Кара Хантер - In the Dark

I started working for the Gardiners in October 2014. I never met them before that. That picture at the carnival really is just a coincidence.

I saw a lot of Rob. His wife was out a lot so we ended up spending a lot of time together. It was pretty obvious he fancied me so it was only a matter of time, really. He told me he wasn’t happy with his wife and he wanted to leave her and be with me instead. He said he would tell her but he kept putting it off.

What happened on June 23rd 2015 was that Hannah found us in bed. She’d told Rob that she’d be in late but she actually turned up just after six. She completely lost it – started shouting at him, swearing, tearing up my clothes. Rob said Toby was in the next room and could hear it all but she took no notice. She dragged Rob out of the bed and started hitting him – he tried to push her off but she was crazy, screaming abuse at me, saying I was a slut and a whore and she never should have trusted me. He told me to get my stuff and go – that it would be OK and he would deal with it. So I did. The last I saw they were in the kitchen. I kept thinking Rob would call me, only he didn’t, and when I texted him I didn’t get an answer. So about midnight I went back over there. As soon as he opened the door I could tell at once something bad had happened. He looked really weird, and he didn’t want to let me in.

He said it was all OK and they’d sorted it out and I should go home. When I woke up the following morning I was really sick, like I said before. That’s why I never got that voicemail from Hannah till the evening, and by then it was on TV that she was missing. It didn’t make any sense, that she’d still have wanted me to babysit Toby that day after all those things she said to me the night before. But I knew it was her on the message – it was definitely her voice, though it sounded a bit funny. Tinny. Not like when she usually called me.

My flatmate said I should go to the police but I was really scared – I didn’t see how Rob could have killed her and what if they thought I had? What if he told them it was me? My DNA would be in the flat and he was a scientist - he’d be cleverer than the police and could easily fake something. That’s why I never told the police we were having an affair. I was scared they’d think I’d done it. That it would give me a motive. And who were people going to believe if it came down to him or me? And in any case, I loved him. He could make me do anything he wanted. I know he never meant to hurt me. And he was always really sorry afterwards.

Pippa Walker

This statement was taken by me at St Aldate’s Police Station commencing 5.15 p.m. and concluding 6.06 p.m. Also present was Police Constable Erica Somer. At its conclusion I read it over to Pippa Walker who read and signed it in my presence.

DS Gareth Quinn

***

In the incident room, Quinn gets a round of applause, but he’s a very long way from the parading general I’d expect him to be right now. In fact, he even has the (unaccustomed) grace to insist that the real breakthrough was Somer’s. Though he looks so uncomfortable admitting it I wonder why he bothers saying it at all.

After a moment or two I cut short the congratulations. ‘OK, everyone – let’s keep this in perspective. Pippa’s statement is a big step forward, but it’s not enough – not on its own. It doesn’t prove Gardiner killed his wife though it does prove he’s been lying to us, and it does give him a motive. Neither of which we had before. But it still leaves us with a timeline that doesn’t add up. If Hannah Gardiner died the night of June 23rd, how did she make a phone call at 6.50 the following morning?’

Baxter raises a hand. ‘Actually, I have an idea about that. Leave it with me.’

‘OK.’ I look round the room. We’ve been on this six days straight. Everyone’s flat-lining. ‘Let’s pick it up again in the morning. Rob Gardiner isn’t going anywhere. All of you go home and get some sleep. That includes you, Gislingham. You look all in.’

Gislingham rubs the back of his neck. ‘Yeah, well, babies. You know what it’s like.’

*

An hour later I pull into my drive and sit there a moment looking at the house. The windows are open upstairs and the curtains are catching in the breeze. The sun is lowering and irradiating the house across the street against a brilliant blue sky. They call it the Golden Hour in Oxford. That brief slice of time where the sinking sun glows the stone like it’s lit from the inside.

I turn off the engine and remember. How it used to be. Before. Alex cooking. A glass of cold white wine. Jake playing on the floor at her feet or, later, kicking a ball about in the garden. Peace. Stillness. A golden hour.

The first thing I hear when I open the door is wailing. There’s no food on. The kitchen looks like a war zone.

‘Is everything OK?’ I call as I dump my bag in the hall.

‘Yes, it’s fine. He just doesn’t want his bath, that’s all.’

When I push open the bathroom door I can see what she means. The boy is lying on his back screaming and there’s water all over the floor, and a good deal on Alex too. She looks up, her face flushed. ‘Sorry, I just seem to have lost the knack of this, that’s all. He’s been so good so far, he really has. But I had to put that toy of his in the washing machine and he’s been impossible ever since.’

‘You want me to take over?’

‘Aren’t you tired?’

‘I think I can still deal with a toddler.’

‘OK,’ she says, getting to her feet in obvious relief. ‘It’ll give me a chance to get the dinner on.’

Once the door is closed the boy stops screaming suddenly and rolls over to look at me. There are smears of tears on his cheeks.

‘Hello, mate, what’s up with you then?’

*

When Alex comes out an hour later I’m in the garden, having a fag. The air is cool and the grass dewy but there is still a glow in the sky. She goes to turn on the lights but I stop her. Some things are best said in shadows.

She hands me a glass of wine and sits down next to me. ‘He’s asleep. Finally.’

She looks down the garden. ‘Look at that lavender we planted last year – it’s been alive with bees. I must bring him out here to look at them.’

I take a drag on my cigarette, letting the pause lengthen.

‘Tough day?’ she says lightly, letting me tell her if I want to. Or not.

‘Every time I think I have this case nailed it turns into something else. Something even more horrific.’

‘How can it possibly be worse than it already was? That poor girl imprisoned and raped. Hannah Gardiner beaten to death –’

‘We’re going to arrest her husband in the morning. The childminder gave us a statement incriminating him.’

Alex has her hand at her mouth. ‘Oh my God –’

Then she stops. ‘There’s something else, isn’t there.’

I grind out the cigarette. ‘Yes. But not about the case. About us. The boy.’

‘Oh yes?’

‘It was when I had him on my lap in the bathroom – he started making these noises – moving against me – like – well –’

But I can see from her face that she knows exactly what I mean.

‘You knew?’

She nods. ‘That nice nurse. She warned me. Said he’d done it once before and I shouldn’t be alarmed. That he must have been exposed to all sorts of terrible things down in that cellar that he’s far too young to understand. His mother being – well, you know. She suggested I read that Emma Donoghue book – Room? It’s been on my Kindle for ages but I never got round to it before.’

‘Is it helping?’

She turns to me in the dusk. ‘It’s making me cry.’