In the Dark
Page 6
VOICEOVER
Ever since Inspector Morse, TV viewers across the world have seen Oxford’s dreaming spires as the perfect setting for the perfect murder. But all those dark tales of killing in the quads bear little resemblance to real life in this beautiful and prosperous city, where the crime rate is low, and unsolved homicides are almost unheard of.
But in summer 2015, all that was about to change. The city’s police force was about to be baffled by a mystery as strange as any case Morse ever confronted. A mystery that was destined to become one of Britain’s most notorious unexplained crimes.
Wide shot of Crescent Square, bikes against railings, cat walking across road, mother and small boy on scooter
VOICEOVER
The story starts here, in leafy North Oxford, one of the most affluent and attractive suburbs of the city. It was here that 25-year-old Hannah Gardiner, her husband Rob and their little son Toby took an apartment in the autumn of 2013.
Family snapshot of Gardiners, gradual close-up; reconstruction of small boy playing with a ball in a garden
VOICEOVER
Hannah had been a journalist in London when she met Rob, and after he got a job at an Oxford-based biotech company, the family took up residence in a sunny first-floor apartment with access to a pretty shared garden where Toby could play.
Interview: Backdrop – interior
BETH DYER, HANNAH’S FRIEND
Hannah was really excited about moving to Oxford. It was a really happy time for her. It just seemed like everything was coming together. And when she got the job at BBC Oxford she was just over the moon – we all went out to celebrate.
Footage of Hannah talking to camera on BBC local news
VOICEOVER
Hannah soon made a reputation for herself covering some of the city’s most controversial stories.
Interview: Backdrop - BBC Oxford office
CHARLIE CATES, SENIOR EDITOR, BBC OXFORD
Hannah was always first in line to take on the difficult issues. She did several pieces on homelessness in Oxford, and a series on the postcode lottery in infertility treatment that got some traction at a national level. She was passionate about her work and she was in journalism for all the right reasons.
Shot of MDJ Property Developments offices
VOICEOVER
In early 2015 Hannah took on her most challenging assignment yet, when local property developer Malcolm Jervis submitted a proposal to build a big new housing estate some miles outside the city.
Tracking shot of protest camp, banners, people chanting
VOICEOVER
Local resistance to Jervis’s new plan was fierce, both from residents and environmental campaigners, who set up a protest camp near the proposed building site.
Panoramic view of fields, finishing with Wittenham Clumps; atmospheric shot with racing clouds and shadows
VOICEOVER
Many people were concerned about the location of the new estate in the midst of unspoiled countryside, and within a few hundred yards of a site of special historical significance, known as the Wittenham Clumps.
Shot of hollow on Castle Hill
VOICEOVER
The hills command views of the Oxfordshire countryside for miles around and are rich in folklore. Castle Hill once boasted an Iron Age fort, and near the summit there’s a hollow, known for centuries as the Money Pit.
Cut to shot of raven with night sky and moon
VOICEOVER
A hoard of treasure is said to be buried there, guarded by a ghostly raven.
Close-up: cuckoo in tree
VOICEOVER
And not far away there’s a grove of trees called the Cuckoo Pen. Legend has it that if a cuckoo can be trapped in this grove, summer will never end.
[cuckoo call]
Aerial shot of excavation
VOICEOVER
In the spring of 2015 a new archaeological excavation had started on Castle Hill, and in early June, Hannah herself was the first to break the news of a gruesome find.
BBC Oxford footage taken at Wittenham Clumps
HANNAH GARDINER
I’m told that the skeletons of three women have been found in a shallow grave, a few yards behind me, beyond those trees. They were found face down with their skulls broken, and from the position of the bones, had probably had their hands tied. The bodies are thought to date from the late Iron Age, or around 50 AD. The archaeologists here are refusing to speculate about what this highly unusual burial position might signify, but some with a knowledge of pagan rituals are suggesting that it may relate to the so-called ‘Triple Goddess’, who is often depicted in the form of three sisters. The discovery of animal bones, including several birds, may also be significant. This is Hannah Gardiner, for BBC Oxford news.
