‘Nothing so far. We think he got out of the car. We traced the signal on his work mobile phone moving for about five minutes afterwards until it ceased. I take it you’ve not had any phone calls?’

‘No. I would have let you know if I had. Why wouldn’t he ring me?’

‘Well, the phone may not have been usable, even though it was giving out a signal,’ Kaplan said. She kept from Mrs Blanchard the news that the phone had been used to call another mobile phone nearby, an unregistered one, in the minutes after the crash. Such news was likely to be an unwelcome addition to the shock of hearing her husband had been in an accident.

‘He might have been injured,’ Angela said.

‘Yes, that’s quite possible,’ Kaplan said. ‘Suffering from shock at least, disorientated. He may even have lost his memory.’ The detective got out her notebook. ‘Now, Mrs Blanchard, I understand you told the PC who first visited that your husband had been behaving strangely.’

‘That’s right. He was clearly in a flap, and in a hurry to get out again. It’s so unlike him. His work isn’t like that, with last-minute changes of plan. He’s a project manager, and these projects are measured in months if not years.’

‘So, do you think it’s possible that he was just giving an excuse, and it wasn’t about work?’

‘Yes. He took personal things with him, like his guitar, and an old tent. I thought he might be leaving me.’ Her eyes welled up. ‘But then I got a phone call from his boss, who did seem to be pretty anxious to get in touch with him. So I then thought maybe it was about work.’

Kaplan made detailed notes. ‘I’ll be speaking to Aqua Western later on.’ As she left, she thought this was unlike any other disappearance she had covered. Fleeing from an old life, yes. But urgently enough to head off into a new one the wrong way on a major road, and end up upside down in a river. And then gone, vanished.

Chapter Four

Six months later

Wednesday