The Perfect Couple
JACKIE KABLER

One More Chapter

an imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

First published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers 2020

Copyright © Jackie Kabler 2020

Cover design by Lucy Bennett © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2020

Cover photographs © Richard Coombs / Alamy Stock Photo (door), ANGUK / Shutterstock (door knob)

Jackie Kabler asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

Ebook Edition © April 2020 ISBN: 9780008328429

Version: 2020-02-28

Table of Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Chapter 37

Chapter 38

Chapter 39

Chapter 40

Chapter 41

Chapter 42

Chapter 43

Chapter 44

Chapter 45

Chapter 46

Chapter 47

Keep Reading …

Acknowledgements

About the Author

Also by Jackie Kabler

About the Publisher

Chapter 1

It was the silence I noticed first. When Danny was around there was always noise, singing or humming, the tap-tapping of a laptop keyboard, the prolonged clatter of spoon against ceramic mug as he stirred his black coffee vigorously for far too long, in my view, for a man who didn’t even take sugar in it – what was he stirring? But I loved it, his noisiness, despite my regular protestations to the contrary. I’d lived alone for far too long before Danny, and the constant clamour made me feel connected, alive. Happy. So that evening, as I pushed the front door open and slid the key out of the lock, expecting a welcoming yell from the living room or to see, within seconds, his grinning face peering around the kitchen door, disappointment hit me like an icy wave.

‘Danny? Danny, I’m home. Where are you?’

I could tell even as I spoke that he wasn’t in but, flicking the lights on and dumping my overnight bag on the table by the door, I began a quick tour of the house anyway, my footsteps echoing on the polished parquet of the hall floor. My frown deepened as I pushed each door open, the rooms dark and empty. Where was he? He’d promised, the previous evening when he’d emailed to say goodnight, that he’d be here when I got back, that he’d cook dinner. Even promised, I remembered as I headed for the kitchen, to have a bottle of my favourite cava chilling; a welcome home, Friday night treat. If he’d forgotten …

‘Dammit, Danny. Seriously?’

I glared at the contents of the fridge. It looked exactly as I’d left it on Thursday morning – a half-full milk container, a block of cheese with one corner hacked off, a pack of sausages with four missing, the four we’d eaten for breakfast before I’d headed off on my latest press trip. No cava. No sign of any fresh food. He hadn’t even gone shopping? What was going on? Had something happened at work, delaying him? He’d told me he’d be finishing at lunchtime that day, for once, that he’d have plenty of time to do the supermarket run for a change, save me doing it on Saturday morning as I usually did, while he stayed at home to run the vacuum round and flick a duster over the shelves. A break from the little routine we’d quickly fallen into, happily fallen into, since we’d moved to Bristol, and into the beautiful house in up-market Clifton. It hadn’t always been like that, but when we moved he’d said he wanted to help around the house more, do more of the chores I hated, and I hadn’t argued. We’d only been in our new home for three weeks, but the words ‘domestic bliss’ pretty much summed things up, cringeworthy as it sounded even to me.

‘You can have a lie-in on Saturday, Gem. You’ll be knackered after all that debauchery at your fancy spa hotel,’ he’d said over our full English, reaching across the breakfast table to wipe a splodge of ketchup from my bottom lip, his finger soft against my skin.

‘It’s work,’ I’d retorted, waggling my fork at him, then smiling as I speared another piece of black pudding. ‘Well … maybe a teeny bit of debauchery too though.’

‘I don’t doubt it. You journalists, and your hard-livin’, hard-drinkin’ ways.’

His accent, normally soft west of Ireland, was suddenly full-on Moore Street Market, Dublin, and I swallowed quickly and laughed.

‘Yeah, right. We’ll have a few drinks, but we’ll all be in bed by eleven, I guarantee it. Too many exhausted mummies in the group now. A night away without the kids means they can finally get a decent night’s sleep for once.’

He raised his thick, dark eyebrows – once a monobrow, until I’d finally pinned him to the bed one day, brandishing my tweezers – and I laughed again at his comically exaggerated expression of disbelief.

‘Oh, shut up.’

‘I didn’t say a word!’

He’d leapt from his chair then, dragging me from my seat and into a hug, whispering into my hair.

