by Cara Hunter
GQ: The convenience store on Cherwell Drive has supplied us with their till receipts for the morning of April 1st, so we have confirmed that your client purchased milk at 9.16.
DO: Which means he couldn’t possibly have committed the assault on Faith Appleford. Have you had the results of the forensic tests on his car?
GQ: We have.
DO: And? For heaven’s sake, Constable, this is like drawing teeth.
GQ: There is no trace of either Faith Appleford or Sasha Blake in Mr Scott’s vehicle.
GS: [slamming his hands on the table]
There – what did I tell you – I had nothing to do with it –
DO: In that case, perhaps you could explain what on earth we are doing here?
GQ: This is in relation to another incident. One that took place some days before Sasha died.
GS: I don’t know what you’re talking about.
GQ: Where were you on the morning of Saturday 17th March, Mr Scott, around 10.45?
GS: I have no bloody idea.
GQ: Are you sure? You don’t remember being on Walton Street that morning? That stretch along by the Blavatnik building? Because we have a witness who says you were.
* * *
Adam Fawley
9 April 2018
12.17
When I push open the door, Somer is already there, watching on the video screen.
‘Sorry, I didn’t realize anyone was in here.’
I shouldn’t be in here either, as I’m sure Somer knows. She looks as if she’s tempted to say something but evidently decides against it. I move closer to the screen and frown a little.
‘It’s just Quinn and Baxter doing the interview? Didn’t Gallagher want to be in on this?’
I glance back at her and realize she’s gone very red. ‘Oh,’ she says, ‘didn’t DI Gallagher say?’
‘Say what?’
‘We ruled Scott out. There was no DNA in his car – either from Faith or Sasha. It wasn’t him.’
I turn back to the screen so she can’t see my face. I know Gallagher didn’t do it deliberately but no one likes being made to look like a prat. Not in front of their own team. My team. Not hers; mine. The one I’m going to have to carry on running, long after she’s hauled her wretched stack of files back to Major Crimes.
‘I’m sure she meant to tell you, sir. It’s just, well, things got a bit crazy this morning.’
‘It’s fine, Somer. Really.’ But I don’t turn to look at her. And I’m not going to. Not until I feel the heat on my face subside. But then I realize what’s quite literally staring me in the face and turn back to her again.
‘Sorry, I don’t get it. If Gallagher’s ruled Scott out, why are you bothering to interview him at all?’
She holds my gaze this time. ‘DI Gallagher may want to charge him with stalking.’
I frown. ‘Even though the person he stalked is dead? That’s not going to be easy to prove.’
‘I know, sir, but she’s worried he’ll do it again. And given that he’s a teacher –’ She shrugs. ‘DI Gallagher’s hoping that what Mrs Parker told us might be enough to persuade the CPS it’s worth a try.’
All of which makes sense. But the ‘us’ is still painful. Because I’m not part of it, even though it was me Victoria Parker came to see. It’s them and me right now, not ‘we’.
Somer turns back to the screen and sighs. ‘But even with a witness it’s going to be yet another case of he said/she said.’
I’m still watching the screen.
‘Give the Blavatnik a call,’ I say slowly. ‘And ask them about their CCTV.’
* * *
GQ: So, do you remember now, Mr Scott?
GS: I suppose I may have been there. I shop in Jericho quite a lot.
GQ: Like I said, this was outside the Blavatnik building. You know where I’m talking about, right?
GS: Of course I do –
DO: What relevance does this have, Officer?
AB: Our witness saw Mr Scott outside the building that morning. He was sitting in his car.
DO: There’s no law against sitting in your own car. Or was he on a yellow line, is that it? You’ve run out of other options so you’re resorting to minor parking infractions?
GQ: According to our witness, Sasha Blake was also on Walton Street that morning. But you already knew that, didn’t you, Mr Scott?
GS: I told you – I go there quite often at the weekends.
