by Nick Louth
‘That means it does not count as consent.’
‘Maybe he just got a treble helping.’ She smiled. ‘A lot more woman than he bargained for! Of course, he had wanted a lot of disgusting sex things that I wasn’t willing to do. But by then of course he was already tied up, so he could hardly contest the matter.’
Gillard could hardly imagine the horror of Dr Chen’s final minutes. ‘And after everything, you had Gary dump him in the Thames.’
She shrugged, a mountainous tremor beneath the nightdress. ‘Who would know?’
‘When did you dream up this idea of revenge against Rollason?’
‘The moment the Hyacinth Trust was notified of his release. I was totally disgusted that it could be allowed, but then I realised Verity would be a great asset. She was reluctant at first, of course. Too professional.’
‘And where is she?’
‘Gone off to Nottingham.’
Gillard had heard enough. ‘Mrs Tilling, investigations are continuing. You are likely to be charged with murder. And you’ll be going to hospital, to get you in shape for a visit to court. They’ll look after you better than Gary can.’
‘I won’t go.’
‘You will. In fact, if you’d had appropriate treatment at the start, proper therapy, exercise and mental health assistance after Robert first disappeared, this festering fantasy of vengeance would never have been necessary.’
‘You have no idea.’
‘Social services will be here soon.’
She flapped a hand dismissively, all varnished nails and chunky rings. ‘I’ve seen them all before. All of them. Mr Ahmed, a consultant from Kingston Hospital, came to visit me last year, to persuade me to go into hospital. He was a bit surprised. “You’ve got a touch on the chubby side, Mrs Tilling.” That’s what he said. Offered me the full à la carte: sleeve gastrectomy, gastric bypass, gastric band, intra-gastric balloon; but I said no. At that time, I was a little below 350 kg. That still exceeds the tolerance on their largest hoist. He looked around and admitted that I had more facilities here than the bariatric ward at his hospital, but he still wanted me in. I said no. Mr Ahmed went away and called in social services to assess me. They undertook a capability assessment, to see if they could section me. Could I look after myself? They could see that I had money and was earning enough to employ two private carers to come three times a week. They saw I already had a specialist bariatric toilet in a wet room, an industrial hoist that will get me from my bed to the wet room and back, the only journeys I have made in more than thirty years. Their only concern was assessing my diabetes and the sores on my legs and feet that refuse to heal. They had noted the fact that three months previously a carer had found maggots in a sore on the back of my left ankle.’ She pulled up the duvet to reveal a leg the size of a side of pork. A hand-sized dressing was taped on the enormously swollen and blotchy limb. ‘It’s a lot better now, but I have acres of eczema and other skin conditions between the folds of flesh. My carers find it extremely hard to keep me clean.’ She dropped the bedclothes back.
Gillard shook his head. ‘If you don’t go to hospital, you’ll die, it’s as simple as that.’
‘No, it’s not as simple as that. I showed my fan mail to the assessor from social services. Like I told her, if I went into hospital, I’d lose it all. My online show. All that affirmation. All that positive mental energy. I’d be depressed, less mobile, and with inferior physical care too. Social services agreed. I was fully capable and there was little they could do for me in hospital that could not be done here. In the end we reached a deal, the NHS and me. They simply stepped up the visits from the district nurse, who comes now once a week instead of once a month.’
Gillard looked again at the photos on the wall. There were many aged portraits of a smiling gap-toothed child, his hair carefully combed, freckles on his face. ‘Is this Robert?’ he asked.
‘Yes.’ Her voice was no more than a whisper.
‘He looks like a nice lad.’
‘You cannot understand a mother’s grief if you have not experienced it. It tears the soul into shreds, hour by hour, day by day, week by week. His father abandoned us a year after Robert disappeared. But a mother has to keep going, to bear the daily pain of waking and recollection, for all eternity, to be there with open arms. Just in case.’
Gillard nodded. He’d seen too many such cases over his career. No mother ever truly recovered.
