Just one bit of solid information was waiting for her. Sandie Golding had left a message, passed on by the desk sergeant. It appeared that they’d checked their inventory. The staff had checked through his belongings and all his other clothes were in place, including the ones he had worn on the Sunday, the last day he had been seen.
She’d added a postscript. ‘It appears he also took the substitute teddy bear.’
Joanna looked at the note then up at a pair of amused dark eyes. ‘So that helps me exactly how?’
His response was to broaden his grin. ‘Not found him yet?’
She shook her head, still irritated at what she perceived as the triviality of her current case.
But the day was about to get worse.
At eight p.m., trying to block out the fact that this was Zachary Foster’s second night out in the cold, Joanna gave up. It was time to go home. The search would continue through the night but, as time moved on, the likelihood of the old man being found alive was decreasing. She changed into her cycling gear and stepped outside. The temperature was hovering just above freezing, joined now by a dismal drizzle, slippery beneath the wheels. Outside it was as dark as a coal mine. Even though her ride home was shorter than when they had lived in Waterfall Cottage, less than two miles, which would take her ten minutes, she wasn’t relishing the idea. And even wearing her fluorescent jacket and with a good set of lights, visibility was poor. Her expanding abdomen was not helping her balance. She made a decision. This would be her last cycle home until after the child was born. As she mounted her bike and flicked back the pedal she was already regretting her decision that morning to cycle in to work.
The cold seeped through her cycling leggings and both thermal layers. She could even feel the rain making her breathable waterproof cling to her. She could have rung Matthew and asked him to come and pick her up. He hated her cycling anyway now she was pregnant, and would have been along in minutes if he was home from work. Matthew’s job, like hers, could mean unpredictable hours, so there was no guarantee he would be free anyway, or at least that was what she told herself. But … She patted her stomach. She would not give in to this pregnancy. She would not. The baby would not win. She would. It would not stop her cycling.
She couldn’t wait to get home, have a shower, change, make some tea. That was the plan. Beyond tea, she decided, little else. A flop across the sofa, preferably curled up with Matthew and some mind-numbing TV. That was the plan.
And that should have been the end of the evening. But, as Joanna tried to ease the discomfort of her cycling shorts, which were uncomfortably tight now (no one, apparently, makes maternity cycling shorts, she’d realized), and move on to the main road, she immediately met a swell of traffic. Though the trip was less than two miles, it was an urban ride with heavy traffic and poor visibility. And to top it all, the rain was turning suspiciously sleet-like. Poor old guy, she thought, as a lorry passed, splashing her with a shower of rain puddle. Her lights, though mud-spattered, were adequate but, like many cyclists, she still disliked riding in the dark. Particularly in built-up areas where motorists could be dazzled by oncoming headlights and the rain and lampposts made a confusing vision. A motorist herself, she knew how tricky it was picking up on a cyclist’s presence and judging his or her speed. Motorists were often impatient and she mistrusted them all in the vulnerable position of a cyclist. Some passed within an inch, leaving no room for a wobble.
However, there was one big consolation in cycling home: thinking time. Riding a bike is the perfect time for contemplation. And there was plenty to think about even on this short journey home. Someone out of those three nurses was lying. Possibly two of them. And her suspicion fell on Susie Trent and also, possibly, that weary night sister. Once she’d got to the bottom of that, the case, and the old man’s whereabouts, would soon be solved. Or … she corrected herself: at least she’d know how the old man had got out and it would narrow the time. It would not, however, explain why they had so far failed to find him.
This seemingly simple case, which she had been insulted to be handed and had anticipated solving within half a day, was beginning to look a little less obvious. A little more devious.
Her thoughts swished in time with her legs. She could understand why the night staff had covered for one another. Loyalty. But, partly due to this, the obfuscation was over timing. The cover-up meant that they couldn’t even ascertain the basics, such as when and how had Mr Foster actually left the home, let alone why. A lost teddy seemed a flimsy excuse. But to a confused mind?
So, as she turned out towards Ball Haye Road her thoughts moved on too. Where was he now? She felt her face screw up both in puzzlement and against the wind, which was biting into her cheeks. She was having trouble seeing. And so, it appeared, were the motorists, who were practically shaving her legs as they passed too close. Where would this confused, frail, elderly man have headed for? Jason had reported that he hadn’t headed for his one-time home. Was he holed up somewhere, alone, confused and afraid? Or was he already dead?
