"Karen, I know this is painful, but I need you to tell me what you know."
Karen stared down at the tissue. "I'm not the one you should be speaking to," she said quietly.
Chapter Forty-Three
"Then who?" Harriet asked, sitting forward on the edge of her chair.
"What's going on here?" The booming voice of Stanley Forder echoed in the hall and made Karen shrink back against her chair. Harriet glanced up at the man who stood in the doorway. He wouldn't, she surmised, have looked out of place on a rugby pitch. His broad shoulders brushed against the door frame as he stepped into the room and Harriet was fairly certain he would have to duck if he didn't want to bump his head on the low hanging light fixture.
"My name is Dr Harriet Quinn." She pushed onto her feet and extended her hand towards the man, who was rapidly turning an unnatural shade of cerise pink.
"I don't care who you are," he said. "You've upset my wife and I come in here to find you badgering my daughter, too? Are you all so inept at your jobs that you feel compelled to bother grieving families?"
"That's not what I'm doing," Harriet said mildly. "As I told your daughter, we've discovered some new information--"
"I don't care what you think you've found," he spoke over her. "I want you to leave my family alone."
"Dad," Karen said, her voice pitched low, but it was at least steady.
"Don't worry, sweetheart, I'll deal with this and then--"
Karen shook her head. "What you like you dealt with Jack Campbell?"
The large man took a step backward as though his daughter had struck him a blow rather that just ask him a question.
"What did you say?"
"You heard me. I might not know everything that happened in the woods that night. You and mum did a good job of shielding me from the worst of it, but I know something happened and now--" Karen's voice broke. "And now Oliver is dead because of it."
"You can't honestly believe..."
"All I know, dad, is that you did something to Jack Campbell, and he never got to go home. And now—and now Oliver. My Oliver." Karen's open palm slapped against the upper part of her chest, the sound echoing in the silence of the room like a gunshot. "Is gone. Dead. Murdered. My beautiful boy is gone and we both know it's because of what you did all those years ago." She squeezed her eyes shut against the tears that had started to course down her cheeks.
"Karen, love, I--"
"Just tell them. Do that much. Tell them what happened so they could find the person responsible for taking my baby away." Karen focused her attention on her father, who had gone deathly pale under the scrutiny of his daughter.
"I--" he started to speak and then shook his head. "We never meant for any of this to happen. We just wanted him to tell us what he'd done with Allison."
"You mean Jack Campbell," Harriet asked, who had until that moment watched the events unfold silently.
"That creep knew something," he said fiercely. "He knew something and he wouldn't tell us."
"He couldn't," Harriet said softly. "If Jack knew something, he wasn't keeping it from you deliberately. It was because he couldn't express it."
Stanley shook his head. "No, you don't understand."
Harriet nodded. "Actually, I do. Jack suffered a brain injury before his birth. He was diagnosed with DiGeorge syndrome which only exacerbated his underlying condition."
"He was a grown man," Stanley said. Horror crept into his voice. "He was a man."
"Physically he was a man," Harriet said. "But mentally, he was still a little boy. A frightened and innocent little boy."
Stanley shook his head. "No, we wouldn't have hurt a child. I would never have--"
"What did you do?" Harriet asked.
"We just wanted to scare him into telling the truth. We took him into the woods, but he wouldn't talk to us."
As Stanley told them what had happened to Jack, Harriet's heart constricted in her chest. It had been a monstrous act, that much she was certain of. But there was no denying that he'd truly believed Jack had been responsible for the disappearance of his daughter. Stanley finished speaking and for a long time, silence filled the space in the room.
"Stanley, why would you think Jack was responsible for Allison's disappearance," Harriet asked.
"I told you why," he said. "He was a creep... We thought he was."
"You keep saying we. Who was there?"
Stanley hesitated. "I'm not sure--"
"We'll find out anyway," Martina said. Harriet glanced over at the DC, but her expression was unreadable.
"Gus Barre, and David Wilkes," Stanley said, but Harriet could tell from the way he stared down at the carpet that there was something else.