‘I’ll miss you. But have a great time. You deserve it.’

So where are you now, Danny? I slammed the fridge door and reached into the pocket of my zebra print coat for my mobile, then remembered. Bugger. There’d been some sort of delay with Danny’s new workplace providing him with a company mobile phone – it would, they’d promised, finally be ready for Monday – and as he’d handed in his old one when he’d left his previous job, he was temporarily phone-less. For a moment, I considered ringing his office, asking them if he’d been made to work late, then sighed and decided against it. A bit much, probably, when he’d only been in the job for such a short time, to have his wife calling, wondering where he was. Email, then? He still had his tablet, and emailing had worked reasonably well over the past few weeks when we’d needed to get hold of each other. We both had Skype too, for emergencies, although we hadn’t needed to use it so far, and just like calling his office, I thought Skyping him might be a bit intrusive. Yes, email.

I perched on the edge of one of the dining chairs and tapped out a message.

I’m home. Where are you? And, more to the point, where’s my dinner? And my FIZZ!? G xx

I hit send, checked the time, and stood up with a sigh. Just after seven. I’d go and unpack, have a nice hot shower, change. We could get some food delivered instead of cooking, and maybe Danny could call in at the off-licence on his way home to pick up some bubbly, I thought. I glanced around the kitchen, noticing that at least he’d washed up, wiped down the surfaces, replaced the chopping knives neatly in their wooden block. Everything was spotless in fact, a faint smell of bleach in the air, even the stainless-steel cooker hood gleaming. I felt my mild irritation subsiding. It would be work, that was all. It wasn’t his fault he’d been delayed. He’d be home soon. Slipping my coat from my shoulders, I headed back down the hall to retrieve my bags.

Chapter 2

‘Holy cow. It’s like looking at brothers. Coincidence, or not? What do you make of that, guv?’

Detective Sergeant Devon Clarke glanced over his shoulder. Behind him, Detective Chief Inspector Helena Dickens nodded slowly, indigo eyes fixed on the two photos on the board.

‘I dunno. Not yet, anyway. But yes, they do look spookily similar. Weird, eh?’

She looked at her watch. Just after seven. She sighed and turned to the room, wincing slightly as she felt a twinge in her lower back. Last night’s run had been too long and too fast, she thought.

‘OK, gather round everyone. I’m sorry to do this to you all on a Friday evening, but with a second murder on our hands now I’m going to have to ask you to work right through the weekend, as I’m sure you’ve already guessed. Let’s just go through what we’ve got so far, so it’s all clear in everyone’s minds, and then I’ll distribute jobs.’

She waited, turning back to scan the board as chairs scraped and feet shuffled; then the room fell silent, the rain which had started to fall an hour ago beating an urgent tattoo against the windows, the air thick with the smell of stale coffee.

‘Thanks. Right, well I know some of you have just been brought into Bristol today to swell our numbers, so thank you for that. I’m DCI Helena Dickens, senior investigating officer. This is DS Devon Clarke.’

She waved a hand towards Devon, who dipped his head.

‘It’s been a while since Avon Police has had two murders on its hands in such a short time frame, so we’re about to get very busy. There’s nothing at the moment to suggest that the two killings are linked, although we’re still waiting on the forensics report on the latest. But …’ she paused and exchanged glances with Devon, ‘well, let’s start at the beginning. Devon, can you take us through what we know about Mervin Elliott?’

‘Sure.’

Devon nodded, and cleared his throat.

‘OK. This is Mervin Elliott.’

He pointed to the photograph on the top left corner of the board.

‘Thirty-two years old, men’s clothing shop manager – one of those trendy places in Cabot Circus. Single, heterosexual, no children, lived alone in an apartment down at the harbourside. His body was found on Clifton Down by a dog walker just over two weeks ago, early on the morning of Wednesday, the thirteenth of February. Here, just off Ladies Mile, near Stoke Road.’ He pointed at a map of The Downs, the vast public open space to the north of the affluent suburb of Clifton. ‘His body was half hidden by shrubs, a bush, something like that. Time of death estimated to be about ten or eleven hours earlier, so between seven and eight the night before, Tuesday, the twelfth. Cause of death, blow to the head. No other significant injuries. No murder weapon found.’

