Cambridge Blue - Alison Bruce [77]
His hand stopped moving and he turned his head, oh so slowly, to look over his left shoulder. His attention dwelt on Marks for a full thirty seconds and then, with a lethargic blink, he shifted his gaze and set it down again on Goodhew. No one spoke at first, and the effect was like a slo-mo moment in a movie where he read their faces and they read his.
Martin Reed was a giant of a man, at least six four and weighing in the region of twenty stone. His hair had receded, leaving him with just a dark, wavy clump on top. The sides were clipped short, as though he’d once sported a flat-top and had never quite grown out of it. He’d been good-looking when he was younger, and he’d never quite grown out of that either.
He stayed at the top of the ladder, clearly in no rush to invest any of his time in descending. ‘How can I help?’ His voice was deep but soft.
‘We’d like to ask you about Joanne,’ Marks replied.
‘Well, I realize that.’ There was no sarcasm there, just an acceptance that the police would only ever turn up to ask about his daughter. ‘You haven’t found her, have you?’
‘No, I’m sorry, we haven’t.’
‘OK.’ He came down from the ladder then, and led them into the house. They stood in the kitchen and waited while he put the window-cleaning cloths and sprays back in the cupboard under the sink. He put the items away one at a time, folding the chamois and placing it on the shelf, leaving the sponge squarely on top, then straightening the bottles on either side.
Goodhew glanced around the kitchen: every surface was clean and devoid of clutter. The washing-up sponge was precisely located in the middle space between the two taps and a tea towel folded in quarters hung from a drawer. It looked ironed.
A lone pen had been left on the windowsill, but he guessed it didn’t count as clutter, because it had been placed exactly parallel to the edge. There were good odds that the rest of the house would match. Martin Reed washed his hands and dried them on the tea towel, then replaced it in precisely the same position. Here the pristine and symmetrical ruled, as the big man struggled to keep control of his surroundings. He reminded Goodhew of a child on best behaviour, trying too hard, concentrating on every small task, and almost imploding with the strain. Instinctively, Goodhew knew that this was a man who rarely left home.
They were led into the front room, where Mr Reed invited them to sit on the settee. ‘You met my wife, Mary?’
They nodded.
‘She won’t be joining us unless you really need her to.’
Marks replied. ‘No, that’s fine. She said you’d “gone into one of your moods”. What did she mean?’
Reed did the slo-mo blinking thing again. ‘She knew what I was like when we married. She keeps me sane, I suppose. Even now I get keyed up whenever you turn up. I tell myself not to be disappointed, but I can’t help wondering if this time . . . I try to put the thought out of my head, but it still sneaks back in. I kid myself that I have no expectations left, but in the hour before you’re due to arrive, I’m counting down the minutes. It would be much easier for me if you could tell me the gist of the news by phone each time. Is that possible?’
‘I’m sorry, Mr Reed, but we’re now working on a different case. There’s a slim possibility of a link, but that’s all. Just the name Emma.’
‘That’s it? The name Emma?’ Martin Reed shook his head, sagging as if the fresh disappointment had winded him.
‘The case notes state that Joanne was also known as Emma. Is that correct?’
Martin Reed spread out his large hands, palms up. ‘It was nothing. She’d always preferred her middle name, and so decided to be known by it while she was at university. But Emma’s not a rare name, and it was never a big deal to Jo as far as I could tell. She used it briefly. To my mind, it seemed to be about . . .’ He paused to make the quotes sign with his fingers ‘. . . self-discovery. Some kids go spiky-haired or dabble with drugs. In her case, she changed her name. One of the detectives on the original