by Cara Hunter
She’s done her homework. I’m beginning to think we should get this woman into CID.
‘Boiler suit?’ says Gislingham. ‘One of those plastic sheets garages put on the seat?’
I turn to Quinn. ‘Call Challow and tell him we need to search the Frampton Road house for a possible body. And for anything Harper might have worn to cover his tracks.’
* * *
*
As people are filing out I catch Baxter’s eye.
‘I want you to look for any unsolved disappearances of young women and small children in the last ten years.’
He shoots me a glance and I see his brain working, but he doesn’t say anything. He knows when to keep his mouth shut; it’s one reason why I like him.
‘Focus on Oxford and Birmingham to start with, then widen the search fifty miles at a time. And then go back another ten years.’
He nods. ‘On the kids, is it boys and girls you want, or just boys?’
I’m halfway out of the room but the question pulls me up short. I turn, still thinking.
‘Just boys. For now.’
* * *
* * *
When I take a seat opposite Bryan Gow half an hour later I can tell at once he’s read this morning’s news. We’re in the café in the Covered Market. Crowds are pushing past outside, stopping to look in the coffee merchant’s opposite and at the rack of vintage postcards outside the shop next door. Dig for Victory, Guinness is Good For You, Keep Calm and Carry On. God, I hate that bloody thing.
‘I was wondering when you’d call,’ says Gow, folding his paper. ‘You’re lucky to catch me – I’ve got a conference in Aberdeen tomorrow.’
I wonder in passing what the collective noun for profilers would be. A ‘composite’, perhaps.
He pushes his plate away. He never could resist a full English, especially if I’m paying.
‘It’s this man Harper you want to talk about, I take it?’
The waitress plonks two cups in front of us, slopping coffee into the saucers.
‘It’s a difficult one,’ Gow continues, picking up his spoon and reaching for the sugar. ‘The Alzheimer’s – it’s going to make getting a conviction very tricky. But I assume you know that.’
‘That’s not why I’m here. When we found the girl, it seemed fairly straightforward –’
Gow raises an eyebrow, then goes back to stirring his coffee.
‘What I meant was that the motivation seemed fairly straightforward. And we initially assumed the child was born down there – like that case in Austria – Josef Fritzl.’
‘In fact, the woman Fritzl imprisoned was his own daughter, so that case would actually be very different. Psychologically speaking, of course. Though I don’t expect such nuances from mere policemen. But from what you say, you’ve decided it’s not so straightforward after all.’
‘It was something Hannah’s husband said. He asked me if Harper had a thing for abducting young women with their children. Whether that’s why he targeted Hannah. Only for some reason he changed his mind and decided to dump Toby. Possibly to put us off the scent. But if that’s true, it would put a completely different timeline on the cellar case – we’ve been assuming the child is Harper’s, but what if the girl was kidnapped with the boy?’
‘I imagine you’re doing a DNA test?’
I nod. ‘It’s a bit more complicated than it’d normally be, but yes.’
Gow puts down his spoon. ‘So in the meantime what you want to know is how common it would be for a sexual predator to do that – to abduct young women with small children.’
Over Gow’s shoulder I can see a family looking in the window of the specialty cake shop. Two little blond boys have their noses pressed against the glass, and their mother is clearly trying to get them to decide which one they want. The chocolate dragon or the red Spider-Man or the Thomas the Tank Engine. We got Jake’s ninth birthday cake from that shop. It had a unicorn with a golden horn. He loved unicorns.
‘I’ve never come across one.’
I turn back to Gow, my head still full of unicorns.
‘Sorry?’
‘A sexual predator who targets both women and children. It’s almost unheard of. I can do some digging about in the published case material, but I don’t think I can recall a single instance. When women have been abducted along with a child it’s because the child was in the wrong place at the wrong time: it was the woman who was the target. You know as well as I do that paedophiles are often married or in long-term relationships, but they don’t abduct women. They abduct children. In fact,’ he says, picking up his coffee, ‘there’s only one possibility I can think of that would make any sense.’
‘And that is?’
‘That you’re not looking at the same man. Two different predators, in other words. One of them a paedophile, the other a sexual sadist. But working together. Sharing the risk, dividing the spoils.’
As if they were so much carrion. It’s enough to make your blood run cold. But so many of the question marks would disappear if William Harper had an accomplice. It would explain why no one saw an old man alone with a buggy that day. In fact, it might even mean Harper was never there at all. The person who dumped the buggy could have been someone else entirely. Someone completely under the radar. Nameless. Faceless. Unknown.
Gow puts the cup down. ‘Is there any evidence there was someone else in the house? Someone who could have visited, even if they didn’t live there?’
Derek Ross, I think, before pushing the thought away.
‘Not so far. Most of the neighbours claim they never saw anyone.’
Gow makes a face. ‘In that part of Oxford? I bet they bloody didn’t. I wouldn’t take that as any kind of proof.’
‘There was one old lady who insisted there was someone. But we’ve dismissed it because she said it was Harper’s son and we know he doesn’t have one.’
