A Room Swept White (13 page)

‘No. I—’

‘You passed your fourth driving test, though, right?’

‘It was my second, and no, I didn’t.’

‘Oh, bad luck. You’ll do it next time. Get a taxi, then. Twickenham by public transport’s impossible – quicker to get
to the North Pole. And keep me updated. I want to know what Ray’s so eager to talk to you about.’

Wendy Whitehead
. I hate knowing things that other people don’t know. My heartbeat is picking up speed, like something walking faster and faster, unwilling to admit it wants to start running. Tamsin’s right: Rachel Hines wants to reel me in, and she’s afraid it isn’t working. I didn’t phone her back first thing this morning. It’s mid-afternoon and I still haven’t made contact. So she rings the MD, knowing I’ll have to meet her if the order comes from Maya.

She’s clever. Too clever to say, ‘He can’t see the trees for the wood’ by mistake.

‘Fliss?’

‘Mm?’

‘What I said about nobodies from nowhere . . . I didn’t mean you, even if it sounded like I did.’ Maya flashes me a poor-little-you smile. ‘We all have to start somewhere, don’t we?’

6

8/10/09

‘How about if I buy the first drink tonight?’ said Chris Gibbs, not seeing why he should have to.

‘No.’

‘How about I buy all the drinks?’

‘Still no,’ said Colin Sellers. They were in an unmarked police pool car, on their way to Bengeo Street. Sellers was driving. Gibbs had his feet up, the soles of his shoes against the door of the glove compartment, safe in the knowledge that it wasn’t his to clean. He’d never have sat like this in his own car; Debbie would go ballistic.

‘You’ll do a better job than me,’ he said. ‘You’ve got the patience, the charm. Or is it smarm?’

‘Thanks, but no.’

‘You mean I haven’t come up with the right incentive yet. Every man has his price.’

‘She can’t be that bad.’

‘She’s deaf as a fucking door knob. Last time I was hoarse when I came out, from shouting so she could hear me.’

‘You’re a familiar face. She’s more likely to—’

‘You’re better with old ladies than I am.’

‘Ladies full stop,’ Sellers quipped. He thought a lot of himself because he had two women on the go, one of whom he was married to and one he wasn’t, though he’d had her
so long he might as well be married to her; two women who reluctantly agreed to have sex with him in the vain hope that one day he might be less of a twat than he was now and always had been. Gibbs had only the one: his wife, Debbie.

‘Ask her nicely, she might give you a hand-job. Used to be a piano teacher, so she’ll be good with her hands.’

‘You’re sick,’ said Sellers. ‘She’s like, what, eighty?’

‘Eighty-three. What’s your upper age limit, then? Seventy-five?’

‘Pack it in, will you?’

‘ “All right, love, wipe yourself, your taxi’s here. It’s four in the morning, love, pay for yourself.” ’ Gibbs’ impression of Sellers was as unpopular with its inspiration and target as it was popular with everyone else at the nick. Over the years, the Yorkshire accent had become considerably more pronounced than Sellers’ real one, and quite a bit of heavy breathing had been added. Gibbs was considering a few more minor modifications, but he was worried about straying too far from the subtlety of the original. ‘ “All right, love, you roll over there into the wet spot, cover it up with your big fat arse.” If you want me to stop, you know what you have to do.’

A few seconds of silence, then Sellers said, ‘Sorry, was that last bit you? I thought you were still being me.’

Gibbs chuckled. ‘ “If you want me to stop, you know what you have to do”? You’d really say that, to an eighty-three-year-old grandmother?’ He shook his head in mock disgust.

‘Let’s both do both,’ said Sellers. He always caved in eventually. A couple more minutes and he’d be offering to interview both Beryl Murie and Stella White on his own while Gibbs had the afternoon off. It was like the end of a game of
chess: Gibbs could see all the moves that lay ahead, all the way to check-mate.

‘So you’re willing to do Murie?’ he said.

‘With you, yeah.’

‘Why do I have to be there?’ said Gibbs indignantly. ‘You take Murie, I’ll take Stella White – a straight swap. That way we don’t waste time. Unless you can’t trust yourself alone with Grandma Murie.’

‘If I say yes, will you shut the fuck up?’ said Sellers.

‘Done.’ Gibbs grinned and held out his hand for Sellers to shake.

‘I’m driving, dickhead.’ Sellers shook his head. ‘And we’re wasting time however we do it. We’ve already taken statements from Murie and White.’

