The Widow

by Fiona Barton

  Mrs Chambers shrugged. ‘Well, he didn’t do it when we were married. Maybe he ran out of women who fell for his lines. Sounds desperate, doesn’t it? Horrible thing to do, but he is a horrible man.’

  The landlord knew little about him. Chambers paid his rent on time, made no noise and put out his rubbish. Perfect tenant. But the other drivers had stories to tell. One of them told the detectives about the mags Lee Chambers sold and swapped from the boot of his car.

  ‘He used to set up a stall at motorway service areas for lorry drivers and other blokes who like that sort of thing. You know, photos of violent sex, rape and kidnap. That kind of stuff. He said he made quite a bit of money.’

  He was a horrible man, everyone was agreed, but that didn’t make him a child abductor, Sparkes said miserably to his sergeant.

  During their second interview with Chambers later that afternoon, he claimed he’d kept the cuttings in the folder because he fancied Dawn Elliott.

  ‘I cut pictures of women I’m attracted to out of the papers all the time. Cheaper than the skin mags,’ he offered. ‘I’ve got a high sex drive.’

  ‘Where did you go when you finished the job in Portsmouth, Mr Chambers?’

  ‘Home,’ he said emphatically.

  ‘Anyone see you there?’

  ‘No, everyone was out working and I’m on my own. I watch telly when I’m off-duty and wait for the next call-out.’

  ‘Someone says they saw a man with long hair walking down the road where Bella Elliott was playing.’

  ‘Not me. I was at home,’ Chambers said, touching his ponytail nervously.

  Sparkes felt dirty when he came out of the interview room for a short break.

  ‘He deserves locking up just for breathing,’ Matthews said, joining his boss in the corridor.

  ‘We’ve spoken to the fare, and they say he helped them in with their suitcase and they offered him a cold drink but he left straight away. No witnesses to his whereabouts after that.’

  As they talked, Chambers sauntered past them with an officer. ‘Where are you going?’ Sparkes snapped.

  ‘To the bog. When are you letting me go?’

  ‘Shut up and get back in the interview room.’

  The two men stood for a moment in the corridor before going back in.

  ‘Let’s see if we can see him on the cameras. We also need to find his contacts for the boot sales at the services. They’re all perverts travelling the motorways round here. Who are they, Matthews? They may have seen him on the second of October. Get on to Traffic and see if they’ve got any likely names.’

  Back in the interview room, Chambers squinted at them across the table and said, ‘They don’t give me their names, do they? It’s all very discreet.’

  Sparkes waited for him to claim he was doing a public service, keeping perverts off the street, and Chambers didn’t disappoint.

  ‘Would you recognize your customers again?’ he asked.

  ‘Don’t think so. Staring isn’t good for business.’

  The detectives began to lose heart, and in the next break, Sparkes called time.

  ‘We’ll have to watch and see, but make sure we do him for the indecent exposure. And Matthews, tell the local press to look out for him in court. He deserves a bit of publicity.’

  Chambers smirked when they broke the news that the interview was over. But it was a brief moment of triumph before he was led away to be processed by the custody sergeant.

  ‘God, one flasher. That’s all we’ve got to show for the investigation so far,’ Sparkes said.

  ‘Early days, Boss,’ Matthews murmured.

  Chapter 11

  Thursday, 2 November 2006

  The Detective

  MATTHEWS HAD STAN Spencer’s notebook in his hand and looked unhappy.

  ‘I’ve been looking at this again, Boss, and reading back through Mr Spencer’s observations. Very thorough. Weather conditions, number and ownership of vehicles parked in the road, who went in and out of the houses. Including Dawn.’

  Sparkes perked up.

  ‘Clocked her in and out of the house most days.’

  ‘Watching her in particular?’

  ‘Not really. All the neighbours are mentioned.

  ‘But there’s something we need to ask him about his notes. They end halfway through a sentence on the Sunday and then switch to Monday 2 October and the stuff about the long-haired man. Looks like there may be a page missing. And he wrote the full date at the top of the page. He doesn’t do that normally.’

  Sparkes took the notebook and scrutinized it, his stomach sinking. ‘Christ, do you think he’s made it up?’

  Matthews grimaced. ‘Not necessarily. He may have been interrupted doing the Sunday log and not gone back to it. But …’

  ‘What?’

