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He’s older than his senior officer: early fifties, at a guess. Cheap suit, badly worn shoes, but his black eyes are sharp and miss nothing. Stacey knows that of the two of them, this is the one she has to fear.
She leads them into the open-plan living room. DCI Hollander perches awkwardly on the edge of one of the vintage Eames lounge chairs, but his colleague remains standing.
‘May we ask when you last saw your husband?’ DCI Hollander says.
She hesitates, knowing how this will sound. ‘About two weeks ago.’
DCI Hollander’s bland expression doesn’t change. He can’t be more than thirty, Stacey thinks, though she realises she’s old enough now to subscribe to the cliché of thinking all policemen look young.
‘Two weeks?’ he repeats. ‘Is that usual?’
‘Not usual, no,’ she says uncomfortably.
‘So, you haven’t seen him sincebeforethe news about Copper Beech became public ten days ago?’ DS Mehdi asks.
She startles: she hadn’t noticed him move behind her.
‘No,’ she says. ‘I’ve had a lot on at work.’
‘You didn’t go to be with him once the story broke?’
She looks at her hands. ‘We agreed it’d be better if I kept a low profile.’
DS Mehdi wanders over to the window and gazes down at the street. Stacey wishes he’d just keep still. ‘So you left him to face the music on his own, Mrs Porter?’
‘It washismusic,’ Stacey says, nettled.
‘Did you know about the misappropriation of funds at Copper Beech ahead of the public announcement of insolvency?’
‘I knew there were problems with the company,’ she says carefully. ‘Obviously I had no idea about anything illegal.’
‘Were you and your husband getting on generally?’ DCI Hollander asks.
Stacey suppresses the urge to tell the young man it’s none of his business. Her husband is missing:everything is his business.
‘Felix and I were working through a few issues,’ she admits.
‘What sort of issues?’
‘The usual problems you get in any long marriage,’ she says impatiently. ‘We were both working long hours. We were worried about money, obviously. No one else was involved, if that’s what you’re thinking,’ she adds.
‘We weren’t,’ DCI Hollander says mildly.
His colleague is less circumspect. ‘You’d moved out,’ he says bluntly. ‘You were staying at a hotel near your TV studio. Were you and your husband discussing divorce?’
‘No!’
DS Mehdi pulls something up on his phone, and shows it to her. ‘It seems your husband may have had different ideas.’
It’s a copy of a letter:Lyon Raymond & Lyon, Specialists in Family Law.
‘You didn’t know?’ DS Mehdi says, watching her closely.
‘No,’ she says tightly. ‘I didn’t know.’
A beat falls.
She watches DS Mehdi move restlessly around the living room, picking things up and putting them down. He seems particularly interested in the contents of the bookshelf, turning his head sideways so he can read the books’ spines.
