Fiona Barton - The Widow

“Poor little thing. I was in Portsmouth that lunchtime on a job. Is that why you’re here? I told the boss he ought to ring in when the papers said about the dark blue van—you know I drove one that color—but he said he didn’t want coppers sniffing around his business. Not sure why—you’ll have to ask him. Anyway, I was nowhere near where the little girl lived. Just did my job and came back.”

Doonan continued to be helpful to a fault, offering his thoughts on the case and what should happen to “the bastard who took her.”

“I’d do anything to get my hands on him. Mind you, couldn’t do much if I did, not the state I’m in.”

“How long have you been in this state, Mr. Doonan?” Sergeant Matthews asked.

“Years. I’ll be in a wheelchair soon.”

The officers listened patiently, then broached his alleged interest in Internet child pornography. He laughed when they talked about Operation Gold.

“I haven’t even got a computer. Not my kind of thing. Bit of a technophobe, if I’m honest. Anyway, all these investigations are bollocks, aren’t they? Clever blokes in Russia stealing credit card numbers and selling them on to pedos, it says in the papers. Don’t take my word for it. Have a look around, Officers.”

Sparkes and Matthews took up his offer, pushing through clothes jammed into a wardrobe and lifting the mattress on Doonan’s bed to look in the storage bags underneath. “Lot of women’s clothes, Mr. Doonan,” Matthews observed.

“Yes, bit of a cross-dresser when the mood takes me.” Doonan laughed easily. Too easily, Sparkes thought.

“Nah, the clothes belonged to my latest ex-wife. Haven’t got around to chucking them out.”

There was no sign of a child.

“Do you have kids, Mr. Doonan?”

“Grown-ups now. Don’t really see much of them. They sided with their mothers.”

“Right. We’ll take a quick look in the bathroom.”

Sparkes looked across at his sergeant, digging through the laundry basket and trying not to breathe.

“Well, she’s not here, but I don’t like him,” Matthews hissed through his teeth. “Overly friendly. Creepy.”

“We need to talk to the Operation Gold boys again,” Sparkes said, closing the bathroom cabinet. “And get his van in for forensics to go over.”

When they filed back into the sitting room, Doonan smiled. “All done? Sorry about the washing. Expect you’ll be off to see Glen Taylor now?”

“Who?” Sparkes asked.

“Taylor. One of the other drivers. He did a drop in the area the same day. Didn’t you know?”

Sparkes stopped putting on his coat and moved closer to Doonan. “No. Mr. Johnstone didn’t mention a second driver when he called in. Are you sure there were two of you?”

“Yeah. I was going to do both jobs, but I had a doctor’s appointment and had to get back to town by four thirty. Glen Taylor said he’d do the second drop. Maybe he didn’t put it on the log. You should ask him.”

“We will, Mr. Doonan.”

Sparkes signaled to Matthews to go and call Johnstone to confirm the new information.

As the sergeant closed the front door behind him, Sparkes looked hard at Doonan. “Is this other driver a friend of yours?”

Doonan sniffed. “Not really. Bit of a mystery if I’m honest. Clever boy. Deep, I’d say.”

Sparkes wrote it down. “Deep, how?”

“Acted all friendly, but you never knew what he was thinking. The blokes would be talking in the drivers’ lunchroom and he’d just be listening in. Secretive, I suppose.”

Matthews knocked on the window, startling them both, and Sparkes put his notebook away and said good-bye without shaking hands.

“We’ll see you again, Mr. Doonan.”

The driver excused himself from getting up to let them out. “Slam the door behind you and come back anytime,” he called after them.

The officers got in the stinking lift and looked at each other as the doors closed.

“Mr. Johnstone says there’s nothing in the log about Glen Taylor doing any jobs that afternoon. He’s looking for the delivery receipt to see whose signature is on it. I’ve got Taylor’s address.”

“Let’s go there now,” Sparkes said, reaching for his keys. “And check if Doonan turned up for his doctor’s appointment.”

In the flat, Mike Doonan waited for an hour and then staggered to the coat hooks in the hall and fished out a padlock key from his jacket pocket. He shook two of his special painkillers from a white plastic container and swallowed them with a gulp of cold coffee. He stood while they kicked in and then shuffled out to remove the pictures and magazines from his locker in the neighbor’s garage.

“Fucking police,” he grumbled as he braced himself against the lift wall. He’d burn the photos later. He’d been stupid to keep them really, but they were all that was left of his little hobby. The computer stuff had come to an end months ago, when his spine had started to collapse and he couldn’t get to his special Internet café anymore.

Too crippled for porn. He laughed to himself—his painkillers making him light-headed and giddy. That’s tragic .

He opened the door of the gray metal cabinet and pulled the battered-looking blue folder off the top shelf. The corners of the photocopies had become dog-eared with use, and the colors were beginning to fade. He’d bought them from another driver, a bloke who drove cabs down on the coast and sold his stuff from the boot of his car. Doonan knew his pictures by heart: the faces, the poses, the domesticity of the backgrounds—living rooms, bedrooms, bathrooms.

He hoped the detectives were giving Glen Taylor a good going-over. Served him right, jumped-up little prick.

The older one had looked interested when he’d said Taylor was “deep.” He smiled.

THIRTEEN

The Detective

SATURDAY, APRIL 7, 2007

Sparkes’s heart was going like a steam hammer as he walked up the Taylors’ path, all senses heightened. He’d done this walk a hundred times, but his reactions never seemed blunted by repetition.

The house was a semi, painted and well cared for with double-glazed windows and clean net curtains.

Are you here, Bella? he repeated in his head as he raised a hand to knock on the door. Softly, softly, he reminded himself. Let’s not panic anyone.

And then there he was. Glen Taylor.

He looks like the bloke next door was Sparkes’s first thought. But then monsters rarely look the part. You hope you’ll be able to see the evil shining out of them—it would make police work a damned sight easier, he often said. But evil was a slippery substance, glimpsed only occasionally and all the more horrifying for that, he knew.

The detective made a quick visual sweep behind Taylor for any signs of a child, but the hall and stairs were spotless, nothing out of place.

“Normal to the point of abnormal,” he told Eileen later. “Looked like a show house.” Eileen had taken offense, seeing the remark as a judgment on her own housekeeping skills, and hissed her discontent at him.

“Bloody hell, Eileen. What’s the matter with you? No one is talking about you, about our house. I’m talking about a suspect. I thought you’d be interested.” But the damage was done. Eileen retreated into the kitchen and some loud cleaning. Another quiet week , he thought, and turned the telly up.

“Mr. Glen Taylor?” Sparkes asked quietly and courteously.

“Yes, that’s me,” Taylor replied. “What can I do for you? Are you selling something?”

The officer stepped closer, Ian Matthews at his heels.

“Mr. Taylor, I’m Detective Inspector Bob Sparkes from the Hampshire Police Force. Can I come in?”

“Police? What is this about?” Taylor asked.