GQ: Our witness was in a coffee shop opposite the Blavatnik, waiting to meet her daughter. She was at a window seat and she remembers seeing a car just like yours parked on the other side of the road. And let’s face it, we’re not talking about a bog-standard Ford Mondeo here, are we? Your car is extremely distinctive.
DO: But it’s not unique – was your witness able to identify who was driving? Because I have to tell you, I very much doubt it.
GQ: Oh, she can identify him all right. Because she’s met him before, more than once. He teaches her daughter.
DO: [pause]
All the same –
GQ: So let’s try the question again, shall we, Mr Scott? Where were you on the morning of Saturday 17th March?
* * *
Adam Fawley
9 April 2018
12.56
‘They sent the footage over straight away,’ says Somer as she opens the digital file on her laptop and navigates to the right place. ‘Baxter went seriously gadget-geek when he saw it.’
And I can see why. The images aren’t just high-res, they’re full colour; you can actually see people’s features, the looks on their faces. The camera is angled down over the broad concourse in front of the Blavatnik building and the stretch of Walton Street immediately opposite. There’s a time code on the bottom left of the screen; the date is 17:03:18.
Somer presses play and forwards to 10.04. A couple of students are talking animatedly near the Blavatnik doors. On the opposite pavement, an elderly man is pushing a tartan shopping trolley. He’s almost bent double, his head twisted to one side so he can see where he’s going. And in the coffee shop, Victoria Parker is queueing up for a coffee before taking a seat on the bench in the window. She gets out her phone and starts tapping the screen, glancing up every few seconds to scan the road. At 10.14, a pale blue Morris Traveller pulls in on the opposite side of the street. The driver stops the car, but he doesn’t get out. He looks up and down the street then opens a magazine.
‘The latest edition of Recreational Stalking, no doubt,’ I mutter darkly.
Somer glances up but doesn’t say anything.
She fast-forwards the footage again, then stops when we see a girl approaching from the left-hand side.
‘It’s Sasha,’ says Somer. ‘Looks like she must have come from the centre of town.’
We watch as the girl crosses the road by the coffee shop, hitching her pink satchel over her shoulder as she goes. She’s wearing a fringed jacket, a beanie and a pair of black ankle boots. At this distance, and with her hair under the hat, she looks unnervingly like Somer, which judging from her face, isn’t lost on Somer either. Victoria Parker looks up, and I know that what she told us was absolutely true: she did see Sasha that day, and she did see Graeme Scott.
We rewind and watch it again, and then again. Staring at Sasha as she dodges the traffic and heads straight into the Blavatnik building, disappearing out of view directly beneath the camera. And each time we run it we can clearly see the man in the car lower his magazine and stare intently at the girl. A few moments later Isabel, Leah and Patsie appear from the same direction as Sasha and stop outside the café. Victoria Parker gets to her feet and starts to pick up her things.
Somer presses pause and turns to face me.
‘OK,’ I say. ‘If I’m Scott’s lawyer I’m going to claim this is pure chance. He wasn’t stalking her, he wasn’t even following her, he was just innocently shopping for bog roll in the Co-op and suddenly, bam, there she was.’
‘But that’s just it,’ says S
omer, ‘he doesn’t buy anything. He doesn’t even get out of the car. He’s only there for one reason and that’s Sasha Blake.’
‘If that’s true it had to be planned, right?’
She nods.
‘So how did he know she’d be there? At that precise place and that precise time?’
‘Actually, I think I may have an answer to that.’ She picks up her phone and flicks to a web page. ‘I did a quick check on the Blavatnik website and there was a talk that morning that was open to the public. Art and Power in Renaissance Florence. That’s exactly the sort of thing Scott might have mentioned to Sasha. He’s already admitted “encouraging” her, the bloody creep.’
But I’m only half listening. I’ve rewound the footage and I’m looking at it again.
‘Here,’ I say, freezing it and pointing. ‘See that?’
Evidently she hasn’t, because she moves a little closer.
‘Just before Sasha crosses the road. That woman there, wheeling the bike.’
