Risk of Harm

by Lucie Whitehouse

  ‘Must have been early; that’s got to be a four-hundred-mile round trip,’ said Tark. ‘What was there?’

  ‘A woman called Jude Everleigh.’

  She told them about Miriam Chapman and how Maggie had put her on to the story. ‘I looked at it, Malia and I looked at her picture, and she did look similar to the Gisborne Girl. Very similar. The problem was, she’d be too old now, it can’t be her, or her sister – formerly Judith Chapman, now Jude Everleigh. But the timing works for Miriam to be the Gisborne Girl’s mother.’

  ‘Whoa.’ Varan sat back.

  ‘Last night, when we were drawing blanks everywhere, even after the TV, I went online and discovered that Jude has a shop. I took a punt this morning and went there.’

  ‘And?’ said Malia.

  Robin unlocked her phone, opened Photos and handed it to her. ‘Jude Everleigh.’

  Malia looked at the picture then back at Robin. She handed the phone to Tarka, who looked then passed it to Varan.

  ‘I’ve dropped in a swab downstairs, fast-tracked. Results on Monday morning.’

  ‘What did she say when you told her why you were there?’ said Malia.

  ‘She was stunned.’

  ‘I should bloody think so,’ Tark said. ‘She had no idea about any of this?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘How did she react to your hypothesis?’ asked Varan.

  ‘Well, that was interesting. At first she was adamant it couldn’t be right, Miriam and she led completely sheltered lives, devout religious family, no interaction with the opposite sex, no way she ran away because she was pregnant, boys weren’t even on their mental radar, let alone allowed. But then she looked at it the other way round: if Miriam had been “attacked”, as she put it, raped, she’d have been too ashamed to tell anyone.’

  ‘So ashamed that if she’d thought she was pregnant as a result, she might have run away?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Varan broke the silence that followed. ‘You said there was another reason Roof Guy here might have wanted the body found.’

  ‘Ready for this? I think he might – might – be her father.’

  ‘Whoa,’ he said again. ‘Are you serious?’ His look of astonishment was near-comical.

  ‘How? Or rather, why do you think that?’ Malia.

  ‘I know it sounds mad, that was my reaction when it first occurred to me, but the more I think about it, the more it makes sense. It makes sense of a lot of things, particularly the care he took at the scene to disguise her identity – there was literally nothing left to help us work it out except her body and face.’

  ‘You mean, something stopped him going that far – damaging her face? Or her teeth.’

  ‘Even her fingerprints. If he’d really wanted to disguise her, he could have burned them off, God knows that’s common enough practice. But he didn’t.’

  Varan looked sceptical. ‘You’re saying he couldn’t do it because she was his own flesh and blood? Even when he’d stabbed her to death?’

  ‘Or, alternatively,’ she said, ‘because he knew he didn’t need to.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because he knew she’d lived her life off the grid. Look at the official records we’ve found for her.’

  The frown deepened. ‘We haven’t found any.’

  ‘Exactly. Which, if she’s British – and she would be if she was Miriam’s daughter, or at least half British – is extraordinary.’

  ‘You think she was purposely kept off the grid,’ Malia said. ‘Her whole life – nineteen, twenty years – to cover up the crime that led to her being born?’

  ‘I think it’s possible.’

  ‘How would you even do that?’ Varan asked.

  ‘The easiest way,’ Malia said, looking at Robin, ‘would be to go overseas.’

  She nodded. ‘Which would explain why not one person in this entire country has come forward to tell us who she is.’

  Chapter Thirty-two

  Mark Serra was the name of Jonathan Quinton’s urban explorer friend, and he lived in Wake Green with his wife and their two-year-old son. Contrary to Quinton’s information, he wasn’t, strictly speaking, a doctor, Varan discovered with a bit of online research. ‘He’s a surgeon. Registrar in orthopaedic surgery. Bones.’ The photograph on the hospital website showed a white man with short brown hair.

  Robin sent Malia and Varan to talk to him. ‘Be careful. If it is him, we know he’s fit. And strong. First sign of trouble, call for back-up immediately, don’t even think about any heroics.’

