However, that morning, that morning of all mornings, Gerry had definitely not been like Gerry.
Anne was puzzled as well as upset. So much so, that after he left for his alleged walk — taking the car, she noticed — she gave in to her curiosity. She went to his study and jacked up the laptop, still on the desk, which had monopolized so much of his attention that day. She’d never done anything like that before. It would just not have occurred to her. Not before this awful and peculiar day. She found that the laptop was password protected. Well, there was nothing unusual or suspicious about that. She also had a laptop, though she did not often use it, and that was password protected too. The only difference was, she suddenly realized, that whilst Gerry knew her password, she had absolutely no idea what his was.
Anne had closed the laptop and walked away, asking herself what on earth she thought she was doing. This was her husband of thirty-seven years, kind, dependable Gerry, who had never given her reason to doubt him for a moment.
Or had he? Gerry was a night owl, she was an early bird. She often went to bed before him, and was aware that he might spend hours sometimes on his laptop before joining her. He played backgammon. He was a keen amateur historian and enjoyed creating his own research projects, looking into famous characters from the past, and indeed his own family. He also liked to browse YouTube, Twitter and Facebook, sites which held no interest at all for Anne.
Or is that what he did? As she sat with her coffee gazing unseeingly now at the blue ants next door, it occurred to her that she really had absolutely no idea what Gerry was doing when he spent all those hours at his computer.
He could be downloading unspeakable porn. He could be conducting some sort of weird internet affair. He could be a criminal mastermind, or an alien in human guise contacting his distant planet.
She let her imagination run riot, because it reassured her that Gerry downloading porn or having a cyber affair was no more likely than him being a criminal or an alien. And the latter two thoughts made her want to laugh. Which also made her feel just a little better.
She told herself there would be a logical explanation for his behaviour that day, because there always was with Gerry. Wasn’t there?
Then she checked her watch. Gerry had left for his little walk to clear his head just after two thirty p.m., promising that he would be back in no time. That was another promise he had totally failed to keep.
He had now been gone for more than three hours, and she had not heard from him at all. He could have gone to the yacht club for a drink, but he had the car. If he’d intended to do that he would have left the car at home.
She was becoming quite anxious. Again, it was so unlike Gerry not to keep in touch. Particularly on a day like this.
She told herself he could have gone shopping to take his mind off everything. He could have driven to Bideford, or slightly further away to Barnstaple. He could just have gone for a very long walk, along any one of the so many lovely beaches near their home, then onto the network of paths which stretched along the North Devon coast. But for over three hours? Gerry was not that sort of walker. And the weather had broken. In any case she would have expected him to call.
She had called him, of course. But he hadn’t picked up. Each time his phone rang briefly, then switched to voicemail.
She didn’t know what to do. She half wanted to call the police. She had the business card that nice DCI Vogel had given her. But he was investigating Jane Ferguson’s death. A death regarded as suspicious. And she didn’t think DCI Vogel, or any other police officer come to that, would be very interested in the case of a grown man who had been away from his home for three hours. They would think Anne was being ridiculous. A silly old woman. And when she put it into words she could fully understand that. It was what she would think about anyone else.
But this was Gerry. Her Gerry. And it just wasn’t right.
Sighing, she reached for her phone to call him one more time. Finally, he answered.
Sixteen
Sam Ferguson was in a total state of shock as he tramped back across the sand and over the pebble ridge onto Northam Burrows.
Sam was a man accustomed to knowing what to do. He would invariably assess a situation quickly, decide upon a course of action, and execute it without hesitation. He was good at making decisions. That was what Sam Ferguson did.
Not this time though. What Gerry Barham had told Sam had shaken him to the very core. He still did not know what it really meant.
He did know that he was afraid. He believed now that his surviving family were under threat. He was sure of it. And whilst what he had told DCI Vogel was absolutely correct, that he felt no grief for the passing of his daughter-in-law, he found himself wishing with all his heart that she were still alive. He glanced at his watch on a kind of autopilot. At almost exactly the same time as Anne Ferguson had looked at hers, and Vogel and Saslow had arrived at the NDYC.
It was a few minutes before six p.m. The two constables who had broken the news of Jane’s death had arrived at his home just before three a.m., around fifteen hours previously.
In the whole of his life Sam Ferguson had not experienced a more devastating fifteen hours. He couldn’t believe what had happened. Not any of it. But particularly not what he had just been told by Gerry Barham.
He was devastated. He did not know whom to turn to or what to do. And Sam was not used to feeling that way.
He unlocked his car, climbed in, and allowed his upper body to slump over the steering wheel for a few seconds, then he sat up and tried to make himself think, to concentrate, to come up with some sort of course of action. Any sort.
He supposed he could just do nothing at all, something he had always found most difficult. In any case he feared that events would overtake themselves. And Felix was so vulnerable. He’d always been like that, charming, not without talent, not without a brain, but weak and rudderless.
Sam had never minded. It had always suited him to have a son whose path he could mould, a young man he could guide and steer who, unlike most sons in Sam’s experience, seemed to welcome that level of interference from his father.
But for a fleeting moment, and for probably the first time ever, he wished Felix were a different sort of man, a young man he could confide in, who might, for once, even be able to support his father in the way Sam had always supported him.
But that was not how things were. And Sam didn’t want Felix, or his grandchildren, ever to have to face the consequences of what he had just been told. Yet he feared that day would come, and sooner rather than later.
He sat there alone in his car for more than half an hour wracking his brains to come up with a workable plan, something that might yet save the day, without any success.
He needed to get home too. He’d told Amelia he’d had to go back to the council offices to deal with some vital issues.
She had echoed Vogel’s thoughts of that morning. Sam didn’t know what Vogel had thought, of course, although he might have guessed.
‘What possible council business could there be to take you away from your family yet again on this day of all days?’ Amelia had asked. ‘It’s a Sunday, too.’
Sam had apologized but insisted that there were pressing matters he needed to attend to before the offices opened for normal business the following day.
‘I’d always intended to go in this afternoon,’ he told Amelia. ‘I didn’t know Jane was going to get herself topped, did I?’
As soon as he spoke he’d regretted his choice of words. Amelia, not a woman known for her sensitivity, looked at him quite aghast.