Fiona Barton - The Widow

“Thanks,” he’d say.

“Anything interesting on the computer?” I’d ask.

“No,” he’d answer. “Just the usual.” End of conversation.

I never used the computer. It was very much his department.

But I think I always knew there was something going on in there. That’s when I started calling it “his nonsense.” Meant I could talk about it out loud. He didn’t like it being called that, but he couldn’t really say anything, could he? It was such a harmless word. “Nonsense.” Something and nothing. But it wasn’t nothing. It was filth. Things that no one should see, let alone pay to look at.

Glen told me it wasn’t him when the police found it on his computer.

“They found stuff I didn’t download—horrible stuff that just finds its way onto the hard drive when you’re looking at something else,” he said. I didn’t know anything about the Internet or hard drives. It could’ve happened, couldn’t it?

“Loads of blokes are being wrongly accused, Jeanie,” he said. “It’s in the papers every week. People steal credit cards and use them to buy this stuff. I didn’t do it. I’ve told the police that.”

And when I didn’t say anything, he went on: “You don’t know what it’s like to be accused of something like this when you haven’t done anything. It tears you apart.”

I reached out and stroked his arm, and he grabbed my hand.

“Let’s have a cup of tea, Jeanie,” he said. And we went into the kitchen to put the kettle on. When I was getting the milk out of the fridge, I stood and looked at the photos on the door—us on New Year’s Eve, all poshed up; us painting the ceiling in the front room, covered in spots of magnolia; us on holiday; us at the fair. Us. We were a team.

“Don’t worry. You’ve got me, Jeanie,” he’d say when I came home after a bad day or something. “We’re a team.” And we were. There was too much at stake to split up.

And we were in too deep for me to walk away. I’d lied for him.

It wasn’t the first time. It started with ringing up the bank to say he was ill when he didn’t fancy going in. Then lying about losing the credit card when he said we’d got into financial trouble so the bank would write off some of the withdrawals.

“It doesn’t hurt anyone, Jeanie,” he’d say. “Go on, just this once.”

Of course it wasn’t.

I expect that this is what Kate Waters wants to hear about.

I hear her say my name in the hall, and when I get up to look, she’s talking to someone on the phone, telling them to come and rescue us.

Glen used to call me his princess sometimes, but I’m sure no one is coming on a white horse to save me today.

I go and sit down again and wait to see what happens.

FIVE

The Detective

MONDAY, OCTOBER 2, 2006

Bob Sparkes smiled the first time he heard Bella Elliott’s name. His favorite auntie—one of his mum’s flock of younger sisters—was called Bella; the joker in the pack. It was the last time he smiled for weeks.

The 999 call had come in at 4:38. The woman’s voice was breathless with grief.

“She’s been taken,” she said. “She’s only two. Someone has taken her . . .”

On the recording played over and over again in the ensuing days, the soothing alto tones of the male operator could be heard in an agonizing duet with the shrill soprano of the caller.

“What is your little girl’s name?”

“Bella, she’s called Bella.”

“And who am I talking to?”

“I’m her mum. Dawn Elliott. She was in the garden, at the front. Our house—44A Manor Road, Westland. Please help me.”

“We will, Dawn. I know this is hard, but we need to know a few more things to help us find Bella. When did you last see her? Was she on her own in the garden?”

“She was playing with the cat. On her own. After her nap. She hadn’t been out there long. Just a few minutes. I went out to bring her in about three thirty and she’d gone. We’ve looked everywhere. Please, help me find her.”

“Okay. Stay with me, Dawn. Can you describe Bella? What is she wearing?”

“She’s got blond hair—in a ponytail today. She’s only little. She’s just a baby.

“I just can’t remember what she was wearing. A T-shirt and trousers, I think. Oh God, I can’t think. She had her glasses on. Little round ones with pink frames—it’s because she’s got a lazy eye. Please find her. Please.”

It was thirty minutes later, after two uniforms from the Hampshire force had gone to confirm Dawn Elliott’s story and make an immediate search of the house, that Bella’s name came to DI Sparkes’s attention.

“Two-year-old gone missing, Bob,” his sergeant said, as he barged into the DI’s office. “Bella Elliott. Not been seen for nearly two hours. In the front garden, playing, and then gone. It’s a council estate on the edge of Southampton. Mum’s in pieces and the doctor’s with her now.”

Sergeant Ian Matthews laid a slim folder on his boss’s desk. Bella Elliott’s name was written in black marker on the cover and, attached with a paper clip, was a color photo of a little girl. Sparkes tapped the photo, taking it in before opening the file.

“What are we doing? Where are we looking? Where’s the dad?”

Sergeant Matthews sat down heavily. “The house, the loft, the garden so far. Doesn’t look good. No sign of her. Dad is from the Midlands, the mum thinks—a brief encounter who left before Bella was born. We’re trying to trace him, but the mum isn’t helping. She says he doesn’t need to know.”

“And what about her? What’s she like? What was she doing while her two-year-old was playing outside?” Sparkes asked.

“Said she was making Bella’s tea. The kitchen looks out over the back garden, so she couldn’t see her. Only a low wall at the front, barely a wall at all.”

“Bit careless to leave a child that age unsupervised,” Sparkes mused, trying to remember his two kids at the same age. James was now thirty—an accountant, of all things—and Samantha, twenty-six and newly engaged. Had he and Eileen ever left them in the garden as toddlers? He couldn’t remember, to be honest. Probably wasn’t around much at that stage—always out at work. He’d ask Eileen when he got home—if he got home tonight.

DI Sparkes reached for his coat, on a hook behind him, and fished his car keys out of a pocket. “I’d better get out there and have a look, Matthews. Sniff the air, talk to the mum. You stay here and get things organized in case we need an incident room. I’ll call you before seven.”

In the car on the way to Westland, he turned on the radio to hear the local news. Bella was top of the news bulletin, but the reporter had found nothing that Sparkes didn’t already know.

Thank goodness for that, he thought, his feelings toward the local media decidedly mixed.

The last time a child had gone missing, things had turned ugly when the reporters started their own investigation and stomped all over the evidence. Laura Simpson, a five-year-old from Gosport, had been found dirty, scared, and hidden in a cupboard at her stepuncle’s place—“It was one of those families where every Tom, Dick, and Harry was a relative,” he’d told Eileen.

Unfortunately, one of the reporters had removed the family album from the mother’s flat, so the police hadn’t seen a photo of Uncle Jim—a local registered sex offender—and realized his connection with the missing girl.

He’d tried to have sex with the child but failed, and Sparkes believed he would have killed her as the detectives ran around in circles, sometimes only yards from her prison, if another member of the extended family hadn’t got drunk and rung in with the name. Laura escaped with bruising to her body and mind. He could still see her eyes as he opened the door to the cupboard. Terror—no other word for it. Terror that he was going to be like Uncle Jim. He’d called a female detective forward to hold Laura in her arms. Safe at last. Everyone had tears in their eyes except Laura. She looked numb.