by Cara Hunter
‘But then you told us William Harper did it. That he’d killed another girl, then buried her in the garden, and boasted to you about what he’d done.’
She shrugs. Whatever.
‘And that was Tricia’s original plan, wasn’t it? She wanted to make sure that when Hannah’s body was found, the police would immediately assume Harper must have killed her. It was his house, who else was it likely to be? If you were lucky, we might not even bother looking for another suspect. And you know, it almost worked. So why, I asked myself, would Tricia suddenly put all that careful preparation at risk by telling us something completely different? Something she must have known we’d prove was a lie?’
She glances at me again. She can’t work out if this is truth or trap.
I move a little closer. ‘A couple of nights ago, my wife reminded me about a play we saw years ago. It was much more her thing than mine – she’s always dragging me to stuff I’d never go to otherwise.’
She looks at me. Wary at where this is going.
‘That type of play, it’s called a revenge tragedy. And I think that’s why Tricia changed her story. Revenge. She tried to frame Rob for killing his wife because he’d thrown her out when she told him she was going to have a baby –’
Vicky starts, then quickly drops her gaze. But not quickly enough to fool me: she didn’t know her sister was pregnant.
‘She just couldn’t forgive Rob for dumping her, could she? She wanted her own back. Even if that meant getting him charged with murder. Even if that meant putting your whole scheme at risk. She betrayed you, Vicky. Just like she did when she left you at the mercy of a nasty piece of work like Donald Walsh.’
Her head comes up. ‘Who’s he?’
It occurs to me – as it probably should have done before – that she may never have known who it was who slipped that bolt and locked her in. She probably thought it was the old man.
‘He’s William Harper’s nephew. We think he worked out what you were up to. He was stealing those netsuke too. It seems it really does take one to know one.’
Her head is down again, and a moment later I realize she’s crying.
‘Have you spoken to Tricia, Vicky? Have you asked her why she didn’t come back – why she didn’t realize something had gone horribly wrong? Those builders finding you when they did – that was a complete fluke. The last page of that journal – that was for real. You thought you were going to die. Down there, alone. In the dark.’
‘It was a mistake,’ she says sulkily. ‘It must have been. She wouldn’t have got any of the money without me.’
‘Are you sure about that?’ I pull out another sheet from my file. ‘We’ve been having a look at your sister’s internet history. What she’s been looking at on her phone.’
I pass her the page and watch her read it. Watch the gasp and her hand coming to her mouth, and then the ferocity in her eyes as she crumples the paper in her fist.
There’s a commotion suddenly outside and the door flings open with a clang. The custody sergeant is standing there, his chest heaving.
‘Jesus Christ –’
‘You’d better come, sir. The other one – Tricia – Pippa – whatever her name is. I think she’s having a miscarriage.’
I’m on my feet already. ‘Have you called an ambulance?’
‘On its way. DC Everett’s going to go with her.’
‘Have you got a number for the girl’s mother?’
‘I asked but she says she doesn’t want us to contact her.’
‘OK, but we’ll still need two officers. See if you can raise PC Somer – ask her to meet Everett at the John Rad.’
I’m at the door when Vicky calls me back.
‘You’re sure about this?’ she says, gesturing at the paper. ‘It’s really true?’
I nod. ‘She even sent an email asking to speak to someone.’ I pull out another sheet and give it to her. ‘See. I’m sorry, Vicky, but there’s no mistake. She may not have planned it that way at the start, but Hannah’s death – that changed everything. Because you were the only one who knew what she’d done. The only one who knew her secret.’
* * *
* * *
The girl standing in the doorway hesitates. After all these months, now it’s come to it, she’s not so sure. The space is so small. So dirty. And it smells.
‘I’ve changed my mind. I don’t want to do it after all.’
‘Oh, for fuck’s sake, Vicky! What did you have that bloody kid for if you weren’t going to go through with it?’
Vicky bites her lip. ‘That was all your idea.’
‘Yeah, and you know why. You won’t get any of the money, you know, if you bottle it now. We’ve waited long enough – you’ve waited long enough –’
‘And whose fault is that?’ snaps Vicky. ‘We could have done this ages ago if you hadn’t gone and ruined everything. I’ve been stuck in this bloody house for months on end while you swan about doing what the hell you want – bringing those bloody students in out the back. You do know, don’t you, that the kid actually saw you having sex with that Danny?’
Tricia laughs. ‘I know, Dan looked up and saw him watching. Completely freaked him out. It was bloody hilarious.’
Vicky says nothing. ‘Look,’ says Tricia, conciliatory now. ‘I’m sorry you haven’t had much fun lately, but we’re going to go through with it now. We have to. You heard that social worker – he’s going to put the old git in a home.’
She reaches out and puts her hand under her sister’s chin. ‘I’ve cleared up upstairs and you have everything you need. I got you food, water, the torch. That diary thing for them to find. And it’s only for a couple of days. Just to make it look real.’