"Who else?" She prompted him.
"Graham Taylor, the scouts leader," Stanley said.
"I thought the scout leader was a Graham Mayhew," Martina said. The surname rang a bell deep in Harriet’s mind. It wasn’t the first time she’d heard the surname. She just needed to remember where she knew it from.
Stanley shook his head. "No. Graham Taylor. He led the scouts. His daughter's name was Mayhew. She was born before he married her mother, Sylvia. He was with us that evening. He was the one who'd put the idea that Jack knew something into our heads to begin with."
"Why would he have done that?" Harriet asked, but the germ of an idea had already wormed its way into her mind.
"He knew him better than any of us ever could," Stanley said. "Why wouldn't we believe him..."
"What did he tell you, Stanley?" Harriet knew she was pressing him, but as far as she was concerned she didn't have a choice. They needed the truth.
"He said he'd caught him being in appropriate with the kids on more than one occasion."
"And if that were true, wouldn't he have asked Marjorie to keep Jack away?"
Stanley leaned forward and buried his face in his hands. "He knew things he shouldn't have known," he said. "When we were beating on that boy, Graham said things that--"
Harriet's stomach rolled, leaving her feeling nauseous. "He wanted you to hurt him, didn't he?"
Stanley lifted his face to meet her gaze. "Did I help the person responsible for hurting my Allison?" There was an unmistakable desperation to Stanley's voice that tore at Harriet's heart.
She opened her mouth, but the words wouldn't come. She nodded and watched as the desperation turned to anguish and then internalised rage. Stanley's shoulders began to shake first, and then his entire body started to tremble. "Those things he said Jack did, he was responsible for..." His voice broke and Harriet pushed onto her feet.
She made it as far as the front path and closed her eyes as she turned her face up towards the falling snow.
"I have to arrest him," Martina said from behind her.
"I know." It was all she could say. "We need to get back to the station. The team needs to know about the connection between John Taylor's father and the cold case."
"You think Taylor did this?"
Harriet shook her head. "No, I don't think it was John Taylor."
"Well, Graham Taylor is dead," Martina said. "Cancer remember?"
Harriet nodded. "I need to get to the station."
"The DS Scofield is five minutes out. We can leave them with the FLO and I'll drive you back to the station."
"Thanks," Harriet said.
"I'm the one who should be thanking you," Martina said quietly. "I'm not sure who we would have put all of this together without you."
Harriet said nothing and went to wait in the car as Martina returned to the house.
They made it back to the station in record time, and Harriet made a beeline for Jodie and her group of analysts. She found the red-head in front of a screen. The blue glare gave her an unnatural colour, and the screen was partially reflected in her glasses.
"I need you to look into something for me," Harriet said without preamble.
"Is it pertaining to the case?" Jodie asked, without once lifting her gaze from the screen.
/> "Yes." It wasn't a lie. The cases were all connected, like an intricate spider's web of lies and deceit that had already seen five people lose their lives.
"Go for it," Jodie said, her fingers poised over the keys.
"I need everything you've got on Graham Taylor's daughter." Harriet could feel Martina's attention as she stood behind her.
"Matilda Mayhew," Jodie said. "Daughter of Graham and Sylvia Taylor, formerly Mayhew. Half sister to John Taylor. You're not the first person to ask me to look into her."
"Who else?" Harriet asked.
"DC Green. They interviewed her yesterday. Although they had her listed as 'Tilly'. She volunteers with the scouts and Oliver was in her group for a short while."
"Wait, did you say John Taylor's half-sister?"
Jodie nodded. "John Taylor's mother was Gabriella Taylor. She died when John Taylor was five. He's Graham's son."
Harriet's heart flipped in her chest. "How old would Matilda have been twenty years ago?"
Jodie's fingers flew over the keyboard. “Eleven.”
Harriet nodded and glanced back at Martina. "She would have known the children who disappeared. And she was friends with Jack."
