But no one could expect Mark to be feeling easy right now.
DC Clements smiles and sits down. As she does so, she gestures to the chair opposite hers and Mark takes it, obediently. It is his house but it’s clear to all of them that she is suddenly in charge. Mark doesn’t mind. He needs her to be. He guesses at the police officer’s age – he puts her in her early thirties but her brief yet calming smile suggests a cool confidence beyond her years. Mark has been making jokes about the police looking like kids for a while. When he does so, Leigh tells him not to go on that way. ‘It ages you,’ she insists. Leigh doesn’t look her age and avoids admitting to it if she can.
Even though they are sat opposite each other, with a coffee table between them, Mark can smell cigarette smoke on the policewoman’s breath and clothes. He tells most people he meets who smoke, what a disgusting death cancer is. People allow him to do that because he lost his first wife and it would seem disrespectful not allowing him to vent. To crusade. He doesn’t bother giving his speech to the policewoman. He imagines she knows as much about horrible deaths as he does. Mark thinks that maybe he would smoke too, if he had her job.
‘So, you’ve reported your wife missing.’
‘Yes.’
‘How long has she been missing?’
‘I haven’t seen her since Monday morning,’ Mark admits.
‘It’s Thursday lunchtime, sir.’ The ‘sir’ seems purposeful. Ostensibly respectful but in fact distancing, challenging. It’s the male officer who says this. He has red acne spots erupting around his jawline, announcing the fact that – in relative terms – he’s just crawled out of childhood. It’s all ahead of him. The glory and gore of life. ‘Why have you waited until now to call?’
‘She works away Monday morning to Wednesday and then gets the sleeper train from Edinburgh Wednesday night. We normally see her Thursday breakfast. I wasn’t aware she was missing until she didn’t show up this morning. She’s a management consultant. She’s currently working for a wind energy company based up in Scotland.’
‘But you’ve called her place of work to confirm she was at work, Monday to Wednesday so not missing, just not at home, right.’ Mark doesn’t like the casual way the young policeman makes statements and simply lifts his inflection at the end of the sentence, hoping that passes as a question. Mark thinks he ought to be more formal, more thorough. He shakes his head.
‘She didn’t show up to work?’ asks DC Clements.
‘I don’t know whether she did, or she didn’t. I don’t know who to call. I don’t have a telephone number for her colleagues or her boss.’ Mark feels awkward admitting this. He wasn’t actually aware this was the case until he needed to call them this morning. But Leigh is an independent sort, they don’t live in one another’s pockets. If he needed to call her at work, he’d call her mobile, why would he have ever needed her boss’s number?
‘There isn’t a head office you can reach?’ Again, a statement dressed up as a question. Mark bites back his irritation at the young constable’s lazy grammar.
‘It’s different with management consultants. Once they’re assigned to a job, they’re not contactable through the usual switchboard. If you think about it, people only ever call in management consultants when things are going wrong in their company, they don’t really want to shout about it. The process is shrouded in secrecy. I’m not even sure which energy company she’s working for.’
The police officers exchange a look. Mark is concerned that they are judging him, that they think he has failed as a husband, that he is uninterested in his wife’s career, not enlightened enough. That will work against him. He tries to claw back. ‘I’ve never needed to know the details. Normally we are in touch via phone a lot.’
‘You do know the name of her company though, sir?’ It is impossible to ignore the note of sarcasm.
‘Yes. Peterson Windlooper. She’s worked for them for about eight years.’
‘We’ll look into it,’ says DC Clements. Mark smiles at her, gratefully. She doesn’t smile back.
Constable Tanner carries on. ‘So, you said normally you’re in touch via phone a lot. Do I take it that hasn’t been the case this week?’ he asks.
‘I haven’t spoken to her.’
‘Text? WhatsApp? Email? Anything?’
‘No, nothing.’
Their eyes are now bolted on Mark. He can feel the power of their gazes although he’s not looking at them but instead staring at the spot above their heads. ‘Nothing? No word. And that’s unusual?’
‘Yes, it is. Of course it is,’ Mark snaps. ‘Like most couples we normally speak on the phone every day while she’s away. She usually rings to say goodnight to the boys, and yes, we message regularly as well.’
‘But you waited until now to report her missing?’
He sighs. It’s going to come out. It might be important when and how it comes out; he thinks he should tell them straight away. It’s never going to look good. ‘We’d had a row. I thought she was sulking.’ Mark still doesn’t look at the police officers’ faces. He would like to see their expressions, to judge what they are thinking but he decides he can’t risk trading that gain against them reading him and knowing what he’s thinking. He imagines the police are trained in that sort of thing. Understanding what is said. Hearing what is left unsaid.
The policewoman nods to the younger officer. He takes out a notebook. It’s incongruously old-fashioned, Mark thought they might have electronic notebooks nowadays. ‘Constable Tanner is going to take some notes. So, let’s rewind, shall we? The last time you saw your wife was when?’
‘I said, Monday breakfast.’
‘And that’s when you had your row?’
‘No, we rowed Sunday night.’
‘What about?’
‘It was silly.
