Bodie and Doyle turned up on the doorstep on a very cold and very wet late afternoon. The door was eventually opened by a middle-aged female. Her shoulders were hunched up to her ears and her head cocked to one side. Her eyes were swollen, her plain face puffy and her hair scraped back from her face.
"Well?" she asked.
Doyle showed his ID. "CI5, Mrs Khan. We'd like to speak to your husband."
"Whatever you're selling, we don't want any." She began to close the door.
"We're not selling anything. We're CI5," tried Bodie, putting his foot in the door.
She looked blank.
"Criminal Intelligence," Doyle explained.
"I'm not a criminal, and I'm not very intelligent," she said flatly.
The agents felt that they were pushing a very reluctant boulder up a mountain. She closed her eyes and swayed. Doyle held her arm to catch her if she fell.
"It's all right. It passes," she said opening her eyes after a spell. Doyle slowly withdrew.
"What does?" queried Bodie.
"Migraine."
Doyle explained in simple terms who they represented and, again, that they'd like to speak to her husband.
"I'd like to speak to him, too," came her unexpected response.
Bodie felt as if he were drowning, physically and metaphorically. He asked if they could come in. Inevitably this was refused. Neither of the agents could be more wet if they'd taken scuba lessons fully clothed. Doyle asked where her husband was.
"If you'd bothered to contact the local police, they would have told you that my husband has been missing for the past three days. The man in charge, if you'd bothered to find out, is Detective Inspector Ghosh. You two, if you don't mind me saying so, seem to be missing the 'Intelligence' part of your job description."
"Ghosh," repeated Bodie, though it could be misinterpreted as she slammed the door in their faces.
Doyle thanked her, but his sarcasm was wasted as the door was already closed. He viciously kicked the doorframe as Bodie turned round and raised his arms to the Heavens in frustration. They flung themselves into the car. Doyle took his temper out on the steering wheel.
"Incompetence," he stormed. Bodie wasn't sure who he meant so wisely kept quiet until Doyle explained himself – or not. He repeated the word as he bashed the car door.
"Ray, I think you'd better drive to the cop shop while there's still part of the car that's working and undamaged, and before you break your hand."
Doyle glared at him. Bodie waited patiently. The glare eventually dissolved into a grin, and then to a chuckle. Bodie joined in. He knew which of Ray's buttons to push – usually.
"Why weren't we told?" Doyle said more calmly, flexing his bruised hand.
"Why didn't we check?" Bodie countered.
"What? Every time we want to talk to someone, we check with the local coppers to see if the man's dead or missing? Or perhaps taken holy orders?"
Bodie didn't have an answer but knew he felt as stupid as Doyle. That was part of the frustration. They should have somehow known and somehow checked. Bodie sighed and radioed HQ to inform them of the situation. In a cooler frame of mind they arrived at the local police station, showed their ID, and asked for DI Ghosh. The desk sergeant, happily, had heard of CI5 and said he thought the DI was out, but he'd check. There was a teenage girl already waiting.
"While you're at it, what about my mum?" she stormed, rocking violently on a hard standard-issue chair.
The sergeant sighed and told her there was still no news. The girl swore very colourfully. Doyle raised an eyebrow and slowly peeled himself off the counter he was leaning on.
Here we go, thought Bodie with a sinking heart.
Doyle leaned on the wall next to the girl. She looked uneasy at his close proximity. He said nothing for a while to unnerve her. Then he leaned down and whispered something in her ear. Her eyes popped. Bodie and the desk sergeant grinned, watching on with curiosity. Her face then became thunderous as she got over the initial shock of whatever he'd said. As he passed idly in front of her towards his partner, her foot lashed out. Without looking at her or breaking his stride, he grabbed her ankle and yanked. She shot off the seat and hit the floor with a very satisfying smack. Doyle went back to leaning on the police counter to the grins and silent cheers of the men. She swore again. They laughed.
"Her mother's missing," the sergeant explained, ignoring the girl.
"Missing or gone into hiding?" asked Doyle.
They had been joined by another party; a scruffy bloke with a moustache and a sniff. The sergeant had just noticed him.
"Sorry, Jack. These two gents are for you – Mr Bodie and Mr Doyle."
