Chapter 4: Missing

“Hi, Tommy,” Rachel said, as she entered the darkened room.

“You must be Rachel?” he asked, blinking at the additional light coming through the doorway as the new visitor entered, “I thought I recognised your voice.”

“Sorry, Tommy, I should’ve remembered you hadn’t actually seen me before now, just heard my voice,” the detective apologised, “And it is still pretty dark in here. When did they remove your eye pads?”

“Only about ten minutes ago, actually. You have the privilege of being my very first visitor since the miracle of my sight was restored.”

“I naturally assumed that the two girls, Helen and Sharon would be in here already, to be honest.”

“I got the impression Sharon works weekends, so Helen was here on her own. She was sent packing from the room before the Doctor removed the dressings and did his shining light tests on my eyes. I think Helen said she was going for a “lattie” and a Danish. Anyway, you got any news for me?”

“Helen went for a “latte”, that’s a coffee with milk. Anyway, I have some good and some bad news. And a few unknowns in the mix too.”

“That doesn’t sound all that promising, Rachel.” he said, calmly, “How do you want to play this, good news first, then bad, or vice versa?”

“You sound quite relaxed about all this, Tommy.”

“I’ve been talking to Ben and the Doc for the last half-hour, catching up on the last thirty years that I’ve lost. Now, that was a bit of a shock, to say the least. Anything else you say is just icing on top!”

“Well, that’s one bad news item that I can cross off my list! Phew, that was one that I am really glad someone else beat me to.” Rachel sat herself down in the chair by the side of the bed and crossed her legs. She noticed, with the tiniest smile, that his eyes slowly ran down her leg to her shiny black heels and back up to her knees. Yes, Tommy, she thought silently to herself, I do work out, rather a lot, actually, and I am pleased with the shape of my legs and only wear trousers when the weather is bad and I’m quite pleased that you noticed.

“It’s been a big disappointment to me that my team Notts County have dropped from Division one to the bottom of Division three,” Tommy said, “Or whatever they call those divisions now. Ben did explain, but I got a bit lost in the translation somewhere along the line. I can’t see what was wrong with the old simple 1,2,3,4, system. Everything else they spoke about just seems like time has moved on real quick and left me behind in its wake. If I didn’t believe them, the Doc showed me my face in a mirror just minutes ago, so I can see that I am old, really old. I suppose you are going to tell me that in the last thirty years my beloved Sally has moved on with her life without me?”

“Well, I don’t actually have any information on Sally’s whereabouts at the moment, the Nottingham boys have so far drawn a blank in that direction. There’s nothing at all in the scanned paper file I received, which hasn’t been updated it seems for 25 years, when...” Rachel paused, “When you were officially declared deceased.”

“Agh, someone’s just walked over my grave!” Tommy said, more to himself than to Rachel. “Any ideas on where I have been living, and ... and who with, for the last thirty years or so?”

“We’ve had a bit of a lead from the Buxton uniforms, a description of you that was given over the phone late yesterday afternoon. No photo’s come through yet. The woman who reported her husband missing is going to speak to the Buxton police later this morning. They will give me the tip-off if anything promising arises out of that interview.”

“I thought I must’ve remarried.” Tommy commented quietly.

“What do you remember?” Rachel asked.

“No, Rach, I’ve not actually remembered anything, nothing at all in fact. When they removed the bandages from my hand and fingers yesterday, I could feel my wedding ring. I’ve seen it too, now, just a few moments ago. It is a thin gold band and it looks well worn, you can just feel some chasing around the outside which has worn smooth in places. When I married Sally, I had a really broad thick gold band, with no patterning on it, just an inscription on the inside. So I knew then that I must’ve got remarried. Probably married a long time ago, too. I may be a ... I don’t know what the word is...”

“Bigamist?” Rachel suggested.

“Yeah, that,” breathed Tommy, “I really can’t imagine this remarriage happening, not to me. There was never anyone else in my life except Sally, she was always ‘the special one’ for me. We knocked around as kids while we were growing up, and we became best friends. Then we just naturally progressed to being lovers. Once we got to that point, I thought we were set up for life together. I was never interested in anyone else, never. I mean, I used to flirt with ladies all the time, that was just my way. Jack the lad, full of cheek, that was me. But Sally was never worried. We both knew that she had no competition, nothing to worry about.”

“You never know what’s going to happen in life, Tommy. We don’t know what will come to light, you just have to cope with it as it comes.”

“So who is this missing person from Buxton?”

“The woman’s name was...” Rachel flicked over a page of her notes, “Er, Jennifer Eleanor Morris; her missing husband is Robert Neil Morris, missing since last Sunday morning. Ring any bells, Tommy?”

