Fiona Barton - The Widow

“I’ve got a list of the people you encountered, here. Let’s look at it together to see if you remember anything.”

The rest of the house was silent. The volunteers had long gone, chased out by the sense of doom and Dawn’s distress.

She ran her finger down the names, page after page. “I didn’t know I talked to so many people,” she said.

“You probably didn’t, Dawn. People can just join a chat room and say hello and then listen.”

She paused several times, making Sparkes’s pulse jump, telling Salmond some small remembered detail—“Seagull, she lived in Brighton and wanted to know about house prices here”; “Billiejean was a big Michael Jackson fan, was always telling us about him”; “Redhead100 was looking for love. Wonder if she found it”—but most of the chat had been so mundane, Dawn had little recollection.

When she reached TDS she stopped. “Tall, Dark Stranger. I do remember him. It made me laugh when I saw his name. Such a cliché. I think we e-mailed once or twice outside the chat room. There was nothing romantic. He was nice to talk to when I felt low once, but we didn’t stay in touch.”

Sparkes went out of the room and phoned Fry. “Look for TDS . Could be him. They e-mailed outside the chat room. Text if you find anything.”

It took a while but, finally, his phone beeped. Found him was the message.

One of the forensics team was waiting to see Sparkes when he arrived for work. “We’ve found the e-mail contact between Dawn Elliott and TDS—just three e-mails, but there is mention of Bella in them.”

Sparkes wasn’t a punching-the-air kind of man, but he came close. “Next step is linking the e-mail address to Taylor, sir.”

They were also all over Dawn’s Facebook site. There were hundreds of photos of Bella on it, but Dan Fry had been brought back to the team and was searching for the images available before the kidnapping and working his way through her friends list for signs of their man.

It’s the new version of footslogging , Sparkes thought as he watched the team at work.

A weary-looking techie came to see him later that day. “Problem, sir. Dawn Elliott didn’t put any security on her Facebook page until after the little girl went missing, so anyone could have looked at her info and photos without becoming a friend.”

“Christ. Have we looked anyway?”

“Of course. Neither Glen Taylor nor any of the identities we know about appears. Odd thing is that Jean Taylor is there. She’s a friend of the Find Bella campaign.”

“Jean? Are you sure it is her?”

“Yes. Security was put on the page by then. She not only liked the page, but she posted a couple of messages.”

“Messages?”

“Yes. She told Dawn she was praying for Bella’s safe return and, later, sent a message on Bella’s fourth birthday.”

Sparkes was mystified. Why would Jean Taylor befriend Dawn Elliott? “Are we sure it’s her, not someone posing as her?”

“The e-mail address is jeanie1970@hotmail.com—one she uses, and the IP address matches her area of London. We can’t be rock solid, but it certainly points that way.”

Sparkes considered the possibilities. It could be her husband posing as her, but it was after the kidnapping. Maybe he was just making sure he heard all the info about the hunt.

“Great work. Let’s keep digging,” he told the technician, and closed his office door to get some thinking space.

He needed to talk to Glen and Jean. Separately.

FORTY

The Widow

FRIDAY, JANUARY 22, 2010

I was doing some hand washing in the sink when Bob Sparkes knocked. I stuck my hands under the tap to rinse off the soap and then shook them dry as I walked to the door. I wasn’t expecting anyone, but Glen had put in a little camera so we could see who was on the doorstep on a video screen. “Save us wasting our time opening the door to the press, Jeanie,” he said, putting the last screw in the bracket.

I didn’t like it. It made everyone look like criminals, all distorted like in the back of a spoon, even his mum. But he insisted. I looked and saw DI Sparkes, his nose filling the screen. I pressed the intercom and asked, “Who is it?” No point making it easy for him. He sort of smiled. He knew it was a game and said, “It’s DI Bob Sparkes, Mrs. Taylor. Can we have a quick word?”

I opened the door and he was there, his face restored to normal proportions, a nice face, really. “I didn’t think I’d see you again, after the compensation settlement and everything else.”

“Well, here I am. It’s been a while. How are you both?” he said, bold as brass.

“Fine, no thanks to you, but I’m afraid Glen isn’t here, Inspector. Maybe you should call ahead next time, if you want to come back.”

“No, that’s fine. I just want to ask you a couple of questions.”

“Me? What can you possibly have to ask me? The case against Glen is closed.”

“I know, I know, but there is something I need to ask you, Jean.”

The intimacy of using my first name threw me off guard, and I told him to wipe his feet.

When he came in, he went straight into the living room—like he was family. He sat down in his usual place, and I stood in the doorway. I wasn’t going to get comfortable with him. He shouldn’t have come. It wasn’t right.

He didn’t look sorry for coming, harassing us after the courts had said it was all over. I suddenly felt frightened. Having him here was like it was starting all over again. The questions starting again. And I was afraid. Afraid he’d found something new to hound us with.

“Jean, I want to ask you why you became Dawn Elliott’s friend on Facebook.”

I hadn’t expected that. I didn’t know what to say. I’d started using the Internet after Glen was charged and taken away. I wanted to understand how it worked—put myself in Glen’s shoes, maybe—so I’d bought a little laptop, and the man in the shop helped me set it up with an e-mail address and Facebook. It took a while to get the hang of it, but I bought an Idiot’s Guide to help me, and I had lots of time to spend figuring it out. It whiled away my evenings and was a change from the telly. I didn’t tell Glen while he was in Belmarsh. I was worried he’d think I was doing it to try to catch him out. He might think I was being disloyal.

I didn’t use it much, anyway, and when he came out, he was surprised but not in an angry way. I suppose there was too much going on for anything I did to matter much.

But he certainly didn’t know that I was a Facebook friend of Dawn’s, and now Bob Sparkes was here to make trouble about it. It was stupid of me—“reckless,” Glen would say if he knew. I did it one night after I saw Dawn on the news. I just wanted to be part of the campaign to find Bella, to do something to help, because I believed she was alive.

I didn’t think the police would see me in the middle of all those hundreds of names, but, of course, they see everything. “You never think, Jean,” Glen would have said if he were here now. I shouldn’t have done it, though, because it would make the police look at us all over again. It would cause Glen problems. Sparkes was looking at me, but I decided I would say nothing and look stupid and let him blunder on.

And on he went. “Did you sign up to the campaign, Jean, or did someone use your identity?”

I supposed he meant Glen.

“How would I know, Inspector Sparkes?” Needed to keep my distance. No first names. Where was Glen? He said he’d be only ten minutes. Finally, I heard his key in the lock.

“We’re in here, Glen,” I called. “DI Sparkes is here.”

Glen looked in, his coat still on, and nodded to the inspector. Bob Sparkes stood and went into the hall to talk to him on his own. I sat, petrified that Glen would explode about the Facebook thing, but there were no raised voices, and then I heard the door click.