‘Still, working in palliative care must take a toll. My wife and I had to put my father-in-law in a place like that last year. We couldn’t afford Trinity, but I imagine they’re all pretty much the same. Death is everywhere, hanging over everything. Must be a pretty depressing place to spend your nine-to-five. Is that why John quit?’

‘I don’t know,’ Kate admitted, trying to keep the sound of heavy resignation from her voice. ‘He didn’t tell me.’

‘He didn’t tell you why he left?’

‘He didn’t tell her he had left,’ Fisher said. ‘Any of us, I mean. We only found out yesterday.’

‘He kept it from you both?’ the officer asked. ‘Why do you think he’d do that?’

‘I have no idea,’ Kate said. ‘I wish I did.’

The officer leaned back in his chair. ‘Tell me about this medical conference.’

‘It’s a ten-day palliative care research colloquium. Trinity sends someone every year. It moves around. Last year it was in San Francisco, the year before that was Sweden, I think. John didn’t want to go but someone dropped out at the last minute and his hands were tied.’

‘How last minute?’

‘He found out a few days before he left.’

‘But you have reason to believe he didn’t attend the conference.’

‘I called the hotel where the conference was held. John was supposed to have a room there, but there was no trace of him on their records. I contacted the airline. The flight details he gave me were correct, but he never got on a plane. So far as I can tell, he didn’t even buy a ticket.’

‘Do you have any idea where your husband might have been for the past two weeks?’

‘No,’ she said.

The bigger question was where had John been for the past three months? Nausea swept through her system. Her body felt off balance; some parts were numb, others were aching. Her chest was tight. She fluctuated wildly between feeling scared for her husband and feeling furious at him, between wondering where he was, and where he had been.

If he wasn’t going off to work each day in the fresh shirts Kate had ironed and left out for him, where was he going? How was he spending his days? Who was he with?

‘Have you had contact with your husband since he left?’ the officer asked.

‘We talked every other day over Skype.’

‘And it seemed like he was calling from London?’

‘It looked like he was calling from a hotel room. It wasn’t as if Big Ben was in the background, but I had no reason not to believe it was London.’

‘When you talked to him, did he give you any indication something was wrong?’