‘Thank you so much for coming. I’m Mary, this is my other daughter, Clare.’ A younger woman ran down the stairs and grabbed the child from Mary’s arms. A red line began to rise on her cheek. She flinched as she rubbed it. ‘He’s a live wire, that one. Come through to the kitchen.’
Gina followed Kapoor and Mary along the hallway. The child’s screams filled the house and she could clearly see that Mary looked exhausted from everything that was going on.
‘Can I get you a drink?’
Gina and Kapoor shook their heads.
‘We’re fine, thank you. You called us because your daughter hasn’t come home yet. May we take a seat?’ Gina asked, her calves aching from the run she had attempted earlier that day.
Mary nodded and gestured for them all to sit at the breakfast bar around the kitchen island. For an old-looking cottage, Mary had modernised it beautifully. The light grey cupboard doors and the light wooden worktop finished the look off with designer precision. Under cupboard lights lit up the room. Children’s finger paintings, bursting with colour, over-spilled the small noticeboard. Mary turned on a lamp that stood in the corner of the room. ‘That’s better, we can all see now. I try to keep the lighting subdued. As you can see my grandson, Harrison, is a bit of a handful. I try to keep it darker in the hope that he may get tired and fall asleep. That’s wishful thinking.’
Gina pulled her notebook out of her bag. ‘Is he the little one who was left at nursery?’
Mary shook her head. ‘No, my other daughter, Clare, couldn’t keep up with her rent so last year she came back home; it’s only a temporary thing. Harrison is her little boy. Rory is my other daughter, Susan’s son. He’s upstairs, fast asleep in our room. He’s the complete opposite. A quiet little soul.’ Mary paused. ‘Look, I’m sorry for troubling you—’
‘It’s definitely no trouble. Your daughter is missing. I’m glad you called, that’s what we’re here for.’
‘I know she’s only been gone a day but I’m worried, I really am. I mean, she didn’t turn up to collect her son from nursery. She would never leave him there and not come home all night. Her other two children are at their dad’s flat and she was meant to collect them too. I just don’t know… At first, I kept thinking she might come back in the night, that she just needed time to think.’ Mary wiped a tear from her cheek. ‘The family think I’m worrying a bit too much but I’m not. I’m her mother and she wouldn’t do this to me. She wouldn’t do this to her children.’
‘It’s okay, Mrs Hudson.’ Gina handed Mary a pack of pocket tissues.
‘Just call me Mary.’
‘Mary. It would help us greatly if you could answer a few questions.’
Kapoor pulled out her pocketbook and cleared her throat. Her shiny black ponytail bounced back and forth as she shuffled on the stool to get comfortable. ‘Can I take her full name?’
‘Susan Helena Wheeler. Wheeler is her married name.’
‘Age?’
‘Thirty-four.’
A few minutes later, Kapoor had noted down all the basic details of their missing woman.
Gina pulled out her pen and turned to a fresh page on her pad, ready to question Mary. ‘I know this is hard, Mary, but will you just go through yesterday’s events and what you know about your daughter’s whereabouts during this time.’
The woman began to twiddle her finger around her dyed bobbed brown hair, accentuating the slight kink. Gina glanced away, that was something her mother always did. Seeing Mary play with her hair like that had dredged up an image of her mother doing the same to her own bobbed brown hair. ‘Are you okay, Detective?’ Mary’s head tilted slightly.
Gina nodded and felt a little shiver run through her body. ‘I’m fine, thank you. Please begin.’ She dug her nail in her leg, reminding herself that she was here, now, and to not get lost in her own thoughts. Lots of people had brown bobbed hair and lots of people twiddled their hair when they were stressed.But not in that exact same way – uncanny.
Over the sounds of the boy running around in the bedroom above, Mary began to speak. ‘I thought nothing of it really, it was just a normal day. I knew that Susan had a few appointments this week, we’d spoken on the phone a few times.’
Gina gave a reassuring smile. ‘What does Susan do?’
‘She’s a bookkeeper, works for herself. From home, most of the time. Occasionally she does a bit of work on site, for companies, but not often. She mostly goes to people’s houses to pick work up and this has always worried me. I told her that I thought it seemed a bit risky but she didn’t seem to care. She always said her clients were lovely. Sometimes they even dropped their paperwork to her at home. I didn’t really like that at all, especially after she and Ryan split up. I mean, she’s in that house on her own with the kids. These people call her up after seeing her adverts in the paper and on Facebook. They could be anyone.’ Mary frowned.
Gina could see that the circumstances surrounding Susan’s work had been a worry for her mother. She wondered if her own mother had been as worried about her, every time Gina had lied that she was too busy to visit or receive visitors. She’d kept away to protect them from what Terry was doing to her, not wanting her parents to see how fragile and bruised she was back then. If only she had let them into her life.
Sucked back into the present by a child’s scream, Gina made a couple of notes. ‘How about yesterday? What can you tell me?’
‘I got a call from the nursery. It was after six, I can’t remember the exact time. They told me that Susan hadn’t picked Rory up and they were waiting to go home. He’s her youngest at two and he goes there most days until about five thirty. I often pick him up when Susan has clients to see later in the day but she didn’t ask me to collect him yesterday. After the nursery called I hurried straight there and brought him home with me. The nursery staff said that they’d tried to call Susan a few times but she hadn’t answered. I tried to call her too – over and over again, no answer. I brought Rory home, fed him and waited. After a while Ryan called. He hadn’t heard from her either. She was also meant to pick up their girls from Ryan’s apartment at eight and she didn’t turn up. As you can imagine, I started panicking. She wouldn’t miss picking the children up.’
‘How has Susan been, in herself?’ Gina imagined a mother of three, going through a divorce and trying to keep it all together by working hard to provide for her children, was going to be a bit stressed. ‘Is she happy?’
‘She wouldn’t hurt herself, if that’s what you’re thinking. Happy? I don’t know. She wasn’t depressed.’ Mary stared out of her kitchen window. ‘She’s not answering her phone. I don’t know what else to do.’ There was a loud thud from above and the patter of tiny feet ran around the room, the voice crying for ice cream.
‘Do you have a photo of Susan that we can take with us?’
