by Cara Hunter
Somer is on the doorstep at number 7, and has been for the last fifteen minutes. She’s wishing, now, that she’d taken up the offer of tea, but if she had she might have been here all day – Mrs Gibson has scarcely yet drawn breath.
‘A son, you think?’ says Somer, flicking back through her notes. ‘No one else has mentioned him.’
‘Well, that doesn’t surprise me. People round here – don’t like to “get involved”. Not like when I was growing up. In those days you looked after each other – everyone knew who their neighbours were. I haven’t got a clue who half these yuppies are.’
‘But you’re sure there’s definitely a son?’
‘John – that’s it! I knew I’d remember eventually. Haven’t seen him around here in a while, though. Middle-aged chap. Grey hair.’
Somer makes a note. ‘And when do you think you last saw him?’
There’s a noise in the hall behind and Mrs Gibson turns to make a shooing sound before pulling the door a bit closer. ‘Sorry, dear. Bloody cat, always tries to get out the front if I let her. She has a flap round the back, but you know what cats are like – always want to do what they’re not supposed to and Siamese are even worse –’
‘Mr Harper’s son, Mrs Gibson?’
‘Oh yes, well, now you come to mention it, I think it could have been a couple of years.’
‘And does Mr Harper have any other visitors that you know of?’
Mrs Gibson makes a face. ‘Well, there’s that social worker, I suppose. Fat lot of use he is.’
* * *
* * *
Quinn takes a deep breath. Harper looks at him. ‘What is it, boy? Spit it out, for fuck’s sake. Don’t just sit there looking like you’re trying to shit.’
Even the lawyer is looking embarrassed now.
‘Dr Harper, do you know why the police came to your house this morning?’
Harper sits back. ‘Haven’t a fucking clue. Probably that arsehole next door complaining about the bins. Wanker.’
‘Mr Sexton did call us, but it wasn’t about the bins. He was down in his cellar this morning and part of the wall gave way.’
Harper looks from Quinn to Gislingham, and then back again. ‘So bloody what? Wanker.’
Quinn and Gislingham exchange a glance. They’ve both been in enough interrogations to know that this is the moment. Very few guilty people – even the best and most practised liars – can control their bodies so well they give no sign. Whether a flicker in the eyes, a sudden twitch of the hands, there’s almost always something. But not now. Harper’s face is blank – no careful withdrawal, no attempt to brazen it out. Nothing.
‘And I don’t have a fucking TV.’
Quinn stares at him. ‘I’m sorry?’
Harper sits forward. ‘Moron. I don’t have a fucking TV.’
Ross glances at Quinn nervously. ‘I think what Dr Harper is trying to say is that he doesn’t need a TV licence. He thinks that’s why you’ve brought him here.’
Harper turns on Ross. ‘Don’t tell me what I think. Fucking moron. Don’t know your arse from your tits.’
‘Dr Harper,’ says Gislingham. ‘There was a young woman in your cellar. That’s why you’re here. It’s nothing to do with your TV licence.’
Harper lurches forward, poking his finger in Gislingham’s face. ‘I don’t have a fucking TV.’
Quinn sees the look of alarm in Ross’s eyes; this is starting to get out of hand. ‘Dr Harper,’ he says. ‘There was a girl in your cellar. What was she doing there?’
Harper sits back. He looks from one of the officers to the other. For the first time, he looks shifty. Gislingham opens his file and takes out the photo he took of the girl. He turns it to face Harper. ‘This is the girl. What’s her name?’
Harper leers at him. ‘Annie. Fat cow.’
Ross is shaking his head. ‘That’s not Annie, Bill. You know that’s not Annie.’
Harper isn’t looking at the photo.
‘Dr Harper,’ insists Gislingham. ‘We need you to look at the picture.’
‘Priscilla,’ says Harper, spitting saliva down his chin. ‘Always was a looker. Evil cow. Swanning about the house with her tits out.’
Ross looks desperate. ‘It’s not Priscilla either. You know it’s not.’
