by Alison James
Something you need to see. Check your email.
There was a file attached to the email: Transcript of Special Measures recorded statement, Ben Wethers 12/12/16. She opened it and began to read.
DC 5019 Tansley: Okay, Ben, my name’s Jess, and I’m from the police. Now before we begin talking, I have to tell you that we’re recording our chat on that camera there, and to check that it’s okay with you that we record you? Is that okay?… For the transcript, Ben is nodding. And Ben, with us here is Sandra, Sandra Newland. You know Sandra, don’t you? She’s here to support you and to help you. Is that okay?
Ben Wethers: Yes.
DC 5019 Tansley: Good, great. All right, Ben, we need to talk to you about the day that your mummy died. I know it’s hard to talk about, so we’ll take it very slowly, and if you need to stop at any time, you can just say so to me, or to Sandra. Okay?
Ben Wethers: Okay.
DC 5019 Tansley: Right. So can you tell me what you remember about that morning? Take your time.
Ben Wethers: I woke up, and I wondered if it was time for school. But Mummy didn’t come into my room.
DC 5019 Tansley: And would she normally come in and wake you up?
Ben Wethers: Yes. Every day. If it was school. Sometimes on Saturday and Sunday I went and woke her up. I jumped on her bed.
DC 5019 Tansley: Okay, Ben, you’re doing really well. Things you can remember are really helpful, little things or big things. So this day was a school day?
Ben Wethers: Yes. I called to her. I called, ‘Mummy!’ But she didn’t come.
DC 5019 Tansley: And what happened next?
Ben Wethers: Got out of bed, went into her room. (Inaudible)
DC 5019 Tansley: It’s okay, Ben, I know this is very difficult, and it makes you upset. We’ll take this as slowly as you like. What did you see when you went into your mummy’s room?
Ben Wethers: I thought Mummy was asleep. But she didn’t move. I shook her like this.
DC 5019 Tansley: For the transcript, Ben is pushing on Sandra’s shoulder. And what happened when you did that?
Ben Wethers: She didn’t wake up. She looked poorly. Her face was all funny.
DC 5019 Tansley: I know this is difficult, Ben, but can you tell me how it was funny?
Ben Wethers: A funny colour.
DC 5019 Tansley: I see. And you thought she might be poorly?
Ben Wethers: Yes. I was scared.
DC 5019 Tansley: I’m sure you were very brave, though. Can you tell me what happened next?
Ben Wethers: I sat down on the landing and I waited. Waiting for her to get better.
DC 5019 Tansley: You waited all by yourself?
Ben Wethers: For someone to come.
DC 5019 Tansley: That was very brave, Ben. And what happened next?
Ben Wethers: Granny came, and she cried. She cried and cried. And then the policemen all came. And then I went to Granny’s house, and she said Mummy wasn’t coming back because she’d gone up to heaven. ’Cause she’d gone dead.
DC 5019 Tansley: I expect that made you very sad, Ben.
Ben Wethers: I was scared.
DC 5019 Tansley: And why were you scared, Ben? Was there something that happened before Mummy died that made you scared? For the transcript, Ben is nodding.
Ben Wethers: I thought Mummy had gone to heaven because it was my fault.
DC 5019 Tansley: What was your fault, Ben?
Ben Wethers: Because I told the secret to her.
DC 5019 Tansley: What was the secret, Ben? Can you tell me?
Ben Wethers: It was what I saw at school, and then I told Mummy and then she went dead.
DC 5019 Tansley: Can you tell me what you saw at school?
Ben Wethers: Can I have a drink?
DC 5019 Tansley: Of course you can.
Ben Wethers: And a biscuit?
DC 5019 Tansley: No problem, Ben. Sandra will get them for you. Can you remember what you saw at school?
Ben Wethers: It was in the changing room at PE.
DC 5019 Tansley: And just so I’m sure, Ben, this was at your school? At Overdale?
Ben Wethers: Yes, in Form Three, in Mrs Maudsley’s class. After PE time. We had PE outside and it was raining. And Mrs Maudsley said we had to hurry up and change out of our wet things so we didn’t get chills.
DC 5019 Tansley: I see. So you were in the changing room. Is it a boys’ changing room?
