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Wednesday 9 July 2014
Acrow – glistening black and iridescent – was jumping about on the flat roof. A small, slim woman stood beside him, smoking. Detective Sergeant Sarah Collins wore polished black Oxford brogues and a grey trouser suit that in recent months had become slightly too roomy around the waist. Her hair was short, her hands tidy, the nails neatly filed but unpolished. From a distance, the simple neutrality of her appearance might have made her seem younger than her years, but close up, the mark of experience on her face aged her somewhere in her mid-thirties. It was a simple face – square-jawed, even-featured – that didn’t look as though it easily broke into a smile but a seriousness and intelligence in the eyes softened any hint of severity.
Sarah extinguished her cigarette and threw the crow one of the nuts she had brought for him. How silly: tears were suddenly rolling down her face. She couldn’t help but think that it said something truly ridiculous about your life when you were sad about saying goodbye to a crow. She pulled the back of her hand across her face, turned away from the bird and looked towards the river.
A cruiser was moving slowly upstream full of sedentary tourists, the sightseers of the megacity skating upon the river’s surface as shallowly as water boatmen. Sarah knew too much about the Thames. She could no longer see it as a place for pleasure cruises. Nor was it any more to her a river of history and literature. Not Elizabeth I making her way downstream on a gilded barge. Not even Dickens’ river of fog and industry, of docks and cranes, toerags, mudlarks and stevedores eking out a living from its dirty but profitable shores. No, policing had made the Thames an impersonal place, a place of physics. The grey-brown canalized river was an inexorable tidal sweep, a mass of cold and filthy water in relentless laminar flow. She knew how young men set off pissed and high-spirited from one bank only to find themselves suddenly in the grip of a current that was accelerating powerfully, sweeping them downstream as small and irrelevant as Poohsticks. She knew how bodies snagged like refuse on the clean-up cages. Unbidden, it entered her mind that perhaps it was those in despair who knew the river best, who came to it as if on pilgrimage with their weighted rucksacks and cast themselves upon its indifference.
For three years, attached to the Directorate of Specialist Investigations, Sarah had had this view of the Thames from the flat roof outside her office window. Deaths in contact with police had been her bailiwick. At the start of her posting it had seemed clear that her job was to contradict the river, to assert the importance of each little life, however small it might be in the scale of the universe. Recently, though, this conviction had threatened to slip away from her, as though her voice were only snatched up and dissipated by the river’s indifferent roar.
She’d joined the directorate with a certain defiance. After all, investigating the police wasn’t a job every officer wanted. Perhaps that was what had attracted her. It was an arena that demanded pure impartiality, an ideal of investigation at its purest. It had been a badge of honour for her to be fearless, impervious to opinion. It was as if she had believed she could put her hand in the fire time and time again and never be scorched.
Well, she’d been wrong.
It was six months since her former colleague, Detective Constable Steve Bradshaw, had let her know exactly what he thought of her, and it had hurt. She’d admired him as a detective and thought of him as a friend. ‘No wonder you’re so fucking lonely,’ he’d told her at the end of their last investigation together. He’d gone further, rubbed it in, said he felt sorry for her. He’d told her to get herself a fucking dog.
Ever since the close of that investigation into the deaths of Hadley Matthews, a male police officer, and Farah Mehenni, a teenage immigrant girl, who had fallen to their deaths from a tower block Sarah felt she had been treading water, trying not to get swept away, knowing she had to move on.
She cleared her throat and turned back to Sid, the crow, who was waiting for her, his head cocked, his eye bright and beady, his beak as hard as galvanized rubber. Crows were cleverer than dogs, she’d read, adaptable. ‘You be good,’ she said, and clamped her jaw shut against any more tears.
All detectives have moments of burnout, she told herself. It’s just the nature of the job.
That morning, she’d picked up an unmarked car from her new team in Hendon. She was making a positive move. She was going on promotion to be a detective inspector on Homicide. She knew the unofficial calls would have gone out as soon as her application was in, checking up on her, finding a way to stymie her move if the words spoken into the phone were sufficiently bad. But clearly the words had been good. The boss had said they were happy with her, and he must have meant it.
She hung up the bag of bird food and ducked under the open window into her office, determined to put her stuff into the car quickly and leave without a backward glance. But Jez, one of her detective constables, was waiting awkwardly for her, shifting his weight from foot to foot, making her think of that stupid crow. There was that bloody painful boiled egg in her throat again, the heat behind the eyes. They must have that red, swollen look. It must be obvious.
She was saved by a flash of humour. How could she not smile at Jez’s flash gold cufflinks, the high-collared white shirt stretched tightly over his no doubt gym-primed chest, the rather nice leather satchel that had probably cost too much. He was young, good-looking. He tried too hard. He’d been supportive, kind to her when she was at her most lonely. She’d come to like him.
She said, ‘I’d better get a move on.’
There was a pause.
‘I got you something.’ Blushing, he pulled a flat package out of the bag. He might have guessed how suddenly close to tears she was because he added, ‘Don’t worry, Sarah. Open it later.’
She nodded. All her stuff was packed away into the blue plastic crate that stood on her desk.
He said, ‘Can I carry that down to the car for you?’
She shook her head. She wouldn’t risk speaking.
He said, ‘I’ll look after Sid.’
She reached out for a piece of paper, took her pen from her inside jacket pocket and wrote, Thanks, Jez.
He put his hand on hers. ‘No worries. I’ll catch you later. They’re lucky to have you. Homicide will be a bit of a break after this, more straightforward.’
Sarah barely noticed the roads she was driving except when they were suddenly peopled by memories from her years of policing. Fulham Palace Road, outside the florist: a posh guy, face-down stone drunk in the street. She’d been at the very beginning of her service, still in uniform. When they’d got him upright, he’d swayed towards her, breathing fumes of vomit, and told her she looked adorable in that hat. She switched lanes, pulled round the Broadway. Hammersmith nick on her left, two police horses waiting for the gates, their tails switching. She had remembered the Shepherd’s Bush Road as launderettes and tatty takeaways, but it was being repainted in a tasteful muted palette that seemed aimed at suggesting country houses rather than Zone 2 Central London. If you had to be rich even to live on a main road, where on earth were the poor going to go? Shepherd’s Bush itself, reassuringly unsalvageable – a brief memory of rowdy Australians outside the Walkabout – then, on the island of scrubby green encircled by choked traffic, the echo of a crying girl with broken fingernails and a bruise to her cheek.