"Matilda spent some time in a mental health facility some years ago," Jodie said, reading something off the screen.
"What for?"
"It doesn't say."
"We need to know what she was diagnosed with," Harriet said. "Can you find out?"
"If it's a matter of record, I can."
"I need to speak to Drew," Harriet said.
"There's something else you need to tell DI Haskell," Jodie said, her voice strained.
Harriet glanced down at the other woman, whose attention was fixed on the screen before her. "What is it?"
"Another boy has gone missing," she said. "An AJ Wilson was reported missing. He's from the same school as Oliver."
"That sounds familiar," Martina said. "I'm sure the boys mentioned the name AJ."
A sinking feeling hit Harriet in the stomach. "Is there any connection between him and the case involving the missing kids twenty-one years ago?"
Jodie gave her a withering look. "I need a little more information than that."
"Use their father's names; David Wilkes, Stanley Forder, Gus Barre?"
The clicking of keys was the only noise in the dark room. "AJ Wilson's mother was the daughter of a Gus Barre..." She paused and scrolled down the screen. "Sister to Gus Barre Jnr who went missing twenty-one years ago." She glanced up at Harriet. "Does that help?"
Chapter Forty-Four
Drew settled into the plastic chair opposite Taylor. The urge to reach across the narrow desk that lay between them just so he could wrap his hands around the other man's throat in order to choke the life out of him was overwhelming. Instead, he settled for folding his arms across his chest.
"Tell me about the shed," Drew said softly.
"Not until you lot tell me what happened before," Taylor said. His complexion had lost the pasty colour from before and now Taylor was ruddy-cheeked, his eyes fever bright and red-rimmed. If Drew didn't know any better, he might have thought Taylor had been crying, but then pieces of shit monsters like him didn't have emotions like that.
"I don't think--"
"We found Oliver Poole's body," Drew said, cutting Melissa off before she could finish. He caught her staring at him from the corner of his eye, but he didn't look in her direction. It was better to ask for forgiveness rather than permission, and this was the kind of situation where they couldn't afford to treat Taylor with kid-gloves. He'd been through all of this before, and he knew the dance only too well. If they gave him an inch, he would take a mile, and Drew wasn't about to let this bastard gain even a millimetre of ground. "You were right," Drew said.
"Right about what?" Taylor asked. Drew watched as the colour slowly drained from the other man's face, causing the red rimming around his eyes to stand out in stark relief.
"You said he was dead, you were right."
"I never said I knew for certain he was dead," Taylor said, and the hitch of emotion in his voice was unmistakable.
"Tell us about the shed."
Taylor shook his head. "No comment."
Drew flipped open the file on the desk in front of him and proceeded to pass the photographs of the evidence they'd found in the shed across the desk to Taylor. Drew didn't think it was possible for him to get any paler, but he was
A knock on the door brought a growl of frustration to Drew's lips, but he swallowed it down when he caught sight of Harriet on the other side of the glass. Pushing onto his feet, he tapped Melissa, and they exited the room together.
"You need to let me speak to him," Harriet said and her tone brooked no argument.
"I don't think you understand how this works," Melissa said sharply. "This is our interview."
"And I'm not trying to take it away from you," Harriet said. Drew could tell from her face that there was something she wasn't saying.
"What is it, what's happened?"
"Another boy has gone missing," Harriet said. Her gaze was unreadable as she met Drew's head on.
"Bollocks," Melissa swore emphatically, stealing the words right out of Drew's mouth.
"That's not all," Harriet said. She sounded so calm and Drew found himself wondering just how she could compartmentalise her feelings so cleanly. It was something he'd never been capable of, and he was almost certain he would never be capable of it, no matter how much he might want to.
"What else could there be?"
"Oliver Poole was the grandson of Stanley Forder." The name sounded oddly familiar, and it took Drew a moment to catch up with her. "The same Stanley Forder who was the father of Allison Forder, younger sister to Karen Poole."
