Martin Edwards - The Coffin Trail

‘Don’t reckon I have.’

‘And you can’t tell us when we may be able to speak to your wife?’

‘No.’

Hannah stood up. ‘In that case, Mr Allardyce, we won’t be troubling you any further.’

‘Thank Christ for that. I can get back to my work.’

‘For the moment, I should say.’ Hannah forced a sweet smile, hoping to provoke him. ‘For the time being, you’re quite free to carry on cleaning your car.’

‘It’s a job to be done,’ he said, as if stung. She exulted inwardly at having dented his calm. So that was his weakness. He didn’t like it to be suggested that he shirked his duties. ‘One of the many. I was up in the fields before six this morning. And you ask me where Jean is! I haven’t got the bloody time to be looking after her as well as everything else.’

‘When your wife gets back,’ Nick said, ‘can you ask her to give us a ring?’

‘Assuming she does get back,’ Hannah added.

Allardyce glowered. ‘And exactly what d’you mean by that?’

Hannah didn’t reply, just allowed her gaze to settle on the farmer, letting him exercise his imagination.

‘What do you reckon?’ Nick watched as the collie raced after the departing Mondeo, barking furiously.

‘I’d say the dog’s marginally preferable to his owner. At least with our four-legged friends, what you see is what you get. Allardyce gives nothing away.’

‘He stuck to his story about the night Gabrielle was killed. Hear no evil, see no evil. Backed up with a convenient alibi from his good lady.’

‘Not quite so convenient for him if she’s vanished.’

‘What do you make of that? Something or nothing?’

‘I wish we had tapes of those calls. Perhaps we should have set the hotline up differently. Run it into the main switchboard so that we could have automatic recording. Then we’d know if Jean Allardyce was the woman who phoned us.’

‘Wisdom of hindsight,’ Nick said. ‘Don’t reproach yourself. It’s an utter waste of energy.’

‘All right, if she is our caller, then why would she go missing? That’s what bugs me.’

‘Early days yet. According to Allardyce, it’s only a few hours since he last saw her. Barely long enough for a serious shopping trip, never mind anything more life-changing. Maybe she’s playing hookey for once in her life. For all we know, she has a secret lover lurking in Staveley or Troutbeck or somewhere.’

‘She’s not the type.’

‘Is there a type?’

Hannah gave him a sharp glance, but he was concentrating on the road ahead. ‘Anything’s possible. As I remember, she wasn’t bad looking, in a bloodless sort of way. Good complexion, I rather think she had an enviable pair of boobs, but her cardigans were so shapeless, it was hard to tell. If you ask me, the mere thought of an assignation with a lover would have scared the living daylights out of her. Quite apart from fear of what hubby would do if he found out. Did you see that dog-eared Mills and Boon next to the coffee machine? My guess is that she got her fix of romance strictly secondhand.’

‘What would have prompted her to ring the hotline, if she’d kept quiet about something important the first time around?’

‘Allardyce gave us one interesting titbit. She served Daniel Kind and his partner when they came to dine with the Dumelows. Could be Daniel said something that pricked her conscience. Especially given that she didn’t share her husband’s hostility to Barrie Gilpin.’

‘So that’s why you asked him about Ben Kind’s son?’

‘Elementary, my dear Lowther. Even though Allardyce says he’s sure that Barrie killed Gabrielle, she may have suspected there was more to the murder than met the eye. Don’t forget, if she has been keeping back important information about the case, it may have nothing to do with her husband.’

‘Her cousin Joe Dowling, then?’

‘Or Simon Dumelow.’ As their car rounded a bend, Hannah caught a fleeting glimpse of the Sacrifice Stone outlined against the sky. ‘Consider this. If she caused strife for her employer, it wouldn’t only be her job on the line. Her husband would finish up right behind her in the dole queue. That’s the sort of prospect that may have been weighing on her mind. It could explain why she told Linz that we should forget about her earlier call.’

‘Isn’t Dumelow supposed to be in a business meeting today?’

‘With his accountant in Manchester, or so he told his wife. If Jean Allardyce hasn’t turned up by tomorrow morning, I’ll ask Maggie to check him out. Has he really been closeted in some high-powered boardroom wheeler-dealing? He wouldn’t be the first man to lie to his wife about his whereabouts.’

‘You don’t think he and Jean Allardyce…?’

‘It seems unlikely he’d leave his gorgeous wife for her. But who knows?’

‘Maybe she’s just so sick of Allardyce that she’s decided to jack the marriage in.’

‘With no clue or warning? She hasn’t left any note or word of explanation. Unless he’s found one and is keeping mum.’

‘Which isn’t impossible. Anyway, in her shoes, would you want to provoke a man like Allardyce any further if you were running out on him?’

‘It might be the best chance I’d ever had. Revenge is a dish best eaten cold and all that. On the other hand, I don’t think I’d hang around to wash his towels and the kitchen floor, let alone start baking bread before I packed my bags and left.’

The minute she walked through the door of their cottage, even before she set eyes on him, she knew that Marc was in a temper. No Poirot-like powers were required to reach this conclusion; it was enough to hear her partner stomping around on the creaky upstairs floorboards. The slamming-shut of the bathroom door merely confirmed her deduction.

In the early months of their relationship, when she’d first encountered his propensity for acting like a spoiled teenager each time something didn’t go his way, she’d allowed his moods to rattle her. Eventually she’d realised this was the reaction he sought, whether or not consciously. Her most effective retaliation was to feign indifference. These days, pretence wasn’t often required; ignoring him and getting on with what she wanted to do was becoming easier all the time. As she made herself a toasted cheese sandwich, she wondered if this pattern was common to all couples. Perhaps it was a sign of maturity, that one could still love a man whilst finding his habits and behaviour a source of recurrent irritation.

She couldn’t be sure, though; this was by far the longest and most intense relationship of her adult life and she didn’t have much first-hand experience to measure it by. Her father had succumbed to prostate cancer when she was eleven and although her hazy memories suggested that her childhood belief that her parents were devoted to each other was not far off the mark, her mother had re-married within twelve months. The step-father had proved to be an alcoholic and Hannah and her elder sister hadn’t shed many tears when his liver had packed up permanently. While she’d been at university, her mother had died of pneumonia and her sister had emigrated after meeting an Italian on holiday. Isobel had divorced Silvio after a couple of years but had stayed on in Rome, teaching English as a foreign language, leaving Hannah to make her way in the police force. Apart from a couple of fellow students and (a big, big mistake that made her go cold simply to recall the gleeful gossip that her surrender provoked) a handsome but boastful fellow police cadet, she’d slept with no one but Marc. Listening to fellow women officers, she’d sometimes wondered if she was missing out. Too late to worry now. She was doomed to respectability. She was a Detective Chief Inspector.