He paused, rubbed his nose and continued.

‘According to everyone we’ve spoken to so far, he was a nice, normal guy. Worked hard, single as I said; his mates said he’d been on the odd date recently, usually women he met online, but hadn’t found anyone he wanted to get serious with. Sociable bloke though, liked a night out by all accounts, but wasn’t a drug user or even a particularly big drinker. He was big into fitness, member of a gym – that big 24-hour one at the harbour, near his flat. Looked after himself. No criminal record. No obvious motive at all for his murder. Looked like he’d been out running the night he was killed – he was wearing trainers and exercise gear when his body was found. But he had a pretty nice sports watch on, and a decent phone in his pocket, and they weren’t touched. Parts of The Downs get their share of doggers and so on at night, people cruising for action, but there was no sign of recent sexual activity on the body, no evidence he was there for anything like that. And so far, we’ve not found any witnesses to the attack. It would have been dark at that time of course. But so far, we have very little to go on. No forensics of any use. Nada.’

A phone suddenly trilled on a desk at the back of the room, and Devon waited while one of the young detective constables sprinted to grab it, answering it in hushed tones then grimacing at Devon.

‘Nothing major,’ she mouthed.

Devon nodded and turned back to the board.

‘OK, so that’s Mervin Elliott. This …’ he gestured at the photograph to the right of the first, ‘is Ryan Jones. His body was found yesterday morning, Thursday, the twenty-eighth of February, in a lane between two houses on Berkeley Rise. That’s here, just off Saville Road.’

He ran his finger across the map.

‘Saville Road borders Durdham Down to the east. And, for those unfamiliar with The Downs, Durdham Down is the northern part, north of Stoke Road. Clifton Down is the southern bit. About four hundred acres in total.’

‘So … the two bodies were found, what? Less than a mile apart?’

The question came from somewhere at the back of the assembled group of officers. Devon nodded.

‘About that, yes. Again, cause of death was probably head injuries but we’re waiting for the results of the post mortem – should be with us any minute; they’ve had a bit of a backlog down there, couple of nasty car accidents got in ahead of us. He also had a couple of minor injuries elsewhere but nothing significant. His head injury was again consistent with being attacked with a heavy weapon of some sort. Again though no sign of that murder weapon. Early days on this one though, as he was only found yesterday. At the scene time of death was again estimated to have been about ten hours earlier, so sometime on Wednesday evening. He was found by a local resident who was out for an early morning cycle and took a shortcut down the lane. We got an ID from the victim’s wallet, which was still in his pocket with about fifty quid in it. Ryan was thirty-one and also single, no kids, dated a bit but again no serious girlfriend as far as we know at this early stage. Worked as an accountant for a firm in Queen Square. Again, early days but so far he sounds a bit like our first victim – nice, normal guy, no record.’

He paused and turned to look at Helena.

‘No CCTV in the area he was found, I assume?’ she asked.

Devon shook his head.

‘No cameras in that area at all. It’s a lot more built up than where Mervin was found though, obviously, so we started doing house to house yesterday afternoon, but so far nobody seems to have seen or heard anything.’

Helena sighed.

‘Remind us what he was wearing? Ryan, I mean.’

Devon turned back to the board.

‘Normal clothes. As in, not running gear or anything. Jeans, trainers, a navy jumper, big black puffa coat. It was cold on Wednesday night. And no, we haven’t worked out yet what he was doing in the area. He lived at an address in …’ he frowned, eyes searching the board, ‘in Redcliffe. So two, three miles away from where he was found.’

‘Thanks, Devon.’

Helena cleared her throat and turned to the room.

‘OK, so that’s the basics. Two dead men, both with head injuries, both murdered in The Downs area within a couple of weeks of each other. Both successful and hardworking, both in their early thirties. Two men whom, as far as we know at the moment, had no involvement in any sort of criminal activity. And, two men who look …’ she turned back to the board again, tapping first the photo of Mervin and then Ryan’s image, ‘who look, quite frankly, like bloody twins. The same dark curly hair, dark eyes, thick eyebrows. Similar height and build. Might mean nothing but …’she shrugged and turned back to face the assembled officers, ‘kind of weird, eh? OK, listen. Let’s not get too hung up on their appearances for now. And of course, there may be no connection between these two murders whatsoever. But we can’t rule it out, not at this stage, considering the similarities between the two cases. Let’s keep an open mind and let the facts guide us.