‘On the first anniversary of Robert’s disappearance, I took to my bed. I told my two remaining children that I would remain here in this room, until he was found, or until I could touch his forehead and bless him on the journey to the great beyond. I would eat, but would not go out into the cruel world that had taken him from me.’ Her voice broke, and she reached again for the oxygen mask. It was a couple of minutes before she was able to continue.
‘You look at me, and I see disgust in your eyes.’
‘It’s not what you look like, Mrs Tilling, it’s what you have done. You could have chosen another path.’
‘But eating, in my confinement, is my only remaining pleasure.’ She laughed, a high tinkling sound quite at variance with the body it came from. ‘Don’t you understand, Detective Chief Inspector, even now? I am grief, made flesh. Only when you see how much of me there is, only when I have been weighed on the scales of anguish, can you measure the depth of pain from which it all comes.’
* * *
Gillard turned off the light, closed the door and returned downstairs, having made only a cursory inspection of the woman’s room. For now he was stumped. This was a woman who could never manage to be a fugitive from justice, or indeed from anything. He could return when he had more information. He was clearly going to need help from medical professionals.
All the computer equipment had been removed from Tilling’s home office and was being ferried in large plastic bags out to waiting police vehicles. ‘What have you got?’ Gillard asked Rob Townsend, indicating the stack of plastic-bagged laptops and computers.
‘It’s too soon to say,’ the research intelligence officer said. ‘He really knows his stuff. A lot of his devices have very strong passwords, but we were lucky to catch one laptop that hadn’t yet shut itself down. So we might be able to find out what we need.’
Gillard beckoned Hoskins outside so that he could talk.
‘Has Gary Tilling said anything?’
‘No. He claims to know nothing about our Dr Chen. But we’ve got his mobile phone now, and we’ll be able to check. There is also a satnav in his car, so we should be able to double-check his movements.’
Gary Tilling was sitting on a sofa giving a statement to a uniformed female officer. He apparently didn’t have much to say, and kept asking if he could go and attend to his mother. The officer looked up at Gillard enquiringly. He called her over and lowered his voice so Tilling couldn’t hear.
‘What’s the mother like? How big is she?’ she asked him, indicating the upstairs room with a flick of her eyes.
‘I promise you have never seen anything like her in your life.’
Gillard started searching his phone contacts. Justice required that the woman be taken to hospital, urgently. It was the only type of custody that would be safe for her. It was beyond his experience, but he guessed he would have to involve the woman’s doctor and care providers. He would ask a family liaison officer to coordinate whatever was required. This was certainly going to be tricky. But before that, he needed to secure the scene.
‘I need to have the room searched thoroughly before we let Tilling up there. That includes the bed itself.’
‘Really?’ asked Hoskins.
‘It’s the perfect place to conceal evidence. I’ll need two female officer volunteers, but we’ll wait until we can get a neutral observer, maybe a district nurse. I’ve got a call in to social services. I just want to make sure that no evidence gets flushed down the loo, chucked out the window or smuggled out. We don’t yet have enough evidence to charge either of them with
the murders, but there’s plenty for the abduction.’
There was one other person who had managed to evade arrest. Verity Winter. Where on earth was she?
* * *
Back at Mount Browne, Gillard was quickly presented with compelling evidence from Gary Tilling’s laptop of his mother’s online mukbang business.
‘It’s not for the faint-hearted,’ Townsend warned.
The production values of the YouTube video were pretty slick, the camera steady and a backdrop projected that made her look like she was in some luxury penthouse apartment, a glorious city nightscape in the background. Mrs Tilling had put on make-up, a wig and jewellery, though she was still in bed. The officers had crowded around to watch the Youtube video, but, after the product introductions had ended and the eating began, almost every detective turned away. The slurping of noodles, the juice running down her chin – it was all too much.
‘What else have we got?’ Gillard asked Townsend.
‘Some finances and bank account stuff. Gary Tilling has done a good job of deleting incriminating material. But there is this.’ The research intelligence officer brought up an early draft of the contract, drawn up by Charon Stichting, that the Taiwanese man had been offered.
