by Fiona Barton
I began to wonder if he was looking for reasons to be upset. The people he’d always liked working with at the bank began to annoy him and he’d come home moaning about them. I knew he was working himself up to something – a row, probably – and I tried to talk him out of his moods. There was a time I might’ve been able to – when we were younger – but things were changing.
One of my ladies at the salon said all marriages ‘settle down after the “truly, madly, deeply” bit.’ But was this settling down? Was this it?
I suppose it was then that he started going upstairs to his computer more. Closing himself off from me. Choosing his nonsense over me.
Chapter 17
Sunday, 8 April 2007
The Detective
TAYLOR’S DELIVERY VAN was being dismantled and scrutinized, inch by inch, by the forensic boys in Southampton, along with his uniform and shoes taken from home, fingerprints, saliva swabs, and samples from under his fingernails, his genitals and hair.
And experts were conducting their dig into the dark recesses of his computer.
They were all over him. Now Sparkes wanted to try his luck with the wife.
On Easter Sunday morning, fresh from their Premier Inn breakfast in south London, Sparkes and Matthews knocked at 8 a.m.
Jean Taylor answered the door with her coat half on. ‘Oh God,’ she said when she saw Sparkes. ‘Has something happened to Glen? His lawyer said it would all be sorted out today and he could come home.’
‘No, not quite,’ Sparkes said. ‘I need to have a chat with you, Mrs Taylor. We can talk here rather than at the station.’
Mention of the station made Jean Taylor’s eyes widen. She stood back to let the detectives in before the neighbours spotted them and wearily shrugged off the sleeve of her coat.
‘You’d better come through,’ she said and led the way into the living room. Jean hovered by the arm of the sofa. She looked like she hadn’t slept much. Her hair was lank with exhaustion and there was a scrape of throatiness to her voice as she asked them to sit down.
‘I answered all the questions yesterday with the other officers. This is all wrong.’
She was so agitated, she got up and then sat down again, lost in her own sitting room.
‘Look, I’m due at my mum and dad’s. I always go on a Sunday to do Mum’s hair. I can’t let her down.’ she explained. ‘I haven’t told them about Glen …’
‘Perhaps you could phone and say you’re sick, Mrs Taylor,’ Sparkes said. ‘We need to talk about a few things.’
Jean closed her eyes as if she was about to cry, then walked to the phone to tell her lie.
‘It’s just a headache, Dad, but I think I’ll stay in bed for a bit. Tell Mum I’ll call her later.’
‘Now then, Mrs Taylor,’ Sparkes said. ‘Tell me about you and Glen.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘How long have you been married? Are you both from round here?’
Jeanie told the bus-stop story and Sparkes listened attentively as she progressed through their courtship to the fairytale wedding and blissful married life.
‘He worked for the bank, didn’t he?’ Sparkes asked. ‘That must’ve been a good job with prospects …’
‘Yes, it was,’ Jeanie said. ‘He was very proud of his job. But he left to start a business of his own. Glen has lots of ideas and plans. He likes to think big. And he didn’t get on with his boss. We think he was jealous of Glen.’
Sparkes paused. ‘And there was the business with the office computer, wasn’t there, Mrs Taylor?’
Jean stared at him, all eyes again. ‘What do you mean?’ she asked. ‘What about the office computer?’
Bloody hell, she doesn’t know about the porn, Sparkes thought. Christ, here we go then.
‘The indecent images found on his office computer, Mrs Taylor.’
The word ‘indecent’ hung in the air as Jean blushed and Sparkes pressed on.
‘The images found on his computer at work. And on the computer we took away yesterday. Do you ever use the computer?’
She shook her head.
‘There were pornographic images involving children, Mrs Taylor, found on both computers.’
She put her hands out to stop him.
‘I don’t know anything about pornographic images or computers,’ she said, the colour deepening to bruise her neck. ‘And I’m sure Glen doesn’t, either. He isn’t that sort of man.’
‘What sort of man is he, Mrs Taylor? How would you describe him?’
