A Room Swept White

by Sophie Hannah

  Waterhouse stands up, walks over to the window. Like everyone who’s ever admired the view from my lounge – a greenish-stained light-well wall leading up to an uneven pavement – he makes no mention of the charming aspect.

  ‘Try not to worry,’ he says. ‘Having said that, you need to take a few basic precautions. You live here alone?’

  I nod.

  ‘I’m going to try and organise for someone to keep an eye on you, but in the meantime, have you got a friend you can stay with? I’d like you to spend as little time as possible on your own until you hear different.’

  Keep an eye on me? Would he say that if the threat to me wasn’t serious?

  This is getting ridiculous. Ask him what’s going on. Make him tell you.

  I can’t bring myself to do it, even though the truth might be an improvement on what I’m not quite allowing myself to imagine. Maybe I’d feel better if I heard it.

  Yeah. Course you would.

  ‘I’d also like you to halt all work on the cot-death murders documentary for the time being, and broadcast the fact that that’s what you’re doing,’ says Waterhouse. ‘Contact everyone involved. Make sure they know it’s postponed indefinitely.’

  Resistance rears up inside me like a tidal wave. I don’t know why I’m nodding mutely like an obedient sap when I have no intention of following his instructions. Either I’m lying again, or I’m agreeing with him because I know he’s right in theory, I know that’s what I ought to do.

  I also know I can’t. Can’t give up on the film now, can’t stop myself from going to Twickenham this morning. Despite the fear and the guilt, the pull inside me is too strong, like a current I have no hope of fighting. I have to talk to Rachel Hines, hear what she has to say about Wendy Whitehead, the woman she claims killed her children. I have to go deeper in.

  It’s nothing to do with truth or justice. It’s me. If I don’t see this through, all the way to the other side of whatever it leads to, I might go my whole life without ever fixing on who I am or how I feel – about myself, my family, my past. I’ll be nothing – the nobody from nowhere, as Maya so graciously put it, trapped for ever, still tainted. I’ll have missed my one chance. That terrifies me more than the idea of someone trying to kill me.

  As if he’s reading my mind, Waterhouse says, ‘We’re having trouble getting in touch with Rachel Hines. Do you have her contact details?’

  The police must think the film is connected to Helen Yardley’s murder.

  ‘They’re probably in a file somewhere. I think she rents a flat in Notting Hill, close to where she used to live with her family,’ I parrot what Tamsin told me. Part of me would like to be helpful and give Waterhouse the Twickenham address, but if I do that, he’ll make it his next stop, and I can’t let that happen. I can’t have him in my way. I’m the person Rachel Hines is going to speak to this morning; no one else.

  ‘She doesn’t seem to be staying there at the moment,’ he says. ‘You don’t have any other address for her?’

  ‘No,’ I lie.

  10

  9/10/09

  ‘Two new faces for you today.’ Proust tapped the whiteboard with a pen. ‘Or rather, one face and one police artist’s best attempt at a likeness. The woman in the photograph is Sarah Jaggard. Some of you might have heard of her.’

  About half and half, thought Simon. There were as many people nodding as looking blank.

  ‘She was tried in 2005 for the manslaughter of Beatrice Furniss, the baby of a friend,’ said the Snowman. ‘She was acquitted. She has several links to Helen Yardley. One: Helen campaigned, under the auspices of JIPAC, on Mrs Jaggard’s behalf. Two: Laurie Nattrass – I assume you’ve all heard of him – was until very recently making a documentary about three cot-death murder cases, two of which were Helen and Sarah Jaggard. Three, and this is closely related to two: Dr Judith Duffy, regular star witness for the prosecution in suspected abuse cases, testified against both Helen Yardley and Sarah Jaggard at their trials. Duffy’s on the verge of being struck off by the GMC for misconduct.’

  A taut silence filled the room as everyone stared at the face beside Sarah Jaggard’s: a sketch of a man with a shaved head and uneven front teeth. Apart from Proust, only Simon, Sam Kombothekra, Sellers and Gibbs knew why his as-yet-unidentified ugly mug was up on the board. Was Simon the only one who objected to being among the chosen people? ‘The home team’, Rick Leckenby and a few others had taken to calling them, seemingly without malice.

