Dreams of Fear

Fifteen

In Estuary Vista Close the forensic examination of number eleven had continued throughout the day. Crime scene investigators arrived and left, moving in and out of the house, sometimes carrying boxes.

Anne Barham, sitting by the window of her spare bedroom, which, like the main bathroom, faced the Ferguson’s home, had a bird’s-eye view of the driveway. She wondered idly what the boxes might contain. She read crime novels occasionally, and more frequently watched the big detective series on TV. She assumed there might be mobile phones and tablets, laptops, or even a desktop computer in them. She knew the Fergusons had an iMac desktop in their home office off the kitchen. There would be paperwork too. Maybe clothes, and shoes. What else? Anne wasn’t sure, but at least she was occupying her mind on what was proving to be a very difficult day.

She took a sip of her cappuccino, freshly prepared from her new all-singing, all-dancing coffee machine, a present for her birthday a month earlier from her daughter and son-in-law. Anne loved cappuccino. Possibly more than any sort of alcohol. Although Gerry certainly didn’t understand that. Nor anyone else much that she knew. The group of retired people who seemed to comprise the bulk of hers and Gerry’s social circle in North Devon were like expats in some ways, she thought. Desperately seeking alcohol in a bid to fill the hours left empty by retirement from jobs which no longer seemed unattractive at all, and the absence of children who had long flown the nest and were now consumed, and quite rightly so, by their own careers and families.

Anne realized that her mind was wandering. The cappuccino was wonderful. Rich and creamy. Angela and Ralph always gave her and Gerry extravagant presents. They lived in London. Ralph was an architect and Angela was a barrister, who had returned to work just a couple of months after the birth of their five-year-old son. Anne knew that their presents were intended to compensate a little for the fact that she and Gerry hardly ever seemed to see them nowadays. But Anne was inordinately fond of all three of them. And usually she didn’t mind too much. Today she so wished they lived closer, and were less busy.

She emptied the coffee cup. Ever since the arrival of the doubtless expensive machine, it had given Anne such pleasure to be able to make and enjoy a truly excellent cappuccino in her own home. Not today.

She was still getting over the events of the early hours. Actually, she wasn’t getting over it at all. And she didn’t think she ever would.

Anne had seen death before. Her mother lying stiff and grey in the bedroom of the old family home in Harrow. Her father at the undertaker’s chapel. And once, a stranger, a motorcyclist, dead and broken in the road, when she had found herself the first on the scene of a fatal traffic accident.

But she had never, ever seen anything akin to what she had so recently witnessed in the house next door.

Jane Ferguson hanging, unnaturally crooked, her face distorted and discoloured, in the hallway of her own home. Then there were the little children, finding Joanna in the road, caught in the glare of the headlights of their car, and little Stevie wandering onto the landing. Both of them disorientated. Distraught. And Anne trying so hard, yet, she felt, so ineffectually, to comfort them.

She shivered. The bedroom was cool, although that may not have been the cause. Outside the wind was getting up, and rain was now falling steadily. The glorious weather of earlier in the day had evaporated. That was North Devon for you. The CSI people, in their pale blue protective suits, were hurrying as they went about their business, hoods up, and heads down. It was probably a trick of the angle from which she was watching them, but their legs looked too small for their bodies, and seemed to be moving unnaturally fast, as if they were part of a speeded-up film sequence. Anne thought they looked like a swarm of blue plasticised ants.

She had only recently dressed properly, having spent most of the day in her dressing gown, wandering aimlessly around the house. And, most unusually, it had been a real effort to do so. But it was an effort she had ultimately made on the grounds that she would feel better. She had showered and washed her hair, applied her make-up with care, dressed nicely in her favourite silk shirt and a faux leather waistcoat over a rather good pair of Eileen Fisher trousers.

However, she didn’t feel better. She thought she would probably never feel better. And her fragile state of mind had not been helped by Gerry’s behaviour, which had actually been distinctly odd.

He had seemed fine at first. The usual supportive kind Gerry, so concerned about her after she had been confronted by Jane’s body. He had taken charge the way he usually did, phoning the police, making hot drinks for the children, whilst she calmed herself down, assuring her that he would see to everything, dealing with the arrival of the emergency services, and later Felix. Then encouraging her to go to bed, to at least try to sleep.

But almost immediately after those two detectives had left, DCI Vogel and DS Saslow, at around seven a.m., he’d retreated to his study and remained there for most of the rest of the morning.

Anne, continuing to feel truly wretched, had two or three times popped in with a cup of coffee and asked him if he wouldn’t come and sit with her for a bit. Each time he’d been bent intently over his laptop, and when he’d looked up at her he’d shut the lid.

‘I promise I’ll be with you in a minute,’ he’d said reassuringly. But he hadn’t kept that promise at all. And when she’d asked what he was doing, he had merely muttered something only half comprehensible about wanting to take his mind off everything.

She’d hovered outside the study door every so often, something she would never normally think of doing, and once heard the murmur of his voice on the phone, but he’d been speaking so quietly that she’d been unable to decipher a word that he was saying.

