Minter stopped. His mouth snapped shut. He looked uncannily like a scolded puppy.

  Boyd suddenly felt guilty. ‘You want a coffee?’ he asked. ‘I’m going up to grab one. I’ll meet you back in the office in a min.’

  Ten minutes later, illicit bacon roll in hand, Boyd was back behind his desk and sipping scolding black coffee, listening to the rest of Minter’s explanation.

  ‘O’Neal with his thick bloody sausage fingers typed the name in arse-backwards so that he accidentally did a database search on NIX instead of XIN. And guess what. We only got a hit back! One Gerald Ian Nix. A misper that was only logged a couple of weeks ago.’

  Minter dropped a printout on Boyd’s desk.

  ‘Here’s the report. It was made by his ex-wife, Jo Bambridge.’

  Nix was a surname Boyd was sure he had stumbled across before. Not in a work context, though. Where was it? Wasn’t there a writer with that surname? He vaguely recalled books on Emma’s shelf about the time she was at secondary school. He dragged his attention back to the present. ‘So we got a lucky lead because one of my team’s dyslexic?’

  Minter nodded, grinning like a Cheshire cat.

  ‘Sherlock Holmes would be so proud of us.’ Boyd picked up the printout. Jo Bambridge lived in Bexhill-on-Sea, just a few minutes away. A conveniently close, lucky lead.

  ‘So what do we reckon? This missing G. I. Nix decided to register a business at Companies House with his name written backwards as Xin Gi? And, remind me, the company is…’

  ‘Maguire Mackintosh,’ said Minter. ‘Which is the same company that pays for that yacht’s marina costs.’

  Boyd scratched at the thickening growth on his chin. He really needed to find his electric razor sometime soon. Even a shitty Bic would do. He was in great danger of growing a proper Uncle Albert beard in the very near future.

  ‘Okay, this is good. Very good. We’ve got our first lead.’ He looked up at Minter. ‘I bestow on you, Detective Sergeant, the honour of pinning this misper report to the case board and, yes, you may do the twirly red cotton link-line too.’

  ‘Aww, thanks, boss.’ Minter picked up the report. ‘I’ve always wanted to do my very own twirly red cotton thingy.’

  The ex-Mrs Nix lived in Bexhill-on-Sea. Another small town, Boyd learned from Okeke, on the seafront that had merged seamlessly with St Leonards and Hastings. If there was a notable variation between these three elderly seaside sisters, it was probably in their character. Whereas Hastings was charming and quaint, St Leonards was the older sister who was having some cosmetic work done. Which made Bexhill-On-Sea the batty oldest one with ten cats and a gin habit.

  Boyd had a fleeting childhood memory of passing through Bexhill – his mum pointing out the grand Edwardian townhouses overlooking the promenade with their wrought-iron balconies, the French doors, the porches with their proud Doric columns. Everything was gleaming, freshly painted white and beautifully maintained like the ‘Who Will Buy?’ scene in Oliver!

  In recent times those same palaces by the sea had become scruffy guesthouses put to work homing ex-cons, alongside vulnerable youngsters and bewildered asylum seekers.

  Boyd had asked DC Okeke to accompany him firstly because she was smart and he liked her, but also because she was the only woman he had on his team. During the phone conversation he’d had with Jo Bambridge earlier, he’d got the distinct impression that she wasn’t particularly keen on men. He thought Okeke might be able to get more out of her. She could offer a little feminine solidarity, perhaps.

  ‘How’s the CCTV stuff going?’ asked Boyd as she signalled right and steered them away from the seafront.

  ‘Not much that’s useful on the jetty camera. It’s just off where the Magpie was berthed. You can see the front of the boat but not the back, which would have been far more useful.’

  ‘Aft,’ said Boyd.

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘Sailors call it the aft of the boat, not the back.’

  ‘The arse?’

  ‘Aft!’

  She laughed. ‘Sorry, guv. Duly noted.’

  ‘Are there no other cameras?’

  ‘Not belonging to the marina, but I’m waiting on the neighbouring businesses. There’s a shared parking area that might be covered by one of them.’

  ‘Good thinking.’ Boyd moved onto their imminent appointment. ‘So this Jo Bambridge. I spoke to her on the phone. She’s not the worried tearful wife by any stretch. She was actually quite combative.’

