by Cara Hunter
‘And since then? What contact have they had?’
‘None.’
He frowns. ‘You’re sure? I mean, you wouldn’t necessarily know –’
I bite the bullet. ‘I would, actually. He’s at my house.’ I can feel the blood flooding my face. ‘Just for a few days. While they find him a more permanent place.’
Shut up, Fawley. Just shut up.
Gow is staring at me. ‘Well, that’s not exactly standard protocol –’
‘Harrison OK’d it. Before you ask.’
There’s a long pause and then he nods. ‘I see. And has the girl asked for him, as far as you’re aware?’
‘No. All I know is that she reacted badly to seeing TV footage of a baby.’
Gow sits back and puts his fingertips together. ‘Anything else?’
‘The trick cyclist at the John Rad said it could be PTSD. That she’s blocking out what happened to her, and the child is part of that.’
Gow nods slowly. ‘If the boy is the product of rape he will be a physical and ever-present reminder of that rape. If she’s failed to bond with him, it may be no more complex than that.’
One thing I do know about Bryan Gow is that he chooses his words very carefully. ‘If?’
He turns to the journal again and flicks through the sheets. ‘What we have here is a very clear psychological trajectory, in relation to the child. We move from her horror at Harper’s sexual assaults, to rejection of the baby once it’s born, towards a gradual acceptance of the child as her own. Here, for instance: “I’m trying to think of him as mine. As just mine and nothing to do with that horrible old pervert.”’
‘So?’
‘The point is, this is entirely at variance with how the girl is behaving now. The violent rejection of the child – the blanking him out. It’s totally at odds with what we have in the journal.’
‘OK, fair enough. But the bit you just read was before the food and water started to run out – perhaps her feelings changed because of the trauma she went through?’
But Gow is shaking his head. ‘From what I’ve been told, she was giving what supplies they had to the child. That argues she was feeling a stronger connection to him by then. Not the opposite.’
‘So how do you explain it?’
‘I think it’s possible there was some sort of collusion going on. Psychological collusion, I mean. A version of Stockholm Syndrome. That’s why I want to see her for myself.’ He sits back. ‘When you interview her, talk to her about the child,’ he says. ‘But start neutrally – “birth” not “baby”, for example. Keep the emotion out of it. Then gradually up the pressure. Let’s see how she reacts.’
* * *
* * *
‘How are you feeling, Vicky?’
‘I’m fine.’
And she actually looks much closer to fine than I’ve yet seen. Though there are still dark circles under her eyes. The manager of Vine Lodge has come in with her, and she glances at him now and he gives her an encouraging smile.
‘I also want to thank you for agreeing to come in, Vicky – it’s going to be an enormous help.’
Everett and I sit down and I put my papers on the table. ‘Bringing a case against the man who abducted you is a very complicated process, and we need to assemble a lot of detailed evidence. We’ll probably need to talk to you several times over the next few weeks, and if it’s OK with you we’ll ask you to do that here – so we can tape the interviews and use them in court if we need to.’ And so Bryan Gow can watch from the room next door. Though this, of course, I don’t say. ‘I know it isn’t very nice in here, but it makes it easier for us. Is that OK with you?’
She looks at me steadily. ‘Yes, that’s fine.’
‘And Mr Wilcox here has agreed to be what we call an “appropriate adult”. That means he’ll keep an eye on things from your point of view.’
She glances at Wilcox again and smiles.
‘And you just tell me if you feel you need to take a break or if it’s getting too much.’
I open my file. ‘So can you start with your name, for the tape?’
‘Vicky. Vicky Neale.’
‘And your address?’
‘I don’t have one. Not any more.’
‘Where were you living last?’
‘A bedsit in East Oxford. I didn’t like it much.’
‘Which road?’
‘Clifton Street. Number fifty-two.’
‘What was the landlord’s name?’
She shrugs. ‘Dunno. He was Asian. Rajid or something. I was only there a few weeks.’
‘And before that?’ asks Everett, looking up from her notebook. ‘Where’s home?’
‘Harlow. But it’s not my home.’
‘It would really help if we had an address.’
She glances at Wilcox, hesitant now.
‘Don’t you want your mum and dad to know where you are? You’ve been missing a long time –’
‘My dad died. And my mum wouldn’t care. Says I’m old enough to stand on my own two feet and she’s got a new family to think about. She’s probably moved by now anyway – she said they were thinking of going up north. Her and her new bloke.’
I know I bang on about Fawley’s law, but in my experience three answers to one question is never a good sign. Still, the pain in her eyes is real enough.
‘I think we should be able to track her down, all the same,’ says Everett. ‘I assume you don’t mind us giving her a call if we do?’
Vicky opens her mouth, then closes it again. ‘Suit yourself. But like I said, she won’t want to know.’
‘Even after she finds out what’s happened to you – the ordeal you’ve been through – surely any mother – ?’
‘Not mine. She’ll probably say it was all my own fault. That I shouldn’t have been so stupid.’
She’s blinking away the tears, refusing to cry. I have a sudden image of how she must have looked as a little girl.