“No Ma’am, it doesn’t. And I really wish it did.”

“Well, you’ll be interested to know that he’s a keen jogger, too.”

Jennifer Morris was nervous, sitting alone in the Buxton Police Station interview room waiting for the detective to be free, from whatever was more interesting than her case, before he came to take her details. A policewoman had brought her a plastic cup of rather disgusting coffee more than ten minutes ago. She checked her watch again. It seemed like she had been waiting three times as long as that. She screwed her face up again as she sipped another cold mouthful. It was probably the worst cup of coffee she had ever tasted, but she didn’t have anything else to do with her hands except pick up the cup, sip and put the blessed thing down again.

Eventually the detective constable, who introduced himself as Paul Tully, came in and took the details that Jennifer was prepared to give him. She disclosed that she had last seen her husband on Sunday, and then only extremely briefly. It was very early that morning when he came home from work and before he left to go out for his usual end-of-shift-pattern run. She had thought through earlier, how could she explain to the police her reasons for delaying so long before reporting him missing? So, when the detective got around to asking that awkward question, she admitted to Tully, apparently reluctantly, that they had had a small domestic argument. Jennifer told Tully that she had assumed that he would stay at a motel for a couple of days before coming back in his own good time for reconciliation. These domestic rows take place from time to time, Jennifer said, it was just a stupid argument that hadn’t come to blows and nothing breakable was thrown out of the pram by either side. She fully expected the row to blow over quickly. He didn’t take their car and he left his wallet at home. He always went for a long run on Sunday mornings, but this time he never came back home.

The detective nodded, accepted what Mrs Morris was saying, not seeing any reason to go into any further details at this point. It was clearly no longer his case, if the Chesterfield “5-0” wanted to follow it up, they could. He had already spoken to DC Rachel Webster at Chesterfield CID and he would send off by email a scan of the photo that Mrs Morris had brought in for comparative purposes. It sounded from what both DC Webster and Mrs Morris were saying, that the injured guy in Chesterfield seemed to be the husband that was missing and lost. He had been there since Sunday he understood, although he must have been driven or taken the train, as Chesterfield was a good twenty-five miles away from Buxton by road.

“Too early to tell if we have found your husband at the moment, Mrs Morris,” Tully said. “We have had reports of a man who, on the surface, answers to your description but some of the important facts don’t quite match up, so I don’t want to get your hopes up yet that we’ve found him. I’ll send off this photo to the relevant CID this morning. We’ll be in contact with you in the next couple of days once we have more information for you.”

Jennifer Morris entered the restaurant at the motorway service station and looked around the tables. A wave from a table near the window alerted her to the presence of Richard Robertson. What a dummy, he was, the thought occurred to her, and not for the first time. They had arranged to meet immediately after her interview with the police, but somewhere quiet, somewhere no-one would see them together. However, instead of taking a table near the back wall or in a corner, Richard picked a table out in the open as close as he could get to the main concourse, where every motorist that uses this station needs to walk down to use the facilities. She sighed as she walked over to the table.

“Hi Jen, what did the police have to say?” Richard asked as she slid into the seat opposite him.

“They think they know where Bob is but they are not saying anything to me at the moment until they have had a positive ID,” Jen replied, “They’ve got someone who answers to Bob’s rough description somewhere apparently, but they have been given conflicting information by him. All reported by another police station somewhere, apparently. Again, they are not saying. They are going to send the photo off to that station today.”

“Looks like Bob’s playing silly buggers with you, then, Jen.”

“Well, can you blame him?” she lowered her voice even more, “Finding your spouse and best friend in bed together is enough to piss anyone off, even somebody as placid as Bob.”

“So, from what the police are saying, he’s not in Buxton, then?” he reached out and took her hand.

“No,” she snapped as she snatched her hand away, “Look, Richard, this was a mistake meeting here today. we should be keeping well away from each other. Honestly, why did you have to pick somewhere right out here in the window, instead of one of the booths near the back, in the shadows? Anyone could see us ... and then you try and hold my hand! Are you really that stupid, Rich?”

“Look I’m sorry, Jen, you know you mean the world to me. Anyway, if you can’t patch it up with Bob, you know, we could always-”

“There’s no ‘we’, Rich, let’s get this straight. I want my Bob back, I want my family back. I want everything back as close as possible to what it was, at any cost. I don’t even know what I was doing seeing you,” Jennifer shook her head, “And staying together for the whole of that last night has turned it into the very worst night of my life. And the nights spent alone ever since have almost been as bad. It’s the not knowing...”