Кара Хантер: In the Dark

‘I think this crime was premeditated,’ I say slowly. ‘Planned down to the smallest detail by someone Hannah knew. Someone who tricked her to a place they’d prepared with everything they needed to get away with murder. The weapon, the packing tape, the blanket, the car cover. Someone who’d even worked out where they were going to hide that car cover afterwards. Someone, in other words, who didn’t just want her dead, but knew that house .’

*

Somer’s face is pale. ‘But to do something like that – they’d have to be –’

‘A psychopath? You’re right. I think the person who killed Hannah Gardiner is a psychopath.’

‘Boss?’

It’s Quinn. At the door. With Gislingham.

‘How nice of you both to pop in.’ And yes, it did sound that sarcastic. ‘Are you two finally going to come clean about what the hell’s been going on these last few days?’

Quinn looks sheepish. ‘It’s all down to me, boss. Gis has just been trying to help.’

The two of them exchange a glance.

‘Can we go into your office?’ says Quinn. I stare at him and then at Gislingham.

‘This had better be good.’

*

And it is. Though not for Quinn.

*

Half an hour later, everyone in the room stops what they’re doing as the three of us walk up to the front.

I turn to Quinn. ‘Go on.’

He swallows. He’s just endured the bollocking of his life, and the shit he’s in isn’t over yet. Not by a long way.

‘We brought Pippa Walker back in a couple of hours ago to charge her with attempting to pervert the course of justice. But when the custody sergeant booked her, she didn’t have any ID. Claimed she doesn’t have any. Which, of course, has to be crap, so we tried to track her down via driving licence records. But –’ he takes a deep breath ‘– there is no Pippa Walker with a birth date matching hers.’

‘You tried looking under Philippa?’ asks Everett.

Quinn shakes his head. ‘Nothing in that name either. We looked under every name Pippa could be short for. Penelope, Patricia –’

One of the DCs looks up from his phone with a mischievous grin. ‘Says here, Pippa means blowjob in Italian. Could that be relevant, Sarge?’

There are stifled guffaws and I see Gis drop his gaze to hide a smirk. Quinn is as red in the face as I’ve ever seen him. I spot Somer watching him from near the back, caught between irony and concern. I hope the irony wins out; she’s way too good for him. And Quinn’s made his own bed on this one. In every sense.

‘What about a bank account?’ says someone as the laughter dies down.

‘Not that we’ve yet found,’ says Quinn, still scarlet.

‘Mobile phone contract?’

Gislingham shakes his head. ‘It’s a pay-as-you-go.’

‘So she’s using a fake name?’ says Everett, clearly confused. ‘Why on earth would she need to?’

And suddenly, I know what I have to do. I get up and pull my jacket from the back of the chair.

‘Where are you going?’ calls Gislingham as I walk away.

‘I’m going to find the answer to that question.’

***

‘Next question: what links Mary Ann Nichols, Elizabeth Stride, Catherine Eddowes and Mary Jane Kelly?’

There’s loud laughter around the room and a couple of good-humoured shouts of ‘Fix! Fix!’

At his table by the fireplace Bryan Gow grins and writes his team’s answer on the sheet. Pub quizzes are one of his fixations, along with trainspotting and quadratic equations. And you think I’m joking. The other members of this particular team are an ex-lab technician and a retired professor of forensic pathology. They call themselves Criminal Minds, which I thought was quite clever until Alex pointed out, a little acerbically, that the TV series got there first.

This pub is Gow’s regular on a Wednesday afternoon – used to be a dingy spit-and-sawdust for the workers at the coal wharf but in the last couple of years it’s gone gastro glam. Log fires in winter, shades of paint in grey and teal, black-and-white floor tiles carefully restored. Alex loves it, and the beer’s still good too. I gesture to Gow, asking if he wants one. He nods and when the current round of questions finishes and the sheets are being collected he gets up and manoeuvres round the tables to join me.

‘What have I done to deserve this?’ he asks wryly, picking up his pint.

‘Talk to me about psychopaths. Sociopaths and psychopaths.’

He raises an eyebrow, as if to say, so that’s where you’ve got to, is it? He licks froth off his upper lip. ‘Well, some of the outer signs are remarkably similar. Both types are manipulative and narcissistic, they lie habitually, they’re incapable of taking responsibility for their actions and they have virtually no empathy. All that matters – all that even registers – is their own needs.’

‘And how can you tell them apart?’

‘Psychopaths are much more organized and much more patient. Sociopaths tend to act impulsively, which means they make mistakes, and it’s easier for people like you to catch them. In their case, there’s usually some traumatic factor in childhood. Abuse, violence, neglect. The usual suspects.’

‘And psychopaths?’

He makes a face. ‘Psychopaths are born. Not made.’ He’s watching me now. ‘Does that help?’

Behind him, the quizmaster is calling people back to their seats for the next round.

I nod. ‘Yes. I think so.’

He picks up the glass to go, but I stop him. ‘One more thing.’

‘I didn’t have you down as a Columbo fan, Fawley,’ he says with a dry smile .

But when he hears what I have to ask, his face darkens.

***

When he unlocks the door and sees me his face is immediately wary.

‘What do you want?’ he says, not bothering to hide his hostility. ‘Have you come to apologize? Because I should bloody well hope so.’

‘Can I come in? It’s important.’

He hesitates, then nods. And opens the door. Toby is asleep on the settee in front of a cartoon video, a toy dog clutched close to his chest.

Gardiner turns off the TV. ‘Let me put Toby down and I’ll be with you.’

The flat looks just as it did when I first came. There’s a smell of cooking and he must have done a hell of a lot of cleaning too, because there’s no trace of the forensics team. The only mess is happy-little-boy muddle. Gardiner is obviously doing everything he can to get his son’s life back to normal. Just as I would, in his place.

He comes back in and sits on the sofa. ‘Well?’

‘I did come to apologize. For what you’ve been through these last few days. It doesn’t bear thinking about.’

He gives me a dry look. ‘Well, whose fault is that?’

‘I’m sorry. But we had no choice. We have to eliminate all the possibilities. Pursue all the evidence.’

‘Yeah, well, that’s the point, isn’t it? You didn’t have any “evidence”. Not against me. Just malicious lies.’

‘That’s the other reason I came. I wanted to talk to you about Pippa Walker.’

His face hardens. ‘What about her?’

‘That statement she gave us, we know she made it up.’

‘Too fucking right she made it up.’ His voice has risen and he corrects himself.

I sit forward slightly. ‘But did she make all of it up? I believe you that there was no row that night, but were you actually sleeping together before your wife died? Look, I’m not trying to trap you – that’s why I’m doing this here, not at the station. We now know she sent you a number of texts in the week or so before Hannah disappeared. Explicit texts. You must know what I’m talking about.’

Gardiner rubs a hand through his hair, then takes a deep breath and looks at me. ‘OK, if you must know, we did it once. What I said about doing something you regret because you’re depressed and pissed, well, that was it. She’d been making it pretty damn clear she was interested, and one night Hannah was away and I’d had one too many and it just – happened.’