‘They’re all we’ve got. We need to push them for what they didn’t think of the first time.’

‘There’s only one reason we’re back here,’ said Sellers. ‘We’ve got nowhere else to go. Everyone close to Helen Yardley’s got a solid alibi, none of them tested positive for gunpowder residue. We’re looking for a stranger, to us and to her – every detective’s worst nightmare. A killer with no link to his victim, some no-mark who saw her face on TV once too often and decided she was the one – someone we’ve no chance of finding. Proust knows it, he just won’t admit it yet.’

Gibbs said nothing. He agreed with Simon Waterhouse: it wasn’t as simple as someone close to the victim versus stranger murder, not in the case of a woman like Helen Yardley. Someone could have killed her because of what she stood for, someone who stood for the opposite. The way Gibbs saw it, Helen Yardley’s murder convictions had started a war. She’d been killed by the other side, the child protection
control freaks who assume parents want to kill their kids unless someone can prove otherwise. Gibbs kept this insight to himself because he didn’t think he deserved the credit for it; as with all his best ideas, Simon Waterhouse had planted the seed. Gibbs’ admiration for Waterhouse was his most closely guarded secret.

‘He’s really lost it this time.’ Sellers was still talking about the Snowman. ‘Telling us we aren’t allowed to say or even think Helen Yardley might have been guilty. I wasn’t thinking that – were you? If her conviction was unsafe, it was unsafe. But now he’s put the idea into all our heads by telling us it’s forbidden, and all of a sudden everyone’s thinking, “Hang on a minute – what if there
is
no smoke without fire?”, exactly what he’s saying we mustn’t think. All that does is make us think it’s what he
thinks
we’re going to think, which makes us ask ourselves why. Perhaps there’s some reason we
ought
to be thinking it.’

‘Everyone’s thinking it,’ said Gibbs. ‘They have been from the start, they just haven’t been saying it because they’re not sure where anyone else stands. No one wants to be the first to say, “Oh, come on, course she did it – sod the court of appeal.” Would you want to stand up and say that, when she’s been shot in the head and we’re all breaking our bollocks to find her killer?’

Sellers turned to look at him. The car swerved. ‘You think she killed her babies?’

Gibbs resented having to explain. If Sellers had been listening . . . ‘I can see what you’re all thinking because I’m the only one
not
thinking it. What that Duffy woman said – it’s crap.’

‘Duffy who?’

‘That doctor. When the prosecutor asked her if it was possible that Morgan and Rowan Yardley were both SIDS deaths, she said it was so unlikely, it bordered on impossible. SIDS is cot death – Sudden Infant Death Syndrome, where the death’s natural but no reason can be found.’

‘I know that much,’ Sellers muttered.

‘That was the quote: “so unlikely, it borders on impossible”. She said it was overwhelmingly likely that there was an underlying cause, and that the cause was forensic, not medical. In other words, Helen Yardley murdered her babies. When the defence called her on it and asked if, in spite of what she’d said, it was possible for SIDS to strike two children from the same family, same household, she had to say yes, it was possible. But that wasn’t the part that impressed the jury – eleven out of twelve of them, anyway. They only heard the “so unlikely, it borders on impossible” part. Turns out there’s no statistical basis for that, it was just her talking shit – that’s why she’s up before the GMC next month for misconduct.’

‘You’re well informed.’

Gibbs was about to say, ‘So should you be, so should everyone working the Yardley murder,’ when he realised he would be quoting Waterhouse word for word. ‘I reckon Helen Yardley would have walked if it hadn’t been for Duffy,’ he said. ‘All the papers at the time printed the “so unlikely, it borders on impossible” quote. That’s what springs to most people’s minds when they hear the name Helen Yardley, never mind the successful appeal or Duffy being done for misconduct. And that’s just regular people. Cops are even worse – we’re programmed to imagine everyone on our radar’s guilty and getting away with it: no smoke without fire, whatever legal
technicalities might have got Helen Yardley out. I only know different because of Debbie’s experience.’

‘Your Debbie?’