Harper reaches out a clawed hand, and without dropping his eyes from Gislingham’s face, sweeps the picture off the table, along with Gislingham’s phone, which clatters against the wall and falls in pieces on the floor.
‘What the hell did you do that for?’ shouts Gislingham, half out of his chair.
‘Dr Harper,’ says Quinn, his teeth clenched now, ‘this young woman is currently in the John Radcliffe hospital, where the doctors will be giving her a full medical examination. As soon as she is able to talk, we will find out who she is, and how she came to be locked in the basement of your house. This is your chance to tell us what happened. Do you get that? Do you get how serious this is?’
Harper leans forward and spits in his face. ‘Fuck you. Do you hear me, fuck you!’
There is a terrible pause. Gislingham dare not look at Quinn. Then he hears him get something out of his pocket and looks up to see him wiping his face.
‘I think we should stop now, officer,’ says the lawyer. ‘Don’t you?’
‘Interview terminated at 11.37,’ says Quinn, with icy calmness. ‘Dr Harper will now be taken to the custody suite and held in the cells –’
‘Oh, for heaven’s sake,’ says Ross, ‘surely you can see he’s in no fit state for that?’
‘Mr Harper,’ says Quinn coolly, collecting his papers and stacking them with exaggerated care, ‘may well present a danger to the public, as well as to himself. And in any case his house is now a crime scene. He can’t go back there.’
Quinn gets up and strides towards the door, but Ross is at his heels, following him out into the corridor.
‘I’ll find him somewhere to stay,’ he says, ‘a care home – somewhere we could keep an eye on him –’
Quinn turns so suddenly that the two of them are barely inches apart. ‘Keep an eye on him?’ he hisses. ‘Is that what you’ve been doing all these months – keeping an eye on him?’
Ross backs off, his face white. ‘Look –’
But Quinn isn’t letting up. ‘How long do you think she’s been down there, eh? Her and that kid? Two years, three? And all that time, you’ve been going to that house, keeping an eye on him, week in, week out. You’re the only sodding person who was going in there. Are you seriously telling me you didn’t know?’ He drills his finger into Ross’s chest. ‘If you ask me, it’s not just Harper we should be arresting. You have some very serious questions to answer, Mr Ross. This is way beyond professional negligence –’
Ross has his hands up, fending Quinn off. ‘Do you have any idea how many clients I have? How much paperwork I have to do? What with that and the traffic I’m lucky if I get fifteen minutes a visit. It’s as much as I can do to check he’s been eating and isn’t sitting in his own shit. If you think I get time to pop round doing a house inspection too then you’re in cloud bloody cuckoo land.’
‘You never heard anything – never saw anything?’
‘Quinn,’ says Gislingham, who’s now standing in the doorway.
‘I’ve never been in that sodding basement,’ insists Ross. ‘I never even knew he had one –’
Quinn’s red in the face now. ‘You’re seriously asking me to believe that?’
‘Quinn,’ says Gislingham, urgent. And when Quinn ignores him he reaches for his shoulder and forces him round. There’s someone coming along the corridor towards them.
It’s Fawley.
* * *
* * *
At Frampton Road, Alan Challow walks down the path to the front door and stops for a moment to let the uniformed officer li
ft the tape barring the entrance. It’s the hottest day of the year so far and he’s sweating in his protective suit. The crowd at the end of the drive is more than twice the size it was and its character has changed. Most of the May Morning stragglers have gone and the builders have called it a day, too. One or two neighbours still linger, but the majority of the onlookers now are either looking for a morbid thrill or a good story. Or both: at least half of them are hacks.
In the kitchen at the back, two of Challow’s forensics team are dusting the room for prints. One of them nods to Challow and pulls down her mask to speak to him. There’s a line of sweat across her upper lip. ‘This is one of those times when you’re actually grateful to be wearing one of these. Christ knows when anyone last cleaned properly in here.’
‘Where’s the cellar?’