Back on autopilot as she headed north-east, her thoughts returned to their usual obsession: the investigation into the deaths of PC Hadley Matthews and Farah Mehenni.
It had been her last full investigation at the DSI: the one that had made her look around for a new posting. She and Steve Bradshaw had been practically first on scene and found them both smashed against the concrete but still warm from the life that had left them.
Outwardly the investigation had been a success. Inwardly it was anything but. She felt she’d carry it with her all her career. She thought of the pretty young police constable, Lizzie Griffiths, who’d been on the roof when Hadley and Farah fell and who had run away, going missing for days before she and Steve could locate and interview her. She remembered with more discomfort Lizzie’s boss, Inspector Kieran Shaw. If anyone had to pay it should have been him. She couldn’t pinpoint the feeling that slid uncomfortably inside her: dissatisfaction, frustration, anger – yes, anger certainly. Guilt, maybe. Self-doubt. Certainly a darkness. She checked herself. She needed to stop herself circling around these thoughts, stuck in the same place she’d been for months.
She focused back on the road, the here and now. It was just the nature of a detective’s job: some things stayed with you. Some things couldn’t be resolved. You had to accept that. She was doing that. She was moving on.
She was threading her way through residential streets of 1930s semis, Victorian terraces, slowing for speed bumps and winding through the maze of closures that tried to prevent drivers using them as rat runs. Her years as a detective had made her as knowledgeable about cut-throughs as a London black-cab driver. Here, by an arcade of shops, her first homicide as a detective constable. The victim had made it across the street to bleed out in front of his mother as she ran downstairs from her flat above the off-licence. The murderer had been only seventeen, imagining he was in a movie when he killed the other boy over a bag of weed.
Like a homing pigeon she accelerated along the A41 and then turned left down past the big-money residential developments that were forcing their way upwards like big-money Redwoods. She swung into the entrance to the Peel Centre, passed the security check – the civilians at the gate as usual never in any particular hurry – and pulled round under the concrete portico that framed the entrance to the site.
For a moment she stood on the parade ground, allowing the site to seep into her bones, all her love and hatred for the place, acclimatizing herself to the open space, onto which a light drizzle was falling from a grey sky. Ranged around were low-rise buildings, with white concrete and green fascia, brick-clad columns, strip windows and a skyline of long flat roofs.
Hendon: less famous than New Scotland Yard, but to many who worked for it the secret heart of the Met. The business of dealing with the public, with victims, witnesses, families, suspects: that was all done elsewhere. Hendon was a back office, a place where you wouldn’t be bothered by someone who didn’t know how things worked in the police world of abandoned children, violence and madness. Until recently everyone had trained here and passed out on this parade ground in ranks of shiny shoes, polished buttons and white gloves and it was a place you returned to throughout your service, a place where things were going on but that kept itself to itself. It was going to be a fresh start in an old location.
Carrying her blue plastic crate up the floating treads of the murder block, Sarah snuck into her new office and pulled the door shut.
Her new boss, DCI James Fedden, had told her she would be taking on a job straight away, and sure enough, three storage boxes were waiting on the desk. Operation Egremont: the disappearance of Tania Mills, a teenage girl, back in 1987.
She put her crate on the floor and ran her fingers over the top of the first box. She wanted to open it and start reading, but she should wait until she could work systematically.
Quickly she began setting up her base camp, sorting her stuff into drawers – bags of nuts for those nights when everything was shut and you weren’t getting home, a box of cereal for early warrants, a toothbrush, toothpaste, soap and a towel. She threw her shoulder harness with cuffs and asp into a bottom drawer, got out her legal Blackstones and lined them up on the shelves, set up her coffee machine on the windowsill. Then, with no ceremony, she opened the present from Jez. It was a framed picture of Sid, bearing the handwritten legend Illegitimi non carborundum. It was a nice thought. She hung it on the wall, next to a picture of her dog. They made her smile. Other people had children. She had a dog and a crow.
There was a light knock and then the door was pushed open. Detective Inspector Peter Stokes’ face was hidden by the two large storage boxes he had in his arms.
‘Where do you want them?’ he said.
Sarah cleared a path. ‘Oh, just stick them on the floor.’
He placed them by the window, stood up, scratched the back of his head, looked out towards the parade ground. He’d done his thirty years. This was his final shift and she was his replacement. It was his office she was moving into. He turned, offered his hand.
‘Welcome to Homicide, Sarah. Thanks for taking on Egremont.’
‘Yes, thanks. No problem.’
He was a career detective, grey around the temples, no longer excited about anything. Tall, a bit sweaty and overweight in a baggy suit and an undistinguished tie. Sarah didn’t know him well, but she assumed he could never have been much interested in rank: just got hooked on solving crimes. He seemed reluctant to leave, and that wasn’t really surprising. It couldn’t be easy handing back your warrant card and trying to retrieve as a much older person what it had been like to be a civilian.
The boxes he had brought in were of dark mottled cardboard: better quality than the stuff issued nowadays. The spines, facing towards her, carried printed Op Egremont labels that were peeling away.
She put her hands on her hips. ‘I’m just about to get to grips with it, actually. Is there anything you need to tell me about it?’
He shook his head and mirrored her body language. It was as if they were pulling up their shirt sleeves to start work together.
‘Nothing that springs to mind. Ring me when you’ve read through it. If you’ve got any questions, that is.’
Sarah smiled sympathetically, and after a pause, he smiled too. ‘You don’t have to ring me, of course,’ he said.
‘No, it’s useful to know you wouldn’t mind. Thank you.’
‘The boss sends his apologies, by the way.’
‘That’s fine. He emailed. Thailand, isn’t it?’
‘That’s right. Daughter’s getting married.’ Stokes went over to the desk, put his hands on the first box. ‘Do you mind?’