  ‘Combative?’

  ‘She was dumped by Nix some time ago for some – and I quote – “young tart”. I got the distinct impression she’d be more than happy to bury an ice pick in both their heads. I’m going to lead the questioning but if this turns into a gender-war thing, if she looks like she’d prefer to talk to you…’

  ‘Step in? Sure, no problem, guv.’

  ‘Good. Thanks. He’s obviously done a number on her and I’m not sure she’s all that keen on any men at the moment.’

  Okeke followed the directions on her phone, taking them away from the smart, white-washed seafront façade into a warren of narrow roads flanked on either side by nose-to-end parked cars and low terraced houses that sported seventies pebble-dash veneers and windowsills that were shedding paint like a bad skin condition.

  ‘Here we are,’ she said, looking for a gap to shoehorn the patrol car into.

  This was another part of Bexhill Boyd vaguely remembered. And this part hadn’t changed.

  16

  ‘This is DC Samantha Okeke and I’m DCI Boyd,’ said Boyd, smiling at the stressed-looking woman, in front of them.

  ‘You took your time,’ Jo Bambridge said harshly.

  He was momentarily taken aback by that. ‘We only spoke twenty minutes ago.’

  ‘No, I mean since I reported my ex-husband missing. That was over a fortnight ago!’

  She led them into the front room and gestured to them to sit down.

  Jo Bambridge was a woman in her early fifties with long blonde hair that was well on its way to becoming grey, pulled back tightly into a ponytail. She’d clearly been crying before they’d arrived; her make-up wasn’t doing a great job at masking the red eyes. There were photos of her on the windowsill from when she was younger, slimmer and happier. Pictures of her on a horse. Pictures of her helming a sailing boat. Glamorous pictures of a woman enjoying a much better life than the one she was living now.

  ‘Sorry about the time this has taken, Mrs Bambridge –’ Boyd said.

  ‘Just call me Jo, for God’s sake. I’m not officially divorced from that bastard yet. But I’m using my maiden name.’

  Boyd nodded. ‘Jo it is, then.’

  ‘So have you found the shitty little weasel?’

  ‘Gerald Nix?’ He shook his head. ‘We found his yacht, though.’

  ‘Magpie?’

  Boyd nodded again.

  Jo pointed at the picture of her sailing. ‘That’s the Magpie and me, about seven years ago.’

  Boyd and Okeke turned and looked at the photo. Neither of them really knew what to say. It was a picture of her and a tiny bit of the boat’s helm.

  ‘The Magpie was found drifting in the Channel, deserted,’ said Boyd. ‘There was some damage to the hull and –’

  ‘I saw the news,’ said Jo. She almost smiled at him. ‘And your amusing bleeped press conference. Something happened on board, didn’t it? There were reports of blood. Was someone murdered? Was it Gerald?’

  ‘Well, that’s exactly what we’re looking into, Jo,’ said Okeke. ‘We think there were three people aboard.’

  ‘Gerald and his trophy bitch being two of them, I suppose?’

  Okeke nodded. ‘We think so. We’ve got CCTV footage of a woman, and possibly two other men.’

  ‘Was the woman young and slim? Tits out and tarty looking?’

  Boyd caught Okeke’s eye, trying to keep a straight face.

  Okeke bit down on her lip and shrugged. ‘We didn’t get a close look at the woman. She didn’t look particularly glamorous, if I’m honest. She seemed to be wearing an old parka. She had a baseball cap on too. Looked quite scruffy actually.’

  Boyd liked the way she handled that. On side with Jo at the first opportunity.

  ‘Tell me about her,’ Okeke pressed.

  ‘All I know about her is that she’s twenty years younger than me and she’s basically stolen my husband, my home, my business and my money. Gerald – he hits his mid-life crisis and, instead of buying a motor bike, ditches me for someone young enough to be his bloody daughter!’

  ‘He sounds like a real prize, Jo. Do you have any children?’

  Jo shook her head. ‘He didn’t want any. To be frank, neither did I.’

  ‘What do you know about her?’

  Jo shrugged. ‘Not much.’

  ‘Do you know her name?’

  ‘Zophie something.’

  ‘Sophie?’ asked Okeke.

  ‘No, Zophie with a pretentious “Z” at the beginning. I suppose she thinks it makes her sound more exotic.’ Jo tutted and rolled her eyes.

