Another pause.
‘Was he having an affair?’
‘Not that I knew.’
‘Did he have other relationships? Either before that or afterwards?’
‘If he did, he kept it to himself. He certainly never told me. Look, Sheila could be a difficult woman to live with but I never saw any suggestion that he had anyone else.’
‘So you have no idea who this “someone” was he needed to help?’
‘I’m sorry, Inspector, your guess is as good as mine.’
* * *
‘If he doesn’t stop fucking smirking soon,’ mutters Quinn, ‘I swear I’m going to nut him.’
Gislingham glances across at Carter, then grins at Quinn. ‘Well, I guess you can’t blame him. It was pretty impressive.’ Quinn’s still frowning and Gislingham just can’t resist. ‘Bit of a surprise, though – him coming up with that. I mean, it’s not the sort of thing I’d expect him to know about – shoes and that. Fashion. More your area, I’d say.’
Quinn flashes him a look. ‘I’d never spend that much on a pair of sodding trainers.’
‘What’s this about trainers?’ says Chloe Sargent, dumping her bag on her desk. She’s just back from lunch and there are splatters of rain on her jacket. ‘Have I missed something?’
Baxter looks up. ‘Carter just bagged a humungous wodge of brownie points by working out that the vic’s shoes must have been bought in America.’
Her face falls. She glances towards Carter. ‘Really?’
‘Quite the little detective,’ says Quinn, raising his voice. ‘Aren’t you, Carter?’
Carter looks up and flushes. ‘Not really –’
‘Oh, come on,’ begins Quinn, but there’s a sharp edge to his sarcasm that Gis knows only too well. People are looking up, trying to work out what’s going on. Time to dial it down.
‘Ignore him, Carter,’ says Gis, deliberately jovial, ‘we’re all just jealous – me included. Credit where credit’s due, but –’ turning to the rest of the team now – ‘we’ve got a long way to go yet.’
It’s another five minutes before Carter pushes back his chair and goes out towards the coffee machine, by which time everyone’s returned to what they were doing. Apart from Ev, who’s just got back from lunch herself. Which is why she’s the only one who notices Chloe Sargent get up and follow Carter out.
* * *
Adam Fawley
26 October
14.15
I have to drive into London for the BBC interview so I go via Risinghurst and get a change of clothes. I wouldn’t have bothered because I don’t particularly care how I look, but Alex does. She would anyway, but as she’s already reminded me, this is about more than just making sure I don’t have baby sick down my sleeve.
‘You need to look like you’re at ease with yourself,’ she says as I stand staring at my tie rack. ‘In control.’ And an obvious choice for Thames Valley’s next new Chief Inspector. Which, of course, we’re both studiously avoiding mentioning.
‘I don’t feel like I’m in control. I’m not even in control of my bloody tie.’
She smiles. ‘All the more reason to look like you are.’ She pulls one out and threads it round my collar. It’s not the tie I’d have chosen – I’d have gone quieter, more conventional – but that’s why she’s better at these things than I am.
‘What would I do without you?’
She laughs. ‘Forget to pay the bills? Run out of clean socks?’
‘You know what I mean.’
I pull her into my arms, and her hands slip under my jacket and round my waist.
I put my lips to her hair. ‘I should come home at lunchtime more often.’
‘Harrison would notice,’ she whispers. ‘You’d never make it back in the afternoons.’
A laugh now, but not mine, and not hers. I swing round to see Lily staring at us from her cot, her little fists gripped on the bars, her face lit up in a smile.
Alex drops her hands. ‘Oh. My. God. Adam – she’s pulled herself up.’ She stares at me. ‘She’s never done that before – she’s only three months old and she’s pulled herself up.’
She rushes over to the crib and lifts Lily out, and now Lily’s laughing and Alex’s laughing and kissing her, and telling her how clever she is, and all I can think is, who gives a stuff about Camilla Rowan, or the bloody BBC, or the promotion, or any of it, because I’m the luckiest bastard in the whole wide world.
* * *
‘No, if he was brought up in the US it would make no difference to the familial search results. If the biological father was born in the US – or somewhere else overseas – then yes, that would definitely give us a significantly different gene pool, but that’s not what you’re talking about, is it?’
‘No,’ says Gislingham at the other end of the line. ‘Sorry, Nina, my bad. I should have thought.’
Mukerjee smiles to herself; it might have been a waste of time but it was very far from being the dimmest question a police officer has asked her about DNA. And in any case, she likes Gislingham; she’s glad to see him making a success of his step up to sergeantship.
‘No problem at all – really.’
‘I just remember the boss saying you were surprised you hadn’t found as many matches as you usually would and thought this might be the explanation.’
‘Well, the first half of that’s true, at least.’
Gis laughs. ‘Back to the drawing board, eh?’
* * *
www.bbc.com/transcripts/Behind_the_Headlines
BEHIND THE HEADLINES aired October 26, 2018 – 18:30 GMT
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
[18:00:18]
HELEN KERRIDGE, HOST: Good evening, I’m Helen Kerridge and this is BEHIND THE HEADLINES, where we take an in-depth look at a story that’s making the news this week. Tonight it’s an ‘infamous’ case from fifteen years ago that’s once again making the front pages. Back in 2003, Camilla Rowan, then 23, was accused of killing her newborn son six years earlier. She has always claimed she gave the baby to its natural father, a man called Tim Baker, but this man has never been found. Rowan was convicted of murder at the Old Bailey, and sentenced to life. And that seemed to be the end of it. But then in 2016, investigative journalist John Penrose revisited the case in a now-celebrated series for Netflix, which raised some serious questions about the reliability of the original police investigation. And now, two years on, the case has taken another sensational turn, and we have the man who made that documentary here with us tonight. John –
JOHN PENROSE: Thank you, Helen. Back in 2016, I ended Infamous: The Chameleon Girl by asking if the time had come to take another look at Camilla Rowan’s case. Had there, in fact, been a serious miscarriage of justice which led to a victim of child abuse being imprisoned for a crime no one could prove she had committed? A few months later, the Criminal Cases Review Commission did indeed look at that question, but they concluded that the answer, then, was ‘No’.
But now we know better. Because earlier this week the news broke that Camilla Rowan’s lost baby had been found. Not, sadly, alive and well, but dead; killed in the most bizarre circumstances. Here in the studio tonight we have Detective Inspector Adam Fawley, who is leading the investigation into that death for Thames Valley Police. Inspector Fawley, perhaps you could tell us how you came to identify this man as Camilla Rowan’s son.
DETECTIVE INSPECTOR ADAM FAWLEY: Officers were called to a house on the outskirts of Oxford last Sunday night after reports of an intruder. They discovered the body of a man in the kitchen.
PENROSE: He’d been shot. By the owner of the house.