by Cara Hunter
‘And how often was that, would you say?’
‘While Nancy was still alive I used to go two or three times a year. After Bill married Priscilla, probably once a year at most.’
‘So why did you stop going altogether after Priscilla died? Surely that should have made things easier between you and Dr Harper?’
Walsh sits back in his chair. ‘I don’t know, it just happened that way. There’s not some ulterior agenda here, Constable.’
But Gislingham isn’t giving up. ‘So let me get this straight – you stopped going to see him at the very point when he needed someone to look out for him? He’s on his own, he’s getting on, he’s starting to show signs of dementia –’
‘I knew nothing about that,’ says Walsh quickly.
‘Well, you wouldn’t, would you. Since you’d stopped bothering to go and see him.’
Walsh looks away.
‘It wasn’t just that though, was it?’ says Quinn. ‘You two had argued. A major falling-out, from what we hear.’
‘That’s absurd.’
‘Someone saw you.’
Walsh gives him a withering look. ‘If you’re talking about that old dear from down the road, she’s hardly my idea of a reliable witness.’
There’s a silence. Walsh is drumming his fingers on his thighs.
Then there’s a knock on the door and it opens to reveal Erica Somer, with a sheaf of papers in her hand. She tries to catch Quinn’s attention but he studiously avoids looking at her.
‘Sergeant? Could I have a word?’
‘We’re in the middle of an interview, PC Somer.’
‘I know that, Sergeant.’
Gislingham can see it’s important, even if Quinn is refusing to. He gets up and goes to the door. Watching on the screen, Everett sees Quinn get increasingly irritated until Gislingham finally returns to the room. And this time, Somer follows him in. Quinn doesn’t look up. And when she takes the chair in the far corner facing him, he still won’t meet her gaze.
Gislingham puts the papers down on the table, then swivels one of the sheets round to face Walsh. It’s a photograph.
‘Do you know what this picture is of, Mr Walsh?’
Walsh looks at the paper and shifts slightly. ‘No, not offhand.’
‘I think you know very well. You have one like this yourself.’
Walsh sits back and folds his arms. ‘So? What’s that got to do with anything? It’s just a cupboard.’
Gislingham raises an eyebrow. ‘Hardly. It’s a very special type of cupboard, designed to hold a very special type of ornament. A type of ornament Dr Harper just happens to own. We know that, because they’re right here –’ he points at a second sheet ‘– on his contents insurance. Only strangely enough, I don’t remember seeing any of them in that house. What I do remember, however, is seeing a cupboard just like this one in your front room.’
Gislingham is suddenly aware how hard Quinn is staring at him. And if there’s one thing Quinn hates, it’s being wrong-footed.
‘So, Mr Walsh,’ says Gislingham quickly, ‘why don’t you save us all a lot of time and tell us exactly what this thing is for?’
Walsh’s mouth has set in a thin, irritated little line. ‘My grandfather was a diplomat, and spent a number of years in Japan after the war. During that time he amassed a considerable collection of netsuke.’
Quinn puts down his pen and looks up. ‘Sorry?’
Walsh raises an eyebrow. ‘You haven’t got a clue what I’m talking about, have you?’ he says sardonically.
But sarcasm is rarely the best way to deal with Quinn. ‘Well, in that case,’ he replies, ‘why don’t you just go right ahead and enlighten me?’
‘Netsuke are miniature carvings.’ The voice is Somer’s. ‘They were part of traditional Japanese dress. A bit like toggles.’
Walsh smiles at Quinn. ‘Your colleague seems to be rather better informed than you are.’
Quinn looks at him venomously. ‘So this collection of your grandfather’s – how much was it worth?’
‘Oh, probably only a few hundred pounds,’ says Walsh airily. ‘It was more the principle of the thing – its sentimental value. My grandfather left them to Nancy, and when she died I thought they should revert to the family.’
‘But Dr Harper didn’t agree?’
