Everyone needs a devil’s advocate, and Baxter has a kitemark from Old Nick himself.
‘Actually,’ says Quinn, ‘I don’t think it would have been such a big deal. You can tell the place is in a state, even from the outside. She could have gone round there – snooped round the back, found there was a broken lock –’
‘Without Harper knowing?’
‘He was getting a bit confused, he drinks, he was taking those sleeping pills – I reckon he was pretty much out of it most of the time.’
‘OK,’ says Everett, ‘so let’s say that’s what happened. Just for argument’s sake. Next question: how did Pippa get Hannah in there?’
Gislingham throws up his hands. ‘Oh, that bit’s easy: she waited for her in Frampton Road that morning. She knew Hannah parked along there so she just picked her moment. And she’d have known Hannah was going to Wittenham – in fact, she was one of the few people who definitely did know that. So she hangs around, then persuades Hannah down the path – I don’t know, she says she’s seen an injured cat or something. Then as soon as they’re out of sight –’
‘OK, fair enough,’ says Baxter. ‘But none of it proves she was in that house, does it? It’s all just circumstantial. The CPS are going to want way more than that. And if we can’t arrest her for the murder her lawyer will get her bail on the other charge and that’ll be the last we see of her.’
There’s a silence. The photos stare out at us. Hannah. Pippa. Toby. Toby who couldn’t tell us anything about the bad man who hurt Mummy because there never was any bad man. Just his usual childminder taking him out for a nice ride in the car. I must have looked at these pictures a hundred times. Only now, for the first time, something is bugging me. Something about Pippa.
I turn to Baxter. ‘This shot at the Cowley Road carnival – we have an electronic version of that, right?’
‘Yes, boss,’ he says, going over to his desk and pulling it up on the PC.
I go across and bend to look at the screen. Then point.
‘The necklace. Can you zoom in on that?’
There’s a low-level buzz in the room now, and people start to gather round. They think I’m on to something. And as Baxter enlarges the image and it pings into focus, they know I am.
The chain is long and silver, and hanging from it, there’s an intricately carved object in the shape of a shell. Small and beautiful and priceless.
It’s the missing netsuke.
The noise starts to rise – the adrenaline of discovery, of the pieces of the puzzle shifting suddenly into sense. Soon there’s only one person who isn’t gathered round the screen. Somer. She’s at the whiteboard, staring at what Baxter wrote.
I get up and join her. ‘What’s on your mind?’
‘It’s what you said about Walsh, sir – that he couldn’t possibly have killed Hannah in that house without Vicky knowing.’
I wait. ‘And?’
‘Doesn’t the same apply to Pippa? I get it that she must have planned it all really carefully, but however well-organized she was, Vicky would surely have heard something, wouldn’t she? And there is no way Pippa could have got that car cover into the loft without Vicky knowing, not if Vicky was camped out on the top floor.’
I turn round and raise my voice. ‘Quiet, everyone – you need to hear this. Go on, Somer, say all that again.’
Which she does. Though not without blushing.
‘So – what’s your theory?’ says Quinn. ‘Vicky hears a noise, comes downstairs and walks straight into a bloodbath?’
‘Why not?’ says Somer. ‘Only she can’t go to the police without exposing her own little scam. After everything she’d gone through to get that money – having the baby, hiding out in that house – she’d risk losing it all.’
Quinn frowns, but it’s a thinking frown, not a dismissive one. ‘So you’re saying they covered each other’s tracks? Mutual assured destruction?’
Somer’s got the bit between her teeth now and around the room I can see the thought taking hold. ‘Think about it – the very last thing Vicky would want is the police sniffing round. Both those girls needed to do everything they could to divert attention away from the Frampton Road house. So they make a deal – Pippa agrees to keep quiet for Vicky, if Vicky helps cover up for Pippa. It’s Vicky who helped move the body, hide the car cover, clean up the mess –’
‘Whoa, whoa,’ says Gislingham, leaping to his feet as he rifles through a pile of papers. ‘Shit. Why the fuck didn’t I think of it before.’
He finds the page and looks up, his face pale. ‘That flatmate who gave Pippa her alibi in 2015? The one who said Pippa’d been throwing up that whole morning? Her name was Nicki Veale.’ He looks around, drilling every word. ‘Vicky Neale and Pippa’s flatmate – they’re the same person.’
***
An hour later Everett is looking for a parking place off the Iffley Road. When they divvied up the jobs she persuaded Quinn to let her do a recce of where Pippa was living in 2015. He thought it was the arse-end of the tasks and said so, but Everett has a hunch that it could be the best chance they have to find out the girl’s real name. But she wasn’t about to say that in public, especially in front of Fawley. Or Somer. She’s not envious of Somer, not exactly, but she is getting just a bit too much air time, especially for a uniform PC in a CID inquiry. And what with that and the way she looks, well, you’d be a sack of potatoes not to feel a bit out-shone. Everett tries not to remember her father describing her in exactly those terms when she was a child, and focuses on manoeuvring the Fiat expertly into a space that’s only just longer than the car. Two years living in Summertown has some advantages.
She locks the car and walks up to the letting agent’s. The young man inside is just shutting up shop, but relents and opens the door when she shows him her warrant card. He’s wearing a Manchester United shirt and loose white cotton trousers.
‘You were here last week, weren’t you?’ he says. ‘You still looking for that girl? Vicky something, wasn’t it?’
‘It’s a different girl this time. Do you have the records for the summer of 2015 – for twenty-seven Arundel Street?’
The young man flips open his laptop and scrolls down some files. ‘Yup, what do you want to know?’
‘Did you have a Pippa Walker as a tenant then?’
He scans a list, then, ‘Yes, we have a Walker. Stayed until that October.’
‘Pippa Walker?’
He makes a face. ‘I dunno. My father was running the place then and he only used surnames. That’s why we didn’t have any luck when you were here last time – there wasn’t enough to go on.’
‘But people have to give you ID, when they take a tenancy?’
He flashes her a huge smile. ‘Of course, Constable. We do things properly here.’
‘You don’t by any marvellous chance have copies of what she gave you?’
He makes a rueful face. ‘Probably not. Not this long after. I can have a look, though it may take a while – my father wasn’t exactly an early adopter when it comes to technology. Him and the scanner were in a state of perpetual armed stand-off.’
She smiles. ‘No worries, I can wait.’
He gestures. ‘We have a coffee machine.’
Everett glances at it then shakes her head quickly. ‘I’m fine.’
He grins at her. ‘Good choice. In my opinion, the coffee is rubbish.’
As he goes back through his files, Everett wanders around the office, looking at the sheets of property particulars pinned on the walls and marvelling at the prices even tiny bedsits in this part of town are now commanding. Commanding and getting too, by the looks of it – most have large red stickers saying ‘LET’. A moment later she stops in front of one of them, then gets out her notebook and flips back through the pages. Quinn may have a tablet but humble DCs are still paper-powered. It pisses Gislingham off, all the time.