Once word came back positive on the screw and the lens prescription, Janine felt a wash of relief and the kick of excitement. Finally, finally they were getting closer, things were adding up. Still a lot of blanks to fill in but if they could just get Joe Breeley talking.
His solicitor was a whey faced woman with greasy hair. Thankfully she had not advised her client to offer no comment, perhaps because of the seriousness of the crime. She sat next to Breeley and opposite Richard and Janine in the interview room.
‘What can you tell me about the body of a child recovered from Kendal Avenue on the twenty-eighth of April?’ Janine said to Breeley.
‘Nothing. I don’t know anything about it, I swear,’ he said.
‘How do you account for the fact that a screw of the same type to that missing from your glasses was found in the sheet wrapped around the child’s body?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘You told us before that the manhole cover had been closed and that you had no need to access the drainage tunnel. So how come your glasses screw ends up in the drain, inside the sheet covering the child.’
‘I don’t know,’ he said, looking away.
Janine could see a pulse ticking fast at the side of his neck.
‘We have a witness who heard your vehicle arriving at the address at six-fifteen on the morning of the nineteenth of April,’ Richard said.
The solicitor interrupted, ‘Is this witness able to distinguish individual vehicles by the sound of their engines?’
Janine knew it was a fair point.
‘A diesel engine, a sound the neighbours had become familiar with over the course of the weeks you were working there,’ Richard said.
‘I was at home then,’ Breeley said.
‘I don’t think that’s the case. When did you break your glasses?’ Richard said.
‘I don’t remember.’
‘Where did it happen?’ Richard said.
‘Not at work,’ he replied.
‘The screw must have worked loose, dropped onto the sheet. Later, as you were moving the body, your lens fell out and broke,’ said Richard.
‘It’s not mine,’ Joe Breeley said. He rubbed his jaw.
‘We can identify the prescription from the fragments. It matches yours,’ Richard said.
‘You’re bound to find traces of me all over the shop. I worked there,’ Joe Breeley said.
‘But you have just told us that you didn’t break your glasses at work. I’m confused,’ Janine said.
‘You went to work early, in the van,’ Richard said, ‘you put the little boy there, left. Came back at nine. What happened, Joe?’
He refused to answer.
‘How did particles of glass that match your missing lens come to be on the driveway at Kendal Avenue?’ Richard said.
He shook his head. ‘I don’t know.’ Temper or desperation edged his reply.
‘We’ve taken a DNA sample from you along with hair from your head. Will we find that matches material recovered from the victim?’
Breeley stilled though Janine was not sure why but then he recovered. Had he remembered something incriminating? She decided to push this topic a bit further.
‘Anything like that could have come from the house,’ he said, ‘we use the basin, the toilet.’
‘And how might that have got inside the sheet? Or onto the child’s body?’ she said.
He swallowed, closed his eyes momentarily. ‘I don’t know.’
‘Let’s back up a little. Friday afternoon, the eighteenth of April. You left early?’ Janine said.
‘Yeah, Mandy was going shopping. I had the kids.’
‘She didn’t take them?’ Janine said.
‘No – John’s got the chickenpox,’ he said.
‘So Mandy went shopping, she came back when?’
‘She was late – the car broke down. Be going on five when she got back.’
‘And that evening where were you?’ Janine said.
‘Just in the house,’ Breeley said.
‘Neither of you went out?’ Janine said.
‘No, honestly. Ask Mandy. She’ll tell you,’ he said.
‘Oh, we will,’ Janine said, ‘I promise you that. Saturday morning what time did you leave home?’
‘Nine o’clock, like I said.’
Joe Breeley maintained his story, refusing to be drawn, then there was a knock at the door. Richard suspended the interview, paused the tape and went to answer it.
He came back into the room and nodded to Janine. It must be something important.
‘We’ll take a break now, half an hour,’ she said to the solicitor.
‘You’re keeping me here?’ Joe Breeley said.
‘For as long as it takes,’ Janine replied.
‘Millie’s found something in Breeley’s background,’ Richard said in the corridor once Breeley had been escorted to a cell.
‘Where is she?’
‘Incident room.’
Millie held a sheaf of printouts. She handed Janine the top one. Janine scanned the headline. Tot’s Death Inquest. She checked the date, 12th February 1991. Janine started to read, The county coroner opened an inquest yesterday into the death of Gary Breeley (3) who died at the family home in October 1990.
‘Fractured skull,’ said Millie. ‘Joe Breeley had a little brother, Gary. Joe was looking after him when Gary died. He fell down some steps, fractured his skull. They ruled accidental death, though there were rumours.’
‘Did he fall, or was he pushed?’ said Janine.
‘Exactly,’ said Millie, ‘Joe was ten at the time.’
The same cause of death. What were the chances? Was family man Breeley repeating an earlier crime?
‘We can use this,’ she said to Richard, ‘we should put this to him.’
While they waited for the half hour to elapse, Janine checked on responses to the Sammy Wray reconstruction. ‘The phones are red hot,’ Shap told her, which could mean anything or nothing. Perhaps Sammy had been snatched and taken abroad, at best for an illegal adoption and at worst as a victim for the men who get pleasure from abusing children.
‘Joe,’ Janine said once they had resumed the interview, ‘we really need to sort this out. You need to start telling us the truth. We have good reason to believe that you were involved in the death of the child found at Kendal Avenue. You’ve not been in to work since. Bad back you said, then excuses about the weather, then you claimed you stayed at home to help Mandy. Not like you to blob work according to Donny McEvoy. This is why, isn’t it, Joe? You couldn’t do it. Go back and carry on knowing that child was down there in the dirt. Alone. You couldn’t stomach it.’
He looked down at the desk, closed eyes. When he raised his head and stared at Janine, he looked tired, cynical, his cheeks hollowed.
‘We know about your brother. About Gary,’ she said.
Joe Breeley jerked as if she had slapped him then sat back his eyes blinking rapidly, his face tight and Janine could see how close he was to breaking point.
‘Oh you do, do you? You know all about that,’ he said bitterly.
‘He had a fractured skull, too. Same age. What happened this time, Joe? Another accident?’
Joe Breeley’s mouth was rigid, his face pale. His upper body was shaking and Janine realised his leg was bouncing up and down as it had at the house. A nervous tic. He didn’t answer.
‘Who is he?’ Janine said.
He looked down, put his head in his hands.
Janine spoke quietly. ‘Someone out there is worried sick because their little boy is missing. You’re a father. Imagine that? That little boy needs a name. We need to find out what happened to him and return him to the people who love him so they can lay him to rest.’