‘He paid them £87,000 to be killed by “gradual and protracted intimate suffocation”,’ Townsend said. ‘The bank account details do show that it was paid.’
Gillard looked over Townsend’s shoulder at a PDF of Mrs Tilling’s bank statement. ‘I see that payment, but there are many others for smaller amounts.’
‘Yes. I can’t be sure what they are yet – mukbang maybe – but I’ve asked the banks to forward the counterparties behind these IBAN codes.’
‘Let’s look at the contract again,’ Gillard said. ‘Wouldn’t it have stipulated that he have some kind of proper funeral arrangement afterwards?’
‘Yes. It’s right here. In fact, the breakdown of the quote shows that most of the money the Tillings were paid was to cover arranging for repatriation of the body to Taipei. They saved £25,000 by just dumping him in the Thames.’
Gillard shook his head. ‘Chisellers as well as murderers, eh.’
‘A civil matter,’ Townsend said, looking up at his boss.
‘I can’t quite see it coming to court.’
* * *
Gillard returned to the Tillings’ home to find a considerable press presence outside. One young woman with a microphone pushed it under his nose as he was making his way to the door.
‘Why are the police harassing this disabled lady? A woman who believes she lost her son to a man just released from prison. What have you to say about that?’
The detective brushed past the reporters, and greeted the female uniform who had been posted at the front door. ‘When did this lot arrive?’ Gillard asked her.
‘About half nine this morning, sir. Just to let you know there are two of Mrs Tilling’s regular carers inside, and a manager from social services in Sunbury.’ Gillard thanked her as she let him in. He immediately saw Gary Tilling sitting on the sofa watching daytime TV.
‘How are you doing, Gary?’ Gillard asked.
‘I’ve got loads of work to do and I can’t do any of it because you’ve got my equipment. I don’t understand why.’
‘Two men have been murdered, Gary. If you weren’t your mother’s principal overnight carer, and if she’d agree to anyone else looking after her, I’d have put you in custody yesterday instead of on police bail. Think on that.’ Gillard looked upstairs, where a conversation could be heard on the landing. He climbed up, easing his way past the stairlift.
A dark-haired bespectacled woman in her fifties was talking to two younger women, who from their overalls were clearly from a specialist social care company. The older woman seemed pleased to see him. ‘I’m glad to make your acquaintance, Detective Chief Inspector. I’m Helen Cathcart, head of social services outreach.’
Gillard guided her to a spare bedroom as the two care workers continued with their tasks.
‘Mrs Cathcart, I’m trying desperately to do this by the book, though from everything I’ve heard this particular chapter has not yet been written.’
‘No, indeed, we’re all rather feeling our way along,’ she said. ‘The crucial thing here is that Mrs Tilling is quite within her rights to refuse medical treatment, even though it would undoubtedly be good for her. She passed her capability assessments quite easily. She has Attendance Allowance and some other benefits, but they are not sufficient to cover the cost of two carers. It is only because she is able to continue her self-employed work from bed that she can afford the care she needs. I’m afraid she has constructed rather an elaborate legal construct that makes it hard to prise her from her home.’
‘Well, Mrs Cathcart, I’m going to have to arrest her as we now have most of the evidence we need.’
She gave him a wintry smile. ‘That is an arrest I really have to see.’
‘I don’t even know how I’m going to do it.’
Chapter Thirty-four
Gary Tilling sat in the dock at Staines Magistrates Court looking bewildered. He was the only representative of the Tilling family present for this first stage in the legal process. Leticia Mountjoy, watching from the public seating area, saw him look first to his solicitor, a young woman whose eyes were fixed on the paperwork in front of her, and then roam the room looking for some kind of ally, someone to explain what was happening. His eyes found hers, and Leticia risked a brief smile. He blinked and looked away.
