6

The front garden was paved over and held only plastic wheelie bins. Sarah opened the picket gate, and like a big blue caterpillar, a carrier-load of officers, all in blue babygros, moved silently past her into place. The bloke at the front was a lump: seven foot possibly, and broad across the shoulders. He carried the heavy red enforcer as though it was as light as an empty briefcase and moved towards the door with a surprisingly graceful confidence. He cradled the enforcer, his elbow crooked, looked over his shoulder to check for readiness. The sergeant counted a silent one-two-three with his fingers.

The big red key swung forward and the door splintered and gave way at one attempt.

They bundled up the stairs, shouting.

‘Police, police, police!’

With Lee holding the premises search book and the warrant, Sarah followed slowly behind the public order officers, who were taking control and probably already thinking of a job well done and a table full of fried food and hot coffee. Sarah’s work was just beginning.

It was a one-room flat in a partitioned Victorian house. Greasy washing-up was drying on a calcified stainless-steel draining board. The door to the bathroom was ajar and a smell of urine drifted. The curtains were nicotine-stained. On the table by the bed was a full ashtray, overflowing with dog-ends. Andrew Walker, sitting on the bed, drew his open hand down his face and yawned. He was wearing a vest and boxers, had long, thinning hair, a domed forehead, loose arms that showed prominent blue veins.

He said, ‘Can I smoke?’

Everyone looked at Sarah, and she nodded. ‘Yes.’

As Andrew was lighting up, his hands shaking, Lee stepped forward.

‘I’m arresting you for the murder of Tania Mills in October 1987. My grounds are that we have information that you have confessed to this murder . . .’

Sarah, glancing around the room, saw an unusually large number of framed black-and-white photographs on the walls. A picture of an old lady eating an ice cream on a slatted bench. A wide-angle shot of kids skipping in an alleyway. They were the work, she guessed, of a keen amateur photographer.

One of the public order officers nodded towards a shelf that held about three decent old-fashioned film cameras.

‘Likes taking pictures.’

‘Typical pervert,’ the sergeant added.

‘Can we seize all the cameras and film, please,’ Sarah said.

Andrew, making no reaction to the proceedings, offered his hands to the cuffs without protest. He held the cigarette in his mouth and closed one eye against the smoke.

Ellersby police station had replaced the old early-twentieth-century nick where Tania’s father had first reported her missing. Built during the Blair years of plenty, it dominated the road: tinted glass, blue-and-white fascia, an impressive round office tower on the left.

In the interview room, Sarah’s phone buzzed. She checked her screen. It was a voicemail from her father. Without listening, she knew what it would be about. In less than ten days it would be her sister’s memorial service. Would she be able to make it? She switched her phone off, returned it to her pocket. She placed her pen on the desk beside her notebook, took a breath, composed herself, prepared herself to concentrate.

‘I’m sorry about that. Please, go on.’

Walker, now wearing a light blue cotton shirt, frayed at the collar, and blue trousers, sat impassively. There was nothing particularly distinguishing about him – only his sharp nose perhaps, his pale skin – but a stench of solitude haunted him. His solicitor – Derek Holt: a wiry, quick-moving, besuited little man with a northern accent – read out his prepared statement.

‘My name is Andrew Walker and this is my response to the allegation that I murdered Tania Mills in 1987.

‘I am released on licence and I attend the sex offenders’ treatment programme at HMP Ripon. This programme is only open to men who have admitted their offences and want to change their lives.

‘I like girls’ underwear, that’s my thing. I don’t want to touch people or to hurt them. I’m not violent. I only want to look.

‘I imagine girls opening their legs and showing me their pants. I fantasize that they want to do this. I have these thoughts constantly. I can’t talk to a woman or stand next to her without imagining what pants she is wearing.

‘When I worked in an office I was forever dropping my pen on the floor by women’s desks. I practically invented the selfie stick. One of the times I was arrested I had dressed up as a cleaner in a sports centre and taped a camera onto a mop handle. I put it under the door of a woman’s changing cubicle. I go to the swimming baths and swim a lot underwater with goggles on. I’ve got very good at holding my breath. Ridiculous, isn’t it? Who could blame me for thinking that what I did wasn’t harmful?

‘But four years ago I realized I had to control myself. I’m going to talk about it so that you understand how it happened.

‘I just came across them: two girls sunbathing in a secluded part of the park. They had pulled up their skirts to tan their legs. As I walked past, I could see their pants just above the line of their skirts. God help me, it was the sexiest thing I had ever seen. There was a men’s toilet nearby and I locked myself into the cubicle and tried to get them out of my system. But it didn’t work. I kept thinking about them lying there, chatting and showing their pants. It felt like an emergency.

‘I went back and one of the girls had gone. The other one had pulled her skirt down. She was lying on her side reading a book.

‘There’s an iron gate that leads into a little nature reserve. There’s a bench in there and I sat and waited, almost hoping the girl would choose a different way out of the park. When she walked past it felt like fate. I got up, tried to make it look as though I just happened to be leaving the park at the same time as her. She quickened her pace but I caught hold of her upper arm and said, “You have to come with me.”

‘I took her behind a fallen tree trunk. I’d never felt anything so compelling. I told her to lie still and pull her skirt up.

‘She did what I asked. If we hadn’t been interrupted I would have done what I needed to and let her go. But I was interrupted. There was a black Labrador and the girl shouted out. The dog started barking. I got up and started running. A man grabbed hold of my shoulder and pulled me backwards. He called me a dirty pervert and punched me in the face. I managed to start running again. My nose was bleeding. A helicopter was circling above. I hid in a ditch. I could hear people tramping through the undergrowth and a police radio. A dog was coming closer, panting. I could see it through the brambles and nettles: an Alsatian barking furiously. A woman’s voice shouted, “If you don’t comply I will release the dog.”

‘Except for the arrest, no one spoke to me while we waited for transport. My nose was broken and it hurt like hell. One of the male police officers spat on the ground. I thought, if I could just have finished, I would have let her go and then they would have known I wasn’t violent. I never got the chance to show that.

‘They released the photograph of me the police took in custody. I looked like every sex monster you’ve ever seen. The detective chief inspector said I was one of the most vile and depraved individuals he had come across. They repeated that in all the papers and news reports. The most vile and depraved. He said the man who punched me was a hero. He might have saved a life. But that was a lie. I’d never have hurt her. I’d only wanted to see her pants.

‘Still, I recognized that I’d crossed a line. I began to accept I had to do something, so I signed up to the programme at Ripon.

‘I’ve spent a lot of time wondering why I’m like this. Maybe there’s something chemical, or some event in my childhood, something I could understand and change. But my counsellor at HMP Ripon told me that worrying about reasons is a waste of time. This is how I am. It’s permanent and I have to control it. So I do my best. I live at my designated address. I take the drugs they prescribe. I keep all my appointments. But it’s a hard way to live. Now you say I’ve killed someone. It makes me wonder. What’s the point? Can I ever make a life for myself?

‘When I was on remand, I shared a cell with Erdem Sadiq, and I’ve worked out that he must be your snitch.

‘I hadn’t been convicted yet so I wasn’t on the programme. We were on lockdown for up to twenty-three hours a day. Erdem is a sex offender too. We kept each other company by talking about what we’d like to do. There was a lot of time to make things up and we were bored. Masturbating is one way to stop being bored. It’s a relief as well to have someone you can talk to. These are private thoughts that you daren’t share with anyone. Sharing makes you feel better – it feels normal: you’re not the only one.

‘I didn’t have to think hard to make up stuff about Tania. She’d lived only a few streets away from me when I was a young man. When she disappeared, her face was all over the newspaper. I could remember her walking down the road, waiting for the bus. I began to fantasize about what I had done with her.

‘I talked to Erdem about this. I never said I’d killed her, just that she had agreed to me seeing her pants. She’d liked it. It had turned her on. Maybe the charge I was up on made him think that I’d not only looked at her pants: I’d murdered her. But I didn’t kill Tania. I never even met her. Look at my criminal record. How would I have killed Tania in 1987 and then not harmed anyone since then?

‘Erdem was on remand for possession of images of young girls. They were top grade – girls doing things even most adult women wouldn’t. I don’t know what he’s done this time but I listened to what he wants to do. If he has actually done any of that stuff he’ll be looking at some serious time. In those situations a man starts casting around, looking for ways out.

‘He must have started to think how he could use the fact that I’d fantasized about Tania. I imagine you guys helped too. Talked him up, did you? Some of you lot, you’re brilliant at that. Made him feel good about himself – he had some dirty pictures but he wasn’t like me? I get it, because that’s what everyone’s like. Everyone – and I mean everyone – uses the bad guys to put a distance between themselves and their own dirty thoughts. But don’t kid yourself. Erdem is as deceitful and concealed about his life as I ever was.

‘Erdem’s using me and he’s using you. I’m a lonely man who’s cursed by an obsession, but I never harmed Tania.’

They took a break. In a side room, Sarah began drawing up a map of the things she needed to ask Walker. She tuned out Lee’s comments about the ‘sick monster’ they had just interviewed. It was like pervert bingo; soon she would have a full house of epithets. She understood Lee was angry and disturbed, but it was a distraction having to appear to listen to him. She wished she could have interviewed Erdem Sadiq herself, had an opportunity to weigh his evidence. Finally she said, ‘I’m sorry, but I’m trying to concentrate.’

Lee, taking another stick of gum out, said, ‘Just one question. Do you think he did it?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘You know these creeps are the best liars you’ll ever meet. It’s part of their job description.’

‘Yes, I know that.’ Lee didn’t seem satisfied. ‘Is there anything else?’

‘Just that it’s usually the most obvious person.’

She looked at him. ‘Don’t you trust me?’

Lee led Walker through Sarah’s list of questions. Dates, times, locations. He was a good interviewer: assiduous on the detail. Walker said he couldn’t remember that far back. He didn’t know what he was doing on the day after the great storm in 1987.

Sarah said, ‘You can’t remember the day after the storm? It was such a memorable day. A bit like 9/11. One of those days everyone remembers.’

‘Well, I don’t remember it.’

She made a note, moved on. ‘Looking’s your thing, not touching?’

‘That’s right.’

‘You and Erdem were only fantasizing?’

‘Yes.’

‘Why did you need to fantasize about a real girl?’

‘I’m only interested in real girls. She came into my thoughts. I didn’t ask her to do that.’

‘It was just a coincidence that you were fantasizing about a girl who had gone missing?’

He held Sarah’s gaze. ‘Perhaps because she was missing I associated her with dirty things. I fantasized that she was a dirty girl who’d like to show me her pants.’

She allowed herself to think, asked the simple question.

‘Did you have a car in 1987?’

‘Yes. A Mini. A red one. It was old. V reg.’

She made a note.

‘Do you fantasize about other missing girls? Murdered girls?’

‘No.’

‘When did you start fantasizing about Tania?’

‘Why?’

That was the first time he had answered her questions with a question. Something there had bothered him, something she couldn’t put a finger on. She waited for a line of inquiry that would help her, but it didn’t come. She returned to the simple question that had troubled him.

‘Never mind why. When was the first time you fantasized about Tania?’

‘I can’t remember.’

‘Before or after she disappeared?’

‘After.’

‘How long after?’

‘I don’t remember.’

‘What prompted it?’

‘I don’t know. The photos of her in the paper maybe. All that stuff on the television.’

Instantly Sarah thought of that appeal Tania’s parents had made: her frozen-faced father, her mother unable to get her words out. Some involuntary gesture must have revealed her reaction to Walker’s words because he was studying her with a sly expression. Her emotion had pulled her into his account. Perhaps that was the first step towards believing it. Perhaps he had become skilled even at using people’s disgust against them.

‘You say you never met Tania?’

‘Never.’

‘Never spoke to her?’

‘No.’

‘Sure about that?’

‘I’ve told you.’

Sarah chewed her pen. ‘What did you tell Erdem you had done with Tania?’

His hands flipped outwards. ‘The usual stuff. Like I’ve already told you.’

‘Come on, you know I’m going to need the detail.’

He inhaled as though bored. ‘She’d agreed to come to my house. She lay on her stomach with her legs open. I could see her pants. She let me stand there and wank over her.’

‘How many times?’

‘Once. It was that same fantasy, over and over.’

She thought about that: that same fantasy, over and over. ‘Why were you so obsessed?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘And did you ever tell Erdem you’d killed her?’

‘Never. If he’s told you that, he’s made it up.’

They bailed Walker. What else could they do? They had no evidence against him except the word of another sex offender.

The A40 was evenly busy, the cars driving too close in the urban routine of slowing and speeding for the yellow Gatso cameras. The flyover swept Sarah down into the queuing traffic of central London. She filtered off into the outer circle of Regent’s Park. She pulled over by the zoo and took a moment, breathing in the smell of grass and watching the giraffes from the pavement. She loved that they were here, improbably, right in the heart of London, and she hoped to find in their quirky grace some solace after the glimpse she had just had of Andrew Walker’s mind. She smiled, charmed by their lopsided but surprisingly elegant walk – as if they were getting it wrong but succeeding anyway. She would have liked to put a hand on their warm sides, maybe place her cheek against a patterned flank.

Reluctantly she got back into the car and turned the engine over.

Her thoughts turned involuntarily to long-lost Jessie. She’d been so in love, so silent about her secret wishes. Once, during the school holidays, Jessie had telephoned.

‘Quick! Come over. Mum’s out all day.’

They’d wandered the large clean rooms of Jessie’s mother’s mock-Tudor house like cub-free lionesses set free on the savannah. Jessie had taken Sarah up the stairs to her mother’s bedroom and Sarah had stood shyly hopeful, feeling the white deep-pile carpet beneath her socks.

Jessie had smiled and said in the voice of the Queen, ‘Shall we? Do you dare?’

Momentarily Sarah had been on the brink of a gesture that would have been undeniable, a hand reached out to draw Jessie’s face towards her for a kiss. Only just in time did she grasp the real meaning of Jessie’s question. Her neck and cheeks burned, scalded by the only-just-avoided shame of the mistake. Recovering quickly and without giving it enough thought she said, ‘Yes, OK. Why not?’

There was a boy: his name was lost now to Sarah’s memory. She remembered only how much Jessie had fancied him and how the boy had hinted at trying a threesome.

He had a motorbike and arrived in minutes, roaring up the drive. Through the rippled glass of the front door Sarah saw his vulnerability as clearly as her own. Before he had even got off the bike he had removed his helmet and roughed up his hair. He kicked the bike over onto its stand, strode up to the house as if in a terrible hurry. What a disappointment that he had to be there, but he was incidental. What bliss it was to finally be on the crisp cotton sheets of Jessie’s mum’s bed with Jessie.

Jessie had worn, Sarah remembered, a fine white cotton lace bra over her small breasts, and matching lace pants. Sarah’s hands roamed over her bottom, her stomach, down between her legs. She nibbled at her neck, up towards her ear. Jessie turned and began to kiss her.

And then the boy ruined it – that poor, foolish, annoying, jealous boy. How ridiculous that he should have been jealous when it was Sarah who was pretending, Sarah who was hiding.

‘You’re not paying me any attention!’ he suddenly protested, getting up and stomping angrily away from the bed, pulling on his underpants in adolescent fury, all pimples and red face, almost falling over himself in his hurry to get his trousers on.

Jessie sat up, tried to console him. She walked over, pressed her beautiful body against him. He put his hand on the small of her back. She kissed him. It was abundantly clear where her real interests lay. Silently heartbroken, Sarah made her excuses and slipped down the stairs unprevented, barely noticed even.

A few days later, she tried tentatively to work the conversation round to what had happened, hinting as casually as she could that perhaps they might try it again.

‘God no, Sarah! I might start liking it too much.’

Too much?

It was painful, but at least things were becoming clearer. She had recognized what had happened for what it was: a faltering first step. Maybe not Jessie, but there would be others. She would be less desperate, more discerning, less dissembling. There would be no boys next time. And no girls that wanted boys either.

But then something happened that she could never have imagined. Her sister Susie’s boyfriend, Patrick, the one everyone liked, had driven his car into a tree. Susie was gone forever, and everything had changed.

The drive had passed by unseen. Sarah swung in past security and, parked in the shadow of the building, she paused to listen to her father’s voicemail. She quickly drafted a text. She didn’t want to risk him picking up.

So sorry, Dad. This year I am not going to be able to make it to Susie’s memorial service. I just can’t free the day up. I will be thinking of you and Mum. Much love, Sarah.

She hesitated, then pressed send. She took her bag from the car, swiped her way into the murder block.

Everyone else from her team was long gone, hurried home for their extended rest days before the on-call began, but from along the corridor she could hear voices and see lights coming from open doors of the neighbouring team. They must have caught a job. She fumbled in her bag for the key to her office. She would just take an hour to review Tania’s file and update it with the results of the interview. She opened the door, rubbed her eyes, flicked the light on. There was a buff folder on the desk. A Post-it note from Fat Elaine was stuck on the top: Richard Stephenson, Tania’s violin teacher. Married at the time. Now divorced. Drove a green Jaguar.

She opened the file. At the time of Tania’s disappearance, Stephenson had been teaching at her school, Hatchett’s. The headmaster at the time was now deceased, but Elaine had managed to contact the former deputy head, who’d remembered the car. Sarah logged on to her computer and emailed Elaine.

Well done on finding Stephenson. Please conduct further research – schools he worked at, orchestras he directed, reasons for leaving – and submit request to other forces for any intelligence, crime reports.

As she read over her email, she wondered whether she had enough to justify such intrusive investigations. Elaine had done basic intelligence checks. Stephenson had no criminal record. There were no crime reports relating to him within the Metropolitan Police District. There were no complaints, no ‘intelligence only’ rumours even.

She thought too about the workload she was about to dump on Elaine and how she would resent it. She finished her email brightly.

Thanks for all the work! I know it’s a lot. I appreciate it!

She pressed send, then immediately wondered whether perhaps she hadn’t been a bit heavy on the exclamation marks. Elaine didn’t strike her as the kind of person who’d be a fan of enthusiastic punctuation.

She had twelve unread emails in her inbox. One was from the boss, headed Andrew Walker appeal for info: suggested draft. She clicked on it.

Detectives announce a £40,000 reward to help solve the 1987 disappearance of Tania Mills . . .

Here was the bit that really bothered her.

DCI Fedden wishes to draw the public’s attention to photographs of this man [Sarah: attach] who lived in the area at the time of Tania’s disappearance. Anyone knowing or encountering him during this time is asked to contact the incident room number below.

Fedden was making her move far too fast. It was too early to release this kind of thing. They needed to be dominating the information, not wandering around with the lights off. Certainly they shouldn’t be encouraging every idiot with a grudge to come forward. But she knew Fedden wouldn’t be gainsaid, so she sent him a quick reply, aiming for an upbeat tone in spite of her misgivings.

Fine by me. Thanks for running it past me. Sarah.

She needed to try to get ahead with her own inquiries. She emailed the school secretary at Tania’s old school, Hatchett’s, asking to visit on the morning of the first day of the on-call. She could squeeze in the inquiry before her official tour of duty started in the afternoon. Now she needed to go off duty for her rest days. When the on-call began, the team would have to respond to any murder within London. The hours could be punishing.

She logged off, locked her office door and made her way downstairs, pausing in the shelter of the building to smoke a cigarette.

Evening light was falling across the empty parade ground, the heat of the day bleeding from the tarmac. The office windows were all dark except for the offices adjacent to her own, which glowed orange. The neighbouring homicide team would be working through the night. She loved Hendon when it was like this – all the impurities, all the irrelevancies burnt off by the lateness of the hour. Anyone on duty here now had real police work to do, and Hendon had become fully itself: a secret and purposeful place that only the cops really knew.

She leaned back against the wall and reached out to Tania, her mind running over her knowledge of her, watching the musical teenager with the long hair running off to the park that morning. She saw the photograph Robert had shown her. Behind the grey wash, the desaturating colours, Robert and Tania stood together in the shade of a tree, his arm around her shoulders, both smiling, both apparently happy.

And then, with her contemplation of that photograph, a possible line of inquiry became suddenly, blindingly obvious. How could she not have thought of it before?

She stubbed out her cigarette and ran back up the stairs to her office. She logged on, took the exhibit book from the warrant on Walker’s flat out of her desk drawer, ran her finger down the entries, carefully checking each relevant item’s description against a Google search on the internet. She scribbled the reference SBB/23 C3427680 on a piece of paper, found the keys for the exhibit cages and made her way downstairs.

The strip lighting flickered into life. The basement was sealed grey concrete, windowless and airless. Apart from a constant low electric hum, the room was silent. Rows of sealed chain-link cages secured into the concrete were filled with floor-to-ceiling shelving units. She walked along the central aisle, past rows of stacked blue plastic crates that held the dried bloody clothing, phones, letters, children’s toys and the other human detritus that had turned out to have unforeseen life as material evidence in the capital’s murders and manslaughters.

At the end of the aisle she unlocked one of the cages and sat on the floor next to the shelf that had been put aside for Egremont. Here were the recent seizures from the warrant on Walker’s flat. She looked through the boxes until she located the correct one. She lifted it off the shelf and sorted through it until she found SBB/23. Taking the exhibit with her, she locked the cage and made her way back upstairs. She sent Elaine an email.

I’ve got SBB/23 from the warrant on Walker’s flat locked in my drawer. Please submit it for a speedy fingerprint and DNA comparison against Tania. Inquiries are active – urgent submission. Ask them to check the workings, particularly the film feed, for prints.