Dead in the Dark

11

The road twisted and turned constantly on the way from Baslow into Bakewell. They called this stretch Thirteen Bends. Cooper thought there might actually be fewer than thirteen, but he’d never managed to count them, being too busy steering his car round one sharp curve after another.

He drove down the hill past the Peak District National Park headquarters and arrived in the centre of the town near the visitor centre and the Old Original Bakewell Pudding Shop, with the Rutland Arms hotel looking out over a little square.

Bakewell was only a small town. Its permanent population was about four thousand, but in the summer it was full of visitors. It was also the market town for the surrounding area. On cattle market days the streets were thronged, the car parks packed. Busiest of all were the two days of the Bakewell Show early in August. The police station here no longer had a front counter and wasn’t open to the public, though some officers were still based here.

A few miles down the A6 from here was the wonderful Haddon Hall, one of his favourite places to visit, when he had time.

The Bowers’ home was on Aldern Way, a curving cul-de-sac on the edge of Bakewell, with views across to Chatsworth estate in one direction, and down over the town in the other. The spire of All Saints Church stood out clearly on the skyline.

The house was a stone-built three-bedroom detached with two short driveways down from the road and an attached garage. The driveway Cooper and Villiers used was short, but steep. An iron rail had been placed to assist in icy conditions.

Naomi Heath was aged in her thirties, so must have been ten or twelve years younger than her partner. She had short blonde hair and wide cheekbones, and she’d used make-up to disguise dark shadows under her eyes. She was dressed in jeans and a T-shirt, and was clutching a mobile phone in her hand.

‘The postman slipped on the ice once and bruised his arm,’ she said when she saw Carol Villiers holding on to the rail. ‘Reece got worried about being sued in some personal injury claim. So he installed the rails and we buy bags of grit in the winter. “Better safe than sorry”, he always says.’

Cooper showed his warrant card.

‘Naomi Heath? Detective Inspector Cooper from Edendale CID. This is Detective Constable Villiers. We’d like to speak to you about Mr Bower.’

‘Oh, are you taking an interest after all? I got the impression no one really cared. Because Reece is who he is, I suppose.’

Cooper didn’t respond to the taunt.

‘Miss Heath, do you have any idea where Mr Bower is now?’

‘None at all.’

A small porch led to an inner PVC door with obscured windows. A combined lounge and dining room had windows to the front and rear to take advantage of the spectacular views. From the dining area, a hatchway opened from the kitchen. Cooper glimpsed oak units, a gas range, and another window with a westerly view.

They had gas-fired central heating here, which he couldn’t get at his cottage in Foolow. They probably needed it in the winter too.

‘As a matter of fact, we’re all very concerned about Reece,’ said Naomi. ‘Something must have happened. He wouldn’t just have run off like this.’

‘When was the last time you were in contact with Mr Bower?’ asked Cooper.

‘Before he left, of course. It was on Sunday, the day before yesterday. During the morning he packed an overnight bag, and he went off with it at about eleven o’clock.’

‘What did he say to you when he left?’

‘He said he was going away and I might not see him for some time.’

‘Have you noticed any change in his behaviour recently?’

‘He was a bit more moody than usual, perhaps,’ she said.

‘Had you been arguing before he left?’

‘Reece had got angry the previous night. He’d knocked back quite a few drinks — he likes his malt whisky a bit too much, you know. He said a lot of things, but I’m used to it. I usually just let it go, and he forgets about it next morning.’

‘What was the argument about?’

She shook her head. ‘It wasn’t an argument, exactly. He gets upset about things. And because I’m here, it’s as if I’m to blame for it all. Do you understand what I mean?’

‘I think so.’

‘He’d been having problems at work. A lot of it I couldn’t even grasp. I think he was under pressure from his manager on one hand, and getting hassle from some of the employees on the other.’

‘What sort of hassle?’ asked Cooper.

‘Oh, I don’t know. I just think it was something that someone said to him at work.’

‘What did they say to him?’

‘He wouldn’t tell me. He can be reticent like that at times.’

‘Mr Bower is secretive?’

Naomi shook her head. ‘No, just a bit uncommunicative. When things are really bothering him, he tends to keep them to himself.’

‘So you think Mr Bower had enough of it and decided to get away for a while?’

‘That was the impression I had. He wouldn’t tell me any more. It was as if he’d made some decision and wasn’t going to talk about it.’

‘And you really haven’t heard from him since?’ asked Cooper. ‘No phone calls, not even a text message?’

‘No, nothing. That’s what worried me. I can understand him wanting to be on his own for a while, but he would have got in contact by now, I’m sure. I expected him to be back on Monday, to go to work. But it’s been two nights now, without a word. That’s just not right.’

