I’ve just returned from the far side of the country – visiting with grandchildren!! Thought I’d get back into the swing.
Chapter 9 – The police investigation
It was predictably the next morning before the police finally showed up. John, Mandy, Pete, Brian and all the others had been out half the night scouring the fields, canal and paths looking for me. Of course they had turned up nothing.
Liz had packed the kids off to school. They were frightened and reluctant to go. They wanted to go out with everyone else looking for me. But Liz put on a brave face and reassured them that I’d soon turn up safe and sound and they weren’t to worry or say anything to their friends. I was alright. Everything would turn out fine. Daddy had probably just needed some time on his own. They saw through it but did not really have any alternative. Liz assured them that she’d let them know as soon as she heard anything and so they went. She knew I wasn’t out there down the lane. She did not know where I was but she knew I wasn’t there.
Liz stayed off work. She was much too confused and upset to go in teaching little primary school children. She couldn’t even look after herself properly. Her mind wasn’t functioning and she kept bursting into tears. Carol, Kathy and Mandy all took time off to be there with her. They made her cups of tea and fussed round reassuring her that it would all turn out OK and came up with a series of increasingly implausible explanations. Liz wasn’t sure that any of it was helping but she was glad they were there. Them being there helped. She certainly didn’t want to be on her own. She kept imagining the worst and each time she conjured it up it was worse than before.
Liz wondered if she ought to ring round the relatives and let them know. But she kept putting it off. It was far too early. She had nothing to tell them. Besides if she did that it only served to make it more real. It meant I was gone.
The doorbell rang and Mandy answered it. She ushered the two police officers in to the sitting room with Liz and then discretely took Carol and Kathy off, ostensibly to make some tea for everyone.
‘When did your husband go missing?’ the lady police officer asked, taking out her notebook to record what was said. The other police officer, a sombre looking man, sat silently in his seat and studied her intently. Liz knew that he was watching her responses. Most murders were carried out by spouses. They knew that, and Liz knew it too. They were watching for tell-tale signs and it made Liz uncomfortable. She knew she had not done anything wrong but that did not help. It felt to her like when you’re driving and look in your mirror to see a police car; you’re driving goes to pieces.
‘He went missing yesterday evening,’ she explained carefully. ‘He went off to walk the dog at around eight o clock and hasn’t come back,’ a lump had come to her throat at the thought of it. She gathered herself and pressed on. ‘The dog returned all upset and still won’t come out of his bed.’ She looked round at the two of them. ‘He’s never like that. He adores my husband. He wouldn’t have abandoned him. Something terrible has happened. I know it has.’
‘So he’s only actually been gone for fifteen hours?’ the lady policewoman said, writing in her book and sounding disinterested. ‘We don’t normally start investigating for at least three days. They usually turn up with their tail between their legs.’ She looked at Liz and shrugged. ‘What is your husband’s name?’
‘Opher,’ Liz replied. ‘O P H E R,’ she spelt out. ‘You don’t know him. He wouldn’t just go off for no reason. He’s not like that. The dog came back so distressed. Something terrible has happened. I know it has.’
‘Opher,’ the policeman cut in. ‘That’s a strange name. Is he foreign?’
‘No, he’s English,’ Liz said, beginning to feel peeved with their attitude and picking up on their indifference.’ White English,’ she added angrily, as if that made the slightest difference.
‘Do you have a recent photograph?’ The policewoman continued in her lackadaisical manner.
The questions were making Liz more and more flustered.
‘Yes, I’ll sort one out,’ Liz replied.
‘Has he ever done anything like this before?’ the police lady continued, as if reading a checklist.
‘No. Never!’ Liz said emphatically. The idea was quite preposterous.
‘Has he been suffering any great stress at work?’
‘No,’ Liz replied, floundering around and beginning to question herself. Maybe there was something she hadn’t known? Maybe something had been upsetting him and he hadn’t confided in her? Maybe things weren’t as good as she thought they were? ‘He is a teacher. He loves his job and he’s good at it. The students love him. He is well respected. He doesn’t get stressed.’
‘So what exactly does he do?’
‘He’s a secondary school Biology teacher and Head of Department.’
