Кара Хантер - In the Dark

At St Aldate’s, Quinn is going through the file on Hannah Gardiner. Uniform have spent all morning tracking down the witnesses who were at Wittenham that day, but so far they’ve turned up nothing. No one remembers an elderly man alone with a buggy, and no one has picked out William Harper from an array of similar digital images. What Quinn’s now looking for is any sighting of Hannah in Crescent Square or Frampton Road, after she left her flat and went to collect her car. If Harper did kill her he must have been out in the street, and in the middle of June, it would have been broad daylight at that time of the morning. Surely someone would have seen? A commuter – even an early school run? But according to the file, there’s nothing – absolutely nothing. He’s making a note to issue a new appeal for witnesses, when the phone rings. It’s Challow.

‘Fingerprint results, hot off the press.’

Quinn picks up his pen. ‘OK, hit me.’

‘Those in the kitchen and downstairs bog are mostly Harper’s, but there are several from Derek Ross, which tallies with what he told us. Also several other unidentified sets, none of which are in the national fingerprint database.’

‘And the cellar?’

‘Harper’s again, and some I assume are the girl’s. We’ll check that, obviously. None from Ross this time, though there are some which match one of the unidentified sets from the kitchen. But there were two very clear prints on the bolt to the inner door. Database says they belong to an extremely shady character name of Gareth Sebastian Quinn.’

‘Haha, very funny.’

‘Seriously, though, there weren’t any other prints on that bolt apart from yours, so it looks like it could have been wiped down. We also found a couple of partials in the shed that could be a match for the unidentified prints in the cellar room, though it’s only a five-point match at best, so don’t even bother asking the CPS to run with that.’

Quinn sits forward in his chair. ‘But it’s possible someone else was involved both times?’

‘Don’t get carried away. There’s no way of knowing how old those prints are. Could be some innocent plumber. The bloke who fitted the lav. Or unblocked the sink. We’ve started processing the rest of the house for a possible murder scene, but thus far we’ve come up empty.’

‘Nothing on the DNA?’

‘Not yet. Don’t worry, I’ll make sure you’re the first to know.’

After Quinn puts the phone down he wonders for a moment about that last comment. Was it as pointed as it sounded or is he just getting paranoid? The trouble with Challow is that pointed is his default mode, so it’s hard to tell when he is, in fact, making a point. Fuck it, he thinks, picking up the phone and dialling Erica.

‘Fawley wants us to interview that woman at number seven again – what was her name? Gibson, yeah, that’s the one. See if we can get a better description of that bloke she thought was Harper’s son. Can you get that organized?’ He listens, then smiles. ‘And no, PC Somer , that wasn’t the only reason I was calling. I was wondering if you fancy a drink tonight? To discuss the case, of course.’ He smiles again, broader this time. ‘Yeah, and that too.’

***

‘I only found two similar cases. And I had to go back over fifteen years to find those.’

I’m leaning over Baxter’s shoulder, staring at the screen. The room is stifling. The temperature’s suddenly risen and the ancient HVAC system in the station isn’t designed to turn on a sixpence. All the computers crowded in here aren’t helping, either. Baxter mops the back of his neck with a handkerchief.

‘Here you are,’ he says, tapping the keyboard. ‘Bryony Evans, twenty-four, reported missing on 29th March 2001 along with her two-year-old son, Ewan. Last seen outside a supermarket near her home in Bristol.’

The picture is slightly blurred, probably taken at a party; there are Christmas decorations in the background. She looks younger than twenty-four. Hair in corkscrew curls. Smiling, but not with her eyes.

‘Apparently the family had been worried about her state of mind for several weeks before she disappeared. They said she was depressed – struggling to find a job and stuck at home with the kid. They’d wanted her to go to the doctor but she kept refusing.’

‘So they thought it was suicide?’

‘Looks like Avon and Somerset agreed. There was a thorough inquiry – there are forty-odd statements on file – but no one ever found any evidence of an abduction. No suggestion of any sort of foul play. Inquest returned an open verdict.’

‘It’s pretty bloody rare for no body to be found – not after all this time. Not if it was suicide.’

Baxter considers. ‘Bristol’s on the coast. She could have just walked into the sea.’

‘With the kid in tow? Really?’

He shrugs. ‘It’s possible. OK, not likely . But possible.’

‘What about the other one?’

‘Ah, this one’s closer to home.’

He pulls up another file. 1999. Joanna Karim and her son, Mehdi. She was twenty-six, he was five. And they lived in Abingdon. Baxter sees my interest kindling and rushes to douse it.

‘Before you get too excited, this was one of those contested custody cases. The husband was Iranian. I spoke to the SIO who handled it and he said the kid was almost certainly smuggled back to Tehran by his father. They suspected he got rid of the wife too, but they never found enough evidence to bring charges, and by then the bastard had left the country. So yeah, it looks like a double disappearance, but I think it’s actually two entirely separate crimes.’

I sit down next to him. ‘OK. Even if these aren’t connected, we still have a set of unidentified fingerprints in that cellar.’

‘But like Challow said, it could just be the plumber.’

‘You’re a betting man, aren’t you, Baxter?’

He flushes; he didn’t realize I knew.

‘Well, I wouldn’t exactly say betting as such –’

‘You do the football – the horses – I hear you’re pretty good at it, too.’

‘Well, I’ve won a bit,’ he says guardedly. ‘Now and again.’

‘So what are the odds, do you think? That those prints are the plumber’s?’

His face changes. He’s not embarrassed now, he’s calculating.

‘Twenty-five to one. And that’s a gift.’

***

‘DC Gislingham? It’s Louise Foley.’

It takes him a moment to remember who she is. Which doesn’t go unnoticed.

‘Birmingham University?’ she says drily. ‘Remember? You asked me about disclosing Dr Harper’s file?’

‘Ah, right, yes. Hold on, let me grab a pen. OK, shoot.’

‘I’ve spoken to the head of department and he’s authorized me to send you a copy of the relevant papers. I’ll be emailing them to you today.’

‘Can you give me the headlines? You know – the basics?’

She sighs, unnecessarily loudly. ‘It’s nothing like as salacious as you appear to be hoping. There was a relationship with a student, but she never made a complaint. There was no – coercion involved. Indeed, some of the girl’s friends suggested that it was more a case of her pursuing him, than the other way round. But nonetheless Dr Harper was married at the time, and such relationships are prohibited under university regulations, so it was agreed that it was in everyone’s best interests if he took early retirement. You’ll find all this in the file.’

‘OK,’ says Gislingham, tossing his pen back on the desk. ‘Just one more question – what was the girl’s name?’

‘Cunningham. Priscilla Cunningham.’

***

All the windows are open in the flat at Crescent Square. The breeze lifts the long white nets and there’s the sound of children playing in a garden a few doors away. The thud of a trampoline, squeals, a ball bouncing. All the children seem to be boys.