‘Hold on – in English, please.’
He blushes. ‘The background noise – the quality of the sound – it’s possible the voice on the call was a recording.’
There’s certainly no background noise right now. You can almost hear people holding their breath.
‘So, let’s be clear,’ I say. ‘You think it’s possible Gardiner played back an old message into the phone – something he already had on his own voicemail?’
The analyst nods. ‘It’s nowhere near one hundred per cent. But yes, he could have. It would account for the slightly hollow quality of the sound.’
‘And remember,’ says Baxter quickly, keen to capitalize on his coup, ‘Hannah never used any names on that call and she didn’t mention a time either – there was nothing that tied it to that particular day.’
I turn to the timeline again.
‘OK, let’s assume that’s what happened. Gardiner kills Hannah the night before, after she finds him in bed with Pippa Walker. He buries the body in Harper’s shed and when Pippa turns up again at midnight he doesn’t let her in, presumably because he’s still cleaning up the blood. Then the following morning he fakes a call to Pippa at 6.50 to make it look like his wife is still alive. But there’s still a problem, isn’t there.’
I turn to face them. ‘That call was made from the landline at Crescent Square at 6.50, which means Rob Gardiner had to have been at Crescent Square at that time. We dismissed him as a suspect before because there wasn’t time for him to get to Wittenham and back for the 7.57 train. And that’s still true. It still doesn’t add up.’
‘It could do, sir.’
It’s Somer. At the back. She gets up and comes forward.
‘What if he wasn’t on that train?’
Baxter frowns. ‘We know he was. We have footage of him arriving at Reading.’
But she’s shaking her head. ‘We know where he got off. But we don’t know where he got on.’
She looks to Gislingham, who nods. ‘You’re right. The Oxford CCTV was down that day.’
She turns and looks at the map. Wittenham, Oxford, Reading. She points. ‘What if he got on here instead?’
Didcot Parkway. Halfway to Reading, and only five miles from Wittenham by road.
Gislingham’s checking on his phone. ‘The 7.57 from Oxford stops at Didcot at 8.15.’
‘Right,’ I say, picking up the pen and drawing a second timeline next to the first one, ‘let’s work it through. If he left Oxford just before seven, straight after faking that voicemail, he’d have got to Wittenham, when?’
Gislingham considers. ‘By car, at that time in the morning, I reckon it’d only be half an hour.’
‘Which would put him at Wittenham by 7.30. Perhaps 7.25. And he’d need to leave Wittenham by around 7.50, to be on the train at Didcot at 8.15. The question is, is that enough time? To dump the car, take the buggy up the hill, leave his son and go, all in less than half an hour.’
‘I think so, sir,’ says Somer. ‘It would be tight, but it’s possible. He could have done it.’
Gislingham is nodding. As is Baxter. There’s only one person who hasn’t said anything at all.
Quinn.
***
Outside the incident room, Gislingham gets hold of Quinn and pulls him into the empty office next door.
‘What the fuck’s going on? Have you got a death-wish or what? I saw Fawley giving you a funny look – it won’t take long for him to rumble you if you keep going on like this.’
Quinn’s standing with his back to him, but now he turns round slowly. Gislingham has never seen him look so haggard.
‘What is it? There’s something, isn’t there?’
Quinn sits down heavily. ‘She lied. Pippa – in her statement. Perhaps only about some of it, but I know she lied.’
Gislingham pulls up a chair. ‘The text, I’m guessing.’
Quinn nods. ‘She said she texted Gardiner that night but I know she didn’t. I saw all her texts to him. There was nothing that night.’
‘Perhaps she deleted that one?’
‘She’s got the same phone as me. If you delete one it deletes the whole thread. There was no text.’ He puts his head in his hands. ‘It’s like a bloody nightmare. The more I try to sort it the worse it gets. Fawley’s going to arrest Gardiner on the basis of a witness statement I know isn’t reliable and yet I can’t say anything without putting myself irretrievably in the shit.’
‘OK,’ says Gislingham, going into fix-it mode. ‘We’re just going to have to get that warrant to look at her phone records, aren’t we? That way you’ll be in the clear. We’d have had to verify that statement anyway, even without all this.’
‘But the magistrate’s bound to wonder why we haven’t just asked her if we can look at the bloody phone – why we need a warrant at all if she’s just a witness –’
‘Yeah, well,’ says Gislingham, ‘you’re just going to have to think of an answer to that one, aren’t you?’
‘But you know what’ll happen the minute we put Pippa under any pressure – she’s going to tell, isn’t she? That she stayed in my flat – that we – you know.’
‘Well, did you?’
‘No. I told you.’
But he’s sweating like a man who did.
‘Look,’ says Gislingham. ‘If that’s what she says you’re just going to have to come clean. Tell Fawley you’ve been a twat and hope he doesn’t want to take it any further. And in the meantime focus on something useful. Like trying to get that bloody warrant.’
‘Right,’ says Quinn, his voice lifting a little.
‘And while you’re at it, try to act a bit more like your usual irritating cocky sod of a self, would you? This give-due-credit-to-others stuff is giving me the willies.’
Quinn smiles bleakly. ‘I’ll give it a go,’ he says.
***
Interview with Robert Gardiner, conducted at St Aldate’s Police Station, Oxford
8 May 2017, 11.03 a.m.
In attendance, DI A. Fawley, DC V. Everett, P. Rose (solicitor)
PR: I have to say, Inspector, that this is veering perilously close to harassment. Do you really have adequate grounds for arresting my client? For murdering his wife? I fail to see what new ‘evidence’ you can possibly have, and it’s extremely inconvenient, given he currently has no permanent childminder.
AF: Yesterday afternoon, my detectives questioned Miss Pippa Walker. I imagine you thought she had left town, Mr Gardiner. Or hoped as much.
RG: [silence]
AF: But she’s still here.
RG: [silence]
AF: She has made a full statement about your wife’s disappearance.
RG: That’s ridiculous. She can’t have told you anything because she doesn’t know anything.
VE: We also had our doctor take a look at that bruising on her wrist. The bruising you gave her.
RG: Look, it wasn’t like that. I told you before. I found out that she was trying to pass off someone else’s kid as mine – that she’d been screwing around –
VE: And that gives you licence to hit her?
RG: I didn’t hit her. I told you. I just grabbed hold of her – probably tighter than I realized. If she’s telling you something different then she’s lying.
AF: [silence]
I imagine it wouldn’t go down well, would it?
RG: What are you talking about?
AF: With your employers. I don’t imagine they’d be very happy about one of their senior managers being prosecuted for domestic violence.