She turns to the small boy kicking against one of the sacks of junk and picks him up. His dark hair curls on his shoulders. They made sure not to cut it.
‘It’s an adventure, isn’t it?’ she says brightly. The boy puts out his hand and touches her face. ‘See? He thinks so too.’
Vicky reaches out and takes her son and holds him stiffly against her. She hesitates a moment, then steps over the threshold.
Behind her, the door clangs shut. And then there’s the sound of a chair being dragged across the floor and the bolt sliding across.
Vicky rushes to the door and hammers on it with her fist, her heart pounding. ‘Tricia! What are you doing?’
‘I’m making it look real, you idiot. What do you think I’m doing?’
‘But you never said anything about this –’
‘Because I knew you wouldn’t be up for it, that’s why. But it’s the only way – the only way to convince people you were really locked up down here.’
‘Please – don’t do this – open the door –’
‘Look, it’s only for a few days, right? Then I’ll call the police anonymously and tell them I heard something and they’ll come here and set you free. And we’ll get the money. Just keep thinking about that – three million sodding quid. It’s worth a couple of days of crap for that, right?’
‘No – I don’t want to – I can’t – please –’
But then the footsteps retreat back up the stairs and the light under the door goes out.
The child she’s holding goes rigid against her, his body contorted as he starts to scream.
* * *
* * *
Somer is already waiting outside when the ambulance pulls up outside the A&E entrance, and two nurses come out briskly to meet it.
‘Possible miscarriage,’ says one of the paramedics as she opens the back door. ‘She’s lost quite a lot of blood already.’
As they lower the trolley to the ground Somer can see that the girl is pale and visibly trembling, clutching at her stomach.
‘OK, lovey,’ says the nurse. ‘Tricia, is it? Let’s get you inside and take a look.’<
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* * *
* * *
Interview with Vicky Neale, conducted at St Aldate’s Police Station, Oxford
10 May 2017, 9.00 p.m.
In attendance, DI A. Fawley, DS G. Quinn, M. Godden (duty solicitor)
AF: For the purposes of the tape, Miss Neale has previously been arrested on a charge of false representation and has been given police bail. She has now been arrested in connection with the death of Hannah Gardiner in 2015, and has decided, of her own free will, to assist the police by making a statement to clarify the exact extent of her involvement in this matter. That’s right, isn’t it, Vicky?
VN: [nods]
AF: OK, then. Why don’t you tell us what happened. In your own words.
VN: Where d’you want me to start?
AF: At the beginning. When you first came to Oxford. When was that?
VN: 2014. April 2014. I came first and got that place in Clifton Street. Then one day Tricia turned up.
AF: Your sister, Tricia Walker. The young woman currently using the name Pippa.
VN: [nods]
AF: But that wasn’t the plan? You weren’t expecting her?
VN: I hadn’t seen her for months. We’d had a huge row and I’d walked out.
AF: From your mother’s home?
VN: I was fed up living there anyway. Mum was always at her new bloke’s and I was bored with Tricia telling me what to do all the time.
AF: What was the row about?
VN: [silence]
There was a boy I liked. Only, you know.
AF He preferred Tricia?
VN: She took him off me. She didn’t even like him that much. She just did it because she could. It was the same with Mum’s boyfriends. Tricia was always walking about with hardly any clothes on whenever they were there. It was like she was daring them to come on to her.
AF: Did that ever actually happen?
VN: Once. Some bloke called Tony.
[silence]
Mum caught them in bed together. Tricia claimed it was all Tony’s idea. That he’d been ‘grooming’ her or some crap like that. He denied it, of course, but Mum still threw him out.
AF: What did you think had happened? Did you believe Tony?
VN: Look, Tricia never does something she doesn’t want to do, right? But she didn’t fancy Tony or anything. She just wanted to prove she could get him if she wanted.
AF: How old was she at the time?
VN: Dunno. Fifteen, maybe?
AF: So what happened when she came to Oxford?
VN: She moved in with me. She signed on and I had some money my dad left me when he died, but it wasn’t much. Trish always hated having no money. That was why she came up with the idea. All of it – everything that happened – it was all her idea.
AF: What, exactly?
VN: You know – all of it.
AF: You have to tell us, Vicky. We have to hear it from you.
VN: She’d seen a TV programme about that woman in the cellar in Germany. The one who had all those children. She said we could do something like that and get a whole load of cash. We just had to find the right person. An old bloke who lived on his own. Someone with Alzheimer’s, that’s what she really wanted.
AF: You couldn’t just get jobs, like everyone else?
VN: I would have, but Tricia said she wasn’t going to waste her time doing a crap job for rubbish pay.
AF: So how did you pick on Dr Harper?
VN: We went up to North Oxford on the bus. Everyone said that was the rich place – that there were a lot of old people living in huge houses up there. The second time we went we saw him. He was in the street on his own. He was in his PJs and he had a can of lager. Tricia said he was perfect so we followed him back to his house. We went back later after it got dark and got in. There was a broken lock round the back. He was in the front room, snoring. He’d been wanking off over this picture of a woman in a red dress. It was really disgusting.