"Mr Ghosh?" said Bodie, who couldn't disguise his surprise. Firstly, that the scruff was a DI and secondly that, with a name like Ghosh, the guy should be white English. He was clearly used to the response.
"Ghosh by name; gosh by wonderment," he retorted. It was obviously a well-used line. He sauntered up the corridor and the agents trailed after him. His office was as scruffy as its occupant.
"Excuse the mess. My DS is off sick. Shot, and making a right meal of it."
Bodie and Doyle exchanged glances. It was Doyle who got in first.
"Gun shots are nasty things, Mr Ghosh – physically and psychologically. Is he badly injured?"
"It was – is – a flesh wound. Doc said so. Been off two weeks now. Lazy sod."
Not the only 'lazy sod' thought Doyle as he looked at the mess on Ghosh's desk and that of his hapless DS.
"What's his name, your sergeant?" asked ex-copper Doyle.
"Straddles. What's it to you?" he replied rudely.
Doyle raised an eyebrow. "I know him," he returned. Doyle knew the man to be diligent. He felt sorry that he'd been straddled (pardon the pun) with a DI like Ghosh.
"Well when you see him remind him who I am," Ghosh said throwing himself onto a chair and fishing a boiled sweet out of his coat pocket, picking the fluff off it, and rolling it noisily round his teeth.
Bodie thought that they had gone far enough off the purpose of their visit for him, at least, to drag them back to it. "We're looking for Mr Khan. We believe he's gone missing."
"Yeah. Another one."
"Another one?" asked Doyle as he sorted through the mess on the sergeant's desk. Ghosh chose to ignore the rifling of confidential papers.
"Perhaps he and Straddles have gone off into the sunset together!" He laughed at his own attempt at humour.
Bodie and Doyle looked at each other with sinking hearts and rising anger. Bodie noticed that his partner was sorting the papers into separate piles.
"This Khan. What do you know of him?" Doyle asked. "Aside from him being missing that is," he added quickly.
"Well, I've got the report somewhere," he said shoving papers around on his desk as though he was mixing a cocktail.
"Don't bother," Bodie said in some exasperation. "Just tell us what you remember." If anything, he added mentally.
"Well, Mrs K- came in on, er, Monday, yes Monday morning. Said hubby hadn't come home last night. Usual thing. Probably a woman in there somewhere – if we cast aside the Straddles theory." He chuckled again. Bodie and Doyle, soaked and cold, were getting more annoyed. He saw that he was playing to an unappreciative audience. The agents could well understand why the pitiful Straddles was 'making a meal of it'. The DI coughed and tried again, strolling round the room with self-importance.
"Well we sent a PC and WPC round at lunchtime. The husband still hadn't turned up. The PCs asked the usual questions. Got the usual answers – never been missing before, faultless marriage, marvellous husband, endless sex, etc, etc. Then it started to get interesting."
"Oh yeah," said a bored Doyle, pushing Ghosh roughly to one side while he made inroads on the DI's filing.
"The buttons, being their usual efficient selves, asked Mrs K- what her husband did and where he worked. She told them that he worked at Kath's Corporation and gave them a business card of his. Two interesting things." He paused for effect. Bodie was looking out of the window and refused to be drawn in. Doyle was still shuffling papers. It wasn't the undivided attention Ghosh had hoped for from his audience. But he manfully ploughed on. "The business card had a phone number, but no address. And, here's the even better bit – the phone number doesn't exist. Our boys dug a little deeper and found that the company doesn't exist either." He had Bodie's attention now at least. Ghosh beamed.
"Why wasn't this statement filed in court last week?" asked Doyle half-heartedly, pushing an unrelated paper under the DI's nose. Bodie smirked and suspected that the ex-Detective Constable was getting his own back from years of abuse from his own DI. He also strongly suspected that Doyle was greatly enjoying himself.
Deflated and flustered, putting the paper in his 'out' tray, the DI pressed on. "We made enquiries with the phone company and they said that the number had been temporarily allocated for only six months. Mrs K- said she had used the number because of some domestic crisis or other – you know what women are like – and it had worked then, but she couldn't remember when she'd had said crisis."
"What else?" probed Bodie.
"Er, well that's as far as we got. He's only been gone three days," he reminded them.
