But now the papers and the telly—and even the radio—were about us. Glen was big news, and the reporters started knocking on the door again. I found out they called it “door stepping,” and some of them actually slept in their cars outside all night to try to catch a word with me.
I used to sit upstairs in our bedroom at the front, peeking out from behind the curtain, watching them. They all did the same thing. It was quite funny, really. They would drive past first, checking out the house and who was already outside. Then they parked and strolled back to the gate, a notebook in their hand. The others would jump out of their cars to cut the new one off before they could get to the door. Like a pack of animals, sniffing around the new arrival.
After a few days, they were all friends—sending one to get coffees and bacon sandwiches from the café at the bottom of the hill. “Sugar? Who wants sauce?” The café must’ve made a fortune. I noticed the reporters kept to one group and the photographers to another. Wonder why they didn’t mix. You could tell them apart because the photographers dressed differently—trendier, in scruffy jackets and baseball caps. Most of them looked like they hadn’t shaved for days—the men, I mean. The women photographers dressed like men, too. In chinos and baggy shirts. And the photographers were so loud. I felt a bit sorry for the neighbors at first, having to listen to them laughing and carrying on. But then they started bringing out trays of drinks, standing and chatting with them and letting them use their loos. It was a bit of a street party for them, I think.
The reporters were quieter. They spent most of their time on their phones or sitting listening to the radio news in their cars. Lots were young blokes in their first suits.
But after a few days, when I wouldn’t talk, the press sent the big guns. Big beery men and women with sharp faces and smart coats. They rolled up in their expensive, shiny cars and stepped out, like royalty. Even the photographers stopped messing about for some of them. One man who looked like he’d stepped out of a shop window parted the crowd and walked up the path. He banged on the door and called out: “Mrs. Taylor, what is it like to have a child murderer as a husband?” I sat there on the bed, burning with shame. I felt like everyone could see me even though they couldn’t. Exposed.
Anyway, he wasn’t the first to ask me that. One reporter shouted it at me the day after Glen was charged, as I was walking down to the shops. He just appeared, must’ve followed me away from the other journalists. He was trying to make me angry, to get me to say something, anything, so he’d have “an interview” with the wife, but I wasn’t falling for that. Glen and I’d discussed it before he was put in prison on remand.
“Jeanie, just stay quiet,” he said. “Don’t let them get to you. Don’t let anything show. You don’t have to talk to them. They are scum. They can’t write about nothing.” But of course they did. The stuff that came out was awful.
Other women said they’d had cybersex with him on the Internet and were queuing up to sell their stories. I couldn’t believe any of it was true. Apparently, he was called “Bigbear” and other ridiculous names in the chat rooms. I would look at him sometimes on my prison visits and try to imagine calling him “Bigbear.” It made me feel sick.
And there was more stuff about his “hobby”—the pictures he bought on the net. According to “informed sources” in one of the papers, he’d used a credit card to buy them, and when the police did a big swoop on pedophiles, tracking them through their card details, he panicked. I expect that’s why he got me to report it missing, but how do papers get information like that? I thought about asking one of the reporters, but I can’t without saying more than I should.
When I asked Glen about it at our next visit, he denied it all. “They’re just making it up, love. The press makes it all up. You know they do,” he said, holding my hand. “I love you,” he said. I didn’t say anything.
I didn’t say anything to the press either. I went to different supermarkets so they couldn’t find me and started wearing hats that hid my face a bit so other people wouldn’t recognize me. Like Madonna, Lisa would’ve said if she were still my friend. But she wasn’t. No one wanted to know us now. They just wanted to know about us.
TWENTY-SIX
The Detective
MONDAY, FEBRUARY 11, 2008
The incident room had been packed up four months before the trial; walls and whiteboards were stripped, and the mosaic of photos and maps dismantled and packed into cardboard box files for the prosecution.
When the last box had been taken out, Sparkes stood and looked at the faint rectangles left on some of the walls. “Barely a trace that the investigation ever took place,” he mused. This moment in any case was a bit like postcoital tristesse, he’d once told Eileen.
“Post what?” she’d asked.
“You know, that sad feeling after sex, that it’s all over,” he’d explained, adding sheepishly, “I read about it in a magazine.”
“Must be a man thing,” she’d said.
The final interviews with Taylor had been long and, ultimately, frustrating. He’d disputed the sweet-paper evidence, sweeping it aside as coincidence.
“How do you know Jean didn’t get it wrong? She could’ve picked it up in the street or in a café.”
“She says she found it in your van, Glen. Why would she say that if it wasn’t true?”
Taylor’s mouth had hardened. “She’s under a lot of pressure.”
“And the cat hair on the paper? Hair from exactly the same type of cat that Bella was playing with that day?”
“For God’s sake. How many gray cats are there in this country? This is ridiculous.”
Taylor turned to his lawyer. “That hair could’ve been floating around anywhere . . . Couldn’t it, Tom?”
Sparkes paused, savoring the rare note of panic in Taylor’s voice. Then he moved on to what he anticipated would be the coup de grace. The moment when Taylor realized he’d been seen and played by the police.
“So, Bigbear, then, Mr. Taylor,” Sparkes said.
Taylor’s mouth had fallen open, then snapped shut. “Don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“You’ve been down in the woods, looking for friends. Finding friends, haven’t you? But we’ve met Goldilocks, too.”
Taylor’s feet started tapping, and he stared at his lap. His default position.
At his side, Tom Payne looked mystified by the turn in the questions and interrupted. “I’d like a few moments with my client, please.”
Five minutes later, the pair had their story straight.
“It was a private fantasy between two consenting adults,” Glen Taylor said. “I was under a lot of stress.”
“Who was the baby girl with a name beginning with B, Glen?”
“It was a private fantasy between two consenting adults.”
“Was it Bella?”
“It was a private fantasy—”
“What have you done with Bella?”
“It was a private fantasy . . .”
When they charged him, he stopped mumbling about his private fantasy and looked the detective in the eye.
“You’re making a terrible mistake, Mr. Sparkes.”
It was the last thing he said before he was locked up to await trial.
A winter on remand did not persuade him to cooperate, and on February 11, 2008, Glen Taylor stood in the Old Bailey to deliver his plea of not guilty to abduction in a loud and steady voice. He sat down, barely acknowledging the prison officers on either side as he fixed his gaze on the detective inspector making his way to the witness box.
Sparkes felt the power of Taylor’s stare boring into the back of his head and tried to collect himself before he took the oath. There was the slightest of tremors in his voice as he spoke the words on the card, but he went on to give his evidence in chief competently, keeping his answers short, clear, and humble.
The months of footslogging, chasing, heavy lifting, checking, questioning, and stacking up the evidence were condensed into a short performance before a small and select audience and a battery of critics.