Ben Wethers: Yes, it’s different to the girls’ one. The girls are all together too.
DC 5019 Tansley: So what happened when you were changing?
Ben Wethers: Harry Brown took his shorts off and he didn’t have any willy.
DC 5019 Tansley: Sorry, can we just go back a bit, Ben. Is Harry a boy in your class?
Ben Wethers: Yes. In Mrs Maudsley’s class. He wasn’t there at the beginning of Mr Faire’s class; he came at the end,
DC 5019 Tansley: So Harry got undressed and he didn’t have a penis? A boy’s private part? Like this? For the transcript, I am showing Ben the male anatomical doll and he is shaking his head.
Ben Wethers: He had a girl’s front bottom. When I looked at it, he started to cry.
DC 5019 Tansley: Like this? For the transcript, I am showing Ben the female anatomical doll and he is nodding his head.
DC 5019 Tansley: Did you say anything else to Harry?
Ben Wethers: In the playground I did. I said why haven’t you got a willy like a boy. And Harry said it’s a secret and you can’t tell anyone or something bad will happen. But I told it to Mummy.
DC 5019 Tansley: You told her about Harry?
Ben Wethers: I said Harry Brown’s pretending to be a boy but he’s really a girl. Why is he dressing up as a boy?
DC 5019 Tansley: What did your mummy say?
Ben Wethers: She said, ‘Oh my God.’
DC 5019 Tansley: You’re doing really well at remembering, Ben. Really good job.
Ben Wethers: I told her it was a secret and bad things would happen if we told. She said it was okay, because we were going to keep the secret. But it wasn’t okay. Is that why Mummy’s in heaven?
Rachel was hunched forward in her chair, staring at her screen. They only had a traumatised child’s word, but if this was true, then a seven-year-old girl was being passed off as a seven-year-old boy. A boy called Harry. Lola Jade’s middle name was Harriet.
Why doesn’t someone ask Michelle Harper about her boy? Carly hadn’t been referring to baby Oliver; she was talking about Harry Brown.
She shut down her terminal, grabbed her coat and bag and headed for the lifts, texting as she went.
I’m heading to Overdale School now. Meet me there.
Thirty
‘Damn, the kids are all going home!’
Rachel and Leila Rajavi stood in the playground of Overdale Infants and Juniors and watched as children came out of the old Victorian schoolhouse; a trickle at first that swelled to a flood.
‘I’m sorry,’ said Rajavi. ‘But I had the devil of a job rounding up a couple of available bodies who also happen to be trained in child protection.’ She indicated the uniformed officers: one male, one female. ‘Took me an hour to find these two.’
Rachel took in the curious stares of the parents as they led their offspring past. ‘It means going in mob-handed,’ she sighed, ‘but in the circumstances I suppose we have no choice.’ She had been sitting in her car for forty minutes, with a host of possible scenarios going round and round in her brain. She had even phoned Brickall in an attempt to anchor her whirling thoughts.
He had been sceptical. ‘Come on: you know kids and toilet talk. They’re obsessed with private parts at that age, and the differences between them. This kid without a winky is probably a bit under-endowed. I remember that being the cause of endless hilarity in the changing rooms when I was at school.’ He added hastily. ‘Never happened to me, of course.’
‘I know I only read the transcript – and possibly it would have seemed different if I’d watched
the video—’
‘Maybe you should have done. Belt and braces, the old pet mantra. Or one of them.’
‘This child, Ben, seemed so certain what he’d seen: I didn’t want to waste any more time.’
‘Take a breath, Prince. Let it play out: it could be something and nothing.’
The school was in the throes of festive end-of-term celebrations. Glitter-encrusted Christmas pictures decorated the walls, along with those for Hanukah and Diwali, and rustling swags of home-made paper chains dangled from every spare inch. Rajavi asked the uniformed officers to wait outside the head teacher’s office and went in with Rachel.
Chris Sewell was one of the new wave of progressive primary heads, a fact that was signalled by his wearing jeans and sweater rather than a suit. ‘I was expecting another visit, to be honest,’ he said, indicating that they should sit on the chairs opposite him. ‘This business with Ben Wethers’ mum being found dead. Dreadful thing.’ He adopted a suitably sombre expression, which looked out of place on what was a naturally cheerful freckled face.