‘Did he take a mobile phone with him?’

‘As far as I know. He always has his iPhone on him.’

‘We’ll need the number.’

‘Fine.’

‘Didn’t Mr Bower give you any hint at all about where he was going?’ put in Villiers.

‘No.’

‘But you must have some possibilities in mind.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Some idea of where he would go, if he wanted to disappear or be on his own for a while. People normally go to a location they know quite well. Somewhere their family or friends live, perhaps. Their old home town, or just a place they went on holiday once...’

Naomi shook her head. ‘I don’t know. I can’t think where he would go.’

Cooper sighed. They weren’t really getting anywhere with her.

‘We’ll need the addresses of all Mr Bower’s family, and any particular friends he might have gone to.’

‘All right, I’ll get them,’ she said.

Cooper looked at Villiers as Naomi got up and left the room. Villiers nodded at a display of photographs on a corner table. Holiday snaps, Reece and Naomi smiling at the camera with a blue sea and sunlit rooftops in the background.

‘The Mediterranean,’ said Cooper. ‘That’s no good. He wouldn’t have risked crossing the border.’

‘There’s one on a caravan site,’ said Villiers. ‘Looks quite recent. Maybe they couldn’t afford a foreign holiday this year.’

‘Can you see—’ began Cooper.

But Villiers was ahead of him. She’d already eased the photo out of the plastic pocket and turned it over.

‘Bridlington,’ she said, as she slipped it back.

Naomi came back into the room with an address book. ‘I’ve marked the family members and his closest friends. There aren’t many of those, just a few golfing buddies.’

‘We’ll also need the number of his mobile phone so we can track it. His bank account details, particularly debit and credit cards. And please make a list of the clothes he was wearing and what he took with him in his overnight bag, if you can.’

‘I can do that.’

Cooper paused. ‘Miss Heath,’ he said, ‘it’s impossible for us to assess Mr Bower’s state of mind. Since you were the last person to speak to him, do you think there’s a possibility he might have intended to harm himself?’

‘No, not at all—’ She’d begun to shake her head automatically, but stopped abruptly. ‘Well, I can’t deny it’s crossed my mind. Normally I wouldn’t say Reece was the type of man to do something like that. Even if he isn’t happy in his job, he has his family here. We have two children, for heaven’s sake. He has all that to live for. But who can say, really? There’s no way to see inside someone else’s head and tell what they’re thinking.’

‘No, that’s quite true.’

And Cooper meant that sincerely. He’d often wished there was a way of seeing inside someone’s head and learning what they were thinking. He was wishing it now. He would love to know what Naomi Heath really thought about the disappearance of her partner. The only thing he was sure of was that she wasn’t telling him everything.

‘How long have you two been together?’ asked Villiers.

‘About four years.’

‘And you have children?’

Naomi Heath smiled. ‘Yes, we’re one of those complicated families.’

‘Complicated?’

‘I have a son from a previous marriage. His name is Joshua. And Reece and I have a younger son together, Daniel. And of course Reece has a daughter from his marriage.’

‘That would be Lacey,’ said Cooper, recalling the detail from the files.

‘Yes, Lacey. So, you see — it’s complicated.’

‘Your previous marriage—’ began Villiers.

‘We were divorced,’ replied Naomi quickly. ‘It didn’t work out. We separated not long after Joshua was born. He’s nine now.’

‘There must be quite a difference in age between Lacey and Daniel.’

‘Thirteen years. Lacey is a young woman. She doesn’t live with us any more. She’s eighteen now, and she’s at college. She doesn’t really want to be bothered with small children.’

Cooper nodded. He could see how the relationships in this family might be quite complicated. So Lacey didn’t want to be bothered with her step- and half-brothers? But how did she feel about her stepmother, the person who’d taken her own mother’s place and claimed her father’s affections? That could be one of the most difficult and complicated relationships of all.

‘Miss Heath,’ he said, ‘I have to ask you: I assume you know about what happened ten years ago — the disappearance of Mr Bower’s wife?’

‘Yes, of course I know. In fact, I already knew about it when I met Reece. It had been in all the papers. It was big news in this area. But Reece made a point of telling me about it anyway. He didn’t want there to be any secrets between us.’

No secrets? Cooper thought that was unlikely. But it was the sort of thing that people said to each other, especially in the early days of a relationship.

‘Did he say what he thought had happened to his wife?’

‘He said he didn’t know, any more than anyone else did. He’s always felt that way.’

‘A witness claimed to have seen her alive,’ said Cooper.