  ‘The notebook says it has thirty-two pages on the cover. There are only thirty now.’

  Sparkes ran both hands through his hair. ‘Why would he do it? Is it him, then? Is he our man? Has our Mr Spencer been hiding in plain sight?’

  Stan Spencer was dressed for gardening when he answered his door, in old trousers, a sun hat and gloves.

  ‘Good morning, Inspector. Good morning, Sergeant Matthews. Good to see you. Any news?’

  He ushered them through the house to the patio area, where Susan was reading a paper.

  ‘Look who’s here,’ he chirped. ‘Get the officers a drink, dear.’

  ‘Mr Spencer,’ Sparkes tried to bring an official note to what was turning into a coffee morning, ‘we want to talk to you about your notes.’

  ‘Of course. Go ahead, please.’

  ‘There appears to be a page missing.’

  ‘I don’t know what you mean,’ he answered, reddening.

  Matthews spread the relevant pages on the table in front of him. ‘Sunday finishes here, in the middle of your remarks about litter outside Dawn’s house, Mr Spencer. The next page is Monday and your notes about the man you say you saw.’

  ‘I did see him,’ Spencer blustered. ‘I tore out the page because I made a mistake, that’s all.’

  There was silence round the table.

  ‘Where is the missing page, Mr Spencer? Did you keep it?’ Sparkes asked gently.

  Spencer’s face crumpled.

  His wife emerged with a tray of tasteful mugs and a plate of homemade biscuits. ‘Help yourselves,’ she was saying gaily when she noticed the heavy silence round the table. ‘What’s the matter?’ she asked.

  ‘We’d like to talk to your husband for a moment, Mrs Spencer.’

  She paused, taking in Stan’s face and turned, tray still in hand.

  Sparkes asked his question again.

  ‘I shoved it in my desk drawer, I think,’ Spencer said and went into the house to look.

  He reappeared with a folded sheet of lined paper. The rest of Sunday’s log was there, and halfway down the page, Monday’s original log started.

  ‘Weather, clement for the season,’ Sparkes read out loud. ‘Legal vehicles in road during day: AM: No. 44’s Astra, midwife’s car at No. 68. PM: Peter’s van. Illegal vehicles in road: AM: usual 7 commuter cars. PM: Ditto. Leaflets on nuisance parking stuck under wipers. All quiet.’

  ‘Did you see the long-haired man on the day Bella was taken, Mr Spencer?’

  ‘I … I’m not sure.’

  ‘Not sure?’

  ‘I did see him but it might have been on another day, Inspector. I may have got confused.’

  ‘And your contemporaneous notes, Mr Spencer?’

  He had the grace to blush.

  ‘I made a mistake,’ he said quietly. ‘There was so much going on that day. I just wanted to help. To be of assistance to Bella.’

  Sparkes wanted to wring his neck, but maintained the crisp, professional tone of the interview. ‘Did you think you were helping Bella by sending us off in the wrong direction, Mr Spencer?’

  The older man slumped in his chair. ‘I just wanted to help,’ he repeated.

  �
�The thing is that people who lie often have something to hide, Mr Spencer.’

  ‘I haven’t got anything to hide. I swear to you. I’m a decent man. I spend my time protecting the neighbourhood from crime. I’ve stopped thefts from vehicles along this road. Single-handedly. Ask Peter Tredwell. He’ll tell you.’

  He stopped. ‘Will everyone know I got it wrong?’ he asked, his eyes pleading with the officers.

  ‘That’s not really our main concern at the moment,’ Sparkes snapped. ‘We’ll need to search your house.’

  As members of his team began sifting through the Spencers’ life, he and Matthews let themselves out of the house, leaving the couple to contemplate their new role in the spotlight.

  Matthews rubbed his jaw. ‘I’m going to talk to the neighbours about him, Boss.’

  At the Tredwells’ house, they had nothing but praise for ‘Stan the Man’ and his patrols.

  ‘He chased off some hooligan who broke into my van last year. Saved my tools from being nicked. Fair play to him,’ Mr Tredwell said. ‘I park it in a lock-up now. Better security.’

  ‘But your van was parked in Manor Road on the day Bella Elliott was taken. Mr Spencer noted it down.’

