by Alison James
‘Come on… you must have a theory. Your daughter vanishes and then so does your ex, five months later? After – you say – he’d previously attempted to take her.’
‘Oh, don’t worry: I know exactly where he’d go. He’ll have gone back to Spain. He worked in a bar in Torrevieja for a while when he was younger, as a package holiday rep for a bit, then at the Asturias Bar – and he was always banging on about how he wanted go back. Wanted me and Lola to move out there too… said it would be a great childhood for her, growing up in the Mediterranean sun.’ She sucked on her cigarette savagely. ‘But I said no.’
‘Have the police followed that up?’
Michelle curled her lip. ‘They just said they were looking into all relevant lines of enquiry. But they never found anything…’ Smoke escaped from her mouth as she spoke. ‘… Apparently.’
‘But you think Torrevieja could be a good starting point?’
‘Definitely. He’d have taken her there. If it is him that’s done this, and I can’t see who else it would be.’
Rachel waited for Michelle to elaborate, but she simply flicked at her cigarette and stared vacantly ahead.
‘And what about other people who came into close contact with Lola Jade? Other adults in her life – relatives, her friends’ parents, babysitters?’
Michelle shook her head firmly. ‘I never used babysitters. I didn’t like leaving my princess with strangers; I liked her with me. The odd time she needed minding, she’d go to my sister Lisa’s…’ Michelle thought for a moment. ‘I know when she was with Gav, if he needed to go out somewhere he’d leave her with his cousin Tony. Tony and his wife Joyce.’
‘Their surname?’ asked Rachel, pen poised over her notebook.
‘Ingram. They didn’t have kids of their own and they adored Lola. Every time she went to theirs she’d come back with a present. Usually just cheap rubbish.’ Michelle screwed up her nose to indicate distaste.
‘Any chance of a cup of tea?’
‘Sure. Sorry.’ Michelle gave a non-sorry smile as she ground the butt into the ashtray and headed into the kitchen.
‘Okay if I have a look around?’ Rachel called after her.
Michelle was filling the kettle and taking mugs from the cupboard. ‘Course. Go ahead.’
‘Let me just get rid of this.’ Rachel indicated the paper coffee cup, reaching past Michelle to throw it into the kitchen swing bin, before heading back into the sitting room. While her back was turned, she grabbed Michelle’s phone from the table. It was unlocked, so she scrolled quickly through the photos app, taking screenshots of a few with her own phone before heading for the stairs.
Immediately in front of her was Lola Jade’s room, all too familiar from the crime-scene photos. It was bleakly tidy, with toys displayed in regimented rows and her clothes – mostly pink dresses – hanging in the wardrobe on small satin hangers. From the top of the stairs, the landing made an L-shape, with the bathroom immediately to the right of Lola Jade’s room and Michelle’s room at the front, occupying the space over the living room and taking up the entire width of the house. This too was extremely tidy, the frilly cream duvet and pillows neatly arranged, the bedside tables bare of clutter, and dresses and tops ordered by descending length in the wardrobe, shoes arranged by heel height below them.
The landing itself was freshly decorated with a garish wallpaper featuring oversized purple poppies, the sort that was designed with a single feature wall in mind. Looking at it gave Rachel a headache. There was a fourth door, identical to the doors of the two bedrooms and the bathroom. Rachel opened it, releasing a pungent chemical gust of air freshener and detergent, and revealing a shallow storage cupboard stuffed with loo roll, multiple cleaning products and spare carrier bags. There were scented oil plug-ins in the landing sockets, releasing a sickly perfume. She used her own phone to take pictures of everything.
As she came downstairs, Michelle was carrying two mugs of tea back into the living room. ‘I’ve got biscuits, if you want them?’
‘Trying to avoid them.’
Michelle looked Rachel up and down.
‘The knee injury. I’m not burning up as many calories as usual.’
‘Fair enough.’ This was said without any genuine interest.
‘Do you have any other pictures I could see? Anything that might help?’