  There was another meeting of the select few scheduled for immediately after the briefing. In Proust’s glass-walled office in the corner of the CID room, where everyone else working Helen Yardley’s murder would once again be able to see but not hear the inspector consulting his inner circle. It was no way to run a murder investigation.

  ‘Last Monday, 28 September – so a week before Helen Yardley was shot – Sarah Jaggard was attacked near her home in Wolverhampton by the man whose unprepossessing image we have here.’ Proust pointed to the board. ‘Mrs Jaggard has understandably suffered from depression since her arrest in 2004 and is on anti-depressants. On 28 September, she went to her GP for a repeat prescription. On leaving the doctor’s surgery, she went straight to the nearest chemist, the Moon Street branch of Boots. As she was approaching the door, in full view of the shop window, a man came up and grabbed her from behind. He put one arm round her neck and the other round her waist, and dragged her into a nearby alleyway. Once he had her where he wanted her, our assailant turned Mrs Jaggard round, enabling her to get a good look at his face, produced a knife and held it against her throat.

  ‘Mrs Jaggard can’t remember his exact words but he said something to the effect of, “You killed that baby, didn’t you? Tell me the truth.” Mrs Jaggard told him that no, she didn’t kill Beatrice Furniss, to which he replied, “You shook her, didn’t you? Why don’t you admit it? If you tell me the truth, I’ll let you live. All I want’s the truth.” Mrs Jaggard told him again that she didn’t shake the baby, had never harmed a child and never would, but that didn’t satisfy him, and he continued to repeat himself, threatening that unless she told the truth, he would kill her. In the end, Mrs Jaggard became so terrified, and so convinced he was going to kill her if she didn’t give him what he wanted, that she lied. She said “All right, I did shake her, I did kill her.” ’

  Simon saw confusion on some of the faces around him, though a few people were shrugging as if to say, ‘Anyone would say that, if someone had a knife to their throat.’

  ‘Sarah Jaggard did not shake Beatrice Furniss, who died of natural causes,’ said Proust, his metal-grey eyes raking the room for signs of dissent. ‘She was being threatened by a madman. A madman who didn’t know his own mind, as it turned out, because the minute she lied and said she’d shaken the baby to death, he started to tell her that she didn’t. He said words to the effect of, “Don’t lie. I told you, I want the truth. You didn’t kill her, did you? You didn’t shake her. You’re lying.” At which point Sarah Jaggard tried again to tell the truth: that she hadn’t harmed baby Beatrice in any way, that she’d only said she had in fear of her life. The man got angry at this point – angrier, I should say – and said, “You’re going to die now. Are you ready?”

  ‘Mrs Jaggard fainted in shock, but not before hearing a woman’s raised voice. She was too frightened to make out what the voice was saying. When she came round to find herself flat on her back, her attacker was gone, and there was a woman standing over her, a Mrs Carolyn Finneran, who had come out of Boots and noticed a skirmish in the alleyway. Hers was the voice Mrs Jaggard heard before she fainted.’ Proust paced the room as he spoke: his gang-plank walk, one foot slowly and carefully in front of the other. If only there were an ocean for him to fall into.

  ‘If Mrs Finneran hadn’t appeared when she did and scared our man away, it’s reasonable to assume Sarah Jaggard might have died on 28 September,’ said Proust. ‘In any event, given the link between her and Helen Yardley, that this attack happened
a week before Helen’s murder is something we couldn’t afford to ignore even if we didn’t have something more concrete linking the two incidents. I won’t keep you in suspense.’

  The Snowman stopped in front of an enlarged copy of the card that had been found in Helen Yardley’s pocket after her death: the sixteen numbers. ‘Once Sarah Jaggard had been helped to her feet by Mrs Finneran, the first thing she did was reach into her jacket pocket for a tissue to wipe her face. She pulled out more than she bargained for: there was a card there, identical to the one you’re all familiar with.’ Proust held out his hand. Colin Sellers, standing behind him like a performing seal waiting for his cue, handed him two transparent plastic folders. Proust held them up so that everyone could see the cards inside. ‘Same numbers, same handwriting – though that hasn’t yet been officially confirmed by the people whose overpaid job it is to tell us what we already know. Exactly the same layout – the numbers divided into four rows of four horizontally and four columns of four vertically, and nothing else on the card except the numbers: 2,1,4,9, et cetera.’