‘Of course not.’
He opened the box, took out the top item and handed it to Sarah. ‘Here she is.’
It was the Missing poster for Tania Mills. It had that elusive something that marked it as the past – a stiffness in the paper perhaps, or the sheen of a time when the Met outsourced such matters to a printing company, a dark, less sharp typeface, the smell of something stored too long in a box.
The poster bore a black-and-white black-bordered photograph of the missing girl, looking evenly at the camera. She was in her school uniform, with a too-fat diagonally striped tie and her hair in long plaits. Awkward, but pretty. The hotline number was for a London code long gone, superseded numerous times by the growth of the city and the changing nature of telecoms.
Stokes folded his arms across his chest. ‘To be honest, she’s been haunting me for nearly thirty years. I first worked the job as a young DC. I’m really hoping this new lead goes somewhere. Part of me wants to follow it up myself, of course. If you can solve it, I’ll buy you a case of champagne. That’s a promise. I’m a man of my word.’
Sarah wanted to offer some intelligent consolation. She put the poster back in the box, taking a moment before she spoke.
‘Surely it’s the fate of every serious detective to carry unfinished business into retirement? I’ve already got jobs that bug me and I’ve still got nearly twenty years to do.’ She smiled. ‘Not that I’m claiming to be serious myself.’
He shrugged, still looking at the poster. ‘I’ve got to let it go. I know that.’
‘What’s your feeling? Are you sure she was murdered?’
‘Well . . .’ Gently, he put the lid back on the box. ‘Her disappearance was so totally out of character.’ He opened his hands as if he were a magician with a disappearing trick. ‘And to never make contact again, never? Not in all this time?’
‘It does seem the most plausible explanation. But she could have had some sort of accident. Simply be dead, not murdered.’
‘Yes. That’s true. But still, no body.’
There was a silence. Then Sarah said, ‘And the family can’t stop hoping?’
‘Don’t really know about Dad – he doesn’t want updates unless it’s really necessary. Does everything over the phone. Finds it too painful to meet. As for Mum – she’s definitely got the candle lit at the window. Thinks it’s a betrayal to give up on Tania coming home.’
Sarah exhaled. Of course that was the case: hope was the last act of fidelity.
‘Have you told them about this latest line of inquiry?’
He shook his head. ‘I’ve told Dad but I’m leaving Mum to you, I’m afraid. I can’t stand to go through all that with her again. The hope, then the disappointment. We’ve had so much crap information over the years.’
‘They’re not together?’
‘Separated about twelve months after the disappearance. It’s often the way. I got into the habit of seeing Mum about once a year. We have a coffee. I tell her we never give up.’
‘Can’t be easy for you.’
‘No, it isn’t.’ He rubbed his right eyebrow with his index finger. ‘Still, hardly as difficult for me as for the family.’ He threw his hands out in sudden frustration. ‘Problem always was, no body! No physical evidence. No opportunity for a helpful DNA hit because the technology’s so much better now and the bastards didn’t know then that they hadn’t better leave anything of themselves behind.’ There was a brief silence. Then it seemed that Stokes couldn’t stop himself. ‘The job throws money at the cases that capture the public’s attention, but nobody’s interested in properly resourcing an obscure investigation into a fifteen-year-old girl who went missing more than twenty years ago.’
But it was normal, Sarah thought. How could the job possibly fund all of these missing people and lost causes? She checked her pessimism. She didn’t know yet whether it was a lost cause or not. And a new lead surely meant there would be some money on the table to investigate. It was her professional responsibility to hope.
Stokes, as if he was remembering to make small talk, glanced at the photo of the shiny black crow with the particularly beady eye. ‘Who’s that?’
Sarah smiled. ‘Oh that. That’s Sid – a former colleague.’
‘He didn’t fancy Homicide, then?’
‘No, he was a strictly Special Investigations kind of a corvid. They promised me they’d feed him.’
He tapped the photo of the spaniel. ‘And this little chap?’
‘That’s Daisy. I’ve only just got her. Don’t know what I was thinking.’
‘Looks like a nice dog.’
‘She is. A lot of fun.’
‘What do you do with her when you’re on duty?’
‘I’ve got a dog walker. She goes there full time when I’ve got a push on.’
Stokes nodded. ‘I remember when we used to be able to bring our dogs into work. CID nights there always used to be some mutt or other lying under a desk. Just one more thing we’re not allowed any more. Oh well, times change.’
For the first time Sarah felt his gaze focusing on her with the necessarily cool regard of a detective. It was an unconscious habit all the good ones had – to bring their professional attention to bear on non-professional matters.
He said, ‘You live alone, then?’
‘None of your business.’
She had tried for a bit of cheek in her voice but it wasn’t a style that came easily to her. Stokes had heard only her defensiveness.
‘Sorry,’ he said quickly. ‘Didn’t mean to intrude.’
‘No, not at all, no worries. Only joking. Yes, I live alone.’
She opened the Op Egremont box, removed the Missing poster, found some Blu Tack in her drawer and stuck the poster on the wall directly above her computer.
Stokes nodded. ‘Nice gesture. Thanks.’
‘No problem.’
She thought she had been giving him a clear message that the conversation was over, but perhaps his detective gaze had seen a trait in her that evoked sympathy because he now said, ‘Listen, Sarah. Don’t worry too much about Egremont. I never got round to it. Not properly. It’s just not possible. Once we pick up a live job, you’ll be too busy. You have to find a bit of space for down time.’
She tried to brush him off. ‘Don’t worry. I’ll only do what I can.’
But he wasn’t having it and interrupted. ‘This job can eat you alive.’
She offered her hand. ‘I’ll see you at the Crown later on.’
He enclosed her smaller hand in his two and smiled. ‘Look, this job, Tania Mills. I know you’ll give it a good go. I’m grateful. But don’t worry. I’m also realistic.’
‘Hey,’ she said. ‘It’s OK. I get it.’
He released her hand. ‘Sorry. I’ve got two daughters. Sometimes I need to be told to back off.’
‘That’s OK. But still, back off.’ She smiled.
