by Alex Marks
She took a wavering breath. 'You're going to ask me why I didn't do anything, why I didn't tell the policeman,' I shook my head, she was a child for God's sake, what could she have done? On screen, Sarah's face was pinched with guilt. 'But Mum and Dad were always there, always watching, and I couldn't. And I knew she was dead. I just knew. We were twins, so I knew... And then the years went on and everybody said Helen had run away and I was never,' she gulped, 'sent back to that house again and I started to think that maybe I'd just made it all up, that it was just some disgusting fantasy and that I was mad or twisted...'
Oh God, oh my poor, poor Sarah. I felt my brain begin to fill with a kind of white noise of horror.
'But today I went to the house, the house I apparently own, and it was that house, Adam, the house that me and Helen used to be taken to. I couldn't get inside but I recognised it from the street, God, I recognised it alright.' She leaned closer to the webcam, her tortured face filling the whole screen, 'so it must all be true, all of it, and Helen must have been killed there, and maybe she's still there, buried in the garden or something...' she sobbed, 'so I am going to confront them now, Mum and Dad,' she spat the words, 'and tell them that I'm going to the police and that I will have justice for Helen, even after all these years.'
She sat back again and heaved a huge sigh. 'And I know you're not here but I know you'd be supporting me,' No! No! No! I was thinking, it isn't safe! 'And I've done this message so I can't bottle out.' She smiled, kissed her fingers and then touched them to the camera. 'I'll see you soon, my darling, I love you.'
Her hand reached out and turned off the webcam and the message ended.
I slowly put my hands up to my head and gripped my hair until my scalp burned. The screaming in my mind got louder and louder as I imagined what my Sarah had been through, the terror and the pain, those disgusting men who had abused two eight year olds, her shame, still evident now, nearly thirty years later... it all roiled together like smoke, foul and clinging with soot and death and disgust, clouding my brain and choking me and everything went dark round the edges of my vision like I was sinking
into Hell...
I took a huge gasp of air and found I had rolled off the chair and onto the floor. Uncurling myself, I lay flat on the carpet and looked blindly at the ceiling, not wanting to think, not wanting to imagine. It was too much, I couldn't deal with it.
But Sarah had had to deal with it every day, on her own, never telling me. I pushed the heels of my hands into my eyes until I saw stars but the tears still leaked out. Why had she never told me? With dread I wondered if she'd worried I would somehow judge her, or blame her, or be disgusted? And how come I had never realised how far Richard Holland's repulsive behaviour actually went? For all I'd loathed him, for all I'd found his off-colour comments appalling and disgraceful, I'd never thought for a moment that he could be as horrendous as this. Now it was all too clear. He'd been hiding in plain sight all this time. I sobbed until I felt numb, just thinking about Sarah, and then I felt a fierce pride that despite everything, she'd got up every day and smiled and loved and made a difference.
I climbed back onto the chair and flopped down, staring at the screensaver on the laptop screen, and another thought struck me: it couldn't be a coincidence that Sarah had died just after confronting fucking Richard and Maggie Holland. Not a coincidence.
I scrambled to my feet and raced over to my jacket, which I'd slung on a kitchen chair when I'd got in. I fumbled out my phone and scrolled to find Darren Underwood's number. I could start with him.
I rang the number and was surprised that Darren picked up, it being now late on a Saturday night.
'Yes? Adam?'
In the background I could hear the sounds of laughter and music – a pub. I felt jolted, as if Sarah's video and people enjoying themselves couldn't co-exist in the same universe. Underwood sounded wary, his initial friendliness missing. I took a steadying breath and tried to think about how not to sound as frantic as I felt.
'I've found a video file, from Sarah. It explains why she was at her parents' house that night.'
'Look, Adam, the investigation is closed –'
'I know that, for fuck's sake!' He fell icily silent on the end of the line, and I could distinctly hear someone saying 'just bloody well hang up'. I gritted my teeth and went on. 'Sorry, but you will want to see this video. It impacts on many things other than Sarah's death, it's really important, Darren. Please!'
I heard him sigh. 'Fine. Email it to me and I'll take a look.'
'But –'
'Email it to me. If it's not worth pursuing then it won't have wasted any more of – our time then it needs to.'
I sat at the laptop and sent the file to the personal email address he gave me, trying not to think about how he'd really just been interested in whether he'd be having his time wasted. Well, God forbid that, I thought, but then my phone rang. It was him.
'Can you bring that laptop into the station now, please?' His voice was brighter, and I cynically thought he might be seeing how well this could play out for him. I agreed, grabbed the computer and ran to the car.
Thirty minutes later I had parked the car at the bottom of the Abingdon Road and was walking up to the door of Oxford's police headquarters when Darren cut across to fall into step with me. He was looking excited, and was carrying long black case.
He saw me looking at it, and shrugged: 'Saturday night pool competition at the Jolly Postboys.' He pushed open the glass door and ushered me through the foyer into a confusion of identical corridors. 'I'm not rostered on tonight but I thought it was important to come in for this,' he said, holding open another heavy door for me to go through into a small interview room. A heavy, older man with a lined face and shrewd eyes was waiting inside. Underwood introduced him Detective Inspector Nick Walters from the Greenland Enquiry – the unit that had taken over from the city's investigation into historical child abuse cases, Operation Bullfinch. I put the laptop on the table, and pressed play.
