Rubric's Cube

Chapter 8 Seeking explanations but finding more questions

I was packed and ready to go and kissed and hugged my family, and left their kindness through the gaggling geese clustered around the farm gate at around noon.

The weather didn't relent and I crept through the Cornish mizzle, through a similar fog in Devon until the M5 when the visibility cleared only to be replaced by steady rain, and spray from the heavy trucks.

I took a break at Michael Wood, filled the car with petrol, and had a killer burger and vastly expensive coffee, to distract myself.

Two hours later with my back aching from the unfamiliar seat of the hired car, I let myself into the silent house in Rugby, as the gloom started to come down in the dark wetness of the rainclouds.

I resented the stark magnolia painted rectilinearity of this modern house which we had recently acquired. Why had we bought this so called home? Of course the answer was it formed another investment, located in a modern fashionable suburb of Rugby. But where was the randomness of a stone inglenook fireplace, the sparks flying up the chimney, the need to put a log on the glowing embers, to feed firelight flickering on the walls, leaving mysterious unlit corners behind bent beams supporting an uneven ceiling?

I sighed for Mark's farmhouse and flicked a switch for the central heating. There was work to be done.

The luggage was restored to its rightful cupboards, or in the washing machine now chuntering away in the utility room. An unrewarding ready meal had been consumed, and a couple of glasses of an unappreciated red wine drunk.

So to Ellen's papers. In my mind I could distance myself marginally from her loss by treating this aspect of her life forensically, using her name as written on our marriage licence, rather than how I addressed her within that same marriage.

I realised that I was at an immediate disadvantage. Her lap top and briefcase were in the Porsche, whatever remained of that. There were three locations which might help. The bureau that we both used for immediate papers, her desktop PC, and her filing cabinet in the study upstairs.

The bureau revealed nothing unexpected: a couple of bills from both our company credit cards. I would have to send Ellen's as part of the clear up papers with West and Buissons Bank. I hoped I would find some record of Ellen's planned attendance at the conference, until I remembered I had passed the papers to detective Hansen.

There was little else. Most of our routine expenditures like utility and council tax bills, and the mortgage were covered by direct debits. I made a note to find out how much longer my salary unsupported by Ellie's could sustain the mortgage.

So to the filing cabinet. We kept the key on a key rack behind the door of a locked cupboard in the kitchen. The key to the cupboard was on each of our key rings. The cupboard opened without problems and the filing cabinet key was hanging where I expected it.

So it was a shock to find that the key wouldn't turn to release the lock of the filing cabinet. I compared the serial number on the cabinet and the key. They corresponded. I wasted a few minutes futilely rattling the key and the cabinet.

I knew how this cabinet was constructed. These cheap ones were pretty insecure.

In the garage I turned the flat white fluorescents on. They reflected in curved highlights on the Ferrari, uncovered when I had shown the car to the police. I covered the car up again without any thought of pride in the elegant possession.

I retrieved the Dremel toolbox and returned to the cabinet. With a cutting tool I started to remove a square of metal from the side of the cabinet next to the lock. I was barely conscious of the front door bell's ring penetrating through the scream of the cutter.