Imposture (DI Gardener 6)

Gardener nodded at Reilly.

“It’s him, isn’t it?”

Rosie remembered the email from James earlier in the day. “Wait a minute, no, it can’t be. I had an email earlier today.”

“An email?” asked Reilly. “What time was that?”

“Eleven o’clock this morning.” After she’d said that she felt stupid, it wouldn’t be anything but morning, they hadn’t reached eleven at night. “How can that be?”

“You’re sure it was from your husband?”

Rosie wasn’t. “I thought it was… at first.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, when I reread it and thought about it afterwards, it didn’t sound like James.”

Floods of tears streamed down Rosie’s face. She stood up and walked over to the window, pressing her hands onto the draining board, unable to stop the flow, despite what she had thought about James in recent weeks.

Gardener followed her. “Are you sure there is no one we can call for you?”

Rosie was struggling to breathe, let alone string a sentence together. She reached across the worktop and grabbed her mobile. On the contact page she found Michelle’s number. She handed the phone to Gardener.

“Please,” she sobbed, pointing to her best friend’s number.

Gardener passed it to Reilly, who immediately stepped out of the kitchen.

“I’m really sorry to land all of this on you, Mrs Henshaw, but there are two further things I need to ask.”

Rosie simply nodded, unable to speak.

“Did the email come through to your phone?”

Rosie nodded.

“May we take it? Once we analyse it, it might tell us who sent the email and where from?”

Rosie nodded and buried her head into a kitchen tissue, sobbing and shaking. Reilly came back into the room, nodding. “She’s on her way, Mrs Henshaw.”

Rosie nodded, finally managing words. “And your second question?”

She could see the compassion in Gardener’s eyes. He really did not want to ask the obvious question. “Oh, God, please don’t ask me to identify him.”

Rosie collapsed in a heap.

Chapter Forty-four

Anthony was sitting in a late-night café in Headingley. His day had been brutal. After finding a chemist he had dyed his hair, swapped his glasses for contacts, worn a fake moustache and bought a leather jacket and jeans.

Thirty minutes previously he had been over to Beckett’s Park again but swiftly left after he had spotted what he suspected were police, more than likely searching for the phone he had disposed of yesterday.

He was sitting at the back of the room, completely out of earshot of everyone else, staring at the untouched latte in front of him. Not that he had a great deal to worry about. The other people in the café were students and he may as well not have existed for all the attention they were paying him.

His head was a mess. Who the hell was picking them off? James? Zoe? Rosie? Someone else altogether – someone he either didn’t know or hadn’t considered?

The café owner was cleaning and setting a table in front of him. He stared at Anthony but said nothing. At the front of the shop a group of excited students cheered and shouted, and squealed with laughter at something on one of the phones.

Anthony picked up his own phone. It was no good. He needed to speak to someone, and Rosie was probably the only person. He hadn’t been able to connect with Zoe or James, nor had he received any reply to his email at the safe address.