  An eruption of whispers and murmurs filled the room. Proust waited for it to subside before saying, ‘Mrs Jaggard is adamant that this card was not on her person when she left home to go to the doctor’s, and that there’s no way it could have made its way into her pocket unless her attacker put it there. The numbers mean nothing to her, or so she told DC Waterhouse. She kept the card in the hope of working out what it meant, thinking it had to mean something. She informed neither her husband nor local police about the attack.’ The Snowman raised his hand to halt the loud expressions of incredulity. ‘Don’t be so sure you would have behaved differently in her position. Her only experience of the law is a negative one. The thought of inviting the big boots of plod to re-enter her life when they’d crushed it once before was unappealing to say the least. She was also terrified that, if this man were caught, he would say she’d admitted to killing Beatrice Furniss. She decided a better way to deal with what had happened was never to leave the house again. Her husband Glen noticed a deterioration in her condition, but had no idea of the cause.’

  ‘So we’ve got a serial, or an aspiring serial?’ Klair Williamson asked.

  ‘We don’t use that word unless we have to,’ said Proust. ‘What we have is a strong interest in these sixteen numbers. No help so far from Bramshill or GCHQ, or from the Maths departments of the universities I contacted. I’m considering going to the press with it. If we need to wade through a thousand lunatics to find out what these numbers mean, then that’s what we’ll do. And, while I’m on the bad news, my request for a psychological profiler did not meet with a favourable response, I’m sorry to say. The usual excuse: lack of money. We’re going to have to do our own profiling, at least until bust gives way to boom.’

  ‘I thought boom and bust had been abolished,’ someone called out.

  ‘That was a lie told by a man every bit as criminal as the shaven-headed individual who held a knife to Sarah Jaggard’s throat,’ Proust snapped. ‘A man . . .’ – he tapped the police artist’s image with his pen to make it clear who he was talking about – ‘. . . that Mrs Stella White, of 16 Bengeo Street, says might be the man she saw on Helen Yardley’s driveway on Monday morning. He might have had a shaven head, even though in her original account, he had darkish hair. Her son Dillon says it’s definitely not the same man, but then he also says it was raining on Monday, and that the man outside Helen Yardley’s house had a wet umbrella with him. We know this is not true – there was no rain and none was forecast. Even if Helen Yardley’s killer concealed his gun inside a fastened umbrella, that umbrella wouldn’t have been wet. I think we’re going to have to write off the Whites, mother and son, as being among the most unhelpful witnesses that have ever hindered our progress. Nevertheless, the cards in the pockets are a firm link between Baldy and Helen Yardley’s murder, so at the moment he’s our best bet.’

  Baldy? thought Simon. Had the Snowman looked in the mirror lately?

  ‘Why would he use a gun for Helen Yardley and a knife for Sarah Jaggard?’ a young DC from Silsford called out. ‘And why attack one in her home and the other outside a shop? It doesn’t fit in with the sixteen numbers in their pockets. That’s typical serial, but the change of method and setting . . .’

  ‘It’s not the same man,’ said Gibbs. ‘Stella White said darkish hair, twice – to DS Kombothekra and then to me.’

  ‘Shave your head tonight, DC Gibbs. We’ll see if you’ve got enough hair by this time next week to be described as darkish.’

  ‘You’re not serious, sir?’

  ‘Do I strike you as a frivolous sort of person?’

  ‘No, sir.’

  Simon raised his hand. ‘If I can respond to the point about serial—’

  ‘I don’t know if you can, Waterhouse. Can you?’

  ‘The attack on Sarah Jaggard wasn’t a success. He was interrupted before he’d finished with her. With Helen Yardley, he decided to do it differently, better: in her house, husband safely out at work, gets her all to himself for a whole day, no one to disturb them, and shoots her at the end of it. The repetitive part, the signature that’s typical of serials: that’s the cards with the numbers on. That’s the focal point for him, and it would have provided enough continuity to allow him to be flexible about the details.’

  ‘I’ll take that as an application for the post of in-house profiler, Waterhouse.’

  ‘We’ve been wondering why the killer might turn up at 8.20 in the morning, stay all day and only shoot Helen Yardley at 5 in the afternoon.’ Simon went on.

