Fiona Barton - The Widow

“I am,” he says, all fired up.

“We know. But we need to show it, and we need to be sure there are no surprises. Just saying, Glen. You need to go into this with your eyes open, because it’s a very expensive action to bring. It will cost thousands of pounds.”

Glen looks at me, and I try to look brave, but inside I’m running for the door. I suppose we’ve got the dirty money we can use.

“No surprises, Mr. Taylor?” the smoothy repeats.

“None,” Glen says. I look at my lap.

The letter goes out the next day, and the Herald shouts about it all over its pages and on the radio and television.

“Taylor Tries to Gag Herald ” is the headline. I hate the word “gag.”

THIRTY-THREE

The Mother

FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 26, 2008

The photographs of the Taylors in France made Dawn furious. Is furious she wrote in her Facebook status, with a link to the main picture of Glen Taylor in shorts and bare-chested, lying on a lounger, reading a thriller called The Book of the Dead .

The crassness of it made her want to go around and shake the truth out of him. She cooked the idea in her head all morning, playing the scene over and over of her bringing Taylor to his knees and him crying and begging forgiveness. She was so sure it would work, she rang Mark Perry at the Herald and demanded a confrontation between her and the kidnapper.

“I could go to his house. I could look him in the eye. He might confess,” she said, high on the fear and excitement of meeting her child’s abductor.

Perry hesitated. Not from any compunction about accusing Taylor—he was writing the headline in his mind as he listened—but he wanted the dramatic confrontation to be exclusive, and the doorstep was far too public.

“He might not open the door, Dawn,” he said. “And then we’ll be left standing there. We need to do it where he can’t hide. In the street when he’s not expecting us. We’ll find out when he’s next meeting with the lawyers and catch him as he goes in. Just us, Dawn.”

She understood and told no one. She knew her mum would try to dissuade her—“He’s scum, Dawn. He’s not going to confess in the street. It’ll just upset you and bring you down again. Let the courts get it out of him.” But Dawn didn’t want to listen to sense. She didn’t want advice. She wanted to act, to do something for Bella.

She didn’t have to wait long. “You won’t believe this, Dawn. He’s got an early-morning appointment next Thursday—on the anniversary of Bella’s disappearance,” Perry said on the phone. “It’ll be perfect.”

Dawn couldn’t speak for a moment. There was nothing perfect about the anniversary. It had been looming over the horizon, and the terrible dreams had increased. She found herself reenacting the days leading up to October 2: shopping trips, walking to nursery school, watching Bella’s DVDs. Two years without her little girl seemed like a lifetime.

Perry was still talking, and she tuned back in, trying to reach back to her anger. “Taylor likes to go when no one else is around, apparently, so we’ll have him to ourselves. Come in, and we’ll plan our MO.”

“What’s an MO?”

“It’s Latin for how we’re going to get Glen Taylor.”

Every eventuality was covered during the conference in the editor’s office. Arrival by taxi, check. Arrival by public transport, check. Back entrances, check. Timings, check. Dawn’s hiding place, check.

Dawn sat and received her orders. She was to sit in a black cab down the street from the barrister’s chambers and jump out at a signal from the reporter. Two rings on her mobile, then out.

“You’ll probably have time for only two questions, Dawn,” Tim, the chief reporter, advised. “So make them short and to the point.”

“I just want to ask ‘Where’s my daughter?’ That’s all.”

The editor and assembled journalists exchanged glances. This was going to be fantastic.

On the day, Dawn was not dressed too smartly, as instructed. “You don’t want to look like a TV reporter in the photos,” Tim had said. “You want to look like the grieving mother.” He added quickly, “Like you, Dawn.”

She was collected by the office driver and delivered to the meeting point, a café in High Holborn. Tim, two other reporters, two photographers, and a video journalist were already around a Formica table, smeared plates stacked in the middle. “All ready?” he said, trying not to show too much excitement.

“Yes, Tim. I’m ready.”

As she sat in the cab with him later, her nerve began to fail, but he kept her talking about the campaign, keeping her anger ticking over. The mobile rang twice. “We’re on, Dawn,” he said, picking up the copy of the Herald she would thrust in Taylor’s face and cracking open the door. She could see them coming down the street, Glen Taylor and Jean, his simpering wife, and she stepped clear of the cab, her legs shaking.

The street was quiet; the office staff who would eventually fill the buildings were still jammed together on the underground. She stood in the middle of the pavement and watched them get nearer, her stomach knotted, but the couple failed to notice her until they were only a hundred feet away. Jean Taylor was fussing over her husband’s briefcase, trying to stuff documents back in, when she looked up and stopped dead. “Glen,” she said loudly. “It’s her, Bella’s mother.”

Glen Taylor focused on the woman in the street. “Christ, Jean. It’s an ambush. You say nothing, no matter what she says,” he hissed, and took hold of her arm to propel her through to the doorway.

“Where is my daughter? Where’s Bella?” Dawn screamed into his face, spittle from the B landing near his mouth.

Taylor looked Dawn in the face for a fraction of a second and then was gone behind dead eyes. “Where is she, Glen?” Dawn repeated, trying to catch his arm and shake him. The cameramen had appeared and were capturing every second, circling the trio to get the best shots while the reporters barked questions, separating Jean Taylor from her husband and leaving her stranded like a stray sheep.

Dawn suddenly wheeled on Jean. “What has he done with my baby, Mrs. Taylor? What has your husband done with her?”

“He’s done nothing. He’s innocent. The court said so,” Jean screamed back, shocked into a response by the violence of the attack.

“Where’s my child?” Dawn shouted again, unable to ask anything else.

“We don’t know,” Jean yelled back. “Why did you leave your little girl alone so someone could take her? That’s what people should be asking.”

“That’s enough, Jean,” Taylor said, and pushed past the cameras, pulling her along in his wake as Tim comforted Dawn.

“She said it was my fault,” she breathed, her face ashen.

“She’s a nasty bitch, Dawn. Only she and the nutters think it’s your fault. Come on, let’s get you back to the paper for the interview.”

This is going to look great , he thought as they traveled through the traffic to West London.

Dawn stood beside one of the pillars to watch as the photographs were laid out along the whole length of the back bench so the newsroom could look and admire. “Fucking brilliant shots of Glen Taylor. That look he gave Dawn is chilling,” the picture editor said as he hawked his wares.

“We’ll put it on the front,” Perry said. “Page three, Dawn in tears and Jean Taylor shouting at her like a fishwife. Not the mousy little woman, after all. Look at the fury in that face.”

“Now, where are the words?”

“The Kidnapper and the Mother” blared out of the front page the next morning on trains, buses, and at Britain’s breakfast tables.