“Or perhaps she simply bought a second passport. Kai Janssen probably has enough money to find fraudsters, even if Leigh Fletcher doesn’t. Who knows who she knows?” Clements suggests, wanting to haul the woman out of a comfortable, familial setting just for a moment and place her somewhere more terrifying. It isn’t a comforting thought, but it has to be looked at. Kylie Gillingham might be mixed up with the wrong sort of people. All possibilities deserve an airing. Clements presses on with the facts that strengthen her belief that the woman has been taken rather than done a runner. “No money has been withdrawn from any of her bank accounts since Monday morning when she paid for coffee and cake at a café in the park. A contactless transaction. That fits in with what her best friend told us. That was the last time anyone saw Kylie. The last time this made sense to anyone. What is she doing for money if she’s run away?”
“She probably has several bank accounts. There’s probably a complex trail of cash moving from one account to another, crisscrossing freely.”
“Well, I’d like to request the bank statements for all accounts going back some years, to unravel it. To see if it came to an abrupt halt on Monday.” The detective inspector raises his eyebrows, skeptically. Clements changes tack, puts an alternative on the table, one with which her boss is more likely to hold truck, anything to be given permission to request the bank accounts, devote a little more time. “Or to see if there is evidence of an escape fund being established.”
“Yes, you’ll probably find money has been siphoned off to fund a flit.”
“But what if I don’t? I mean, sir, questioning has not revealed any reports of obvious signs of stress or anxiety. There were no fluctuations in her routine, no sudden eruptions of temper. She was organized, controlled, careful. A cool customer, that much was certain. Mark Fletcher talked about some strain between her and their eldest boy, but that seemed pretty standard stuff in terms of parenting a teen, nothing that strikes me as a reason for a woman to bail on her life.” The DI looks uninterested. He keeps glancing at his screen, checking emails.
Clements cannot believe a woman who immaculately planned her life—her lives—with such precision would have left without money, passport, clothes if she could have helped it. So, even if she has done a runner, it is most likely impromptu. Under threat or fear? Possibly? Probably? What was the straw that broke the donkey’s back?
The detective inspector sighs. “Not sure if you are aware, DC Clements, but we are facing a global pandemic. Things are going to get rough imminently. There might be riots and revolt once the government announces plans to curtail the nation’s movements. There will be those who will use this to cause a fight, gain a foothold, exploit the vulnerable. We will be waist deep in looters, thugs, gangs, pushers. They’ll all come creeping out of the woodwork soon enough.”
Clements knows it is true. “But, sir, if we go into lockdown like the Europeans, any leads we have will go cold.”
“What leads do you have, Clements?” he asks impatiently. Clements doesn’t reply. He answers for her. “None, just hunches. What’s your plan? Knocking on every door in London and asking if they’ve seen her? Stop wasting police time. You know that’s an offense, right?” Her boss chuckles at his own joke, trying to show her he isn’t entirely unsympathetic to her, one of his key team members, just pushed for resources: time, manpower, funding. “Look, when lockdown begins, we’re going to have more than enough on our plates without chasing around looking for a grown woman who doesn’t want to be found. Conversation over.”
Nonreligious bigamy cases are rare. Clements has come across just two in her career—in both instances the men had more than one wife; her online research last night suggested that was the pattern. The jokes those cases spawned when being investigated were along the lines of, “He wants to plead insanity,” or, “What is he going down for? Didn’t realize masochism was a criminal offense.” Had a woman bigamist created an unarticulated but tangible sense of resentment? It annoys Clements that sexism drips into every part of her world. She wonders whether her boss’s reluctance to invest any time in this missing persons case was a misplaced sense of indignation against a woman who had dared to break not just the law, but the rules too. How dare Kylie Gillingham dupe men?
Clements returns to her desk and starts to fill out a Section 28 Data Protection form that would give her access to the bank records. Morgan comes to find her and takes it upon himself to offer an uninvited opinion. “It’s obvious, isn’t it?”
“Is it?”
“She was no longer able to maintain the deception. Perhaps she was even bored of it.”
“Bored?” It just doesn’t sit right. Clements can’t imagine getting bored of either man, let alone a situation where you had access to both. She is slightly annoyed with herself for having this thought—it is shallow, slick, borderline silly. Yet it came from her gut and Clements has learned to trust her gut. The life Kylie had constructed was many things—illegal, complex, dangerous, challenging—but it was not boring.
Only young Tanner has a differing view. “Which one of them do you think did it?” he asks, not quite able to hide his excitement. “The frazzled dad or the hot he-man?”
“Do you operate exclusively in stereotypes, Tanner?”
“I try to,” Tanner affirms with an unselfconscious grin.
Clements huffs irritably, even though she has been asking herself a variation on that same question. Did either of them know more about her disappearance than they were letting on? Were either of them responsible? If they had discovered her betrayal, there would be motivation. Humiliation, fury and desolation fueled many crimes of passion. Jealousy was a poison.
Both men were insistent that they had no clue that she was betraying them. But that in itself blew Clements’s mind. How was it possible that they had no clue? She thinks perhaps the issue is that healthy, rich, white men are dangerous because they are disinterested in everything other than themselves. Women, people of color, poorer men are still trying to work out the world. They are still asking why it is unfair. What can I do to make it fair? How do I ask for a pay rise? How do I get heard? Or believed? The people still asking themselves these questions observe what is going on around them, because everything around them is a potential threat. Clements has a theory that handsome, rich white men have nothing to work out and so they rarely bother with introspection, let alone inspection. The husbands assumed she was fine: busy, happy, trustworthy. And in this instance the self-absorption of the handsome, rich white man worked in Kylie’s favor.
Until of course it didn’t.
Everyone in the station is playing a waiting game. The air is electric, like it is just before a storm. Despite orders to drop the case, Clements decides to make some more phone calls. She calls Kylie’s mother in Australia, who says she last saw her daughter last year, they had a three-day break in Dubai. Kylie paid for it. “I wanted it to be longer. It was a long way to travel for just a few days,” the mother complained. Clements—who was guilty as charged and did operate on hunches, although not instead of facts but as well as—thought the mother was self-involved, hard work. If Kylie wanted a sanctuary, somewhere to escape to and cut free of the mess she created, Clements doubted her mother would offer that. “You’ll get in touch if you hear from your daughter? It’s important.”