  ‘No, it wasn’t. I was using it for work and then put it in the lock-up. Do the same thing every day.’

  Matthews quickly took the details and stood up to go.

  Sparkes was still standing outside the Spencers’ bungalow.

  ‘There’s a blue van in the road unaccounted for at the material time, Boss. It wasn’t Mr Tredwell’s.’

  ‘For Christ’s sake. What else has Spencer got wrong?’ Sparkes asked. ‘Get the team looking back through the witness statements and CCTV in the area. And see which of our perverts owns a blue van.’

  Neither man spoke again. They didn’t need to. They knew they were thinking the same thing. They’d wasted two weeks. The papers would crucify them.

  Sparkes fished out his phone and rang the Press Office to try to limit the damage.

  ‘We’ll tell the reporters that we have a new piece of evidence,’ he said. ‘And steer them away from the long-haired man. Soft pedal on that front and focus on the hunt for the blue van. OK?’

  The media, hungry for any new detail, put it on the front pages. This time, there were no quotes from their favourite source. Mr Spencer was no longer answering his door.

  Chapter 12

  Saturday, 7 April 2007

  The Detective

  IT TOOK ANOTHER five months of donkey work, tracing every blue van in the country, for a breakthrough to come.

  It was Easter Saturday when the incident room took a call from a delivery firm in South London. One of their vehicles, a blue van, had been making drops on the south coast the day Bella disappeared.

  An old hand answered the call and then went straight through to Sparkes. ‘Think this is one for you, Sir,’ he said, putting the information sheet down on the desk.

  Sparkes rang Qwik Delivery back immediately to confirm the details. The manager, Alan Johnstone, started by apologizing for wasting police time but said he’d only recently joined the company and his wife had made him call in.

  ‘She talks about the Bella case all the time. And when I talked about the cost of re-spraying the vans the other day, she said to me, “What colour were they before?” She nearly shouted the house down when I said they were originally blue. They’re silver now. Anyway, she asked if they’d been checked by the police. She kept on and on at me, so I went through the paperwork and found that one was in Hampshire. Didn’t go to Southampton, so that’s probably why the old management didn’t contact you at the time – they probably didn’t think it was worth bothering you with. Sorry, but my wife made me promise.’

  ‘Don’t you worry, Mr Johnstone. No information is a waste of our time,’ Sparkes coaxed, his fingers crossed. ‘We’re very grateful that you took the time to call. Now, tell me about the van, the driver and the journey it took.’

  ‘The driver was Mike Doonan, a regular of ours. Well, he’s left now – wasn’t due to retire for another couple of years but he had a terrible back problem and could hardly walk, let alone drive and lug parcels about. Anyway, Mike had drops in Portsmouth and Winchester on the second of October. Spare parts for a chain of garages.’

  Sparkes was scribbling it all down, phone under his chin, and entering the name and details into his computer with his left hand. The driver was within a twenty-mile radius of Manor Road to make his drops and, potentially, fitted the timeframe.

  ‘Mike left the depot just before lunchtime – it’s a one-and-a-half to two-hour journey if the M25 doesn’t come to a standstill,’ Mr Johnstone said.

  ‘What time did he deliver the parcel?’ Sparkes asked.

  ‘Hold on, I’ll have to call you back when I’ve got the paperwork in front of me.’

  As he hung up, Sparkes shouted, ‘Matthews. In here now!’ and handed over the computer search to his sergeant as his phone rang again.

  ‘He dropped first at 2.05,’ Johnstone said. ‘Signed for and everything. The second drop time doesn’t seem to figure on this sheet. Not sure why. Anyway, they didn’t see him come back, according to this. The office staff clock off at five o’ clock and, according to this, the van was left on the forecourt, clean and hoovered out for the next day’s work.’

  ‘OK, that’s great. We’ll need to talk to him, just in case. He might’ve seen something helpful to us. Where does he live, your driver?’ Sparkes asked, fighting to quell a note of excitement in his voice. He wrote down an address in south-east London on his notepad. ‘You’ve been very helpful, Mr Johnstone. Thanks very much for phoning in.’ He ended the call.

  An hour later, he and Matthews were on their way up the M3.