She must be fifty, perhaps fifty-five, with longish blonde hair and a turquoise coat. She’s going in the opposite direction to Sasha, so there’s a point when they have to pass each other on the crowded pavement. A few moments later the woman suddenly stops and stares at something, clearly startled, before turning and looking back towards Sasha as she crosses the road. Then she shakes her head and carries on the way she was going.
‘Is she looking at Scott?’ says Somer.
‘I don’t think so. He’s on the other side of the road, so I doubt he’s in her line of sight. And he’s just sitting in his car – there’s nothing to provoke a reaction like that.’
Somer looks more closely at the screen. ‘Victoria’s on her phone – she wouldn’t have seen anything. Damn.’
‘I doubt she’d have seen much anyway – not from inside the shop. The angle’s all wrong.’
‘I suppose we could try to track down the woman with the bike,’ begins Somer, ‘but we’re going to struggle to find her after all this time –’
‘We don’t need to. Whatever that woman saw, it must have been right outside the OUP building. What’s the betting they have CCTV too.’
* * *
It’s the first really dry afternoon for over a week, and Ursula Hollis decides to take advantage. She hasn’t been further than the end of the street for days and is starting to get a bit cabin crazy. Her elderly Labrador hasn’t exactly complained, but they could both do with blowing the cobwebs away. She unhooks the lead from the rack by the door and smiles as the dog gets rather laboriously to his feet. You can almost hear him sigh.
‘Come on, Bruno, it’s not that bad. Just down to the Vicky Arms and back. There might even be rabbits.’
It’s a long time since Bruno chased anything, let alone a rabbit. There are silver hairs round that chocolate muzzle these days. She rubs him behind the ears and drops a quick kiss on his brow, trying not to think about what she’s going to do without him, when he’s gone.
Even if the weather’s improved there’s still hardly anyone about outside. In five minutes, the only people she passes are a man from BT doing something complicated with wiring in a green box and Jenny from number 4 wrestling with her bins.
She gets to the junction, zips her puffa jacket up a little further against the wind and heads down towards Mill Lane.
* * *
Adam Fawley
9 April 2018
13.13
‘But the OUP didn’t have anything?’
To her credit, Gallagher looked neither surprised nor wary when Somer turned up at her office with me in tow. I’m not sure I’d have been so sanguine about it, if the roles were reversed.
Somer shakes her head. ‘It’s too long ago – they don’t keep their CCTV footage that long. And they’re not even sure the camera would have been pointing the right way anyway.’
Gallagher sits back and her shoulders sag a little. ‘So we’ve no way of knowing what that woman saw, barring tracking her down. And even if we could find her it could be nothing – someone on a unicycle, that duck that got into last week’s Oxford Mail – any bloody thing.’
It’s that sort of town; I saw a bloke dressed as a giraffe on the Woodstock Road last week. #OnlyinOxford even has its own bloody hashtag. So yes, this could all be a complete wild goose chase. But something tells me it isn’t. That woman on Walton Street saw something – something that shocked her enough to stop her in her tracks. And I suddenly have a cold feeling in my gut about what it might be.
Somer makes a despairing face. ‘I don’t think there’s anything else we can do.’
I look at her and then turn to Gallagher. ‘Yes,’ I say. ‘There is.’
* * *
Interview with Graeme Scott, conducted at St Aldate’s Police Station, Oxford
9 April 2018, 2.05 p.m.
In attendance, DI R. Gallagher, DC E. Somer, Mrs D. Owen (solicitor)
RG: For the purposes of the tape, DI Ruth Gallagher and DC Erica Somer will now be conducting this interview. I hope you enjoyed your lunch break, Mr Scott; perhaps we could now return to the subject you were discussing with DC Quinn. Since you were last in this room we have obtained CCTV from the Blavatnik School of Government from the morning in question, and you are quite clearly visible on camera.
DO: I trust you will make this footage available?
RG: Of course. So, Mr Scott, do you remember that morning now?
GS: If you say I was there, I suppose I must have been.
