The House on Downshire Hill

by Guy Fraser-Sampson

  “True, all too true I’m afraid,” Collison murmured. “More and more I find myself thinking that there’s something we have yet to find out, something that will make everything fall into place and make sense. If only we knew where to look for it.”

  “And there’s the other thing we shouldn’t forget about,” Metcalfe said with an awkward look at Willis, “the thing you and I know about, guv, but aren’t allowed to mention to anybody else.”

  “You mean that this still could have been either a botched attempt to murder Raj, or a deliberate act to put the frighteners on him, or a deliberate act to frame him for murder?”

  “Exactly, guv, and in any one of those three cases then we’re talking about a third party, as yet unknown.”

  Collison shook his head helplessly.

  •

  It was shortly before midday that Priya finally received the call she had been waiting for.

  “Listen, Elizabeth,” she said after an awkward round of hellos, “we really need you to come in and see us. We need to know that you’re for real.”

  “How do you mean? Are you saying you don’t believe me?”

  “No, I’m saying that we can’t just accept your word for who you are. I’m sorry but after any appeal like that there are always a lot of calls which turn out to have been hoaxes. We really want to believe you, but we need to see you face to face and find some way of being sure that you really are Elizabeth Schneider.”

  “I’m not coming to any police station.”

  “It doesn’t have to be at a police station. It could be anywhere you like, just so long as I can come and bring a colleague with me.”

  “Nice try, but it could be a trick just so you can arrest me.”

  “Why on earth would we want to arrest you? You haven’t done anything wrong, have you? We just want to speak to you as a potential witness, that’s all, to get some background on two different murder cases. We couldn’t arrest you, even if we wanted to.”

  There was another of those silences. Desai tried again.

  “Listen to me, Elizabeth. There’s obviously something you want to tell us very badly, since you made the effort to call us, which we really appreciate. But it’s no good for anybody unless we can take seriously whatever it is you want to tell us. We can’t go around making allegations against people or deciding how to conduct an enquiry just on the basis of a voice on the end of the telephone. Do you understand that?”

  “Yes, I guess I do. I just didn’t think it would be this complicated, that’s all.”

  “It has to be a bit complicated, Elizabeth, these are serious matters we’re dealing with here. But if we can arrange to see you it can be at a location of your choosing, somewhere public if you like, and I promise that you’ll be free to go whenever you like.”

  “But you know who murdered my dad, don’t you? I heard on the telly that you’ve already got him banged up.”

  “We have a suspect in custody on suspicion of murdering your father, yes. But that enquiry is ongoing; we have no wish to put an innocent man behind bars if there is fresh evidence out there that might clear him. But there’s this other murder to consider now as well, and that’s the one I sense you can help us with. Come on, Elizabeth, there’s a young woman just been dug out of a back garden in Hampstead. Whoever she may be, don’t you want to see her killer brought to justice?”

  A pause again.

  “All right, I’ll agree to a meet.”

  “Great. When and where?”

  “Do you know Berkeley Square?”

  “Yes, of course. What time?”

  “Be there at 3 o’clock. Sit on one of the benches.”

  “OK. How will I know you?”

  “You won’t. Tell me what you’ll be wearing and I’ll find you. But if I think anything is wrong – that it’s a trick, like – then I’ll just walk away and you’ll never see me again. Understood?”

  “OK, understood. Look, I’m just wearing a black trouser suit, so nothing very distinctive. But I’ll bring another female officer with me. Hang on, I’m just looking across to see what she’s wearing today. OK, good, she’s wearing stockings that are a sort of light blue colour. That good enough for you?”

  “OK.”

  “And, Elizabeth, if there’s anything you can bring with you that will help to prove your identity, then please do, all right?”

  By this time everyone in the incident room and fallen silent and was listening openly. As Desai replaced the receiver a ripple of relief and approval ran through the team.

  “Do I understand we have a date?” Willis asked with a smile.

  “Yes, just you and me. Berkeley Square at 3 o’clock.”

  “It’s a good choice on her part,” Metcalfe noted. “Completely open, and with easy exits on all sides. It won’t be easy to mount any surveillance, particularly not at such short notice.”

  “Oh please don’t, guv. I sense that she’s really jumpy. If she spots anything at all she’ll just slip away and then we may have lost her for ever. Let’s just play it really straight and try to win her trust.”

  “I agree,” Willis nodded.

  “OK, then,” Metcalfe conceded reluctantly. “It doesn’t sound like we have much choice.”

  •

  Willis and Desai arranged themselves on a bench in Berkeley Square a little before the appointed time. It seemed very quiet. The lunchtime rush of sandwich eating office workers was over, and it was coming on to rain a little, with a sudden chill in the air. Desai huddled into her scarf, while Willis buttoned up her raincoat, but then crossed her legs and made sure the bottom part of the coat felt open so that her stockings were prominently on display. Then they waited.

  “You think that’s her?” Desai asked.

  Careful not to point, she nodded in the direction of the Bentley showroom, towards a nondescript woman with mousy hair.

  “No, I don’t think so. Look, she’s just walked straight past the entrance.”