The two men exchanged glances and read each other's minds. It was getting late. There wasn't much more they could do tonight. Doyle explained his filing system to the DI and told him to keep on top of the paperwork, or it would quickly get on top of him. Oh, and if he could find the Khan report they'd be grateful if he would send a copy over. On their way out they noticed that the teenager was still kicking about in the waiting room. They ignored her and she tried to be invisible.
Outside, Bodie turned to his partner. "You enjoyed that, didn't you Constable?"
Doyle grinned back a silent answer. They returned to HQ in a much better mood, soaked through though they were, than when they'd left Mrs Khan's. A return visit was required.
...
Next day found them back at Mrs Khan's. Doyle thought he was going down with a cold and hoped he could visit DI Ghosh again so he could pass on his germs, if not his fond regards. Inevitably they hadn't received a report from him. It had stopped raining when they arrived and Mrs Khan reluctantly let them in. She still looked very unwell. To get on her right side, Doyle offered to make her a cup of tea. It was the only way, in any case, he reckoned that they would get refreshments and his throat felt raw. She pointed him in the right direction as she sat down, gesturing Bodie to do the same.
"While you're in there," she called, "don't be shy about rummaging in cupboards and drawers. The coppers did." Bodie knew Doyle would be as thorough as he had been in Ghosh's office yesterday.
"What did the police find, Mrs Khan?" Bodie asked.
The woman didn't seem angry at the police methods. "If you think that was a snub against the boys and girls in blue, it wasn't. If sorting through the medicine cabinet gets us a step closer to finding my husband, then so be it. To answer your question Mr Doyle –"
"Bodie," he corrected.
"- they didn't find anything of interest. Or if they did, they didn't tell me about it, or what they may have taken."
Bodie wasn't sure if she was aware of police procedure – there was no reason why she should be, though surely she watched TV or read novels which told her that residents got a receipt for anything taken away. He was glad Doyle was out of earshot in the kitchen. After some minutes, Doyle appeared with a tea tray of three steaming mugs and a bowl of sugar. He was tempted, for Bodie's sake, to break out the biscuits but didn't want to get off on the wrong foot – again.
"Anything of interest in the kitchen?" she asked.
Doyle wasn't sure if she was being sarcastic but took it straight and said he didn't see anything unusual or out of place.
"Tell me about your daily routine," Doyle said sitting down next to Bodie, "and what made Sunday different."
"Sunday wasn't different, until it got late and he didn't come back." She didn't add anything further and waited for their next question.
It was like pulling teeth. Doyle glanced appealingly at his partner to take up the slack. He felt a headache coming on.
"Did Mr Khan act any differently on Sunday, or even before that? Was he anxious for example? Did he have any visitors, or phone calls?" Bodie asked.
She thought for a moment. "No to all of that," she said at last, sipping her tea. Her head still hadn't managed to find a comfortable position on her hunched shoulders but she looked in less pain than the previous day. Doyle had wanted to ask her if she was taking any medication for her migraine but thought he'd better stick to the subject in hand. It was going to take forever at this rate in any case.
"At what point did you get worried, Mrs Khan?" Doyle asked.
"He should have been back from golf at around 5pm. Sometimes he met up with friends there and went out for dinner with them, so wouldn't get back till late – say around 11 o'clock. But, when he wasn't back by midnight, I became anxious. Next morning, it was clear that he hadn't come home at all. I phoned the hospital, nothing, so waited till just after 9 o'clock and rang his office in case, for whatever reason, he'd gone from wherever he was directly to his office – though he'd never done that before. But the office number was out of order. I phoned the engineers and they said that the number had been reallocated. I asked them to find the new number of Kath's Corporation and they said they hadn't got one. I was confused and, I must admit, increasingly frightened. By 10 o'clock I'd had enough of thinking things out on my own and getting no answers, so I thought the police should be brought in on it and to get some answers from them. They said he was an adult in his right mind and could do what he wanted. However, they did deign to send a couple of police officers round at lunchtime to at least make it look as though they were taking it seriously. Not that it has got us anywhere." She seemed more resigned than bitter. Perhaps she was too tired and in too much pain to be angry.
