by Alison James
‘So, I wanted to start by asking you about these.’ Rachel pointed to the bags from Willow Way, which had been brought into the room. ‘For the purposes of the tape, I’m pointing to exhibits HAR/16/232 and HAR/16/233.’
Michelle gave a good-natured shrug. ‘What is there to tell, really? I went back to the house to pick up my post and tidy round and I decided to have a bit of a clear-out.’
‘This is more than a bit of a clear-out,’ interjected Brickall. ‘This is most of the stuff from your daughter’s room.’
Michelle frowned, but her tone remained level, reasonable. ‘I wouldn’t say it was all of it. There’s still stuff in her wardrobe. I just find it hard, you know, to have so many reminders.’ She bit her lip, which was wobbling decorously, and pulled a tissue out of her bag.
‘All right then, what if Lola Jade is found and comes home wanting her stuff? I imagine she would want her stuff.’ Rachel took a swig of coffee, wincing at the jackhammer behind her temples.
‘I’ll get her all new, of course. I get her new stuff all the time. Got her new stuff,’ she corrected herself, glancing down and inspecting her manicure. ‘Kids grow out of clothes and shoes anyway. She’s still growing.’
‘So you didn’t chuck her clothes and toys because you know she’s not coming back?’
‘Definitely not.’ Michelle was firm, and quite unruffled. ‘I’m still hoping you’ll find her. You know, one day.’
One day. This struck Rachel as an odd choice of words, but she decided to change tack. ‘Can we talk about the funds raised on the JustGiving page.’
‘It’s to help find Lola Jade.’
‘Obviously,’ said Brickall. ‘But why would you need to withdraw £30,000 in one go? In cash.’
‘Someone said to me I should hire a private investigator.’
‘Really?’ Rachel checked her notes. ‘A few days after Lola disappeared, when the police investigation was still in full swing? Wouldn’t that be something you would do when other lines of enquiry had failed?’
Michelle narrowed her eyes defensively, but Rachel could tell she was trying hard not to seem truculent. ‘All I know is I was desperate. And when you’re desperate, you’re going to try anything.’
‘So who was the PI?’ demanded Brickall. ‘And how much did you pay him.’
‘He’s called Mike Booker. I found him on the internet. I paid him fourteen grand, but it was a total waste of money. He was useless.’
‘And the rest of the money?’
‘I’ve still got it. Of course.’
‘Not according to this. For the purpose of the tape, I’m showing Michelle exhibit HAR/16/219.’ Brickall showed her the log from the second search of 17 Jubilee Terrace. ‘Nothing written on here about a bloody big bag of twenties.’
Michelle scowled at him, but kept the same level, reasonable tone. ‘I don’t keep it at my sister’s, obviously. It’s at the salon where I work, locked in the safe.’
‘And you’d be happy to let us verify that?’
Michelle smiled sweetly. ‘Of course.’
‘And what did you intend to do with the rest of the cash? Why take out 30,000 if the investigator was only charging you fourteen?’
‘I was afraid he might get going with something… you know, find some proof or whatever, and then say he’d run out of money. I thought it was best to have the other fourteen grand ready, you know: in case.’
So plausible. So reasonable. Rachel smiled calmly. ‘I thought you said the investigator charged fourteen thousand? That would leave another sixteen.’
For the first time, Michelle lost her composure, picking repeatedly at her right thumbnail with her forefinger. ‘Booker could have charged more; I honestly can’t remember the details.’
‘Such a big sum of money, and for something so important: you’d think you’d remember.’ Brickall folded his arms across his chest in a textbook ‘don’t believe you’ tell.
‘I can’t remember stuff like that: my head’s all over the place!’ Michelle folded her head into her hands and started to cry; jagged breathy sobs. She straightened up and dabbed her face with the tissue. ‘You’ve no idea how awful this is for me. It’s literally a living nightmare. I just want my princess back, my little princess angel.’
The sobs were met with silence, and petered out. Michelle sniffed and raised her head, groping again for the tissue, which this time she used to dab at her nose. Her eyes, Rachel noticed, were completely dry.