He said, ‘You’ll like it here. And I’m sure you’ll do well. I’ve heard about you on the grapevine. I’d have liked to have worked with you. I admire someone who’s a bit bloody-minded.’
The door shut. Sarah slipped a capsule into the coffee machine, got out her reading glasses.
The disappearance of Tania Mills was an investigation that had long gone cold, but now, after all these years, there was a new lead. Erdem Sadiq, a prisoner on remand at Thameside, claimed to know what had happened. Sarah had wanted to interview the informant herself to get a measure of his evidence, but the DCI had told her it was too late for that.
‘We’ve already booked the interview. HMP will never let us change the officers at this stage. Don’t worry. I’m sending someone good: Lee Coutts. You’ll like him. He’s keen as mustard. Reminds me of myself as a young man. Anyway, don’t get too excited. The snout’s a sex offender – he’s got his own reasons for talking to us. This is something just to get you started. Work it slow time. Live investigations have to come first.’
Fedden hadn’t been encouraging, but he was right to be dubious about any information Erdem Sadiq might provide. Sadiq had a strong incentive to talk: if he gave evidence that led to a charge, he could expect time off his own sentence.
Sarah lifted the initial investigation summary out of the box. It was typewritten and bore Tippex corrections. The past felt so distant, so different, that it was hard to believe that she herself had been alive in 1987, throwing her satchel over her shoulder and walking to school with her older sister. As she began to read she reached back through the gap of time to that other girl who had walked out of her own front door on the morning after the storm, and disappeared.
Situation report: Operation Egremont
Victim: Tania Mills
Date of disappearance: 16 October 1987
Summary
Tania Mills left her home on 16 October 1987 at approximately 0900 hours. Tania’s school was closed due to the storm. Tania told her mother, Claire Mills, that she was going to see a friend, Katherine Herringham, to revise for her O levels. Tania frequently studied outside the home. Her parents had thought she would pursue a musical career but recently she had decided instead to study modern languages. Tania was known to walk to her friend’s through a local park. Katherine reported that Tania never turned up but that she hadn’t been worried because Tania often changed her plans.
Tania’s disappearance was reported at 1930 hours. Her mother, Claire Mills, told police she had expected her daughter home by 1800 hours but had not initially been concerned. Tania was fifteen, almost an adult. Claire had thought there was an innocent explanation for her delay in returning home.
By the time Tania’s father, Benedict Mills, returned home Claire was anxious. Benedict Mills drove to Ellerby police station and reported his daughter missing at the front counter.
Immediate action
Borough officers made an initial search of the park and surrounding area. The work was hampered by darkness and storm damage, including many fallen trees. Tania’s friends were contacted at their home addresses. None reported seeing Tania at all on 16 October. The following morning the investigation was taken on by the local CID. The park was cordoned off and an extensive search undertaken. A pair of jeans that had belonged to Tania were found. No other evidence was recovered. Robert McCarthy, the local park keeper, was arrested but subsequently eliminated from the inquiry. There was no sign of fighting or damage in any area of the park. No one reported seeing anything unusual. Tania’s school, Hachett’s, had reopened. Teachers and pupils were spoken to. An appeal was made in the local paper, the Ellerby Gazette, and on BBC London and Capital Radio . . .
The initial investigation and the subsequent reviews had generated hundreds of statements. And the files contained other things – exhibit lists, school reports, photographs. Sarah read for three hours. Still she felt she had only just started. She needed to get to know Tania, to reach out to her through the silent years. This wasn’t mere sentiment. It was her task as a detective to concentrate hard on every detail until the victim she had never met became a breathing person, revived for the sole purpose of rolling the film. It might be something hidden that unlocked what had happened – a criminal activity, a secret friendship perhaps – or it could be just a random detail. The victim made a detour to buy cigarettes or left the party early or left the party late.
Sarah was more dependent than usual on witnesses. In 1987, there had been fewer opportunities to intrude. Fewer cameras. No helpful internet browsing. No teenager’s phone accessed hourly to check her texts, update her status and tell an investigator where she was and who was important to her. She hoped the detectives had known their job: to cast their net widely and to encourage people to feel safe to speak.
Finally she stood up, rubbed her face, clasped her hands behind her neck and stretched backwards.
She was irritated by the investigation’s constantly repeated refrain that conjured a good girl – doing well at school, a talented musician – and very little else. Where were Tania’s misdemeanours? Where were the bits that made her a teenager – the untidiness, the day bunked off school, the secret smoking? Where, crucially, was the anomalous detail that might offer a fresh line of inquiry?
The only bit of grit that hadn’t passed through the sieve was an out-of-character shoplifting incident in Selfridges, six months before Tania disappeared. Tania had been arrested. Nothing had come of it. It wasn’t much but it might be worth probing. One other thing had drawn her attention. On the morning of her disappearance, Tania had secretly changed out of her jeans and into a short skirt. It was the last time police had evidence of her alive. Perhaps that moment too could stand some re-examination.
It was late afternoon and the other officers from her new team were already leaving, going straight to Peter Stokes’ leaving drinks. Still, she told herself, she could squeeze in a quick visit before that.
She made a phone call, shut down her computer, pulled on her jacket.
Sarah knocked at the front door of the house Tania had left nearly thirty years ago. She’d called ahead and driven the twenty minutes or so west to the nice suburban neighbourhood, the tree-lined residential streets.
The door opened. Claire Mills was in her late sixties and still trim. The first impression was of one of those well-turned-out women who can’t leave the house without foundation and lipstick. Neatly bobbed ashgrey hair. A blue brocaded jacket over a matching knee-length dress. Around her neck a Liberty-print scarf. It was the briefest of impressions. Tania’s mother quickly turned into the hall and guided Sarah inside, leaving her alone in the front room while she made tea. Still, despite the bright colours of the scarf, the smart clothes and the well-cut hair, Sarah had immediately recognized the immobility in Claire’s expression, the certain fixedness around her mouth and eyes: it was the imprint of settled grief shared by so many of the otherwise very different next-of-kins she had encountered. This woman’s life had been suspended in 1987. All her other activities gave only an illusion of movement around an unbending grief.