A flicker of anger crosses Walsh’s face. ‘No. He didn’t. I talked to him about it but he said Priscilla was very fond of them. He made it very clear she wasn’t going to give them up.’
I bet she wasn’t, thinks Quinn.
‘I see,’ he says, ‘but after she died you thought, well, worth another shot?’
‘As you so eloquently put it, yes. I went to see him again.’
‘And he blew you off. Again. That’s what the two of you were arguing about.’
Gislingham smiles drily; as he always says, when it comes to crime, it’s love or it’s money. Or sometimes both.
Walsh is really hacked off now. ‘He had no right – those items were part of my family’s history – our legacy –’
‘So where are they now?’
Walsh stops abruptly. ‘What do you mean?’
‘As DC Gislingham just pointed out, there aren’t any of those netsky things in the house. You, on the other hand, appear to have a cupboard specially designed to display them.’
Walsh flushes. ‘I bought that when I thought Bill was going to be reasonable.’
‘So you’re saying that if we search your house we won’t find any of the items listed on this insurance form?’
‘Absolutely not,’ he snaps. ‘If they’re not at Frampton Road I have no idea where they are. And that being the case I would like to report them missing. Officially.’
Quinn turns a page in his file. ‘Duly noted. So, perhaps we could now turn to the issue of the fingerprints.’
‘What?’ Walsh looks at him blankly, distracted.
‘The fingerprints I mentioned. So far we’ve found them in several different parts of the house. Some are in the kitchen –’
‘That’s no surprise, I must have spent most of my time in there –’
‘And some are in the cellar.’
Walsh stares at him. Swallows. ‘What do you mean, the cellar?’
‘The cellar where the young woman and child were found. Perhaps you could explain how they got there?’
‘I have no idea. I don’t think I’ve ever been down there. And I want it noted that I absolutely and categorically do not know anything about that young woman. Or her child.’ He looks from one to the other. ‘Furthermore, I’m not prepared to answer any more questions until I see my lawyer.’
‘You do, of course, have the right to do that,’ says Quinn. ‘Just as we have the right to arrest you. Which, for the avoidance of doubt, I am now doing. Interview terminated at 6.12 p.m.’
He gets up to leave, so quickly that he is out of the door before Gislingham is even on his feet. And when Somer comes out into the corridor he takes her by the arm and pulls her to one side. Her smile chills when she sees the look on his face.
‘Don’t you ever fucking do that to me again,’ he hisses. ‘Do you understand?’
She pulls back from him. ‘Do what, exactly?’
‘Make me look like a bloody idiot in front of a suspect – in front of fucking Gislingham, for fuck’s sake.’
‘I’m sorry – I was trying to help –’
He brings his face closer to hers. ‘If that’s what you call helping, then forget it. In fact, forget it, full stop.’
‘Where’s all this come from?’
But he’s already gone.
* * *
* * *
The team meeting is at 6.30. And this time, I’m taking it. The room is packed and hot. But silent. Word has got around.
‘OK,’ I sa
y, into the expectation. ‘You probably know that Challow’s team found something in one of the boxes in the cellar at Frampton Road. It’s a journal, written by Vicky during her captivity.’
I step forward and turn on the projector.
‘Some parts are missing or damaged but there’s still no doubt what happened to her. This is a transcript of the key pages. But I warn you, it’s painful reading.’
I’m silent as they read it. There are gasps, shakes of the head. Some of the women are really struggling, and I know the exact moment Gislingham gets to ‘Billy’. I won’t let myself look at him but I sense him stiffen, hear the intake of breath.
‘We’ll wait for the DNA,’ I say at last, ‘as formal proof, but I plan to charge William Harper with rape and false imprisonment by close of play today. We have enough now to make a case against him.’
There’s a silence.
‘Sir,’ says Somer tentatively, ‘I know I’m not CID and all that, but is it possible there’s another way to read this? I haven’t met Harper but I did meet Walsh, and I think he’s the one she’s talking about here. The man she talks about opening the door, that sounds more like Walsh to me.’