Michelle took a photo album from the sparsely-filled bookshelves and handed it to her. Inside were pictures dating back to the early days of Gavin and Michelle’s marriage. The wedding shots themselves showed a tanned, good-looking man with a receding hairline, awkward in a cravat, and the bride with a wet-look perm and a shiny white toilet-roll cover of a dress. There were pictures from what looked like a stag weekend, and some of a bare-chested Gavin on a beach next to another tanned and good-looking man.
‘Who’s this?’ asked Rachel, although the two men were so alike she was pretty sure she knew the answer. The dolphin tattoo on Gavin’s left forearm was the only way she could be sure which was him.
‘That’s Gav and his brother Andy. They used to go on lads’ holidays together.’
‘So they’re close?’
‘Yeah. Thick as thieves.’
Then there were pictures of a pregnant Michelle, and Lola Jade’s baby pictures. A few of the three of them on family holidays, all looking miserable despite the sunshine.
‘Actually, I think I’ll have that biscuit after all. It’s been a while since breakfast.’
While Michelle was in the kitchen again, Rachel took out her phone and snapped images of the pages that featured Gavin and Andy.
‘I can’t find the biscuits, sorry.’
Michelle was back in the room, snatching the photo album from Rachel and holding it defensively against her chest.
‘I just needed a picture of Gavin. So I can show people who we’re looking for.’
She relaxed her grip a fraction. ‘Oh. Okay. Only he doesn’t look like that now. He’s got less hair.’
‘Well. If you could send me an up-to-date photo, that would be helpful.’
Michelle narrowed her eyes. ‘You said you were from the NCA. Does that cover other countries?’
Rachel inclined her head. ‘There are a few of us that used to be Interpol, before the NCA took it over. I happen to be one of them. But we cover cases on the mainland UK too. Wherever our expertise is needed, really.’
‘So you’re going to go to Spain, right?’
‘It’s something we’ll be looking into, certainly. Anyway, thanks for your time today – it was helpful.’
Rachel stood up, giving Michelle her cue to stub out the cigarette and walk her to the front door. Outside, WPC Nicholls was sitting bolt upright in the patrol car, munching on a ham sandwich.
‘Find anything?’ Rachel enquired as she climbed back into the passenger seat.
WPC Nicholls handed her phone to Rachel and she examined the shots of the inside of Michelle’s bin. ‘Interesting.’
‘Is it?’
‘It certainly is. Do me a favour and send them to me, please.’
* * *
‘How d’you get on?’ Brickall enquired when she was back at the NCA building.
‘Not sure.’ Rachel gave a cursory debrief of the visit, then uploaded the photos she and WPC Nicholls had taken to her Ikena Forensic software and examined them in greater detail. Every picture tells a story: wasn’t that what they always said? Whoever ‘they’ were.
She washed down some tramadol with a can of Coke and turned back to the Lola Jade file. She flicked through it until she found the original MG11 form recording Gavin Harper’s witness statement.
My name is Gavin Harper. I live at Flat B, 209 Carlisle Road, Eastwell, Surrey. On the afternoon of 10 May, I received a phone call from my brother asking if I knew about Lola Jade, who’s my six-year-old daughter. I said I didn’t know what he was talking about, and he told me that he’d heard on the local news that she was missing. I tried to phone my wife, Michelle Harper, but I couldn�
��t get through. I drove over to the family home, 57 Willow Way, but I wasn’t allowed to see or talk to Michelle. Her sister, Lisa Urquhart was there and said she was too upset. I wanted to join in the search for Lola Jade, but I was told it was best to let the experts get on with it. I was told I should go home and wait there until the police could come and speak to me.
It’s true that relations between my wife and I had broken down and that we were arguing over custody and my access to Lola Jade. I know nothing at all about her disappearance.
Signed by: Gavin Thomas Harper
Witnessed by: DS 2394 Rajavi
With the photos the CSO had taken of Lola’s bedroom spread out in front of her, Rachel then reread the entire forensic report, including the lab results that were stapled to it.
And then stopped in her tracks with a sharp intake of breath.
