“Yes,” Glen said, and asked if they were selling something. I couldn’t hear properly at the beginning, but then they came in. They were policemen—Detective Inspector Bob Sparkes and his sergeant, they said.
“Mr. Taylor, I’d like to talk to you about the disappearance of Bella Elliott,” DI Sparkes said. And I opened my mouth to say something, to make the policeman stop saying these things, but I couldn’t. And Glen’s face went blank.
He never looked at me once the whole time. Never put his arm around me or touched my hand. He said later he was in shock. He and the policemen carried on talking, but I can’t remember hearing what they were saying. I watched their mouths moving, but I couldn’t take it in. What had Glen got to do with Bella? He wouldn’t harm a hair on a child’s head. He loved children.
Then they left, Glen and the policemen. Glen told me later that he said good-bye and told me not to worry; it was just a stupid mix-up he’d sort out. But I don’t remember that. Other policemen stayed at the house to ask me questions, to root around in our lives, but through it all, going around and around in my brain, I kept thinking about his face and how I didn’t know him for a second.
He told me later someone had said he’d been making a delivery near where Bella disappeared, but that didn’t mean anything. Just a coincidence, he said. There must’ve been hundreds of people in the area that day.
He’d been nowhere near the scene of the crime—his delivery was miles away, he said. But the police were going through everyone, to check if they saw anything.
He’d started as a delivery driver after he got laid off by the bank. They were looking for redundancies, he told people, and he fancied a change. He’d always dreamed of having the chance to start his own business, be his own boss.
The night I discovered the real reason was a Wednesday. Aerobics and a late supper for us. He shouted at me about why I was later than usual, horrible tight words spat out, angry and dirty. Words he never used normally. Everything was wrong. He was crowding the kitchen with his accusations, his anger. His eyes were dead, as if he didn’t know me either. I thought he was going to hit me; I watched his fists clench and unclench at his sides, me frozen at the cooker, spatula in my hand.
My kitchen, my rules, we used to joke, but not that Wednesday. Wednesday’s child is full of woe.
The row ended with a slammed door as he marched off to bed, to sleep on the sofa bed in the spare room, cut off from me. I remember standing at the foot of the stairs, numb. What was this about? What had happened? I didn’t want to think about what it meant for us.
Stop it, I told myself. It’ll be all right. He must’ve had a bad day. Let him sleep it off.
I started tidying, picking up his scarf and jacket where he’d hung them on the banister and putting them on the coat hooks by the door. I felt something stiff in one pocket, a letter. A white envelope with a see-through panel with his name and our address showing. From the bank. The words were official and as stiff as the envelope: “inquiry,” “unprofessional behavior,” “inappropriate,” and “termination forthwith.” I was lost in the formal language, but I knew this meant disgrace. The end of our dreams. Our future. Clutching the letter in my hand, I ran up the stairs. I marched into the spare room and flicked on the light. He must’ve heard me coming but pretended to be asleep until I heard myself screech: “What is this about?” He looked at me like I was nothing.
“I’ve been fired,” he said, and rolled back over to pretend to sleep.
The next morning Glen came into our bedroom with a cup of tea in my favorite cup. He looked like he’d hardly slept and said he was sorry. He sat down on the bed and said he was under a lot of pressure and it was all a misunderstanding at work and that he’d never got on with the boss. He said he’d been set up and blamed for something. Some mistake, he said. He’d done nothing wrong. His boss was jealous. Glen said he had big plans for his future, but that didn’t matter if I wasn’t beside him.
“You are the center of my world, Jeanie,” he said, and held me close, and I hugged him back and let go of my fear.
Mike, a friend he said he met on the Internet, told him about the driving job—“Just while I work out what business I want to get into, Jeanie,” Glen said. It was cash in hand at first, and then they took him on permanently. He stopped talking about being his own boss.
He had to wear a uniform. It was quite smart: a pale blue shirt with the company logo on the pocket and navy trousers. Glen didn’t like wearing a uniform—“It’s demeaning, Jeanie, like being back at school”—but he got used to it and seemed happy enough. He’d go out in the morning and wave as he drove off to pick up the van. Off on his travels, he’d say.
I went with him only once. Special job for the boss on a Sunday just before Christmas one year. Must’ve been the Christmas before he was arrested. It was only down to Canterbury, and I fancied a run out. We sat in total silence on the way down. I rooted through his glove box. Just stuff. Some sweets. I helped myself and offered one to Glen to cheer him up. He didn’t want it and told me to put them back.
The van was lovely and clean. Spotless. I never really saw it normally. It was kept at the depot, and he took his car to pick it up in the mornings. “Nice van,” I said, but he just grunted.
“What’s in the back?”
“Nothing,” he said, and turned up the radio.
And he was right. I had a look when he was talking to the customer. The back was as clean as a whistle. Well, almost. There was a corner torn from a sweet packet poking out from under one edge of the mat. I got it out with my fingernail. It was a bit fuzzy and dusty, but I put it in my coat pocket. To be tidy.
? ? ?
It all seems so long ago. Us going for a drive like normal people. But it was only three years ago.
“Glen Taylor?” the nurse is saying to me, startling me out of my thoughts and frowning as she writes his name on a form. Trying to remember. I wait for the inevitable.
The penny drops.
“Glen Taylor? The one accused of taking that little girl Bella?” she says quietly to one of the paramedics, and I pretend not to hear. When she turns back to me, her face is harder. “I see,” she says, and walks away. She must’ve made a phone call, because half an hour later, the press is there, hanging around the casualty department, trying to look like patients. I could spot them a mile off.
I keep my head down and refuse to speak to any of them. What sort of people are they, hounding a woman who’s just seen her husband die?
The police are there, too. Because of the accident. They’re not the ones we usually see. They’re the local police, the Met, not the Hampshire officers. Just doing routine work, taking statements from the witnesses, from me, from the driver of the bus. He’s here, too. Apparently, he got a nasty knock to the head when he braked and says he didn’t even see Glen step out.
He probably didn’t—it was that fast.
Then DI Bob Sparkes shows up. I knew he’d turn up eventually, like a bad penny, but he must’ve driven like the wind to get here from Southampton so quickly. He’s all sad face and condolences for me, but he’s even sadder for himself. He certainly doesn’t want Glen dead. Him gone means that the case will never be closed. Poor Bob. He’ll be stuck with that failure all his life.
He sits down beside me on a plastic chair and reaches for my hand. I’m so embarrassed I let him. He has never touched me like this before. Like he cares for me. He holds my hand and speaks in a soft, low voice. I know what he’s saying, but I don’t hear it, if you know what I mean. He’s asking me if I know what Glen did with Bella. He’s saying it nicely, telling me I can let go of the secret now. Everything can be told. I was as much a victim as Bella was.
“I don’t know anything about Bella, Bob. Neither did Glen,” I say, and take my hand away, pretending I need it to wipe away a tear. Later I’m sick in the hospital toilets. I clean myself up and sit on the loo with my forehead resting on the lovely cool tiles on the wall.
TEN
The Detective
THURSDAY, OCTOBER 12, 2006