by Sarah Ward
‘You think?’
He clenched his hands on the steering wheel. ‘I’m sure of it.’
77
Kat sat on the bed with her head on Lena’s shoulder. The fear that she’d felt a moment earlier had been replaced by the familiar longing to regain the sister she’d once known. Sitting here with Lena, she could have been thirteen again. Except she could feel her sister removing herself once more. There were so many questions, and she didn’t want to fracture the brittle truce they’d reached. She still needed to get at the heart of the deception. ‘Andrew was in the photos too?’
Lena nodded. ‘He was in the ones on Philip’s phone. As well as the girls. There were pictures of the pair of them with the victims. Just before the attacks, I suppose. Larking around and posing for the camera, you could call it, if you didn’t see the one where Andrew was holding down the girl. Philip must have taken the photo and maybe the girl didn’t make it easy to photograph her. In any case, Andrew was holding her down and she looked terrified. It was obvious they were working together. Prowling as a pair. The thought makes me sick even now.’
‘And you confronted him, Andrew, I mean, with what you found?’
‘He was in London. It was a Sunday evening, and he’d gone back down to the flat ready for work the next day. It was why I was so confident that Philip could use my bed.’
‘So you called him and told him to come home.’
Lena wiped a hand across her face. ‘You’d never believe that conversation. I never want to think about it again. But he came back and saw his dead friend in our bed. So I told him why I’d killed him.’
‘What did he say?’
‘He didn’t even try to deny it. He just stood there with a strange look on his face. Told me it was Philip who was the instigator. He just went along with things out of a misplaced loyalty to a teenage friend. So we did a deal. He would leave Bampton, and I would admit to the murder that I’d committed but I’d pretend it was him.’
‘But why pretend that Philip was Andrew?’
‘I half believed him. That Philip was the instigator, I mean. Philip did have a dominant personality. Everything was about him. So, in order for Andrew to disappear, to get away from Bampton, I needed to pretend that it was him I’d killed. If I’d confessed to Philip’s murder it might have come out. About the girls, I mean. It seemed the best way.’
‘You came up with this plan? By yourself?’
Lena hesitated. ‘Yes.’
‘You were prepared to let him off scot-free?’
‘Kat, I wasn’t thinking properly. I thought about ringing the police and telling them what I’d done, but then it would have all come out. I tell you, the police were horrible to me. I bet nothing has changed either.’
‘I wouldn’t be so sure of that, Lena. There have been huge leaps in how victims of sexual assaults are dealt with by police. There are even dedicated units you can go to who will support you even if you don’t want to press charges.’
‘That’s now. But in 2004? I don’t think things had changed that much. Some of those officers who had treated me like dirt in the eighties were probably still serving in the force.’
‘I don’t know. Maybe you could have . . .’
‘I wasn’t going through that again and I wasn’t going to drag any of their victims into it either. All those other women he’d assaulted. Including you, I thought, at the time. The way you acted. I just thought . . .’
Kat shook her head. ‘I don’t really remember the night you were talking about. I’d probably been dumped, again, and wasn’t very happy about it. Given that we weren’t close any more, I wouldn’t have confided in you.’
‘Bampton was a nightmare for teenage girls at that time. I suspected then and I know now. It didn’t take much for me to think you’d been a victim too.’
‘So you decided to protect us? How could you be so idiotic?’
‘Andrew was convincing when he told me that Philip was the architect of those assaults,’ said Lena. ‘So I began to formulate a plan. To get him away from Bampton without the real story coming out.’
‘You paid a terrible price for someone else’s actions. Remember how long you spent in prison?’
‘Kat! I deserved it. I killed someone. In cold blood as well.’
‘I don’t think a jury would have considered it to be in cold blood if the evidence of the photos had come out.’
Lena’s face took on the familiar closed look. ‘That was never going to happen.’
‘And now Andrew’s dead too. Did you kill him?’
