‘I need to know where my wife was on certain dates. It’s important,’ he said.
‘I’m not really sure if we can do that, Mr Moore,’ said Wendy with a sympathetic half-smile.
‘Can’t or won’t? Sorry.’ He apologised immediately for the snap in his voice. ‘It’s really important,’ he stressed.
‘Why do you need to know?’
‘Insurance policies.’ He’d thought of this in the car to give as an answer if asked, vague enough to be believable. ‘They’re asking me questions about where she was when she died. If she was working or not.’
Wendy drummed her fingers on the table, the equivalent of thinking dots on an open phone message. Then she stood. ‘Can you bear with me?’
‘Yes of course.’
Wendy left the office. He saw her through the glass windows approach an older woman with grey cropped hair sitting at a computer and talk to her. They both glanced at Pete. The older woman took out a large book and Wendy returned with it.
‘Gilda arranges the client appointments, she prefers the old-fashioned approach of paper and pens,’ said Wendy.
‘The day she died, Tara was supposedly with a client in Leeds,’ said Pete. ‘It was the afternoon of February sixth.’
Wendy flicked through, found the date, checked the information on it. ‘I can’t . . . see . . . ’ she began.
‘What does it say? Please tell me,’ said Pete.
‘Tara wasn’t working that day. She’d booked it off,’ said Wendy.
It had to be a mistake. He said as much.
‘No, Gilda is very reliable and she has recorded here that Tara asked for the time off the day before, for an emergency dental appointment that apparently was going to take up the whole day.’ Her tone was slightly scathing.
Pete’s brain began to spin. There had been nothing wrong with Tara’s teeth.
‘I don’t understand this at all,’ said Pete, hand raked in his hair. ‘We walked out of the house together that morning. She was dressed for work and she was carrying files. She said she had a full day of appointments. I’d told her to drive carefully between them because snow had been forecast and she said that she would.’ That was what happened; he had no doubts about it. ‘Are you sure?’
‘Gilda doesn’t make mistakes.’ Wendy said it in such a way that indicated Gilda’s word was reliably gospel.
She looked at the man sitting in front of her, his brow creased as he tried to make sense of the information she had just given him. She wasn’t a fool, he wasn’t asking for insurance purposes. For a moment she was poised on the horns of a dilemma, but the truth would always carry a greater weight for her. He should know, she decided.
‘Were you aware that Tara had a verbal and a written warning because of false appointments?’
‘What do you mean?’ asked Pete.
‘Tara was very good at her job, well respected and a brilliant deal-closer. She brought us in a lot of clients who wanted to invest in us. She earned the firm a lot of money, which is why we were patient with her. She went AWOL quite a lot in the months before her death. She’d miss turning up for some appointments and tell us she was in places that she wasn’t. Gilda made a follow-up call to one of them to find that Tara had lied. So Gilda went on a detective trail because once she gets her teeth into something, she doesn’t let up. She uncovered a few of these transgressions. Between you and me, Gilda has a form of OCD that makes her quite invaluable where accountability is concerned, but maybe doesn’t endear her to her workmates that much.’
‘Did my wife have close friends here?’ Pete asked, but he doubted it. Tara didn’t make women friends easily. Not close friends, not friends she’d ever confide in. Not outside her family.
‘Not really. Someone mentioned, the other day in fact, that they’d worked with her and known her for years but didn’t know her at all. She didn’t let people in very easily, did she? Always played her cards close to her chest.’
What hand was she playing that she needed to do that? came the thought.
Pete opened up Tara’s diary. He’d marked a couple of dates, ones where he could remember she’d been late home, moaning about clients. July twenty-sixth, James Brecht, Buckmans. November fifth had stuck in his mind. It was the only day that A. Bakewell – Paragon Holdings could do so he’d gone alone to Jacko’s bonfire party. January fifteenth – Edinburgh.
‘Could you cross-check these for me, please?’
‘Paragon Holdings? I’ve never heard of them and I’d know about them if they were potential clients,’ said Wendy, opening Gilda’s book again, flicking through the pages.
‘Yes to Brecht, yes to Edinburgh, that was a one-day financial course with an overnight stay booked for her. No to the mysterious Paragon Holdings, as I thought. Tara rang in with a migraine that day.’
She didn’t get migraines. And she’d been in Edinburgh for four days. She had definitely been there because she’d sent him photos of the city and texts saying how boring all the presentations were. He’d dropped her off at the railway station and picked her up there four days later.
Pete stood up, stuffed the diary back in the bag. ‘Thank you, Miss McCulloch.’
Wendy McCulloch stood up and held out her hand. She’d made the right call telling him the truth but she gained no joy from it. Her disclosure did not extend to the office gossip that Tara must have been having an affair though. It was a conclusion that others apart from her had reached but she hoped for the sake of this man, who looked bewildered and felled, that they were wrong on that.
‘I’m sorry, Mr Moore. I don’t feel as if I’ve helped you at all.’ She held on to his hand and he felt the warmth and sympathy in it. Wendy seemed nothing at all like Tara had described. When she let go she said, ‘I’m sorry for your loss, Mr Moore. I can’t imagine what you must be going through.’
‘No, you really can’t,’ he said and left.
*
Pete checked his phone in the car to find a flood of messages and voicemails. From Griff, from his father, from Laurie.
Laurie here. Everything okay? X
Pete, ring me, I’m worried about you lad. It’s your dad. I’m driving over.
Dad’s chucked that bitch out. G. Ring me
P where are you, ring me. G
P will you ring Dad, he’s worried sick. Then ring me because we are as well. G
Pete I’m here at your house. I need to know you’re all right. Dad
When he got home, it was to find his dad parked outside, having a snooze in the front seat. Pete rapped on the window and Nigel woke up with a start.
‘Where the bloody hell have you been?’ said Nigel. ‘I’ve driven all over the place looking for you. Let me ring Griff and tell him you’re still alive. He’s worried daft.’
Pete unlocked his front door while his father and brother communicated. Nigel then went inside, opened up his arms and closed them around his son. His father was inches smaller than Pete was now but Pete remembered being a boy, looking up at him, feeling his dad’s arms enfold him like a papa bear’s.
‘Put the bloody kettle on,’ said Nigel, letting go and sitting down at the kitchen table. ‘What a day already and it’s not even lunchtime.’