‘Forensics on Ryan might help when we get them, if we’re lucky. But in the meantime, let’s talk to as many of their friends and family members as possible, and see if there are any common factors – Redcliffe and the harbour aren’t that far apart, so did these two hang out in the same bars, did they know each other, did they have any mutual friends or common interests? And why were they both on – or, in Ryan’s case, very close to – The Downs, on the nights they died? OK, so Mervin was there running, and it’s a nice place to run, I run there myself now and again. But he’s a member of a gym and, even if he preferred running outdoors, there are plenty of routes to choose from around Bristol. So why there, specifically? Was it something he did regularly? And why was Ryan in the area? Was he visiting a friend, a relative? We need to know everything about these two, and fast.’

She stopped talking, watching as her colleagues scribbled notes on their pads, many of them exchanging glances. She knew instantly what they were thinking. It was something she’d thought herself, immediately and with a sudden sick, sinking feeling in her stomach, when Ryan Jones’s photograph had been stuck on the board yesterday next to Mervin Elliott’s. If these two murders were connected, if they’d been carried out by the same person, well …

She swallowed hard. It needed to be three, though, officially. Three murders, to fit the most widely used UK definition. And so far it was only two. Please God, she thought, let it stay that way.

Two was bad enough.

But three …

Three, and she might just have a serial killer on her hands.

Chapter 3

‘Where the hell are you, Danny? This is getting ridiculous.’

I stopped pacing up and down the kitchen for a moment to stand and stare out of the rain-streaked window into the elegant courtyard at the back of the house, willing him to suddenly appear, my fists clenched, nails digging into my palms. It was late Saturday afternoon and, despite my best efforts all day to track my husband down, I’d come up with precisely nothing. I needed to make some more phone calls, but I’d have to calm myself down first. I took a deep breath, trying to slow my racing heartbeat, and rested my forehead against the cold glass, eyes flitting across the yard. On two levels separated by a row of pleached hornbeam trees, the beautifully designed limestone-paved space had enthralled me from the moment Danny and I had first come to view the place. In the centre of the top level nearest the house, water bubbled gently from a polished metal sphere perched on top of a stone plinth, next to which sat a huge glass-topped table, six wrought iron chairs tucked underneath it. The outdoor dining area had been given an exotic, tropical feel more reminiscent of Bali than Bristol thanks to artfully planted bamboo, phormiums and tree ferns, the space illuminated at night by hundreds of tiny lights dotted among the foliage. At the front of the top terrace, steps led down to the lower level, where on either side of the back gate bay trees swayed gently in the wind in tall graphite pots, and raised herb beds lined the walls; our very own kitchen garden in the heart of the city. Even on a wet Saturday in March, and even when I was feeling so utterly miserable, a tiny shiver of pleasure ran through me.

‘A fountain! There’s a fountain, Danny!’ I’d squeaked when we’d first walked in through the back gate, and he’d laughed and squeezed my hand. We’d wondered why the letting agent had suggested meeting at the back of the house instead of at the front door, but it suddenly made perfect sense. It was stunning.

‘It’s more of a water feature, but OK. You and your fancy courtyard fetish,’ Danny had whispered as we were led indoors, both of us knowing instantly that no matter what the interior was like, this place already had me hooked. He was right; I’d always yearned for a courtyard garden. A peaceful place to entertain friends, to sit in the sun with a glass of wine on a summer evening, to lounge with a book on a Sunday afternoon, and no lawn to mow? Pretty damn perfect in my book.

We’d had a lovely home in London, but as so often in the capital, a place in a central location with any sort of decent outside space was hard to find. We’d made the small roof terrace of our apartment as beautiful as we could, but the Bristol courtyard had seemed huge in comparison.

‘There’s even a proper bicycle shed, look, down there in the corner of that lower level. I can finally stop having to chain my gorgeous bike to the front railings and you can finally quit moaning about how it lowers the tone,’ Danny had said, and I’d clapped my hands and done a little happy dance, making him laugh.

