The rest of the phone records were still being checked.
Tom was looking serious as she walked in. He was leaning back in his chair, as though trying to put as much distance between him and his client as was possible in the small area of the interview room. He looked at her, must have read what he saw and his expression changed to one of resignation. He knew what was coming all right. So did Barker. A small bead of sweat squeezed out of a pore on his pale forehead as she cautioned and charged him with the girls’ disappearance. As she spoke she met Tom’s eyes and saw, from his expression, that he knew there was every chance that this charge would be changed to one of murder.
Even Barker seemed to understand this. ‘But I didn’t,’ he protested, without the listeners quite understanding how he could still be claiming innocence.
She leaned across the table. ‘It’ll go better with you, Mr Barker, if you give us the absolute truth.’
Disclosure rules meant that she had to tell Barker and his solicitor that, in the sitting room of Mandalay, in his desk, they had found a printout of the text used in the message purporting to be from Dorothée to her mother, in English with a French translation from the online translator tool he’d accessed from his laptop. ‘It must have taken you a while to compose,’ Joanna said.
Barker looked like a cornered rat. Eyes furtively darting around the room, hunting for an escape route, finally coming to rest, beseechingly, on his lawyer. A silent, Get me out of this.
Tom looked back at him steadily and then requested a private word with ‘my client’.
It would soon be time for a briefing and to assemble the team together, time to search for what Joanna was now convinced would be two bodies, but for now it was time to ring Matthew and tell him not to expect her home for tea, and forewarn him that his services may soon be needed. His response, initially, was a grunt, followed by a cheery, ‘OK.’ She looked at the telephone receiver in her hand, a little puzzled at this unusual truce. Normally Matthew grumbled when she was detained.
‘I’ll fill you in when I get home,’ she added. He didn’t even ask when that would be. Another departure from the norm. Perhaps he was learning about her being married to the job. She blew a kiss down the phone and, from his embarrassed chuckle, knew that his assistant would be listening on the speakerphone.
She re-entered the room and proceeded with the questioning. ‘Mr Barker,’ she said. ‘I’ll ask you again. Do you know where the girls are?’
‘No,’ he said flatly, and without any emotion now, as though he had schooled himself not to react. ‘I don’t.’
‘So what explanation do you have for the rucksacks being in your house?’
‘I’ve already told you,’ he said peevishly, as if having to repeat himself. ‘They just left them behind. They were in the way and I wanted to get the room ready for my next lot of visitors. They were due that evening,’ he finished, ‘so I moved them out the way.’
‘And the text to Dorothée’s mother, Mr Barker?’
‘I wanted to divert any suspicion away from me and from Mandalay,’ he said earnestly. ‘I hated you hanging around asking questions. I knew you’d be suspicious if you saw the rucksacks.’
Too bloody right.
‘But I didn’t know what to do with them. You see, they might have come back for them. They’d have been angry if I’d got rid of them.’
This phrase jarred Joanna. She gave a quick glance at Korpanski who, up until then, had been as still as a statue. Even Tom Fairway looked a little startled.
Barker continued. ‘So I tried to make you think they were in London.’ He looked almost pleased with himself. ‘And it worked. You left me alone,’ he said. ‘I did have to use the online translator, of course,’ he finished.
Tom glanced down meaningfully at his watch. His client was due a break and Joanna decided she would use the time to return to Rudyard, see if anything else had turned up and supervise the search of the area. She was still bothered that she couldn’t get a handle on Horace Barker. Some things were a little too plain and obvious – the rucksacks and even the text, while other events were subtle and clever, notably the sneaky spying through the hole in the eye of the Chinese girl, that he called Supi … whatever it was.
And the question remained: was it possible that Horace Gladstone Barker was telling the truth?
She sighed and minutes later turned off the Macclesfield road to reach Rudyard, driving underneath the railway bridge just as a small train ‘oooh ooh’-ed its way across.
