Unexpected Ch. 01

It was on the Wednesday morning that Sergeant Frank Stevens knocked on my door. He told me that Anna's file had finished up on his desk. He went through everything, all the questions I'd been asking myself. Was she unhappy, was there any chance she had been having an affair. You know all the questions you would expect. Then he left, not giving me much hope, by the way.

Friday morning Sergeant Stevens was back, this time with a couple of police constables for company. He asked would I mind if they searched the house. I told him go ahead and then he told me they were going to search it anyway as they had a warrant. I gathered later that he'd asked for permission just to see what my reaction would be.

After they turned the house upside-down and then made a very poor job of straightening it up after them, the sergeant asked me to accompany him to the station, where he'd like to ask me some questions. I could see no harm in that; at least it showed they were showing some interest in where Anna had gone. I figured the police were more likely to find her than I was.

Jean, who'd been Peter-sitting that day, had not been as relaxed about the police visit as I had. Shortly after I arrived at the police station, a solicitor whom Barry had hired turned up to sit in on the interviews. Jean had apparently been on to Barry the moment we'd left the house.

In the interview room I met Inspector Gary Harris for the first time. I'll admit that I didn't like the guy to start with, but I later changed my opinion as it was him who unofficially introduced me to the people to whom I think I owe my life.

From the start it was obvious the inspector wasn't happy about Anna's disappearance. Mind you, I wasn't either so I assumed we were on the same team. But that apparently isn't how policemen's minds work. "Hey fella, she's your wife; what have you done with or to her?" appeared to be the attitude they took with me. Christ, they gave me one hell of a grilling.

My brief told me later that most of the time it's the person who last claimed to have seen the person or who reports or doesn't report them missing early enough who's responsible for their disappearance. Yeah, don't ask me to explain here, or this bloody tale will go on forever. Take it from me, there's a window for reporting any adult missing. Do so too early or too late and the police suspect you of doing something. In my case it was too early, Anna might have gone off to see a friend or something. Yeah, bollocks; to my knowledge there was no one for her to go and visit.

The police let me go home again later that evening. Note the go home bit. They'd taken me to the police station in a car. I had to find my own bloody way home again.

I heard nothing more from the police over the weekend. I attempted to get the press interested but to no avail. Because she'd taken some clothes with her they said she'd probably left home by choice and asked me what I'd done to upset her.

The Tuesday of the second week I was still a real mess mentally. I'm not sure what made me call Inspector Harris and demand to know what progress had been made but I did so. It was quite a shock to me when he invited - yeah, I said invited - me to call into the police station for a chat and he'd give me an update.

I arrived about ten in the morning and was shown into the inspector's office where I found Harris and Sergeant Stevens waiting for me.

"Now there's just a couple of things I'd like to check out with you before I say anything, Mr Garland. Is that alright?" Harris asked.

"Yeah, fine with me. Anything that I can do to help you find her I will," I replied.

"Good, now lets see. You told my sergeant here that your wife's maiden name was Thomas and that she was born in Walford East London," Inspector Harris said.

"As I understand it, yes. Well, that's what it says on the birth certificate I showed Sergeant Stevens the other day," I replied.

"And as far as you are aware she grew up in the town of Bedford."

"As I understand things, yes. Anna didn't talk about her past much. I think her family is dead from the way she talked about them, not that she did very much."

"Tell me have you ever heard of a man called Ian Murray? Did she ever mention the name at all?" the inspector asked.

"Murray? No, I'm pretty sure she never mentioned the name. Inspector, Anna was - how can I put it? - reticent about talking about her past," I informed him.

"Hmm, I see," the inspector said as he extracted a piece of paper from a file lying on his desk. "Now then, there we have a real problem. There was an Anna Thompson who was born in Walford on the right date. The National Health and Insurance reference numbers that your wife was using are the ones issued to her. Anna Thompson's family moved out of the Greater London Area about a year or so after she was born and she grew up until the age of fifteen in Bedford.

"But then we run into problems. You see, the Thompson family emigrated to New Zealand and she went with them. We've been able to ascertain that she's apparently happily married to a guy called Ian Murray and now lives in Sydney, Australia with her husband and three children.

"My sergeant here has spoken to the Sydney Police, Anna Thompson's parents, Ian Murray and Anna Murray nee Thompson herself. I'm afraid to say, Mr Garland, that whoever you were married to, it was not Anna Thompson. It was someone using her identity.

"You've got to be wrong."

"I'm sorry, sir, but the National Health and Insurance numbers are the same. Your Anna Thompson was not the real Anna Thompson."

"Oh, Christ, where do we go from here?"

"Well, sir, where can we go? Who ever the woman calling herself Anna Thomas was, she must have been hiding from something or someone. She could be wanted for a crime by another police force or running away from ... well, just about anything - a previous marriage that went wrong even. Or, and it is a possibility that we have to take into account, she could a con artist who was setting you up, but I somehow don't believe that. No disrespect, sir, but you're not exceptionally rich or anything, are you?"

"No, I suppose I'm mister average. I've got a few grand stashed in the bank, but nothing to write home about," I replied.

"Tell me, sir, did your wife ... um ... I know she didn't she take any large amounts of money out of your bank accounts before she left because we've got a trace running on them for any movement. But did you buy her any expensive jewellery or anything like that whilst she was with you?"

"No ... well, yes, I brought her a few things, but nothing ostentatious. Anna wasn't into that kind of thing."

"And we know she hasn't maxed out on the credit cards or anything, from the watch we've got running on them. She hasn't apparently used any money at all from accounts that we know about. But that doesn't mean that she hasn't got other bank accounts in different names. She's obviously a very resourceful woman."

"I'm pretty sure she wasn't trying to steal from you. I suspect she was running away from something. I'm afraid that it could possibly be us. It's unusual not to find a single fingerprint if the woman in the house has lived in it for so long. That says to me that she purposely removed them."

"Now you come to mention that, Anna insisted that our car needed washing on the night before she disappeared. I washed the outside and she cleaned and polished inside ... that's strange," I observed. "I remember now she was wearing rubber gloves when she did it. But later I noted that she still had them on well after we went back inside the house. One of those things I thought odd, but not odd enough to bother to mention to her."

"I see. She could have been planning her disappearance for some time then. Well, she must have removed nearly all trace of herself from not only your house and car but from her office desk as well. Someone noticed her cleaning her telephone and computer on the Thursday afternoon. I suppose I'd better tell you that we've had to check that she hasn't stolen any money from her employers as well."

"And has she?"

"Not that they can find. She had no dealings with the cash side of things there and all the cheques that have been paid in or out are accounted for. No, whatever your wife has run away from it's in her past, not the last year or so. And, sir, I think we are going to have one hell of a job tracking her down. That's assuming we ever do."

"Can people disappear like that? Just walk out the door and then nothing?"

"All too often, Mr Garland. We've got filing cabinets full of them down in the record department. Most are not as experienced as your wife at hiding themselves either. It strikes me that if she doesn't want to be found, then we aren't going to find her."

That was really the end of the interview. The inspector told me that there were just a couple of human hairs found in my house that could belong to Anna, pubic hairs found caught on the washing machine filter. They had been sent off to the laboratory in an attempt to get a DNA match with anyone on the police DNA register.

That was it. We said our goodbyes and he assured me that Anna would remain listed as a missing person, but unless there was a DNA match that proved she was a wanted felon he very much doubted that her disappearance would be treated with a high priority.

End of Part one