  “Yes, but that’s the second time she’s walked round the square, and I could have sworn that she was looking at you, clocking the blue stockings.”

  “They’re not blue actually, they’re lilac.”

  “Yeah all right, whatever. But I’m betting she carries on and turns into the next opening – that one over there by the traffic lights.”

  “I hope you’re right. I’m getting chilly.”

  They both tensed and held their breath as the woman continued her progress. At the next entrance point she paused uncertainly but then came into the square and started walking around the path towards them. They both exhaled in silent relief, and watched her approach while trying not to make it obvious that they were doing so.

  She stopped in front of them. She was clearly very nervous.

  “Are you the coppers then?”

  “Yes, I’m Priya Desai. We spoke on the phone. This is Karen Willis.”

  “I didn’t know coppers dressed like that,” she said, staring dubiously at Willis.

  “Some of us do. Just because we’re in plainclothes they don’t have to be … well, plain.”

  “Why don’t you sit down and we can chat?” Desai suggested.

  The two of them moved apart and she sat down between them, moving stiffly and pressing both her arms and her legs together in front of her.

  “I know this can’t be easy for you,” Desai said, “but we really need to hear everything you can tell us about what happened.”

  Without answering, the woman plucked at the clasp of her bag and extracted a Canadian passport, which she handed wordlessly to Desai. She opened it and gazed quizzically first at the photograph and then back at the woman. She passed it across her to Willis, who repeated the process and then nodded and placed it back in the woman’s almost nerveless grasp.

  “OK, so you’re Elizabeth Schneider. Thank you. It’s really helpful even to know just that. We were worried that you might have ended up in a flowerbed in Downshire Hill.”

  “No. Like I said, that wa
s someone else.”

  “Do you know who?”

  “No, I haven’t the slightest idea.”

  “Did you know that someone was buried there?”

  “I’ve only known for a little while. My mum told me just before she died.”

  “Do you know what happened?”

  “Only that my dad killed her.”

  “And how do you know that, Elizabeth?” Desai asked, trying to sound calm despite her suddenly pounding heart.

  “Because she saw him burying her, that’s how.”

  CHAPTER 21

  “So what happened then?” Collison asked.

  “We made it very clear that she would need to come in and give a formal statement which she would have to sign,” Willis explained, “but we didn’t have any possible grounds for arresting her, so all we could do was try to persuade her. I think Priya did a really good job of that, by the way.”

  “What’s your feeling, Priya?” Metcalfe enquired. “Will she come in?”

  “I really don’t know, guv, but I have to say yes. I reckon her motivation for coming forward was to see that someone knows the truth about her father. I don’t see how she could be satisfied about that if we weren’t able actually to use whatever she told us.”

  “Well, let’s hope you’re right,” Collison said. “Wow, it’s a real turnup for the books isn’t it? We go public asking for help with a 20-year-old murder, only for our supposed victim to turn up in person very much alive.”

  “And making allegations against somebody else,” Willis pointed out.

  “You must be happy, guv,” Metcalfe said with a grin. “According to Peter this means that your serial killer idea is still up and running.”

  “It’s only one of several hypotheses, remember,” Collison said slightly defensively. “Actually, I’d have been very happy to be able to eliminate it. We seem to have altogether too many possible solutions already for my liking.”

  “Well, now that we know the corpse in the back garden wasn’t Elizabeth Schneider, does that make it more likely that these two murders were connected I wonder?” Willis conjectured.

  “I suppose that if they really were murderer and victim then a connection makes sense, though who on earth would be coming back to seek revenge 20 years later?”

  “Somebody who’s been in prison for a long time perhaps?” Desai suggested.

  “How about somebody who’s been a long way away – say, Canada?” Metcalfe countered. “If Taylor was the girl’s killer then how about this for a hypothesis: Johann Schneider knew the girl, finds out at the same time as his sister that Taylor murdered her, and comes back to take revenge.”

  “Yes, that thought had occurred to me too,” Collison agreed. “It might also make sense of Rowbotham’s mystery caller: it could have been the brother asking whether the father still lived in the same house. Oh dear, yet another hypothesis to put on our list.”

  “It seems like everything is riding on Elizabeth Schneider,” Willis observed. “If she has the guts to come in and make a formal statement we can ask her where we might be able to find her brother. If she doesn’t, then we’re whistling in the dark again.”

  Suddenly the phone on Collison’s desk rang. They all tensed. At the beginning of the meeting, the phone system had been set to divert all calls for Desai to this number. Collison lifted the handset, listened for a moment, said “just a minute, please”, and passed it to her.

  “It’s for you,” he said softly. “A woman’s voice.”

  “Hello,” Desai began, but then, after a pause and more awkwardly, “oh, I’m sorry but I really can’t talk right now. I’m in a meeting with my guvnor and I’m also expecting an important call … Yes, later will be fine. I’ll call you.”

  “Sorry, guv,” she said, handing back the phone. “It was nothing.”

  Willis and Metcalfe glanced quickly at each other. They had never seen Desai flustered before, yet flustered she clearly was.