Nineteen
The following morning, Rachel’s mobile rang for a third time, and for the third time the display said No Caller ID.
She had ignored the first two calls, but this time she answered it. There was an almost-silence, the kind that betrays the fact that someone is listening on the other end of the line but has no intention of speaking.
‘Hello?’
No response. She cut the call and placed the phone face down on the table, switched to silent mode.
She was spending the first half of the morning working at home, which should have been a luxury. Instead she was made irritated and on edge by this intrusion. Brickall was in Tinworth Street making a start on tracking down Michelle Harper’s PI, and they had arranged to meet up later and head back to Eastwell to check the safe at her place of work.
Once the previous day’s hangover had receded, some exercise had been in order. Before sitting down with her laptop and a large mug of coffee, she had been for a run over Tower Bridge and back. Alone. She had cancelled her training session with Howard with a craven five-word text.
Sorry, can’t make this morning.
Yes, probably she would have to face him again at some point, but not yet. Not today.
The message board on Find Lola Jade was her destination of choice this morning. Slowly, painstakingly, she read through all the comments. Most of them were anodyne displays of emotional support with emojis to match, or criticisms of the police. Michelle’s cheerleader-in-chief seemed to be Stacey Fisher, who agreed with everything that she wrote on the page (which wasn’t much) and leapt to her defence at every turn. Then, posted a few weeks earlier, during Rachel’s extended stint in Portugal, was the following:
If you ask me, the mum knows far more about this than she’s letting on.
The name of the account was simply ‘TruthTella’.
A few days later, TruthTella cropped up again.
It’s no coincidence police start by looking at the family, it’s always the person who’s closest to the victim.
The poster was eloquently shouted down by Stacey Fisher.
You don’t know what your talking about you slag!!
Rachel printed off the comments feed and showed it to Brickall as he wove expertly through traffic, sighing. ‘Why don’t we just move to Eastwell: save ourselves the commute?’
He glanced at the printout while they were idling at a red traffic signal.
‘Interesting. And shall I tell you what else is interesting? That Mike Booker guy.’
‘Doesn’t exist?’
‘Oh, he exists all right. But the phone number on his website is out of date, and when I visited his registered office in Tulse Hill, it was all locked up. I shoved my card through the letter box, but the place looked dead as the proverbial donkey.’
Michelle greeted them at the Happy Nails salon as though they were merely enquiring about an unpaid parking ticket. She was wearing a pink beautician’s tunic and had her hair tied back in an elaborate fishtail plait. Her manner was relaxed, friendly even.
‘Come through to the back office,’ she said, then asked, ‘Can I get you anything? Coffee? Herbal tea? Water?’ As though they were there for a pedicure.
‘If we could just see the safe, please.’ Rachel was still surfing the tail end of the martini hangover, and not in the mood to make nice. Brickall, on the other hand, was fascinated by the sample nail-colour wheels, holding the finger-shaped palettes over his own nails one by one.
Michelle unlocked the safe and pulled out a l
arge manila envelope containing bundles of twenty-pound notes with an ATM slip wrapped round them. The date and the amount – thirty thousand pounds – matched her bank account record and the remaining cash added up to fourteen thousand pounds.
‘Did you get a receipt from Mike Booker?’ asked Brickall.
She shook her head. ‘I never thought to ask for one. My head was all over the place at the time. Wasn’t thinking straight.’
‘And where did you meet him?’
‘At his office.’
‘Which was?’ Rachel asked.
‘In Tulse Hill,’ Michelle said, without missing a beat. ‘On Norwood Road.’
‘Go by yourself?’
‘Course not. I was a basket case. Kevin drove me. Lisa’s other half.’
‘Fucking hell, she’s a slippery one,’ Brickall muttered as they left the salon, his tone betraying a grudging admiration. ‘You think you’ve got her cornered, and she comes up with the answers.’
‘Speaking of answers,’ said Rachel, tilting her head and scanning the street, ‘this might provide some.’ She pointed to a CCTV camera on the frontage of a newsagent opposite called Bangla Stores. Its lens was trained on the nail salon. ‘Let’s round up what they have, and then I think we have to get back to the good old-fashioned plod work Patten requested. Talking to witnesses. Including our pal Gavin, who’s up for sentencing tomorrow.’