That Saturday though, as I stared out of the window, I could see that, just as it had been since I came back from my trip, the smart wooden lean-to where his beloved bike usually stood was empty. I looked at the blank space for a few more seconds, my vision blurring, then jumped as a cold, damp nose nuzzled my hand.

‘Hey, Albert. Where’s Danny then, eh?’ I whispered, and he cocked his head, eyes fixed on mine, and whimpered. I didn’t blame him; I felt like whimpering myself. My stomach churning, my eyes dry and scratchy from crying and lack of sleep, I glanced at the empty courtyard one more time then turned from the window and started pacing again. Albert stood watching me for a moment, then whined softly and trotted off to his bed in the corner of the kitchen.

On Friday night I’d finally ordered pizzas, picking at mine as I constantly refreshed my emails, expecting an apologetic message from Danny to pop into my inbox at any moment. When nothing came, I’d finally, grumpily, assumed he was pulling an all-nighter, and had gone to bed, noticing as I crawled under the duvet that he’d even changed the bedding while I was away, the pillow case fresh and crisp against my cheek. His bloody job, I thought. He loved it, but I wasn’t always so keen. Danny was an IT security specialist, analysing and fixing systems breaches, defending companies against online hacking.

‘I fight cybercrime. I’m basically a security superhero,’ he’d announced with a theatrical wave of his arms on our first date, and I’d rolled my eyes, grinning and, if I was honest, not quite understanding what he did at all, while still being secretly impressed.

What the job meant in reality though was long hours and frequent emergency call-outs, and although this would be the first such occasion in this new job, it wasn’t that unusual for him to have to work through the night if something had gone wrong with an important client’s computer system. When we first met he’d been working for a company in Chiswick, in west London, earning a healthy six-figure salary. When we’d talked about leaving the capital, I’d assumed it would mean Danny accepting a lower wage, but that hadn’t been the case, something that had surprised me until I realized that his new firm, ACR Security, had itself relocated from central London a couple of years back, taking advantage of the lower rents in the UK’s eleventh biggest city.

‘Makes sense,’ Danny had said, when he’d first floated the idea of us moving out of London. ‘There’s a great job up for grabs in Bristol, and the internet’s the internet, my job’s going to be the same anywhere, same pay too. And think how much further our money will go without London prices, you know? And you can do your job from anywhere too, can’t you, Gem? You’d love it, I know you would, the quality of life would be so much better. Bristol’s a lovely city, and you’ve got Devon and Cornwall just a few hours down the road, and the Cotswolds not far in the other direction, and it’s a uni city so there are plenty of good bars and restaurants, and the architecture’s gorgeous …’

‘OK, OK, you’ve sold it to me, let’s do it!’

In truth, he hadn’t really had to work very hard to convince me. He was right that as a freelance journalist, I could pretty much work from wherever I wanted to, and London didn’t have any great hold on me anymore. It was too busy, too stressful, and in recent years I’d often craved a gentler life, more greenery, less noise. And so he took the job he’d been offered, and we’d packed up our modern apartment just off Chiswick High Road and moved into this lovely, high-ceilinged Victorian semi with the wonderful courtyard in the leafy Bristol suburb of Clifton. We’d only been married a year, and had still been renting in London, not wanting to commit to a huge mortgage until we’d decided where we wanted to settle. Even though Bristol felt right to both of us, we didn’t want to jump into buying there too soon either, wanting to give ourselves time to make sure we were both still happy with our jobs and the Bristol lifestyle and to find the perfect forever home.

‘We’ll rent, just for a year or so. Somewhere nice though. Best part of town,’ Danny had said as we’d scrolled excitedly through the property listings online, amazed at how low the rents seemed compared with what we’d been paying in Chiswick. And so it all came together perfectly, and after just a few days, I knew I was home. Danny appeared to feel the same, even if his working hours were just as long as they’d been in London, something I hated but had grown to accept.

Even so, I’d been so looking forward to seeing him on Friday night that I’d felt miserable, sleeping badly, waking every hour to see if the empty space in the bed next to me had been filled by his warm, weary body.

When he still hadn’t called by nine o’clock on Saturday morning I’d started to really worry. This wasn’t right. Pushing aside my reluctance to appear the nagging wife, I’d looked up the switchboard number for his company and dialled it. It had gone straight to voicemail, informing me that ACR Security was now closed and would reopen at 9 a.m. on Monday, and advising that clients with an urgent issue should call the emergency number on their contract.

