The police hadn’t been able to offer an explanation, but Cam hadn’t expected them to. Why would they care why she’d been on that road? All they were concerned with was the cause and outcome of the accident. They’d asked him endless questions about his wife’s health and then her mental health as though they suspected that she might have done this deliberately. And they’d questioned Tom – which was unacceptable and intrusive.
What the police couldn’t seem to accept was that Cam loved his wife and would never want to hurt her, or to have her hurt herself. If he’d been a little domineering or possibly too proscriptive about her behaviour at times it was all because he wanted the best for his family. She hadn’t minded staying at home to look after Tom when he was little so why should she mind staying at home to look after the house and her men after Tom had started school? Cam didn’t understand. He was happy to provide everything. She had a fantastic wardrobe, an expensive car and all the high-spec tech she wanted. He didn’t mind her seeing her friends during the day when he was at work as long as she was at home when Tom got back from school. He gave her the perfect life.
He couldn’t remember when he’d first started to doubt her. It hadn’t been one specific incident – it was more a gradual, creeping thing, a niggle. Twice Tom had to be sent home from school – once after a serious nosebleed and once with a sickness bug – and Chrissie hadn’t been able to collect him straight away. She’d claimed to be out with friends in Keswick or Cockermouth but neither location was more than twenty minutes away from the school. Why had it taken over an hour for her to pick up her son?
Then there was the time she’d decided to go out in the evening instead of in the daytime. She hadn’t given much of an explanation beyond wanting a change, but Cam hadn’t been convinced and was hurt that she didn’t want to spend her evenings with her family.
Her attitude had changed as well. She’d been more likely to challenge his views and ideas and less inclined to take his advice about her clothes or how to look after the house. It had gradually dawned on Cam that somebody else was influencing his wife in a way that he didn’t appreciate, and he had to find out who this person could be.
Hiring a private investigator proved more straightforward than Cam had expected; paying for her, less so. He couldn’t have Chrissie spotting an unusual charge on his credit card or from their joint bank account so he’d had to be creative and find a solution that she couldn’t possibly trace.
School funds offered the perfect solution. He could take the money and pay it back gradually, telling Chrissie that he was making small donations for sponsored events – or some similar bullshit. But he’d never had the opportunity to lie about his finances. Just two weeks after hiring the investigator, Chrissie was dead, he was a widower and Tom was motherless. And Cam didn’t have a clue why. The PI had been following Chrissie but hadn’t found anything concrete after the first week and Cam hadn’t been able to face getting in touch with her since the funeral.
Now he felt like it was time.
He picked up his phone and scrolled through his contacts until he found ‘LEA Jack’, his coded entry for the private investigator. He tapped the name and put the device to his ear, still holding the police report in his other hand.
‘Stacey?’ he asked as soon as the person at the other end connected.
‘Yes. Who’s this?’
‘Cam Cleaver. I’ve got the police report, but I haven’t had your report yet from the last week of my wife’s life. It’s been over two months.’
He heard a sigh from the other end of the line. ‘Cam, I don’t think it’ll do you any good to read my report because I don’t have any answers. All I can offer is speculation based on where Chrissie was going. She didn’t leave a trail, as you know, and I have nothing concrete to suggest that she was having an affair.’
‘Can we meet?’ Cam asked. ‘Now I’ve got the facts I want to see how they link with what you’ve got.’
Silence. Then, ‘I assume you’ll pay me. I still haven’t received the last instalment. I know you’re grieving, and I haven’t wanted to hassle you, but you do owe me money.’
‘You’ll get the cash,’ Cam assured her. ‘When I get the report. Where and when’s good for you?’
The woman tried to put him off with a lot of excuses and promises to email but Cam wasn’t going to be fooled. He’d been stupid to hire a woman he realised now. Stacey might have been sympathetic towards his wife – she might have thought Chrissie was justified in having an affair. A man would have been safer; more reliable. In the end she agreed to meet at The Elland Arms on the way to Allonby – a pub Cam knew well, which was safely out of catchment.
Stacey was early. Cam had planned to get there first to find an appropriate table away from the rest of the early evening drinkers, but he saw he’d been outplayed as the woman had picked a table in the middle of the lounge with no privacy at all. As Cam crossed the room towards her, he realised that she’d already attracted the attention of several of the men at the bar. He could understand why. Dressed in an oversized burgundy jumper and skin-tight black jeggings, Stacey couldn’t hide her height or her build. She was what he’d heard some of the sixth-form boys refer