Lena turned to her. ‘You’ve got to believe me. What I’ve just told you is everything. I didn’t kill Andrew. We agreed that we’d never see each other again. But he came back and now he’s actually dead. So what happens next?’
78
While Palmer was driving, Connie took the opportunity to call the station and retrieve the details of Andrew Fisher’s first wife. Throughout this investigation they’d treated Lena’s dead husband as a victim – in 2004 and more recently. Now he was shaping up to be a sexual predator in the Philip Staley mould, and they needed to go back into the past.
Gail Fisher lived in a terraced house to the west of Bampton. They had been workers’ cottages built for the employees of the cotton mill that still stood on the bank of the river. The mill had been turned into apartments, similar to Connie’s, but the cottages hadn’t yet been gentrified.
There was a haphazard air to the terrace. The window frames of each house were painted a different colour, and the front doors heralded the change in fashion over the past hundred years. Connie banged on the door, and, after a moment, a woman answered. ‘Mrs Fisher?’
Both she and Palmer showed their ID, and, with a resigned raise of her eyebrows, Gail Fisher let them into her house and took them into the front room. She didn’t offer them coffee.
Connie had been expecting someone similar in appearance to Lena, but this woman was short, barely over five feet tall, and heavily made-up. Her cheeks were rouged with pink, a colour that clashed with the peach of her lipstick. Underneath the gunk she was probably attractive.
‘I wondered if you’d be coming to see me. Again.’
‘I don’t suppose this is easy for you,’ Connie told her.
‘That’s putting it mildly, but then it hasn’t been easy from the day I first met Andrew Fisher.’
‘You were married to him for three years?’
‘Two. Oh, I suppose it was three if you include all the stuff around getting divorced.’
‘It wasn’t amicable?’ Palmer had settled back into the sofa and was taking notes, content to let Connie ask the questions.
‘No, it wasn’t.’
‘You petitioned him for adultery, I believe.’
‘Yes, he was sleeping with that slut, Lena Gray.’
Palmer’s pen stopped briefly mid-sentence, then he carried on writing.
‘Who he eventually married.’
‘Eventually? About three months after the Decree Absolute came through.’
‘Were you aware that he was having an affair?’
Gail Fisher stared at her hands. ‘I suspected there was someone.’
‘He came home late at nights?’
Gail’s face was dour. ‘He’d come home early enough and then he was off out again. He never said where he was going.’
‘What did you think when you heard that Lena had killed him in 2004?’
A slow smile spread across Gail’s face. ‘I thought he’d got his just deserts.’
‘Because he’d left you for her?’
‘Because he was a pig.’
Palmer had stopped writing again.
‘A pig?’
‘Andrew Fisher was a pig. I should never have married him. And I never liked his mother either. The pair of them had this I’m-better-than-you attitude. Have you seen where she lives? It’s only around five minutes from where I grew up, but you’d never have thought it, the way they both looked down on me.�
��
We really should have interviewed this woman earlier, thought Connie. ‘How did you meet?’
‘I was working in the dentist’s as a receptionist. Both Andrew and his mother were patients. He used to chat me up when he came in. Which wasn’t often. Anyway. One time he had some work done on his teeth. Cosmetic, to straighten them. So over the space of a month or so he was in the surgery quite a lot. Then he asked me out.’
‘Did you meet any of his friends?’
‘I suppose so. They were a rugby crowd. Not my sort.’
Connie bit on the top of her pen. Gail Fisher was, in her own way, as much of a snob as her husband. ‘What about a man called Philip Staley?’
Gail coloured. ‘There was someone called Philip at our wedding.’
‘Do you have a photograph?’ asked Palmer.
‘They’re up in the attic. I keep meaning to throw them out but there are some pictures of my mum who’s not alive any more, so I can’t bring myself to get rid of them.’
Connie looked at Palmer, who rolled his eyes.
