I nod. ‘I can easily see someone mistaking another young woman for Hannah. It’s William Harper who’s the real question mark. If he abducted Hannah off the street in Frampton Road, then dumped her car and her son in Wittenham, wouldn’t someone have remembered seeing him? I mean, an old man alone with a baby buggy?’
Baxter is still leafing through the file. ‘One of the witnesses mentions seeing grandparents with kids, so it’s possible he didn’t stand out. But we only asked people if they saw Hannah. We didn’t ask who else they saw.’
‘Right,’ I say, ‘so let’s get back in touch with the eyewitnesses and ask them. See if they remember anyone resembling Harper.’
Quinn nods and makes a note.
‘OK,’ I continue. ‘We established there wasn’t enough time for Gardiner to get to Wittenham and back if Hannah was still alive at 6.50, but what about Harper – could he have done it?’
Everett considers. ‘If Hannah left the flat at 7.30, she must have met Harper no later than 7.45. He could have found some pretext to lure her into the house, then struck her from behind. And once she was unconscious all he had to do was tie her up and leave her there. That wouldn’t have taken that long. I reckon he could have been on the road to Wittenham by 8.15, which means he’d have been there by 8.45 or so. So yes, he could have done it.’
‘Was Harper still driving back then?’ asks Baxter. Not much gets past him.
‘According to the social worker, yes.’
‘So how did he get back to Oxford? Without the car, I mean.’
Gislingham shrugs. ‘Bus? He’s got all day, after all. There’s no one looking for him. No one at home to ask him where he’s been. And all the time in the world to get rid of the body.’
‘After he’d finished with her,’ says Everett darkly. ‘He could have kept her alive for days, for all we know.’
‘There’s still an issue, though, isn’t there, sir?’ Somer this time. ‘There was no unexplained DNA in Hannah’s car. I suppose this man Harper could have driven it and left no trace, but that’s not easy.’
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.’