The grizzled stipendiary, who had spent several minutes in close conversation with court officials, looked over his half-moon spectacles at the defendant. ‘I think you are aware, Mr Tilling, that these committal proceedings are not to examine your guilt or innocence. They are merely to ascertain that all the instruments of law and the required evidence are present for the case to be referred to the Crown Court, which in terms of the severity of the crimes alleged is its right and proper venue. It is at this stage that you are required to confirm your name and address.’
After being prompted a second time Tilling did so.
‘Now where is Ms Verity Winter?’ the magistrate asked, looking at the ranks of legal officials at the modern desks in front of him. Two approached him, and there was another whispered huddle around the magistrate’s desk.
‘Mr Tilling,’ the magistrate asked. ‘Are you aware of the whereabouts of your sister?’
‘No, sir,’ he replied.
‘The police seem to think that she took a flight from Heathrow to Buenos Aires several days ago. If you have been in contact with her, Mr Tilling, can I ask you to request that she return immediately? An international arrest warrant has already been issued and the consequences will be much more severe if she seeks to hide from justice.’
The stipendiary turned to address the court. ‘Now, Mrs Poppy Tilling.’ He looked around as if expecting her to magically appear. The clerk of the court leaned across his desk and fiddled with a console in front of him. A large TV screen in one corner of the courtroom flickered into life, revealing a startlingly close-up image of the florid face of Mrs Tilling, in bed. Her hair was neatly arranged in a ponytail, and she was wearing some kind of shapeless leopard-print top that almost filled the screen. A female officer stood at the bedside.
‘Mrs Tilling.’ The magistrate then asked her about the whereabouts of her daughter Verity and repeated his request that she be persuaded to return of her own will.
‘I’ve no idea where she is.’
‘Now, Mrs Tilling. I understand that you have mobility issues. I’d want to ask you to co-operate with those attempting to improve your health to allow for your attendance at Crown Court.’
‘I’ll come to Crown Court if it’s a case about the murder of my son, Robert.’
‘Mrs Tilling, may I remind you that it is not up to you to decide which cases you would wish to attend. This is not, if I may choose a particularly apposite metaphor, a Christmas box of chocolates from which you pic
k only those that appeal most.’ The magistrate permitted himself a small indulgent smile before he continued. ‘You are required to attend in person, and I expect you to make whatever physical adjustments are required to ensure that happens.’
‘I’m not coming unless it’s about Robert,’ she said again. She banged a huge arm right in front of the screen, and the image jumped. ‘I am a victim. I have suffered grief that you would not believe for more than thirty years. I demand justice.’
‘Mrs Tilling, I am sure everyone has the greatest sympathy for your loss. However, you are in no position to make demands or reset the legal agenda. You are accused of three extremely serious offences for which a custodial sentence would on conviction be inevitable. You seem to think that you are able to treat this as something no more serious than dropping a chocolate wrapper in a park.’
‘Then I’m not coming.’
‘You most certainly will attend, Mrs Tilling,’ the stipendiary told her, his face bristling with indignation. ‘You will be seized and brought to face justice, even if you have to be moved with a crane. Your comments are already close to contempt of court.’
The video call was ended and the formalities of the hearing concluded. Leticia watched as Gary was escorted by two burly prison officers out of the courtroom.
* * *
The operation to remove Mrs Poppy Tilling from her home had been a number of days in the planning. A huge crowd had assembled in Linden Avenue to watch the contractors on the cherry picker removing the window from her bedroom and then using angle grinders to cut down through the brickwork to create a space big enough to remove her and her bed. An eight-wheeled crane with a large jib that soared high above the house was standing by. Two uniformed police officers were in her bedroom together with two contractors and a paramedic. Everything seemed to be going fine, even though Mrs Tilling was repeating that she was not going to co-operate and had no intention of leaving the room that she had occupied for over thirty years. Just as the contractors had secured webbing underneath her bed, she decided to wriggle off it. The sight of her in enormous leopard-print pyjamas, lying on the floor, was extraordinary. The paramedics spent a long time trying to persuade her to get back on the bed but she said she had no intention of allowing herself to be removed from her home. She then complained of breathing difficulties and had to be reconnected to her oxygen machine.
