AB: But you didn’t knock at the door?
RH: No. I left after about fifteen minutes.
AB: Why didn’t you tell the police this at the time?
RH: You never asked. And anyway, everyone was saying she’d been seen at Wittenham the next day. I didn’t see how it mattered where she’d been the night before.
AB: Did you see the childminder by any chance?
RH: Well, I can tell you one thing – she definitely wasn’t in the flat that night.
AB: What makes you so sure?
RH: Because I saw her on the Banbury Road when I turned off. I knew who she was because I’d seen her with Toby once or twice in town. She was sitting on a wall with a couple of lads. Students, probably. They all looked pretty pissed.
AB: Thank you, Ms Heath. Would you be able to come in and make a formal statement?
RH: If I have to. I couldn’t stand Hannah, frankly. But it wasn’t Rob who killed her. That I do know.
***
Back at the car, I get out my phone.
‘Quinn? It’s Fawley.’
‘Where are you? I’ve been trying to reach you.’
‘Vine Lodge. Vicky wanted to see me.’
‘Look, Gardiner’s ex-wife called. She actually saw Rob and Pippa that night. And if what she says is true, I don’t see how he can have killed Hannah.’
‘I know. Vicky’s remembered something. She said Harper boasted about another girl. About killing another girl and burying her in the garden. That had to be Hannah. Hannah died in Frampton Road and William Harper killed her. These two cases – they’ve always been linked. And that link is William Harper. We just have to find some way to prove it.’
‘OK –’ he begins.
‘And Quinn?’ I say, cutting across him. ‘Get the nanny – Pippa – in again. It’s starting to look like she made up that whole cock-and-bull story about Gardiner, and I’m not about to let that pass.’
There’s a silence. ‘Are you sure?’ he says eventually. ‘I mean, she’s only a kid. And she never actually accused him. She probably just wanted to get her own back –’
Fawley’s law. Three lies and you’re out. Or – in this case – found out.
‘Since when did you get so soft, Quinn? She lied – in an official statement. Bring her in first thing and bloody well charge her.’
I can almost hear his anxiety. ‘What with?’
‘Arrant stupidity for starters.’
And something tells me she’s not the only one round here who’s guilty of that.
*
An hour and a half later I’m sitting outside my own house. In the car, closed in my own thoughts. Then a curtain moves inside and I realize I’ve been out here too long. She’ll be worried. I get out of the car and drag my jacket out of the passenger seat. By the time I get to the door she’s opened it, and is standing there in a pool of pale yellow light. My beautiful barefoot wife.
Inside, she pours me a glass of wine and turns to me, aware suddenly that my silence isn’t tranquillity.
‘You OK?’
‘I saw Vicky today. She said Harper told her he’d killed before. That he’d abducted another girl and buried her in the garden.’
I can hear her breath come sharp. ‘Hannah Gardiner?’
I nod.
‘So Gardiner didn’t do it.’
‘No, Gardiner didn’t do it.’
I take a gulp of wine and feel the warmth run through my veins.
‘So why did that girl lie – the one who gave you the statement?’
‘Gardiner had just thrown her out because she’s pregnant with someone else’s child. It may have been a cheap little attempt at revenge.’
Alex looks down the garden. ‘’Tis Pity She’s a Whore.’
‘Sorry?’
She shakes her head. ‘This whole case, it’s turning into Jacobean tragedy.’
‘Was that the play we saw – where was it?’
‘Stratford. And it was actually Women Beware Women. But all those plays are much the same – vengeance, violence, mistaken identity. And gore. Lots and lots of gore.’
I remember that production now; I came out peppered with blood. Only this time, for once, it wasn’t real.
*
Later, when I go out to collect something from the car, there’s a movement at the window above and I glance up to see the boy, looking down at me. The changeling living in my son’s place.
***
Rob Gardiner opens the door to his flat and closes it quietly behind him. His little son is asleep in his arms, and he walks across to the sofa and lays him gently down. Toby stirs a little and turns over, his thumb in his mouth. Gardiner gently caresses his son’s hair then straightens up. The room is darkening in the twilight but he doesn’t turn on the lamps.
He walks to the rear window and looks down at the garden. Then he closes the curtains and sits down heavily on an armchair. Opposite him, on the mantelpiece, the silver photo frames catch what’s left of the light. He can’t see the pictures but the images are etched in his mind. Toby and Hannah. The three of them. Hannah alone. The life he once had.
He gives a little gasp then, and puts his hand to his mouth, careful not to wake his child. And the tears that follow are silent, as he sits there in the dark, remembering.
Remembering.
***
First thing the following morning I brief the team on where we are. On what Vicky said, and Pippa made up, and Rob Gardiner didn’t do.
‘Which means,’ I say at the end of it, ‘that we revert to our original timeline: Hannah was alive at 6.50 a.m. when she called Pippa and left the flat for Wittenham around 7.30, taking Toby with her. The working assumption must be that she met Harper in the street a few minutes later when she went to collect her car and he lured her into his house. Just as he did with Vicky.’
There’s a shifting of feet; a sense of being back where we started, and not much better off. Because we still have no evidence, and we still have no murder scene.
‘So what next?’ asks Baxter. I can hear the weariness in his voice.
‘I want you to go back to Frampton Road and work with Challow’s team on another search of the house.’
‘But we’ve already been through the whole place – forensics analysed every room –’
‘I don’t care. There must be something we missed.’
*
When I emerge into the corridor the desk sergeant is waiting outside.
‘That profiler is in reception for you, Inspector. Bryan Gow.’
‘Really? I thought he was in Aberdeen or somewhere.’
‘Seems not. Do you want me to tell him to come back later?’
‘No, he wouldn’t have bothered to come in if it wasn’t important. Bring him up. And get someone to bring us coffee, would you? Decent stuff – not the crap from the machine.’
I get waylaid by the Super on the way back to my office, so Gow is already there when I push open my office door. And now I know what he’s doing here: he has a photocopy of Vicky’s journal on the table in front of him. As well as a take-out coffee from the café up the street.
‘Where did you get that?’
He raises an eyebrow. ‘The latte?’
‘The journal.’
He sits back and crosses one leg over the other. His foot is jigging slightly against his knee. ‘Alan Challow sent it to me. Said he thought I’d find it interesting. Which, of course, I do.’
I take a seat opposite him. ‘And?’
‘I have some preliminary thoughts.’
‘Care to share them with a mere policeman?’
He smiles thinly. ‘Of course. But I’d like to observe the girl as well. Is that possible?’
‘I asked Vicky to come in and start on her statement. It was going to be tomorrow but we can call and see if we can bring it forward.’