‘Goodness, what sort of question is that? Normal, I suppose. Normal. Hard-working, a good husband …’
‘In what way is he a good husband?’ Sparkes asked, leaning forward. ‘Would you say you were happy as a couple?’
‘Yes, very happy. We hardly ever argue or fall out.’
‘Have you been having any problems? Money problems? Problems in your intimate life?’ He didn’t know why he had shied away from using ‘sex life’ but the woman’s distress at the questions was palpable.
‘What do you mean, our intimate life?’ Jean had said.
‘In the bedroom, Mrs Taylor,’ he’d clarified delicately.
She looked as if she’d been spat on. ‘No, no problems,’ she managed to get out before starting to weep.
Matthews passed a box of tissues from the nest of tables at his elbow. ‘There you go,’ he said. ‘I’ll get you a glass of water.’
‘I’m not trying to upset you, Mrs Taylor,’ Sparkes said, ‘but these are questions I need to ask. I’m investigating a very serious matter. Do you understand?’
She shook her head. She didn’t understand.
‘What about children, Mrs Taylor?’ The detective moved on to the next incendiary subject.
‘None,’ she said.
‘Did you decide not to have any?’
‘No, we both wanted children, but we couldn’t.’
Sparkes waited a beat.
‘It was a physical problem with Glen. The doctor said.’ She faltered. ‘We love kids. That’s why I know Glen could never have had anything to do with Bella’s disappearance.’
The child’s name was now in the room and Sparkes asked the question he’d been waiting to put.
‘Where was Glen at four o’clock on the day Bella went missing, Mrs Taylor?’
‘He was here, Inspector Sparkes,’ Jean answered immediately. ‘Here with me. He wanted to see me.’
‘Why did he want to see you?’ Sparkes asked.
‘Just to say hello, really,’ she said. ‘Nothing special. Quick cuppa and then off to the depot to get his car.’
‘How long was he home?’
‘About … about forty-five minutes,’ she said a little too slowly.
Is she doing the maths in her head? Sparkes thought.
‘Did he often come home before returning the van?’ he asked.
‘Well, sometimes.’
‘When was the last time he called in like this?’
‘I’m not sure – I can’t remember …’ she said, ragged blotches spreading to her chest.
‘I hope she doesn’t play poker,’ Matthews said later. ‘She has more tells than I’ve seen for a long time.’
‘How did you know it was four o’clock, Mrs Taylor?’ Sparkes asked.
‘I had an afternoon off work because I’d worked Sunday morning and I heard the news at four on the radio.’
‘It could’ve been the news at five. There’s a bulletin every hour. How do you know it was four?’
‘I remember them saying it. You know, ‘It is four o’clock, this is the BBC News.’
She stopped to sip her water.
Sparkes asked about Glen’s reaction to the news of Bella’s disappearance and Jean told him he was as shocked and upset as she was when they saw it on the news.
‘What did he say?’ Sparkes asked.
‘Poor little girl. I hope they find her,’ she said, carefully putting her glass on the table beside her. ‘He said he thought it was proba
bly a couple whose child had died who took her and went abroad.’
Sparkes waited for Matthews to catch up in his notebook and turned to Jean Taylor again. ‘Did you ever go in the van with Glen?’
‘Once. He prefers driving on his own so he can concentrate, but I went for a ride out last Christmas. To Canterbury.’
‘Mrs Taylor, we’re having a good look at the van at the moment. Would you mind coming to the local station to give your fingerprints so we can rule them out?’
She wiped another tear away. ‘Glen keeps his van spotless. He likes everything spotless.’
‘They will find her, won’t they?’ she added as Matthews helped her on with her coat and opened the front door.
Chapter 18
Sunday, 8 April 2007
The Detective
GLEN TAYLOR WAS PROVING to be a man with an answer for everything. He had a quick brain and, once the shock of his arrest wore off, he seemed almost to be enjoying the challenge, Sparkes told his wife.
‘Arrogant little sod. Not sure I’d be so confident in his position.’