The front room – and it was a front room, not a sitting room – was a shrine.
One wall was covered with a Danish-style shelving system entirely devoted to the missing girl. A framed newspaper cutting of Tania with other girls all lined up holding a ball and wearing medals: U14s net prize in school netball competition. A Grade 8 certificate for violin, with distinction. Photographs in frames. Tania standing on a stage playing her violin in front of an orchestra. Tania – pinafore dress, white tights – curtseying by a piano and handing flowers to Princess Diana. Tania at the beach, a toddler with bucket and spade. Again at the beach, an older Tania – tiny breasts just budding – wearing a sailor one-piece with a white fringe around the hips and sporting red plastic heart-shaped sunglasses. There were objects too. A teddy bear. A small glass horse. The school music prize for 1986: a treble-clef music trophy.
Standing in the silent room, a thought suddenly came: Claire was holding the line but one day she would be gone too. All this memorabilia would become like a family video in a cardboard box of miscellanea in a junk shop that no one is interested in possessing, and the desire to find Tania would be silenced too.
The door to the hallway opened and Claire entered, carrying a tray with two china cups, a small teapot, a sugar bowl and milk jug, a plate of biscuits. She put the tray on the circular coffee table and smoothed down her dress with both hands before sitting.
‘Ben wouldn’t let me put photos up. He finds it easier than me to let go of things that cause him unhappiness. When he left I really let rip.’
Sarah mustered a smile and moved towards a chair. ‘I hope you don’t mind me looking.’
‘Not at all.’
She accepted the offered cup of tea. ‘They are lovely photos.’
‘Thank you.’
‘She was a violinist?’
‘Oh yes, very good. Grade 8 by the age of fourteen. With distinction. Everyone said she could play professionally.’
She’d trotted it out like an incantation. How many times had she said that since Tania had gone? ‘But she’d decided not to study the violin at college?’
‘Well yes, that’s right. I was pleased in a way. It’s very competitive. The better you get, the better everyone else is. Makes girls anxious. And all that practising! I thought she’d have more of a life if she kept it as a hobby.’
Sarah nodded, picked up the cue. ‘Was she a particularly anxious girl?’
Claire frowned, a tiny indentation between her brows. ‘Not particularly, no.’
You must miss her terribly.’
‘Every day.’
‘Would you tell me about her?’
Claire smiled – pleased, Sarah understood, to have the opportunity to say the words. ‘She was a lovely girl, absolutely lovely. Beautiful, talented, kind.’
Sarah nodded. ‘I want to ask you about something . . .’
Claire smiled again. ‘Ask whatever you like.’
‘Well, the morning she disappeared . . . she changed her clothing. After she’d left home, I mean.’
Claire shook her head in mock despair as though she was talking about a girl who had just that minute walked out of the room.
‘Teenagers! I’d said to her I thought her skirt was too short and she changed into jeans – only to please me, it turns out, because as soon as she was out of the house she changed back into the skirt.’
‘You don’t know anything more about it than that?’
Claire tilted her head, narrowed her eyes. ‘No,’ she said. ‘Why, should I? An arrest was made but they told me it was a mistake. Is there more to know?’
Sarah smiled. ‘No, not at all. I’m just new to the case and trying to get a better picture.’
There was a constrained smile. ‘That’s all right.’
Sarah paused. ‘There’s one other thing I wanted to ask you about . . . I hope you don’t mind.’
‘Please.’
‘There was a shoplifting incident, about six months before Tania went missing.’
Claire frowned again. ‘Oh, that. That was nothing! She’d gone into town, to Selfridges. She was at that age, you know? Beginning to experiment with how she dressed?’
‘Mmm. So what happened?’
‘She tried on a leather belt and left the shop without realizing she was still wearing it. Silly girl. Anyway, the officers accepted her account. Nothing came of it.’ After a moment’s pause, Claire added, ‘Do you mind me asking why you want to know about that?’
‘Like I say, I’m trying to get a feel for the case, for Tania. It’s just so out of character.’
‘Yes, though it isn’t really, because she hadn’t actually stolen anything.’
‘No. So, Selfridges, central London. That’s quite a way from here.’
‘Yes, but you know these girls . . . they’ve been raised in the city. They’re so confident with the trains and those department stores . . . they can try clothes, make-up, perfume.’
‘Was she with a friend?’
‘I don’t think so. On her own.’ There was a pause. Then Claire said, ‘If you think it might be relevant, you could ask my ex-husband. He went down to central London when she was arrested.’
‘Yes, I might do that.’
Claire’s mouth was tense. ‘He doesn’t want to talk about her, does he? Moving on. New family, all that.’
‘I’ve not met him yet.’
After an angry pause: ‘It was less than twelve months before he moved in with her. The first one, I mean. He’s on his third wife now. Nothing stops him.’
‘I see.’
‘I’ve wondered if they were already together – before Tania disappeared, I mean.’
‘And what do you think?’
‘I think they must have been, yes.’
‘But you don’t know for sure?’
‘Not for sure.’
Claire looked down and stretched her fingers out.
Sarah said, ‘I’m sorry to ask you this stuff.’
‘No, no, no. It’s fine. Don’t feel you have to treat me with kid gloves. Anything, anything at all that might help.’ She met Sarah’s eyes. ‘Biscuit?’
Among the Duchy Originals on the flowery china plate were Penguins in their shiny wrappers. Penguins splashing in water, penguins canoeing and skateboarding. Sarah leaned forward and chose a surfing Penguin. Claire took one too. They compared biscuits without comment. Claire’s penguin was skiing. They both smiled as they unwrapped them.
Sarah said, ‘Mind if I dunk?’
Claire put her own biscuit in her coffee. ‘Dunk away.’
The melted chocolate was over-sweet and brought memories of a plate of biscuits waiting on the kitchen table when Sarah came home from school.
Claire said, ‘They used to have shiny aluminium foil wrappers and the penguins were black and white. You can’t get those any more.’
‘You always keep a pack in the house.’
Claire nodded and Sarah knew better than to complete the thought.
For when she comes back.
