Accused wife-killer Gerard Baden-Clay said his wife vented her feelings to him for 15 minutes the night before she vanished but when the discussion ended they talked about something else.

Part of a police interview with former real estate agent Baden-Clay, recorded the morning he reported his wife missing, was played at the 43-year-old’s murder trial on Wednesday.

Two uniform police officers interviewed Baden-Clay in his Brookfield house in Brisbane’s west after he rang triple zero to report his wife Allison Baden-Clay missing on the morning of April 20, 2012.

During the interview, police asked Baden-Clay whether anything had happened between the couple the previous night.

He said a marriage counsellor had advised them to spend 15 minutes a day letting Allison “vent” after she discovered he was having an affair.

“We had one (discussion) last night and there were some difficult things that we talked about but it wasn’t … we then finished and then we talked about what were the plans for today,” he said.

Asked in the interview about their relationship overall, Baden-Clay said: “We have generally a pretty positive outlook on these things. Yes, things are tough at the moment.”

“You didn’t get into a fight last night?” one officer asked.

“We’ve had some challenges,” Baden-Clay replied, and repeated that the couple had had a short discussion as advised by the counsellor.

One of the police officers asked Baden-Clay about marks on his face, saying they could be consistent with scratches.

He replied he had cut himself shaving because he was in a hurry to get his daughters to school.

“I was rushing because I needed to get all the girls up … then I cut myself,” he said.

He told police a cut on his hand happened when he replaced a light fitting at his friend’s house the day before.

At the end of the interview police told Baden-Clay they didn’t mean to alarm him but they would be calling officers from the criminal investigation branch.

“This is just not what we normally have with missing persons and it’s not how things normally go and we just need to make sure we’ve got everything right,” one of the officers said.

Baden-Clay has pleaded not guilty to murdering his wife, whose body was found on April 30, 2012, at a creek bank at Anstead, in Brisbane’s west.

The trial continues.