I want to meet this person, this tightly wound woman who has a secret dry wit hidden beneath diplomacy. I want to flesh out the skeleton in my mind.
“When was the last time you saw her?” I ask.
“Jack’s funeral.”
“How was she?”
“Oh, she was holding everything together, of course. That’s what women do during these times. Not that anyone was particularly…” She trails off and stares down at her feet.
“People weren’t sad to see Jack die?”
“Ah, I didn’t mean it to sound like that. Jack had been ill for a very long time, and it didn’t come as too much of a shock.”
“Okay,” I say. “What do you think has happened to Claire?”
Janice’s chin wobbles again. She turns away and brushes tears from her cheeks. “I wish I knew. I wish I had an answer to give. This is not like Claire at all. I suppose what I keep thinking is that… is that she had some sort of breakdown. Like I said, Claire is always very reliable, very controlled. Maybe losing Jack cracked something she’d been holding together. Maybe she’ll turn up on a beach in Spain drinking cocktails.”
I can tell that she’s thinking wishfully. I don’t believe she’s on holiday for a moment.
“Could someone have hurt her?” I ask.
Janice sighs. “I did mention this to the police. I suppose there’s no harm telling you too.”
“What is it?” I ask.
“The things is… Claire never had a good relationship with her stepson. Actually, she was really quite afraid of him. And she always had been. I’m not saying that he was a dangerous person or that he had anything to do with her disappearance, but she did once, maybe twice, confess that he scared her.”
“What did she say? Was he physically violent?”
“No, nothing like that. More… manipulative.”
My mind immediately goes to Nathan, to all the trouble I had with him as a child. Chills run up and down my arms.
“Thank you so much, Janice. Can I leave you my number?”
“Of course,” she says, taking a business card from me. “You are so like her. The resemblance is uncanny. But you don’t speak or move like her at all. It’s very strange.”
I laugh. “Sorry. It must be creepy.”
“If I didn’t know Claire as well as I do, I wouldn’t know the difference,” she says, raising her eyebrows.
CHAPTER 31
FAYE
Alistair greets me with a cocky, “Afternoon, inspector,” when I join him in The Cricketers, a pub on the edge of the village.
I flash him an amused but tired expression and he heads to the bar to order me a lemonade.
“So, did you find anything out?” I ask as he sits back down.
“Not really,” he says. “Except that these people know her,” he points to the barman pulling a pint of ale. “But they knew her husband better. He used to go to the pub alone a lot. Local bigshot apparently. His company is one of the biggest employers in the area and they host a company barbecue every summer that is quite well known around the village. His son is tipped to take over the business.”
“Pillars of the community,” I mutter.
There’s something almost dystopian about it. The perfect house, the perfect life, with the possibility of a rotten core. But I check my imagination before it runs away again. I don’t know anything for sure. Claire could be perfectly safe, holed up in a hotel somewhere ordering room service for all I know.
Alistair and I swap notes over our drinks. I tell him all about Janice Tideswell, and everything she shared with me about my sister’s life. Aside from her manipulative stepson and her somewhat reserved attitude to life, it sounded as though my sister was comfortable, happy even. Yes, her husband had just died but it made no sense for her to disappear.