‘Actually, she’s got a point there,’ says Gislingham quickly. ‘The tie, the poncey way of talking. That’s Walsh bang to rights. Harper’s the one who goes out in the street in his vest.’
‘This was at least three years ago. Harper was a very different man then.’ But even as I’m saying it I’m starting to wonder.
‘Yes, sir, but look,’ says Somer, getting up and going to point at the transcript. ‘He calls her a “vicious bitch”. That’s exactly what Walsh called Priscilla. This afternoon, when we interviewed him.’
Harper called his wife an evil cow, but it’s Walsh who says vicious bitch. Words matter. Nuance matters. I walk towards the screen. Somer is standing in the light from the projector, Vicky’s words trailing eerily across her face.
‘This reference here,’ she says, still half apologetic, ‘to the doctor and Vicky being “in the right place”. Yes, that could be Harper talking about himself, but it could also be Walsh, talking about Harper. About him being a PhD doctor but not a real doctor.’
‘Either way, that’s a pretty sick joke,’ says Gislingham grimly. ‘To a girl about to give birth without medical help.’ He’s bound to feel it: a man whose son only survived because of state-of-the-art equipment and a whole team of neonatal specialists.
I stand there, reading. Re-reading. I can hear them all behind me. The murmurs, the trying to work out which way it’s going.
I turn back to face them. ‘What do we have on Walsh?’
‘Plenty, actually,’ says Quinn as the energy in the room shifts up a notch. ‘We’ve got his fingerprints on some of the boxes in the cellar, as well as in the kitchen and on some of the items in the shed –’
‘So how does Walsh explain that?’
Quinn shakes his head. ‘Nothing doing. Insisted he’s never been in the cellar and demanded to speak to his lawyer before he answered any more questions. We’re still waiting for her to arrive. But when she does, we’ll also be asking Walsh about a collection of netsuke Harper inherited from his first wife. You know, this sort of thing.’ He holds up a page of images. An ivory hare, two entwined frogs, a coiled snake, a crow curled round a skull. Beautiful and tiny and perfect.
‘Walsh wanted them back,’ continues Quinn, ‘but Harper refused. Only there’s no sign of them in the house. There’s a cupboard in the bedroom where Walsh says they were but it’s empty.’
‘So this collection – was it valuable?’
Quinn nods. ‘Could be. Walsh told us they were only worth a few hundred but I happen to know rare examples can fetch a hundred grand or more. Each.’ I see Somer glance across at him and the effort he makes to avoid her eye.
‘Actually, sir,’ says Somer, addressing herself rather pointedly to me, not Quinn, ‘I saw a display cabinet on the wall in Walsh’s house when we called there. It had quite a distinctive design – the sort of thing people buy for collections of netsuke.’
One thing I do know: her pronunciation is much better than Quinn’s.
‘My personal theory?’ Quinn continues as if the interruption never happened. ‘I reckon Walsh realized Harper was starting to lose it and took the opportunity to swipe the collection. Either all in one go, or gradually, so it wasn’t so obvious in case someone like Ross was snooping around. That could mean he’s been going to that house much more often than he’s letting on. So he could have been there that day – the day Vicky was abducted.’
‘But wouldn’t someone have seen him if he’d been going there a lot?’ says Baxter. ‘There was only one neighbour who said she saw him and that was a good while ago.’
‘I don’t think we should take that as conclusive. Not in that part of Oxford. And in any case, he could have come at night. I doubt anyone would have noticed him in the dark.’
‘Right,’ I say, addressing the whole room. ‘Gislingham – organize a search of Walsh’s house. And let’s remember, he only lives in Banbury. If he really is some sort of sexual psychopath, Frampton Road would have been the ultimate safe house – far enough away but not too far, only an old lady next door, a cellar with thick walls and no windows –’
‘Christ, even better than the Loony Lock-up,’ quips Gislingham to laughter that comes as a release of the tension. It’s a joke we have – ever since Prime Suspect every TV serial killer seems to have his own private torture chamber. As Alex once drily observed, clearly all that’s required to round up any currently operational serial killers is a systematic sweep of the nation’s railway arches.