‘What about wives with an urgent issue?’ I’d shouted down the phone, then ended the call, my heart beginning to pound. If his office was closed, where the hell was Danny? Had he had an accident on his way home? That flipping bike. I’d always thought it odd that he didn’t drive, but he’d shrugged cheerily when I’d asked him about it.

‘Never needed to. Plenty of good public transport in Dublin when I was a student. And then London … I mean, who drives in London? Congestion charge, parking is ridiculous … ah, bike’s the way to go, Gem. And we’ve got your car, haven’t we, when we need it? No point wasting money on two.’

He had a point. But I still worried about him commuting on that thing. And so when I couldn’t track him down at his office, and after I’d tried to Skype him half a dozen times only to find he was offline every time, I started to ring the hospitals. There seemed to be only a few in Bristol with accident and emergency departments, and after I’d ruled out the children’s and eye hospitals there were only two left, Southmead and Bristol Royal Infirmary. My hands shaking, I called both, but neither had any record of a male with Danny’s date of birth or fitting his description being admitted in the past twenty-four hours. For a minute, a wave of relief washed over me, before fear gripped me again. If he wasn’t at work, or hurt, where else could he be? If he’d decided on a last-minute trip to see a friend, he’d have called me, wouldn’t he? But that was just so unlikely, when he’d promised to be there when I got home, cooking dinner for me. So maybe he was at work, after all, and the office switchboard had just been left in weekend mode. But why hadn’t he answered my email, or contacted me to let me know where he was? Surely, however busy he was, he’d have had time to do that? He’d know how worried I’d be.

Breathing deeply, trying to keep on top of the anxiety which was threatening to overwhelm me, I tapped out another email.

Danny, where are you? I’m seriously worried now. I’ve tried your office but it’s just going to voicemail. PLEASE let me know you’re OK? Gxx

I pressed send and checked the time. Midday, on Saturday. I hadn’t heard from him since the goodnight email he’d sent me at about eleven on Thursday night, the one I’d read in my hotel room. Just over thirty-six hours. It just wasn’t right, wasn’t normal, not for us. Should I call the police? But what if he really was just frantically busy at work, trying to fix some sort of online disaster for a major client, totally losing track of time? Imagine his mortification if the police suddenly turned up at his office, the sniggers of his new work mates, the mutterings about neurotic wives. No, I couldn’t call the police; it was too soon. I was being silly. He’d reply to this latest email any minute now, and everything would be fine, I told myself. By this evening we’ll be snuggled on the sofa drinking wine and laughing at me and my stupid over-reaction.

I’d gone out briefly to collect Albert from the nearby kennels – I’d dropped him off on Wednesday night before I left on Thursday morning – Danny’s long and unpredictable working hours not compatible with dog care – desperately hoping that by the time we arrived home, my husband would be back, wearily brewing coffee in the kitchen or sprawled, exhausted, on the sofa after a long night in the office. But he wasn’t, and so at lunchtime, and uncharacteristically for me, because doing it too often made me feel fearful and anxious, I turned on the BBC Radio Bristol news. I’d worked in newsrooms for years before going freelance, covering so many stories that had shocked and sickened me, and although I’d become harder and tougher as time had gone on, more able to handle the horror of reporting on yet another stabbing, yet another senseless murder, there had come a point when the life I’d led back then had all become too much for me, and I’d simply walked out and left it all behind. I’d stopped watching the news completely for months after I quit, stopped reading the papers, finding solace in my ignorance about the true state of the world, switching to lifestyle journalism when I returned to work, leaving crime and politics behind me. But now my husband had vanished, and so I turned the radio on, feeling shaky as I listened for stories about accidents, car crashes, unidentified bodies.

