In the Dark

by Cara Hunter

  Quinn looks sheepish. ‘It’s all down to me, boss. Gis has just been trying to help.’

  The two of them exchange a glance.

  ‘Can we go into your office?’ says Quinn. I stare at him and then at Gislingham.

  ‘This had better be good.’

  * * *

  *

  And it is. Though not for Quinn.

  * * *

  *

  Half an hour later, everyone in the room stops what they’re doing as the three of us walk up to the front.

  I turn to Quinn. ‘Go on.’

  He swallows. He’s just endured the bollocking of his life, and the shit he’s in isn’t over yet. Not by a long way.

  ‘We brought Pippa Walker back in a couple of hours ago to charge her with attempting to pervert the course of justice. But when the custody sergeant booked her, she didn’t have any ID. Claimed she doesn’t have any. Which, of course, has to be crap, so we tried to track her down via driving licence records. But –’ he takes a deep breath ‘– there is no Pippa Walker with a birth date matching hers.’

  ‘You tried looking under Philippa?’ asks Everett.

  Quinn shakes his head. ‘Nothing in that name either. We looked under every name Pippa could be short for. Penelope, Patricia –’

  One of the DCs looks up from his phone with a mischievous grin. ‘Says here, Pippa means blowjob in Italian. Could that be relevant, Sarge?’

  There are stifled guffaws and I see Gis drop his gaze to hide a smirk. Quinn is as red in the face as I’ve ever seen him. I spot Somer watching him from near the back, caught between irony and concern. I hope the irony wins out; she’s way too good for him. And Quinn’s made his own bed on this one. In every sense.

  ‘What about a bank account?’ says someone as the laughter dies down.

  ‘Not that we’ve yet found,’ says Quinn, still scarlet.

  ‘Mobile phone contract?’

  Gislingham shakes his head. ‘It’s a pay-as-you-go.’

  ‘So she’s using a fake name?’ says Everett, clearly confused. ‘Why on earth would she need to?’

  And suddenly, I know what I have to do. I get up and pull my jacket from the back of the chair.

  ‘Where are you going?’ calls Gislingham as I walk away.

  ‘I’m going to find the answer to that question.’

  * * *

  * * *

  ‘Next question: what links Mary Ann Nichols, Elizabeth Stride, Catherine Eddowes and Mary Jane Kelly?’

  There’s loud laughter around the room and a couple of good-humoured shouts of ‘Fix! Fix!’

  At his table by the fireplace Bryan Gow grins and writes his team’s answer on the sheet. Pub quizzes are one of his fixations, along with trainspotting and quadratic equations. And you think I’m joking. The other members of this particular team are an ex-lab technician and a retired professor of forensic pathology. They call themselves Criminal Minds, which I thought was quite clever until Alex pointed out, a little acerbically, that the TV series got there first.

  This pub is Gow’s regular on a Wednesday afternoon – used to be a dingy spit-and-sawdust for the workers at the coal wharf but in the last couple of years it’s gone gastro glam. Log fires in winter, shades of paint in grey and teal, black-and-white floor tiles carefully restored. Alex loves it, and the beer’s still good too. I gesture to Gow, asking if he wants one. He nods and when the current round of questions finishes and the sheets are being collected he gets up and manoeuvres round the tables to join me.

  ‘What have I done to deserve this?’ he asks wryly, picking up his pint.

  ‘Talk to me about psychopaths. Sociopaths and psychopaths.’

  He raises an eyebrow, as if to say, so that’s where you’ve got to, is it? He licks froth off his upper lip. ‘Well, some of the outer signs are remarkably similar. Both types are manipulative and narcissistic, they lie habitually, they’re incapable of taking responsibility for their actions and they have virtually no empathy. All that matters – all that even registers – is their own needs.’

  ‘And how can you tell them apart?’

  ‘Psychopaths are much more organized and much more patient. Sociopaths tend to act impulsively, which means they make mistakes, and it’s easier for people like you to catch them. In their case, there’s usually some traumatic factor in childhood. Abuse, violence, neglect. The usual suspects.’