Claire’s voice carried a hint of protest. ‘Sometimes missing people are found alive, even years afterwards. Jaycee Dugard, Natascha Kampush, Elizabeth Smart . . .’
She stopped speaking but Sarah’s imagination had already leaped unbidden to those girls, imprisoned, raped, but – finally – returned to their families. It was a poisoned dilemma. If you prayed Tania was still alive, then what were you praying for?
Claire was speaking again in a rush of words. ‘I know! I know how I must look to you. My silly Penguin biscuits! But if you knew. How I wish I could turn the clock back, stop her going out that door . . . ?
Sarah felt the tears come to her own eyes. She reached forward impulsively and put her hand on Claire’s knee. ‘You can’t imagine how happy it would make me to be able to find her for you.’
Claire looked directly into Sarah’s face. She nodded as if in surprised recognition of something she hadn’t expected to find there.
‘Thank you. Yes, I can see that. Thank you for that. Yes. Thank you.’
Sarah could hardly hear the words. She had, she felt, momentarily ceded control of herself. It wasn’t professional. She had lost the thread of why she was here, what she could offer. She sat back into her chair and into her mind came an unwelcome thought. This already means too much to me. There was another pause. Then Claire said, ‘Why don’t you tell me about this new line of inquiry you’ve got?’
Afterwards Sarah stood in the park just along the street from Tania’s house. The sky was gunmetal grey and the park was luminous with the strangely bright light that sometimes precedes showers. Perhaps she was doing it on purpose – making herself late for Peter Stokes’ farewell drinks – but no, she dismissed the thought. There’d still be time to pop in for a quick one.
She began to walk the route Tania’s school friends had said she normally took. The path wound downhill through trees. On the left was a children’s playground with horses on springs and a flying fox – new things. Sarah tried to picture how it had been on the morning Tania disappeared. She had seen the photographs: the uprooted trees, scattered branches, the turned earth.
Further down was the park keeper’s hut: a small building, shut up. Timber walls: planks layered vertically, green with lichen. Dirty floral curtains at a small square window. A padlock on the door. It was a ghost building. In 1987 this had been the fief of the investigation’s main suspect, Robert McCarthy. Sarah had read the account of his arrest more than once.
When police entered the park that first evening, Robert was there in the dusk: a slightly portly man who, at the age of thirty-five, was still dressed by his mother in cardigans and trousers with braces. He’d hung around. With a certain slackness around the mouth and that something about him that missed the point, he hadn’t matched the emotional state of the others looking for the lost girl. He’d got on people’s nerves.
The following day, when the park continued to be the focus of the police search, Robert was there again, bothering people, asking too many questions. He was the park keeper but no one seemed clear how he’d got the job. The park was only a small area of land and there was no real need for a full-time keeper. He was only paid an honorarium organized, it turned out, through the local church. Robert and his mother Pauline had been regular churchgoers. One of the more switched-on uniformed constables asked him for a cup of coffee.
Robert was honoured to have a big policeman in full uniform sitting in his hut. He gave the constable the best chair – the chair, he said, usually reserved for his mother – and made him a cup of instant coffee on his Calor Gas camping stove. PC Lawrence complimented Robert on how nice he kept everything. There was a big white plastic bottle for water, a little blue plastic bowl for washing up, a clean tea towel hanging on a hook. Some Matchbox cars were displayed on a shelf. There was also a folded pair of girl’s jeans on the table and Lawrence asked whose they were.
‘Tania’s.’
‘Tania’s?’ Then, after a pause, ‘How come you’ve got her jeans then?’
‘Because she came in here to change.’
‘To change?’
‘Yes.’
‘And why’ve you kept them?’
‘She forgot them. I want to give them back to her.’
The copper wrote in his statement that he had wanted to liaise with the investigators before taking any action but he had also not wanted to leave Robert in his hut where there might be more evidence that could be destroyed. So he nicked him. He used handcuffs because, although he was compliant, Robert was quite a big man.
Claire Mills was spoken to by detectives within the hour. She identified the jeans as the ones Tania had been wearing when she’d left home the previous morning.
Robert seemed quite happy in custody. He chatted with the police officers who gave him tea and biscuits. Pauline, his mum, came down and they were allowed a private word in one of the interview rooms. Pauline explained to Robert that the police just needed to find out everything they could. They would ask him some questions and he should tell the truth. Then everything would be sorted out. Robert didn’t need a lawyer because he hadn’t done anything wrong.
But Robert’s mood began to deteriorate when his mother was no longer allowed to act as his appropriate adult. As she had provided an alibi for him for the whole of the previous day, she was part of the evidential chain and couldn’t be involved in the interviewing process. Then a neighbour said she had cut Pauline’s hair in the afternoon and Pauline’s reliability as a witness was blown. She was arrested for perverting the cause of justice.
Robert saw his mother being booked in at the custody desk. It wasn’t clear to Sarah whether this had been done on purpose as a way of pressuring him. It had been a different time. Police had not been so aware of the dangerous suggestibility of vulnerable suspects. Robert told the interviewing officer he didn’t understand what was happening. He had always liked policemen. Many of his Matchbox cars were police cars.
A search of the hut turned up a photograph of Tania and Robert. Robert’s possession of the photograph was put to him in interview. He answered that he had the photograph because he loved Tania. She was special, not like the other girls: always friendly.
The interview was suspended. A warrant of further detention was obtained to enable further questioning. Detectives executed a warrant on Robert’s house. They found a collection of porn magazines under his bed. The local vicar, Reverend Byers, came down at Pauline’s request and acted as Robert’s new appropriate adult. The interviewing officers put it bluntly to Robert in interview that he had murdered Tania. Robert put his head in his hands and wept. There were so many tears that they had to get a cloth to wipe the table. Detective Constable Clarke asked Robert if he was crying because he felt guilty about what he had done. Robert replied that he didn’t feel guilty: he was crying because Tania was dead.
Clarke asked how Robert knew she was dead. Robert didn’t reply, only wept inconsolably.
Where had he hidden the body?
Robert started rocking with his eyes closed and his hands over his ears.