A couple of minutes later, Walters leant back in his chair, having just seen Sarah's terrible video. I stood in the corner, trying to get my face right, the two men tactfully pretending not to notice that I was crying, Darren eventually going out and bringing me back a cup of coffee.
'Thanks, Underwood. I can take it from here,' DI Walters dismissed him with half a smile. I could see Darren's frustration as he had no choice but to leave the room.
'Well, Dr Kitchener, that's quite a recording.' I just nodded. Walters fiddled with his pen for a second and then looked me straight in the eye. 'It's going to be a difficult case to prove, especially as your wife... is no longer able to make a statement in person.'
I sat down in the chair opposite. 'But she left a statement on this message.'
'Yes,' he conceded, 'and that's very compelling, but it's not a statement in the legal, criminal justice sense. Also, if anything ever went to trial, she's not available to be cross-examined.' He saw the look on my face and held up a hand to forestall my instant objections. 'Look, I'm not saying that we're not going to do anything, I just want to be clear with you on what is likely to happen, and what isn't.'
I sighed and rubbed my face. I felt like I was standing on the floor of an ocean with the whole weight of the last six weeks bearing down on me like two miles of sea water. 'I think this has a bearing on her accident.' I put my hands flat on the table and looked at the policeman. He stared back, impassive but sympathetic.
'It might,' he conceded, after a pause. Then: 'What I'd like to do, Adam, is to take a copy of this message and all the data surrounding when it was sent and so on, and get my team at Greenland to take a proper look at it.'
'That's good.' I nodded approval. Perhaps these detectives already had evidence against the Hollands, perhaps this would be the missing piece and...
'Adam. Adam!' I realised Walters had continued to speak but I'd tuned out. 'But please don't expect a quick result on this. The analysis of the video will take a while, and then i
t will be some time before we can get back to you. I'll try and keep you informed but it just won't be soon, I'm sorry.'
The huge weariness that had been building up in me broke like an enormous wave over my head. 'Fine, that's fine.' I had handed it on, I had done my best, I just wanted to lie down somewhere and let everything pass over me.
It was nearly dawn by the time the technical people had rooted around in my laptop and copied the recording and the metadata and all the rest of it. Taking one look at my exhausted face, Walters had suggested that I leave my Ford and had arranged for a squad car to drop me off at my house. I don't remember walking through the door or going upstairs, just falling onto my squeaky bed and everything going black.
CHAPTER FIVE
Sunday, 5 April 2015. 10:11
Another day without Sarah. I woke up late and for a long while I just lay in bed, staring at the wall. Then I hid myself in mindless routines, feeding the cat, eating breakfast, putting clothes into the washing machine, cleaning the house: anything not to think. I couldn't think any more.
The quiet seemed oppressive, so I dug into a box of ruined or abandoned technology and fished out an old walkman from the year dot, cabling it up to my laptop to transfer the tracks from the mix tape onto my iPod. Now I cleaned and tidied to a soundtrack of Louis Armstrong, StereoMCs and Fat Boy Slim.
Eventually, in the late afternoon, I sat down at the kitchen table to do the task that I had started out to do last night – emailing Williamson at CalTech. The tiny amount of focus it took to write a comprehensible message enquiring politely about a job helped me to mentally shake myself, and I pressed Send and sat back, with my mind a little clearer.
I wondered if the Operation Greenland people had seen Sarah's video message already, or whether it would be weeks and stacks of paperwork later before it worked its way to the top of their piles of evidence.
I sat up. Just because it might take the police weeks to look into this didn't mean I couldn't do some digging of my own. I didn’t know the exact date of Helen’s death, as it had been such a painful subject for my wife that I'd never wanted to ask for details, but thinking about it now I realised it must have been between 1983 when the family moved into the house in Summertown and about 1985.
My hands flew over my laptop keyboard and I called up the archive of the local paper, the Oxford Mail. Unfortunately, their online archive only ran back to 1997. I dare say I could have gone to their offices or to the local library to consult paper back issues, but I was basically too impatient for that. Instead, I wondered if the disappearance of an eight year old child would have made the national papers. To find out, I typed ‘Helen Holland missing’ into Google. Top of the inevitable umpteen thousand hits was the link to an article in The Times, and I clicked on that.
This was more like it: the Times archive was available online from 1785 onwards. I entered my search terms into the box, and was immediately rewarded with a chronological list of articles detailing Helen’s disappearance, the police search and the eventual abandonment of the enquiry. I began to click on the articles in turn.
23 April 1985: Eight year old vanishes
Police are investigating the disappearance of eight year old Helen Holland from her Oxfordshire home. The child, daughter of financier Richard Holland and his wife Margaret, went missing on Tuesday night during a violent storm. It is thought that she became frightened by the thunder and ran out of an unlocked back door.