  When they’d gone, she phoned Good Hope on the off-chance of catching someone to take a message for Stewpot and Martin. No one answered, there was no service at dinner time, so she left a message for Daniel Reid on the machine.

  She turned to Jude’s list of Miriam’s contacts and started to put them in order of priority. It was near-impossible to concentrate, however: once Malia and Varan had had enough time to get there, she was checking her phone every twenty seconds. Was this it? Had they found him?

  After ten minutes or so, she gave up and went to see if Webster was in next door. He was packing up for the day. ‘It’s my mother-in-law’s birthday and they’re coming over for dinner,’ he said, pulling his jacket from the back of a chair. ‘Sarah’s doing a roast.’

  ‘How are you getting on?’ She looked at his board, from which Gupta’s bulldog-like face gazed mournfully down.

  ‘Making progress,’ he said. ‘No major breakthroughs, but with CCTV we’ve been able to track him on foot for about half a mile. Sooner or later he’ll get in a car or onto a bus and we’ll be off to the races. He’s cold, though, I’ve got to say. After he stabbed Gupta, his T-shirt was covered in blood, obviously, but he’d thought of that. He’d had his jacket open when he accosted him and afterwards he just zipped it up and off he went, strolling along, not a care in the world. At one point, he looks like he’s actually whistling.’

  ‘Jesus.’ Robin shook her head. ‘Did you check in with Martin Engel?’

  ‘Yes, but …’

  ‘Let me guess: cast-iron alibi. At quarter past five in the morning.’

  ‘Well, I don’t know about cast-iron,’ Webster said, ‘but yeah. He’s got a new girlfriend or more accurately, he’s got a girlfriend – first one he’s had since his wife left him, apparently. Good luck to him, I say; bloke deserves a bit of happiness after what he’s been through.’

  ‘And you haven’t found any connection between him and Ben Tyrell and his mob?’

  ‘Engel said he’d never heard of him. Tim went to talk to him after we charged Tyrell and he’s confident he’s telling the truth.’

  ‘Right.’ She felt her phone buzz in her back pocket and pulled it out. Malia.

  It’s not him.

  Robin sagged.

  ‘Bad news?’ Webster asked.

  ‘A dead end. Another one.’

  An hour later, when Malia and Varan got back, they reported that Serra had been in the garden when they got there, attempting to patch a hole in his son’s paddling pool. He’d admitted to his urban exploring straight away and also to having visited the Gisborne works twice on his own.

  ‘He even told us he felt guilty because it was him who recommended Gisborne’s to Quinton when he had to flake,’ Malia said. ‘But he can’t be our guy because he, too, has a rock-solid alibi.’

  ‘He wasn’t spinning Quinton a line about having to work,’ Varan said. ‘He was operating all night – a biker on the M42 came off at fifty-five miles an hour around half eleven and he didn’t finish pinning his leg and hip back together till half six in the morning. After that, he fell asleep in the staffroom where loads of people saw him at the shift change. He gave us five names off the top of his head, reckons there were probably more if we need them.’

  ‘Can you confirm with the hospital anyway? Get someone to check the theatre records.’ It was quarter past seven and she felt hollow-stomached suddenly. ‘Is anyone hungry?’

  She rang the good Thai pla
ce and ordered food for the four of them. ‘I can walk round and get it,’ Tarka offered.

  ‘Thanks,’ she said when she’d recovered from the shock of him voluntarily standing up. She waved off the general movement toward purses and wallets. ‘Already paid for. Saturday night – my shout.’

  ‘Something about Mark Serra that made me think.’ Malia pinched a piece of chicken panang between her chopsticks and paused. ‘His age. He’s only thirty-five, right, which means that if the Gisborne Girl was his daughter, he’d have been fifteen when Miriam disappeared. He’s ruled out anyway and he grew up in Bristol, nowhere near Whitley Bay, but it made me think: surely he’d have been too young?’

  ‘Plenty of fifteen-year-old rapists,’ said Tark through a mouthful of rice.

  ‘Yes, but if we’re going by your theory, guv, does it work if Miriam got pregnant by someone that age? The shame part works whatever age, but the practicalities … Because if you’re right, she had a baby, and could she have done that on her own?’