Shot of skeletons in pit
VOICEOVER
Within days of the find, lurid stories had started to circulate that the women had in fact been the victims of human sacrifice, and this only added to the strange and highly charged atmosphere that prevailed in the days leading up to that Midsummer Day.
Reconstruction: Shot of calendar, with kitchen scene in background. Calendar has date of Wednesday June 24 circled
VOICEOVER
For the Gardiner family, June 24 2015 started like any other day. Rob got up early to travel to a meeting in Reading, and Hannah also made an early start.
Reconstruction: ‘Hannah’ getting into orange Mini Clubman car, and strapping small boy in car seat. She has a dark brown ponytail and a navy quilted anorak.
VOICEOVER
She’d been conducting interviews at the protest camp the previous week, and she’d managed to persuade Malcolm Jervis to meet her at the site and film an interview. Her usual childminder was unwell, so Hannah had to take Toby with her. She left the house at around 7.30 a.m. to drive to Wittenham, and Rob had already departed fifteen minutes before, heading into Oxford to catch a train to the nearby town of Reading.
Reconstruction: ‘Rob’ on phone looking anxious, pacing up and down
VOICEOVER
At 11.15 Rob tried to call Hannah during a break in his meeting, but got no answer. So it wasn’t till he got home mid-afternoon that he realised something was wrong. There was a message on the answerphone from the cameraman Hannah was due to meet at the site, wanting to know why she never turned up. Rob tried Hannah’s mobile again, and when there was still no reply he called the police. Little did he know then, but his son Toby had already been found. Alone.
Reconstruction: buggy and toy in undergrowth
VOICEOVER
A walker had noticed the empty buggy in the Money Pit as early as 9.30, but it was another hour before Toby was found, hiding in the undergrowth, terrified, clutching his toy bird.
BBC footage: Mini car at Clumps, with police presence and crime-scene tape
VOICEOVER
A huge search is mounted, but no trace of Hannah can be found. The police have no leads.
Interview: Backdrop – interior
DETECTIVE SUPERINTENDENT ALASTAIR OSBOURNE,
THAMES VALLEY POLICE
There was no forensic evidence in the car or on the buggy that shed any light on what had happened to Hannah. We made exhaustive enquiries in the Wittenham area, and although several people came forward to say they’d seen Hannah and Toby that morning, we were no nearer finding out what had befallen her.
Reconstruction: Close-up of computer screens and files
VOICEOVER
Rob Gardiner was quickly eliminated as a potential suspect, and the police then turned their attention to anyone who might have had a motive to harm Hannah.
After examining her laptop they found evidence that she was about to expose questionable financial dealings on th
e part of MDJ Property Developments. The police interviewed Malcolm Jervis, but he had a watertight alibi. He had been delayed that morning, and only arrived at Wittenham at 9.45.
Reconstruction: Twitter feed
VOICEOVER
Meanwhile, speculation was mounting on social media that Hannah had been murdered in some sort of Satanic ritual connected with the Clumps. The police issued several statements denying there was anything to suggest an occult motive but that didn’t stop the rumours.
BBC footage of protest camp, yurts, people chained to trees, dogs among the rubbish, small children running about naked
VOICEOVER
In this fevered atmosphere, attention inevitably started to focus on the protest camp at the site, which had been swelled by numbers of New Age travellers who’d come to celebrate Midsummer’s Eve.
And as it turned out, there was a link with the camp, just not the one the bloggers and Twitter activists had been suggesting.
Interview: Backdrop – interior
DETECTIVE SUPERINTENDENT ALASTAIR OSBOURNE,
THAMES VALLEY POLICE
Three months after Hannah’s disappearance, a man named Reginald Shore was arrested for an attempted sexual assault on a young woman in Warwick. A police search of his house turned up a bracelet identical to one Hannah Gardiner owned.
