The Perfect Wife(78)

“You helped her with that.”

“I tried.” Boyd looks troubled. “That is, I listened. She was so used to not being listened to that at first it was hard for her. But little by little she opened up. I doubt anyone else had seen that side of her. Certainly not her husband.”

Piers Boyd had been a little bit in love with Abbie, you realize. Did she use her beauty and her vulnerability to manipulate him? Or are you being too cynical about that?

“And what was the specific issue that made you file a child protection report?” you ask. “Was it to do with drugs? Drinking?”

Boyd shakes his head. “Nothing like that. She was planning to abduct Danny.”

You sit back, reeling. “Abduct him? How?”

“He’d been put in a special-ed school, one chosen by Tim. He’d showed Abbie all these studies proving it was the most effective placement, bullied her into going along with it…It was only after Danny started there that she realized just how bad it was.”

“I know. I saw it myself, this morning.”

Boyd nods. “Horrible, right? Abbie had been through something similar herself, back in the rehab unit Tim put her in. But while she’d accepted it for herself, she couldn’t bear the thought of Danny suffering like that.”

“But…” You stop. In the last few hours all your assumptions about Abbie have been turned upside down. Not a bad mother, but a devoted one. Not a party animal, but a parent caught in an impossible position.

“The thing is, I was torn,” Boyd adds. “I could see why she hated that place. But it didn’t seem to me she’d properly thought through the alternative. They were just going to take off and start a new life somewhere, she claimed, like it was easy. But when I pressed her, she didn’t know where or how, or what the arrangements for Danny’s education would be. He’s a vulnerable child. I couldn’t ignore what she was telling me—I could lose my license to practice. I thought if I flagged an issue, at least the police would get an educational psychologist to take a look at Meadowbank and assess whether it really was the right place for Danny.”

“But they didn’t.”

He shakes his head. “The report still hadn’t been acted on by the time she disappeared.”

“So what happened?”

He spreads his hands. “I’m as much in the dark as anyone. Maybe her plans changed. They were pretty vague, after all.”

You wonder if that’s true. The website had walked her through how to set up a new identity, how to live off-grid—

Tell no one what you plan to do, it had instructed. Not even those you trust the most.

“I think she knew exactly where she was going to take Danny,” you say slowly. “She just didn’t want to tell you. It was safer that way.”

Piers Boyd looks hurt, then nods as he sees the sense in what you’re saying. “But if that’s the case, why is Danny still at Meadowbank? And where’s Abbie? What went wrong?”

You shake your head. “That’s what I still don’t understand. But I intend to find out.”





62


Charles Carter comes to his door wearing an old gray cardigan. You weren’t surprised to find him home: He’d said he worked from there. Mergers and acquisitions, mostly.

“Come on in,” he says. He seems genuinely pleased to see you.

You follow him through the house to an office overlooking the beach. There are three computer screens on his desk, arranged like mirrors on a dressing table. One displays a stock-trading screen. A second is for Skype. The largest, the one in the middle, displays what looks like a contract he’s drafting. But it’s the picture on the wall behind the screens your eye is drawn to. It shows the view of the ocean from the boardwalk below, painted in a vibrant, almost street-art style, the waves reduced to abstract, clashing triangles of energy. In one corner you can just make out his boat, the Maggie.

Like the mural in Tim’s office, you think. You go over and look for the looping, flamboyant signature. Abbie Cullen-Scott.

“It’s good to see you again,” Charles Carter says. “There aren’t many people around at this time of year. I won’t deny it does get somewhat lonely out here.”

You indicate the painting. “Was that how she paid you?”

“Abbie?” He looks amused. “Why would she need to pay me?”

“For setting up a corporation.”

Carter takes off his reading glasses and twirls them in his hand, looking at you thoughtfully.

“That was the part she’d have needed help with,” you add. “Most of the instructions she was trying to follow were straightforward—leave your phone on a bus, stop using credit cards, that kind of stuff. The tricky bit was setting up a legal entity that could rent a house and sign up for utilities and so on, without her name being attached to it. I’m guessing she came to you for that.”

Charles Carter raises his eyebrows. You outwait him.

“That’s conjecture,” he says at last.

“I’m extremely good at conjecture. Intuitive thinking is what I was built for.”

“It’s always good to have a purpose,” he murmurs. “And indeed, to know what that purpose is.”

“For a while back there, I thought you might have been sleeping with her,” you add. “But now I think I was falling into the trap of looking at everything the way Tim does. I’m guessing you simply liked each other. Two lonely people who, in their different ways, had each lost the person they loved most in this world…And as you said yourself, you owed her a favor, for sorting out the leases here with Tim.”