Gow picks up his cup again. ‘I’d check that out again if I were you. The old buzzard might not be as gaga as you think.’
* * *
* * *
Challow gathers the forensics team together in the kitchen. ‘Looks like the to-do list just got rather longer so I hope no one has a hot date planned for later. CID, in their infinite wisdom, now suspect there could be a link between this house and the disappearance of Hannah Gardiner in 2015. So until we’ve completely eliminated that possibility we have to work on the basis that we could be standing in the middle of a murder scene. Or a burial site. Or, indeed, both.’
Nina takes a deep breath. She remembers the Hannah Gardiner case. She did the search on the car. The packet of mints in the glovebox, the juice stains on the child seat, the screwed-up petrol receipts. All the detritus of life that becomes so unbearable when someone has gone.
Challow is still talking. ‘If we’re looking for a grave, the cellar’s a non-starter. You couldn’t take up the concrete down there without some pretty hefty tools and there’s no sign of that sort of disturbance. So where next – the garden?’
‘Actually, I don’t think so,’ says Nina. ‘It’s too exposed – too dangerous. You couldn’t get away with digging a hole that big without risking one of the neighbours seeing.’
She walks over and pushes through the bead curtain to the conservatory. The glass inside is greened and the only thing alive is the creeper growing through the breaks in the windowpanes. The shelves of pots hold nothing but decay. Fossilized geraniums. Yellowed tomato plants. There’s a smell of damp and old earth. The rush matting on the floor is black with mildew and coming apart.
She goes up to the window and wipes a space in the murky glass, then stands there for a moment, looking down the garden.
‘What about that?’ she says, pointing. ‘That summerhouse or shed or whatever it is.’
The two men join her. The grass outside is knee-high, and thick with
nettles and dock leaves. There’s a pile of dirty white plastic garden furniture, most of it upside down, and heaps of dead scrub where someone’s had a go at cutting back the undergrowth and left it where it fell. Right at the bottom, by the fence, there’s a large brick shed, with a tiled roof almost submerged in ivy. Several of the windows are broken.
‘See what I mean?’ she says.
They see it even more clearly when they get there. The slope of the garden is steeper than it looks and the shed is resting on a raised base.
‘I think,’ she says, reaching through the broken glass to unlatch the door, ‘that we may well find there’s a cavity under these boards.’
Inside, there are shelves crowded with old pots of paint and weedkiller, and a pile of rusting garden tools. An ancient wasps’ nest is rotting under the eaves and, hanging from a nail, an old boiler suit splashed with stains.
Challow stamps his foot, hearing the hollow echo underneath. ‘I think you’re right.’
He lifts a corner of the matting. Dirt and grit cascade down, woodlice run in all directions.
‘Once in a while,’ he says, looking up at them, ‘we just get lucky.’
It’s a trapdoor.
* * *
* * *
‘You can see her now. Though I’m not sure how much use it’s going to be.’
The nurse holds open the door of the family room and waits for Everett to join her, then the two of them walk together down the corridor. An old man with a walking frame, two doctors with clipboards, posters about hand hygiene and healthy eating and how to spot the signs of a stroke. The room is at the far end and the girl is sitting up in the bed in a hospital gown. And for once, the cliché is true: her face is scarcely darker than the sheet she’s pulled up tight against her chest. She looks bleached, somehow. Not just her skin but her eyes, even her hair. Like there’s a fine film of dust over her. There are cold sores around her mouth.
When she sees Everett she starts backwards, her eyes widening.
‘I’ll just be outside,’ says the nurse gently, pulling the door to behind her.
Everett waits a moment, then gestures to the chair. ‘Do you mind if I sit down?’
The girl says nothing. Her eyes follow Everett as she pulls the chair further away from the bed and sits down. There’s six foot of floor between them.
‘Can you tell me your name?’ she asks gently.
The girl is still staring at her.
‘We know you’ve been through something terrible. We just want to find out what happened. Who did this to you.’
The girl grips the sheet a little tighter. Her fingernails are broken and dirty.
‘I know it’s hard – I do. And the last thing I want to do is make it worse. But we really do need your help.’
The girl closes her eyes.
‘Do you remember how it happened? How you ended up in that place?’
There are tears now. Seeping out from under her eyelids and slowly down her face.
They sit in silence for a few moments, hearing the murmur of the hospital around them. Footsteps, the clank of trolleys, voices. The ping of the lift.
‘I’ve seen your little boy,’ says Everett at last. ‘They say he’s doing well.’
The girl opens her eyes.
‘He’s a lovely child. What’s his name?’
The girl starts shaking her head, clearly terrified, and a moment later she’s screaming and shrinking back in the bed and nurses are rushing in and Everett is out in the corridor on the wrong side of a closed door.
* * *
*
It takes twenty minutes and an injection to calm the girl down. Everett is sitting on a chair in the corridor when the doctor emerges from the room. He pulls up another chair and sits down next to her.
‘What happened back there?’ she says. ‘What did I do?’
