I thought, initially, that he turned Helen's phone on - to check that the text he had sent had been received ok - and I thought what an idiot.
But, from reading the reporting ( which has been sometimes muddled - the cleaner information for a start, which will hopefully be clarified once the cleaner or cleaners give evidence ) it seems that Helen's phone connected to the wifi at the cottage. So I don't believe he necessarily turned it on, just that her smart phone recognised a known location for her ( she would have had her phone, ipad etc all linked to the router at Broadstairs ) and pinged.
Again, as a computer expert, he should have known this might happen.
RSBM - I actually think this might be part of an initial plan to make it look as though Helen had been at Broadstairs, as this was just a day after Ian reported her missing and he would't have been up to his neck in it at that point - he might have been just trying to throw police off being concerned.
Asking for the bedsheets to remain unchanged makes me think that he wanted there to be evidence that Helen had done exactly what she said she had done and left to go to Broadstairs and she was, in fact missing from there and not their shared home.
Turning on her phone there was possibly with the intention that her phone 'pings' in that loaction and to therefore make police think that she has been at Broadstairs as per her note and there's no need to worry. Then the plan goes as follows:
- The phone pings to the wireless network at the house and indicates Helen is alive and well and taking time out in Broadstairs.
- Search doesn't die down, in fact it ramps up.
- It becomes clear that Helen hasn't been in Broadstairs at all and is missing from their home.
- IS removes the router upon realising that this bit of evidence now incriminates him rather than relieves suspicion.
The reason I think he's smarter than we're perhaps giving him credit for is the fact that he removed and hid the router. He knew the router could be matched up with that connection on her phone (possibly hadn't realised it already had been), so he will have known what he was doing with it in the first place. There's no other reason for him to have removed the router than to hide that one connection to it.
Unless he forgot that it would automatically connect to the wireless network in the home... BUT in that scenario, he would know the messages from people trying to get in touch with her would come through to him at Broadstairs also and that would also show the phone in that location. So, it leads me to think he was initially trying to build on the narrative that Helen just wanted time out.