Page 46 of Then She Vanished

‘We are following some leads and we have made an arrest.’

‘Sorry, I didn’t catch that.’ She turned and shouted, ‘Boys, can you give Mummy a break?’

Gina spoke louder. ‘We’ve made an arrest.’

‘Who is he?’

‘We are still investigating. The suspect hasn’t been charged, but I’ll keep you updated when we know more.’

Mr Moore sank back into the cushions and sipped his wine. ‘But it’s probably him? That’s good. He’s off the streets and hopefully once you’ve got your evidence, we can go home. I love my parents and all, but we need our own space.’

‘Where are they now?’

‘Oh, they’ve gone out for the evening. They knew you were coming, so they said they’d leave us to talk.’

‘There are a lot of vans outside.’ Gina wondered if Mr Moore would happily talk about them.

‘Yes, as I said, my parents are property developers. They use the vans, and my dad is a brickie, too.’ He scrunched his brow. ‘Wait, you don’t think my dad tried to take Keeley, do you? He didn’t. That’s ridiculous. You can take a look in the vans, if you like. Keeley would recognise the van, wouldn’t she?’

Keeley guzzled her wine down in one go. ‘The van from this morning was a lot older than my father-in-law’s fleet, and a bit longer, and he doesn’t have chess pieces dangling from the rear-view mirror. It wasn’t his.’ She placed her empty glass on the table.

‘Do you want another one, love?’

‘No, I’m okay,’ Keeley replied to her husband.

Gina knew that her next line of questioning might be sensitive. ‘Would you mind if we speak to your wife alone?’

Keeley tilted her head and linked her hands in her lap.

‘I’ll go and try to read the boys a bedtime story.’ He placed his glass on the table and headed towards the back of the room. ‘Call me when you’re done.’ He went up the stairs.

Gina glanced up, wondering if Mr Moore could hear them, but the boys began to shout and scream again. They’d be lucky to hear each other. She edged forward a little in the hope of hearing better. ‘Do you know a man called Colson Ferguson?’

Keeley began to bite her nails. ‘I don’t want to talk about him, not now, not here.’

‘We have him in custody.’

She stopped biting her nails and held both hands out, palms up. ‘Why? He has nothing to do with this,’ she replied, glancing at the stairs at the same time.

‘Mrs Moore, someone tried to kidnap you earlier. We’ve had to explore all avenues, and Mr Ferguson is an avenue.’

‘How did you even find out about him? I didn’t tell anyone.’

Gina didn’t want to use the word coincidence, but then again, she didn’t believe in coincidences – Ferguson had come up in the investigation for a reason. ‘Tell me about your relationship?’

‘There is no relationship.’

‘There was though, wasn’t there? We’ve spoken to Mr Ferguson.’ Gina could just tell. Mrs Moore’s body language was screamingaffair.

Her eyes began to water up. ‘This is going to kill Morgan. I should have come clean and told him, but I didn’t want to be the person to ruin everything. Please can we not do this?’

‘We have to, I’m sorry. There is a dangerous person on the loose and that person might strike again. What we haven’t mentioned to the press is that we believe someone else’s life might be in danger, and time is against us. You need to tell us what you know.’

Keeley stood and walked all the way back over to the kitchen area. She grabbed the bottle of Valpolicella, came back andtopped her glass up. She gripped the stem of the wine glass and took another sip. ‘It was a good month ago, at least. My in-laws were away, Morgan’s mum was visiting her sister and his dad was at some property seminar in London. When we came over for dinner a few days before, one of the boys had left his favourite teddy behind and I said I’d swing by to get it. Morgan stayed at home and I drove here. We have an emergency key, so I thought I’d just nip in and nip out.’ She paused and glugged the wine again.

‘What happened when you got here?’

‘I let myself in and Colson was here, standing in the kitchen, wearing my father-in-law’s dressing gown. I didn’t know who he was at that point. My father-in-law, Tristan, used his name when he called down for Colson to hurry back, and I knew straight away that they’d been sleeping together. That’s when he saw me. I ran upstairs to Tristan and he begged me not to say anything. Colson followed, grabbed his clothes and left.’

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