‘We’re here to talk to you about a pupil called Harry Brown.’
He looked blank for a second. ‘Brown… oh yes, Harry. One of Mrs Maudsley’s lot. I was struggling to picture him for a minute: he hasn’t been with us long. Let me just get his details.’ He stepped into an adjoining office and came back with a file. ‘Registered towards the end of the summer term, which is unorthodox, but the mother was quite insistent. Quiet child. Not a troublemaker, but doesn’t have much to say for himself.’
‘Did you meet the mother?’ asked Leila Rajavi.
‘Briefly. The school secretary takes care of most of the registration business.’
Rachel pulled up a photo of Michelle Harper on her phone. ‘Is this her?’
He squinted at it. ‘Oh gosh, no! I mean, I know we’re not supposed to pass comment on the parents’…’ he groped for a PC phrase, ‘personal style, but I would have remembered someone as glamorous as that lady.’ He peered a bit closer. ‘Also, isn’t she the mother of that missing girl?’
Rachel found Lisa Urquhart’s Facebook profile shot. ‘How about her?’
‘Definitely no. I’d have remembered something as distinctive as pink hair! No, this lady was quite the opposite. Very… indistinctive.’
‘Hair colour?’ demanded Rachel.
‘I don’t like to—’
‘Mr Sewell, this is vitally important. Please just tell us everything you can remember.’
He puffed out his freckled cheeks, making himself look about fourteen years old. ‘Like I said, there was nothing distinctive about her. In fact, she was distinguished by a lack of distinguishing features. And clothing.’
‘Dull, in other words?’
He flushed slightly. ‘Well. Yes.’
Rachel went into her Facebook app and pulled up another photo, this time of the drab Stacey Fisher.
‘Yes, that’s her. That’s Mrs Brown.’
Rachel and DS Rajavi looked at each other. ‘Do you have a photo of Harry?’
‘You know the rules have tightened up about us taking and using photos of pupils without parental consent…’ Sewell stood up and rummaged in a filing cabinet. ‘But we do have some class photos taken at the end of the last academic year, in July.’
He placed the photo, taken by a professional, on the desk. The teacher was sitting at the centre of the front row, with twenty-five or thirty children arranged around him. ‘That’s Harry there. In the back row.’
Two large boys either side were jostling for space, so not much of Harry was visible. His face wore a familiar glum expression. And the style of the brown hair, shaved at the sides and long and floppy on the top, looked familiar.
‘That’s him. It’s the penguin,’ breathed Rachel.
‘I’m sorry?’
Rachel and Rajavi were both on their feet. ‘Will he have been picked up?’
It was twenty to four.
‘Normally his class would have gone home by now, but Form Three have all been to the pantomime at the local theatre. Parents had the option to pick them up there or for them to be bussed back here. The coach should be arriving round about now. I can—’
Before he had finished speaking, Rajavi had opened the door and started running down the corridor, clutching her bump, followed by the two uniforms, Rachel and Mr Sewell. They reached the car park just as a minibus with the Overdale logo was pulling in. A dozen or so over-tired children were herded off by a harassed middle-aged teacher clutching a clipboard.
Harry Brown was not among them.
* * *
‘It’s been about, ooh, a week? He was fine on the Friday, but come Monday morning there was a note saying Harry was poorly and wouldn’t be coming to school for the remainder of term. A chest infection apparently.’ Mrs Maudsley seemed personally offended that Harry had not been at the pantomime with the rest of the class.
Rachel calculated. Harry mysteriously became ill the weekend after Carly Wethers died. The same weekend she and Leila – the ‘LOLA JADE COPS’ – had been on the front page, investigating Carly’s death. ‘Is this a common occurrence?’
‘No, I’d say Harry’s attendance has been good up until now. He’s a timid child; you don’t get very much out of him. Likes to stay in the background.’
DS Rajavi dispatched the WPC to Jubilee Terrace, with instructions to wait for backup, then to bring in Michelle if she was there. She and Rachel and the male officer set off for Stacey Fisher’s house. Before they had arrived, Rajavi’s airwave set bleeped.
