‘It’s just a small extension…’
Thorne hadn’t enquired, but he nodded anyway and asked when the work had begun. If the builders had been on site for a month or two, it might be significant. Plenty of contractors were happy to take on casual labourers for the heavy work, which would have been as good a way as any for Anthony Garvey to gain access to his target.
‘They started last week,’ she said. ‘Hell of a mess, but it helped take my mind off Andrew being missing, to be honest. Can you understand that?’
Thorne said that he could.
‘I’d been starting to worry that it would all be finished before he was found. If he was found.’
‘Well, you can stop worrying.’
‘Can I?’
Her food arrived and Thorne watched her begin to eat; precise movements of her fork, a sip of water every two or three mouthfuls. He tried to imagine her and her newly shorn husband dining together in the new extension on their already large house in Clapham. Sarah’s salary on top of what Andrew made as an investment manager, expensive holidays twice a year, private healthcare and a nice car each. They were the typical young professional couple who had it all, Thorne thought.
Except for a marriage that worked.
When she put down her fork suddenly, Thorne could not tell if she had lost her appetite or if that was as much as she normally ate. Had it been anything other than salad, he might have asked if he could help her out.
‘When the police called to tell me he’d been found, they said he didn’t want to see me. Well, they were a little more discreet than that, some rubbish about procedure, but I got the message.’
She looked very serious, but Thorne got the impression that she was not the sort of person who smiled a great deal anyway. He had certainly seen no evidence of it so far. ‘Obviously that’s none of our business,’ he said. ‘Our job was just to find him and keep him safe.’
She continued as though she had not heard him. ‘Then, when they came round to collect his clothes, they wouldn’t tell me where he was.’ She tucked a strand of immaculately styled blonde hair behind her ear. ‘I mean, is he even in London?’
‘He’s… in London,’ Thorne said. ‘I’m sure you understand that it’s best to keep the exact location secret. Bearing in mind the nature of the inquiry.’ It sounded convincing enough as he said it, but he could see that she was not taken in.
She pushed the remnants of the salad around the plate. ‘I didn’t know things were quite that bad,’ she said. ‘We’d been arguing, you must know that much.’
‘Like I said, not our business.’
‘He’s making it your business though, isn’t he?’
‘Your husband’s been under a lot of stress, I know that much. Maybe he thinks it’s better for both of you if he just… cuts himself off a bit right now. It makes a lot of sense actually, considering that there has been a serious threat.’
‘I don’t know if you’re a good detective or not,’ she said. ‘But you’re pretty good at bullshit.’
‘It’s a vital part of the job.’
‘Ever thought of working in advertising?’
Thorne caught the first hint of a smile. ‘I’m sure the money’s a damn sight better,’ he said.
She shrugged. ‘It’s bloody stressful.’
Thorne had to struggle not to laugh. A waitress appeared and asked if Sarah had finished. She picked up her plate and handed it over without looking at the girl. The suggestion of a dessert menu was waved away, and it was only then that Thorne noticed just how thin Sarah Dowd’s arms were, the bones sharp at her wrist.
‘Andrew was telling me about a man you had working for you,’ Thorne said. ‘Someone who came to the house to clean the cars?’
She nodded. ‘Tony.’
Thorne felt a prickle at the nape of his neck. ‘Do you know his second name?’ He asked, knowing that it would certainly not be Garvey, not when he was working for someone to whom the name would be so recognisable.
‘He was always just “Tony”,’ Sarah said. ‘I never asked.’
‘Tell me about him.’
‘He just turned up at the house one day touting for business. I told him what we were already paying, he offered to do it cheaper and he did a bloody good job. He had all the equipment in his van – a jet-wash thing, a vacuum, etcetera. Why are you so interested?’ A second after she’d asked the question, her face changed; a pale wash of realisation. ‘You think this could be the man who wants to kill Andrew?’
Thorne reached down for his briefcase and took out copies of the three E-fits, based on the various descriptions they had been given thus far. ‘Could any of these be him?’
She studied the pictures, then lightly tapped a finger against the middle one. ‘This one isn’t a million miles away, I suppose. But he was a bit fatter in the face and he wore glasses. A lot of stubble too, like he was growing a beard.’
Thorne put the pictures away, thinking how easy it was to change your appearance. You did not need to be a master of disguise. A beard grown or shaved off. A haircut, a hat, glasses. Factor in the average person’s powers of observation and recall and almost anyone could hide in plain sight.
‘Did he ever come into the house?’
She seemed to become nervous suddenly, as though she were being accused of something. ‘I made him cups of tea, we chatted about this and that… yes.’
‘How long was this going on for?’
‘He probably came eight or nine times, so I suppose a couple of months?’
‘Then he stopped coming?’
She nodded, getting it. ‘Around the time Andrew went off. I tried calling the number I had for him, but it wasn’t in service.’ She reddened. ‘I remember I was pissed off because I had to drive to the garage to wash the car.’
‘Can you let me have the number?’ Thorne knew that it had almost certainly been a pay-as-you-go phone and all but untraceable, but it was worth checking.
‘He seemed like a nice enough guy,’ she said. ‘Down to earth. Just a… regular bloke.’
‘What did you talk to him about, when he was in the house?’
‘I don’t know.’ She sounded tetchy now. ‘Holidays, jobs, we just nattered for ten minutes at a time while he drank his tea.’
‘Did he ask you any questions?’
‘Well, you do when you’re having a conversation, don’t you? Nothing out of the ordinary, though.’
‘Nothing about your routines, your domestic set-up?’
‘No, nothing specific, but he was probably there enough to get a… sense of everything.’
‘Right.’
‘I never said anything… told him anything.’
‘You wouldn’t have needed to,’ Thorne said. Everything he’d learned so far about Anthony Garvey pointed towards a man who was content to watch and listen, until the time was right. ‘Was Andrew ever there when he came?’
She thought for a few seconds. ‘A couple of times, I think. He usually came on a Saturday.’ She began to play with her napkin. ‘I remember he was there once when we had a major bust-up. I hate it, you know, airing your dirty linen, but Andrew’s never shy about speaking his mind when other people are around. He doesn’t even notice them most of the time, but if he does, it’s like he enjoys having an audience.’ She took a breath and it caught slightly, and she ignored the strand of hair that fell back across her face. ‘We were screaming at each other and swearing, and I remember it spilling out into the front porch and seeing Tony outside working on the cars.’ She paused for a moment or two. ‘I remember him glancing up and me smiling at him like an idiot, as if to say everything was fine. Like this was all perfectly normal.’
Thorne watched her squeezing the napkin, thinking that if Andrew Dowd’s version of events was to be believed, a row such as the one she was describing had become perfectly normal. Thinking, as she looked at her watch, then made noises about having to go, that he liked her far more than he had ten minutes earlier, especially when he considered what the rows between her and her husband had been about.
‘It’s all right,’ Thorne said. ‘You didn’t do anything wrong.’