The lake was sparkling in the golden October sunshine; after the dry August the trees were just beginning to change colour, though a little late this year. It was so beautiful, like a vividly coloured Constable painting. England in glorious Technicolor. Yellows and reds contrasting with the green. In spite of the circumstances Joanna felt the familiar skip of autumn in her heart. She loved the month – when all the sunshine turned to gold. And the association between one of the world’s great poets and this place had always made it even more special to her. From childhood she had always had an affection for it. It was, as they called it, the Staffordshire seaside, a place where the inhabitants of a landlocked county could play at being beside the seaside beside the sea. It had the lot, boats for hire, little trains, ice-cream stalls, a hot dog stand and a posh, traditional Victorian hotel. The real thing. At least a great illusion.
She turned to share this with Korpanski, who had caught up with her just as the incident van was manoeuvring into place. ‘How’s it going with Barker?’ he asked. ‘I know about the French lesson.’
‘He’s giving nothing away but I’ve bought us some more time by charging him.’
‘If you’ve charged him why are you looking so down in the mouth?’ Trust Mike to pick up on it.
‘You’re right,’ she said, meeting his eyes with a faint smile. ‘I shouldn’t be, should I? I should be happy and focus on the search for the girls’ bodies, but it just doesn’t feel right, Mike. Unless we can link him to their murder he might slip through the net.’
‘We’ll get there, Jo,’ DS Korpanski replied stoutly, which raised a smile from her. Oh, to be Mike, she sometimes thought – stolid and unimaginative, unlike her, who was often full of instincts (frequently misguided) and worries about arresting the wrong person.
He was waiting for her to speak. She began to revert to her original focus, of the beauty of the place, while she waited for the officers to arrive.
The briefing was a sober affair. The two girls looked so young, healthy, beautiful and fresh-faced – vibrant and alive in the photos. They were the very last people who should now be dead. But here they were all searching, searching, searching.
For two bodies which she believed they would soon find.
Besides Fask she had now three full teams – one to search the grounds of Mandalay, one to begin house-to-house enquiries in the village and the third to start on the surrounding area which was extensive and sparsely populated, consisting of isolated farms, a few cottages and a small village with a few hundred inhabitants. That and the hordes of holidaymakers who came and went. If some of the lake’s visitors had seen the two French girls the search would have to be nationwide – even possibly worldwide, to reach them. But as the incident van was finally in place on the car park near the dam Joanna looked across the sparkling water and her attention was caught by the mud which rimmed the lake. The water level was still low after the extended dry season and the lake was not only a reservoir and a place of recreation but also the feeder to the Caldon Canal, popular with holidaymakers in their hired boats. Each time a lock gate opened the water level fell a little more.
There were yards of mud rimming the lake, soft and treacherous. Last year a dog had succumbed, to its owner’s distress. The dog was not seen again after it sank into the mud. Since then, whenever the water level dropped, the council erected signs warning people of the danger. Mud in the dry season, bathing in the summer and thin ice in sub-zero temperatures. Rudyard Lake kept the council bus
y trying to keep the public safe but there were always a few, a little more reckless than the rest, who would risk it. But thankfully there were no more fatalities.
Or were there? Were the girls beneath the mud? Was it possible that Barker’s claim that they intended to leave early on the Sunday morning the truth? That he had committed no worse crime than failing to report a disappearance when he discovered the rucksacks but they didn’t come back? Joanna sat up instinctively, feeling that that they were getting closer to some answers. Barker had failed to report the girls’ disappearance because he was anxious about Miss Wong and her dirty little secrets. So had the girls gone out by themselves and succumbed to a tragic accident? And if so, where were the bodies? Buried in the mud? Or were they at the bottom of the lake itself? If the water level dropped further would the bodies of Annabelle and Dorothée be exposed? A hand, a foot, a head? She fought back a moment of sheer exasperation. Where were they?
It is tempting to believe that water hides everything. But it is not so. The human body has an almost inbuilt instinct to float and show itself. Water yields its secrets. It does not hide them. She stared across the glistening surface, almost willing the lake to give up their ladies. But no. The surface remained glassy and unbroken. There was barely a ripple.