  ‘And psychopaths?’

  He makes a face. ‘Psychopaths are born. Not made.’ He’s watching me now. ‘Does that help?’

  Behind him, the quizmaster is calling people back to their seats for the next round.

  I nod. ‘Yes. I think so.’

  He picks up the glass to go, but I stop him. ‘One more thing.’

  ‘I didn’t have you down as a Columbo fan, Fawley,’ he says with a dry smile.

  But when he hears what I have to ask, his face darkens.

  * * *

  * * *

  When he unlocks the door and sees me his face is immediately wary.

  ‘What do you want?’ he says, not bothering to hide his hostility. ‘Have you come to apologize? Because I should bloody well hope so.’

  ‘Can I come in? It’s important.’

  He hesitates, then nods. And opens the door. Toby is asleep on the settee in front of a cartoon video, a toy dog clutched close to his chest.

  Gardiner turns off the TV. ‘Let me put Toby down and I’ll be with you.’

  The flat looks just as it did when I first came. There’s a smell of cooking and he must have done a hell of a lot of cleaning too, because there’s no trace of the forensics team. The only mess is happy-little-boy muddle. Gardiner is obviously doing everything he can to get his son’s life back to normal. Just as I would, in his place.

  He comes back in and sits on the sofa. ‘Well?’

  ‘I did come to apologize. For what you’ve been through these last few days. It doesn’t bear thinking about.’

  He gives me a dry look. ‘Well, whose fault is that?’

  ‘I’m sorry. But we had no choice. We have to eliminate all the possibilities. Pursue all the evidence.’

  ‘Yeah, well, that’s the point, isn’t it? You didn’t have any “evidence”. Not against me. Just malicious lies.’

  ‘That’s the other reason I came. I wanted to talk to you about Pippa Walker.’

  His face hardens. ‘What about her?’

  ‘That statement she gave us, we know she made it up.’

  ‘Too fucking right she made it up.’ His voice has risen and he corrects himself.

  I sit forward slightly. ‘But did she make all of it up? I believe you that there was no row that night, but were you actually sleeping together before your wife died? Look, I’m not trying to trap you – that’s why I’m doing this here, not at the station. We now know she sent you a number of texts in the week or so before Hannah disappeared. Explicit texts. You must know what I’m talking about.’

  Gardiner rubs a hand through his hair, then takes a deep breath and looks at me. ‘OK, if you must know, we did it once. What I said about doing something you regret because you’re depressed and pissed, well, that was it. She’d been making it pretty damn clear she was interested, and one night Hannah was away and I’d had one too many and it just – happened.’

  ‘And this was just before your wife disappeared?’

  ‘About a fortnight before. Hannah was in Nuneaton. Doing research on some of Malcolm Jervis’s other developments.’

  ‘And it was after that Pippa started texting you?’

  His eyes are miserable. ‘She wouldn’t leave me alone. She seemed to think it meant something. That we had some sort of future together – that I actually loved her. It was crazy. I deleted every single text – I never replied to any of them –’

  ‘I know,’ I say
quietly.

  ‘So I told her she was going to have to find another job – that it was just going to be too difficult.’

  ‘And how did she take that?’

  ‘She seemed to be being really mature about it. She was quiet for a bit and then she said she was sorry she’d misread the situation. That we could just carry on as if nothing had happened. Only I realized after a few days that it wasn’t going to work, so I told her again she’d need to find another job.’

  ‘What did she say to that?’

  ‘She was fine about it – said not to worry, and she’d start looking.’

  ‘How did you explain all this to Hannah?’

  ‘I just said it was probably a good time for a change. Something like that. She agreed straight away.’

  ‘And when did all this happen?’

  ‘A few days before Hannah disappeared. I think I spoke to Pippa on the Friday.’

  If bells weren’t ringing in my head before, they are now.

  ‘And why didn’t you tell us any of this before, Mr Gardiner?’