Her phone buzzed in her pocket. No Caller ID. She cut the call in disgust.
‘Your ex again.’
‘I doubt it,’ said Rachel, very much fearing that it was.
* * *
Joanne Keen, whom Michelle claimed bore her a sizeable grudge, was at the top of Rachel’s interview hit list. Followed by Lisa Urquhart’s neighbour, Kirsty Wade, although she’d already been interviewed and not had much of interest to say.
Joanne Keen lived in a pin-neat executive detached and looked like a suburban Stepford Wife, in catalogue-fresh leisure wear and a neat bob without a single stray hair.
Her feisty manner belied her bland appearance. ‘The woman is a psycho,’ she said firmly, as she set down matching mugs of coffee on a dust- and smear-free glass coffee table. ‘When I heard about what happened to her daughter I wasn’t that surprised, to be honest.’
Rachel sipped the coffee gratefully while Brickall homed in on the biscuits.
‘Don’t get me wrong,’ Joanne went on quickly, smoothing an imaginary crumb from her top. ‘I’m not saying she’d hurt her. That girl was the centre of her universe: she adored her.’
‘So why weren’t you surprised?’ Rachel pressed her.
Joanne sighed. ‘I don’t know… It’s hard to put into words. It’s just that she thrived on drama, you know? There was always something going on with her. Danny says she’s the sort of person who would start a fight in an empty room.’
‘Danny’s your old man?’ asked Brickall through a mouthful of shortbread.
‘That’s right. He put in some kitchen units for the Harpers, only they refused to pay him because Michelle claimed one of the units was crooked, only actually it was their floor that was uneven. Danny said it was because they had subsidence. Anyway, that’s what I mean. About Michelle. She could always find something to kick off about.’ Joanne gave a triumphant smile.
‘She mentioned you when we asked if she had enemies,’ Rachel said, unable to resist a smile.
Joanne made a snorting sound. ‘Oh, come on! As if we’d have anything to do with taking her daughter!’ She indicated the immaculate sitting room. ‘I mean, why would we? Not only have I never had so much as a speeding fine in my life, but Danny’s business is doing fantastic. We’ve just moved into our dream home. We’re happy together, planning another baby. Okay, yes, I couldn’t stand the woman, but I wasn’t alone in that. Most of the mothers at school felt the same.’
‘So there was a bit of a dust-up at the school gates.’ Brickall rubbed the biscuit crumbs from his fingers. ‘Michelle claims you threatened her. Like to tell us about that?’
‘She was the one who got physical,’ Joanne protested, the colour rushing hotly to her cheeks, ‘She grabbed me hard. Really hurt me. She may not look it but she’s pretty strong. I was just trying to defend myself. And when I said we were going to get her back, I was only talking about getting our money from them. Danny was planning on taking them to the small claims court.’
‘And did he?’
Joanne shook her head. ‘She paid up after that, like nothing had happened. Like I said, she’s a nutter. When Danny was working round there, he said that Michelle and Gavin had the most horrendous fights. And he said when they fought it was Gavin who would get upset. She would just laugh at him, all cold; didn’t give a crap about his feelings.’
‘Did it get physical between them?’
Joanne considered this. ‘I’ve only got what Danny told me to go on, but apparently he would chuck stuff and shout, but when she snapped she would fly at him and actually hurt him. And I heard on the grapevine when they split that Gavin was going for custody. But now, obviously…’ She gave a rueful shrug, to indicate that things had changed.
‘I can’t see Little Miss Perfect there being our criminal mastermind somehow,’ said Brickall ten minutes later as he drove them to Jubilee Terrace.
‘Agreed. That would involve messing up her outfit… Interesting corroboration, though.’
‘Patten’s after us for more than corroboration. All we’ve got to show for our efforts is a fucking great bucket of circumstantial. Not good enough.’
Kirsty Wade’s mother-in-law answered the door at 19 Jubilee Terrace. She was minding the youngest while the child napped, Kirsty having popped out to do a grocery shop. Rachel told Mrs Wade Senior that they would wait, and they sat in the car, both idly flicking at their phone screens. Like a teenager unable to stop herself from checking her social-media status, Rachel was drawn again to the Find Lola Jade message board.
