Afternoon
Stuart had heard Angie’s story so many times, he was visualising it as a television documentary, with the appropriate fast and slow music that would accompany the reconstructed action.
I was at home one evening and about an hour after my husband had gone to work I got a visit from the police. They had come to tell me that a wall on our house in Wales had collapsed. My first words were “we haven’t got a house in Wales”. But the police were absolutely convinced they had the right person. I told them my name and they still seemed unfazed. My husband’s name – well, my ex-husband now – Michael Jones, could easily have been a coincidence. He couldn’t be the only one locally. I packed them off still believing there must be some mistake. I told them where my husband worked and suggested they go and ask him. When my husband got home the next morning I didn’t say anything straightaway. During breakfast I casually mentioned “I had the police round last night”.
“Oh yes” was his reply “and what did they want?”
“They thought we should do something about the wall that collapsed on our house, in Wales”.
“We haven’t got a house in Wales” he said.
“That’s what I told them”.
My husband smiled at me and winked. “Wish we had”.
“I told them where you worked and they said they’d come and visit you there”.
“They never did” he replied.
“I said there must be a mistake because we didn’t own a house in Wales”.
“Perhaps they realised it was their mistake” he said.
So we left it at that.
Two years later, while I was at work, I got an irate phone call from my son’s school wanting to know “Is anybody coming to pick him up?” I said my husband was supposed to be collecting him and that made me worry. Had something happened to my husband? My first concern was for my son. I was very angry about the situation I’d found myself in. My husband knew I always worked late on a Thursday? Later on that night my husband still hadn’t come home. If they’d called him in or asked him to stay on he’d have rung me, wouldn’t he? He never forgot about Liam being at school. You’re probably asking why I didn’t phone him at work as soon as I got in. I was trying to keep everything calm for Liam because of the constant questions he kept asking. I keep having flashbacks of what I should’ve done. The moment I’d got home I should have phoned him at work and asked “what the hell are you playing at?” Somehow I just knew something was terribly wrong, don’t ask me why. Intuition I guess and I must have been in a state of shock as well.
But there was worse to come. The next morning my boss rang me to ask if everything was okay, his polite way of asking “why aren’t you in work?”
There and then I clicked out of this daze. I rang my husband’s workplace and asked them to page him. He was there!
“What do you mean where have I been?” he asked.
“I’ve been here all the time. I was on call last night. I’m on call again tonight. Did you forget?”
“But you were going to pick Liam up from school yesterday”.
“No I wasn’t” he snapped.
He was acting like I was the one going silly. I could hear girly twittering in the background. Someone at his work obviously thought this was very funny. I instantly remembered what a friend had said to me about him once:
“His good telephone manners didn’t impress me. They just told me that somebody else was listening in and his intention was to get me off the phone as soon as”.
“Excuse me, yes you were” I said. “You always do on a Thursday”.
“And I told you that this week I couldn’t because I was on call”.
Do you know, I started feeling like I wasn’t even talking to my husband? But it also felt like he didn’t know who he was talking to or he was speaking for the benefit of someone listening in. At that point I just slammed the phone down. Suddenly I remembered about the house in Wales and I thought “is that’s where he’s been?”
My husband left me. I never saw him again, apart from in court. He’d been having an affair, which explained a few other incidents. He DID have a house in Wales. The police HAD visited him at work on that evening. He’d also got married to someone else while he was still married to me”.
The woman looked very shocked.
“Now then Angie, this is Anne’s story” he said pointing to the open magazine.
“Let’s have a suggestion from you”.
Angie scanned the story. She was brilliant at speed reading.
“I don’t believe your husband’s dead. I think he had it all set up” said Angie.
“Do you know anything about his family?”
“He didn’t have any” the woman replied.
“How old was he when you met him?” Angie asked.
“Nineteen.”
“No parents?”
“No”.
“No brothers and sisters?”
“He was an only child”.
“Any cousins?”
“No”.
“Aunties and uncles?”
“None”.
“So his mother was an only child and his father was an only child then?” said Angie. Stuart sensed that Angie didn’t quite believe this. It all seemed a bit too convenient.
“He never knew his father. His mother raised him single-handed with help from her parents”.
“Who, don’t bother telling me, are both dead. Yes?” said Angie.
“Yes” said the woman.
“So he must have had a very good inheritance?”
“He got something, but it was held in trust. He was never able to have the whole lot at once, just a little bit at a time”.
