‘My colleague noted that you had a faulty lock on the back door of this property, is that right?’
I nod, crushed. I should have fixed it. ‘Yes.’
‘There’s been a couple of incidents over the last month in this area, so we’ll make enquiries about that.’
‘Incidents?’
‘Burglaries. You said no valuables were taken, correct?’
‘As far as I can tell.’
He searches my face, so I add: ‘I work away Monday through Thursday. So I suppose I’m not completely up to speed with everything in the house.’
‘We’ll do a sweep of the door for prints.’
DS Welsh tells me they want to ask me a few more questions, although a ‘few’ in this case means so many I lose count. Medical numbers, insurance company details, schools we went to, everyone and anyone we have contact with. They want to know more about my job, about Eloïse’s job, and I tell them that eight years ago she set up Children of War, a charity that offers emotional and educational support for refugee children. The detectives are deeply interested in this and take copious notes. When she set it up, what kind of work it involves. Their questions make me realise how much I don’t know about the charity.
‘Any colleagues holding a grudge against her?’ DS Canavan asks. ‘Anyone who owes the charity money?’
‘I’m afraid I have no idea.’
He lifts his eyebrows. ‘She didn’t talk about her job? The people she worked with?’
‘I guess that Eloïse was so good at her job that everything looked to be very smooth.’ Even to my own ears I don’t sound very convincing. Right before I go dig out my Bad Husband sackcloth, I remember that she really did make most things look effortless. That’s why I didn’t tend to ask. If anything was good or bad, I expected that she’d tell me. And of course, she’s currently at home full-time with the kids.
He taps the pen against the page. ‘Even so, it’s important that we get a complete picture of the events leading up to her disappearance. Any media interviews she might have given, anything work-related at all, could prove extremely useful.’
‘What about her mental state?’ Welsh asks from the other armchair.
‘Eloïse’s mental state?’ I say. ‘What about it?’
‘Well, she gave birth recently. Sometimes women can experience mood swings and depression.’
I shake my head. ‘She was fine.’
‘Has she ever had any signs of depression or emotional instability in the past?’
A memory rises up. ‘Well, she saw a counsellor for a while after Max was born, but other than that she was fine.’
‘What counsellor?’ Canavan says, and I can see he’s writing down everything I’ve said and underlining it.
I rub my face, trying to think. ‘I honestly don’t remember the name. I mean, it was over four years ago. A health visitor kept going on about El’s moods after our son was born. Despite El saying she was fine, a bit tired, she had to go talk to someone. But she was discharged very swiftly. It was nothing.’
‘We’ll look into that,’ Welsh says, throwing a look at Canavan.
‘I really don’t think this has anything to do with her going missing,’ I say, fearful that they’ll waste time looking into something completely irrelevant. There’s no way this has anything to do with El having a bad day.
‘We need to rule this one out,’ Canavan says firmly. ‘We see a lot of cases where a loved one goes missing because they don’t want to admit that they’re struggling and don’t know where to turn to for help.’
‘I’m pretty sure my wife doesn’t fall into that category.’
He ignores me. ‘Anything else you can think of? Anything missing, any personal belongings gone? Even a single credit card can make a huge difference to the investigation.’
I shake my head, but then an image jumps into my mind: the Swiss passport. I tell Welsh and Canavan that it’s gone, but that I haven’t seen it in a long time anyway. ‘She never used it,’ I say. ‘More a token of her heritage than anything. Besides, if she’d used it to travel overseas I’d see it on the credit card statements. But I thought I’d mention it.’
Both Welsh and Canavan react to this a lot stronger than I’d have anticipated. ‘She could have used cash to travel. You don’t keep any at home?’
I tell him we do, but it’s all still there.
Magnus and I begin to draw up a list of everyone El’s ever had any association with, while Canavan writes up his notes. He interrupts Magnus and I to ask more questions: addresses and telephone numbers, a list of Eloïse’s support network. I’m embarrassed to say that I can’t recall the names of many of her friends and have no idea where they live. I promise to get the information off Facebook, but he tells me there’s no need: they’ll do their own investigation of my wife’s social media activity and check out her emails. For this, they require every device she has access to: her laptop, tablet, and mobile phone. They’ll check our bank accounts, Eloïse’s charity, and they’ll be speaking to our GP.
‘So, what happens now?’ I ask as the interview comes to an end. I feel wrung out.
‘There are a number of steps in cases of missing persons,’ Canavan answers. ‘Eloïse is what we call high risk, given that she may not be fully recovered physically from the birth of your daughter. First, we’ll need to do a search of the property.’
I stare at him. ‘A search of the property?’ Is he insinuating that I’ve murdered my wife and buried her under the gladioli?
DS Welsh must spot whatever crosses my face because she jumps in to explain. ‘We’re aware that two small children are without a mother right now, and that Eloïse recently gave birth. Both things combined make this case a high priority. We really want to make sure we can locate her as fast as we can. Searching the property is standard procedure.’
Welsh is convincingly sympathetic, and her role in this partnership becomes clear. She has a soft manner, the kind I usually associate with early years’ teachers and childminders.
Once I’ve ascertained that I’m not about to be dragged from my children in handcuffs, I step away from the doorway, granting them entry to the stairs. Swiftly and efficiently they move throughout the house, peeling back the layers of our lives.
The search takes most of the afternoon. After some debate over whether or not I should send Max to nursery, Gerda and Magnus drop him off on the basis that his routine ought not to be too disturbed. Then they pack a baby bag and take Cressida to the park while I pace back and forth from the playroom to the kitchen, listening to the noises of strangers upstairs trawling through our cupboards and drawers, emerging every now and then with a box of toys or paperwork.
In the kitchen, I go through our family paperwork in the oak dresser to find anything that might indicate a reason for all of this, something concrete and reasonable. Receipts, birth certificates, Max’s paintings from nursery. Still no sign of the Swiss passport, and so I phone our bank to make sure that there aren’t any payments pending, no airline tickets booked. Then I turn yet again to El’s laptop and phone, before the police have a chance to take them away. It takes me a while to work out her email password, but finally I crack it: MaxJan11. I spend ages searching carefully for train or flight tickets, but there’s nothing. I sign into her Facebook account. Her most recent status update hardly suggests anything out of the ordinary:
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