thought, thinking again about the latest newspaper headlines.
‘Well, she thinks – and so do I now, it just didn’t occur to me before, but the more I think about it the more it makes sense – well, she and I both think now that Danny must have been in some sort of trouble, and maybe had been for a while, before he … before he disappeared.’
‘What sort of trouble?’ asked Helena, glancing sideways at Devon and raising an eyebrow.
‘Well … I don’t know, not at the moment. But our theory is that whoever Danny had got himself in trouble with met him at our place in Chiswick that morning after I moved out. And this guy attacked Danny, didn’t manage to kill him but hurt him somehow. I still don’t know how there could have been so much blood, but I’ve thought about it and in retrospect I don’t think I actually saw Danny totally naked after he moved to Bristol. We didn’t have sex …’
‘Ohh-kaaay.’ Helena couldn’t help it – her scepticism was growing exponentially.
Gemma ignored her and carried on.
‘We didn’t have sex after he moved down, and I just wonder now if he might have been hiding an injury on the lower part of his body. He didn’t seem hurt or in pain, but it’s the only thing I can think of to explain the blood.’
‘Unlikely, but go on,’ said Helena, resisting the temptation to roll her eyes. She wasn’t buying this ‘theory’ for a minute.
Gemma flushed.
‘I know this sounds far-fetched, but please, bear with me. I don’t know how it ties in with the other murders, or why the victims all look so alike, and so like Danny, I can’t explain that. But leaving that aside, it does make some sort of sense, honestly. So Danny got hurt, and went somewhere to recover for a week before joining me here as planned. I don’t know where – maybe a hotel or something. Or, if he was seeing someone else, some other woman, which I don’t really want to think about, but you know …’
She paused and swallowed hard, then took a breath.
‘And then when he did move here, he was terrified that this guy would track him down, finish him off. So he hid, basically – never answered the door to deliveries, made sure the neighbours never spotted him, didn’t even get a new mobile phone. I still don’t know why he pulled out of his new job before any of this would have happened, or where he was spending his days when I thought he was at work. But … can you not see that it’s sort of logical? He’d have been scared. Really scared. And then, maybe he just got so scared that he ran. And he’s still running. Either that or …’ She paused again. ‘Either that or he got caught, and he’s dead now too,’ she said quietly.
For a few moments there was silence.
Then Devon said: ‘Just assuming for a minute that this is what happened – and there are a lot of holes in this theory, as you’ve just pointed out yourself. But just assuming … so you really think your husband could have been going through all this, I mean being literally scared for his life, without you noticing a thing? Without you noticing any change whatsoever in his behaviour? Nothing?’
She stared at him for a moment, dropped her gaze to the table, then raised her head again.
‘I don’t know. But I didn’t. I didn’t notice anything. He was acting perfectly normally, and I’m struggling with that too. And I know, I know how unlikely this all sounds. But all I know is that I didn’t do anything to hurt my husband, that he did move to Bristol and lived with me here for three weeks despite what you think, and that now he’s gone. And there has to be a reason, and with everything that we know so far, this is the only thing that makes even half sense to me. Can you not … can you not go with me on it, even a little bit?’
There were tears in her eyes now, and the earlier determination Helena had seen in her face had been replaced by an expression of deep distress.
‘Look, Gemma …’ She paused, unsure of quite what to say. ‘It does sound highly unlikely, yes. It’s a very elaborate theory, with nothing to back it up, I’m afraid. And the only way to prove or disprove your