‘Ooh,’ she said out loud, even though Brickall was not paying attention. ‘Look at this! TruthTella’s posted again!’
‘Who the fuck’s TruthTella?’
‘Remember – the troll on the Lola Jade Facebook site. I showed you the comments page… “Why doesn’t someone ask Michelle Harper about her boy?”’
‘Let’s have a look.’ Brickall took her phone, frowning at the message. ‘Whoever it is presumably knows about the cot-death baby. Gavin Harper’s our next stop: we need to get him to talk about it.’
Kirsty Wade returned, and, while she unpacked bags of oven chips, sliced bread and cheese strings, chatted happily enough about what she knew of Michelle. She had seen her very rarely since she had gone to stay with her sister, just the occasional glimpse as she came in or out of the house. She would acknowledge Kirsty but they didn’t really speak. Kirsty was, however, on good terms with Lisa and the two of them took turns to take and collect their children from the nearby primary school: Overdale Infants and Juniors. All the children from the neighbouring streets tended to walk together in a group.
‘Not especially helpful,’ grumbled Brickall as they headed north again. ‘Time to go and cheer on our mate Gav.’
* * *
Gavin Harper was being sentenced at Croydon Crown Court, and Rachel and Brickall slipped into the public gallery just as his case was called.
He did, after all, have a very good barrister, who made a meal of Gavin’s grief and anguish over Lola Jade. The judge appeared to take heed of this mitigation and only handed down eighteen months in prison for the theft of the rhodium and six months for the passport fraud, to be served concurrently. A lenient sentence in light of the value of the goods, and the time he had already served on remand would be taken into account.
‘I’d rather barbecue my own head than spend any time inside,’ Brickall said to Rachel as they walked down to the holding cells in the basement of the court building. ‘But I reckon Harper’s a lucky beggar.’
‘On this occasion, I agree,’ she said, pleased to find she could n
ow keep up with the ever-springy Brickall without limping. ‘Strictly speaking he was looking at four— Oh Christ.’
She had switched off her mobile while she was in court, and now turned it on to find four missed calls from No Caller ID. It rang again in her hand.
‘You need to sort that out,’ observed Brickall. ‘Have a word with whoever it is.’
Gavin Harper was sitting on a slatted bench in a tiny open-fronted cell, waiting for transport to arrive and take him back to High Down. Now that he had been sentenced, he would eventually be moved to a lower-category prison. He seemed calm and composed.
‘I’m just glad that Andy’s okay,’ he told them when they asked how he was bearing up. Andy Whittier had been given a suspended sentence two weeks earlier, and his employers had very generously allowed him to return to work.
Rachel pressed her hand briefly on Gavin’s shoulder, then sat down beside him on the bench. ‘I want you to know that we’re still offering operational support to Surrey Police while they’re looking for Lola Jade,’ she said. ‘But I also need to ask you something. You mentioned your son, Oliver, in relation to Michelle’s conduct as a mother. What did you mean by that?’
A look passed across his face; one she was unable to fully decipher, but which had elements of sadness, anger and despair.
‘They said it was just one of those things.’ He spoke quietly, looking at his prison trainers. ‘They said there was nothing we could have done differently. It’s just something that happens sometimes.’
‘On the certificate, the cause of death was “unascertained”. I understand that pathologists sometimes put that if they’re not convinced it was Sudden Infant Death Syndrome.’
Rachel let the observation hang there. Gavin adjusted his position to avoid the possibility of eye contact. ‘Look, I don’t know for sure what happened. But the police… they acted like they were suspicious that Michelle had something to do with it. I thought that was a bunch of crap at the time. Just something they had to investigate. Michelle and I… we were both really upset, we just showed it in different ways. I’d lost my son; I needed to grieve for him. Michelle wanted to heal the wound by having another kid. It was only years later, when I’d actually got my head straight, that I started to wonder. When our marriage was breaking down and she was acting like a complete psycho… it got me thinking back to the way she’d acted when Olly was born.’