  ‘How did she meet Gerald?’ Okeke asked, as Boyd jotted the name down in his notebook.

  ‘Online. The dirty old bastard chatted her up online. What a cliché. Obviously she saw he had money and that was that… She dug her claws in and it was out with the old, in with the new.’

  ‘Have you met her?’ asked Boyd. ‘Could you identify her?’

  ‘I could probably identify her breasts if you want. I saw those on his screen.’

  Okeke gave Boyd a ‘let me handle this’ look.

  ‘When was the last time you spoke with Gerald?’ she asked.

  ‘Eighteen months ago. When I left him,’ said Jo.

  ‘So what happened? How did you find out what he was up to?’

  ‘I discovered he’d been texting – sorry, sexting this girl. They’d been sending pictures to each other.’ The hard tone in Jo’s voice began to waver slightly. ‘It had been going on for weeks, months. When I confronted him, he didn’t even try to deny it. He didn’t even try to lie his way out of it…’ She cleared her throat. ‘I don’t want to cry again. I’ve just put make-up on.’

  ‘It’s all right,’ said Okeke, resting a hand on her arm.

  Boyd found himself gazing awkwardly out of the window. This Nix guy sounded like a total arsehole.

  Jo dabbed her eyes lightly with the heel of her hand. ‘He doesn’t fucking deserve my tears. Really…’ She took a deep breath and continued. ‘He just admitted it. Said it was over between us and that maybe I should move out.’

  ‘Just like that?’

  She nodded. ‘It was like he’d been hoping I’d find out. Waiting for a chance to tell me to sod off. And there it was.’

  ‘Did you leave?’

  ‘I packed a couple of bags and left. Yes.’ She dabbed at her face again. ‘To be honest, I thought I’d be out for one night and back home the next day, listening to him begging me for a second chance. Well, that didn’t bloody happen, did it?’

  ‘Have you been back since?’

  She shook her head, more tears spilling from her red and puffy eyes. ‘I’m stuck here,’ she mumbled pitifully. ‘Renting.’

  Boyd gazed around the front room and noticed for the first time how bare it looked. The furniture was generic Ikea stuff, just the basics: a sofa and chairs, a small dining table, a TV cabinet, a shelving unit and a couple of bland, framed prints on the wall. The only personal items in the room were the few photographs of Jo’s younger self.

  ‘So all your things are still in your house?’ said Okeke.

  Jo nodded. ‘I haven’t been back in. He changed the front door lock. And it is my house. I made it our home, not him.’

  ‘You’ve not spoken to him?’

  ‘I tried. I texted him a few times. He wouldn’t answer. A week after we split, he said that he was going to get the divorce arranged and I’d get a cash settlement when it was all done.’ She shrugged in resignation. ‘And that was it.’

  ‘You reported him missing a fortnight ago.’ said Okeke. ‘Why then? What changed?’

  ‘I got a solicitor three months ago and she’s been trying to get him to respond. And, of course, there was nothing. No replies to her letters or calls. So I went to the house. Knocked on the door. Nothing. Looked in all the windows… ’ She shook her head. ‘There was no sign of him.’

  ‘Where do you think he could have gone?’ asked Boyd. ‘Could he have gone to visit family?’

  Jo shook her head again. ‘No. Like I said, we don’t have kids. He’s not that close to his brother, and his parents are both dead. Besides,’ she added, ‘his car was there. I supposed he was off sailing somewhere with his tart in tow.’

  Okeke tutted. ‘He sounds like a right piece of work.’

  Jo’s eyes flashed. She nodded her head vigorously. ‘Oh, God, but he is! A complete, selfish arsehole. We were together twenty-two years, building up the business together, then he just dumps me for a younger model.’ Her voice quivered again and Okeke instinctively placed a supportive hand on her shoulder.

  ‘What was the business, Jo?’

  ‘Financial consulting,’ she said. ‘Investments, tax advice… that kind of thing.’

  ‘You worked together?’ asked Boyd.

  ‘Yeah, on the High Street. I ran the office, admin, marketing, business accounts… the appointments, the client handling; pretty much all he did was the consulting. He owes me for that. He bloody well owes me for all the years I put into it all.’ Tears spilled from her raw eyes.

