I didn’t phone to warn them I’d be coming, so the woman who opens the door greets me with the standard upper-middle ‘now who might you be’ look. She’s wearing black trousers and a blue-and-orange geometrical print shirt that looks like it’s hoping to be a kaftan when it grows up.
‘DI Adam Fawley, Thames Valley Police. Could I speak to Mr Ward?’
I suspect she’d like to pretend he isn’t at home, but I can actually hear him, somewhere close, talking on the phone. She asks to see my warrant card – not that I can blame her for that, in the circumstances – then gives a heavy sigh.
‘Is it that ghastly Camilla again? All that nonsense in the papers?’
‘Yes, I’m afraid so.’
She gives me a ‘here we go again’ look, then ushers me in and closes the door before calling to her husband, ‘Jerry – there’s a policeman here for you.’
The hall is black-and-white paved and yellow walled; a staircase bending away on the right with light streaming down from somewhere above; a line of white-painted doors on the left, from one of which her husband now appears.
He must be at least a decade younger than his dead brother. Or perhaps he’s just had an easier life. Tank top, plaid shirt, cords. Glasses perched on the top of his head, which immediately gets my goat.
‘What can I do for you, officer?’
‘I take it you’ve seen today’s news?’
‘Hard to avoid it.’
‘We believe Camilla Rowan’s missing child may have been found, and we’d like to eliminate your brother as the father. All I need from you is a simple mouth swab, for DNA. We can do it right now – it won’t take more than a couple of minutes.’
And then I can stop cluttering up your hallway like a hairy-arsed artisan. Though I don’t say that.
I’m expecting him to agree at once – he has as much to gain as Sheila if they can put all this behind them – but he looks troubled. Unaccountably troubled.
‘As I said, it’s purely for elimination purposes – the DNA won’t be stored or used for anything else –’
‘It’s not that,’ he says quickly. Then pauses, heaves a breath. ‘Look, I think you’d better come through to my study. Fiona – perhaps you could get us some tea?’
From the look on her face, he’s going to pay for that later, but what’s intriguing me far more is the fact that she clearly has no more idea than I do why he’s reacting the way he is.
She turns, distinctly crisply, and I follow Ward back down the hall to where he came from. The study is floor to ceiling with leatherbound books that anywhere else I’d assume were fake, but I wouldn’t risk betting on that here. He gestures towards a chair, one of those pompous buttoned things with a hood over the top. Porter’s chairs, I think they call them. I’ve never been less tempted to sit down.
His chair, on the other hand, looks rather comfortable. Unlike him.
‘Is there a problem, sir? With the DNA test?’
He shakes his head slowly. ‘With the test? No. I have no problem with the police taking my DNA.’ He sighs. ‘The issue is rather with what you’ll find.’
I frown. ‘Are you saying what I think you’re saying?’
He nods. ‘That my brother could have been the father? Yes, that’s exactly what I’m saying.’ He shakes his head a little and looks away. ‘I’ve been dreading a day like this for years. Someone like you turning up and saying they’ve found the body.’
I sit forward; to be honest, I’m worried that if I lean too far back in this contraption I may never get up again.
‘What makes you so sure it was your brother? Was it something he said?’
‘That’s the point,’ he says quickly. ‘I’m not sure. If I had been, my conscience would have compelled me to say something long ago.’
But instead of that his so-called ‘conscience’ managed to find a loophole just about big enough for him to protect his brother and safeguard his own comfortable life into the bargain. Like I always say when they get me to talk to new recruits: when it comes to this job, abandon faith in human nature all ye who enter here.
Ward’s cheeks are slightly flushed now, as if he knows what I’m thinking. ‘I’m sorry. I know that doesn’t paint me in a very good light, but –’
‘So if you’re not “sure”, I’m assuming he never actually spoke to you about it?’
He shakes his head again. ‘No.’
‘So where did it come from?’
He looks genuinely distressed now. ‘It was something I saw.’ He stops, clears his throat. ‘It was 1994, I think, maybe ’95. Nigel and Sheila had a party in their garden for her birthday. Nigel’s golf mates, the Rotary Club, the whole shebang.’
‘The Rowans?’
He nods. ‘Camilla was about fourteen. Peggy always had her dressed very prim whenever she was on show but it wasn’t fooling me. Or any of the women there.’ He makes a face. ‘Including my wife. She referred to her later as a “first-class prick-tease”. Anyway, Nigel was doing the barbecue most of the afternoon, but by about four Fiona had got bored making small talk with Tory wives and wanted to leave, so I went looking for him to say goodbye.’
‘And where was he?’
‘Upstairs. With Camilla.’
‘In one of the bedrooms?’
He nods. ‘The door was ajar. They were sitting on the bed and he had his arm round her. She seemed to be upset.’
He stops again. I wait.
‘I heard him saying something about “sorting it out”. That she “wasn’t to worry”.’
‘I see. And what did you think he meant?’
‘At the time? I wasn’t sure. I mean, it could have been anything, some problem at school, a row with her mother. Some teenage angst or other. Though I was surprised she’d gone to him with it – I didn’t think they knew each other that well.’
‘Did they see you?’
He hesitates, then shakes his head. ‘No. And I didn’t mention it. Either to him or to Fiona – it would just have been a red rag to a bull where she was concerned. But later, when it all came out about the baby – when Camilla was arrested – I started to wonder whether she might have been pregnant then too. Whether that’s what he’d meant about “sorting it out”.’
‘And she went to him because he was the father.’
He nods. Looks away.
‘Why didn’t you say anything to the police?’
He’s not meeting my eye.
‘Mr Ward, you know as well as I do that it could have been crucial evidence in the trial. If there was any question of child abuse –’
‘If you must know, that’s precisely why I didn’t say anything. Because of the whole damn Pandora’s box that would have let loose if I had. And because, whatever went on between Camilla and my brother, it was not child abuse.’ He gives me a steady look. ‘You didn’t know Camilla back then. I did. And believe me, if they were having sex it’s because she wanted it just as much as he did.’
‘You said yourself, he was a grown man – she was fourteen –’
His jaw is set now. ‘All the same. She’d have had her reasons. She was very good at using people.’
‘And you still said nothing, even after the Netflix show came out and your brother was named?’
He looks away again. I can see a vein pulsing in his neck.
‘Why didn’t you say anything, Mr Ward?’
He takes a deep breath and turns to face me. ‘Because blood is thicker than water, Inspector, that’s why. And because that night – the night the baby disappeared – when he was late to the Christmas party and said he’d been at Mum’s – he was lying. He was never there.’
‘But your mother’s drugs were given to her as usual –’
‘I know. But he wasn’t the one who did it. It was me.’