"If your husband was going to go on to dinner with his golfing mates, would he phone you to let you know?" Doyle asked.
She looked a little surprised. "No. If he wasn't back by around 6, I'd assume he'd not be coming back till much later and I'd have dinner on my own."
It seemed a haphazard arrangement to the men, but she seemed to think it usual. Doyle was beginning to wonder if she was under Khan's thumb. Although she was ill and in pain, she didn't look like a battered wife, but you could never tell for sure.
Doyle asked if they could look round the house. She told them to look where they liked. Bodie took the ground floor, Doyle the upstairs. It was a standard three bed semi-. Doyle had already turned over the kitchen, so Bodie started with the living room. He felt a bit uncomfortable but Mrs Khan seemed lost in her mug of tea and tried to be invisible. He mentally thanked her for the gesture as he pulled out cupboards and drawers. There was nothing interesting in them, nor anything incriminating helpfully stuck to the bottom of any of the drawers, or floorboards which lifted up conveniently to reveal hidden stash.
There was a small room off the kitchen which Bodie had at first thought was a pantry or utility room. It was in fact a small study. Doyle wouldn't have had time to go over it. Bodie popped his head back in the living room and asked whose study it was. Mrs K- said it was her husband's. She never went in there except to clean. Bodie felt he was on more fertile ground here. There was a small computer, which he was going to purloin and also, possibly, the printer. Papers were neatly sorted (Doyle would approve) and consisted mainly of household bills. Bodie took away the bank statements. There seemed to be three accounts. No credit cards as far as he could find. There were business cards and letterheads of the company, but it told him nothing about what the company did. As DI Ghosh had pointed out, there was no address. Returning to the living room, Bodie drew up a list of the items he was going to take away. He asked her what the firm did. She said that they sold greetings cards. Her husband was an accountant. On his questioning, she told him that he'd worked there for ten years. They'd been married for five. No children. And she didn't know whether he had a passport or not. She'd never seen one and they hadn't holidayed abroad. She'd never had any reason to visit his company and no-one from there had come round for drinks or meals, or had ever phoned as far as she remembered. Bodie was gathering that Mrs Khan was a very incurious person. He found that curious.
Doyle hadn't had such good hunting upstairs and he came down to hear the tail end of the interview. As Bodie got up to go, Doyle asked for a photograph of Mr Khan. Mrs K- said that she hadn't got one. They looked surprised.
"Well, we haven't got a camera," she said as though this was quite normal.
They looked at each other for inspiration. Bodie found it.
"Do you have wedding photos?" he asked. If she didn't have a camera, then there would be a studio who did. Mrs Khan moved over to the sideboard.
"It's in the bottom drawer. Would you mind getting it? I can't bend down at the moment." She turned to Bodie for his help. He obliged.
"This drawer?" he asked, pulling it out and finding nothing there. She looked bewildered.
"That's where it should be. I – we – obviously don't look at it day to day, but that's where I last remember seeing it."
As she talked, Bodie obligingly pulled out all the other drawers in turn. During his search he didn't remember coming across any albums.
"I don't understand," she said. She was beginning finally to crumble and looked on the verge of tears. Nothing made sense to her any more. Doyle said he'd check again upstairs though, like Bodie, he didn't remember coming across any photos on his hunt. He came back down empty-handed.
"Don't worry about it, Mrs Khan," he soothed, "I'm sure it'll turn up."
"Just like you're sure he'll turn up." She finally broke into tears and retreated hurriedly to the kitchen. The men look embarrassed.
"Would you like me to get a neighbour or phone a friend or relative, Mrs Khan?" Doyle asked softly, standing on the threshold of the kitchen to give her space and dignity.
"It's kind of you Mr … But I haven't relatives, neither does my husband by the way, and I don't know the neighbours well enough to impose on them. I'll be alright." She had her back to him and was leaning on the sink. Not being able to be of any practical help the men reluctantly left.
"I'd like to pop into the local station and ask if they'd send a WPC round," Doyle said. Since he was driving Bodie couldn't object, though he thought Doyle was going over and above. Once they'd parked up, he loyally followed Doyle back into the police station. The same sergeant was on the desk and the teenager had gone. The sergeant smiled at their return.