She had assumed the DNA found belonging to Gavin Harper was hair or skin; something not unusual for a parent frequently in their child’s bedroom. But it wasn’t. A brief typed sentence confirmed something she’d missed. The sample found was seminal fluid.
Five
At 6.15 the next morning, Rachel was out of bed and climbing into a sports bra, a vest and a pair of loose athletics shorts that she used for running in hot weather.
Howard was waiting for her at the gym, standing next to the pull-up bars.
‘Up you jump, Rachel,’ he said, nodding in their direction.
‘Howard, I can’t. I don’t have enough upper-body strength.’
‘Exactly why you need to work on it.’
Inhaling hard and holding her breath, Rachel bent her knees and mustered as much aerial projection as she could, but only succeeded in banging her wrist on the bar. Howard gripped her round the waist and lifted her up as though she weighed no more than a child. She hesitated, savouring the moment of weightlessness, then grabbed hold. He let go, and she dangled awkwardly.
‘All right, now pull! Pull hard!’
Rachel managed to hoist herself a couple of inches higher, but then lost her grip and fell, landing awkwardly at Howard’s feet and sending a painful shock through her damaged knee joint. She grimaced.
‘Come on: again! You need to keep trying.’
‘I want to box.’ She was aware that she sounded whiny.
‘Do this, then you can box. You need to work on your dead hang. Literally hang like a dead man. Person,’ he corrected himself. ‘If your lats and chest are tight, you’re going to damage your shoulders and spine when you’re boxing. Hang! Like you’re dead!’
Thirty sweaty minutes and ten pull-ups later, Howard allowed her to give the punch ball a good beating. She headed to work with aching arms and shoulders but a glow of satisfaction.
* * *
‘Your face is as red as a beetroot,’ observed Brickall. ‘Early-morning shag, was it?’
Rachel shot him a warning glance.
‘Okay! How did you get on with the lovely Michelle then?’
Rachel shook her head slowly. ‘Not sure. She’s definitely buying into the possibility that Gavin Harper’s disappearance and Lola’s are related. And I did find out that he’s very close to his brother, Andy, so I reckon we talk to him next.’
‘Wasn’t he interviewed?’
Rachel shook her head. ‘They almost certainly spoke to him informally, but there’s no MG11 on the file. See if you can track him down.’
Half an hour later, Brickall slapped his desk in frustration. ‘I’m getting fuck-all here. According to the electoral roll, the only Andy Harper in the Eastwell area is sixty-eight. So he can’t be Gavin Harper’s brother.’
‘Then we widen the search.’
Rachel scoured local newspaper reports and social media but drew a blank, apart from the Facebook account of a fourteen-year-old Andy Harper.
‘See!’ said Brickall triumphantly. ‘The man doesn’t exist.’
‘Perhaps he’s moved out of the area. Try the General Register Office.’
Brickall frowned. ‘That’s only going to provide a record of his birth, not where he lives now.’
‘Right now, it’s all we’ve got.’
After an hour and a half of trawling the General Register database, Brickall found a handful of Andrew Harpers born between 1970 and 1990, but none of the family details matched Gavin Harper’s. ‘Waste of bloody time,’ he grumbled, and went off to find lunch.
Rachel went back to the drawing board, searching online articles about the case. There was an interview, in one of the many hysterical Lola Jade pieces, with Gavin Harper’s father.
LOLA GRANDAD SPEAKS OUT: ‘My son is no killer.’
The photo was of an overweight man with iron-grey hair and a jowly face that would once have been handsome. The gutter journalist writing the piece mentioned Terry Harper agreeing to meet him in his local pub, and the photo showed him standing outside it. Rachel googled it. The Hand and Flowers, Whiteley. She then checked the electoral register and found Terry’s address on a housing estate in Whiteley, a few miles from Eastwell.
Brickall wandered back into the office with a slice of pizza and a can of Coke.
Rachel shook her head vigorously as he went to sit down. ‘You can eat that in the car. We’re off to talk to Lola Jade’s grandfather.’
* * *
Terry Harper was wary, which she had expected. He was a short man, so short that even Brickall loomed over him. The three of them filled the cramped hallway of his modest bungalow.