  She dabbed at her cheeks again. ‘It’s the betrayal that hurts, you know? You think you know someone. You think you’re working together as a team for a beautiful, happy retirement, then…’

  ‘I know…’ said Okeke. ‘I know what men can be like.’

  Boyd sat back to give them a little more space.

  ‘So you think he took Magpie? Took the yacht out?’ Okeke asked.

  Jo nodded. ‘That’s what I thought. Maybe he was showing off to his new girlfriend. Maybe just swanning around for a bit.’

  ‘What about his office? Have you been to –’

  ‘Gerald closed that down nearly a year ago. There’s no office any more. It’s a hairdresser’s now.’

  ‘Right. So you called the police to make a missing person’s report because…?’

  ‘Because I could see post piling up in the hallway. Because he wasn’t answering my solicitor. Because there was no sign of him… and because Magpie was gone.’

  ‘You went to the marina?’

  She nodded again. ‘I thought I might find him… them… there.’ She looked up at the ceiling. ‘I thought that if they were there, then maybe I’d have the chance to tell this girl about the life she’d just destroyed. Or maybe I’d have just slapped her.’

  ‘And the yacht was gone,’ said Okeke.

  ‘Yes. The lady behind the counter said Magpie’s berth had been vacant for several weeks.’

  ‘And that’s not normal?’

  ‘He barely used it. An afternoon here and there. He’s not a very confident sailor.’ She looked at Okeke. ‘To be totally honest with you, I thought he might have emptied the bank accounts and gone off into the sunset with her and all our retirement money. That’s what made me call. I don’t have much money left,’ she whispered. ‘I’ve been living off what was left in the only account I have access to.’

  She reached into the pocket of her trousers and pulled out a blue plastic name badge. ‘This is how I’m paying the rent now. Tesco.’

  Boyd glanced at his notebook. ‘Jo?’ She looked up at him. ‘Can you think of anyone who might have a reason to harm your… to harm Gerald? Anyone he might have crossed swords with?’

  She gave that a moment’s thought. ‘Not really. Maybe through his work. Wait. There was a client.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Well, I’m… I can’t really say the name because of client confidentiality. But there was an investor who lost a lot of money through us. I mean it wasn’t our fault. But he blamed us. Blamed Gerald specifically.’

  ‘How much? A lot?’

  She nodded. ‘Enough that he tried to pick a fight with Gerald in our local a few years back.’

  ‘Words or fists?’ asked Okeke.

  ‘Oh, fists,’ she replied. ‘I mean it was a proper fight. Drinks were spilt. Gerald got a bloody nose.’ Jo smiled at the memory.

  ‘Did Gerald call the police?’

  She shook her head. ‘He didn’t want it to escalate. He hoped his bloody nose would be the end of it.’

  Okeke lowered her voice. ‘Give me a name. It’ll save us having to go to the pub to ask there.’

  ‘Well, yes. Okay, I suppose…’ She clacked her tongue. ‘It was a man called Aiden Rigby.’

  ‘Do you know where he lives?’

  ‘No, I don’t. He used to live in Rye. I think.’

  ‘Do you mind if at some point we pay a visit to your old house?’ asked Boyd.

  Jo shook her head. ‘Please, do. Do whatever you need to.’

  ‘Can we have the address?’ asked Okeke. ‘It’s not far, is it?’

  ‘It’s also in Rye,’ she replied. ‘So, no, not very far.’ She gave the address to Okeke who jotted it down.

  Boyd decided they had probably put Jo through enough for one day. He thanked Jo for her time and asked Okeke to hand over one of her business cards.

  ‘If there’s anything else you can think of, you call Samantha, okay?’

  Jo Bambridge nodded, relieved it was over for now.

  17

  Back in the car, Boyd called Minter. ‘We’ve got a name. Can you check it for me please?’

  ‘Fire away, boss.’

  ‘Aiden Rigby. He may or may not be on LEDs. I need a current address.’

  ‘Righto.’

  ‘Me and Okeke are going to drive over to Rye to visit Nix’s house.’

  ‘What’s your reason, boss? For the log.’

  ‘Reason for visit – to look for evidence of forced entry or abduction.’ Boyd could hear Minter repeating it word-for-word as he tapped away at his keyboard. ‘As soon as you’ve got an address for Rigby, you call me, okay?’