‘Thanks for agreeing to meet with us, Dr Hawley,’ Anna said. ‘I understand you’re coming off shift?’
Hawley nodded.
‘Are you back on today?’
‘Three days off. Time for some sleep and R and R.’
‘Would you like some coffee?’ Woakes signalled the circulating waiter, who nodded an acknowledgement.
‘No thanks.’
‘We’re taking a fresh look at the Rosie Dawson case,’ Woakes said.
‘So you said.’ Hawley’s eyes remained wary but narrowed through inquisitiveness. ‘Have you found any new evidence?’
‘I’m not at liberty to say,’ Woakes said. ‘But we’re talking to people who were involved at the time.’
Anna sensed the obvious friction between the two men. Hawley’s was borne out of the unpleasant experiences he’d had so far with police over anything and everything to do with Rosie’s case. And Woakes’ stemmed from his default bluntness. She was quickly realising subtlety was not the sergeant’s strong point.
‘I wasn’t involved,’ Hawley said.
‘But you were questioned. Extensively.’
‘Yes, I was.’
‘Could you remind us what your involvement with Rosie was, exactly?’
Hawley smiled and shook his head. He knew Woakes’ decision to continue using the word ‘involvement’ was no accident and was unable to stop a resigned sigh from escaping his lips. ‘As I’m sure your records show, four weeks before the abduction, I saw Rosie with her mother as a patient.’
If Hawley was hoping this brief summary would be enough, Woakes’ expectant silence told a different story.
‘I was working in the A and E at Cheltenham General. They asked me to see Rosie because she felt she had something in her eye. I examined her, found a small scrap of shell under her lid. I instilled some anaesthetic drops, removed the offending foreign body and that was it. People generally improve instantly when it’s subtarsal—’
‘Sub what?’ Woakes asked. The question was sharp. Woakes didn’t like Hawley’s confidence, that was obvious.
‘Under the lid,’ Hawley said. ‘It had been a windy day. Rosie and her family had been visiting Sudeley Castle. Sometimes little fragments get caught on the wind. Tiny shell fragments are especially light and can be cup-shaped. They can embed under the lid quite easily. She was a great patient. Better than most adults. She didn’t flinch as I put anaesthetic drops in.’
‘And then what?’
‘And then, as I was writing her up for some antibiotic drops, she walked over to her mum and whispered something in her ear. Mrs Dawson smiled and said Rosie wanted to give me a hug. I stopped writing and before I knew it, Rosie ran across the room, hugged me around the neck and kissed me on the cheek.’
‘How did you feel about that?’
‘Nothing. Embarrassed if anything. Both the nurse and Mrs Dawson were laughing. Rosie was smiling. It was nothing more than a spontaneous act of gratitude from a little girl. Something she probably did a dozen times a day with her dad or her uncles. I was young. It didn’t happen to me often—’
‘Often?’ Woakes sat forward.
‘OK, never. I didn’t quite know how to react, but it had happened and everyone was fine with it. I finished writing the prescription and they left. I thought no more about it until a week after Rosie went missing when the police turned up at the hospital wanting to see me.’
‘And you understand why?’
‘Of course I know why. I let a child hug and kiss me in public.’
‘So, it didn’t come as a surprise to you when you were questioned?’
Something, a shadow of remembered pain, passed across Hawley’s face. ‘What do you think?’ he said.
Woakes shrugged. ‘I think you were probably pretty shocked.’
‘That’s putting it mildly. I went with them to the station and they held me there for two days. They searched my flat, took my laptop and my girlfriend’s. Wanted to see any computer I had access to in work. They did it twice. The first time when she went missing. The second time when they found her remains more than a year later.’
‘They wanted to be thorough.’
‘That’s what they kept saying. They wanted to be thorough. To be sure. That I should realise I was a person of interest and if I had any information it would be better for me if I told them.’
‘But you had no information.’
Hawley had a habit of grinding his back teeth. Anna wondered if it only happened in stressful situations.
‘Correct. I had no information. I still don’t have any information. I have no idea who took Rosie, but it wasn’t me. I had a room in the doctor’s mess. Luckily, there were CCTV cameras outside the hospital. On the day Rosie was abducted, the cameras showed me entering the hospital accommodation and not leaving. Though, there was a back entrance, but I’d left my phone on and it showed I hadn’t gone anywhere. Again, I could have left my phone at home and gone all the way to Clevedon. But I was on an evening shift at seven and that was the clincher, I think. They had no evidence showing me getting out or back into Cheltenham by road or rail. They eliminated me by default. But they took their time.’
Woakes nodded. The waiter arrived, laid out three cups and left a pot, a silver milk jug, sugar and some thin biscuits wrapped in cellophane. Woakes poured out two cups, topped his up with milk and stirred it. ‘Sure you don’t want any?’
Hawley shook his head. He looked a little sick to Anna. Not the kind of white-faced, sweating look she saw on liars, more the unhappy look of someone traumatised by something in the past, desperately hoping the same thing was not going to happen again.
‘The thing is, Dr Hawley,’ Anna said, ‘time can sometimes help or hinder cases like this. Memories fade. Or sometimes memories surface after they’ve been buried for long enough.’
Hawley waited, jaw working. ‘What do you want from me?’
Woakes spoke again, the bit between his teeth. He picked up his coffee and sipped before saying, casually, ‘Do you know that 50% of child abductions are by family members and another 30% are acquaintance abductions? Stranger abductions are pretty rare.’
‘I did as a matter of fact. I learned all sorts of things I didn’t want to know back then… and since.’
‘But you were known to Rosie. She liked you.’
‘We’d met once. Twenty minutes for just the once. As doctor and patient.’
‘And she hugged you and kissed you.’
‘Jesus.’ Hawley sat forward, let his head drop.
‘You can’t deny that.’
When Hawley looked back up again his expression was drawn and sour. ‘No, I can’t. I didn’t then and I can’t now. I’ve explained the circumstances. They were confirmed by the clinic nurse and Rosie’s mother.’
Anna said, ‘But Rosie told you her grandmother used to pick her up from school and take her to the park, didn’t she?’
Hawley nodded, a thin wry smile now on his lips. ‘No, she didn’t. She was chatty and while I was getting bits and pieces ready, she talked. She told the nurse she’d been to the castle. She told the nurse the name of her dog. She told the nurse she liked going to the park and that her grandmother used to take her every day after school. It wasn’t me she told, but of course I heard it all.’
‘You were in the room?’
‘Yes.’
Woakes put his coffee cup down before asking, ‘What did your girlfriend think about it?’
‘We split up. That’s what she thought about it.’
‘You were sharing a flat at the time?’
‘Yeah. About to get engaged.’