Woman Last Seen(37)

Clements glances about. “There doesn’t look like there is much stuff.”

“No, we both like a minimalist home so it wasn’t really surprising when I couldn’t find a paper bill. We are environmentalists. We keep as much as we can online.” Clements suppresses a sigh; he sounds like he is expecting to be congratulated on this very usual practice. Clements tries to be as environmentally friendly as the next person, so she doesn’t know why she finds people who declare they are environmentalists so irritating, but she does. “I logged into her email account, had a poke around there.” Clements raises her eyebrows. It’s technically an offense to read someone else’s email—admittedly, one that’s unlikely to lead to prosecution, but it’s an invasion. He shrugs, unperturbed. Entitled. “We have each other’s passwords. We’re not the sort of couple to keep secrets. I couldn’t find any correspondence from the home, or even a file on her mother. I logged into her phone provider and looked up her last phone bill. I thought there would be the number of the home on that. When she is here with me, she calls first thing in the morning to see how Pamela has slept and then in the evening to see that Pam has had a comfortable day.”

“You’d make a good detective.”

He shrugs. He’s a man used to being told he’s good at things. It doesn’t matter to him. He doesn’t need to be told; he knows it.

“But here is the thing, on her phone records there are no outgoing calls to any number other than mine.”

“What?”

“Well, no personal ones. No care home, no friends, just a couple of restaurants that we’ve visited, and her hair salon, decorators—that sort of thing. I went through every one of her phone calls—line by line—for the past six months but there are no calls to people she actually knows. Here, look.” He reaches for his laptop, types at the speed of light and pulls up a phone statement. He has all the enthusiasm and urgency of a member of Enid Blyton’s Famous Five. Clements is always skeptical of amateur sleuths. She also is starting to doubt his assertion that they are not the sort of couple to keep secrets.

“This doesn’t mean much in isolation. I need to check the numbers myself.” Clements’s first thought is that Kai Janssen has two phones. “Does your wife work, Daan?”

“No.”

“Do you have children?”

“No.”

“What did her last message say? The one you received today?”

“I’m fine, no need for you to visit.”

“How long have you been married?”

“Three years, last December.” Clements’s longest relationship was eight months. She shakes her head, an almost imperceptible motion. She doesn’t know how people do it. Live with each other, day in day out, without getting bored or driving each other mad. Without killing each other. But then, she thinks, maybe they don’t manage it. Some do kill each other. Daan Janssen continues, desperate to impart his concerns. “I decided to make a list of the care homes in Newcastle. I collated the information online. I was very thorough. I called them all, one by one. I can give you that list too. I can’t find a place with a woman resident by the name of Pamela Gillingham. No one has ever heard of Kai Janssen. I tried all the private ones and the council ones. Nothing. And there is another thing. The Find iPhone app has been turned off.”

“Have you called any of her friends?”

“Without her phone I don’t know how to get hold of her friends.”

“You don’t have the number of any of them in your phone? Not one?”

“There aren’t many. There is someone from her pottery class that she mentions a lot, Sunara. Sunara Begum, I think, but I don’t have her number. There are a few friends from her college days—Ginny, Emma, Alex—but they don’t live in London. She sometimes takes spa weekends with them, that sort of thing. They are not my friends. You know? I don’t mean I don’t like them. I just don’t know them. Kai is very busy with her mother. She’s devoted and that takes up most of her time. She also supports me in my role. We have a full social life through my work and through the friends I’ve introduced her to.”

“Have you called them?”

“I don’t want to make a fuss.”

Clements nods, trying to appear sympathetic. She doesn’t know what to tell him. If Kai Janssen was employed, Clements might assume that there is a second phone for work and that perhaps she isn’t as honest as she should be about making private calls on her work phone to the care home but that isn’t the case. Daan is right, something is off, but Clements doesn’t believe Kai Janssen is missing, she is most likely having a cozy weekend away with her lover and it’s been eked out longer than she was expecting. Adulterers often have two phones. It’s standard practice. Clements suddenly hates her job. In this exact moment it feels like a babysitting service. Women leaving their handsome but self-involved husbands is not police work. She decides the best thing she can do is draw the evening to a close with promises to make the appropriate enquiries. Sooner rather than later, Daan will receive word from his wife. Maybe a tearful confession that she has met someone else or a hard-nosed “see ya, don’t wanna be with ya.” Either way, this isn’t Clements’s business. It isn’t police business.