“Description?”
“A bloke on his own, he said. Long hair, looked rough. Neighbor said he was looking in the cars.”
Sparkes fished his phone out of his pocket and called his sergeant. “Looks like a live one,” he said. “No sign of the child. We’ve got a description of a suspicious character walking down the road, details on their way. Get it out there to the team. I’m going to talk to the witness.
“And let’s knock on the door of every known sex offender in the area,” he added, his gut churning at the thought of the child in the clutches of any of the twenty-two registered sex offenders homed by the local authority on the Westland housing estate.
Hampshire Police Force had about three hundred offenders in its area: a shifting population of flashers, voyeurs, pedophiles, and rapists who disguised themselves as friendly neighbors in unsuspecting communities.
Across the road, at the window of his neat bungalow, Stan Spencer was waiting for the senior detective. Sparkes had been told he’d started an ad hoc neighborhood watch a few years back, when the spot in which he felt he was entitled to park his Volvo kept being usurped by commuters. Retirement held few activities for him and his wife, Susan, apparently, and he relished the power a clipboard and nightly patrol gave him.
Sparkes shook his hand, and they sat together at the dining room table.
The neighbor referred to his notes. “These are contemporaneous, Inspector,” he said, and Sparkes suppressed a smile.
“I was watching out for Susan coming back from the shops after lunch, and I saw a man walking down our side of the road. He looked a rough sort—scruffy, you know—and I was worried he was going to break into one of the neighbors’ vehicles or something. You have to be so careful. He was walking past Peter Tredwell’s van.”
Sparkes raised his eyebrows.
“Sorry, Inspector. Mr. Tredwell is a plumber who lives down the road and has had his van broken into several times. I stopped the last one. So, I went outside to keep watch on the man’s activities, but he was quite far down the road. Unfortunately, I only saw the back of him. Long dirty hair, jeans, and one of those black anorak things they wear. Then my phone rang indoors, and by the time I came back out, he’d gone.”
Mr. Spencer looked very pleased with himself as Sparkes noted it all down.
“Did you see Bella when you went down your path?”
Spencer hesitated but shook his head. “I didn’t. I hadn’t seen her for a few days. Lovely little thing.”
Five minutes later, Sparkes perched on a chair in Dawn Elliott’s hallway and scribbled a press statement before going back to her sofa.
“Have you got any news?” she asked.
“Nothing new at the moment, but I’m going to tell the media that we need their help to find her. And . . .”
“And what?” Dawn said.
“And that we want to trace anyone who was in the area this afternoon. People who might have been driving or walking down Manor Road. Did you see a man walking down the road this afternoon, Dawn?” he asked. “Mr. Spencer across the road says he saw a man with long hair, in a dark coat, someone he hadn’t seen before. It might be nothing . . .”
She shook her head, tears already sliding down her face. “Was it him that took her?” she said. “Was it him who took my baby?”
SIX
The Widow
WEDNESDAY, JUNE 9, 2010
More feet on the gravel. This time Kate’s phone rings twice and stops. Must be some sort of signal, because she immediately opens the front door and lets in a man with a big bag over his shoulder.
“This is Mick,” she says to me, “my photographer.”
Mick grins at me and sticks out his hand. “Hello, Mrs. Taylor,” he says. He’s come to pick us up and take us to a hotel “somewhere nice and quiet,” he says, and I begin to protest. Everything’s moving so fast.
“Wait a minute,” I say. But no one is listening.
Kate and Mick are discussing getting past the reporters who’ve gathered at the gate. The man from the telly must’ve told people I had someone in the house, and they’re taking turns knocking on the door and opening the letter box to shout to me. It’s awful, like a nightmare. Like it was at the beginning.
Then they were shouting at Glen, accusing him of all sorts of things.
“What’ve you done, Mr. Taylor?” one shouted.
“Have you got blood on your hands, you pervert?” the man from the Sun had said as Glen took the bin out. Right in front of people walking by. Glen said one of them spat on the pavement.
He was shaking when he came in.
My poor Glen. But he had me to help him then—I would stroke his hand and tell him to pay no attention. But there’s just me now, and I don’t know if I can cope on my own.
A voice is yelling horrible things through the door: “I know you’re there, Mrs. Taylor. Are you being paid to talk? What do you think people will say if you take this blood money?”
I feel like I’ve been hit. And Kate turns and strokes my hand and tells me to ignore it. She can make it all go away.
I want to trust her, but it’s hard to think straight. What does making it all go away mean? Hiding has been the only way to deal with it, according to Glen.
“We have to wait it out,” he would say.
But Kate’s way is to go at it head-on. Stand up and say my piece to shut them up. I would like to shut them up, but it means being in the spotlight. The thought is so terrifying I can’t move.
“Come on, Jean,” Kate says, finally noticing me still sitting in the chair. “We can do this together. One step at a time. It’ll all be over in five minutes, and then no one will be able to find you.”
Apart from her, of course.
I know I can’t face more of the abuse from those animals outside, so I obediently start to get my stuff together. I pick up my handbag and stuff some knickers into it from the tumble drier in the kitchen. Upstairs to get my toothbrush. Where are my keys?
“Just the essentials,” Kate says. She will buy me anything I need when we get there. “Get where?” I want to ask, but Kate has turned away again. She’s busy on her mobile, talking to “the office.”
She has a different voice when she talks to the office. Tense. A bit breathless, like she’s just walked upstairs.
“Okay, Terry,” she says. “No. Jean is with us, so I’ll give you a call later.” She doesn’t want to talk in front of me. Wonder what the office wants to know. How much money she’s promised? What I will look like in the pictures?
I bet she wanted to say, “She’s a bit of a mess, but we can make her look presentable.” I feel panicky and go to say I’ve changed my mind, but everything’s moving too fast.
She says she’s going to distract them. She’ll go out the front door and pretend to get her car ready for us while Mick and I slip down the garden and over the fence at the back. I can’t really believe I’m doing this. I start to say “Hang on” again, but Kate is pushing me toward the back door.
We wait while she goes out. The noise is suddenly deafening. Like a flock of birds taking off by my front door.
“Snappers,” Mick says. I guess he means photographers. Then he throws his jacket over my head, grabs my hand, and pulls me along behind him out the back door into the garden. I can’t see much because of the jacket, and I’ve got stupid shoes on. My feet are sliding out of them, but I try to run. This is ridiculous. The jacket keeps slipping off. Oh God, there’s Lisa next door, looking out of her top window, mouth open. I wave my hand limply. God knows why. We haven’t spoken for ages.