returned to the garden, accepting a glass of champagne from a waiter with a tray as I stepped outside, anxiety building. And then, suddenly, there he was, hands slipping round my waist from behind, lips soft on my neck.
‘Danny! Where did you go? I was worried!’
‘Work called. Went out the front to take the call, couldn’t hear myself think back here with all the music and chat. Managed to sort it out on the phone though, so nothing to worry about. Right – where’s the beer?’ he’d said, with a grin.
Suddenly weak with relief, I’d let it go. He was allowed to chat to other women, after all – I’d been chatting to plenty of men that night, hadn’t I? – and I trusted him, trusted him implicitly. I hadn’t seen Sylvie again that night and I’d forgotten all about it. But as I repeated the story to Eva, I wondered. Had I been too trusting? Was Danny all I thought he was, or had he been making a fool of me all along? How long had he been on that dating website, if his profile on it wasn’t a joke by one of his stupid mates …
‘Well, I wasn’t at that party, so I just don’t know, Gem,’ Eva was saying. ‘But, well …’ she hesitated, then shook her head. ‘Oh nothing. Look, it’s probably just …’
‘No go on. What were you going to say?’
She shook her head again.
‘Nothing. We don’t know anything at this stage, Gemma, that’s all. Maybe he has gone off with some other woman, but maybe it’s something else entirely. There’s no point in working yourself up and jumping to conclusions until we know, OK?’
I sighed.
‘I know. I’m trying, I really am. But I just can’t understand it. Cheesy as it sounds, I thought we were the perfect couple, you know? Well, clearly not; he’s been lying to me for weeks, and now he’s vanished. He could be dead, Eva. Dead like those other two men. Or he could have just upped and left me. Or he could have been abducted by bloody aliens for all I know. I have no idea what’s happened to him, none at all.’
Eva closed her notebook, pushed it to one side and put her pen down.
‘I think aliens are unlikely. But, you know what, I don’t think I have any proper idea either,’ she said. ‘This is going to take more thinking time, a lot more thinking time. So we’re going to go out now, get some fresh air, walk Albert, go to the supermarket. Get you some supplies in. And then we’re going to put our heads together, and we’re going to work this out, OK? The two of us, together. Because whether he’s alive or dead now, he’s definitely been hiding something, your Danny. That much is pretty clear. We just need to figure out what it was.’
Chapter 12
DS Devon Clarke was staring at the glazed doughnut on the plate in front of him. Normally, he’d have wolfed it down in a matter of seconds, but today, weirdly, it held no appeal whatsoever. It was the room that had stolen his appetite; since the moment he’d walked into that nightmarish, blood-soaked bedroom in Chiswick some twenty-four hours previously, he had barely eaten, or indeed slept, missing Jasmine more than ever, needing her arms around him, the comfort of her body next to his. He’d seen crime scenes like that before, of course he had, many, many times, some with the bodies, mangled and macabre, still in situ. So why had this one stuck in his mind, haunted his dreams, taken away his desire for doughnuts, for goodness’ sake? Was it the unexpectedness of it, maybe? After all, they hadn’t been expecting to find much at all in Danny O’Connor’s former home, so to open a door and see … and see that …
He shuddered and glanced at the clock in the corner of his computer screen. Just after two. The forensic report should be arriving any minute.
‘No sign of it yet?’
Helena suddenly appeared at his elbow, peering over his shoulder.
‘Are you reading my mind? I was just thinking about it. No, not here yet. They’re fast-tracking it for us though, so it should be here soon. Want that doughnut?’
He pointed at the plate, and Helena wrinkled her nose.
‘Thanks, but I’ll pass. Charlotte would kill me. She wants me healthy, if we’re going to have a baby …’
She stopped talking abruptly, and Devon raised a quizzical eyebrow.