‘A Head of Department is a stressful role isn’t it?’ The policewoman said, her ears pricking up.
Now they were probing to suggest that he might have had a breakdown from stress at work and gone off, maybe had amnesia and simply wandered off in a daze or even taken his own life. But that was absurd. Opher wasn’t like that. She would have known. Besides it didn’t explain Sam’s weird behaviour. He was terrified and distressed. Something untoward had happened.
‘Opher was not stressed at work. I would have known.’ Liz replied evenly, keeping control of her voice. ‘He has not had a breakdown or committed suicide. Something has happened to him.’
She was emphatic and the police lady wrote it down carefully without revealing her true feelings.
Liz was finding this experience quite distressing. The questions were bad enough but the attitude made it even worse. It brought all her fears to the surface. Something horrible had happened to Opher and she was trying to blot it out from her mind. She didn’t like to dwell on it too much. If she did not think about it then maybe it hadn’t happened. The police’s disparaging attitude merely served to make it worse.
Mandy, Carol and Kathy brought the teas in and Mandy handed the police lady a recent photo. We had hundreds of them. We were always taking photos. Mandy had heard the policewoman’s request and quickly sorted one out. She’d reasoned that Liz had enough on her plate.
‘Can we hold on to this?’ The policewoman asked, peering at my photo suspiciously.
Liz nodded. ‘I just want him found.’ Tears welled up and Carol sat down beside her and put her arm round her comfortingly while the police officers looked on indifferently.
‘We’ll find him, Mrs Goodwin,’ the policeman said firmly, with a show of compassion. ‘Like my colleague said – he’ll probably come crawling back with some lame excuse. Don’t you worry yourself. We’ve been down this road a hundred times before. It always works out.’
Liz did not find it very reassuring.
The girls retreated to the kitchen and the questioning resumed.
‘Has everything been alright on the marriage front?’ The policewoman asked matter of factly.
Liz was stunned. Now they were suggesting that they’d had a row or the marriage had gone bad. There was nothing like that. They had a great relationship.
‘We hadn’t had a row, if that is what you’re suggesting,’ she replied, on the verge of tears again. ‘Our marriage has its ups and downs but it’s good. We are happy. We have the kids. It’s a loving marriage. I know he hasn’t run off with someone else. I’d know. And why would he take the dog for a walk and disappear with some other woman? That doesn’t make sense.’
The voice had risen and the tears finally flowed.
Science Fiction books:
Ebola in the Garden of Eden – paperback £6.95 Kindle £2.56 (or free on unlimited)
Green – paperback £9.98 Kindle £2.56 (or free on unlimited)
Rock Music books
In Search of Captain Beefheart – paperback £6.91 Kindle £1.99 (or free on unlimited)
3&sr=1-1&keywords=opher+Goodwin
Other selected books and novels:
Anecdotes-Weird-Science-Writing-Ramblings – a book of anecdotes mainly from the sixties and other writing.
More Anecdotes – following the immense popularity of the first volume I produced a second
Goofin’ with the cosmic freaks – a kind of On the Road for the sixties
The book of Ginny – a novel
In Britain :
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Opher-Goodwin/e/B00MSHUX6Y/ref=sr_tc_2_0?qid=1461306850&sr=1-2-ent
In America:
http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=opher+goodwin
In all other countries around the world check out your regional Amazon site and Opher Goodwin books.
‘Opher,’ the policeman cut in. ‘That’s a strange name. Is he foreign?’ I couldn’t help myself. I giggled and giggled at that! 😀
I know. I’m glad it made you chuckle.
Really interesting perspective on what is essentially your own life, though obviously fictionalised. Small point, though, the references to ‘my’ and ‘me’ are potentially confusing. As a character in your own story, you can’t adopt a universal narrator position. The reader wonders how you know exactly what has happened in so much detail. You may have been told by Liz but to reconstruct in such detail would involve some invention, which the reader should know about. Hope you don’t mind the input. It doesn’t seem a big thing to put right in a story which seems to be working well otherwise.
Well Dave you are right – not quite sure how to address it though. I’ll ponder over the course of the night.
Thanks for pointing that out.
Glad you showed the Police as immediately jumping to conclusions.