ES: There was a talk at the Blavatnik that we believe Sasha was going to. A talk about Renaissance Florence – is that ringing a bell?
GS: Now you mention it, I think I did point that out to Sasha. I’m on their mailing list.
ES: So you knew she’d be there.
GS: I didn’t know she’d be there. I just mentioned it to her. My pupils don’t keep me informed about their social lives, Inspector.
RG: But you knew there was a good chance she’d go, didn’t you? Good enough for you to arrange to be there yourself. Just in case.
GS: Like I said, I often shop in Jericho.
ES: Only you didn’t. You didn’t even get out of your car. You just sat there. Watching.
GS: I wasn’t watching. I’m not some sort of pervert –
RG: That’s as may be. But you were watching her, all the same. And what I want to know now, Mr Scott, is what exactly it was that you saw.
* * *
Adam Fawley
9 April 2018
14.37
‘Do we believe him? Do we actually believe him?’
I don’t think I’ve ever seen Somer’s face so pale. Ever since she and Gallagher came out of the interview room she’s been pacing up and down, trying to walk off the nervous energy, the sheer incredulity. Gallagher has gone the other way: she’s sitting at the table, barely moving, but I can sense the din in her mind, even from the other side of the room.
Somer turns to Gallagher and repeats her question. ‘Well, do we? It’s crazy –’
‘But possible,’ says Gallagher quietly. ‘You know it is.’
‘But we can’t go hauling people in for questioning based on that – even if it is true – even if he’s not still lying through his bloody teeth, which he has every reason to do right now –’
I take a deep breath. ‘I don’t think he is. I think he’s telling the truth.’
Gallagher looks across at me. ‘But Somer has a point, doesn’t she. Even if you’re right, we need a lot more than just his word. And without either the CCTV or that witness –’ She shrugs helplessly. ‘We’re stuck, aren’t we?’
But I’m not so sure.
I get up and reach for my jacket.
‘Where are you going?’
‘Keep Scott here. There’s someone I need to talk to.’
* * *
Bruno picks up his pace as they get towards the turning for the pub. More bushes, more litter, more interesting smells. Ursula has to drag him away from a particularly we
ll-loved lamp post, only to find him bounding off suddenly and ploughing into a ditch half-filled with blackish water. She goes to the edge and peers down, frowning at where he’s worrying away at something. Which isn’t like Bruno; he hasn’t done anything like this for months. At first she can’t see what he’s got hold of, but then the dog moves and she catches sight of something pink. She recoils a little – she’s had her fill of disembowelled rats over the years – but something about the shape, the colour –
A moment later she’s taking out her mobile phone.
‘Is that Thames Valley Police? My name is Ursula Hollis. It’s about that girl – Sasha Blake. I think you need to come.’
* * *
Adam Fawley
9 April 2018
15.45
We look at the footage again and then the woman sits back in her chair. She’s in her seventies, with short thick white hair and a rather tired navy cardigan. But there’s nothing tired about the look on her face. She’s one of the sharpest people I’ve encountered in a long time. When I first met her, I told Alex she reminded me of that woman who used to play Miss Marple on TV in the eighties. I didn’t realize then how close to home that was.
‘It was a pretty good stab – for an amateur,’ she says, turning slightly towards me. I sense a little stiffness in her movement and sit forward so she can see me more easily. ‘Perhaps you should consider learning to do it properly. Looks like it might come in handy in your line of work.’
I smile. ‘Only if you promise to teach me. But I was right, yes? That’s what you’re saying?’
She gives me a heavy look. ‘I’m afraid so. Judging from what I’ve just seen, there’s something very wrong here, Inspector. Very wrong indeed.’
* * *
The house is a new build on the outskirts of Marston, designed to look old in that Poundbury sort of way Somer always distrusts. It’s tidy, well-kempt, but curiously lifeless, and the woman who opens the door is very much the same.
‘Mrs Webb? I’m DC Erica Somer and this is DC Everett. We’d like a quick word with Patsie if she’s around?’
