‘No, I don’t want to see anyone.’
There was a light tap on the door; it was DC Burrows, asking if Marcus would ring the station if he intended leaving.
‘Is there some news?’ he asked anxiously.
‘I’m afraid not, but DI Reid wants to see you. He may be coming back to the house later or perhaps you would call him. Mrs Fulford, I have made a list of all your personal calls in case you want to ring back, and your answer machine for your business line is full, so I think you should perhaps check those messages and delete some, because when they can’t get through they call on your private line.’
Lena sat up as Marcus took the list from Burrows and passed it to her. ‘Come on, it’s best you do something. I’ll come into your office with you and we can go through them together.’
Lena slowly swung her legs down from the bed, though her head was throbbing and she felt drained of energy.
‘Agnes wanted me to ask if you would like her to prepare lunch?’ Burrows added.
Marcus said he wouldn’t mind a sandwich, but Lena said she wasn’t hungry. Burrows noticed how attentive he was, helping Lena stand up and fussing around her. He fetched her hairbrush and was gently brushing her hair while she stood in front of the dressing table as Burrows closed the door.
‘We’ve also got to talk to our solicitors. Jacob Lyons was on the phone this morning – at least he had the grace to ask about Amy – but basically he wants to know when your bloke Henshaw is going to contact him.’
She turned towards him. ‘How can you even think about this right now? You disgust me. Is that why you’ve come round and why you are acting all loving and caring, when basically you are here because you want a divorce settlement agreed?’
‘For pity’s sake, Lena, I just told you that Lyons called me. Whatever happens we will have to agree to some settlement; right now I can’t even cover the rent at Simon’s place.’
‘Simon? Simon Boatly? I remember now, he was in Antigua when we were there. Do you remember he was on somebody or other’s yacht and came over to the hotel and we all had dinner together?’
Marcus sighed impatiently, dismissing any suspicion of Simon, but Lena pursed her lips and, striding out of the bedroom, said that she was going to include him on the list for DI Reid.
Marcus followed Lena into her office as she began to play the messages on her business answer phone. Call after call was querying deliveries and payments, and then there were the repeated enquiries from her staff about Amy. Lena stood pressing delete, delete, and then listened to Gail Summers asking for the details of three children’s parties and for her to confirm addresses and times.
‘Christ, you’d think she’d have enough sense to look in the order book – it’s all in there.’
‘Why don’t you just call and tell her,’ Marcus suggested, leaning on the doorframe, as Lena continued deleting messages. One of the delivery drivers was off sick, so had not come into work, and Marcus watched as she became angry, swearing at their incompetence, before eventually she went to her computer and began to email instructions. He’d always admired how fast she could use a keyboard and he could see the distraction was beginning to calm her. Even though irritated by the slew of queries, she proceeded to work through them.
Marcus finally left her working and went downstairs into the kitchen, where Agnes had a coffee and toasted cheese sandwiches set out on the kitchen table for him. Burrows was still dealing with the phones but thankfully they had been silent for a while. She hesitated when Marcus invited her to join him, unsure about sitting with him.
‘Come on, sit down, Agnes can take over the calls. Please.’ He gestured to a chair.
‘Would you like tomato ketchup, Barbara?’ Agnes asked as she set a place for her.
Marcus squirted out some HP Sauce, noticing how Agnes, within minutes of meeting anyone, always used their Christian name. It used to annoy Lena, but it never really bothered him, although he was the exception – she never called him by his Christian name. She was bustling around the kitchen and obviously listening in to their conversation as he turned on the charm and asked Barbara how long she had worked for the police. Burrows, slightly ill at ease, explained that she had recently finished her two years’ uniform probation before going on missing persons and hoped eventually to become a full detective and work on the murder squad.
Marcus asked if she had ever been on a missing person’s case before and she admitted that their daughter was the first. The atmosphere grew tense as she attempted to explain how the police structured their enquiries – small children were always a high risk, but very often teenagers were quickly traced and the reason why they had absconded was uncovered.
‘What reasons?’ Marcus asked.
Burrows sipped her coffee, hardly touching her toasted sandwich and wishing she had not agreed to sit with him. She mentioned that exam results, boyfriends, drugs and abuse were factors.
‘What, sexual abuse?’ he asked, finishing his sandwich.
‘Yes, not just sexual but physical abuse; sometimes there are mental issues; very often though it is connected to schooling, failure, bullying. So we have to take everything into consideration.’
She stood up, wiping her lips with the napkin, and asked where the bathroom was. Marcus out of manners half rose from his chair as Agnes directed ‘Barbara’ to the downstairs cloakroom. He then drained his coffee cup and crossed to use the phone. ‘Have you got the number of the local police station, Agnes?’
Agnes, organized as ever, showed him the station number and DI Reid’s mobile.
‘I’ll make the call in the sitting room,’ he said, walking out.
Reid had just arrived at the forensic labs in Lambeth when Marcus rang his mobile, which made any immediate conversation difficult. Marcus agreed to wait at the house until Reid was free, and finishing the call stretched out on the sofa and closed his eyes. He recalled the time they had been in Antigua, specifically when Simon Boatly had appeared. With sun-bleached blond hair, tanned and wearing shorts and a T-shirt and rubber flip-flops, he had surprised them by strolling up the beach towards their cabana. Simon was a well-educated Old Etonian and Oxford graduate with a BA in Philosophy and was at the university at the same time as Lena, who studied Biological Sciences. Marcus had attended the local polytechnic where he had studied Design Graphics and had first met Lena in a pub in Oxford city centre. He met Simon in a squash competition against the University and they instantly became good friends and enjoyed each other’s company, but there was always the difference in their backgrounds. Simon had money, having inherited a lot when his parents died, including a villa in Italy, a manor house in Henley and the Mayfair flat on his aunt’s death. Although years went by when neither made contact, when they did meet up and renewed their friendship it was as relaxed as if they’d never been apart. Before the separation and Simon’s travels abroad, they had seen a considerable amount of each other, both being keen squash players with membership of the Queen’s Club. Simon had never married and appeared to have no intention of settling down as he continued his laid-back easy-going life. Although he called himself a photographer, there was no need for him to ever have gainful employment, as his inheritance was invested and he lived off the interest. When Marcus, after a strenuous game of squash, had bemoaned his marital situation, Simon had without hesitation offered him the use of his Mayfair flat.
Mulling the Antigua holiday over in his mind, Marcus couldn’t recall Simon ever being alone with Amy. He was certain that Simon would not in any way have, as Lena had insinuated, been abusive towards the girl. That one time when he had appeared like the Sun King strolling along the beach, he had seemed to be as surprised as Marcus to discover they were there.
Marcus swung his legs down from the sofa and rested his elbows on his knees. Amy had visited the yacht with him, but only for a very short time because they’d returned to their hotel for lunch. Simon had been his usual witty self, and after about an hour went off on a speedboat, waving to them as he left. He and his crew were going to a different beach to water-ski, as the hotel did not have any speedboats, nor for that matter did it approve of the disruption of the boats’ high-powered noisy engines.