Left You Dead

10

An hour later, shortly after 10.15 a.m., with still no sign of Eden, he ate a few mouthfuls of cereal, called her mobile once more — no dice — and then her direct work line. It went to voicemail. Next, he called the main switchboard of the Mutual Occidental Insurance Company and, when it was answered, asked if the operator could locate his wife, telling her he’d already tried her direct line.

After putting him on hold while she tried several different departments where Eden might be, the woman told him that no one had seen her yet, although, she added helpfully, she had been expected in for an 8.30 a.m. meeting.

Niall thanked her and ended the call. Shit. He tried to think back clearly to yesterday afternoon. But his mind was in turmoil. Cat litter. Was he going crazy? They’d been squabbling in the car, hadn’t they, just petty stuff? He’d dropped her off at Tesco to buy cat litter. Hadn’t he?

His nerves were in tatters. He took an energy drink from the fridge and downed it. Just as he finished, a text pinged in on his phone. Eden? He looked at it and saw to his dismay it was from her mother.

Time to call the police, he decided. But on what number? Two weeks ago, a drunk shitbag he’d picked up in his cab in the centre of Brighton, who he’d driven to north of Gatwick Airport, had done a runner on him in a Redhill housing estate, leaving him with forty quid on the meter. He’d called the police 101 non-emergency number the following morning to report it. It had been seventeen minutes before it was answered. He’d been assured by the operator to whom he gave the details that someone would be in touch. But no one had.

To hell with that.

He dialled 999.

It was answered on the third ring. ‘Emergency, which service, caller?’

‘Police, please.’

There was a brief wait, then he heard a polite, assured voice.

‘Sussex Police, how may I help you?’

‘Hi,’ he said. ‘I’m worried that something’s happened to my wife. She’s disappeared.’

‘May I have your name and address, please, sir?’

He gave the details to her.

The call handler asked him for his wife’s name, age, date of birth and address, which he gave her, struggling for a moment to remember whether Eden had been born on 2 or 3 March 1988. He settled on 3 March.

‘Can you please give me a full description of your wife and the clothes she was wearing when you last saw her?’

He repeated the description he’d given to the security guy at the store the day before, adding in a few extra details. ‘She’s thirty-one, five seven, shoulder-length, straight brown hair, wearing a pink T-shirt and white shorts.’ Then, remembering, he suddenly realized he’d given the security man a wrong description. She’d been wearing her hair up yesterday, pulled back and clipped into a kind of bun, the way she wore it when she couldn’t be bothered to wash it. He corrected the description to the call handler.

Continuing, sounding as if she might be reading from a script, she asked Niall what he thought might have happened, and if he could describe in as much detail as possible the circumstances of her disappearance.

He told her all he knew.

Next, sounding even more like she was working off a script, she asked him for information about her family, friends and work colleagues.

He answered in as much detail as he could.

When he had exhausted the list, she asked him, ‘Does your wife have any previous history of disappearing?’

‘No, never.’

‘She’s never gone missing before?’

‘No— OK, she did do something about a year ago, when we’d had a row. She went into a supermarket and bumped into a friend, and asked her to give her a lift home, leaving me waiting in the car. She did that just to get back at me.’

There was a pause, during which he heard the tapping of keys. Then she asked, ‘Was that just a one-off situation?’

‘Yes.’

‘Do you and your wife argue often?’

‘No... no more than any other couple.’

More tapping of keys, then, ‘Does your wife have any history of mental health problems?’

‘No, none.’

‘Has she ever self-harmed?’

‘Self-harmed? Like cutting herself, do you mean?’

‘Any instance where she might have deliberately injured herself?’

‘Absolutely not,’ he said.

There was a brief silence, punctuated with more key tapping, then she asked, ‘Has your wife, Eden, ever talked about suicide with you? Have you ever considered her a suicide risk?’

‘No, no way.’

‘So you wouldn’t consider it a possibility?’

Niall nearly shouted at the woman. ‘Not remotely. I cannot in a million years believe she would do that. And all we’d been bloody arguing about was cat litter. You think she’d go and kill herself over cat litter?’

There was no response for a moment. Just the sound of a keyboard again. Then the woman said, ‘If you can remain where you are, sir, I’ll dispatch a unit to you as soon as possible.’

‘Sure,’ Niall said. ‘I’m not going anywhere. How long do you think that will be?’

‘I’ll do my best to get a car to you within the next hour. If anything changes in the meanwhile, please call us back.’

Niall said he would.