Five minutes later, he emerged from the attic with a pale-pink photograph album covered in rosebuds. Gail took it from him and flicked through the pages until she found the photo she was looking for. She pulled it out of its holdings and handed it over to him. ‘You can keep that one.’ She bustled out of the room, photo album in hand.
Connie looked at the image. It was a picture of Andrew Fisher and Philip Staley arm in arm, laughing into the camera. They were both good-looking men. Their hairstyles and suits dated the photo. Andrew Fisher was slightly taller but broader than his friend. He looked confident, trustworthy. Philip Staley, despite the smiles, carried with him an air of anxiety. He looked to one side of the camera. The hand that clutched his friend looked proprietorial.
Palmer looked at the photo. ‘Victims or perpetrators?’
She put the picture in her handbag. ‘Both.’
79
‘What do you mean, what happens next?’
Her sister’s voice was muffled. ‘Someone worked out that Andrew was alive all this time. They must also have known that I had a part in hiding him. Whoever it was has got their revenge. They might want to extend it to me.’
Kat thought back to her patients over the years. Plenty were victims of trauma, people who had been preyed upon, abused and neglected. She couldn’t think of a single one who had forged forward with revenge. That wasn’t the way things worked. Victims usually blamed themselves. It took anger and a certain amount of self-belief to embark on a path of revenge.
‘What about Steph?’ She tensed for her sister’s withdrawal.
‘Steph?’ Lena lifted her head. ‘The whole time I was inside, in prison, I never even thought about Steph. She was part of that time. From before.’
‘But you got back in touch afterwards?’
Lena exhaled a long deep breath. ‘You remember how it was when I first came out. I hardly left the house but I did bump into Steph one day. In the park opposite the house. She was walking with her daughter Mary. She looked like him.’
‘Like who?’
‘Like Philip.’
‘Steph had a child with Philip Staley?’
‘Yes and she looked just like him.’ Lena’s face was a vision of misery. ‘Not in build. She’s thin like her mother. But her face. It was like looking at the man responsible for everything.’
‘So you started to see Steph again?’
‘She asked if I was still living in the house and, afterwards, we’d meet occasionally. Maybe once every couple of months.’
‘Why did she kill herself? Why now?’
‘You’re asking if it was anything to do with me? In a way, it was. When I left Providence Villa, I went to stay with Mary. She’s got a flat not far from here. I know. Don’t look at me like that. I had nowhere else to go. Steph knew, of course.’
‘I don’t understand.’
‘When it came out in the press that it was Andrew who’d been found dead, she came round to find out who I’d killed before.’
‘She guessed it was Philip?’
‘Yes. It was a shot in the dark. She thought he’d moved to Australia in 2004 and that was the end of that.’
‘But was she one of his victims? I thought he was her boyfriend.’
‘Not boyfriend. Not casual pick-up. Something in between. She was treated badly. Perhaps not the same as the other women. But still.’
‘And when she heard of Andrew’s body being found, she wondered if it was Philip you’d killed.’
Lena picked at the duvet cover. ‘Not a bad guess, was it? In fact, spot on.’
‘But why kill herself now?’
‘She killed herself, Kat, because sometimes you just reach the end.’
80
The woman was thin, dressed in grey straight-legged trousers and a black jacket. Her cropped hair was immaculately styled, but she’d made no attempt to hide the passage of time. In a few years it would be completely white. She was wearing make-up. Pale mauve eyeliner and pink lipstick. It softened her masculine hairstyle and clothes.
‘This is Superintendent Sioned Rhys. From West Glamorgan Police.’
She held out her hand to Sadler. ‘Good to meet you. I’ve heard a lot about you from the Superintendent here.’ She had a soft Welsh accent. Barely noticeable but present under the clipped professional tones. Sadler said nothing because he already had a fair idea what was going on and the thought made him so mad he didn’t trust himself to speak.