  ‘Practically, you mean? How did she do it, live – afford to live – and raise the baby?’ Robin thought of her own experience in Lennie’s early years, the hellish struggle to make it all work. She’d been older and she’d had help – Corinna, who’d lived with her for the first eighteen months, then Frances, her landlady and resident babysitter in the upstairs flat. Without them, it wouldn’t have been possible, practically or otherwise. ‘It would have been extremely difficult,’ she said. ‘A nightmare, probably. But benefits, housing …’

  ‘But she never showed up on any of those records,’ said Malia.

  ‘Maybe she went under a false name,’ Varan suggested.

  ‘Possible but that’d be a challenge in itself. And even if she changed her name, someone could have recognized her.’

  ‘You think the theory’s off?’ Robin saw Varan and Tark become very focused on their food all of a sudden. She wasn’t sure why; she made a point of welcoming all ideas, especially if they didn’t fit the current thinking.

  ‘No,’ Malia said slowly. ‘Not necessarily. I think my point is, if she did have the baby in the UK, someone would know. Much more likely she went overseas, as we said earlier. But how many fifteen-year-olds have the wherewithal to do that, leave home in a state of emotional distress and up sticks abroad to start a new life? Without,’ she motioned with her chopstick, ‘using a passport at any border.’

  ‘Even two fifteen-year-olds,’ said Varan. ‘Even a Romeo and Juliet situation, nothing criminal. Say you did manage to stow away in a truck over to Europe, where do you go from there? Literally and metaphorically. And if she wasn’t up for it? Forget it.’

  ‘So if it is what happened – Miriam had a baby who turns out to be the Gisborne Girl,’ Malia said, ‘it’s got to have been overseas, and to me, that says she had help from someone with means, practical and financial.’

  Robin put her fingertips against her lips, a gesture that reminded her of Samir. She moved them away. ‘Older, you’re saying.’

  Malia nodded. ‘Older.’

  ‘Which ties into something I was thinking,’ said Varan, eyes fixed on his green curry.

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘Well … Just, if he killed his own daughter, it’s got to be really bad, hasn’t it, what he’s trying to cover up? Really bad. If he was fifteen, even if he had raped Miriam back then, would he really kill his own child to hide it now, eighteen or twenty years later? I mean, hard enough to get a rape charge to stick at the best of times but twenty years later, with a defendant who was fifteen at the time and the same age as the victim?’

  Tark was nodding. ‘Yeah, he’d have to be older. If he was worried about being done for sex with a minor, spending years in jail as a nonce, that might be enough to kill for.’

  ‘But even then … I mean, to actually kill your own child?’

  ‘Are you saying he killed Miriam, too, Varan?’ Malia asked. ‘That that’s what he was trying to hide?’

  ‘I don’t know. That doesn’t make sense, either. We know he didn’t do it straight away because, if you’re right,’ a glancing look in Robin’s direction, ‘Miriam was definitely alive long enough to have a baby. He let her live long enough to have the baby – a baby who could find out the truth years later and come and find him like something out of, I don’t know, Greek tragedy – and then killed her? I mean, I don’t want to say I think you’re wrong but …’

  ‘You think I’m wrong?’ Robin smiled.

  Varan looked conflicted then smiled – awkwardly – himself. ‘I don’t know. Maybe. Or if it is right – if he is her dad – then there’s got to be something bigger going on.’

  At half past eight, Tark turned off his computer, did another lot of eye drops and gave Robin the bottle back. ‘That’s me for the day,’ he said, blinking. ‘Much more and I’m going to do myself long-term damage – I feel like I’m looking through one of those pin-hole cameras.’ He patted his pockets for his wallet and keys. ‘Anyone fancy a pint?’

  Rarely had Robin seen a group of people move so quickly.

  ‘Guv?’

  She shook her head. ‘Love one, Tark, but better not. Imagine the headlines.’