  He looks exasperated. ‘Because I thought it would just land me in it – and that’s exactly what happened, isn’t it? As soon as you thought I was banging Pippa you lot put two and two together and assumed I must have killed my wife.’

  ‘You still should have told us,’ I say gently. ‘It would have been better for you in the long run. And for us.’

  ‘Sorry,’ he says. He leans forward, his arms on his knees. ‘I know. I’m sorry.’

  We sit in silence for a moment.

  ‘Did Pippa know anyone in Frampton Road, as far as you know?’

  He shakes his head. ‘She never mentioned anyone to me.’

  ‘There’s no reason you can think of why she might have visited number thirty-three?’

  He frowns. ‘No. I’m sure she didn’t. When it was on the news – about that girl in the cellar – she asked me which house it was. What makes you ask that?’

  I’m trying to work out how best to say it. But he’s a scientist, as well as a father and a widower. He can cope with candour.

  ‘You never thought Pippa could have been involved – with Hannah’s disappearance?’

  He stares at me. ‘Pippa?’

  ‘It never occurred to you at all?’

  He is clearly staggered. ‘Of course not – you think I’d have let her live here – look after Toby – if I thought she’d killed my wife? Like I told you – after Hannah disappeared I was a mess – I needed someone to help – she was great at all that, and Toby liked her –’

  His voice trails off. He swallows. ‘I mean, yes, she was a bit full-on at one point – but it was just an infatuation. A crush. She got over it. You know what it’s like when you’re that age – one minute it’s the end of the world and the next you can’t even remember what all the fuss was about. She wasn’t much more than a teenager, for Christ’s sake. Not a bloody psychopath.’

  * * *

  * * *

  ‘Only he was wrong.’ I look around the room. If they were wondering where I went and why, they know now. ‘I think that’s exactly what she is. I think Pippa Walker killed Hannah, and she meant to do it.’

  But I can see from their faces they’re not with me on this – not yet. And I can’t say I blame them – she’s personable, nicely middle class, and she’s only twenty-two, even now: would she really have been capable of the carnage that must have taken place in that house two years ago? So I tell them what Gow said. About how psychopaths are born, not made. And how – in his experience – the female of the species is even more narcissistic than the male, even more selfish, even more vindictive when crossed.

  ‘The actual phrase Gow used was “hell hath no fury”.’

  ‘And I bet he told you where the quote comes from, too,’ mutters Gis.

  ‘The point is that someone with that personality type – everything revolves round them. Other people are merely obstacles to be eliminated. If she decided she wanted Gardiner, then a little thing like him having a wife already wasn’t going to stop her.’

  There was a scene I saw once on an old BBC cop show, Waking the Dead – one of the ones I did actually watch. The thing that stuck in my mind was what the profiler woman said about why people become murderers. She said men kill out of anger or for money, or words to that effect. But women are different. Women kill because something’s standing in their way.

  ‘And she got what she wanted, didn’t she?’ says Everett, her face grim. ‘She ended up moving in with him. And if she hadn’t messed up over getting pregnant Gardiner might even have married her.’

  ‘Would a girl like her be strong enough to crush someone’s skull?’ asks Baxter. Pragmatic, as usual.

  ‘That one could,’ says Quinn, making a face. Some of the old Quinn is seeping back. ‘And Hannah was hit from behind, remember. It probably didn’t take that much brute force.’

  ‘But what about moving the body – could Pippa really have got it into that shed on her own?’

  ‘If you ask me, yes,’ says Quinn. ‘Hannah wasn’t that big. And Pippa’s young – she’s fit –’

  One of the DCs makes a ‘yeah, right’ face behind his back.

  ‘– I reckon she could do it, as long as she had enough time.’

  ‘And after that,’ says Gislingham, ‘it could all have panned out just like we said. Pippa could have driven to Wittenham, dumped the car and come back by bus. And she wouldn’t have been that bothered about dumping the kid either – not if the whole point was getting Gardiner all to herself. I said, didn’t I – only a psycho would do that to a little kiddie. Looks like I was right.’