"Did the mother turn up?" asked Doyle nodding to the vacant waiting room chairs.
"Yeah. It turned out they'd had a row and the mother finally snapped and stormed off. The kid waited around for her to return and when she didn't the child came here. To cause her mum some grief I'd have said. It took us a while to find her though," the sergeant chuckled. The agents were intrigued. "Mum had found herself at the train station and just got on the first train out. She said she felt guilty as it pulled out the station, and felt even worse when she found herself on a non-stop express to Doncaster!" They laughed heartily but guiltily.
"I hope she didn't get into trouble with social services when she eventually came back here," Doyle said when he'd sobered – but worried for the woman all the same.
"We'd got the girl into a kids' home by then, more to teach her a lesson than her mum. Frighten her a bit, make her count her blessings and all that. I think they both left – eventually - sober and wiser," added the sergeant. "By the way, some of our blokes know you, Mr Doyle. Ray Doyle isn't it? They've got some stories, and I told them about you and the girl yesterday. They had a right laugh. Said it was just your style." He chuckled.
Intrigued though he was to hear those stories, Bodie felt that he was the only one concentrating on the Khan case. Get Doyle into a station and it was reminiscences and stories all the way – riveting and/or amusing though they were. Bodie coughed dryly. Doyle took the hint, rolled his eyes and got round to telling the sergeant why they'd returned. The sergeant agreed to send a WPC round to Mrs Khan within the hour.
The two men retired to a café round the corner to swap information. Bodie had a coffee, and Doyle surprised him by opting for an ice cream. "Throat," he said simply and hoarsely. They went through the oddities together – the company that didn't exist, the camera which also didn't exist, the missing photo album. Doyle added to the list by saying that there were no photos in the house at all. If the album was missing or mislaid ok, but you'd think there'd be a photo framed somewhere in the house of the happy couple. Doyle also remarked to Bodie that the pair slept in separate rooms. The pair found that interesting and significant. They returned to CI5 with their booty. Bodie took up the driving as Doyle was coughing and sneezing too much, in Bodie's opinion, to see the road ahead.
...
A few days later they arrived at Cowley's office as usual for their day's assignment. Cowley sat them down and returned them to the Khan case. Doyle's cold had turned to a hacking cough. Cowley and he chose to ignore it. Bodie was becoming concerned though. Cowley and Doyle chose to ignore him.
"We got the boffins to go over Mr Khan's computer. Interesting," Cowley started off.
The agents waited.
"Nothing," Cowley expanded.
"Wiped clean?"
"Even more interesting than that, Bodie. There was nothing on the computer at all. It was a brand new machine. No doubt the same colour and brand as the original, so as not to arouse the wife's suspicion, but a new one all the same. It hadn't been downloaded, or whatever it is that you do with new electronics. The same with the printer. Brand new. Never been used."
"And the bank accounts?" asked Doyle.
"One is hers and one is a joint account. The bank confirms that the joint account is for household bills to pay the utilities, the decorator, and so on. The third is his. Or was. The account was closed down two weeks ago and all the money withdrawn. There wasn't a huge amount. We're not talking Swiss gold here, but interesting that it's been closed nonetheless. We're looking into how that account was used. There was a regular amount going in – a wage you might say. We need to know where that came from. It's proving elusive. Their phone bills are also being analysed. On initial viewing the calls look very sparse." The men took some papers from Cowley.
"Oh, and by the way," Cowley added, "none of the local golf courses have ever heard of a Mr Khan."
The agents looked at each other. The Controller had their attention. They had given Cowley their reports when they'd returned from their second visit to Mrs Khan. Cowley was aware of the missing and non-existent photographs, the separate bedrooms etc. It all added up to smoke and mirrors. Did the man exist at all? It was becoming clear – and this was the only part that was clear – that he'd disappeared of his own choosing – planned and organised – rather than kidnapped or died in a ditch somewhere. That was the angle they were beginning to work on. And how much was Mrs Khan an innocent party to all of this? – whatever the 'this' was. The agents told Cowley that they believed she was genuinely bewildered. She seemed as lost as anyone and crumbling under the strain. It was only now that he was missing that she had begun to ask the questions perhaps she should have asked from the beginning, such as who he was and where he'd come from.