Robert was returned to his cell. The officers told the Reverend Byers they wanted to review the evidence, see if they had enough for charging.
The jailer brought a cup of tea to Robert’s cell and caught him masturbating. The jailer told him he should be ashamed. Tania dead and Robert was wanking? What kind of a monster was he? Perhaps the officer’s comments were understandable: he was only a young man and feelings were running high. There were posters of Tania everywhere. A press conference had been held earlier that day and the officer had seen it: Tania’s father frozen-faced, her mother sobbing, unable to get her words out. In any case, all hell broke loose. Robert tried to punch the jailer and then had to be restrained to stop him banging his own head on the cell floor. Even on a constant watch with a sympathetic female officer sitting next to him and a male officer standing at the door just in case, Robert kept weeping and rocking. The Reverend Byers asked to speak with the superintendent. He insisted his views be recorded. He entered them himself on the custody record in a beautiful italic long hand.
Robert, an adult with special educational needs, has been in detention for more than three days.
Robert has been masturbating in his cell. This is inappropriate but indicates his state of mind. I have known Robert for about eight years and have never seen behaviour like this. His mental condition is clearly deteriorating under pressure. He is confused and distressed.
The evidence against Robert appears to be as follows. He had a photo of Tania and a pair of her jeans in his workplace – for which he has given an explanation – and some pornographic magazines at his home.
Questions remain unanswered. If Robert has killed Tania then how – with an IQ so low he can only read comic books – has he managed to conceal her body so effectively and in such a short period of time? How has he destroyed any evidence of violence on himself or elsewhere?
It is suggested that Robert’s distress is evidence of his guilt.
My view is that Robert wept in interview not because he knew Tania was dead but because he misunderstood the detective constable who accused him of murder. To a person with learning difficulties the accusation amounted to a perhaps unintentional misrepresentation of the evidence. Robert thought the police knew that Tania was dead.
Robert has told detectives that Tania was kind to him. She was unusual in taking the time to talk to him. Quite understandably, Robert loves Tania, and so, when he believed she was dead, he wept.
I am concerned that opportunities may be lost by this focus on Robert McCarthy. The police do not know what has happened to Tania. No body has been found. She may still be alive.
The reverend’s comments had clearly given pause for thought. Robert was bailed with conditions to report to the police station daily. The newspaper reported only that a local man was helping police with their inquiries: Robert’s name wasn’t given. Still, everyone in the neighbourhood knew who he was. Eventually he was released from bail and the charge against his mother for perverting was also dropped on compassionate grounds. The investigation into Tania’s disappearance continued. But Tania was never found and no one was ever charged for her murder. The cloud of ‘no smoke without fire’ that hovered over Robert never lifted.
Robert’s hut was graffitied with the words ‘nonce’ and ‘pervert’. A brick was thrown through Pauline’s front window. Robert couldn’t go back to working in the park. For a while he and his mother lived in the rectory. It was a big, cold nineteenth-century building. Reverend Byers said there was plenty of room for everybody. Then Pauline managed to sell her place and they moved away. Robert had been no more than collateral damage in an investigation that was never solved and never closed.
Sarah walked back up through the park. Time had passed. The young replacement trees that had been planted then were tall now.
An opportunity had been missed. If he hadn’t been a suspect then Robert had been a witness. He’d said Tania had changed in his hut. He was the last person the police knew of who had seen Tania alive.
Sarah slid into her car and smoked with the door open. That was it for the day. She ought to nip over quickly and share a drink with her new team.
She closed her eyes and leaned back in her seat and thought of her own sister’s death in a collision so long ago: the earth turned around the fresh grave and how, impervious to the clay that soiled her best skirt and clogged her shoes, she had knelt and found a fossil, the shale splitting open in her hands perfectly, like hooks and eyes suddenly releasing to reveal the imprint of a fern millennia dead.
She opened her eyes and turned the key in the car’s ignition. She considered once more driving over for the retirement drinks for Peter Stokes. She saw in her imagination a bunch of officers at the bar, buying shots, ribbing each other. They all knew each other, had experienced the push of working murders together more than once and had now been drinking for a few hours. It would be painful to try to find her place. Anyway, she told herself as she pulled away from the kerb, out here she was already part of the way home. Did she really want to travel in the wrong direction? It didn’t matter missing it. There’d be plenty of others.
After five minutes she stopped at a Turkish all-night supermarket on one of the outlying streets that took her through the sprawl of London and into its leafier outskirts. From the darkness of the street the shop was brightly lit. Huge bunches of coriander and mint outside the door. Inside, a big screen showing multiple CCTV cameras. A dark-haired young man stood behind the counter. There was evidently still enough of London in this shop for it to be useful to look as if you might be handy with a broom handle, should anyone want to chance his arm.
Sarah nodded hello and moved round the shop with a metal basket, throwing in tinned vine leaves, some salad – good tomatoes here – a plastic package of meat as a naughty treat for Daisy. Standing at the back by the cold dairy fridge, she caught sight of someone she recognized but couldn’t place. There was a flutter of excitement that she tried to stifle. She lingered, standing back in the aisle, flicking through her mental card index. The woman’s back was turned but there was something very familiar and somehow cheerful about the tight jeans around the plump bottom, the dark curly hair. Then in an instant she realized who it was. She turned and walked quickly towards the till.
Caroline Wilson: the former maths teacher of Farah Mehenni. Sarah had interviewed Caroline as part of her last inquiry at the DSI.
She’d liked Caroline the moment she’d set eyes on her standing on a table in her classroom, sticking a drawing pin into a poster. She’d been so sweet, so precarious on the wobbly table, a bit shameless too, her bum showing above the line of her jeans because her arms were raised. The feeling hadn’t been mutual, not to begin with anyway. Caroline had quizzed Sarah quite hard on the investigation and Sarah had liked that too. She’d liked that Caroline had cared so much about her dead pupil and had wanted to see right done by her. By the end she’d felt that Caroline trusted her, believed that she’d do her best for Farah. Now that the case had been closed with no tangible result and no one called to account, Caroline was the last person Sarah wanted to bump into.