There weren’t any, but in the afternoon, and feeling a little foolish, I slipped Albert’s lead on and went out to walk Danny’s route to and from work, some vague idea in my head that maybe he’d been knocked off his bike by a car and had been tossed, unconscious, into a hedge or alleyway. Ridiculous, even I knew that, in a big city where he’d surely have been spotted within minutes, but I did it anyway. I’d realized before we set out that I didn’t even know his exact route to work, or even if he took the same route every day – as a cyclist, there were so many options, so many shortcuts you could take. So I studied a map, picked what looked like the two most likely routes, the most logical roads to take to travel between our house in Monville Road and Danny’s office in Royal York Crescent, and did both, one one way, the other on the return. His office was clearly closed when I got there, but I rang the doorbell anyway, and peered in through the windows at unlit rooms empty of people, before turning round and heading home again, my sense of desperation growing. I found nothing on either route, of course. No bike, no helmet, no Danny.

I spent the rest of the afternoon pacing around the house, staring out of the windows, yelling pointlessly at my absent spouse and intermittently bursting into tears. Finally, I checked the time – almost six o’clock – and made myself sit down and start making some more calls. It had been too long, and I needed help; I couldn’t handle this on my own, not any longer. I’d met a few people in the short time we’d been in Bristol, a couple of whom I already felt could potentially become good friends, but the relationships were too new, I thought, to burden with something like this. In terms of old friends, most of the couples we hung out with had originally been friends of mine, and I didn’t think that any of them would be able to help, not at that stage; if Danny had gone away to visit someone without telling me, unlikely though that seemed, it would probably have been one of his own mates. I didn’t have contact details for any of his Irish friends, but I found numbers for two of the colleagues he’d been palliest with in his old job in London, and for his former boss. They all sounded a little bemused – no, they hadn’t heard from him since he’d left, but … you know what this job’s like, he probably has no idea what time it is or how long he’s been head down at his desk, he’ll probably turn up in a couple of hours, don’t worry, Gemma. Keep us posted though, OK?

I wished I had an out-of-hours number for Danny’s new boss, just in case, but I didn’t, and I couldn’t even remember his name. So – family, then? Danny had a cousin in London, but the rest of his family lived in the west of Ireland, and after some consideration I decided against calling them, for a while at least. I’d never felt that comfortable around his cousin Quinn, and his mum, Bridget, was tricky at the best of times. His dad, Donal, had died not long before we got married, and Danny had never been close to either of his parents; there was no point in sending Bridget into a panic if, in the end, there was nothing at all to worry about. I didn’t call my parents either – they were nervy types, both of them, and I couldn’t handle their distress, not on my own, not while I was feeling so horribly anxious myself. And so I kept dialling other numbers, and when Danny’s friends couldn’t help, I decided to phone a few of my own after all, not so much to ask if they’d heard from my missing husband but for advice, for comfort, although I found little of the latter.

‘Shit, Gemma, that’s worrying. I’d be calling the police, if I were you.’

‘Oh Gem, darling, how awful! Do you want me to come down? Just say the word. But I’m sure he’ll turn up soon, it probably is just a work thing …’

‘Bloody men. But Danny’s usually so reliable, isn’t he? I don’t know what to think, Gem. Maybe give it until tomorrow and then report him missing? You don’t … well, I hate to ask, but you don’t think he’s got another woman, do you?’

It was something that hadn’t crossed my mind until then, and when I’d put the phone down after speaking to Eva, one of my closest friends, I swallowed hard, trying to consider the possibility. No, it just couldn’t be true. Since we’d moved to Bristol we hadn’t had a night apart until Thursday when I’d gone on my press trip, and we’d spent every second of every weekend together too, sorting out our new home. When would he have had time? We’d been pretty much inseparable most of the time before we moved too … we were still virtually newlyweds, after all. Well, not entirely inseparable; we’d obviously had the odd night apart, work trips and ‘girls’ and ‘boys’ nights out, and Danny was the type of guy who sometimes just wanted his own space, but … I shook my head. If he’d been having an affair, I’d have known, wouldn’t I? Whatever was going on, it wasn’t that. Could he have left me for some other reason though? I stood up, pulling my cashmere cardigan – the baby blue one Danny had bought me for Christmas – more tightly around me, and walked slowly from the lounge and down the corridor to the kitchen to peer out into the dark, empty yard again. Albert jumped up too and followed closely behind me, his nose butting my shins. He was almost as anxious as I was, I could see that, his doggy senses always keenly attuned to mine, and I crouched down beside him, stroking his soft head, looking into his dark brown, intelligent eyes, muttering soothing nonsense as my mind continued to race.