Eileen squeezed his arm as she passed him his evening glass of red wine. ‘No, you’d confess everything immediately. You’d be a terrible criminal. Chops or fish tonight?’
Sparkes perched on one of the high stools Eileen had insisted on when breakfast bars were de rigueur and helped himself to shards of raw carrot from the pan on the counter. He smiled at Eileen, relishing the entente cordiale in the kitchen that evening. Their marriage had been through the usual peaks and troughs of a shared life, but, although neither would admit it out loud, the children leaving home had put it under unexpected strain. They had talked before about all the things they would be able to do, the places they’d see, the money they could spend on themselves, but when it happened, they found their new freedom forced them to look at each other properly for the first time in years. And, Bob suspected, Eileen found him wanting.
She’d been ambitious for him when they were first going out and then married, urging him to study for his sergeant’s exams and bringing him endless cups of coffee and sandwiches to fuel his concentration.
And he carried on, bringing home his triumphs and disasters as small promotions and anniversaries passed. But he suspected she was now seeing what he’d actually achieved in the cold light of late middle age and was wondering, Is that it?
Eileen squeezed by with some frozen chops and ordered him to leave the veg alone.
‘Hard day, love?’ she asked
It had been an exhausting day, combing through Taylor’s statements for gaps and inconsistencies.
Images of children being sexually abused found on his computer were, according to the suspect, downloaded ‘by mistake – the internet’s fault’ or without his knowledge; use of his credit card to buy porn was done by someone who had cloned his card – ‘Don’t you know how rife credit-card fraud is?’ he’d asked scornfully. ‘Jean reported our card stolen last year. She’ll tell you. There’s a police report somewhere.’ And there was.
‘Interesting that it was around the time the papers started writing about the link between credit cards and online child sex abuse,’ Sparkes mused, going over the interview transcript at his desk later. But it was circumstantial.
He can see daylight, Sparkes thought during a coffee break. He thinks his story is solid, but we haven’t finished yet.
Nothing seemed to get through to Taylor until they interviewed him again and showed him a scrapbook of children’s pictures, torn from magazines and newspapers, found behind the water tank in the airing cupboard at his home.
There was no pantomime this time. It was clear he’d never seen it before; his mouth fell open as he leafed through the pages of images of little cherubs in cute outfits and fancy dress.
‘What is this?’ he asked.
‘We thought you might tell us, Glen.’
They were on first-name terms by now. Glen hadn’t protested. But he called the detective ‘Mr Sparkes’ to preserve a distance between them.
‘This isn’t mine,’ he’d said. ‘Are you sure you found it at home?’
Sparkes nodded.
‘It must belong to the previous owners,’ Glen said. He crossed his arms and tapped his feet as Sparkes closed the book and pushed it to one side.
‘Hardly, Glen. You’ve lived there how many years? Maybe it belongs to you or to Jean, Glen?’
‘Well, it isn’t mine.’
‘So it must be Jean’s. Why would she keep a book like this?’
‘I don’t know – ask her,’ Taylor had snapped. ‘She’s obsessed with babies. You know we couldn’t have any and she used to cry all the time about it. I had to tell her to stop it – it was ruining our lives. And anyway, we’ve got each other. We’re lucky in a way.’
Sparkes nodded along, considering Jean Taylor’s luck to have a husband like Glen.
Poor woman, he thought.
A forensic psychologist they were consulting on the case had already warned him that it was very unlikely the scrapbook belonged to a paedophile.
‘This isn’t a predator’s book,’ he said. ‘There’s nothing sexual in the images – it’s a fantasy collection, but not made by someone who objectifies children. It is more like a wish list – the sort of thing a teenage girl might make.’
Or a childless woman, Sparkes had mused.
Jean’s secret fantasy life had rattled Taylor. That much was clear. He was lost in thought, perhaps wondering what else he didn’t know about his wife. It had, Sparkes and Matthews agreed afterwards, created a hairline crack in his certainty that he had her under control. Secrets were dangerous things.