‘So can you tell us how that happened?’ I say gently. ‘How Dr Harper kidnapped you? I’m sorry, I know it’s upsetting, but we do need you to go through everything.’
She wipes her eyes with the heel of her hand. ‘I was on my way to look at another bedsit, only I broke my shoe. I was sitting on his wall when he came out and said he could mend it for me. He didn’t look weird or anything. He reminded me of Dad. So I went in.’
Everett looks up. ‘When was this, exactly?’
‘July 2014. The 5th. I remember because there’d been fireworks the night before and someone said it must be Americans.’
‘And how old were you then?’
‘Sixteen. I was sixteen.’
Everett passes across a photograph of Harper. ‘Can you confirm that this is the man you’re talking about, Vicky?’
She looks and looks away. Then nods.
‘And he gave you tea,’ I say. ‘That’s right, isn’t it?’
‘Yes. It was a really hot day and he didn’t have anything cold. He must have put something in it though, because one minute I was sitting there in his horrible smelly kitchen and the next I was waking up in that cellar.’
‘And he kept you down there – kept you and raped you?’
‘Yes,’ she whispers.
‘I can’t imagine how horrible that must have been.’
Her lip trembles and she nods.
I turn a page in my notes.
‘Can you tell me about the food and water?’
She blinks, confused. ‘What do you mean, the food and water?’
‘I’m sorry, I know it’s difficult, but the prosecution is going to have to explain things like that to the jury.’
She nods. ‘OK. I see. He’d leave bottles of water. Food in tins. It was all old people’s stuff. Peaches. Manky stew. I had a plastic spoon. My wrists were t
ied in front with those tie things. But I could eat. Just about.’
‘And write,’ I say, smiling at her. ‘That’s impressive. Not many people would have the presence of mind to do that.’
She lifts her chin. ‘I wanted everyone to know what happened. If I died down there I wanted people to know what he’d done.’
‘The same as he did to that other girl.’
‘He boasted about it. About burying her in the garden. I didn’t think it was true. I thought he just wanted to scare me. So I’d do what he wanted.’
‘Did he tell you how he was supposed to have killed her? When it happened?’
Her eyes widen. ‘I don’t remember exactly, but I’d been in the cellar a long time by then.’
‘And you were in Dr Harper’s cellar for nearly three years?’
‘I didn’t know how long it was. Not till I got out.’
She gives a little gulp that’s half a sob.
‘And he still kept you down there – even when you were pregnant?’
She nods again.
‘And what about when the contractions started? Surely you were let out then?’
She hangs her head. The eyes she raises to mine are full of tears.
There’s a knock at the door and one of the DCs appears. I get up and go towards him.
‘Sorry, boss,’ he says in a low voice. ‘But you’re wanted. Next door.’ He gives me a meaningful look.
When I turn back to Vicky she’s leaning against Wilcox, crying silently.
‘I’m really sorry, Vicky. I didn’t mean to upset you. Perhaps we should stop for now?’
Wilcox looks up. ‘I think that’s best. She’s had enough for today.’
‘Tomorrow then? Tennish?’
He nods, and helps the girl to her feet.
I watch the two of them down the corridor and through the swing doors. At one point Wilcox places his hand lightly on the girl’s shoulder.
* * *
*
When I open the door to join Gow he’s scanning back through the interview footage.
‘Here,’ he says, without looking round. ‘It’s where you asked her about the food and water. She drops her eyes before she answers, then looks to the right. If you believe in Neuro-Linguistic Programming – which I do, incidentally – that’s a big red flag for fabrication. But that’s not the only thing. When you asked her that question, she repeated it. She doesn’t do that anywhere else. She was trying to buy herself time.’ He leans forward and points. ‘And then she brings her hand to her mouth as she replies. Look.’
‘So she wasn’t telling the truth?’
‘Certainly not the whole truth and nothing but the truth.’ He sits back and turns to face me. ‘I think I was right about the collusion – I think she came to some sort of accommodation with Harper. Something she accepted out of desperation at the time but now finds deeply shameful. Shame’s a rather unfashionable sentiment these days: the modern world is always telling us we don’t need to be embarrassed about anything we do – or think. But the shame response is still there, in the psyche – self-disgust, regret, revulsion. Those are immensely powerful emotions and all the more so when the subject is in denial. Whatever that girl did, she doesn’t want to admit it – certainly not to you, and on the evidence I’ve just seen, not even to herself.’
He sits back and starts to clean his glasses. Which is his own particular ‘tell’, though I’ve never had the courage to say so.
‘But that doesn’t invalidate her whole story, surely?’
He puts his glasses back on. ‘Of course not. It just means there’s some element of what happened in that house that we don’t yet know about.’
‘So how do we find out the truth? We can’t ask Harper – he’s still claiming he doesn’t know anything about any of it. That’s when he’s in a fit state to say anything at all.’
He can see the exasperation on my face. He checks his watch and gets up. ‘You’re the detective, Fawley. I’m sure you’ll work it out.’
My phone goes. A text, from Baxter:
At Frampton Road. Somer thinks she might have found something.
