*
At the other end of the line Gislingham puts down the phone and turns back to his computer screen. Janet’s been on his back about working at the weekend, and while half of him really would rather be at home, the other half is copper first, expectant dad second, and this is one of those cases that won’t leave you alone. It’s not just that it’s a kiddie, it’s the knottedness of it. It doesn’t feel right calling it a puzzle – not when there’s a little girl still missing – but that’s what it is. That’s why he’s here, that’s why he’s been sitting at this desk since mid-morning, in a room with no air conditioning, going through possible local matches for the number plate of the car Daisy was seen in outside the school. He’d told Janet it’d only take ten minutes, half an hour at the most – after all, how many bloody Escorts can still be out there? – but with only two letters to go on and no idea of the colour of the car, the list seems to be never-ending.
Seems to be, but suddenly isn’t. Because there it is – a 2001 model, Toreador red, registered to an address in East Oxford. Gislingham punches the air, then abruptly sits forward. He navigates quickly to a different section of the Police National Computer, and types in a name.
‘Shit,’ he says. ‘Shit shit shit.’
*
‘How the hell did we not know this?’
I’m in my office, standing at Anna Phillips’s shoulder, staring down at her laptop screen. She glances up at me. ‘To be fair, it took a lot of digging up – the newspaper archive is online but it’s all just PDFs. It would never have come up on an ordinary search.’
‘We do have other ways to find things out. Aside from sodding Google.’
The door opens and Bryan Gow comes in, looking slightly overheated and more than a little irritated at being dragged in on a summer weekend. ‘So what’s so important I had to miss Oliver Cromwell at Didcot?’
I raise an eyebrow. ‘You into Sealed Knot now too?’
He looks at me witheringly. ‘It’s a locomotive, you philistine. A Britannia standard class seven, to be precise. One of the last steam locos British Rail ever ran.’
I shrug. ‘I was never one of those kids who wanted to be a train driver.’ I point at the screen. ‘In any case, this is rather more urgent.’
The Croydon Evening Echo
3rd August 1991
TRAGEDY STRIKES FOR HOLIDAY FAMILY
A Croydon family are returning home from Lanzarote tomorrow, after tragedy struck what was supposed to be the holiday of a lifetime.
Gerald Wiley, 52, and his wife Sadie, 46, jetted off to the holiday island a week ago, with their two daughters Sharon, 14, and Jessica, 2. Mr Wiley had recently been laid off after 30 years with London Underground, and decided to use his redundancy money to take the family on a holiday to remember.
The family were enjoying a beach party organised by the hotel where they were staying, when the catastrophe occurred. Witnesses say that the weather was good and the sea calm. Jessica and her sister had earlier been playing on a small inflatable dinghy, and shortly after 4 p.m. hotel staff realised that the girls were missing. It was Mr Wiley who saw the dinghy some way out to sea, and he then raised the alarm. Hotel staff immediately called for help and Mr Wiley attempted to swim out to the girls. Several other holidaymakers also tried to offer assistance, but by the time the girls could be reached the dinghy had capsized, and both were in the water.
Paramedics attempted resuscitation, but Jessica Wiley was pronounced dead at the scene. Mr Wiley, who suffers from angina, had to be treated at the local hospital. Sharon Wiley, who attends the Colbourne School, was treated for cuts and bruises.
Pauline Pober, 42, from Wokingham, saw the whole incident. ‘It’s just heart-breaking. We were all enjoying the party – the kids were having a lovely time and everyone was just relaxed and enjoying themselves. Jessica was such a beautiful, happy child – the apple of her parents’ eye. What an awful thing to happen. My heart goes out to poor Sharon. She was distraught when they brought her back to the beach.’
Local people confirmed that the tides on that stretch of beach can be treacherous. There have been three drownings in the area since 1989.
Mr Wiley said yesterday, ‘My wife and I are devastated. Jessie was our gift from God. Our lives will be empty without her – we will never get over it.’
‘So,’ I say, ‘what do you think?’
Bryan takes off his glasses and cleans them on a rumpled handkerchief. There are shiny red patches either side of his nose. ‘You mean, do I think it really was an accident?’
‘We can start with that.’
‘There’s not a hell of a lot to go on – ’
‘I know. But in theory – what could we be looking at?’
‘Well, if we’re only looking at what’s possible, rather than an actual profile – ’
‘Fine. That’s all I need right now.’
‘Then I’d say that even if Sharon had nothing to do with Jessica’s death, it’s quite conceivable that some part of her – conscious or unconscious – wanted it to happen. Do the math, to coin a phrase. Sharon would have been twelve when her sister was born, and judging by the parents’ ages, I’m guessing the pregnancy came as a surprise to all of them. Hard to know where to start on the cocktail of destructive emotions that could have ignited. Sharon’s just entering puberty, and she’s suddenly confronted by the reality of her parents’ sex life. Awkward, as I believe the young people say. Add to that being deprived of her only-child status, out of the blue, after twelve years assuming that’s the way the world was. “When they said he was their only son, he thought he was the only one.”’
He’s lost me now. ‘He?’
He smiles wryly. ‘Sorry – it’s that seventies song. It came up in the quiz last week. You remember. About the kid who has to cope with suddenly finding he’s got a baby sister. That’s never easy, however well-balanced the kid is, and however sensitively the parents handle it. Only in Sharon’s case it looks like all the parents’ love and attention transferred wholesale to the new baby, and Sharon found herself, without warning, a very inferior second best.’ He shakes his head, then gestures at the screen with his glasses. ‘I’m guessing they never forgave Sharon for being the one who survived. They may even have told her outright she was to blame. And if she wasn’t – if it really was just an accident – well, I can’t think of anything much shittier than that.’
‘Is that a technical term?’
‘It serves. When dealing with the untrained.’
I see Anna suppress a smile.
‘OK,’ I say. ‘Now wind forward twenty-five years. Second time around?’
‘Pretty much, judging by what I’ve seen of Sharon. Which again isn’t much, but enough to see she’s socially insecure, personally vain and almost certainly extremely jealous where that errant husband of hers is concerned. And all that being the case, Daisy is just Jessica all over again. Only far, far worse. Because this time the attention Sharon’s competing for is not her parents’ but her husband’s – someone who should put her first. Or at least that’s how she’d see it. Crueller still, the younger interloper is her own fault – she brought that kid into the world, she presumably made all sorts of sacrifices as a mother, and this is how she’s repaid. All the resentment she felt against Jessica transfers wholesale to Daisy, only magnified many times over. And it’d be all the more toxic because she almost certainly buried her feelings after Jessica died.’
‘So you think she would be capable of killing her own daughter?’