If Danny had left me, what possible reason could he have? And he hadn’t taken anything with him, had he? I realized with a shiver that I didn’t know. I hadn’t looked, hadn’t even thought to check. Suddenly light-headed with fear, I rushed upstairs to the bedroom, pulling open drawers, clawing at the clothes in his wardrobe, searching frantically through his bedside cabinet, not even sure what I was looking for. But everything seemed untouched, neat, there. His passport, still in the drawer where he always kept it. All his clothes, his underwear, his watch collection. No gaps, nothing missing, as far as I could tell anyway. Everything looked the way it always looked. So what was gone? Just his coat, his laptop, his tablet, the black backpack he carried them in, his bike and helmet. The usual things he’d go to work with. Everything else was still there, waiting for him, like I was. Like Albert was.

I slumped onto the unmade bed, breathing heavily, and Albert hesitated for a moment – he wasn’t usually allowed on the bed – and then clambered up to join me, seemingly correctly assuming that I was currently too distracted to tell him off.

Is Danny’s stuff all still being here a good thing or a bad thing? I didn’t know, couldn’t think straight, panic taking hold, and suddenly I felt very alone. If we’d still been in London at least I’d have had old friends nearby, people who could just pop round, people who could support me, but here, in this new city …

I took a few deep breaths, my heart racing again, and wondered if I should reconsider my decision not to burden the couple of new friends I’d made so far in Bristol with all of this. I’d met Clare on Clifton Down just days after we moved in. I’d actually arrived in the city a week before Danny, who’d had work to finish up in London before he joined me, and I’d abandoned the mountain of unpacked boxes for an hour to clear my head and give Albert a decent walk. Clare had a Standard Poodle, a white curly bundle of energy who had bounded up to Albert, nuzzled him enthusiastically and then run off again, looking coyly over her shoulder. Albert had hesitated for a moment and then raced gleefully after her, leaving me and Clare standing helplessly, leads dangling from our fingers, awaiting their return.

‘She’s called Winnie. Winnie the Poodle. Get it?’ She’d grinned, and I’d liked her immediately. Clare was tall, five eleven in her bare feet and slender as a hazel twig, with a mass of blonde curls.

‘And yes, I did choose a dog who looks just like me,’ she added.

We’d sat on a bench and chatted for a full half an hour on that first day and, when I told her I was new to Bristol and was planning to look for a yoga class somewhere nearby, she insisted I come to hers the following evening.

‘I go twice a week with my friend Tai. It’s Ashtanga and it’s quite full-on, but you feel great afterwards. And we sometimes go for a drink in the wine bar across the street when we’re done, if you fancy it?’

I did fancy it, and I’d loved the class, although I’d only returned to it twice in the few weeks since, too busy with trying to get the new house sorted out in the evenings when Danny was back from work. I’d met up with Clare and Tai – a beautiful, petite Chinese woman with an infectious laugh, who’d moved to the UK to attend university and never gone home – several times for drinks or coffee though, and I could already sense a solid friendship beginning to form. They were my kind of women, feisty and strong, kind and funny, and I could tell they liked me too. But it was still early days, and to call them and land something like this on them, to tell them my husband had suddenly gone missing and ask for their support? No, I just couldn’t.

I groaned. Where was he? And how soon could you officially report somebody, an adult, missing? Wasn’t there some rule? I dragged myself off the bed and back down to the lounge and grabbed my iPad, checking my email inbox again – empty – before doing a Google search.

No, there wasn’t a rule.

It’s a common belief that you have to wait 24 hours before reporting, but this is not true. You can make a report to the police as soon as you think a person is missing. Most people who go missing return or are found within 48 hours, with only around 1% still remaining missing after a year …

A year? Fear swirled in my stomach. But most people came back within forty-eight hours. I checked the time. Nine o’clock. That was forty-six hours then. Forty-six hours since I’d last heard from my husband.

Come on, Danny. You’ve got two hours. Be like most people. Come home. Please, Danny.

And if he wasn’t, if he didn’t come home? What then? I’d have to do it, wouldn’t I? Yes, I thought. I’d do it, first thing in the morning. I’d go to the police and report him missing.

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