‘How much will I get paid?’ he asked, when she told him they wanted to talk about Lola’s disappearance.
‘Paid?’
‘By your paper?’
‘We’re not journalists,’ she corrected him. ‘We’re police officers. Working in crime investigation support.’
Terry tutted at this, but led them through into a small, over-furnished living room. There were family photos on display, including one of Gavin and Michelle’s wedding; the bride resplendent in her shiny meringue.
Rachel poised herself gingerly on a Dralon armchair, decked out with an antimacassar, that reminded her of her mother’s house. Brickall took the sofa.
‘I’m going to come straight to the point, Mr Harper,’ he said. ‘Do you know where Gavin is? Or why he’s disappeared?’
He shook his head vehemently. ‘Honest to God, I don’t. I mean, I’ve tried phoning him, obviously, but his mobile’s disconnected. All I’m hoping—’
‘Do you think he has Lola Jade with him?’ Rachel leaned forward and engaged eye contact.
Terry hunched his shoulders in a helpless gesture. ‘I mean, he must have, mustn’t he?’
Rachel looked at him sharply. ‘Why do you say that, Terry?’
He shrugged. ‘It’s just the obvious explanation. Why else would he do a runner like that? But he wouldn’t hurt her, I know that. He wouldn’t hurt a hair on that precious kiddie’s head.’
Rachel thought back to the DNA sample found in Lola’s room. ‘How was her relationship with her dad? Did she enjoy spending time with him?’
‘She adored him. Adores him,’ he corrected himself.
‘So there were no… issues between them?’ Rachel was aware that she was pussyfooting, but she couldn’t quite bring herself to ask if he thought his son was abusing his own daughter.
Terry shook his head. ‘To be fair, there was that time when Michelle reported him to the police for not taking her back on time. But he had his reasons,’ he added darkly.
Rachel raised her eyebrows.
‘Husband-and-wife stuff, you know. She likes playing games, does our Michelle.’
Brickall shot Rachel a look.
‘Go on,’ Rachel said to Terry.
‘Their relationship was what you might call volatile.’
‘Michelle seems to think Gavin could be in Spain,’ Brickall interjected. ‘Do you think that’s true?’
‘Could be. He’s spent time over there, you know, speaks some Spanish, so I suppose it would be relatively easy for him.’
Terry looked confused. ‘My other son? I’ve only got the one. Gavin.’
It was Rachel’s turn to look confused. ‘What about Andy?’
The penny dropped, and Terry’s face relaxed into a smile. ‘Ah, Andy! Andy’s not mine, he’s my ex-wife’s kid. He and Gav are half-brothers, you know? Pat and I split when Gavin was a nipper, and she remarried soon after and had a couple more kids: Andy and Karen.
‘Ah, I see.’ Rachel smiled back. That would explain their singular failure to track down Andy Harper. ‘Michelle showed me photos and they were so alike, I just assumed…’
‘They both look like their mother.’
‘So Andy’s surname?’ asked Brickall.
‘Whittier. Andy Whittier.’
* * *
‘Easy to find someone in 2017 when you’ve got the name right,’ mused Rachel as Brickall drove them back along the main road that led back towards London. ‘I’ve just gone into Facebook and found him right away.’ She held up her phone. ‘If this is correct, then Andy Whittier’s still living in the Eastwell area.’
‘Bloody hell, does that mean you want me to turn round?’
Rachel shook her head. ‘We could get his home address from the PNC, but right now he’s probably going to be at work, not at home.’
‘His employment status will be on Facebook too, dummy!’
Rachel checked, and sure enough it was. ‘According to his profile, Andy works at JBH Distribution Ltd,’ she read out to Brickall, then broke into a grin. ‘It supplies building and construction materials. And conveniently, the address is London Road, Whiteley. We just passed it about quarter of a mile back.’
Swearing under his breath, Brickall executed a sharp U-turn.
The receptionist at JBH explained that there were two shifts: early, from 7.30 until 4.00, and late, from 11 till 7.30. Andy Whittier was on an early that day. It was now 3.30, so they parked outside and waited.