She points. ‘Behind you. We’ve rigged up some better lighting. Which only serves to make it worse.’ She shrugs grimly. ‘But you know that.’
Challow makes a face; he’s been doing this job twenty-five years. He ducks slightly to avoid the lamp now strung over the top of the cellar stairs and makes his way down, throwing giant juddering shadows across the bare brick walls. At the bottom, two more forensics officers are waiting for him, staring round at the accumulated junk.
‘OK,’ says Challow, ‘I know it’s a pain in the arse but we need to get all this lot back to base. Where was the girl?’
‘Through there.’
Challow moves to the inner room. An arc light is throwing a merciless brilliance over the filthy floor, the dirty bedding, the macerator toilet standing in a pool of evil-smelling waste. More boxes of junk. There’s a cardboard pallet that once held bottles of water, but there’s only one left, and though a plastic sack is bursting with packaging and empty tins, there’s no sign of any food. And in the far corner, a child’s bed, curled like a mouse nest.
‘Right,’ says Challow eventually, into the silence, ‘we need to take all this stuff away too.’
One of the officers walks over to the crack in the dividing wall. Some bricks are broken and the mortar’s been dug out.
‘Alan,’ she says after a moment, turning back to Challow, ‘look.’
Challow joins her, then bends closer. The damp plaster is streaked with red smears.
‘Jesus,’ he says eventually. ‘She was trying to claw her way out.’
* * *
* * *
I haven’t seen Derek Ross since the Daisy Mason case. He’d sat in with her brother when we questioned him, so one way or another I saw a lot of Ross back then. It was less than a year ago but to look at him you’d think it was five. He’s lost more hair, gained more weight, and there’s a tic under his right eye. But I suspect Quinn may have something to do with that.
‘DS Quinn,’ I say, turning to him. ‘Why don’t you go and get us all a coffee. And I don’t mean from the machine.’
Quinn looks at me, opens his mouth and closes it again.
‘Sir, I –’ he begins, but Gislingham touches him on the elbow.
‘Come on, I’ll give you a hand.’
It’s as good a thumbnail of these two as you’re likely to get: Gis, who has always been exceptionally good at knowing when to stop digging; and Quinn, who carries his own set of shovels.
I take Ross into the office next door. The screen is on mute now but still shows the interview room. The lawyer is on her feet, getting ready to leave, and Harper is huddled sideways on the chair with his knees clutched against his chest. He looks very small, and very old, and very scared.
I put a cup of water down in front of Ross. Then I take a seat opposite and push it a little further back. He has large dank patches under his arms and the atmosphere can best be described as ‘tangy’. Take it from me, you don’t want to get that close.
‘How have you been?’
He glances up at me. ‘So-so,’ he says, wary.
I sit back. ‘So tell me about Harper.’
He stiffens, just a little. ‘Am I some sort of suspect?’
‘You’re an important witness. You must know that.’
He sighs. ‘Yes, I suppose so. What do you want to know?’
‘You told my officers you only went in once a week. How long has that been going on?’
‘Two years. Perhaps a bit more. I’d need to check the file.’
‘And you don’t stay long?’
He takes a gulp of the water; some of it spills over on to his trousers but he doesn’t seem to notice. ‘I can’t – I don’t get the bloody time. Seriously, there’s nothing I’d like more than to sit there for an hour and crap on about the weather, but with the budget cuts we’ve had –’
‘I wasn’t accusing you.’
‘That DS of yours did.’
‘I’m sorry about that. But you have to remember – he saw the state that girl was in. Not to mention the child. And if he was finding it hard to see how you could have been going there all that time and not known she was there, well, I can’t say I blame him. To be honest, I’m struggling with that myself.’
Because despite what I just said, I’m a hair’s breadth from questioning him as a suspect. And until I’m absolutely sure he isn’t, Harper’s going to need someone else to sit in with him. It’s going to be difficult enough getting a conviction on this one; the last thing I need is a botched investigation.