Inspector Alan Christie, of Oxfordshire Police, said last night: ‘Helen went missing yesterday evening, sometime between being put to bed at half past seven and being checked by her mother at ten thirty. We appeal to anyone driving in the vicinity of Lonsdale Road in Summertown yesterday night who may have seen a small child wandering alone.’
24 April 1985: Police appeal for sightings of missing girl
I scrolled down to the second article and was confronted by a grainy photograph of the remaining members of the Holland family. The quality was terrible and little Sarah was no more than a child-shaped blob with pig tails. Richard Holland seemed a very sinister figure to me: tall and brooding in a dark suit and mind-boggling sideburns, his hands resting proprietorially on the shoulders of his wife and remaining child. Maggie sported a hairband and a hideous dress, her expression unreadable. The gist of the article was the increasing frustration of the police as their searches and enquiries came to nothing. Finally there was a note that previous sightings of a small child in the area had now been investigated and found not to have been Helen.
25 April 1985: Searches continue for vanished child
A shorter article this time, the media seemingly losing interest in the missing child. Of interest to me, though, was the reproduction of what was clearly a family snapshot, taken during some kind of picnic. Maggie must have been behind the camera as the photo showed just a shirt-sleeved Richard sitting awkwardly on a rug with his two small daughters. It seemed such a strange time-capsule of a summer afternoon thirty years before. The two girls had been snapped speaking to each other, and I wondered what innocent child's observation of the world they had been sharing. I stared at the photo for a long time, but then scrolled down to the next article.
30 April 1985: Hopes fade for Helen Holland
This made depressingly familiar reading: the search of woods and fields and the dragging of ponds, the house-to-house questioning and the gradual realisation that Helen was not going to be found. The slant in this article was the interview with Helen and Sarah’s infant school teacher, Mrs Wilson, but all she could add was that the twins were quiet and a bit small for their age. There were no more articles after that.
Lastly, I searched on the BBC archive and to my surprise found a short clip from a national news broadcast. I had a moment to think about how weird it was to be watching a decades-old news report on a small i-Player screen on my laptop, and then it had buffered. The set was a study in brown and orange, and the newsreader’s plummy voice was intoning dispassionately that Helen had been missing now for five days, and that the police search had been scaled down. There followed a shot of quaintly dressed constables beating through the fields and woodland near the house. Then suddenly there was Richard, saturnine and middle class, being interviewed by a reporter and saying all the right things about being terribly worried and Helen please come home. Obviously the rule that whoever does press conferences after murders or disappearances is the killer hadn’t been written in 1985, but he seemed bloody suspicious to me.
I sat back from the laptop screen and stretched my back. Well, that had helped confirm what I’d already presumed, namely that no-one had suspected that Helen's parents were complicit in her murder. I found myself imagining holding a press conference and showing Sarah's video, then accusing Richard and Maggie of running a paedophile ring and killing one of their children. I'd get sued for slander, of course, but I didn't care.
The day had darkened around me whilst I'd been engrossed with the computer, and I got up and walked through the gloomy rooms of the house until I got to my temporary bedroom. I should probably eat, I thought, but before I could push my way through my inertia the phone rang. I clicked off the music from the ghostly mix tape as I answered.
'Adam? It's DI Walters.' He sounded mightily pissed off. 'Have you been speaking with the press?'
'What?'
'The Oxford Mail, Tessa Davies, to be precise. Have you?'
I bridled at this interrogation. 'No, of course I haven't, what's going on?'
There was a sigh at the end of the line, and then his voice came calmer. He's breaking some bad news to me, I immediately thought.
'Sorry, it's just – the paper has got hold of Sarah's video from somewhere...'
Electricity seemed to shoot up my body, and I felt every muscle clench. 'They've seen the video?' I lowered myself carefully into a chair and tightened my fist in my hair. 'They've seen Sarah's video? How is that fucking possible?'
Walters cleared his throat. 'Er – I don't know. I am sorry, it'
s possible the leak was from the station...'
'Possible the leak was from the station? Where else could it be from? I haven't shown the film to anyone!' Images of the video appearing online and being watched by the gawping and the curious shot into my mind. 'This is my bloody wife, for God's sake, how could this happen?'
The policeman was silent, his discomfort radiating down the phone line.
'When are they publishing it?' I started to head back downstairs, intent on finding the Oxford Mail website. 'Is it up already?'
'No, fortunately we've been able to get their Editor to delay publication, as it's part of an ongoing police investigation. But it's very likely that they will be contacting you –'
'Shit! They can piss off!'
'Well, you don't need to give them the time of day,' he replied, drily. Then: 'I am sorry that this has happened, Adam, and we will be investigating.'
'Right,' I felt exhausted, crushed, barely registering his final words before ringing off.
I could feel the cursor in my brain blinking at the end of a row, awaiting a further command. I couldn't think of one, instead I just went back to the bed, lay down, and closed my eyes. Poor Sarah! This seemed the final insult, the final trashing of her as an individual. Once that video was made public then there would be no going back: her name would forever be associated with that terrible confession, those tears, that abuse. For as long as the internet existed it would be trawled up, rehashed, commented on by fuckwits around the world, public property.