What Happened Next? Episode Three

Episode THREE

Ring, Ring

My skin prickled as the two detectives continued their silent scrutiny, like they were waiting for me to crack and confess to a crime I didn’t even remember committing. I awkwardly fiddled with the tie of my dressing gown, desperately running through every possible way Isobel’s phone could have wound up here. Maybe they had made a mistake, and it wasn’t here at all. That’s plausible, right? Perhaps it was all some bureaucratic cock-up, and five minutes later, they would apologise and leave me alone with my tepid wine and crap telly. That being said, the expressions on their faces told me I was barking up the wrong tree.

“Would you mind if we checked around your back garden?” DS Zahradnik asked.

“The garden?” I clarified. “What for?”

“You know, just signs that Isobel might have been here.”

“Er—of course,” I stuttered.

I led them through the kitchen, flicked on the garden light, and held the door open. The air outside was sharp and slightly damp, the grass slick under my slippers as we stepped onto the patchy lawn. As Rhodes swept his torch across the flowerbeds, pausing on every discarded plant pot and muddy footprint, Zahradnik kept her eyes firmly on me, with an accusatory stare that seemed to be bolted onto her face. I wrapped my arms around myself, shivering for reasons that had nothing to do with the cold, wondering when the hell Mark would get home, hopefully with some answers.

“Boss?” Rhodes said over his shoulder.

“Yeah?” she replied, glancing over.

“I think you’d better take a look at this.”

My heart plummeted into the pit of my stomach as Zahradnik knelt beside Rhodes in front of the petunias. She put on a single glove and reached into the tangled stems, emerging with something rectangular and dark. It was a phone housed in a slim, pale case that was spattered with something rusty-red across the corner, which glinted in the moonlight. Before she carefully placed it into an evidence bag, I saw that the screen was cracked, and there, as clear as day, was an oily, red smear against the plastic which, to my horror, was unmistakably blood.

“Mrs Harper, are you certain you haven’t seen this before?” Zahradnik glanced at me, her expression shuttered.

I eagerly shook my head. “I swear—I have no idea how that got there. I’ve never even seen that phone in my life.”

The two officers exchanged one of those silent glances that says everything and nothing all at once.

“Is your husband home?” Rhodes asked, his tone softer than before, almost pitying.

I stared through the darkened window above the kitchen sink at the driveway beyond, praying that I would see his car parked there.

“No,” I managed. “He… he should’ve been back by now.”

“Do you know where he is?”

“Work,” I said feebly.

Mark always texted if he was going to be late. Always. Especially since he was working nights. Hoping against hope that I would have a message waiting for me, I dug my phone out of my pocket, my fingers trembling so badly I nearly dropped it. No messages. No missed calls.

I looked up at the detectives, my pulse hammering behind my eyes. “Can I call him?”

Zahradnik nodded. “Please do.”

My hands felt disconnected from the rest of me as I dialled his number. The phone rang, and rang, and rang—each tone slicing a little deeper.

“He might be busy, but he usually answers,” I said with a forced smile.

“We aren’t in any rush,” Rhodes said sternly.

There was no answer, so I tried again, and again until it stopped ringing altogether and started going straight to his voicemail. Did he just turn his phone off?

“He’s not answering,” I whispered, my voice barely audible over the sudden rush of wind in the garden.

For a long moment, nobody spoke. The night pressed in around us, cold and hungry, as the reality of what I was standing in—the centre of a grim crime scene I didn’t understand—finally began to settle in my bones.

And for the first time, I wondered if Mark was going to come home at all.

Thank you to Lalita Creighton from Florida for her contribution to this episode!