‘Sarge – Michelle Harper’s not at the property, or at her workplace. The sister’s there with her children, claims she doesn’t know where Michelle is.’
Rajavi pressed the button to respond. ‘Sort someone to look after the children, then bring Lisa Urquhart to the station. And get someone to check at Willow Way.’
Stacey Fisher did not seem surprised to see them, but then she did not seem pleased either. She had deep bags under her eyes and, despite it being tea time, was swigging from a bottle of Jack Daniel’s. ‘Like I told you, I just sold Michelle the washer-dryer. I don’t know nothing else,’ she whined. ‘I’ve never heard of no Harry Brown.’
‘Maybe a little trip to the police station will refresh your memory,’ Rachel told her briskly.
‘I ain’t going nowhere.’
Rachel pulled the PC’s handcuffs from his belt and dangled them in Stacey’s face. ‘With or without? Your choice.’
‘You can take me where you like, but I’m not going to tell you anything.
Quick as a whip, Rachel pulled Stacey’s arms behind her back and cuffed her, knocking the bottle of bourbon to the floor, where it splashed over their feet. Enough was enough: no more softly-softly.
‘Stacey Fisher, I am arresting you on suspicion of making a false statement, contrary to Section 89 of the Criminal Justice Act. You do not have to say anything, but it may harm your defence if you do not mention when questioned something you later rely on in court. Anything you do say may be given in evidence.’
At Eastwell police station, the charge was formally read to Stacey. That officially began the twenty-four hours they had to prise the truth out of her, or they would be required to let her go.
‘I’ll stick her in a cell and leave her there without contact for a couple of hours,’ Rajavi told Rachel. ‘That usually makes them more inclined to talk.’
They were interrupted by a scuffle at the front door as Lisa Urquhart was dragged in, screaming, swearing and generally resisting.
‘You can’t bring me in here, I haven’t fucking done anything! What about my human rights? I’m going to fucking sue you lot!’
‘Much as I’d like to leave her to cool off, we can’t afford to waste any time.’ Rachel pointed the officer manhandling Lisa in the direction of an interview room. The tint in her pink hair had been boosted from pale candyfloss to bright fuchsia, and it flew out like a Catherine wheel as she twisted her head and tried to bite h
is wrist.
‘What is it they teach us about establishing a rapport with suspects?’ Rajavi muttered. ‘Lovely job for whoever’s duty solicitor too.’
She watched as three uniformed PCs wrestled Lisa into a chair and cuffed her. This did not stop her from jumping to her feet and kicking the chair over. Her ankle was then cuffed to the chair leg, with difficulty.
‘So, Lisa.’ Rachel sat down calmly once the solicitor had arrived and taken his seat. ‘This is a lot of fuss when all we want is to ask you where your sister is.’
‘And I’ve said: I don’t fucking know.’
‘She’s living in your house and working locally. You must have some idea.’
Lisa tried to shrug, which didn’t really work when three of her four limbs were restrained, so she adopted a sneering tone instead. ‘She’s gone away for a bit. She is allowed to leave town, you know.’
‘Where has she gone?’
‘I’ve no idea.’
‘Come on,’ said Rajavi calmly. ‘She must have said something about where she was headed.’
‘She was thinking of going to the seaside.’
‘The British seaside? In mid December?’ Rachel was incredulous.
‘Why not? It’s not against the law, you know.’
‘Has she gone on her own?’
‘Of course she has. Who else is she going to go with?’
Rachel adopted her crossed-arm pose. ‘Do you know who Harry Brown is?’
There was a microsecond of hesitation before Lisa answered. With her years of interview experience, Rachel sensed it. ‘No idea. Don’t know no one called Harry Brown.’
‘All right then,’ Rajavi said levelly. ‘Who’s the other child who goes to school with your two kids and the Wade children?’
‘Which other kid?’ Lisa’s eyes shifted slightly, to the door and back again.
‘There are always five of them walking to school together. You’ve got Chelsea and Connor, and Kirsty Wade’s got two—’
‘She’s got three kids actually.’
‘Two at school. So who’s the extra boy?’
Lisa shrugged. ‘Dunno.’
‘He goes to school with your children, how can you not know?’