Darkness Falls (Kate Marshall, #3)(12)

“I’ll take it black,” said Tristan.

“Me too,” said Kate.

“Have a seat,” he said, indicating a long wooden kitchen table with a bench on each side next to a patio window.

Kate and Tristan perched on the bench facing the window. The back garden was large and dotted with silver birch trees, which were still small. A soft, undulating path of white gravel led to a huge wood-framed structure with glass walls at the bottom of the garden. It was empty inside, and the floor was covered in dark-green mats.

“That’s Tameka’s yoga studio,” said Fred. Kate noticed the gate in the wall at the bottom of the garden. Tristan noticed it, too, and glanced sideways and raised his eyebrow. It was the gate Famke had used for their affair.

Fred came over to the table with three steaming espresso cups on a little tray. “Tameka is an Ashtanga yoga teacher, and she does lessons from home.”

“Do you work now?” asked Kate, taking two of the cups off the tray and handing one to Tristan. “The case files say you were unemployed when Joanna went missing.”

“Yes, I work now,” he said with an edge of sarcasm in his voice. “I’m a website designer. We both get to work from home and share the responsibility for Anika.” He pulled a packet of biscuits from the pocket of his baggy trousers and opened it with his teeth, spreading out the plastic packet on the tabletop. The biscuits spilled out. “Damn, I didn’t think that through, did I?” he said. He went back to the kitchen and started searching through the cupboards to find a plate. Kate sensed that he was a stranger to food preparation and the kitchen in general. He returned with a plate and tipped the biscuits onto it. He then fussed around some more, clearing up the crumbs and then checking to see if any mess remained. Kate presumed that Tameka ran a tight ship.

“Right,” he said, sitting down opposite them. “Joanna . . .”

“Yes. Bev said she contacted you,” said Kate.

“Yeah. She sent me a text,” said Fred. “Do you think you’ll find her?”

“I hope so,” said Kate. “Do you support Bev’s decision to hire a private detective?”

Fred rubbed his eyes. “I’m not against it. I’ve mourned for Joanna. And I think I’m lucky that I’ve been able to move on. I had to, for my sanity. I think Bev’s still trapped in the same place she was the night Joanna vanished. Just talking about it again is giving me the shivers. Look at my hands—I’m shaking . . .” He held them out. He had long, thin fingers, but his fingertips were slightly bulbous.

“Is it difficult to still live here, in the same house where you lived with Joanna?” asked Tristan.

“I’ve only been back for three years. A year after Joanna went missing, I rented the place out and got a flat in Exeter.”

“Why did you rent it out?” asked Kate.

“I couldn’t afford the mortgage on my own. I had to rent it out. When people go missing, there’s no law in place to say what happens to their assets. We had a joint mortgage, but I couldn’t change it without Joanna’s signature. It wasn’t until eight years later, that we, well, I went to court so Joanna could be ruled as death in absentia. Presumed dead.”

His face looked pained at the memory.

“You said we and then corrected it to I?” asked Kate.

“Bev was against it. She accused me of giving up on Joanna, but in the end, she came around to it. We were able to get a death certificate, have a funeral. My marriage to her was annulled. I bought out what Joanna put into this house. I gave the money to Bev.”

“What did Bill think?”

“Bill tends to think whatever Bev thinks. He’s devoted to her . . . They look after each other. Bev had a bad time when she was with Joanna’s father. He was violent and controlling. Bill is the opposite of that—calm, dependable. But after Joanna’s dad, Bev vowed that she’d never get married or give up her independence to a man. I thought they might be married by now, after all these years. I suppose moving in together is a step in the right direction . . . Bill’s a good guy. He helped me out with money after Joanna went missing. And when they finally ruled Joanna as dead, he bought the plot of land in the cemetery next to Bev’s mum’s grave and paid for a beautiful headstone . . .” His voice trailed off. “We had a lock of Joanna’s hair interred.”

Kate thought back to when they’d met Bev and Bill, how Bev had spoken of Joanna like she still might be alive. She hadn’t mentioned any of this. Fred took a sip of his coffee and went on.

“I met Tameka six months after Joanna was ruled dead in absentia. I proposed six months later, and she fell pregnant. We wanted to live somewhere nice, and this is now a good area with a good school. We had this house completely gutted. New floors, roof. We added this kitchen on and two more rooms upstairs with an en suite bathroom. The garden was landscaped . . . It’s unrecognizable from before. Weirdly, it helped with the neighbors too,” he said.

“How did it help?” asked Kate.

Fred raised an eyebrow.

“As you probably know, the police questioned me, but that’s as far as it went. My alibi came from Famke, a neighbor who I was having an affair with, so a lot of the neighbors still think I bumped Joanna off. When we remodeled, the whole house was ripped apart. Floors pulled up, walls stripped back to the brick. We dug up the garden for a new ground-source heat pump, and the village is now on the main sewage system, so we took out the old septic tank . . . Someone in the village called the police when they saw the tank being craned out of the garden. I don’t know who. The police showed up and asked to look inside before it was taken away. They’d checked it already, three times over the years. It was good to get rid of it and make a new start. I think the rumors that I killed Joanna and stashed her under the floorboards or buried her in the garden have hopefully been put to rest.”