’ he said, turning his attention to the hotel notepaper.