Gow, meanwhile, has stopped at the door. ‘Might be worth looking at the journal again. I can’t point to anything specific, but something about it doesn’t quite ring true.’
* * *
* * *
At Frampton Road, there’s a uniformed constable at the door and the sounds of movement overhead. Whatever it is, it’s upstairs. The bathroom on the first landing has its floorboards exposed now and the ancient lino is rolled up in the corner. The carpet’s up in the master bedroom too. That very faint smell Luminol has, that you don’t even notice unless you’ve been around it many times.
They’re on the top floor. Baxter, the forensics officer, Nina Mukerjee, Erica Somer and another uniform whose name I can’t remember.
‘So, what have we got?’
Baxter gestures at Somer. A gesture that says, as far as I’m concerned this is a wild goose chase so if it goes tits up it’s down to her, not me.
‘In here, sir,’ she says.
The room at the front. It was probably a servant’s bedroom once, with its low window set into the roof and its small cast-iron fireplace. She turns to me, more than half apologetic.
‘You’re going to think this is a crazy idea – that English grad thing again –’
‘No. Go on. We’ve run out of options. All we have left is crazy ideas.’
She blushes a little; it rather suits her. ‘OK, if we assume Hannah definitely did die in this house –’
‘I think she did. I know she did.’
‘OK, and yet forensics found absolutely nothing. That’s just not possible.’
‘It shouldn’t be, no.’
‘No,’ she says, insistent now. ‘It isn’t. There must be evidence. We just haven’t found it.’
‘As Challow keeps reminding me, they Luminol’d every floor –’
‘Exactly, so what if it isn’t the floors we should be looking at?’
‘I’m not with you –’
She turns and points overhead. ‘Look.’
A dull brown stain, darker at the edges, curiously heart-shaped. The rest of the ceiling is blotched with damp and age, but this – this is different. Deeper. Heavier.
‘It’s dry,’ she says. ‘I checked. And I know it’s crazy – I mean, how could she possibly have died up there – it doesn’t make sense – but there’s that scene in Tess –’
But I’m not listening – I’m already out on the landing. The loft hatch is directly above the stairs. The Victorians weren’t constrained by such nice concerns as Health & Safety.
‘Didn’t someone check up here?’
Baxter makes a face. ‘Uniform were supposed to, but it looks like someone dropped the ball. Sorry, sir.’
‘Right, well, we’d better look at it ourselves then, hadn’t we.’
Baxter finds a chair in the next-door room and I climb on to it. The hatch is stiff, and I have to force it to get it free. But I can’t get all the way up from the chair.
‘Do you have a torch, Baxter?’
‘There’s one in the car, sir. And there’s a stepladder in the conservatory. I remember seeing it.’
‘OK, fetch the torch and I’ll get the steps.’
When he gets back I’m wedging the stepladder against the hatch.
‘I’ll hold it for you, sir,’ says Somer quickly. ‘You’d break your neck if you fell from here.’
I start up, pushing the loft hatch open until it swings back and bangs against the floor. I can feel a cold draught of air, and bits of dust and grit fall on to my face. Once I get to the top step I haul myself up until I’m sitting on the edge. I don’t want to think about what I’m doing to my trousers. Somer hands up the torch and I turn
it on and swing the beam round. Boxes, junk, old clutter; the same crap there was in the cellar. On the wall, the wiring for the old servants’ bells. I can just pick out the labels. Breakfast room. Parlour. Study. On the far side there’s a hole in the tiles the size of my fist.
I get slowly to my feet, stooped under the roof beams, and step carefully across the boards. Most aren’t nailed down and they sway a little under my weight. Suddenly, out of nowhere, something moves. A looming in the dark, wings, something leathery in my face –
They must have heard me cry out.
‘Are you OK, sir?’ calls Baxter.
My heart is still hammering. ‘Yes, it was just a bat. Startled me, that’s all.’
I take a deep breath and get my bearings. Work out where the mark on the ceiling must be. And yes, there is something there. Shapeless, hunched somehow. I call down for Nina to come up and I train the light on it. When she edges across to join me I hold the torch beam on it as she snaps on a pair of plastic gloves. And as she lifts the object carefully away we can see the dark, spreading and long-parched stain.
* * *
* * *
It takes a while to open it out. The plastic is so dry and petrified it cracks and won’t lie flat on the lab table. The lab intern makes a joke about it being like unwinding a Dead Sea scroll, then realizes that’s a bit crass in the circumstances and falls quiet. They work in silence then, until the whole thing is spread before them in the glare of the overhead lamp.
Nina Mukerjee picks up the phone and calls Challow.
‘So,’ he says a few minutes later as he slips on his lab coat and approaches the table. ‘Is it what we thought it was?’
Nina nods. ‘A car cover. Probably seventies and probably for that Cortina on the drive.’
They stand there, looking at it. No need for Luminol this time.
‘Jesus,’ says Nina under her breath. ‘He didn’t even bother to hose it down.’
* * *
* * *
The Botley Road, 7.00 p.m. The only sounds in Vine Lodge are from the kitchen. Muffled voices, the clunk of the fridge door opening and closing, laughter.