‘And another thing,’ I continue. ‘When I interviewed Harper he said he doesn’t go down to the cellar any more – that he’d started to hear noises coming from it. “Wailing and scratching” were the actual words. He appeared to be genuinely frightened. And that could make sense, if Walsh had locked Vicky down there without Harper knowing. The old man’s getting confused, he drinks – it’s not inconceivable Walsh could have got the girl into the house without him knowing. After all, he probably has a key.’
‘Yeah,’ says Gislingham, ‘but isn’t Harper going to say something like that, even if it’s not true? He’s bound to claim he never knew anything about it.’
‘In theory, yes, but this came out towards the end of the interview, when Harper was starting to get more confused. I don’t think he was faking that. It could also explain something else that’s been bugging me about Harper. Kidnapping that girl, keeping her locked up – a crime like that doesn’t come out of a blue sky. There’s always something that leads up to it – some sort of escalation over time, even if that’s only obvious in retrospect. But with Harper, there’s nothing – or nothing we’ve found.’
‘There’s the porn in the house,’ says Baxter.
‘Yeah,’ says Quinn. ‘But what if that was actually Walsh’s stuff? Let’s face it, it’d be a safer place for a schoolteacher to stash it than in his own home.’
‘Right,’ I say. ‘So let’s get prints from it to be sure. And everything I said about escalation – that all applies to Walsh, just as much as to Harper. If it was him, there’ll be something that led up to it. Some trace we can find if we look hard enough.’
‘There was a kid in his room at the school,’ says Gislingham. ‘Poor little bastard looked terrified.’
Somer looks up. ‘It’s also the third school he’s taught at in the last ten years. I ran the records. It would be worth checking if there’s anything behind that.’
She’s good, that woman. She’s very good.
‘OK, Somer – can you pick up the Banbury end. Work with Gislingham to liaise with the local force at both the school and the house.’
I see Quinn look at her, then me, then away. He’s pissed off, but I don’t care.
‘Any news on the girl
?’ says one of the DCs at the back.
‘She still hasn’t said anything,’ says Everett. ‘But I’ll be going back to the hospital in the morning.’
‘And the kid?’
Everett glances at me, then across at the DC. ‘He’s OK. Better.’
I nod briefly to Everett. A nod of thanks. For her discretion.
‘OK,’ I continue. ‘Now – Hannah Gardiner. Despite the appeal for witnesses, no one’s yet come forward with any new information about Hannah’s movements that morning –’
‘Apart from the usual nut-jobs,’ mutters the DC at the back.
‘– but we do have two significant new facts. The first is that she often parked her car in Frampton Road. So if we’re now looking at Walsh as a possible suspect we urgently need to check where he was that day – whether he could have met her on the street. Schools tend to keep pretty good records so we may get lucky.’
The noise level is rising and I raise my voice. ‘However – and there’s a big but coming here, people – we also have a second new fact that points in a completely different direction. Baxter’s spoken to Beth Dyer, who told him something that puts a rather different slant on the relationship between Hannah and Rob. Something Miss Dyer unfortunately didn’t see fit to share with us two years ago. And which could also explain why we still haven’t found any trace of a murder scene at Frampton Road.’
Baxter gets up and turns to face the group. ‘Beth says she saw Hannah a few weeks before she disappeared, with a bruise on her face. Hannah claimed it was an accident with Toby but Beth didn’t believe her. She thought it was Rob – that the two of them had been having problems. She skirted around that idea back in 2015 but she’s come right out with it now. And she did say one thing that struck me – whoever it was who killed Hannah, how did they know where to dump her car? There weren’t that many people who knew where she was going that day. Walsh wouldn’t have, and Harper wouldn’t either, for that matter. But Rob did. That’s why Beth thinks Rob did it. That and the bruises.’