Perhaps realising how this might have sounded she quickly added “It wasn’t a lot by today’s standards. It was about thirty grand. He also had the house, but there was some agreement that it wasn’t legally his until he was forty. I think, so that he couldn’t sell it”.
“Right Anne” said Stuart.
“I’m not going to charge you for this appointment. It’s pointless me taking this case up. I’ve got absolutely nothing to go on”.
He turned the computer screen round.
“This is all the public record that exists. What’s most notable is that no National Insurance has been paid since December 1997. Legal status is missing presumed dead, legally declared dead in 2005. There’s no other employment ever, no other addresses obviously”.
This procedure usually killed any suspicions that a person was still alive.
“You still don’t believe that he’s dead?”
Clearly the woman didn’t.
“Well I don’t either. But I don’t know how we will ever be able to find him?”
Stuart forced a smile.
“You know I got very annoyed once when I used a private investigator. Allegedly an expert who had access to almost everything, but very obviously didn’t. He asked me to provide all the following about my missing person”.
Stuart reeled off the following list, from memory, as if bored in a voice that suggested really low intelligence.
“What was his wife’s name? What were his children’s names? Where did they go to school? What were his parents’ names? Where did they live?”
Then in a more severe voice he said
“All details HE should have been able to find out. If I’d been able to answer all those questions, I wouldn’t have been asking for his help would I? One look on the National Database would have found him, that’s the first place he should have been looking. He wasn’t a professional. Maybe he knew the guy and had some agenda of his own”.
Angie stepped back and mouthed something at Stuart to say she had to leave the meeting. Faintly he could hear a phone or a pager vibrating in Angie’s pocket.
“You know what I’d do” said Stuart.
“Why don’t you stick a posting on a website, get a Hotmail address but don’t get into the emotional blubbering”.
In a whiney voice that mimicked pathetic desperation Stuart said “I’m his wife and he left me”. Then in a normal voice he said
“Just stick your posting up with a false name. Say you’re an old school friend and you often wondered what happened to him and you’d love to get in touch. Stick a posting on Friends Reunited at his school with the same identity. Usual bollocks, say married twenty eight years, two children and three grandchildren, worked for the same company for seventeen years. Now work part-time as an optician’s receptionist”.
Stuart forced an even more exaggerated smile.
“Don’t take any replies you get too seriously and DON’T pay any money to anyone. ESPECIALLY those saying they’ve found him and can set up a meet but hold you to ransom for the information”.
Stuart looked at her. This time he appeared genuinely kind.
“When you get any replies bring them in to me and I’ll have a look at them before you do anything”.
“What will I owe you?”
“Let’s see if you get any replies, then we’ll worry about fees”.
Stuart opened his desk and took out two leaflets and a business card. One leaflet was entitled “Missing?” the other “Reborn in the UK or abroad?”
“I want you to take these home with you and read them. Call me if you have any questions”.
He stood up, indicating the meeting was at an end. After shaking his hand and walking out of the office Stuart called out to her.
“One bit of advice for you Anne, there’s a lot of people out there who will take your money off you saying they can help. Do you hear what I’m saying?”
The woman nodded, she’d got the message loud and clear, and then she was on her way.
The phone rang. Stuart picked up the telephone receiver.
“Hi Stuey” said a young girlish voice. “It’s Wendy”.
“Sue’s just popped out to get a sandwich, she’ll ring you when she gets back but she asked me to give you a call. How did you get on with that dreadful woman?”
“She hasn’t got a clue about anything”.
“What have you done, pointed her in the wrong direction?”
“I’ve given her a direction” said Stuart firmly.
“What was the database number of this person?”
“9090196”.
“He wasn’t a real person. I can tell you that without even checking. I expect he was generated by her parents? Any message you want passed on?”
“She’s a wreck”.
“She’s also a very wealthy lady” said Wendy resentfully.
“She’s got all his assets, his pension and his life assurance”.
“At least he ensured she was provided for. Maybe that’s no compensation”.
“He always knew this day would come. She didn’t. You did us proud Stuey. I was listening to your conversation. Angie had the wires on”.
“There was me thinking maybe his father might be the key to his whereabouts or he was mummified in a chimney breast. Any worries?”
“Nah, I loved it when Angie was asking about his family. The article sounded so lovey-dovey I wanted to puke”.
“Indeed. Right I’m going”.
“Alright”.
“Cheers Wendy”.