But at the case review meeting with his bosses, as the thirty-six-hour deadline loomed, Sparkes felt defeated. They had crawled over everything. The van had yielded nothing and they had nothing to charge Taylor with apart from the internet stuff, and that wouldn’t keep him in custody.
Two hours later, Glen Taylor was bailed and walked out of the police station, already on his mobile phone. Bob Sparkes watched him go through a window in the corridor.
‘Don’t get too comfortable at home. We’ll be back,’ he told the retreating figure.
The next day, Taylor was back at work, according to the team assigned to watch him round the clock.
Sparkes wondered what Taylor’s boss was making of it all.
‘Bet they let him go by the end of the month,’ he said to Matthews. ‘Good. It’ll give him time to make some mistakes if he’s hanging around the house all day. Bound to get up to mischief.’
The detectives looked at each other.
‘Why don’t we give Alan Johnstone a call and ask if we can come and look at his driver records again. Might give him a nudge in the right direction,’ Matthews said.
Mr Johnstone welcomed them into his office, sweeping paperwork off threadbare office chairs.
‘Hello, Inspector. Back again? Glen said it’d all been cleared up as far as he’s concerned.’
The detectives pored over the worksheets, noting the mileage all over again, while Johnstone hovered uneasily.
‘Are these yours?’ Sparkes said, picking up a picture of two small boys in football shirts from the desk. ‘Lovely kids.’ He let that hang in the air as Johnstone took the picture back.
‘See you again,’ Matthews said cheerily.
Glen Taylor was asked to leave later that week. Alan Johnstone rang Sparkes to let him know.
‘It was freaking out the other drivers. Most of us have children. He didn’t make a fuss when I paid him off; just shrugged and emptied his locker.’
Matthews grinned. ‘Let’s see what he does now.
Chapter 19
Saturday, 21 April 2007
The Widow
GLEN’S MUM AND DAD came round the weekend after he was sacked. We hadn’t seen them for a while and they stood at the door while the press tried to talk to them and took their pictures. George was furious and started swearing at them and Mary was in tears when I
opened the door. I hugged her in the hall and led her through to the kitchen.
George and Glen went into the living room. We sat at the table and Mary carried on crying.
‘What’s going on, Jean? How could anyone think my Glen could do such a thing? He couldn’t have done something so wicked. He was a lovely little boy. So sweet, so clever.’
I tried to calm her down and explain, but she kept talking over me, saying ‘Not my Glen’ over and over. In the end, I made a cup of tea to give myself something to do and took a tray through to the men.
There was a terrible atmosphere – George was standing in front of the fireplace staring at Glen, all red in the face. Glen was sitting in his armchair, looking at his hands.
‘How’re you doing, George?’ I asked as I passed him a tea.
‘I’d be a damned sight better if this idiot hadn’t got himself involved with the police. Thanks, Jean. We’ve had the press knocking and on the phone morning, noon and night. We’ve had to take the phone off the hook to get some peace. Your sister’s had the same, Glen. It’s a bloody nightmare.’
Glen said nothing. Perhaps everything had been said before I came in.
But I couldn’t let it go. I said, ‘It’s a nightmare for Glen, too, George. For all of us. He’s done nothing and he’s lost his job. It isn’t fair.’
Mary and George left soon afterwards.
‘Good riddance,’ Glen said afterwards, but I was never sure if he meant it. It was his mum and dad, after all.
My mum and dad came next. I told Dad on the phone to go to Lisa’s next door so they wouldn’t be bothered by the reporters and could come through the gate between the gardens. Poor Mum, she opened the back door and came tumbling in as if a dog was after her.
She’s lovely, my mum, but she finds it hard to cope with things. Ordinary things. Like catching the right bus to the doctor’s or meeting new people. Dad is very good about it, really. He doesn’t fuss about her ‘little panics’ as they call them. He just sits her down and strokes her hand and talks to her softly until she feels better. They really love each other – always have. And they love me, but Mum needs all Dad’s attention.