ease, noticing that despite her obvious distress she’d made an effort with her appearance, a slick of crimson lipstick matching the oversized red leather bag on her knee, her smart black wool coat accessorised with a leopard print scarf draped around the neck.
‘And you want to report a missing person? Your husband?’ she said.
Gemma nodded.
‘Yes. His name is Danny. Full name Daniel Ignatius O’Connor.’ She grimaced slightly. ‘His parents are Irish, Catholic. Ignatius is some obscure saint, apparently.’
Helena smiled again.
‘I got Muriel as my middle name, after my grandmother. I feel his pain. Go on.’
Gemma gave her a small smile back, then took a deep breath.
‘Right, well, I was away on a business trip on Thursday night; we had breakfast together that morning, and last thing that night he emailed me to say goodnight. When I got home on Friday evening he wasn’t there, and I thought at first he’d just had to work late, because he sometimes does, you know? Has to pull an all-nighter. But I couldn’t get hold of him, and when I woke up on Saturday morning, yesterday, and he still wasn’t home and I still couldn’t contact him I started to panic. I spent all day calling everyone I could think of, his work, the hospitals, friends … even took Albert out and we walked along his route to work, to see if I could find him, in case something had happened. That sounds silly, I know, but he cycles to work, and this is just not like him, not at all, and he hasn’t taken anything with him, just his bike and his laptop and the usual stuff he’d go to work with, and now it’s Sunday and I still can’t get hold of him and I’m just … I’m just so scared …’ Her voice cracked, and her eyes filled with tears.
Helena, feeling for the woman but still wondering why Devon had asked her to leave her double murder investigation for this, looked around for tissues, saw a box on a side table and got up to retrieve it.
Offering it to Gemma, she said gently: ‘OK, try not to get upset. We’ll need to take some more details, if that’s all right, and then we can start looking into it for you. But there’s every chance he’ll turn up in a day or so, most missing people do, OK? So take a breath, and then we’ll do a bit of paperwork. Who’s Albert, by the way? Your son?’
Gemma, who’d ignored the proffered tissues and had started fumbling in her handbag, looked up with a surprised expression and shook her head.
‘Oh, sorry, no! We don’t have kids yet, we’ve only been married less than a year. Albert’s our dog. He’s a black Miniature Schnauzer. Bit like a child though, I suppose. They’re super clever.’
Helena smiled.
‘Ahh, I see. Cute dogs, yes. A friend of mine has one.’
Gemma, who was rooting in her handbag again, didn’t seem to be listening.
‘Where is it, dammit! This bag … sorry. I wasn’t sure what you’d need, but I thought a photo …’
She raised her eyes to Helena, finally pulling an envelope from her bag and sliding a picture out of it.
‘I showed your colleague here when he came down earlier. I don’t know why I put it away again, I can never find anything in this stupid bag at the best of times. This is the first one I could find. I’m in it too as it’s a wedding photo, obviously, but I can get you a better one, one of him on his own, later, I have loads on my phone, I just need to look through them and find a good one, but I thought you might need a hard copy one and I just wanted to get the ball rolling, do something …’
Her words came out in a rush, tumbling over each other, and she stopped talking abruptly, eyes still glistening with tears. Devon reached out and took the photograph, placing it on the table between himself and Helena.
‘Thanks, Gemma. Guv, take a look.’
He looked meaningfully at Helena, and she glanced at the photo, then looked again, properly. Shit. SHIT. Now she understood. Her stomach lurched. There was Gemma, glowingly pretty in a simple white satin shift dress, hair piled high in an elaborate up-do, one hand clutching a bouquet of white lilies, the other gripping the hand of a smiling young man. Dark hair, curly. Thick dark eyebrows, dark brown eyes. A man who appeared,