Llewellyn was looking at him through narrowed eyes. Warning him. Rhys picked up on the tension in the room. ‘I don’t often play the female card, Sadler. I’ve got where I am, in my considerable opinion of myself, through hard work and talent. I can cop it against the most able of men, and I’ve got to Superintendent by rolling my sleeves up and mucking in.’
Llewellyn leant back in his chair with a faint smile on his face.
‘However, I am going to say this, and if I’m ever asked about it outside this room, I’ll deny I ever said it. But if you think you’re pissed off about what we’ve discovered happened to the reporting of rapes throughout the late eighties and nineties, then, believe me, it’s nothing to how I feel. I’ve read those files. All of them and in depth. There are even some taped interviews. I actually threw up after one of them. Would you like me to go into details?’
Sadler shook his head.
‘Okay. So we start from the base line that I’m as pissed off as you are. No, in fact I’m more pissed off than you because, one day, over a drink, I’m going to tell you about some things that have been said to me over the years by policemen like those in the files. But that doesn’t help you and your case and that’s what you want right at this moment, isn’t it?’
Sadler nodded. ‘I have two police detectives out there who also deserve some answers. They’ve been scrabbling around in the dark when actually you have some information that might have helped.’
Rhys shook her head. ‘I take the criticism head-on but I had to do my job too. It’s only recently that it’s come to light that my investigation and yours are connected. I admire your loyalty to your team.’ She looked to Llewellyn. ‘They might as well hear this too.’
Llewellyn shrugged. ‘I have no objection. Bring them in.’
Sadler prayed that they were somewhere in the station. Because, if what he suspected was coming, then he’d rather they heard it from the horse’s mouth, so to speak. Especially Connie. It would be unpalatable. And he didn’t much fancy defending the indefensible.
A quick call to the incident room revealed they weren’t there, and Sadler was just about to call Palmer’s mobile when Margaret rang to say they were on their way in to the station. They arrived at Llewellyn’s office a few minutes later, Connie looking flushed, Palmer curious.
The first thing Connie did was give the policewoman the once-over.
Rhys ignored the scrutiny, and, once they’d sat down, plunged straight in. ‘Have you heard of the Sapphi
re Unit?’
Connie looked across to Sadler. ‘Of course. It’s the sex-crimes unit in London. Reported cases of rape in the Greater London area are referred to that department rather than to CID.’
‘Well then, I’m sure you’re also aware that there have been complaints made against this unit in relation to the way accusations have been handled.’
Palmer and Connie both nodded. Rhys continued. ‘I was one of the senior investigating officers looking at the handling of a number of cases in 2012 by a serving DC who was subsequently dismissed. I’m telling you this because I want you to know my background. I know a lot about these issues, and I’m aware of the sensitivities.’
‘I was involved, about five years ago, in the sex-crimes unit in Derbyshire. It was pretty exemplary.’ Connie’s voice was subdued.
‘It still is. I visited the team last week. I have no quibbles with the current set-up.’ A short silence. ‘This is about policing over two decades,’ said Rhys. A faint flush appeared on her cheeks. ‘What I’m here to talk to you about is what happened in Derbyshire between the years 1985 and 2004.’
‘Any reason those dates have been chosen?’ asked Sadler.
She turned to him. ‘There was a policy review in 2004 that led to the setting up of a number of dedicated units to deal with reports of rape and sexual assault. It was later than some forces, and it was in response to the Home Office circular designed to ensure that those reporting rapes would be treated with tact and sympathy. Although it was not perfect, in my opinion women were served much better after the creation of those units.’
‘But before then?’ Connie asked her.
‘I’m here as part of the Independent Police Complaints Commission team looking into practices at that time. It’s historic, as I just explained, but I can safely say that Derbyshire Constabulary was significantly behind the times in terms of how it handled these cases.’
‘And here in Bampton?’
Rhys looked to Llewellyn. ‘There was a complete failure to act in a number of instances. Cases of rape and sexual assault were, for a variety of reasons, classified as “no crimes”.’