"That's not all," DC Nicoll said, her voice taking Drew by surprise. He'd been so fixated on Harriet that he hadn't even noticed the other woman leaning against the wall. "AJ Wilson is the nephew of Gus Barre Jnr, another of the children who went missing twenty years ago."
"Fuck." The word left Drew’s mouth in a rush of breath. He dropped back against the wall, suddenly feeling as though someone had punched the air out of his lungs.
"So I'm not trying to steal the interview," Harriet said. "But I'm your best chance of figuring out what's going on here because I can guarantee you, John Taylor is wrapped up in all of this, we just don't know how yet."
"I don't think--"
"You're in," Drew said, cutting Melissa off.
"Drew?" Melissa sounded confused as she glanced over at him. "We make a good team, we don't need her to do the job you and I could do in our sleep."
"We can't risk this," Drew said. "We need to know what he knows." He turned his attention to Harriet before Melissa could tug on his guilty conscience anymore than she already had. "You sure you can do this?"
Harriet nodded and smoothed down the front of her shirt. "This is what I do," she said, a faint smile hovered on her lips. "I'm sure I can get him to tell us what we need."
"Then what are we waiting for."
Chapter Forty-Five
Telling Drew a lie, even if it was a white one, didn't sit right with Harriet. But if she'd told him everything she knew regarding Matilda Mayhew, he probably wouldn't have let her through the door. What she did know was far too tenuous, and Drew wouldn't have allowed her to pursue that line of questioning.
"What's she doing here?" Taylor asked. Hostility dripped from his words. Not that Harriet could blame him. People like him, with the kinds of proclivities he had, would not like someone like her. People like Taylor relied on the general public's desire not to see the worst in humanity. It made it easier for them to lie and make it sound convincing. And in some cases they believed the lies themselves.
"I don't want to speak to her," Taylor said, leaning back in his chair with his arms folded over his chest. "I won't speak with her here."
"Tell me about your father," Harriet said, levelling Taylor with her gaze.
"I'm not
saying a thing to you." He spat the words at her.
"Your mother seems to think he acted inappropriately with you." Harriet made a show of glancing down at her notes. "Sorry, Sylvia. We both know she's not your biological mother."
Taylor looked away and shuffled uncomfortably in his seat. "She was as much a mother to me as Gabriella was; more so. I know Sylvia far better than I ever knew my real mother."
"So she's right then," Harriet said. "Your father was inappropriate with you?" Harriet could feel Drew's attention on her, but she ignored it and kept her gaze fixed on Taylor.
"He never touched me."
Harriet smiled grimly. "No, I don't suppose he did," she said softly. "Boys weren't his interest, were they?"
Taylor's gaze flickered up to meet hers, and she saw the truth reflected in his gaze. "No."
"He liked girls," Harriet continued. "Did he like Matilda?"
Taylor shuffled and coughed awkwardly. "No comment."
"Did he hurt her?"
"I said no fucking comment."
"You cared for Oliver, didn't you?"
Taylor started to pick at the edge of the desk. "He was a good lad."
"You wouldn't ever have hurt him," Harriet said gently. Her proximity to Drew made it easy for her to feel him as he stiffened in his chair. It was obvious he didn't like what she had to say, but that couldn't be helped. She would do whatever it took to get the truth from Taylor.
"Of course not." Taylor lifted his gaze to hers.
"Did you love him?"
"I--"
"Your father loved Matilda, didn't he?"
The colour drained from Taylor's face. "It's not the same."
"His love. It hurt her, didn't it? Did she tell you what he was doing..." Harriet trailed off as she saw the flicker of guilt in Taylor's eyes.
"Another boy is missing," Drew said.
Fear filled Taylor's eyes. "Who is it this time?"
"AJ Wilson," Harriet said. She pulled the school picture they had of the teenager from her file. Disgust rolled through her as she noted the way Taylor's eyes fixed on the boy. It only served to confirm her suspicion.
Hunting the Silence: The Yorkshire Murders (DI Haskell & Quinn Crime Thriller Series Book 4) Page 24
