‘Did you kill O’Neill, and did you kill Macleod?’ I asked, as slowly and calmly as I could.
I dodged the book that came hurtling towards me and Mep swiftly drifted around the corner, doing a 180 again to flee the shouting.
‘Why…why would you say that?!’ Fran screamed at me, pushing her face towards mine. ‘Why did I have to marry such a pig?’
‘What did you just say, Fran?’
Fran’s eyes didn’t show any remorse. She meant this.
‘I said you’re pigged up,’ she said, doubling down on the insult. ‘You absolute idiot.’
Lord above. She knew how to push my buttons. To anyone else, I knew this would sound like such a ridiculous kind of argument. But every couple has thatthing,thatwordthat may seem absolutely bonkers to everyone else but goes off like mints in a fizzy Coke can between them. My mind was racing, fuelled by rage, searching for an insult that could hurt her as much as what she’d just said hurt me.
‘Whatever you say.’
I paused before speaking again, hoping I would be able to stop myself.
‘Murderer,’ I grumbled.
What happened next was something of a blur. All I saw was her charging towards me, slamming me against the wall, her forearm against my neck, pushing down with life-threatening pressure. I tried to look in her eyes and I didn’t see Fran any more. Her gaze was fixed on my neck and she was continuing to push down tight. I knew I had enough strength to push her off, but I didn’t know what to do. The shock of it had made my limbs go lifeless. My throat was closing in and tightening up, but I watched as she slowly realised what she was doing and lurched herself back. I glared at her in disbelief. Her skin went the palest shade of white, crimson sauce still moving down her body.
‘Hey,’ I said, reaching out to her. I knew she didn’t know what she was doing. Something else had taken over; she hadn’t meant to do that.
But she simply got up and walked out the door, closing it shut. I heard her car drive off before I even managed to move myself away from the wall.
I tried calling Fran what must have been a thousand times. Ringing and ringing until I didn’t hear any ringing any more. Just a cold, emotionless voice telling me that she wasn’t available, and to please try again later.
I found Mep, who had retreated into the cupboard upstairs, scooped him out and stroked him and held him until he stopped quivering.
‘It’s okay, buddy,’ I said, gently holding him against my chest and running one hand down his back. By the time I had finished petting him, he seemed more infuriated than scared by the evening’s events. I wasn’t sure if Fran had fed him, so poured him some food. He took a few mouthfuls, still looking trepidatious that the shouting could suddenly interrupt him again at any moment.
I cleaned up the kitchen as best as I could. The Bolognese came easily off the countertops and cupboard doors with a few wipes. The carpet was more difficult. I filled a bucket of water with bicarbonate of soda and a squeeze of detergent and began scrubbing away. I put the TV on in the living room to whatever channel seemed best to take my mind off this evening’s events, and spent the next few hours pushing my arm back and forth until my wrist physically couldn’t take it any more. I would experience an occasional pang of hope whenever I heard a car go past the window, darting my head up like a meerkat at the zoo, only to see it shoot past the house. It didn’t take long to dawn on me that Fran probably wasn’t coming home tonight.
Why hadn’t she told me that she had been a suspect for murder before? Let go after questioning – but still, the case had never been solved.
I was now realising that my wife wasn’t who I thought she was. Not because of her not having told me about being a suspect previously. And not because of anything she had said, or how she’d reacted to any of the questions. Hell, it wasn’t even becauseof how she’d attacked me. It was because of that look in her eyes when she’d stared at me, with her arm pushing down my throat. That wasn’t Fran. That was someone else, someone I absolutely did not recognise.
By the time I had finished cleaning the carpet and listening to the entirety of some dull talk show, I decided to go into the station. I wasn’t going to stay here and wait for Fran. It was killing me.
I grabbed a piece of paper from my book and wrote a note.
I’m sorry. This was a stupid fight. I shouldn’t have asked you that…
I stopped writing halfway through. I wasn’t sure about Fran any more. I wasn’t sure who she was. This wasn’t an ordinary argument; this felt cataclysmic. I scrunched up the piece of paper and tossed it in the bin, then began writing a new note.
I’m at the station if you need me. Please let me know if you’re home, okay? My phone is fully charged.
I gave Mep another cuddle, unsure whether it was for his benefit or for mine. Then, in what was now the early hours of the morning, I made my way to the station. The place was usually a busy and bustling hubbub twenty-four hours a day, but as I made my way through the building, it began to get quieter and quieter the closer I got to the CID. I sat down at my desk and placed my phone smack bang in the centre. If Fran rang, I would hear it straight away.
More than anything, I just wanted to know if she was okay. I also wanted some clarification of what kind of fight we’d just had. Had this been a verbal shouting match that got really outof hand, or was this the kind of thing where you took a trip to a family law solicitor to see what your options were?
The more sickening realisation to me was that I knew I couldn’t just let it go. If Fran had killed someone, she needed to be held accountable. The law was the law, and there was no bending it just because your wife was the suspect.
Or maybe she was protecting someone. Maybe she was being blackmailed or threatened, and that was why she wasn’t thinking straight. Could Angus be involved in this somehow?
I opened her report on my computer and went back to scanning over the selection of documents on my screen. I felt like, maybe from the beginning, I had known deep down she might have had a part to play in this. The cryptic notes on her phone, her unease at the mention of O’Neill, maybe now it was all beginning to make sense.
I heard the office door creak and my head shot up, foolishly expecting that I might see Fran. But unless she had undergone some pretty radical physical changes in the last few hours, including but not limited to male pattern baldness, the person I saw was definitely my colleague Steve.