Stuart’s first afternoon client was a police investigator called Jale. A woman in her fifties and of which ethnic origin Stuart was never sure, other than as he always put it “and she’s as British as I am”. If one wanted to be derogatory, you might say “mumsie’s the word”. Not someone you would have looked at and thought “police”. Someone you would imagine out walking the dog down country lanes and pushing children on playground swings. Yet she never seemed shocked by anything Stuart said. The case she was involved in was well remembered. Married woman vanished one day while out doing her daughter’s paper round. Stuart had always wondered why the daughter wasn’t doing the paper round herself. Was mum trying to prevent her from getting the sack or was her daughter having problems getting money out of the customers on Saturdays? So wouldn’t the simple answer have been to just stop delivering the papers to the delinquent customers? Mum had met two of her daughter’s school friends while making deliveries. She stopped and chatted while she walked part of the way with them. She talked about her daughter and husband going to a pop concert that night and when she got home she was going to put her feet up in front of the telly with a large pot of tea and a box of cream cakes. She then rode off and was never seen again. When the two girls were crossing the railway embankment bridge, the bike, which should have been on the scrap heap, was neatly stood up against a lamp-post. The bag of papers stood on the ground like mum had just thought “sod it” and walked away leaving it there.
“I wondered when this little chestnut would come up again?” said Stuart.
“I had an enquiry out on this one about three years ago”.
“Who by?” said Jale.
“Your little friends: The twats that visited this morning”.
“Yes” said Jale. “I’ve heard about that, I’m sorry”.
“The reason they visited was because of the daughter”.
“Who doesn’t believe her mum’s dead”.
“Exactly, except the daughter disappeared twenty-nine years ago as well. She’d be forty-two now”.
There was a long silence.
“Mum’s never been legally declared dead and neither has the daughter” said Stuart.
“I thought she would have been after all this time”.
“Well, it wasn’t that straightforward” said Stuart.
“Interesting things came out about the husband after that. He was a sales rep supplying electronic equipment for hospitals. Cardiac monitors, infusion equipment, small scanners you know the sort of thing”.
“I really thought the husband had done them both over. He blamed one well-known killer, who says he didn’t do it” said Jale.
“So why have you come to see me again?”
“A well-known killer’s a convenient peg to stick this on”.
“And?” said Stuart.
“We’ve always wondered, what if he really was telling the truth?”
“Is that likely?” said Stuart.
“That could put the husband back in the frame.”
“I remember this case when I was at college” said Stuart.
“I’ve often wondered if the paper round gave her an excuse to get away from her husband. It removes the attention from it all being planned. She wasn’t expecting to meet the school friends, but they wouldn’t have expected her to ignore them. At the bottom of the embankment bridge someone was waiting for her in a car. She left the bike expecting, as happened, that the girls looked around the immediate area wondering if she was nearby, buying her valuable getaway time. The girls didn’t know what to do, so they went to the police. The police couldn’t get the husband because he wasn’t at home. By the time the husband knew, the woman was miles away IF that’s what really happened. The next day the police interviewed the daughter at the station and she “disappeared” on the way home. The daughter’s father went to the police station to pick her up and she’d “already gone”. He went berserk, ranted and raved, never knowing why they let his daughter walk home alone, if they really did. He’s still alive to this day and mentally screwed up, allegedly. Married and divorced a further four times. Each time to “a loving wife” who has helped him “get over losing a wife and a daughter”, until they got fed up with him keeping on about it. In my experience when people keep banging on about “the loving wife” they’re usually anything but”.
Jale looked exhausted from this dialogue.
“I don’t believe I’m telling you anything you don’t already know” said Stuart.
“Sometimes that’s what we want to hear”.
“Okay” said Stuart. “I think mum’s under a new ID”.
“A year ago the daughter came to see me, complete with head-scarf”.
“Do you know the daughter’s new name?” asked Jale.
“Of course I don’t”, said Stuart, “and she wouldn’t have told me. You know the answer to that one if she’s really being protected”.
“The girl that came to see you might not have been the daughter. She might have been the father’s step-daughter”.
“Which did cross my mind” said Stuart.
“That’s why our databases never cross-match. Just in case of accidents”.
“What about National Database?”
“What National Database can see, again in case of accidents, cross-matches backwards but not forwards”.
“Meaning?” the officer asked
“She said her name had been Louise Daley, but it wasn’t her name anymore. If they searched Louise Daley, that’s all they would find. They could only match that record on National Database if they searched on her new name. But that facility isn’t available on the public access version”.
