“And she hasn’t been in touch?”
“No, David.”
“But you’d tell me if she had?”
Her pause told its own story.
“Elizabeth?”
“I would reassure you that nothing bad had happened to her,” she said. “As I’m sure it hasn’t.”
“Can I speak to her?”
“She’s not here, David.”
“No, it certainly sounds like it. Just put her on, Elizabeth.”
She hung up at that point. I called back. Her husband answered. We exchanged words.
Shortly after that, I began drinking in earnest.
Thursday evening was the forty-eight-hour mark. I was not at my best. I was, though, back at the police station, talking to a detective.
“So your wife hasn’t been in touch, Mr Wallace?”
I bit back various answers. No sarcasm; no fury. Just answer the question. Answer the question.
“Not a word. Not since this.”
At some point I had found a polythene envelope in a desk drawer; one of those plastic flippancies for keeping documents pristine. Michelle’s card tucked inside, it lay on the table between us. Face down, which is to say, message-side up.
“And there’s been no word from anyone else?”
“I’ve called everyone I can think of,” I said.
This wasn’t quite true.
“You have my sympathy, Mr Wallace. I know how difficult this must be.”
She — the detective — was young, blonde, jacketless, with a crisp white shirt, and hair bunched into the shortest of tails. She wore no make-up. I have no idea whether this is a service regulation. And I couldn’t remember her name, though she’d introduced herself at the start of our conversation. Interview, I should probably call it. I’m good with names, but this woman’s had swum out of my head as soon as it was spoken. Then again, I had distractions. My wife was missing.
“Can we talk about background details?”
“Whatever will help.”
“What about your finances? Do you and your wife keep a joint account?”
“We have a joint savings account, yes.”
“And has that been touched at all?”
“We keep our current accounts separate.” It was important to spell out the details. One might prove crucial. “I pay a standing order into her account on the fifteenth, and she deals with the bills from that. Most of them. The mortgage and council tax are mine. She pays the phone and the gas and electricity.” I came to a halt. For some reason, I couldn’t remember which of us paid the water rates.
“And your savings account, Mr Wallace,” she reminded me, quite gently. “Has that been touched at all?”
I said, “Well, yes. Yes, it probably has.”
“Emptied?” she asked.
“No,” I told her. “Quite the opposite. Well, not the opposite. That would be doubling it, wouldn’t it? Or something.” Rambling, I knew. I took a breath. “Half of our savings have been withdrawn,” I told her.
“Half?”
“Precisely half,” I said. “To the penny.”
She made a note on the pad in front of her.
“But don’t you see?” I told her. “If they’d taken it all, that would have alerted me, alerted you, to the fact that there’s funny business going on.”
“They?” she asked.
“Whoever’s taken her,” I said. “She hasn’t just left. She can’t have.”
“People do leave, Mr Wallace. I’m sorry, but they do. What is it your wife does? She works, is that right?”
“She’s a librarian.”
“Whereabouts? Here in town?”
“Just down the road, yes.”
“And you’ve spoken to her colleagues? Have they... shed any light on your wife’s departure?”
“Disappearance.”
She nodded: not agreeing. But allowing my alternative term the way you might allow a child to have his way on an unimportant matter, on which he was nevertheless mistaken.
I said: “She handed in her notice.”
“I see.”
You had to hand it to her. There was no inflection on this.
“And when did she do that, do you know?”
“A few days ago,” I said. Suddenly I felt very tired. “On Monday.”
“While you were away.”
“That’s right.”
“Didn’t she have notice to serve? Under the terms of her contract?”
“Yes. But she told them that she had personal reasons for needing to leave right away. But...” I could hear my voice trailing away. There was another but; there’d always be a but, but I couldn’t for the life of me work out what this particular one might be.
“Mr Wallace.”
I nodded, tiredly.
“I’m not sure we can take this matter further.” She corrected herself. “We the police, I mean. It doesn’t seem like a matter for us. I’m very sorry.”
“What about the handwriting?” I asked.
She looked down at exhibit one, which just now seemed all that remained of my wife.
“It’s a postcard,” I explained. I was half sure I’d told her this already, but so many facts were drifting loose from their moorings that it was important to nail some down. “It didn’t come through the post. It’s just a card we both liked. It’s been on our fridge a long time. Years, even. Stuck there with a magnet.”
In a few moments more, I might have begun to describe the magnet it was stuck with.
“And you recognize it?”
“The card?”
“The handwriting, Mr Wallace.”
“Well, it looks like hers. But then it would, wouldn’t it? If someone was trying to make it look like Michelle’s?”
“I’m not sure that impersonating handwriting is as easy as all that. If it looks like your wife’s, well...” She glanced down at whatever note she’d been making, and didn’t finish.
“But the name! I keep telling you, Michelle wouldn’t call herself Shell. It’s—” I had to stop at this point. It’s the last thing she would do was what I didn’t say.
“Mr Wallace. Sometimes, when people want a new life for themselves, they find a new name to go with it. Do you see? By calling herself Shell, she’s making a break with the past.”
“That’s an interesting point — I’ve forgotten your name. Whatever. It’s an interesting point. But not as important as handwriting analysis. Maybe, once that’s been done, we can discuss your psychological insight.”
She sighed. “Handwriting analysis is an expensive business, sir. We’re not in the habit of diverting police resources to non-criminal matters.”
“But this is a criminal matter. That’s precisely what I’m trying to get across. My wife has been abducted.”
I might have saved my breath.
“When your wife’s worked out her new place in the world, I’m sure she’ll be in touch. Meanwhile, do you have a friend you can stay with? Someone to talk things over with?”
“You won’t have the card analysed,” I informed her. We both already knew this. That’s why I didn’t make it a question.
“There’s nothing to stop you having it done privately,” she said.
“And if I’m right? When I’m right? Will you listen to me then?”
“If you can provide credible evidence that the note’s a forgery, then we’d certainly want to hear about it,” she said.
It was as if we’d sat next to each other at a dinner party, and I’d described a trip I was planning.
Well, if you have a good time, I’d certainly like to hear about it.
The kind of thing you say when you’re certain you’ll never meet again.