Page 56 of Then She Vanished

Nothing.

‘I’m DI Harte and I have DS Driscoll with me. We’re coming in.’

After a walkthrough of each room, it was clear that Ruth was not in the house, but the sight of the chess piece unnerved Gina. Ruth was in imminent danger.

She stood in the doorway of Ruth’s bedroom and saw a pile of men’s clothes draped over an ottoman. As she reached the bottom of the stairs, she saw the man claiming to be her ex-husband still on the drive. ‘Do you stay here sometimes?’

He shook his head. ‘No, we’re…’ He paused. ‘We’re divorced. She’s been seeing someone.’

The clothes belonged to someone else. ‘Can I take his name?’

‘It’s Eric Hathaway. He’s not a good man.’

Gina furrowed her brows and stepped closer to him.

‘In what way?’

The man looked up at Ruth’s neighbour, peering out of the window. ‘I think you need to come to mine so we can talk. The neighbours like to gossip around here.’

THIRTY-SIX

Gary Pritchard placed a cup of coffee on his tiny kitchen table. Gina sat in one chair and Jacob sat opposite. Gary leaned against his overflowing sink. The smell of fried fish hanging in the air turned Gina’s stomach, and the pile of empty bottles and cans told a tale of sadness. The yellow tinges to his features also told her he was possibly a drinker, or he had a bit of liver trouble. He stared at Gina. ‘What do you want to know?’

‘How long have you and Ruth Pritchard been divorced?’

He placed a large hand in his jeans pocket. ‘Two days.’ He huffed out a bitter-looking smirk. ‘We’ve been apart for most of the year, but the decree absolute has just come through. I won’t lie, I still love her, but I blew it.’ He paused. ‘We lost our daughter many years ago. By lost, I mean, she vanished, but you probably already had that on file.’

He began pulling at a dirty, torn nail before picking his calluses. ‘It was the start of a very long end. We tried for so many years to have another baby – not to replace Elissa, you understand. There was this huge void in our lives.’ He shook his head. ‘Anyway, it never happened. I couldn’t bear the sadness in our house. Every time I got home from work, Ruth would bewalking around like some ghost of her former self, and I bottled up my feelings.’

He paused. ‘I had to try and be the strong one. We lost our child and then our babies. Our bond became one that was based on loss and we got unhappier by the day. It went on for too many years.’ He turned away from them and stared out of his kitchen window. ‘I’m sorry, I need a minute.’

‘We’re really sorry for your loss, Mr Pritchard. It sounds like you and Ruth went through a lot. Have you seen her today?’

‘I saw her yesterday. I had the day off work, so I popped over. Actually, I wanted to say I was sorry. On Monday night, Eric was there, and I noticed that his tyre was flat, so I knocked on the door to tell her.’

‘How did she seem?’

‘She was okay. I felt a bit bad for disturbing them on Monday night, but we spoke yesterday, she was friendly and she invited me in for a drink. I told her something, something about Eric, and she was really upset.’

He turned back around to face them. Jacob kept scribbling notes to keep up.

‘What was she upset about?’

‘I think I could have told her in a nicer way, but I was feeling really smug that I had this dirt on Eric, partly because I still love Ruth. I know it’s wrong, but I enjoyed telling her…’ He looked up and took a couple of deep breaths.

‘What did you tell her?’

‘Eric has a wife, grown-up children and a lovely family. From what I saw, he looks really happy with them. He’d been in a relationship with Ruth and lied about being single. The man is a womanising snake. I could see right through him, but she seemed to worship him with his designer clothes and shiny car. And there he was, Eric the liar. He’s a typical, smug, player. Just after a bit on the side.’

‘How do you know all this?’

‘I saw him from the other side of the pub, out with his family a month or so ago. It was busy but I just kept catching sight of him through the crowd. I was meeting a mate for a drink at a pub between Alcester and Redditch, and what looked to be his whole family were out celebrating his wife’s birthday. One of the staff nudged through everyone at the bar with a huge cake covered in sparklers. When I glanced over next, he was kissing the woman. He later came up to the bar, totally ignoring me. That’s when I spotted his wedding ring, the one he obviously takes off when he’s with Ruth. Can you believe he even tried to chat the woman up who was serving him?’ He rolled his eyes. ‘I’m ashamed of what I did next, but I did it with Ruth’s interests at heart: I followed them home that day, keeping my eye on Eric the whole time. I knew I had to find a way to make Ruth see the truth. Without proof of his other life, she’d have just thought I was being angry and bitter. Anyway, they pulled up at their gorgeous house and the family all went back to there, too.’ He shook his head. ‘It took me ages to tell her. Every time I considered it, I backed out, but yesterday I saw she was wearing an engagement ring. I couldn’t let her humiliate herself, so I blurted everything out and she was really upset. I gave her Eric’s family home address – not the place he pretends to live, where he conducts his affair with Ruth.’

‘We’ll need the address of Eric Hathaway and the address of the house he’s pretending to live at.’

He grabbed a Post-it note and jotted both addresses down before passing them to Gina. ‘His real home is only about twenty minutes from here. The other one is on a holiday let rental site.’

‘Where were you yesterday evening from around eight to two a.m. this morning?’

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