DNA analysis subsequently proved that it was indeed hers, and under cross-examination Shore admitted that he had been at the Wittenham camp in the summer. In subsequent interviews, other witnesses were able to corroborate that he had spoken to Hannah when she visited the camp in late May.
Shot of bracelet
VOICEOVER
Shore claimed he found the bracelet at the camp, and didn’t know who it belonged to. The UK’s Crown Prosecution Service considered the evidence, but concluded that the case against him was not strong enough to put before a jury, especially in the absence of a body.
Mugshot of Reginald Shore
VOICEOVER
Shore was subsequently convicted of the attempted assault on the second young woman, and jailed for three years. His family contended that the sentence passed by the judge was heavier than it should have been, because of the publicity surrounding the Hannah Gardiner case.
As it turned out, Shore served less than a year of his sentence. When he was diagnosed with terminal lung cancer in 2016 he was released on compassionate grounds.
Hannah Gardiner has never been found.
Will we ever find out what really happened?
Will the Clumps ever give up their secret?
Moody shot of Wittenham Clumps by moonlight.
Freeze-frame
ends
‘So tell us what the press didn’t know,’ says Quinn.
I press pause on the DVD player and turn to face the team.
‘We suspected that Toby had somehow got free from the buggy and crawled away into the bushes. That’s why it took so long to find him. He also had a head injury, though we couldn’t establish for certain if it was the result of a blow or just a fall. But we never released that fact to the media.’
There’s a silence. They’re picturing it, imagining what that must have been like. I don’t need to. I was there when we found him. I can still hear his screams.
‘And he couldn’t tell you anything?’ asks one of the DCs. ‘Did the kid not remember what happened?’
I shake my head. ‘He wasn’t even three, he’d had a blow to the head. He was completely traumatized. Nothing he said made much sense.’
‘So we still have no idea how he ended up in that Pit place?’
‘Our theory was that Hannah took him up there for a walk after she got the text from Jervis’s PA saying he’d been delayed.’
I used to do that with Jake when he was that age. When he couldn’t settle or he’d had a bad dream and didn’t want to go back to bed. He loved the motion of the stroller. I’d walk the empty streets in the middle of the night. Just him, and me, and the odd prowling silent cat.
But I push that memory away.
‘And we know she definitely got that text, do we?’ Quinn; and on point.
‘Well,’ says Gislingham, ‘we know it was definitely sent but we never found her phone so there’s no way of knowing whether she opened it or not.’ He sighs. ‘To be honest, the whole thing was a nightmare. All the usual loonies came out of the woodwork – you can imagine – psychics, mediums, the whole bloody nine yards. There was even some old bat who got herself into the Oxford Mail – said the bracelet had a pagan design on it – some sort of three-pointed star thing. Kept on and on that the number three was the key to the whole case and, just you wait, she’d be proved right in the end –’
His voice tails off as he catches sight of the photo of the house. ‘Shit. It had to be sodding thirty-three, didn’t it.’
‘There was one other thing we didn’t tell the press,’ I continue. ‘The Gardiners’ home life wasn’t nearly as idyllic as that programme would have you believe.’
‘I remember,’ says Gislingham. ‘There’d been a lot of tension with Rob’s ex – she obviously resented Hannah for breaking up the relationship. There’d been some pretty nasty stuff on Facebook.’
‘Did she have an alibi?’ asks Quinn.
‘The ex?’ I say. ‘Yes, she checked out. She was in Manchester that day. Lucky for her – we’d have been all over her otherwise.’
Gislingham looks thoughtful. ‘Looking at that video again after all this time, the one that stands out for me is Beth Dyer. Didn’t she drop some pretty heavy hints in interview that Rob might have been having an affair?’