  At first glance, the driver’s profile on the police computer hadn’t contained anything to make their pulses race. Mike Doonan was in his late fifties, lived alone, had been a driver for years and was reluctant to pay his parking fines. But Matthews’ scan of the police database had pulled him up as ‘of interest’ to the boys on the Operation Gold team. ‘Of interest’ meant there was a possible link to child-sex-abuse websites. The Operation Gold team was working its way through a list of hundreds of men in the UK whose credit cards appeared to have been used to visit specific sites. They were concentrating on those with access to kiddies first – the teachers, social workers, care staff, scout leaders – then moving on to the rest. They hadn’t reached Doonan (DOB 04/05/56; Profession: Driver; Status: Council tenant, divorced, three children) yet and at the current pace of the investigation were not due to knock on his door for another year.

  ‘I’ve got a good feeling about this,’ Sparkes told his sergeant. Everything was in place: Met officers had been discreetly positioned to watch the address but no one was to move until the Hampshire officers arrived.

  The DI’s mobile buzzed in his hand.

  ‘We’re on. He’s at home,’ he said when he hung up.

  Mike Doonan was marking his race card in the Daily Star when he heard his doorbell.

  Swinging his bulk forward to rise out of his armchair, he groaned. The pain shot down his left leg and he had to stand for a moment to catch his breath.

  ‘Hang on, I’m coming,’ he shouted.

  When he cracked open the door on to the walkway, it was not his Good Samaritan neighbour with his Saturday shop of lager and sliced bread, but two men in suits.

  ‘If you’re Mormons, I’ve already got enough ex-wives,’ he said and made to close the door.

  ‘Mr Michael Doonan?’ Sparkes said. ‘We’re police officers and we’d like to talk to you for a moment.’

  ‘Bloody hell, it isn’t about a parking ticket, is it? I thought I’d cleared them all. Come in, then.’

  In the tiny sitting room of his council flat, he slowly lowered himself back into his chair. ‘Back’s buggered,’ he said, gasping from a spasm of pain.

  At the mention of Bella Elliott, he stopped wincing.

  ‘Poo
r little thing. I was in Portsmouth that lunchtime on a job. Is that why you’re here? I told the boss he ought to ring in when the papers said about the dark-blue van – you know I drove one that colour – but he said he didn’t want coppers sniffing around his business. Not sure why – you’ll have to ask him. Anyway, I was nowhere near where the little girl lived. Just did my job and came back.’

  Doonan continued to be helpful to a fault, offering his thoughts on the case and what should happen to ‘the bastard who took her’.

  ‘I’d do anything to get my hands on him. Mind you, couldn’t do much if I did, not in the state I’m in.’

  ‘How long have you been in this state, Mr Doonan?’ Sergeant Matthews asked.

  ‘Years. I’ll be in a wheelchair soon.’

  The officers listened patiently, then broached his alleged interest in internet child pornography. He laughed when they talked about Operation Gold.

  ‘I haven’t even got a computer. Not my kind of thing. Bit of a technophobe, if I’m honest. Anyway, all these investigations are bollocks, aren’t they? Clever blokes in Russia stealing credit-card numbers and selling them on to paedos, it says in the papers. Don’t take my word for it. Have a look round, officers.’

  Sparkes and Matthews took up his offer, pushing through clothes jammed into a wardrobe and lifting the mattress on Doonan’s bed to look in the storage bags underneath. ‘Lot of women’s clothes, Mr Doonan,’ Matthews observed.

  ‘Yes, bit of a cross-dresser when the mood takes me,’ Doonan laughed easily. Too easily, Sparkes thought. ‘Nah, the clothes belonged to my latest ex-wife. Haven’t got round to chucking them out.’

  There was no sign of a child.

  ‘Do you have kids, Mr Doonan?’

  ‘Grown-ups now. Don’t really see much of them. They sided with their mothers.’

  ‘Right. We’ll take a quick look in the bathroom.’

  Sparkes looked across at his sergeant, digging through the laundry basket and trying not to breathe.

  ‘Well, she’s not here, but I don’t like him,’ Matthews hissed through his teeth. ‘Over-friendly. Creepy.’

  ‘We need to talk to the Operation Gold boys again,’ Sparkes said, closing the bathroom cabinet. ‘And get his van in for Forensics to go over.’