  In her office, she let the ‘competent professional’ mask drop. She closed her eyes, thought God, man, this case, and immediately heard Samir’s voice. Are you still all right with it? Her answer hadn’t changed – of course she bloody was – but as Malia and Varan had diplomatically raised their issues with her theory, she’d actually wondered. It was out there, she knew, and for a moment, she’d struggled to remember how she’d come up with it all. Had she been thinking clearly or had the tiredness and the drive and the stress about Gupta and her mother and Luke and the Herald put her into some kind of altered mental state?

  Either way, she’d felt her conviction start to ebb away: maybe she was making connections where none existed. Okay, so Miriam and the Gisborne Girl happened to look similar – they weren’t identical, and some people did look like others, they just did. Was it so unlikely that a girl who’d looked similar to their victim had disappeared twenty years ago? And – bonus – her family had been religious, allowing Robin to spin this whole extra yarn about the shame of a pregnancy and the need to run away.

  Go home, said the sensible voice she heard in her ear from time to time these days. Enough for one day, you’re driving yourself nuts.

  She started putting her things in her bag, catching a glimpse of Rose Road through the window as she stood. The sky outside was cerulean, heightened by the contrast with the artificial brightness of her office, the streetlight almost green. Her mind served up the image of Martin Engel standing statue-like by the gate.

  She sat back down and opened Facebook on her computer. Cyber had asked them to take For Queen and Country down but they hadn’t done it yet. She wasn’t on Facebook herself – who’d be interested in what she was doing apart from the people who already knew and people who really shouldn’t? – so it took a few seconds to find what she was looking for, and then she was frustrated: she couldn’t access either the list of the 137 people who now ‘liked’ the page or the 178 who followed it.

  Avoiding the content of the posts themselves as much as possible, she started scrolling through the comments, looking at the names of the posters. Again she had to credit Tyrell with engaging his audience: some posts had upwards of a hundred comments. She kept going, working down page after page. What she was looking for, she couldn’t quite say. Was it still Engel? Maybe. But definitely something, she could feel it pulling at the corner of her field of vision, almost but not quite visible.

  When she found it, she was startled. Startled but not surprised. Parasites, he’d written. Goverment should send em all f*kin’ packing!

  It wasn’t Martin Engel, it was Billy Torrence. ‘Hideous’ Billy.

  At Mary Street, she let herself into the house, threw her jacket on the peg then went straight to the sofa where she sank gratefully into the cushions.

  Some time later, sh
e was woken by the sound of movement in the nook outside the front door. She tensed, instantly on guard. Feet on the tiles, then the lock – a key in the lock.

  A voice said, ‘She must be here, the sitting-room light’s on.’ Lennie.

  Robin felt her shoulders drop. ‘Hello,’ she called.

  Len’s head appeared round the door. ‘Mum? What’s going on? You’ve only got one light on in the whole house.’

  ‘I conked out here the moment I got home.’ She looked at the clock on the TV – more than an hour ago. ‘What are you doing back? I thought you were staying at Asha’s.’

  ‘Hello,’ said Austin, appearing behind Lennie in the doorway, instantly making her look pint-sized. Black Lives Matter was today’s T-shirt.

  ‘I changed my mind,’ Len said. ‘I thought maybe, with everything that’s going on, you might like it if I was here.’ She shrugged. ‘And maybe we could do something together tomorrow instead.’

  ‘Definitely,’ Robin said. ‘On both counts.’

  ‘Austin walked me home again,’ Lennie half-turned, indicating him as if demonstrating on QVC. ‘We’re just going to have some tea. Do you want some?’

  ‘No, not for me. Wouldn’t mind a glass of wine, though.’

  ‘Don’t get up,’ Len said. ‘I’ll bring you one.’

  She stayed in the sitting room to give them a bit of space, trying not to eavesdrop but inevitably – given the size of the house – hearing some of it as well as frequent laughter. The flirtation had kicked up a notch even since earlier in the week. The level of politesse on display had probably last been witnessed at court – there were multiple solicitations about tea-strength and mug choice from Lennie, and a profoundly unnecessary enquiry from Austin as to whether she was sure about the tea, it being late – but the verbal back-and-forth was quite hilarious; twice Robin had to stop herself laughing out loud and giving herself away. The amount of mental energy going into the apparently throw-away one-liners. She grinned, thinking again about her own early days with Samir, then remembered her brother outside the hospital.