  “No problem,” Collison said. “Now, where are we with everything else, Bob?”

  “We’ve pulled some files on girls – young women I should say really – who went missing around the same time and were never found. There were six of them, believe it or not, all in the space of a year or so. Ages range between 14 and 19. We’ve cast quite a wide net in terms of geography. Two of them lived right here in Hampstead – or close anyway – and the others were from Golders Green, Muswell Hill, West Hampstead, and Kentish Town.”

  “What about the two closest to home?”

  “Susan Barnard, age 15, reported missing by her mother on a Sunday morning. She hadn’t come home the previous night. Initially the mother wasn’t worried as she sometimes slept over with a girlfriend from school on a Saturday if they’d been out somewhere together, but when she rang the next morning they said they hadn’t seen her. There were the usual enquiries – school, friends, family – but no widescale search. The officers in charge took the view that it was probably just another young woman who had run off with a man somewhere, and that sooner or later she would get back in touch.”

  “But she never did?”

  “No, she didn’t. We mustn’t be too critical I suppose. Resources were an issue back then just as they are now, and teenage girls do have a habit of disappearing and then turning up again.”

  “And the second?”

  “Janet Winston, age 16, also reported missing by her mother. She went to school one morning but never came back. Enquiries revealed that she had never turned up for class that day. Since she was 16 and technically an adult, even less was done in her case than with Susan Barnard. Again, it was assumed that she’d run off with some man, but, like Susan, she was never heard of again.”

  “Any connection between the two, do you think?”

  “There’s nothing obvious from the file, guv. Susan Barnard was from a white middle-class family; her father worked for a bank in the City. Janet Winston was black and from a single-parent family; her mother was a nursing sister at the Royal Free. They went to different schools and would have had different daily journeys. There’s no evidence that they knew each other.”

  “There is one thing I spotted when I went through the files,” Willis proffered, “well, two actually.”

  “Yes?”

  “Both girls were described by their mothers and their schoolmates as looking older than they really were, particularly when they got dressed up to go out. Also, in the case of Janet Winston she’d been arrested once on suspicion of prostitution. She was interviewed as a juvenile with a social worker present, but released for lack of evidence. For the record, she maintained her innocence; said it was all a mistake.”

  “Yeah, isn’t it always?” Metcalfe asked cynically.

  “Well there we are, anyway,” Collison said. “I don’t suppose there’s anything convenient on file such as dental records or distinguishing features?”

  “No such luck, guv. One thing, though. Tom Bellamy told me unofficially that he thought the victim was white, blonde, and about 15 or 16. So that would rule out Janet Winston. I’m hoping to have the formal post-mortem report tomorrow morning, by the way.”

  “Well, we shall see what we shall see,” Collison mused. “I must say I’m a bit shocked that so many young women should have gone missing in such a short time in such a relatively small area. Are these numbers unusual, do we know?”

  “Actually, I’ve been doing a bit of research on this recently,” Metcalfe replied. “They are striking, but not necessarily completely unusual. A lot of young people go missing every year, particularly in large metropolitan areas. And a surprising number of them are never heard of again. But the fact that their bodies are never found suggests that a lot of them really do just want to run away, disappear, get away from troubles at home perhaps. Presumably they manage to assume a new identity.”

  “Much more difficult today though, wouldn’t you say? How could you get work without a National Insurance number? Or open a bank account without a passport or drivin
g licence? And how could you get a passport or driving licence without a birth certificate? And, as Raj found out to his cost, it’s almost impossible to move around now without leaving some form of electronic footprint behind you.”

  “True. Shall I follow up on Susan Barnard? There’s nothing in the file since the enquiry was closed down 20 years ago. It’s always possible that she might have turned up some years later and nobody bothered to notify us.”

  “Yes, please do, Bob. It might be an idea to do the same thing with the other four as well, just in case. We need some DNA specimens from family members too.”

  “OK, I’ll get some of the troops onto that straightaway.”

  “Diplomatically of course, Bob. We’re going to have to reopen some old wounds here, so please let’s tread carefully.”

  The phone rang again. Once more Collison listened and then passed it across to Desai.

  “Hello, Elizabeth? Thank God, I’m so glad you called, I was really hoping you would. How are you? … Yes, I know this must be very difficult for you, but we really need you to make a formal statement, like we said yesterday. We really can’t do anything without it … Yes, it can just be me and Karen again if you like, you don’t have to see anybody else … Well, we will have to tape record our interview … Yes, and then later we’ll need to see you again so you can sign your statement.”

  She listened intently and then put her hand over the mouthpiece and said “tomorrow morning all right?” to Collison, who nodded emphatically.

  “Yes, Elizabeth, tomorrow morning will be fine. 10 o’clock? OK. Now, you know where we are, don’t you? We’re just on the corner of Downshire Hill. You must have walked past the police station many times when you were young. OK then, we’ll see you tomorrow, and thank you again; I really appreciate this.”

  As she replaced the handset there was an audible sigh of relief from the others.

  “Let’s hope she doesn’t get cold feet at the last minute,” Metcalfe said.