If his mobility was as poor as she’d been led to believe, he couldn’t have gone far and without anyone seeing him. Deep in thought, searching for answers even to the most basic of questions was possibly why, late, tired, distracted, in the dark, pregnant and in a hurry, when a car flashed past her on full beam, she failed to avoid an invisible pothole and landed in the gutter, kissing the pavement, bumping the baby and hitting her head on the kerbstone. As she sat up she could feel blood trickling down over her eyebrow.
‘Bugger.’ She looked down at her torn Lycra leggings and knees scraped like a ten-year-old’s. Matthew would be furious. He was overprotective towards his pregnant wife, and this would hand him the perfect excuse for banning cycling for the rest of her pregnancy.
Which she’d planned to do anyway.
Maybe, she thought, over-optimistically, he wouldn’t be home yet. She could sneak in, clean herself up and …
Fat chance.
She remounted and, cycling more slowly and more warily now, she headed towards home.
Her wish, that Matthew would have been detained at the hospital so she could clean herself up before he saw her, was not granted. His BMW was already in the drive and inside the house the lights were on. He was actually looking out of the window as she rounded the house to put her bike in the shed. She saw his unmistakable long shape and, as he spotted her and waved, she sensed that he stiffened. He’d already seen the bike, perhaps her drooping shoulders and, Matthew-like, had started to fill in the gaps.
Within a minute he was out through the door. ‘Joanna, what on earth?’
Five minutes later DI Joanna Piercy was stretched along the sofa looking rueful, gazing over her expanded abdomen at the bottle of red wine sitting temptingly in front of her (banned by her vigilant husband) and ignoring the stinging from her grazed knees. She looked up at Matthew, who was reading her the riot act about cycling while pregnant and what a fall could have done to his (our?) child.
Her explanation of, ‘Just a pothole, Matt,’ had done nothing to soften his mood. He was really angry. And now she was rebelling. ‘Oh, for goodness’ sake, Matthew, stop fussing and being overdramatic. It’s just grazed knees and a bump on the head. I took a tumble – that’s all.’
Perhaps even Matthew realized he’d gone too far. ‘Jo.’ He sat down beside her, rested his hand on her – their – baby bulge and smiled at her, green eyes warm with affection, before leaning forward and kissing her on the mouth, those same green eyes soft but also unmistakably uncompromising. ‘All I ask,’ he was saying, ‘is that you stop cycling.’ The green eyes were pleading with her now, his mouth curved in a beseeching smile. ‘Darling, it’s not for ever. Just until after he’s born.’
She argued resentfully but silently.
Yeah, yeah. It was right to give up alcohol. She agreed with that. She didn’t want a drunk as a baby. She didn’t actually want a baby but now it was inevitable. The one concession – or should that be bad habit? – she had refused to give up had been her cycling. Matthew had begged her to stop. She hadn’t and today she had paid the price and he had been proved right. He had warned her that any fall could harm their child. They both knew tumbles were often a part of cycling. Two wheels are not exactly stable, particularly when you’re carrying a large load up front. Ubiquitous potholes causing loss of balance, exacerbated by her weird shape and selfish drivers, darkening nights and worsening weather added to the risk score. And, though Matthew was doing his best to be conciliatory, she knew underneath he was furious with her. Her attempt at defence sounded feeble even to her.
‘It’s good for the baby.’ Mentally adding: cycling not falling off! ‘Gives it a burst of oxygen and’ – sly look at husband – ‘it’s keeping me fit ready for the delivery.’ Something she had unsuccessfully tried to shove right to the back of her mind. And thanks to PC Anderton, her fear of it was moving to the fore.
Matthew pulled away to stare at her. He’d read her mind. ‘Look, Jo,’ he said. ‘You’re fit and healthy. You’ll be fine giving birth.’
‘You can’t know that, Matt.’
‘No.’ As always his voice was steady, his reasoning logical. ‘You’ll be in a hospital. I’ll be with you. All the time. Right through. Darling …’ He accompanied the sweet words with a brush of his lips on her cheek. ‘You’ll be fine,’ he repeated. ‘But …’ She knew that frown, particularly when combined with a squaring of his chin and fingers running through that honey-blond hair, ruffling it to an almost artistic style which indicated not calm but turmoil. ‘If you fall off or get knocked off by a vehicle, it could cause all sorts of problems. God, Joanna,’ his anger burst through, ‘it’s not worth the risk. You’re just being stubborn.’
Her sigh, which sounded like a dolphin’s exhalation through its blowhole, was her only response.
He hadn’t finished. ‘Jo. Darling. Stay off your bike until after he’s born.’
‘It’s …’ she began to repeat her mantra, ‘… good for me and good for the baby.’
But he anticipated it. ‘And when you fall off? As you have today? How exactly is that good for the baby, Joanna?’
