Fiona Barton - The Widow

“Wait a minute,” I say. But no one is listening.

Kate and Mick are discussing getting past the reporters who’ve gathered at the gate. The man from the telly must’ve told people I had someone in the house, and they’re taking turns knocking on the door and opening the letter box to shout to me. It’s awful, like a nightmare. Like it was at the beginning.

Then they were shouting at Glen, accusing him of all sorts of things.

“What’ve you done, Mr. Taylor?” one shouted.

“Have you got blood on your hands, you pervert?” the man from the Sun had said as Glen took the bin out. Right in front of people walking by. Glen said one of them spat on the pavement.

He was shaking when he came in.

My poor Glen. But he had me to help him then—I would stroke his hand and tell him to pay no attention. But there’s just me now, and I don’t know if I can cope on my own.

A voice is yelling horrible things through the door: “I know you’re there, Mrs. Taylor. Are you being paid to talk? What do you think people will say if you take this blood money?”

I feel like I’ve been hit. And Kate turns and strokes my hand and tells me to ignore it. She can make it all go away.

I want to trust her, but it’s hard to think straight. What does making it all go away mean? Hiding has been the only way to deal with it, according to Glen.

“We have to wait it out,” he would say.

But Kate’s way is to go at it head-on. Stand up and say my piece to shut them up. I would like to shut them up, but it means being in the spotlight. The thought is so terrifying I can’t move.

“Come on, Jean,” Kate says, finally noticing me still sitting in the chair. “We can do this together. One step at a time. It’ll all be over in five minutes, and then no one will be able to find you.”

Apart from her, of course.

I know I can’t face more of the abuse from those animals outside, so I obediently start to get my stuff together. I pick up my handbag and stuff some knickers into it from the tumble drier in the kitchen. Upstairs to get my toothbrush. Where are my keys?

“Just the essentials,” Kate says. She will buy me anything I need when we get there. “Get where?” I want to ask, but Kate has turned away again. She’s busy on her mobile, talking to “the office.”

She has a different voice when she talks to the office. Tense. A bit breathless, like she’s just walked upstairs.

“Okay, Terry,” she says. “No. Jean is with us, so I’ll give you a call later.” She doesn’t want to talk in front of me. Wonder what the office wants to know. How much money she’s promised? What I will look like in the pictures?

I bet she wanted to say, “She’s a bit of a mess, but we can make her look presentable.” I feel panicky and go to say I’ve changed my mind, but everything’s moving too fast.

She says she’s going to distract them. She’ll go out the front door and pretend to get her car ready for us while Mick and I slip down the garden and over the fence at the back. I can’t really believe I’m doing this. I start to say “Hang on” again, but Kate is pushing me toward the back door.

We wait while she goes out. The noise is suddenly deafening. Like a flock of birds taking off by my front door.

“Snappers,” Mick says. I guess he means photographers. Then he throws his jacket over my head, grabs my hand, and pulls me along behind him out the back door into the garden. I can’t see much because of the jacket, and I’ve got stupid shoes on. My feet are sliding out of them, but I try to run. This is ridiculous. The jacket keeps slipping off. Oh God, there’s Lisa next door, looking out of her top window, mouth open. I wave my hand limply. God knows why. We haven’t spoken for ages.

At the back fence, Mick helps me over. It’s not high, really. More for show than security. I’ve got trousers on, but it’s still a bit of a struggle. He’s parked his car around the corner, he says, and we creep slowly to the end of the alley behind the houses, in case one of the reporters is there. I suddenly want to cry. I’m about to get into a car with people I don’t know and head off to God knows where. It’s probably the craziest thing I’ve ever done.

Glen would’ve had a fit. Even before all the police stuff, he liked to keep things private. We lived in this house for years—all our married life—but, as the neighbors were only too glad to tell the press, we kept ourselves to ourselves. It’s what neighbors always say, isn’t it, when dead bodies or mistreated children are found next door? But in our case, it was true. One of them—it could’ve been Mrs. Grange opposite—described Glen to a reporter, as having “evil eyes.” He had nice eyes, actually. Blue with longish lashes. Little-boy eyes. His eyes could turn me over inside.

Anyway, he used to say to me, “Nobody’s business but ours, Jeanie.” That was why it was so hard when our business became everyone else’s.

• • •

Mick the photographer’s van is filthy. You can’t see the floor for burger boxes, crisp packets, and old newspapers. There’s an electric razor plugged into the lighter thing and a big bottle of Coke rolling around in the foot well.

“Sorry about the mess,” he says. “I practically live in this van.”

Anyway, I’m not getting in the front. Mick takes me around the back and opens the doors.

“In here,” he says, grasping my arm and guiding me in. He puts his hand on my head and ducks me down so I don’t bang my head. “Keep down when we drive off, and I’ll give you the all clear.”

“But—” I start to say, but he’s slammed the doors, and I’m sitting in semidarkness among camera gear and dustbin bags.

SEVEN

The Detective

THURSDAY, OCTOBER 5, 2006

Bob Sparkes yawned loudly, stretching his arms above his head and arching his aching back in his office chair. He tried not to look at the clock on the desk, but it winked at him until he focused. It was two a.m. Day three of the hunt for Bella over and they were getting nowhere.

Dozens of calls about long-haired, scruffy men and other leads were being checked in an ever-widening circle from the locus, but it was meticulous, slow work.

He tried not to think about what was happening to Bella Elliott—or, if he was honest, what had already happened. He had to find her.

“Where are you, Bella?” he asked the photo on his desk. The child’s face was everywhere he looked—the incident room had a dozen photographs of her, smiling down at the deskbound detectives, like small religious icons giving a blessing to their work. The papers were full of pictures of “Baby Bella.”

Sparkes ran his hand over his head, registering the growing bald patch. “Come on, think!” he told himself, leaning in to the computer screen. He read once more through the statements and reports from the trawl of the local sex offenders, searching for the tiniest weaknesses in their individual stories, but he could see no real leads.

He scanned through the profiles one last time: pathetic creatures, most of them. Solitary blokes with body odor and bad teeth, living in a fantasy online universe and occasionally straying into the real world to try their luck.

Then there were the persistent offenders. His officers had gone to Paul Silver’s house; he’d abused his kids over the years and had done time for it. But his wife— His third? he wondered. Or is it still Diane? —confirmed wearily that her old man was inside, doing five years for burglary. Diversifying, apparently, Bob Sparkes had told his sergeant.

Naturally, there’d been sightings of Bella reported all over the country in the first forty-eight hours. Officers had rushed off to check, and some calls had got his heart racing.