AF: And you realized the rest of the house was empty?
VN: There was stuff in a bedroom on the first floor, but Trish said you could live up on the top floor and no one’d even notice. So we watched the house for a bit and realized the only bloke who came was the social worker and he was out of there in, like, ten minutes. It was after that I moved in.
AF: Just you – not Tricia?
VN: She stayed in the flat. But she’d visit sometimes.
AF: So when did she first see Robert Gardiner?
VN: I think it was a couple of months later. She saw him in the garden with the little boy. She was crazy about him. Rob, I mean.
AF: So she started stalking him. At the Cowley Road carnival, for example.
VN: It wasn’t hard. We knew when they were going out - we could see straight into their flat from the top floor. One day we even saw them having sex. Tricia completely lost it about that. That was when she decided to get a job being their nanny.
AF: How did she go about doing that?
VN: She arranged it so she met the wife at the market, you know ‘by accident’.
[makes hooking gesture with her fingers]
She wanted to make the wife think the whole thing was her own idea. Tricia is really good at things like that – getting people to do what she wants without them realizing. Like I said, she can really turn it on when she wants to. Especially with blokes.
AF: [glancing at DS Quinn]
And was that when she started calling herself Pippa?
VN: She thought Pippa sounded more classy. She said things like that matter to people like the Gardiners. That they only like people who are like them.
AF: Was that the only reason?
VN: [hesitates]
No. When we were at school she went for another girl’s face with a fork. It was some stupid argument about her sitting in Tricia’s chair. It was always like that – she’d go completely off on one if anyone tried to tell her what to do. Mum stopped bothering long before. Wasn’t worth the hassle. But the school went ape-shit – she got suspended and sent to one of those counsellor people. She was afraid that if the Gardiners checked up on her and found out about it they wouldn’t have let her look after their kid.
AF: By the time she got that job you were pregnant, weren’t you? That was Tricia’s idea too, I presume?
VN: [shifts in her chair]
She said we’d get even more money that way. That the DNA would prove the old man raped me.
GQ: And the journal?
VN: [pause]
She said people would believe me more if we did that. That it’d look better in court. She told me what to say.
AF: She dictated the journal to you?
VN: She made it up and I wrote it down. Then she messed some of it up with water so it would look more real.
GQ: And that was all when you were still living on the top floor?
VN: [nods]
AF: But if having the baby was Tricia’s idea, why didn’t she do it? That way she’d be the one to get the money.
VN: She said I’d be a better victim.
GQ: She actually said that – that you’d be a ‘better victim’?
VN: She said people were more likely to feel sorry for me than for her. That no one would believe she could have been that stupid.
AF: But they’d believe that about you?
VN: [bites her lip but says nothing]
AF: What about the money?
VN: She made me promise to share it with her.
[in some distress]
She said I owed her, after everything she’d done for me.
* * *
* * *
‘You look fucking amazing. Just like her.’
Tricia stands back and admires he
r handiwork. The red dress, the lipstick, the hair. All perfect.
‘What d’you think?’
Vicky looks at herself in the mirror. And Tricia’s right. The resemblance is creepy. She shivers. She’s not sure she likes looking like someone dead.
‘Ready then?’ Tricia is by the door, holding it open. ‘Last I looked he was flat on his back. Off his face on that lager. Let’s just hope he can still get it up. Or you can.’
‘I’m not having sex with him, Tricia. Not real sex.’
Tricia makes a face. ‘How many more times – you don’t have to. Just toss him off. We’ll collect the spunk and stick it in you.’
‘And what if he remembers? What if he tells someone?’
Tricia laughs. ‘Yeah, right. He’s a spaz, Vicky. Talks fucking rubbish most of the time. No one’s going to believe him. And anyway, that’s what all this bloody get-up is for. He’ll think you’re his wife. That’s why this is such an ace idea. If he says anything, people’ll just think he’s even more of a nut-job than he already is. The more screwed up they think he is, the better it is for us. Remember?’
Vicky shivers. This bloody house is always cold.
‘Here,’ says Tricia, holding out a bottle of Smirnoff. ‘I got it down the road. Might help.’
The vodka burns down Vicky’s throat.
‘OK,’ she says.
* * *
*
Down in the front room, William Harper is on the camp bed, snoring. Vicky hesitates at the door, but Tricia pushes her forward. She stands by the bed for a moment, then pulls back the bedspread. Harper is only wearing a vest. A vest and socks. His shrivelled genitals hang against his thigh.
‘Go on,’ whispers Tricia.
‘It’s disgusting – I’m not touching that.’
‘Just get on with it, will you – he’ll probably come in a nanosecond anyway.’
Vicky reaches out and takes Harper’s cock in her hand. His eyes open at once and for a moment they’re frozen there, staring at each other. His lips move, but no sound comes.