She shrank back against the cushions. She knew he was angry with her when he called her Joanna in that particular tone of voice.
As usual Matthew had had his responses ready, up his sleeve. And also, as usual, he was right. She shoved that bit to the back of her mind.
‘I haven’t hurt it.’
Matthew moved back towards her, again put his hands on the bump as though he was palpating it to check the veracity of her statement, feeling for the child to move. ‘Possibly not,’ he agreed, ‘this time.’ He’d left the pause just long enough for her to worry. ‘But that isn’t the point, Jo,’ he said. ‘You could have hurt him.’
Her response was the only one she’d had up her sleeve. ‘I wish you’d stop calling it him,’ she said irritably, tempted to put her hands over her ears to block out this premature sexing of the child, but determined not to lose every little skirmish. ‘It might be another daughter.’
Another Eloise? She almost shuddered.
He opened his mouth to speak but she pre-empted him. ‘And no, I don’t want to know what it is.’ Thinking, I’ll face that one when I have to. ‘But what with Korpanski treating me as though I was made of porcelain, giving me an insult of a case and you …’ She appealed to him, made one last attempt to get him on her side. ‘Matthew, I find it hard to breathe with all this fuss. Being on my bike, legs pumping, wind through my hair, oxygen in my lungs. It feels great.’ She reached for his hand and squeezed it. ‘To be honest, apart from my disgusting shape, I’ve never felt better.’
‘Disgusting shape?’ And the green flame lit his eyes again but this time brighter, fiercer, as though someone had tossed copper sulphate on to a blaze. Or insulted his ‘son’. ‘Joanna,’ he said, those eyes locking into hers. ‘You’ve never looked more beautiful.’ Again, his hands stroked her bump. ‘Holding, nurturing our child, you are perfect.’ He accompanied the flattery with a kiss before drawing back. ‘And anyway, your shape will return.’ He picked her hand up and, green eyes now watching her mischievously, brushed it with his lips in an old fashioned and strangely erotic gesture. ‘Stop cycling, darling. For the sake of our son, put your bike away. Just for these last couple of months?’
‘Oh, please,’ she snapped, never a good loser but having to accept that this time she was on the losing side. ‘I’m pregnant. It isn’t terminal cancer.’
‘Yes,’ he said, voice steady, reasonable as ever. ‘You’re pregnant and what I want more than anything in the world is a healthy son.’
‘Christ.’
He pulled back but she was roused now. Why did he always use the first person? It wasn’t just his child. It was theirs. She was playing her part. That I went too well with the possessive pronoun mine. Not ours. Not us. Not we. Always I: His son – or daughter. Her lips twitched with anger.
She glanced down at the mound. The child was moving around, in agreement with its father probably, and it was making her uncomfortable. Pressing against her spine it was making her feel slightly sick and a bit dizzy. How could he be excluding her from something that was so obviously and patently growing parasitically inside her?
Matthew had shifted away but was still looking at her, perhaps picking up on her gritted teeth. But his eyes still burned, his chin was firm and his mouth set. She knew this expression only too well. She would not budge him. And he would not give one inch.
And now he was about to say it.
‘I won’t forgive you, Jo,’ he said in his quiet and most dangerous voice, ‘if you harm our son by selfishly refusing to give up anything that might endanger him.’
She met his eyes and knew she would not shift him. Matthew was the most stubborn man she had ever met. And this was him at his most extreme. Even as she opened her mouth to defend cycling with her arguments that it wasn’t a dangerous sport – that the danger came purely from the motorists and unpredictable road surfaces; that these days she only cycled into work, less than two miles – she knew she was on to a loser. The wound on her forehead and the pair of grazed knees bore their own testimony.
And she had to acknowledge the truth.
Resentful but accepting the inevitable, she nodded and managed a smile. ‘OK, Matt, you win. No more cycling,’ she said, adding softly, ‘until after—’
Matthew still wasn’t quite satisfied. ‘Don’t take any risks.’
Fussing over a bumped head and a scraped knee, she thought, inwardly acknowledging damaged pride and an argument lost in his quest for this perfect son, this ultimate ambition, this child, this fulfiller of all his life’s desires. Matthew, she wanted to say to him, be real. Life isn’t perfect. Girls happen. The son may be a daughter. There are no guarantees. Life itself is unpredictable and has a habit of biting you on the backside. Matthew. She wanted to appeal to him. But she didn’t dare. On this subject Matthew was not only intransigent but very, very touchy.
‘And Jo,’ he said, determined to capitalize on this gained ground, ‘there’s something else. Give up frontline policing. Please?’