Once she’d filled her teams in on the current state of affairs she returned to the station and Barker, leaving Fask and his team to focus on the house itself. She didn’t need to check up on him. He would do a thorough job without her breathing down his neck.
Alan King started setting up the computer networks. It would be his job to collate statements and information. Tall and skinny, with long, bony fingers that seemed to fly over the keys scarcely touching the keyboard, he worked quickly and efficiently.
Korpanski took Jason Spark, now a police cadet, but still as eager as a puppy, and DC Danny Hesketh-Brown who was, at last, enjoying the full fruits of parenthood, to head his team. They would search the grounds of Mandalay.
It was not as simple a job as might be imagined. Mandalay had extensive and overgrown grounds, thickly bushed with rhododendrons and a densely wooded area, tricky and sharp with brambles and nettles, fallen branches and soft soil. Like many people with a large garden, Barker appeared to have tidied up a small part of it, cultivating a neat lawn and the area surrounding it but leaving the rest to nature. As the team moved through it they realized how difficult their task would be. Near the perimeter they even found a badger set. Long holes in a soft bank. Bugger, Korpanski thought. Now they’d have to call in environmental services, even though badgers, at this very moment, were being merrily shot in some counties in a vain attempt to prevent the spread of bovine TB. But if the police barged in searching for the girls’ bodies some animal rights activists would be up in arms. It was the way of things.
PC Dawn Critchlow was heading the house to house. Rudyard consisted of a string of Victorian cottages which lined the road in and a row of ex-council houses which ended in a turning area. She started at the hotel, quieter in the week but still offering fish and chips and special pensioners’ rates. The barmaid today was not Sarah Gratton but another girl called Madison Grundy who proved unhelpful, though not through choice. She was dying to help. Thrilled at the thought of being near the centre of an investigation, she racked her brains for some encounter with the two girls but came up with nothing. ‘Will the telly be here?’ she asked, eyes wide with excitement, the vertical ponytail on top of her head waving like a spouting whale.
‘Probably,’ Dawn answered gloomily. While the public might be thrilled at the concept of the media, for her and her colleagues they were nothing but a nuisance – until, that is, they wanted to rope in the help of the general public. Then they were useful.
The house to house was pretty fruitless. Many people were out at work and most households did not respond to her knock. Dawn shoved a leaflet through each letterbox and wondered how many people would actually read it. In one house, right at the end, an old woman stared at her through the window but made no move to open the door. Dawn pushed a leaflet through her letterbox too.
Quite a few of the inhabitants of Rudyard village had guard dogs to keep their properties secure and as Dawn moved from house to house she was followed by a cacophony of the animals barking their warnings to keep away, each dog setting its neighbours off. It was like the Canon in D, the noise going round and round without pause. While Dawn was good at getting on with people, she had a real fear of dogs. She still had a bite mark on her plump left leg from an encounter when she’d been a child, so was wary in her visits. Once or twice the door was opened. Faces changed when they noted her uniform, but so far she hadn’t met anyone who remembered the girls except Sarah Gratton, who lived in a pretty cottage converted from an unconsecrated chapel, and she was no help. While recalling the two girls she had not engaged in conversation with them; neither had she ever seen them with anyone else. ‘Like I said, they were always reading their books,’ she said scornfully. ‘I never saw them with any blokes.’
‘OK,’ Dawn said, frowning. She’d seen the photographs of the two girls – seductive and with a definite ‘come hither’ look in their eyes. Dawn was a woman who rarely saw harm in anyone but, sure as hell, she could see that these two were trouble. Would they give the lads the come on only to giggle, open their books and ignore them? Such behaviour could be dangerous, in her opinion. Men didn’t like to be made fools of.
Joanna left the officers to work around the lake area, returning to the station to interview Horace Barker again. She had a private word with Tom.