  ‘And it’s looking highly likely that’s when she was shot,’ Proust chipped in. ‘The post-mortem gives us a ninety-minute window: 4.30 to 6. Deaf Beryl Murie did us proud.’

  ‘Extrapolating from what we now know, might the killer have been doing to Helen Yardley what he did to Sarah Jaggard, only for longer?’ Simon suggested. ‘ “Tell me the truth. You did kill your babies, didn’t you?” She’d have said “No, I’m innocent,” for as long as she could hold out, then panic would have taken over. He’d have been telling her she’d only live if she told the truth, and she’d take that to mean he wanted her to confess to guilt. She’d have said anything to stay alive: “Yes, I killed them”. He says, “No, you didn’t. You’re lying. You’re telling me what you think I want to hear. You didn’t kill them, did you? Tell the truth.” “No, I didn’t kill them. I told you I didn’t kill them but you didn’t believe me.” “You’re lying. I know you killed them. Tell the truth.” And so on.’

  ‘For eight and a half hours?’ said Sam Kombothekra.

  ‘A chilling performance, Waterhouse. I particularly liked the manic glint in your eye as you delivered the psychopath’s lines. Can you account for your whereabouts on Monday?’

  ‘Why would he have kept it up for so long?’ asked Gibbs. ‘He’d have been able to see within half an hour that she was changing her tune every time he got angry and accused her of lying.’

  ‘Maybe he thought if he kept it up for long enough, she’d see that changing her story back and forth wasn’t getting her anywhere, wasn’t getting rid of him or putting a stop to the fear,’ said Simon. ‘He hoped she’d settle on one or the other – guilty or innocent – and wouldn’t contradict it no matter what he threatened her with. Whichever she fixed on, he’d know it was the truth.’

  ‘And we enter the realm of fantasy,’ Proust intoned.

  ‘In that situation, most people wouldn’t be capable of rational thought,’ said Klair Williamson. ‘You wouldn’t be calm enough to think, “Right, telling him what I think he wants to hear isn’t working, so from now on I’ll stick to the truth.” ’

  Simon disagreed. ‘If someone holds a gun to your head and keeps ordering you to tell the truth or else he’ll kill you, eventually you’re going to tell the truth. You’ve tried lying to please him – it’s got you nowhere. Pretty soon your terror convinces you that he knows the truth, so you daren’t lie any more.’
Simon was pleased to see a few people nodding. ‘We don’t know much about this man, so we can’t afford to ignore what he’s told us himself, via Sarah Jaggard: all he wants is the truth. She said he kept saying that. If he’s the same man who killed Helen Yardley – and I think he is – he spent the whole of Monday trying, literally, to scare the truth out of her.’

  ‘And killed her at five o’clock because . . .?’ asked Rick Leckenby.

  ‘He failed.’ Simon shrugged. ‘Maybe Helen refused to give him an answer. Maybe she said, “Go ahead, shoot me if you want to, but I’m not telling you anything.” Or maybe she told him the truth and he didn’t like it, so he killed her anyway.’

  ‘I just can’t see it going on like that for eight and a half hours,’ said Sam Kombothekra. ‘Maybe one, or two . . .’

  ‘Let’s get back to work,’ Proust said pointedly. ‘Before Waterhouse is tempted to build a leisurely lunch and siesta for the killer into his fantasy. Felicity Benson, thirty-one years old, single.’ He tapped the name on the whiteboard. ‘Known as Fliss. She lives in Kilburn in London and works for the TV production company Binary Star. She’s supposed to be taking over Laurie Nattrass’s documentary, the one about, among others, Helen Yardley. On Wednesday – two days ago – she opened an envelope addressed to her at work and extracted from it a card that made no sense to her, with our friends the sixteen numbers on it. She showed it to Mr Nattrass, who threw it in his office bin. Sadly, it’s well on its way to a landfill by now; the chances of our finding it are zero. Miss Benson is alive and well, and I’ve asked for some resources to be devoted to keeping her that way. The higher-ups are stalling, as I knew they would. In the meantime, Miss Benson has agreed to stay with a friend and spend no time alone apart from when answering a call of nature, at which times the friend should remain close at hand.’