The man at the till began scanning her items and placing them in a blue carrier bag. Hurry up, she wanted to say.
There was a tap on her shoulder. ‘Detective Sergeant Collins?’
There was that wide, kind face that Sarah remembered so well, the smile lines at the eyes.
‘It is you, isn’t it?’ Caroline said.
That was breaking the rules: calling her out in a public place when she was on her own and off duty. She nodded at the man behind the counter, who had also clocked her now. Hastily passing him a twenty-pound note and with no more than a glance over her shoulder, she said, ‘Sarah Collins, yes.’
The shopkeeper handed over her change. She turned to leave but Caroline was still standing there, obviously expecting a chat. There was an awkward pause. Caroline smiled again. ‘I’m Caroline. Do you remember?’
‘Yes.’
Caroline either didn’t notice or ignored the deliberate rudeness of the monosyllable.
‘I was Farah’s teacher, yes?’
‘Yes, I remember.’
And she did remember the interview with her in the classroom. Farah had been a quiet girl, Caroline had said, and good at maths. She remembered something else too: Caroline’s girlfriend arriving at the end of the interview. Patti: that was her name.
Caroline smiled again, and it seemed a genuine smile, with no reserve, no hidden disapproval. ‘You didn’t find anyone responsible in the end?’
It would be so much easier to face someone who was unfriendly, who blamed her as she blamed herself for the outcome of the investigation.
‘I can’t really discuss it.’
‘But it’s public, and that’s what the inquest found, isn’t it? Misadventure.’ She’d said it so kindly, as if she was trying to understand. ‘I looked it up. An accident, a mishap, no evil intent.’
Why did she have to spell it out? Sarah got her car keys out of her pocket. Perhaps that would be clue enough. ‘That’s right. If you’ll excuse me.’
‘What about that officer that went missing . . . PC Lizzie Griffiths? What about her? Why did she run away?’
‘I can’t discuss it. If you followed the inquest, you’ll have read her account.’
There was a pause, and in that pause there was just the hint of that smile at Caroline’s lips, the crease at the edges of her eyes. Then she said, ‘You always this tense?’
Sarah returned her gaze steadily. ‘When I’m off duty in a supermarket and being put on the spot, yes, I am.’
Caroline reached out, put her hand on Sarah’s shoulder. ‘I’m sorry. I’m sure you did your best.’
Sarah flushed with emotion at Caroline’s unexpected kindness. What made it so hard was that Caroline was someone she would have liked to talk to. But she couldn’t talk to anyone. She couldn’t risk it. Anyone might speak to the press. How could she possibly trust her? She imagined the officers from her new team – by now, no doubt, laughing together at their war stories. She felt pathetic standing here alone with her blue carrier bag full of tinned vine leaves and the processed meat for the dog.
Caroline was speaking. ‘Are you OK?’
Sarah nodded. She really needed to leave.
‘I could buy you a drink, maybe? I won’t talk about the investigation, not if you don’t want me to.’
‘Another time perhaps.’ Then, after a pause, ‘How’s Patti?’
The smile was suddenly quite broad now. She could see Caroline’s evenly spaced white teeth. ‘You remembered her name.’
‘I’m a cop. It’s my job to remember people.’
Caroline laughed as if she didn’t believe a word of it. ‘OK. Whatever. Look, ring me if you want to. Patti’s away. She’s gone to family in St Lucia.’ She turned to the man behind the counter. ‘Oi, nosy. Have you got a pen and paper?’
Sarah drove almost blindly away from the shop, threading her way through suburbia, thinking compulsively of PC Lizzie Griffiths, who had run away and disappeared for days. She remembered Lizzie’s evidence to the inquest – how her memory of what had happened on the roof of the tower block had come back to her only in fits and starts. An expert witness had testified that Griffiths – who had witnessed her colleague PC Matthews and the girl, Farah, fall to their deaths – had been suffering from PTSD.
Griffiths told the court she had no idea why she’d run and Sarah, watching, had felt the court’s heart go out to the pretty young woman standing giving evidence in her uniform. She was so young, so pale, so vulnerable. She’d gone to the roof of Portland Tower, risked her life to save the five-year-old boy that Farah had abducted. Everyone had felt for Lizzie Griffiths. But Sarah had known she was withholding evidence, that there was more to it than that. She just couldn’t prove it. The inquest hadn’t criticized Griffiths and it would only be a matter of days before the results of the internal disciplinary inquiry into her actions would announce its findings. Sarah was no longer part of that. It was no longer any of her business, thank God.
She pulled into her drive. It was a small detached house that she could never have afforded if she hadn’t been lucky enough to put a deposit down fifteen years ago. Then the mortgage had seemed impossible; now it was a snip. The house had probably trebled in value. Putting her key in her front door, she could hear scratching and whining. As she pushed her way in, the dog snaked around her, blocking her entrance, its young spine in a supple curve, ears back, tail wagging low, paws up on Sarah’s suit trousers, panting, reaching up to lick her.
Sarah laughed. ‘All right, all right, Daisy.’
She was late home. She should have asked the dog walker to keep Daisy longer. She picked the spaniel up and nuzzled her ears with her nose. Daisy was light, lively, her ribs wriggling beneath her skin as she strained to lick Sarah’s face. She should never have got the dog. With the hours she worked, she wasn’t in any position to have a pet. Her own mother had gently counselled against it, but she’d been so low when she’d seen the litter advertised in a newsagent’s window, and the dog had been so sweet.
Sarah moved through to the kitchen. There was a pool of wee on the floor. She couldn’t bring herself to reprimand Daisy. The dog in any case knew she had done something wrong. She was doing her penitent face, ears back. Opening the back door and putting her outside, Sarah said, with no conviction, ‘Yes, you are a naughty dog.’
She cleaned the floor and then opened the plastic wrapping on the slices of meat. Hearing the scrape of her bowl against the stone floor, Daisy rocketed back in from the garden. Sarah watched, feeling guilty, as the dog wolfed the meat down.
She slipped on her wellies. Although it was fully dark, she reached down the dog’s lead and set out in the darkness to walk the steep track behind her house.