‘She did. But she didn’t have any actual evidence. Just him “looking a bit odd” or “like he had something to hide”. There were no unexplained phone calls, nothing like that – we checked. And his alibi was rock solid. His train left Oxford at 7.57 that morning, and we knew Hannah was alive at 6.50 because she left a voicemail for the childminder. And she used the landline so we knew she was in Crescent Square. So there simply wasn’t time for Rob to kill his wife, take the car to Wittenham, dump it and get back to Oxford in time for that train.’
‘But in any case,’ says Quinn, ‘even if either Rob or the ex had a motive for getting rid of Hannah, what about the kid?’
‘Which is exactly the conclusion Osbourne came to. Even if the timings had added up, it was hard to see Rob Gardiner leaving his son alone up there.’
‘So that’s why everything pointed to Shore?’ says Quinn.
There’s a pause. They’re all looking at me. They expect me to say how we did our best to make the case stick but the CPS wouldn’t go with it. How we still believe we got our man.
But I don’t.
‘So,’ says Quinn eventually. ‘You had your doubts, even then.’
I look back at the TV screen. At the freeze-frame of the Clumps. Black birds against a pale sky.
‘We interviewed everyone who was at the protest camp that day. No one mentioned seeing Shore until after his name came out in connection to the Warwick assault, and that was months later.’
‘Doesn’t mean he wasn’t there.’
‘No, but we couldn’t prove he was either. Not definitively. He claimed he was miles away at the time, but couldn’t produce any witnesses to back him up. We know he was at the camp that summer, and the bracelet we found in his house definitely was Hannah’s –’
‘– but you don’t think he actually did it,’ says Quinn.
‘Osbourne was convinced he was guilty. And he was in charge of the case.’
There’s a silence. He’s retired now but Al Osbourne was one of the legends of Thames Valley. Great copper, and a genuinely nice bloke too, and believe me those two things don’t always go together. More than one person in this station owes a crucial leg-up in their career to him, me included. And even
though we never convicted Shore for Hannah Gardiner there’s always been a tacit understanding that the case was closed. Reopening it now is going to make a lot of waves.
I take a deep breath. ‘Look, I’ll be honest with you. I did have my doubts about Shore. He never struck me as a killer, and on top of that, this was a very organized crime. I’m not saying it was planned – Hannah could have been a completely random victim. But it was certainly covered up very carefully afterwards. No forensics – no DNA – nothing. I just couldn’t see Shore doing that. He isn’t bright enough, for a start. That’s why he got caught in Warwick. I always thought we were missing something – some fact or clue we overlooked or didn’t uncover. But we never found it.’
‘Not till now,’ says Gislingham softly.
‘No,’ I say, looking back again at the screen. ‘Because that’s the one possibility we never really considered – that Hannah never left Oxford at all. That whatever happened to her, happened here.’
‘But in that case, how the hell –’
‘I know. How the hell did Toby get to Wittenham Clumps?’
‘Right,’ says Quinn into the silence. ‘I’ll warn the press office. Because if we’ve made the connection with the Gardiner case, the hacks soon will too. We need to get out ahead of this one, guys.’
‘Too late,’ says Gislingham grimly, looking at his phone. ‘They’ve got there already.’
* * *
* * *
The young woman opens the window and stands there a moment breathing the warm air. The honeysuckle growing up the wall is already in flower. Behind her, she can hear the little boy chattering away to his teddy bear as he has his tea, and, turned down low, the sound of the early evening news on the TV in the kitchen. Somewhere further away, a man’s voice talking animatedly on the phone.
‘Pippa!’ calls the little boy. ‘Look at the TV! That’s the house with all those bikes outside!’
The young woman goes back into the kitchen, picking up a discarded panda on the way, and joins the little boy at the table. On the screen, a reporter is standing in front of a police tape, gesturing backwards towards the scene behind him. There are several police cars with their lights flashing, and an ambulance. The headline running along the bottom of the screen says: BREAKING: Oxford cellar girl: New questions raised about the Hannah Gardiner case. No, she thinks, please no. Not after all this time. Not now that things are finally working out. She puts an arm round the little boy, smelling the sweet artificial shampoo scent of him.