Would he bother mentioning someone else’s Debbie? What did he know about Debbies that weren’t his? Sellers was an idiot. Gibbs wished he hadn’t said anything now; at the same time, he was looking forward to flipping his trump card. This was his own original material, nothing to do with Waterhouse. ‘She’s had eleven miscarriages in the last three years, all at ten weeks. She can’t get past that point, no matter what she does. She’s tried aspirin, yoga, healthy eating, giving up work and lying on the sofa all day – you name it, she’s done it. We’ve had all the tests, seen every doctor and every specialist, and no one can tell us anything. Can’t find any problems, that’s what they all say.’ Gibbs shrugged. ‘Doesn’t mean nothing’s wrong, though, does it? Obviously something is. Any doctor worth shit’ll tell you medicine’s always going to throw up mysteries no one can solve. How many miscarriages has Stacey had?’

‘None,’ said Sellers. ‘How come you’ve never . . .?’

‘There you go – all the medical proof you need, and proof that Duffy’s a cunt. If one woman can miscarry eleven pregnancies and another miscarry none, it stands to reason that one woman might lose two or even more babies to cot death, and others not lose any. Doesn’t make it murder, any more than Debbie murdered all the foetuses she lost. Hardly takes a brain of Britain to work out that some medical issues might be there in one family and not in another, like big noses or a tendency to get varicose veins. Like having a microscopic dick’s a problem in your family and not in mine.’

‘Apparently there’s a rare genetic condition that only affects men with dark curly hair and the initials CG,’ Sellers said
with a straight face. ‘When they look at their own penises, their vision distorts and they see them as five times the size they really are. Sufferers also tend to have a problem with body odour.’

They’d arrived at Bengeo Street. It was a horseshoe-shaped cul-de-sac of 1950s red-brick semis with small front gardens, token patches of green. Many of the houses had extensions built on to their sides. It gave the street an overcrowded look, as if the buildings had over-eaten and were straining to fit into their plots. The Yardleys’ house was one of the few on the street that hadn’t been extended; no need, with no kids to fill it up, thought Gibbs. It was still cordoned off by police tape. Paul Yardley was staying with his parents, for which Gibbs was grateful. Dealing with Yardley was a nightmare. You’d tell him there was no news and he’d stand there and look at you as if he didn’t recognise your answer and was waiting for the real one.

Gibbs looked at his watch: half past four. Stella White’s red Renault Clio was parked outside number 16, which meant she was back from picking up her son from school. Sellers had rung Beryl Murie’s bell and looked as taken aback as Gibbs had been two days ago to get, by way of a response, a wordless electronic version of
How Much is That Doggy in the Window
? that was audible across the street. ‘Forgot to warn you about the deaf doorbell,’ Gibbs called out.

Stella White opened her front door as he approached. She was holding a child’s muddy football boots, a blue plastic alien toy and a toast crust. Her jeans and V-necked jumper hung off her thin frame, and there were dark circles under her eyes. If this was what life with children did to you, maybe he and Debbie were the lucky ones.

‘DC Gibbs, Culver Valley CID.’

‘I was expecting a DC Sellers,’ Stella White said – upbeat, smiling, as if a DC Gibbs was some kind of bonus, or treat.

Sorry to disappoint you
.

‘Change of plan.’ Gibbs showed her his ID, and allowed himself to be ushered into the front room. Television noise was coming from the next room, the one with the closed door: some sort of horse-racing commentary.

‘Your husband watching the racing?’ he asked. The room they were in looked as if it had had some money spent on it: thick swagged curtains, real wood floor, a slate and marble fireplace. Subtle colours that you couldn’t easily describe, nothing as straightforward as red or blue or green. Debbie would have loved it, though she’d have been unwilling to live on Bengeo Street, however smart the house was inside; it was too close to the Winstanley estate, on the wrong side of town.

‘I haven’t got a husband,’ said Stella. ‘My son Dillon’s got a thing about horses. At first I tried to stop him watching the racing, but . . .’ She shrugged. ‘He loves it so much, I decided it was mean to deprive him.’

Gibbs nodded. ‘Any sort of interest’s got to be good, hasn’t it?’ he said. ‘When I was a kid I wasn’t interested in anything. Nothing. I was bored out of my mind until I was old enough to drink and . . .’ He stopped himself just in time, but Stella White was grinning.

‘Exactly,’ she said. ‘I’m just so glad he’s passionate about something – it almost doesn’t matter what. He studies form and everything. Get him on the subject of racing and you can’t shut him up.’

‘How old is he?’

‘Four.’ Seeing Gibbs’ surprise, Stella said, ‘I know. It can be
a bit embarrassing. He’s not a child prodigy or anything – just a normal kid who’s crazy about horse-racing.’

‘Next you’ll tell me he speaks twelve languages and can cure cancer,’ said Gibbs.