PW: [silence]
No.
CG: Did Hannah Gardiner come home that evening and find you in bed with her husband?
PW: No.
GQ: So you lied. Worse than that, you attempted to frame an innocent man for his wife’s murder.
PW: He’s not innocent – he’s a bastard -
GQ: Do you realize how serious that is? The trouble you’re in?
PW: [turning to DS Quinn]
Do you realize the trouble you’re in? When I tell them what you did – letting me in your flat, having sex with me –
GQ: You know that’s not what happened –
PW: Yeah, well, that’s going to be your word against mine, isn’t it?
CG: I think a jury will be rather more inclined to believe Detective Sergeant Quinn, don’t you?
PW: [pulls out her mobile phone and shows DS Quinn a photo]
That’s my underwear in your bed. Who are they going to believe now?
GQ: You staged that – it must have been while I was out –
[turning to DC Gislingham]
She’s lying – all of it –
PW: I want a lawyer. I can have one if I want – yeah?
CG: Yes, as we have already –
PW: In that case I want one. Right now. And I’m not talking any more until I do.
CG: Pippa Walker, I am arresting you on suspicion of perverting the course of justice. You do not have to say anything, but it may harm your defence if you fail to mention when questioned, something you later rely on in court. Anything you do say may be given in evidence. You will now be taken to the cells, to await the arrival of your legal representative. You will also be required to hand over your mobile phone.
Interview suspended at 12.32.
***
‘I still have reservations about this, Inspector.’
I’m standing in the kitchen doorway at Frampton Road with William Harper’s lawyer. Looking down the hallway, I can see Harper’s doctor helping him out of a police car. He looks shrunken. Shrivelled somehow. He stares around in terror at two or three passers-by who’ve stopped to watch from the other side of the road. We’ve done this to him. I know that. We didn’t mean to, and we did it for the right reasons. But it’s down to us all the same.
Erica Somer gets out of the driver’s door and comes round, and she and Lynda Pearson support Harper slowly into the house. He stumbles on the step, bent half double, his hands outstretched before him as if he no longer trusts his eyes.
I turn to the lawyer. She knows what we’re trying to prove by this exercise, but not why we’re suddenly doing it now. ‘This is in your client’s interests. I’m sorry it has to be like this, but we need physical proof. I’m sure you understand.’
‘What I understand, Inspector,’ she says acidly, as Somer and Pearson ease Harper stiffly on to one of the kitchen chairs, ‘is that you could have obtained this so-called “proof” right at the start, and saved a sick and vulnerable old man from enormous unnecessary stress, not to mention incarceration. I fully intend to make an official complaint.’
I see Somer glance at me but I’m not going to lose my rag with this woman. She’s right. Or at least, partly so.
‘You are free to do that, of course. But I’m sure you understand that we had no choice but to arrest Dr Harper when we did. Indeed, we would have been in derogation of our duty had we not done so, given the evidence we had at the time. And whatever the results of this experiment, it has no bearing at all on your client’s physical state three years ago, at the time of the alleged abduction.’
She gives a little huffy sniff and reaches into her pocket for her mobile phone. ‘Let’s get this over with, shall we?’
I turn to Baxter, who’s standing behind me with a video camera; the lawyer isn’t the only one who’s going to film this.
‘OK, Dr Harper, are you ready now?’
He looks up at me, then lifts a shaking hand to shield his face, as if he fears a blow.
‘There’s nothing to be frightened of, Bill,’ says the doctor. ‘This is a police officer. He’s not going to hurt you.’
Harper’s watery eyes stare into mine. He shows no sign of recognizing me.
Pearson crouches down and puts her hand on Harper’s arm. ‘We just need to go down into the cellar for a minute –’
The old man’s eyes widen. ‘No – there’s something down there –’
‘It’s OK, Bill. There’s nothing down there now, I promise. And I’ll be with you the whole time. As well as this nice police lady.’
She straightens up and exchanges a glance with Somer, who smiles weakly.
Baxter goes over to the door and pulls the bolt across, then leans in and flicks on the overhead light. Somer helps Harper to his feet and, between them, she and Pearson get Harper to the top of the flight of stairs.
‘I’ll go first,’ says Somer. ‘Just in case.’
‘He has to go down unaided,’ I say quietly. ‘That’s the whole point.’
‘I know, sir,’ she says, flushing. ‘I just –’
Her voice trails off, but I know what she means.
‘The video’s running,’ says Baxter behind me.
‘Go on, Bill,’ says Pearson gently. ‘Take your time. Hold on to the handrail if you need to.’
It takes nearly twenty minutes, in the end, and he has to go down backwards, clinging to the banister with both hands, muttering and trembling with each step. Once or twice he nearly slips, but eventually we’re all standing in the empty cellar. In the damp and the smell and the bleak, flickering light.
The lawyer turns to me. ‘So what does this prove, Inspector?’
‘It proves that Dr Harper is physically capable of accessing this area on his own, despite the fact that his arthritis has clearly deteriorated in the last few months.’
I catch Baxter’s eye, and I know what he’s thinking: Harper came down here and slipped the bolt on Vicky out of fear and confusion, condemning a young woman and a small child to a dreadful lingering death that only a chance coincidence prevented. But he’d had no idea that’s what he was doing. He probably thought it was rats. It’s not even attempted manslaughter, far less murder.
‘Can we take Bill upstairs again now, Inspector?’ asks Pearson. ‘He’s starting to get distressed.’
I nod. ‘But he needs to do it on his own again, please.’
‘Hold on a minute, sir.’
It’s Somer, on the other side of the room, by the inner door. She looks up at the bolt at the top and reaches up to it.
She swivels round and looks at me. ‘I can’t get enough purchase on this to move it. Not without standing on something.’
The inference is obvious and the lawyer is on it at once. ‘How tall are you, Constable?’
‘Five foot six.’
‘And my client can’t be more than five foot seven even if he was standing up straight, and he has very limited mobility and hands crippled by arthritis.’
‘Crippled’ is a bit histrionic, in my book, but I appreciate that she’s trying to make a point.
I turn to Baxter. ‘Do you have the crime-scene photos on that thing?’
He shakes his head. ‘Not on this camera. But I do have some on my phone.’
‘OK, let’s have a look.’
He scrolls back through. The inner room, the filthy bedding, the bag of empty tins, the repellent toilet. And then the room we’re standing in. Broken furniture, cardboard boxes, black plastic sacks, an old tin bath full of junk. Nothing remotely robust enough to climb on.
‘What about that stepladder?’ I say in an undertone. ‘The one in the conservatory?’