Killing Me Softly

There seemed to be as many CDs and videos as books, and I was worried that I would have to fiddle around with a mouse or a microfiche. But when I asked at the front desk about the local paper, I was directed to shelves where eighty years of the Corrick and Whitham Advertiser was stored in huge bound volumes. I hauled out 1990 and dropped it heavily on to a table.

I checked the four front pages for the month of January. There was a dispute about a bypass, a lorry crash, a factory closure and something to do with the council and waste-disposal but nothing about Adele Blanchard, so I went back to the beginning of the month and skimmed the inside news pages for the whole of January. Still nothing. I didn’t know what to do and I didn’t have much time. I hadn’t been inclined to go by train again and had borrowed the car belonging to my assistant, Claudia. If I left at nine, drove straight there and back, then I could be back in time for a two o’clock meeting with Mike and the pretence of a proper day’s work.

I hadn’t reckoned on the search through the papers taking such a long time. What was I to do? Perhaps Adele had lived somewhere else, except that her mother had talked of Tara as the first to move away from the area. I read through the first February issue. Still nothing. I looked at my watch. Almost half past eleven. I would read the February papers and then I would leave, even if I found nothing.

Such as it was, it was in the issue of the last Friday of the month, the twenty-third. It was a small story at the bottom of page four:

LOCAL WOMAN ‘MISSING’

Concern is growing over the fate of a young Corrick woman. Adele Funston, 23, has been reported missing. Her husband, Thomas Funston, who had been working abroad, told the Advertiser that Adele had planned to go on a hiking holiday while he was away in an undetermined location: ‘It was when I didn’t hear anything that I started to get anxious.’ He joined with his father-in-law, Christopher Blanchard, also of Corrick, in expressing a hope that Mrs Funston was just on an extended holiday. Detective Superintendent Horner told the Advertiser that he was ‘not unduly worried. If Mrs Funston is safe, I would like to appeal to her to come forward,’ he told us. Mrs Funston was best known locally as a teacher at St Eadmund’s primary school in Whitham.

Missing. I looked round. Nobody was nearby. As quietly as I could, I tore the item out of the paper. Malicious damage, I thought to myself grimly.

Thirty-one

Joanna Noble lit a cigarette. ‘Before we start, do you mind if I say something that might sound harsh?’

‘Before we start? You make it sound as if you’re a doctor or lawyer.’

‘Well, what am I? That’s part of my point. Hang on, wait a second.’ She filled our glasses from the bottle of white wine I’d bought at the bar.

‘Cheers,’ I said ironically.

She took a gulp of wine, and jabbed in my direction with her cigarette. ‘Look, Alice, I’ve interviewed loads of people and sometimes I hated them and a few times I’ve thought we might become friends but we never did, for whatever reason. Now it looks as if I’m becoming friendly with the wife of somebody I interviewed, except…’

‘Except what?’

She took a drag of her cigarette. ‘I don’t know what you’re up to. If you want to meet me, is it because I’m such a nice supportive reassuring person and you can’t think of anybody better to pour out your troubles to? Or is it that you think I have some kind of professional expertise that you can draw on? What are we doing here? I suppose I’m wondering whether the sort of thing I expect you’re going to say to me wouldn’t be better being said to a friend or a relative or –’

‘Or a psychiatrist?’ I interrupted angrily, and then stopped myself. It wasn’t fair to blame her for being suspicious. I was suspicious of myself. ‘You’re not a friend, I know, but this is something I couldn’t talk to a friend about, or a relative. And you are right to distrust me. I’m turning to you because you know things other people don’t know.’

‘Is that our bond?’ Joanna asked, almost with a sneer, but then smiled more sympathetically. ‘Never mind. I’m also pleased, in a way, that you wanted to talk to me. So what is it?’

I took a deep breath, then told her in a low voice of what I had done over the previous days and weeks: of the details I had exchanged with Adam about our sexual history, about the letters from the unknown Adele I had found, about the death of her sister, of going to see their mother. At this Joanna raised her eyebrows but said nothing. It felt utterly strange to me to put all this into words and I found myself listening to myself as I talked, as if I were hearing a story told by a woman I didn’t know. It made me realize the hermetic existence I had been leading, going over and over this in my head with nobody to confide in. I tried to tell it like a story, chronologically and clearly. When I had finished, I showed Joanna the cutting about Adele’s disappearance. She read it with a frown of concentration, then handed it back to me.

‘Well?’ I said. ‘Am I mad?’

She lit another cigarette. ‘Look,’ she said in an uncomfortable tone, ‘if it’s all gone wrong, why don’t you just leave the guy?’

‘Adele left Adam. I’ve got the letter in which she broke with him. It’s dated the fourteenth of January 1990.’

Joanna looked genuinely startled and made a visible effort to gather her thoughts and speak.

‘Let me just spell this out,’ she said finally, ‘so that we can acknowledge what is being talked about. You are saying that when this Adele broke up with Adam – your husband – he killed her and managed to dispose of the body so brilliantly that it was never found.’

‘Somebody disposed of her body.’

‘Or she killed herself. Or she just left home and never called.’

‘People don’t just disappear like that.’

‘Oh, don’t they? Do you know how many people are currently listed as missing in Britain?’

‘Of course I don’t.’

‘It’s as many people as live in Bristol or Stockport or some medium-sized town or other. There’s a whole secret ghostly town in Britain, which consists of the disappeared and lost. People do just leave.’

‘Her last letter to Adam wasn’t desperate. It was all about staying with her husband, about committing herself to her life.’

Joanna filled our glasses again. ‘Do you happen to have any evidence of any kind about Adam? How do you know he wasn’t on a climbing expedition?’

‘It was the winter. Anyway, her letter was sent to him at a London address.’

‘For God’s sake, it’s not just a matter of having no evidence at all. Do you really think he’s capable of coolly killing a woman and just carrying on with his life?’

I thought for a moment. ‘I don’t think that there’s anything Adam couldn’t do if he wanted to do it.’

Joanna smiled. ‘I can’t make you out. For the first time today, you really sounded like you loved him.’

‘Of course. That’s not the point. But what do you think, Joanna? About what I’ve told you.’

‘What do you mean, what do I think? What are you asking for? I feel responsible for this in a way. It was me who told you about the rape case and sent you off into this lunacy. I feel that I’ve put you under this pressure so