  ‘And they found her DNA in the car,’ says Everett. ‘Only it never raised any flags because we knew she often drove it.’

  ‘So are we saying it was Pippa those people saw with the buggy?’ asks Somer. ‘But the hair colour’s wrong, surely? Pippa’s blonde, Hannah was dark.’

  Gislingham shrugs. ‘Wigs ain’t hard to find. Not if she planned it all along the way the boss said.’

  ‘Wait a minute,’ says Baxter. ‘Before we all get carried away. The murder happened in Frampton Road, right? We know Walsh had access to that house, pretty much whenever he wanted, but what about this Pippa girl? How the hell did she get in there?’

  Everyone needs a devil’s advocate, and Baxter has a kitemark from Old Nick himself.

  ‘Actually,’ says Quinn, ‘I don’t think it would have been such a big deal. You can tell the place is in a state, even from the outside. She could have gone round there – snooped round the back, found there was a broken lock –’

  ‘Without Harper knowing?’

  ‘He was getting a bit confused, he drinks, he was taking those sleeping pills – I reckon he was pretty much out of it most of the time.’

  ‘OK,’ says Everett, ‘so let’s say that’s what happened. Just for argument’s sake. Next question: how did Pippa get Hannah in there?’

  Gislingham throws up his hands. ‘Oh, that bit’s easy: she waited for her in Frampton Road that morning. She knew Hannah parked along there so she just picked her moment. And she’d have known Hannah was going to Wittenham – in fact, she was one of the few people who definitely did know that. So she hangs around, then persuades Hannah down the path – I don’t know, she says she’s seen an injured cat or something. Then as soon as they’re out of sight –’

  ‘OK, fair enough,’ says Baxter. ‘But none of it proves she was in that house, does it? It’s all just circumstantial. The CPS are going to want way more than that. And if we can’t arrest her for the murder her lawyer will get her bail on the other charge and that’ll be the last we see of her.’

  There’s a silence. The photos stare out at us. Hannah. Pippa. Toby. Toby who couldn’t tell us anything about the bad man who hurt Mummy because there never was any bad man. Just his usu
al childminder taking him out for a nice ride in the car. I must have looked at these pictures a hundred times. Only now, for the first time, something is bugging me. Something about Pippa.

  I turn to Baxter. ‘This shot at the Cowley Road carnival – we have an electronic version of that, right?’

  ‘Yes, boss,’ he says, going over to his desk and pulling it up on the PC.

  I go across and bend to look at the screen. Then point.

  ‘The necklace. Can you zoom in on that?’

  There’s a low-level buzz in the room now, and people start to gather round. They think I’m on to something. And as Baxter enlarges the image and it pings into focus, they know I am.

  The chain is long and silver, and hanging from it, there’s an intricately carved object in the shape of a shell. Small and beautiful and priceless.

  It’s the missing netsuke.

  The noise starts to rise – the adrenaline of discovery, of the pieces of the puzzle shifting suddenly into sense. Soon there’s only one person who isn’t gathered round the screen. Somer. She’s at the whiteboard, staring at what Baxter wrote.

  I get up and join her. ‘What’s on your mind?’

  ‘It’s what you said about Walsh, sir – that he couldn’t possibly have killed Hannah in that house without Vicky knowing.’

  I wait. ‘And?’

  ‘Doesn’t the same apply to Pippa? I get it that she must have planned it all really carefully, but however well-organized she was, Vicky would surely have heard something, wouldn’t she? And there is no way Pippa could have got that car cover into the loft without Vicky knowing, not if Vicky was camped out on the top floor.’

  I turn round and raise my voice. ‘Quiet, everyone – you need to hear this. Go on, Somer, say all that again.’

  Which she does. Though not without blushing.

  ‘So – what’s your theory?’ says Quinn. ‘Vicky hears a noise, comes downstairs and walks straight into a bloodbath?’

  ‘Why not?’ says Somer. ‘Only she can’t go to the police without exposing her own little scam. After everything she’d gone through to get that money – having the baby, hiding out in that house – she’d risk losing it all.’