‘He sent the text, Tom. And he knew the girls were parted from their rucksacks. At the very least he failed to alert us to their disappearance. It’s a bit naive to think they would come back for them weeks later. Worst scenario is we’ll have him on a double murder charge.’
Tom was silent for a moment. Then, ‘What do you want me to do?’
‘I need to know where the girls’ bodies are,’ she said. ‘It’ll save us time and money.’
Tom glanced back at the door to the interview room. ‘It won’t get him off the hook, though.’
‘No. This is purely for us. If we can prove murder he’ll get a mandatory life sentence and that’s that but I want to know how they died sooner rather than later. I want to know what happened to them.’ She appealed to him as a parent. ‘I want their mothers to know their fate.’
Tom looked serious. Then he nodded. ‘I’ll do what I can, Jo. And if he cooperates with you?’
Joanna gave a cynical snort. ‘And if this was your daughter?’
‘I don’t have a daughter.’
‘Yet.’ She continued to stare at him. ‘Maybe one day.’
He moved uneasily. ‘That’s unfair, Joanna.’
‘Life’s unfair, Tom.’
He nodded grimly.
It wasn’t the first time she and Tom had worked together. But fatherhood had changed him. He was different, tougher and yes, more damaged by a case such as this where a child had vanished, apparently into thin air and a mother – or in this case, two mothers – left to grieve and wonder.
And so they went through the whole thing again – and again. And Barker refused to budge an inch. He stuck to his story, that the rucksacks had been left, that he had expected the girls to return and claim them and that he had sent the text message to divert suspicion away from himself and draw the police away from Mandalay and his beloved Supi-yaw-lat. Who was bloody Burmese anyway and not Chinese Miss Wong, Joanna thought in frustration.
Even when she pulled the, admittedly, wild card of plea bargaining, apart from a small glint in his eye he still stuck to the same old story.
So she decided to focus on the spying through Miss Wong’s eye. Which made Barker squirm. Supi, or whatever her name, was his Achilles heel.
She started at him and he dropped his eyes, searching the floor. Refused to answer her questions. It was a typically guilty attitude. Finally, he squinted across the table at her and made a confess
ion.
EIGHTEEN
‘Loo-ook,’ he said, his Staffordshire pronunciation elongating the ‘oo’. ‘I admit it – I like to watch people.’ His face looked mystified at the connection. ‘It doesn’t mean I killed them.’ He looked at his lawyer. ‘I’m not a killer,’ he said simply. ‘I’m not that sort of man.’
Tom put his hand on Barker’s arm, trying to draw him back, but Barker took no notice. He was intent on telling his side of the story now. ‘I like to watch people,’ he said again, his eyes now meeting Joanna’s, his head cocked on one side.
‘You like to watch women,’ Joanna said. By her side, DS Hannah Beardmore shifted slightly in her chair. A few years back her husband, Roger, had had an affair, and since then she turned prudish at any mention of sex, however tenuous the connection. Joanna had no idea how things were between Hannah and Roger these days but wondered whether this signified a happy truce between the couple or something else. She glanced at the constable. Hannah’s face was pink.
Barker was obviously undecided whether to agree that yes, he liked to watch women, or confess to watching men, or at the very worst admit to spying on children, which would bring him the most terrible and dangerous accusation – of being a paedophile.
Joanna regarded him; studied his doughy face and pale complexion. Barker would do badly in jail – if that was where he was headed. There was plenty he wasn’t telling them but she still wasn’t convinced he had murdered two girls with such a weak motive – protection of his voyeuristic tendencies? At worst he would have faced a caution. A fine and some community service. He would be marked down as a sex offender. True, he would probably lose any recommendation for Mandalay from the tourist board and he would almost certainly have a few extra and uninvited visits from the police. But Barker was pretty clean, really. He’d filed tax returns ever since he’d opened. His fire and food certificates were all up to date. There was nothing of any concern on his records. Joanna had watched Alan King’s fingers fly across the keyboard to gain this information.
Guilty Waters Page 14