‘I know. This must sound strange, Detective Inspector Cooper, but that was one of things that upset Reece the most. He’d begun to harden himself to the fact that Annette was probably dead. Then, to have the possibility raised that she was still alive, was hard for him to take. It means, of course, that she disappeared deliberately and has not been in touch for more than ten years. Reece has no idea what he did to deserve that treatment.’

‘On the other hand, it was that witness statement which resulted in the case against Mr Bower being dropped.’

Naomi smiled coldly. ‘It’s a difficult one to understand, isn’t it? None of us can imagine how we would feel in those circumstances. I’m just telling you what I gathered from Reece. He’s always been conflicted about it, but I think that betrayal by his wife was harder to bear than the prospect of a conviction for a murder.’

‘I see.’

‘By the way, I’m really Mrs Heath,’ she said. ‘I kept my husband’s name after the divorce. A lot of my friends thought I was mad, but I did it for Joshua’s sake. He was already at school by then. It didn’t seem fair to change his name or give myself a different surname from him. It would just have confused him more, and he was upset enough after the separation.’

She turned to Cooper and gestured out of the front window at the other houses in Aldern Way.

‘I do get called Mrs Bower, though,’ she said. ‘Some of our neighbours have only moved into the area in the past few years, and they have no idea about what happened ten years ago.’

‘So they don’t know you aren’t married? And they don’t know about the court case?’

‘No. Life is complicated enough, isn’t it? I’d hate having to explain it to everyone I met in the street.’

Cooper followed her gaze out of the window, the trimmed hedges and neat conifers, the well-mown lawns and integrated garages. So there were secrets, after all. That was no surprise.

Then he turned the other way. The back garden of the Reece Bower’s house looked neat and bursting with colour. Beds of dahlias and carnations were in flower, a couple of apple trees were growing heavy with fruit, planters were filled with petunias and begonias.

‘Reece said the police dug this garden up ten years ago,’ said Naomi. ‘And they didn’t find a thing.’

‘No signs of Annette, anyway.’

Cooper was thinking about Lacey Bower, eighteen years old now. It was difficult enough handling a relationship with a stepmother. But what if she really wasn’t a stepmother at all? Not legally, anyway. It might be tempting for an embittered teenager to regard the interloper as temporary, someone who could be separated from her father at some point in the not too distant future. In Cooper’s experience, teenagers were capable of anything. They hadn’t learned to control some of the most powerful emotions — hatred and jealousy, the feeling of betrayal.

‘Is there anyone you can think of who might want to harm Mr Bower?’ asked Villiers.

‘No, no one.’

It was a standard question, but the answer came too quickly. It always did. People thought they were so likeable that nobody could possibly hate them enough to harm them. It was rarely true.

‘And what about you?’ said Cooper.

She frowned. ‘What about me?’

‘Is there anyone who would want to harm you, Mrs Heath?’

‘What sort of question is that, Inspector? It’s Reece who’s disappeared. No harm has come to me. I don’t understand.’

‘Losing your partner would seem to have caused you some harm,’ said Cooper calmly. ‘Don’t you think so?’

She shook her head. ‘I don’t know what you’re suggesting. It doesn’t make sense.’

‘All right.’

He could see she was beginning to get annoyed now. Her fingers fiddled with a spoon from the table, her knuckles whitening as if she was trying to bend it like Uri Geller.

‘I hope you’re doing something to find Reece,’ she said, ‘rather than just coming here asking me all these meaningless questions.’

‘Of course we are.’

‘I’m really very worried that something has happened to him. He wouldn’t just have gone off like this.’

‘Yes, you said that.’

But she hadn’t quite said that, had she? A few minutes ago, she’d said ‘We’re all worried about Reece’. Now, when the same sentiment came out under pressure, it had become ‘I’m worried about Reece’. One sounded like the proper thing to say. The other sounded more like the truth.

‘He may get in touch,’ said Villiers.

Naomi Heath turned to her, a sudden spark of something in her eyes. Hope? Excitement? A challenge?

‘Do you really think so?’ she said.

‘Yes. I can’t help thinking he’ll be in touch soon, when he’s got whatever it is out of his system.’

‘I hope you’re right,’ she said.

‘We’d better get back to the office now and see what progress is being made,’ said Cooper, hoping she didn’t recognise a lie. There would have been no progress, since there wasn’t really an inquiry.

‘Yes, perhaps you should.’

Cooper followed Villiers back up the drive to the road. Of course Reece Bower couldn’t have married Naomi Heath if he’d wanted to. They could only marry if Annette was officially declared dead. And since the case against him was dropped because of evidence she was alive, how could that be? It was the possibility Annette was alive that was keeping him out of prison. And it was also preventing him from getting married again to the woman he now loved.

A living, breathing first wife was both a salvation and a hindrance.