He finally emerged for a late lunch, but only after she had stormed into his study and told him she was going to scream and burst into tears if he didn’t come out. Then, as soon as he’d finished eating, just two or three of the sandwiches she’d prepared, he’d risen from the kitchen table and told her he was going out for a walk.

She’d broken down then, and begun to cry.

He had put his arm around her, kissed her lightly, apologized profusely and said that he just needed some fresh air, and he wouldn’t be long.

She’d reached into the pocket of her dressing gown for a paper tissue, blown her nose, told herself she was over-reacting, and tried to pull herself together. As she had been brought up to do.

‘Well, all right then, fresh air does sound like a good idea, I suppose, so why don’t I come with you?’ she’d enquired, trying to sound cheery.

‘Look, my love, I really need a little time alone to clear my head. You don’t mind, do you? I’ll be back before you know it. And you’re not even dressed yet.’

She hadn’t been dressed, of course. And she supposed she hadn’t minded. Not really. Not too much, anyway. But it was all so unlike Gerry. He was not the sort of man who needed to go for a walk to clear his head. Gerry’s head was always clear. Or so Anne had always thought, and she had been married to him for thirty-seven years. It was one of the things that she’d always loved about him. Whatever happened in life, there was Gerry, level-headed, calm, brain engaged, sorting it all out.

Some women looked for excitement, for partners who were exciting. And God knows, Gerry had never been that. But he suited Anne down to the ground. She loved her dependable man. And she’d never really had a thing to worry about since she’d married him. Gerry had invariably seen to everything.

He had even managed to assist her in producing a daughter who never gave either of them anything to worry about. A clever girl, also pretty, who launched herself with apparent ease into a near brilliant career and married a charming handsome man who was equally clever and absolutely right for her. Anne had little doubt that their son would turn out in the same mould. That was Gerry for you. He managed things right. Even his only offspring.

However, that morning, that morning of all mornings, Gerry had definitely not been like Gerry.

Anne was puzzled as well as upset. So much so, that after he left for his alleged walk — taking the car, she noticed — she gave in to her curiosity. She went to his study and jacked up the laptop, still on the desk, which had monopolized so much of his attention that day. She’d never done anything like that before. It would just not have occurred to her. Not before this awful and peculiar day. She found that the laptop was password protected. Well, there was nothing unusual or suspicious about that. She also had a laptop, though she did not often use it, and that was password protected too. The only difference was, she suddenly realized, that whilst Gerry knew her password, she had absolutely no idea what his was.

Anne had closed the laptop and walked away, asking herself what on earth she thought she was doing. This was her husband of thirty-seven years, kind, dependable Gerry, who had never given her reason to doubt him for a moment.

Or had he? Gerry was a night owl, she was an early bird. She often went to bed before him, and was aware that he might spend hours sometimes on his laptop before joining her. He played backgammon. He was a keen amateur historian and enjoyed creating his own research projects, looking into famous characters from the past, and indeed his own family. He also liked to browse YouTube, Twitter and Facebook, sites which held no interest at all for Anne.

Or is that what he did? As she sat with her coffee gazing unseeingly now at the blue ants next door, it occurred to her that she really had absolutely no idea what Gerry was doing when he spent all those hours at his computer.

He could be downloading unspeakable porn. He could be conducting some sort of weird internet affair. He could be a criminal mastermind, or an alien in human guise contacting his distant planet.

She let her imagination run riot, because it reassured her that Gerry downloading porn or having a cyber affair was no more likely than him being a criminal or an alien. And the latter two thoughts made her want to laugh. Which also made her feel just a little better.

She told herself there would be a logical explanation for his behaviour that day, because there always was with Gerry. Wasn’t there?

Then she checked her watch. Gerry had left for his little walk to clear his head just after two thirty p.m., promising that he would be back in no time. That was another promise he had totally failed to keep.

He had now been gone for more than three hours, and she had not heard from him at all. He could have gone to the yacht club for a drink, but he had the car. If he’d intended to do that he would have left the car at home.

She was becoming quite anxious. Again, it was so unlike Gerry not to keep in touch. Particularly on a day like this.

She told herself he could have gone shopping to take his mind off everything. He could have driven to Bideford, or slightly further away to Barnstaple. He could just have gone for a very long walk, along any one of the so many lovely beaches near their home, then onto the network of paths which stretched along the North Devon coast. But for over three hours? Gerry was not that sort of walker. And the weather had broken. In any case she would have expected him to call.

She had called him, of course. But he hadn’t picked up. Each time his phone rang briefly, then switched to voicemail.

She didn’t know what to do. She half wanted to call the police. She had the business card that nice DCI Vogel had given her. But he was investigating Jane Ferguson’s death. A death regarded as suspicious. And she didn’t think DCI Vogel, or any other police officer come to that, would be very interested in the case of a grown man who had been away from his home for three hours. They would think Anne was being ridiculous. A silly old woman. And when she put it into words she could fully understand that. It was what she would think about anyone else.

But this was Gerry. Her Gerry. And it just wasn’t right.

Sighing, she reached for her phone to call him one more time. Finally, he answered.