“Mrs. Withey, in the interest of obtaining a comparative DNA sample for the purpose of identification, the best way would be to get a sample from a child. Would that be possible?”

“The girls don’t live here anymore. They’re grown. I . . . How would I explain what you’re doing? How would I explain why you need it? No, I don’t think that’s . . . What else can we do?”

“We could use an item, such as a toothbrush . . .”

“Claire’s got clothes and toiletries here for when she visits.”

Susan left the room slowly, giving herself time to comprehend the magnitude of going to collect an item that would tell the police whether her husband was dead or alive. When she got back, Anik was waiting, evidence bag at the ready, gloves on. Susan dropped the sparkly pink toothbrush into the bag.

“Thanks, Mrs. Withey.”

Ridley nodded to Anik, meaning it was back to him to question her about the house.

“You have a lovely home,” he started . . . and the information he needed flowed easily from Susan. She wasn’t thinking about Mike anymore; she was thinking about her girls and this made her talk without caution.

“Thank you. Audrey sold a villa in Spain some years ago and gave the cash to Mike. I said if he gambled it away, I’d leave him. So, he bought this.” Susan shook her head as she remembered how unreliable Mike actually was. “From one extreme to the other. He had no idea what actually mattered to me and the kids. He thought this lovely house would solve all of our problems, but that’s all it turned out be in the end—a lovely house. It wasn’t ever a family home, regardless of the pictures on the wall. Nothing more than a façade.”

“I’d suggest you don’t tell Audrey that we’ve been to see you. Let’s do the DNA test first,” Anik suggested.

“She knows he’s missing, but . . . Well, it’s not unusual for Mike to go off for a while so she’ll not be worried yet. She’s concerned—but not ‘worried,’ you know.”

“I know you mentioned that the text messages stopped but . . . was that the only reason for you reporting him missing this time?”

Ridley noted how Anik was starting to question intuitively.

“He’d been distracted. I assumed it was by work, or the lack of work. I don’t know. He’d been . . . off. Mike wasn’t the deepest of people so he was easy to read. Something had been wrong for a while.”

The conversation was rounded off by Ridley asking the harder questions. Questions he knew Anik wouldn’t think of.

“Mrs. Withey, could you tell me if Mike still wore his wedding ring?” And then came the biggie. “And do you have the contact details for his dentist, please?”

A single tear rolled down Susan’s shocked face. The burnt body, whoever he was, wasn’t visually identifiable.

Back at the station, Jack and Laura were huddled round the same desk in a small, rarely used break room. There was an ancient, unplugged coffee machine in the corner, which was why Laura had requested an urn of hot water, sachets of tea and coffee, disposable cups and a selection of biscuits.