‘Didn’t you say something about a drink?’
***
Three weeks later.
The garden.
My parents dressed stiffly in what they think you ought to wear for Sunday lunch with your son and daughter-in-law. Clothes that probably go straight back in the wardrobe as soon as they get home. A table piled with food they’ll probably only pick at. Smoked chicken, rocket salad, figs, raspberries, pecorino. Alex is down at the bottom with my mother and the boy, talking to next-door’s cat, a friendly ginger-and-white thing with a big plumy tail. Every now and again the boy reaches out to try to clutch at it, and Alex pulls him gently back.
My father joins me at the table.
‘You always do a nice spread.’
I smile. ‘Alex, not me. I think she bought the shop.’
There’s a silence. Neither of us ever really knows what to say.
‘So did you find that girl you were looking for? The one who killed that poor young woman?’
I shake my head. ‘No, not yet. We’ve been monitoring the ports and airports, but it’s possible she’s managed to leave the country.’
‘And what about the boy?’ he says, pouring himself another low-alcohol beer.
‘Toby? He’s fine. His father’s protecting him from all the furore.’
‘No, I mean that boy,’ he says, gesturing down the garden. ‘Is it really a good idea – having him here?’
‘Look, Dad –’
‘I’m just worried about you – after what happened with Jake – it’s not been easy, has it? For Alex, I mean. And you, of course,’ he adds quickly.
‘We’re OK. Really.’
It’s what I say. What I always say.
‘What will happen to him?’ he continues. The boy has started crying and Alex sweeps him up in her arms. I can see my mother looking concerned.
‘I don’t know. Social Services will have to decide.’
Alex has sat down with the boy on the bench. He’s still crying and my mother is hovering, not sure what to do.
‘It’s going to be tough for him, though,’ says my father, staring at the three of them. ‘Some day, someone’s going to have to tell that boy the truth. Who he is, I mean. Who his father is, what his mother did. It won’t be easy – living with that.’
I think about William Harper, who always wanted a son. Does he know yet, that he has one? Does he want to meet him? Or has the stress of the last few weeks pushed him further into the dark? Last time I drove down Frampton Road there was a For Sale sign outside. I try to tell myself he was on the point of going into a home anyway, but it’s an aspect of this case that’s never going to lie easy.
‘Sometimes it’s easier not to face something like that,’ I say, forcing myself back to the present. ‘Sometimes silence is kinder.’
He glances at me, and for a moment – just a moment – I think he’s going to say something. That the time has finally come when he will tell me the truth. About me. About them. About who I am.
But then my mother calls us from the garden and my father touches me gently on the shoulder and moves towards the door.
‘I’m sure you’re right, son,’ he says.
***
Late October. It’s pouring with rain; that thin, mean-tempered rain that gets right into your bones. Rivers, canal, marsh: this city is ringed by water. In winter, the stone soaks up the damp. Along Frampton Road, some of the houses have Hallowe’en decorations in the windows – the family houses, anyway. Leering ghouls, Draculas, green-haired witches. One or two steps have pumpkins cut out in eyes and teeth.
Mark Sexton is standing under a golf umbrella in the drive of 31, looking up at the roof. No bloody chance of getting done by Christmas now. But at least the builders are finally back in. Or should be. He looks at his watch, for perhaps the fourth time. Where the fuck are they?
Almost on cue a flat-bed truck turns into the street and comes to a halt in front of the house. Two men get out; one is Trevor Owens, the foreman. The younger lad goes round to the back and starts unloading tools.
‘Is it just the two of you?’ says Sexton warily. ‘I thought you said they’d all be back in today?’
Owens comes up to the door. ‘Don’t you worry, Mr Sexton. They’re on their way. Just popped into the builders’ merchants to pick up some materials. I came on ahead so we can take another look at that wee problem in the cellar.’
‘Didn’t look like a fucking wee problem to me,’ says Sexton, but he turns and unlocks the door.
Inside, the house reeks of damp. Yet another sodding reason why he wanted to get it done in the summer.
Owens stomps down the hall to the kitchen and tugs open the cellar door. He flips the switch, but nothing happens.
‘Kenny!’ he calls back. ‘You got that light, mate?’
The lad turns up with a large yellow plastic torch. Owens flips it on and trains the beam up at the light socket. There is no bulb.
‘OK,’ he says, ‘let’s see what we have here, then.’
He starts down the steps, but suddenly there’s a crack and a shout and the sound of clattering.
‘What?’ says Sexton, leaning forward. ‘What the fuck was that?’
He stops at the threshold and looks down. Owens is halfway down, on his back, clinging to what’s left of the wooden steps.
‘Fuck,’ he says, his chest heaving. ‘Fuck – down there – look.’
The torch has fallen all the way to the bottom and the cone of light is glaring across the floor. The glitter of a dozen beady eyes in the dark, a scuttle of feet.
Rats.
But that’s not what Owens means.
She’s lying at the base of what was once the stairs. One leg twisted at an impossible angle. Long hair, now turning greenish, thin arms, black nail varnish. She’s young. And possibly pretty once, but it’s impossible to tell.
She no longer has a face.
***
Daily Mail
21st December 2017
VERDICT IN THE ‘TWISTED SISTERS’ CASE
Vicky Neale sentenced for ‘cruel and unusual’ scam
Still no charges in the murder of Hannah Gardiner
By Peter Croxford
‘Cellar scammer’ Vicky Neale was sentenced to six years in prison at Oxford Crown Court yesterday, after pleading guilty to attempting to defraud pensioner William Harper by accusing him of false imprisonment and rape. The court heard how Neale and her older sister, Tricia Walker, tortured and humiliated the old man, burning him several times on the gas cooker in the house, and planting pornography to incriminate him. Passing sentence, Judge Theobald Wotton QC condemned the 19-year-old teenager’s behaviour as ‘cruel and unusual’, and a ‘heartless and self-serving attempt to prey upon a frail and vulnerable old man who had done no harm to you’.
Speaking after the verdict, Superintendent John Harrison of Thames Valley Police said he was pleased that justice had been done, and confirmed that the police are preparing a file to submit to the Crown Prosecution Service in relation to the 2015 murder of BBC journalist Hannah Gardiner. Though many commentators doubt it will now be possible to determine the exact extent of Neale’s involvement in that crime, after the discovery, two months ago, of Tricia Walker’s partly decomposed body in the cellar of the house next door to William Harper’s. The gruesome remains were found by the owner of the empty property, and police believe Walker was squatting there after absconding from custody by inducing a miscarriage. The postmortem concluded that she had fallen and broken her leg on the dangerous cellar stairs, after suffering blood loss and possible dizziness. The coroner’s verdict was accidental death, due to dehydration. Only one mystery remains: what happened to the priceless Japanese ornament Walker stole from William Harper and wore around her neck? The silver chain was found broken on the floor, but there was no sign of the ornament itself, and an exhaustive search by the Metropolitan Police Art and Antiques Unit is believed to have found no trace of it.