He takes a deep breath. ‘The psychiatrist thinks she may be suffering from PTSD. To be honest, it would be more surprising if she wasn’t. It’s not uncommon for people in a situation like hers to repress the memory of what happened to them. It’s the brain going into survival mode. Shutting down something that’s just too painful to deal with. So when you asked her about the child you were forcing her to confront what she’s been through, and she simply couldn’t cope. I’m afraid it could be some time before she’ll be able to talk about it.’
‘How long do you think she’ll need?’
‘There’s no way of knowing. Perhaps hours. Perhaps weeks. Possibly never.’
Everett leans forward and puts her head in her hands. ‘Shit, I really fucked up, didn’t I?’
He looks at her kindly. ‘There was nothing wrong with your intentions. Don’t be too hard on yourself.’
She feels his hand on her shoulder. The warmth of his flesh through her shirt. And then he’s gone.
* * *
* * *
The cavity under the trapdoor is no more than two feet deep, and beneath it the ground is just earth and rubble. Challow lies down on the floor and shines a torch through the opening.
‘Yup, there’s definitely something down there. Nina – do you want to give it a try? I’m a bit too dimensionally challenged for this one.’
He levers himself back up and watches as Nina climbs down into the space, then gets down on her hands and knees. He passes her the torch and she disappears out of view.
‘Mind the rats,’ calls Challow cheerfully.
Down in the cavity Nina makes a face: now he tells me. She trains the torch beam around, left to right and back again. There are scuttling noises and the gleam of small eyes in the dark. Then she gasps as the torch beam collides with something only inches from her face. Something sharp and black and very long dead. Thin feet scratching at the empty air. Cavernous eyes like a Halloween ghost. Then she breathes again as she gets her perspective. It’s just a bird. Probably a crow.
But further over, perhaps six feet away, the torch is picking up something else.
No skull this time, no dried-out bones. Nothing more horrific than a rolled-up blanket. The horror is in her own imagination. In what she knows that blanket hides.
She swallows, her throat dry, and not just with the dust. ‘There’s something here,’ she calls up. ‘It’s sealed with packing tape. But it’s the right size.’
She crawls backwards, scraping her head against the floor above, and clambers back out.
‘I think we need to get these boards up,’ she says, wiping her hands against her suit.
‘OK,’ says Challow, getting to his feet. ‘And make sure we tag them as we go. We’ll need to know exactly what was where, and we need to fingerprint this whole area too.’
‘And hadn’t you better call the pathologist?’
‘He’s on his way.’
* * *
* * *
In his office in Canary Wharf, Mark Sexton is on the phone to his lawyer. Thirteen floors below, the Thames moves sluggishly towards the sea, and three miles due west, the Shard glints in the sun. The TV screen in the corner is on mute, but he can still see the rolling headlines running across the bottom. And the pictures of the Frampton Road house. And not just that house but the one next door, his house.
‘I can’t believe they don’t fucking know. I mean, how long does a sodding forensic search take?’
The lawyer demurs. ‘It’s not really my area. Though I know a Criminal QC I could ask. That’s criminal with a large “c”, of course.’ He laughs.
Sexton’s clearly not in the mood for semantics. ‘Just get on to those Thames Valley tossers again, will you? The builders have already said if they can’t get back in by the end of the week they’ll either have to charge me for sitting on their arses or start another job. And we all know what’ll happen in that case – I won’t see them again for six fucking weeks while they piss about with so
meone’s sodding kitchen extension.’
‘I’m not sure it’ll be much use –’
‘Just do it. What the fuck else do I pay you for?’
Sexton slams down the phone and stares again at the TV screen. They’re clearly doing a reprise of the Hannah Gardiner disappearance; some lank-haired psychic is on reminding the world at large how she predicted the number three would hold the key to the case, and a montage of two-year-old headlines is fading in and out: Was missing girl abducted by Satanic cult? Midsummer mystery deepens as police deny evidence of pagan rite. Toddler found near site of human sacrifice.
Sexton puts his head in his hands; that’s all I fucking need.
* * *
* * *
‘We thought we’d wait for you before we opened it,’ says the pathologist. ‘And it isn’t even your birthday.’
His name is Colin Boddie. And yes, I know, that’s not funny. Only it is; of course it is. He’s heard the gags so many times he’s developed his own brand of pathological humour to go with it. It can sound crass, if you don’t know him, but it’s just a form of carapace. A way to keep the horror at bay. And what they’ve got here – despite the daylight and all the busy professional apparatus – is still the stuff of nightmares.
People in the houses either side were leaning out of their windows as we walked down the garden. Odds-on, some bastard has put a picture on bloody Twitter by now.
Inside the shed there’s a gaping hole in the floor. And around it, us. Forensics, Gislingham and Quinn. And now me. Boddie bends down carefully and cuts away the rotten blanket and the tape. First one side, and then the other. We all know what we are going to see, but it’s a clench to the gut all the same. It’s lying head down, so we can’t see the face. Thanks be to God for small mercies. But there are still the shreds of livid purple and green skin shrunk against the ribcage. The clawing hands. The lower legs reduced to gnawed and whitened bone.