‘Pick an address,’ Hawley said. ‘Any one.’
Anna went to the nearest board. Lily Callaghan, eleven years old when she went missing in 2014. She read out the address and Hawley typed it in. Google Maps came up, he used the trackpad to zoom in and flicked to satellite view. Anna stared at a street and watched Hawley pan around, past a front gate and semi-detached house before zooming out to a bird’s eye view of the adjoining streets.
‘I’m only showing you how easy it is, these days, to find things. I realise you know this, but if I wanted to go to Lily’s house I could plan my route long before I ever got there. She was taken from the corner on her way back from a shop to get some milk. As far as I know, the police got no further.’
He was right, of course. Compared to the resources available to her, this was hardly cutting-edge technology but he’d given this a lot of thought. Anna stared at the screen, trying to make her mind up about Hawley. He’d been caught on the hop with his victim boards. Could it be that he was simply stringing her along here? Had he taken Rosie and perhaps all these other girls? Was he playing some sick and twisted game by showing her how? Or had the trauma of being a suspect truly sent him down this path of trying to make sense of what had happened to him and these girls? If he was involved in these other cases, it would not be difficult to find out. But her instinct told her something else and she’d learned to trust that. Hawley was damaged. A distrustful, mistreated animal unsure of whether this hand reaching out towards him was also going to slap him down.
‘Ben, I can see that you’ve spent a lot of time on this.’
Hawley snorted. ‘One way of putting it.’
‘I don’t know how useful any of this is. To us and to you. But I’m going to take all this away with me and see.’
‘Are you going to turn up at my door unannounced again?’
Anna smiled. ‘No. We have your number. And I’m sorry about Sergeant Woakes. About earlier.’
Hawley stood and shook her outstretched hand. It felt warm and dry in hers. He saw her out.
‘We’ll be in touch.’
Hawley said, ‘I’d rather it be you, not we.’
‘OK,’ she said, not quite knowing why.
She walked back to her car half-expecting to see Woakes get out of his. But there was no sign of the DS or his vehicle. She rang his number when she hit the M4.
‘Where the hell are you?’ she asked when he answered. From the background noise, it sounded like he was talking to her from a moving vehicle.
‘I’ll be back in Portishead in about twenty.’
‘Don’t you want to talk about what just happened?’
‘What did he say?’
‘What?’
‘Hawley, what did he say? Is he going to complain?’
‘Not as far as I know.’
‘Didn’t think so. He’s got too much to hide.’
‘You were over the top, Dave.’
‘Too bloody right. Sometimes you need to push these bastards. Squeeze them until something pops. Did he pop?’
‘He has a theory about Rosie’s case being linked to other missing girls.’
Woakes stayed silent.
‘Dave?’
‘And you believe him?’
‘I think it’s worth a look. Why, what do you believe?’
‘I reckon he’s got skin in the game. I reckon he’s a nonce and we’ve caught the bastard out. We could easily get a warrant for his Bristol flat.’
‘No. No warrant. I see no reason to go in all guns blazing, and you know you were out of order going into that bedroom.’
‘Door was open, ma’am. I was looking for the loo. Innocent mistake. His word against ours.’
‘Dave, it’s not the way we do things here. Hawley might be useful and you almost destroyed any credibility we might have with him.’
More silence.
‘Sergeant, did you hear me?’
‘Yes, ma’am.’
Do you though? Do you hear anyone but your own voice?
‘Get everyone together for a briefing at midday. Meet me in the car park at ten to.’
Woakes didn’t answer.
‘Did you hear me, Sergeant?’ Anna asked.
‘Yes, ma’am.’
Technically, Hawley had assaulted a police officer and Woakes could, if he wanted to, make waves. But there’d be no hiding from the provocation and Hawley had been an easy target. She tried to think about how it had been for him when he’d been under suspicion for Rosie’s abduction. An ordeal, no doubt. And the press were worse than sharks when they picked up a chum line like Hawley’s. The whole overblown episode had cost him his girlfriend, possibly friends and maybe family, too. She’d seen that happen. A tiny little worm of self-consciousness wriggled away at the back of her head. What was she doing thinking about Hawley and his relationships?
She reached for the radio, found a channel and listened to a politician trying to explain why they still couldn’t extradite known criminals back to their country of origin for fear of infringing their human rights.
It was a wonderful world she lived in.
Sixteen
Hawley sat alone in the kitchen of his aunt’s bungalow waiting for his heart to slow and his mind to settle. The police were long gone but still he couldn’t believe how completely, totally, bloody stupid he’d been to leave all that stuff in the bin bags. He hadn’t thought for one minute that they’d follow him here.
‘Shit, shit, shit!’ He thumped the table, and something from the disembowelled laptop fell to the floor. He bent and picked it up, threw it down onto the surface again. Hadn’t he learned the last time not to trust the police?
Woakes, belligerent and confident, reminded him of the worst of the detectives he’d had to deal with last time. The way they’d assumed he’d had something to hide. