23

They had reconvened in the interview room and Walker’s solicitor read out a prepared statement.

‘I did know Tania Mills. A couple of times she came to an evening class at Ellersby College for photography that I assisted at. We got to know each other, but not well. She didn’t seem like the kind of girl you could get to know well. There was something about her, always with her mind on something else. I must have seen her about five times in total.

‘I had access to the darkroom at Ellersby College. A couple of times she bunked off school and I taught her how to develop photographs. I remember that well. She was wearing her school uniform. It was sexy in the darkroom with her, the claustrophobic feel, the red light. I fantasized about her. I lent her my Polaroid camera for a few days. It was to keep in contact with her.

‘The day after the storm, the college was shut and I was at home. At about eleven, Tania called me from a phone box. She said she wanted to give me back the camera. About an hour later, she turned up at my house. She had her violin with her and a shoulder bag. I asked her in.

‘She was in a strange mood. She had some cannabis with her and she rolled a joint. She looked through my cameras. I’m a bit of a camera nerd and I already had a collection – a Nikon, a little Leica, a Hasselblad 500C/M. Tania didn’t know what else I was interested in, of course. But then she wasn’t curious about me at all. She was just using me. She asked if she could borrow my phone directory and she lay on the floor on her stomach and looked through it, bending her knees and swinging her feet. She tore a page out of the directory. She said she was looking for someone, and now that she had the address, she was going round there. I could hardly hear what she was saying because I was taking photographs. I used the Hasselblad. You look through the top of the camera so if someone’s not really paying attention it’s not clear what you’re focusing on. She was used to me taking pictures, moving around. She asked if she could see the pictures when they were developed so I took some conventional portraits to have something to show her when I saw her again.

‘In the first interview you asked when I started fantasizing about Tania. It got really bad after I took those photographs. They were fantastic.

‘Anyhow, she left and that was the last time I saw her. When I saw the reports about her being missing, I destroyed the photos because I understood how easily they could draw me into the investigation. But I never stopped thinking about them and that’s why I told Erdem about that fantasy, over and over.

‘In my first interview I lied about knowing Tania to protect myself but this account is the truth. I’ve put in everything I can remember.’

Elaine and Sarah had bailed Walker. They’d questioned him but everything he had to say was in his statement. They were both starving, but Elaine was keen to get home to her kids rather than spend time getting proper food.

‘Secret weapon,’ she said, producing an unopened pack of chocolate digestives from her bag.

‘Good skills. We’ll get coffee from the machine in the canteen and I’ll call Fedden from there.’

They turned their chairs towards the view out west. Fedden picked up after a couple of rings.

‘I got your text, Sarah. That’s great news. It’s time to start talking to the CPS.’

Elaine offered another chocolate digestive. Sarah waved her right hand to say no and continued talking.

‘Jim, I’m not sure we’re quite there yet.’

‘There’s still work to do, but what a lot we’ve got! Walker says he knew Tania, says he lied about knowing her and puts himself with her on the day she disappeared.’

‘If I was a sex offender, I’d probably lie too about knowing a missing girl.’

‘Yes, but you’re not a sex offender.’

Elaine, munching steadily, watched Sarah with an increasingly amused expression. Fedden was on a roll and Sarah didn’t interrupt his enthusiasm. When he had finally wound himself down, she said, ‘I’ve been following another lead.’

He was no more than a disembodied voice barking into the headset of her mobile phone but she could almost see him, flushed red with a combination of rage and incredulity.

‘Yes, I’ve seen that. A special-needs guy remembers a green car from more than twenty years ago and a teacher at Tania’s school drove a Jag? Christ!’

‘The investigator should pursue all reasonable lines of inquiry, whether these point towards or away from the suspect . . .’

‘Tell me you’re joking.’

‘What I’m saying is that there is another line of inquiry, and if we do get a charge against Walker then we will have to disclose it to the defence.’

‘Or, to put it another way, now that you’ve developed this nonsense, it’s a problem for us. Do you not think that Walker did it?’

‘I don’t know yet.’

‘You don’t know? How much service have you got?’

‘Less than you—’

He interrupted. ‘Damn right, because you’re obviously still naïve enough to think that a pervert who admitted seeing Tania on the day of her disappearance isn’t responsible for her death.’

‘It’s my view that just because someone is repulsive and even dangerous that doesn’t mean they are guilty of every crime we can link them to, however much we might want to.’

Elaine broke into a wide smile and shook her head from side to side. She wagged her index finger and tutted in warning.

Fedden said, ‘Open a discussion with the prosecutor about Walker. Find out what more they need from us for a charge. Once Woodhall’s under control, I’ll give you some decent techs to develop it according to the lines of inquiry laid down by me and the prosecution service.’

There was a pause.

‘And in the meantime, I can keep Elaine?’

‘Yes, in the meantime you can keep Elaine and task her to do everything possible to eliminate this red herring. I want you to concentrate on getting a charge for Walker.’

The line went dead. Sarah put the phone in her pocket.

Elaine said, ‘Sounds like that went well.’

‘Uh huh.’

‘He asked you how much service you’ve got?’

‘He did.’

She laughed. ‘That means he really doesn’t like you. I bet he’s never asked Lee how much service he’s got.’

‘No. I expect not.’

‘The guy’s an arsehole,’ Elaine said cheerfully, putting the nearly finished tube of biscuits in her bag and standing up. ‘Well, sorry, but I gotta go.’

Sarah stood up too. ‘Look, I know you need to get off, but can I just talk the evidence through with you in the yard for five minutes so I can smoke.’

They stood in the covered area by the property store. Some local officers pulled up in an unmarked car and started unloading big plastic bags of evidence from the boot. There was a lot of stuff: three computers, a microwave, a food processor, a mini fridge.

‘Guess the offence,’ Elaine said.

‘Handling, I’d say. Selling it all on eBay.’

‘Yeah, you’re probably right.’

Sarah lit her cigarette. She said, ‘I want to think through what it would mean if Walker’s telling the truth.’

Elaine nodded and Sarah continued.

‘The day Tania disappeared she got a call from her best friend Katherine Herringham and organized to meet her. Claire Mills says Tania left home at about nine. She knows the time because Tania was leaving just as the baby she looked after was being dropped off. Tania went to Robert’s hut and changed out of her jeans. And then that’s it. After she leaves Robert’s hut we have nothing definite.’

They were both silent for a moment, thinking through the evidence.

Sarah said, ‘Walker says Tania telephoned and then came over. It was already late morning when she arrived, after eleven. So if he’s telling the truth we’ve got a gap of about two hours between Tania leaving the hut and then turning up at Walker’s in a bad mood.’

Elaine said, ‘She was supposed to meet Katherine but went somewhere else?’

‘Could be.’ Sarah paused. ‘Or Katherine’s lying and Tania did visit her friend. After all Katherine never called Tania’s home to find out why she hadn’t turned up.’

‘I asked her about that when I was trying to trace the Jag. Katherine said Tania was unreliable. She was pissed off with her and so didn’t want to chase her. But Katherine could be lying, yes. I suppose so. But then why would she lie? She’d want to help find her friend, surely.’

Sarah thought for a moment. ‘Katherine and Tania played music together. Stephenson was probably Katherine’s teacher too. Did she remember the Jag when you asked her?’

‘No. She couldn’t remember anyone with a green Jag.’

‘Still, that doesn’t mean much. I can’t remember what cars my teachers drove.’

Elaine laughed. ‘I remember my German teacher drove a Mini because we used to lie down in front of it and stop her leaving school.’

Sarah laughed. ‘I can see you doing that!’

Elaine affected outrage. ‘What on earth do you mean?’

Sarah went back to her thoughts. ‘There’s no particular reason to remember what your teacher drove, if indeed you ever knew.’

‘I just got lucky with Stephenson?’

‘Maybe. Or maybe . . .’ She thought about it. ‘Or maybe, like your German teacher, Stephenson was the kind of man who stuck in people’s minds. The deputy head who remembered the car – what sort of an impression did he give you of Stephenson?’

‘Didn’t like him. Always had to have things his own way, apparently: rehearsal rooms, the organization of school trips for the orchestra. Stephenson was arrogant, but because he got results, the head always let him have his way.’

‘And what about Katherine? How was she when you met her?’

‘Unfriendly. Said she’d been through it all countless times, what more could she add? To be fair, she is a single mum, so maybe it was understandable that she was in a hurry to get rid of me.’

Sarah stubbed her cigarette on the ashtray attached to the wall. ‘All I’m doing is finding lots of questions I can’t answer. It’s so hard to fill in the gaps.’ She got her packet of cigarettes out of her pocket. ‘And it could all be perfectly straightforward, like Fedden thinks. Walker killed Tania.’

She put another cigarette in her mouth and reached for her lighter.

Elaine said, ‘You’re going to make yourself ill.’

‘Oh stop nagging. This is only my third today.’

‘Well, hurry up anyway. I want to get home. Do you want me to interview Katherine again? I could go round there tomorrow.’

Sarah inhaled. ‘No, not yet. Let’s wait, see if we can get more to put to her. Have you actioned the request to other forces for intelligence on Stephenson?’

‘Yes. They’ll copy you in with any information.’

‘Shame we haven’t got that bloody telephone directory Walker mentioned. If it exists, that is. At least it might give us a first letter of the surname.’

‘Did you believe him then?’

‘I don’t know. Fedden thinks I’m cracked to even consider believing Walker. It’s just a question of finding enough evidence to convict him.’

Elaine said, ‘If Tania went missing today then some older bloke she met from time to time and who dropped her in a park rather than taking her home would definitely be a line of inquiry for us.’

‘Yes, but we don’t even know Stephenson is that man. All we know is that he drove a Jag. Still, I keep thinking about his tree planting in Morville Park. It’d be a bloody good way to dispose of a body.’

Elaine laughed. ‘I think you should keep looking into Stephenson but I don’t think you’ve got enough to start digging up parks.’ She picked her bag up and swung it over her shoulder. ‘If we’re done then I’m off. You staying on duty?’

But Sarah, stubbing out her cigarette, was still preoccupied with Egremont. Another detail had come back to her. She said, ‘When did Stephenson divorce?’

‘Six months after Tania’s disappearance.’

‘That’s interesting. I’d like to talk to his ex-wife. What’s her name?’

‘Abigail Levy.’

‘Can you get me an address for her?’

Elaine pulled a face. ‘You’re not suggesting I do that now, are you?’

Sarah shook her head. ‘Of course not.’ She smiled. ‘It would take an age if you went back to Hendon to do it.’

‘Bloody hell.’

Sarah opened her hands, a picture of innocence. ‘What?’

‘You’re a pain in the arse.’

‘You’re not the first person to have noticed that.’

‘OK. I’ll do a quick intelligence search for an address from here, but if it’s not immediate bingo, then I’m going to give up and go home.’

Sarah smiled and winked.

Elaine said, ‘Don’t you dare.’

‘Trust me, I’m not saying a thing. I’d call you a star but I know that would really piss you off. I’m getting a bite to eat; do you want to come?’

‘No way. I’ll do this and then I’m gone.’

Road sweepers were clearing away the discarded coat hangers and trampled cabbage leaves from the day’s street market. There was a McDonald’s on the right, lit up as bright and strange as a shopping mall fish tank. Young men had stacked themselves around a table, police officers in uniform queued for takeaway, a solid-looking man with dirty hands and orange overalls sat alone eating his way steadily through two burgers. Sarah wouldn’t have been surprised to see an alien in there: purple, with eight tentacles, looking through its laptop undisturbed and picking at a Big Mac and a side of fries.

The feeling of separation she had from the people behind the glass was familiar. How many times, she wondered, had she sat on crowded tubes and surveyed the faces of her fellow travellers wondering what lay concealed behind their bored expressions.

When she was only a trainee detective, she had prosecuted a Chinese DVD seller who, at the bottom of a bag containing ripoff copies of Avengers titles and Batman movies, had concealed some more specialist DVDs. As part of the case she’d had to produce an exhibit that dip-sampled and detailed their contents. Over an eight-hour shift she’d watched a succession of women performing all the various permutations of sex, mainly with dogs. One of the women had had a fairly convincing stab at enjoying it, others seemed professionally sexy. There were girls from all over the world. Asian girls. Americans in hot pants. Some blonde girls who seemed to be from Eastern Europe. There was one in particular who had stayed forever in her memory: a young girl with short black hair and tattoos across her stomach, whose extreme thinness suggested drug use. She acted in company with another woman, who moved with an air of experience. This woman had encouraged the girl, putting her hands where they needed to be, demonstrating how, bending, turning, doing the necessary acts with a practised air, while the girl who was making her debut smiled uneasily, blushed, avoided the gaze of the camera and covered her face, still no stranger to shame.

All kinds of moral cant and imperfectly hidden titillation covered people’s reactions to any talk of sex offenders. Monsters-in-disguise was a much-favoured phrase that usefully marked out the territory of the decent. But Sarah found no comfort in it. The DVD seller had been selling the video of this girl out of a bag on the streets of London. Clearly there was a market. That was the problem, she thought as she crossed the road and entered the brightly lit mall: her job gave her too much access to the backstage areas of people’s lives. Desire was tainted by its contingency to its many possible forms of harm.

She pushed open the heavy glass door to a sushi place. Whirring fridges held plastic trays of cubed raw salmon and clear plastic pots of perfect green beans. She ordered hot food at the counter and perched on one of the tall stools that faced out towards the mall. She prised the cardboard lid from the noodles and steam rose from the standard brown broth. There were the usual green leaves, the shavings of something that looked and tasted like wood. Healthy food, it promised. One of your five-a-day. God, she was tired.

There was a tap on her shoulder and she turned round. A wide, beaming smile greeted her. ‘Hey, Sarah! Twice in as many weeks!’ Caroline grinned. ‘Can I join you?’

In her jeans and white cotton shirt Caroline seemed fresh and untainted. Sarah felt she needed a bath before she even tried to speak to someone so optimistic. ‘Yeah, sure. But I’ve got to go in a minute.’

Caroline jumped up on the adjacent stool and popped a sushi box on the narrow shelf that overlooked the mall. ‘You always this grumpy?’

Sarah smiled in spite of herself. ‘Pretty much.’

‘I’m catching a film in the centre with some friends. You can join us if you like.’

‘No, honestly, I can’t. I’m still on duty actually.’

Caroline broke the seal on the plastic top of her sushi box. She emptied the soy sauce into the little bowl, squeezed in a generous twist of green wasabi, dipped a sushi roll into it and popped it into her mouth with an enthusiastic slap of her lips. Sarah felt a teeming sense of her, the fullness of her lips, the pleasure she had in eating. Caroline had chosen another roll and was moving it around the bowl.

‘So, what have you been up to?’ she said.

‘Ah, nothing much. Interviewing.’

‘Interviewing, that sounds interesting.’

‘Sorry, I don’t want to talk about it.’

Caroline frowned briefly, a quickly dissipated hardness of bemusement between her eyebrows. ‘OK.’ She popped the second piece of sushi into her mouth and winced with enthusiasm at the heat of the wasabi.

Sarah rubbed her forehead with both hands. Maybe she should go now, say she was unwell. She looked back at Caroline, who was studying her with a curiosity that seemed both sympathetic and amused.

‘Sorry about that,’ Sarah said. ‘Been a long day.’

‘No, it’s OK. You do look tired.’

There was a pause.

‘Was it a bad one then?’

‘Kind of.’

‘You can’t talk about your job?’

‘Well . . .’

In went another piece of sushi. Another enthusiastic slap of the tongue. ‘Is that because it upsets you or because it’s confidential?’

Sarah tried to smile. ‘I’m sorry, it’s just . . . not the moment. Can we change the subject?’

Caroline’s face gave a little flicker of discomfort that she quickly hid with another smile. ‘Yes, sure. Why not.’

‘Tell me about your day. You like teaching, right?’

Caroline talked about a girl who had done surprisingly well in a maths competition, but neither of them was interested. They were mired in courtesy. There were perhaps other things they wanted to talk about but they couldn’t work themselves round to them.

Sarah said, ‘I’m sorry. I’ve got to get back to work.’

Caroline looked at her sushi carton. ‘But I’ve only got four more pieces to eat! Can’t you sit with me until I’ve finished?’

Sarah looked at the box. There were indeed four rolls left. ‘Of course I can.’

Caroline was searching out her expression. ‘Don’t you like me?’ she said.

‘I do, yes. Look, it’s been a long day.’

‘You said.’

Suddenly they both broke into a smile, a relieved acknowledgement of the awkwardness that both made them want to sit together and then made them uncomfortable when they did.

Caroline said, ‘Don’t feel you have to stay. Maybe we can do this again.’

‘No. I want to stay.’

Caroline reached her hand across the table. ‘Look, I admire you . . .’

‘Don’t be silly.’

‘I don’t know how you do your job.’

I don’t know how you do your job.

It was the worst possible thing she could have said. It must have shown on Sarah’s face because Caroline shook her head in confusion.

‘What?’

‘Nothing.’

‘What did I say?’

‘It’s nothing.’

There was a long pause. Caroline had stopped eating. She was waiting with a questioning smile for an answer.

Sarah said, ‘It’s silly really.’ When Caroline still didn’t say anything, she added, ‘It’s just that phrase.’

‘What phrase?’

‘I don’t know how you do your job.’

‘What’s the matter with it?’

‘Everyone says it.’

‘So what? I mean it. I do admire you. You do a difficult job.’

Sarah nodded. ‘OK.’

‘OK?’

‘Yes, but what exactly do you mean when you say you don’t know how I do it?’

Caroline frowned. ‘I mean what I say – that I couldn’t do it. Couldn’t bear it. All that suffering. What’s the matter with that?’

‘Do you really want to know?’

‘Come again?’

‘Just think for a moment. Do you really want to hear this?’

Caroline looked cross now. ‘Yes, I do. Finish what you’re saying.’

‘OK. When people say they can’t do my job, they don’t mean they’re not clever enough, or cunning enough, or that they simply couldn’t work hard enough. They don’t mean they can’t get up after just four hours’ sleep after sixteen hours on duty the shift before and start again, or that they can’t be professional and stop themselves vomiting when someone’s been lying dead in a bath for a week. They never mean they haven’t got the patience or the resilience or the sheer determination. No, it’s self-flattery. If they can’t do my job it’s because they’re too sensitive—’

‘Sarah . . .’

‘I’m going to finish.’

‘OK. Go ahead. Finish.’

‘They can’t bear to witness bad things. Or they’re too moral, poor souls. They couldn’t bring themselves to be patient with bad people. They couldn’t sit and listen and be fair and befriend them because that’s all part of the job, however repellent the person is.’

She stopped. Caroline had stood up and Sarah was hit by sudden regret.

‘You’ve always seemed so lonely.’

Sarah was shocked by her own outburst. She said, ‘Look, I’m so sorry I said all that. I haven’t been well.’

‘I’ve only ever tried to be friendly to you.’

‘Yes, you have. I’m sorry. I don’t know why I said all that stuff.’

‘I don’t know you well enough for you to speak to me like that. You know nothing about me.’

Sarah’s phone was ringing. Out of long habit she immediately took it from her outside pocket and checked the screen. It was Elaine, but she rejected the call. Caroline had begun to walk away. Sarah stood up, called after her, suddenly not even embarrassed that people were looking at her.

‘I’m sorry . . .’

But it was too late. The glass door had opened and then shut. Caroline was walking quickly away through the mall and Sarah was left standing. Her phone was ringing again. She sat down and answered. Elaine had an address for Abigail Levy.

Stephenson’s ex-wife lived in a converted mews in Primrose Hill. It was one of those romantic pockets, hidden away in the mega-city, that the wealthy had long since spotted and nabbed. The horses and the stable workers were long gone: if ghosts haunted the cobbled pathway then it was surely only in a friendly way. Terracotta pots outside Abigail Levy’s door burst with flowers: savagely yellow rudbeckia, jagged green and purple acanthus.

Abigail was small and thin: five foot two and probably less than eight stone. She was in her well-kept fifties, had dark brown eyes and a slightly bouffant blonde bob and was wearing a smart pink suit with dark piping on the pockets that might be Chanel or, if it wasn’t, was at least hinting that it might be. She wouldn’t have looked out of place filming a lunchtime chat show for women of a certain age. She smiled with slightly hostile confusion when Sarah showed her warrant card, but asked her into her little house. The sitting room was perfectly done: a Persian silk rug lying like a sky-blue meadow, side lamps that cast a soft light, a matching pair of antique open-sided armchairs. Abigail offered tea and brought it in on a round silver tray. She sat in one of the armchairs and stretched her legs out in front of her, her feet crossed at the ankles. She tilted her head to one side.

‘How can I help?’

‘Thank you for talking to me, Mrs Levy.’

‘Not Mrs, Miss.’

‘I’m sorry, Miss Levy. I’m making inquiries about a girl your ex-husband taught, Tania Mills.’

Abigail gave a tight little smile that crinkled the lines at the sides of her eyes but didn’t seem to contain any happiness. ‘The name doesn’t mean anything to me.’

‘Your ex-husband never spoke about her?’

‘Not that I remember.’

‘Because she went missing. She was never found. It must have been quite a talking point.’

Abigail drew her feet towards the chair, her knees bent at an angle to the side, her heels off the floor. ‘I remember that, yes. I just didn’t remember the name. But he didn’t really talk about her. My husband was never interested in anyone except himself.’

‘You divorced the following year.’

‘Not a day too soon.’

‘Can I ask you about that?’

Abigail placed her hands together and brought them to her chin. She stayed like this for a moment, then said, ‘I’d rather not talk about it, if you don’t mind. I can’t see what relevance it has to any police inquiry.’

Sarah considered whether to press, decided against. ‘Your husband, was he involved in charitable activities?’

‘Not when we were together. I don’t think so.’

‘He didn’t get involved in the community? That sort of thing?’

Abigail exhaled a mirthless laugh. ‘God, no! Why would he do that? You clearly don’t know him. He’s not interested in other people.’

‘But he’s involved in charities now.’

‘I wouldn’t know.’

‘There was a storm . . .’

‘Yes, the storm. I remember.’

‘He volunteered to help replant Morville Park.’

She seemed surprised, interested even. ‘Did he?’

‘You didn’t know about it?’

She sat back in her chair. The animation she had briefly revealed was once more contained. ‘No, I didn’t know. We were already not close.’

Sarah’s phone buzzed. She glanced at the screen. It was a group text to her team. OPERATION WOODHALL: URGENT. She put the phone back in her pocket, paused for a moment before speaking, allowing the interruption to dissipate in the elegant little room.

‘I’m sorry about that.’

‘That’s all right.’

Abigail smiled again, stretched her legs out and recrossed her ankles.

Sarah said, ‘Can I just ask you . . .’

‘Yes?’

‘Your ex-husband and you, how did you meet?’

‘He was my violin teacher. He was a very good teacher.’

‘Do you still play?’

Abigail shook her head. ‘God, no. I haven’t played for years.’ She smiled and tilted her head to one side. ‘Is there anything else you need to ask? Because if not . . .’

Sarah smiled too and stood up. ‘No, thank you for your time.’ She offered her card. ‘If you think of anything that might help me with my investigation.’

Abigail said thank you and placed it neatly on the table.