“What can the public access?” asked Jale.
“The public are only allowed very supervised access. They can only ask if a person exists, yes or no, and that’s it” said Stuart.
“Any other information, they’d have to prove relationship and have a very good reason for asking”.
“She never baulked on any questions?”
“No, but she might have been very well primed by her step-father”.
Stuart opened the desk drawer and took out his first cigarette of the week. He handed one to Jale, assuming that she smoked.
“The more I’ve thought about this case, the more things didn’t stack up. You see, none of the publicity photographs used of the daughter were recent. They all showed a happy schoolgirl with shorter, neater, hair”.
Stuart got up and walked to a filing cabinet and pulled out one of the press cuttings.
“People seem to have forgotten about this. The last ever photo taken”.
He dropped it on the table and sat down again.
“Does that look like “a loving relationship” between father and daughter to you?”
Stuart lit his cigarette.
“She looks very uncomfortable in that photo”.
“Maybe she didn’t like having her photo taken” said the Jale.
“Possibly, but often people get photos taken to create illusions. How many sham marriages have loads of photos taken to provide, and I quote, “evidence of history of their relationship if questions were asked at a later date?”
He paused to light his cigarette.
“Everybody forgets that Mummy Daley was actually Louise’s step-mother, Daddy Daley was on his second wife by then. Louise’s real mum lived in the Cotswolds. I don’t know why Louise lived with her step-mother and her dad as oppose to her mum. Maybe it had something to do with keeping her at the same school”.
Jale nodded.
“It wasn’t the norm for dads to get custody” Stuart continued.
“Unless mum was deemed unfit which the first Mrs Daley very clearly wasn’t”. He tapped his cigarette very hard over the ashtray once.
“Sometimes the child’s wishes are taken into account” said Jale.
“Yeah, I know” said Stuart “But Louise must have been very young when her mum divorced and her dad remarried. Her dad was always “vague” about specifics”.
That quote had been bandied about in many newspapers for years.
“The reason why came out four years after Louise and her mum vanished. His second marriage was already on the rocks before his wife vanished. He’d been having a relationship with his step-daughter, who was nearly twenty, when Louise disappeared. According to his first wife, before his second wife “disappeared” she was about to start divorce proceedings.
Stuart took two good draws on the cigarette, inhaling deeply and blowing the smoke out intensely. Stuart was not comfortable with smoking. The next draw he took was so intense it made him start coughing.
“That’ll teach you” said Jale.
“I’ve just had an awful thought” said Stuart “I wonder if the daughter and the step-daughter are really the same person?”
He coughed again and another coughing fit followed. He stubbed the half-smoked cigarette out very abruptly.
“You’re a disaster” said Jale, smiling and half laughing.
Stuart coughed a few more times. Finally it seemed like the coughing fit had stopped.
“Could the step-mother and the real mother be the same person as well?” said Jale.
Stuart shrugged.
“Has anyone ever thought of that?”
“Maybe Dad was innocent all along then” said Stuart.
The final client was enquiring about a man called Phil. A girl called Jenny, who had known him years ago, had written to the last address she had. A year later he sent her an e-mail. But she’d never been able to meet up with him again. Always excuses why he couldn’t ever meet. Yet his e-mails always read as if he had met her and was reassuring her that a further meet was imminent.
Again Stuart knew where this was going. On his desk lay a selection of printouts taken from the internet.
“Well this is what I found out about you from the internet”.
He offered the printout. It told the world that Jenny lived in Colne Close and was a great fan of Eva Cassidy.
“Do you think it’s really Phil that’s been responding to your e-mails?”
Jenny looked puzzled.
“Why do you ask?”
“If it’s taken a whole year to respond to your first letter in donkey’s years” Stuart paused. “But in the scheme of things I could also say that’s no big deal”.
“I’m wondering if someone that knew him has researched you and it’s them writing to you in his place. It’s taken them this long to research you enough to write convincingly.”
The girl looked like she was going to be sick.
“There are some strange people out there” said Stuart.
Once again he tapped the name into the computer. A whole stream of information came up on screen. For the first time today, surprisingly for Stuart, he looked shocked.
“Why did you want to get in contact with him again?” he asked.
“I don’t know, I just wondered what he would look like after all these years”.
“Are you sure that’s it? Did he leave you holding anything?”
“Holding anything?” said Jenny.
“A baby!” said Stuart coldly.