Ross rakes a hand through his hair. What he has left of it. ‘Look, those houses have thick walls. I’m not surprised I didn’t hear anything.’
‘You never went down there?’
He looks me straight in the eye. ‘Like I said, I didn’t even know he had a cellar. I thought that door was just a cupboard.’
‘What about upstairs?’
He shakes his head. ‘Bill’s been pretty much living on the ground floor ever since I’ve known him.’
‘But he can actually get up and down the stairs?’
‘If he has to – but he doesn’t much. Annie sorted out a bed in the front room before she left, and there’s a bath out the back in the lean-to. It’s pretty basic but it does. I dread to think what state the upstairs is in now. It must be years since anyone went up there. Probably not since Priscilla died.’
‘No cleaner – doesn’t the Council send someone?’
‘We tried that, but Bill just shouted abuse at her. She refused to come back. I wipe a cloth around a bit and shove bleach down the bog. But there’s a limit to what anyone can do in the time I’ve got.’
‘What about food – shopping? Do you do that too?’
‘When they took his driving licence away I got a local elderly charity to organize him a regular supermarket delivery. That was about eighteen months ago. There’s a standing order back to his bank account. He has plenty of money. Well, not “plenty” perhaps, but enough.’
‘Why doesn’t he move out? That house must be worth a fortune. Even in that state.’
Ross makes a face. ‘The tosser next door paid over three million. But Bill refuses to go into a home. Even though his arthritis has got worse the last month or so, and the doctor’s going to put him on medication for the Alzheimer’s and he’ll need to be monitored to make sure he’s taking it properly. There’s no way I can do that. If he stays in that house on his own it’s only a matter of time before there’s some sort of an accident. Like I said, he’s already burned himself once.’
‘Did he know you wanted him to move?’
Derek takes a deep breath. ‘Yes, he did. I sat down with him about six weeks ago and tried to explain it all. I’m afraid he didn’t take it at all well. He got violent – started yelling at me, throwing things. So I backed off. I was planning to talk to him again this week. A place has just become available at Newstead House, in Witney. It’s one of the better ones. But God only knows what’s going to happen now.’
There’s a pause. He finishes his wate
r. I pour him more.
‘Has it occurred to you,’ I say, carefully, ‘that one reason why he didn’t want to move is because of the girl?’
Ross’s face goes white and he puts the water down.
‘He couldn’t leave that house with her still there, because she’d be found. And he couldn’t let her go, for exactly the same reason.’
‘So what was he going to do?’
I shrug. ‘I don’t know. I was hoping you might –’
There’s a commotion suddenly, in the corridor outside, and Gislingham bangs the door open.
‘Boss,’ he says, ‘I think –’
But I’m already pushing past him.
In the room next door, two constables are trying to restrain Harper. It’s scarcely believable it’s the same man – he’s clawing at their faces, kicking out, yelling at a female officer.
‘Cunt!’
The woman is visibly shaken. And I know her – she’s no rookie. There’s a scratch on her cheek and the front of her uniform is soaked.
‘I just gave him a cup of tea,’ she stammers. ‘He said it was too hot – that I was trying to burn him – I wasn’t – really, I wasn’t –’
‘I know. Look, go and sit down for a bit. And get someone to look at that cut.’
Her hand goes to her face. ‘I didn’t even realize –’
‘I think it’s just a scratch. But get it looked at anyway.’
She nods, and as I follow her out of the room, Harper lurches at her again. ‘Cunt! It’s her you should be arresting, you moron – tried to fucking scald me. Evil cow!’
* * *
*
Ross is staring at the screen when I go back next door, and I stand there for a moment, watching him watching.
‘So which is the real Bill Harper?’ I ask at last. ‘The one who was cowering like a frightened child or the one who just attacked one of my officers?’
Ross shakes his head. ‘It’s the disease. That’s what it does.’
‘Perhaps. Or perhaps all the disease is doing is breaking down the self-control he used to have. Perhaps he always was angry but he didn’t let it get out of hand. He knew how to manage it. Hide it, even.’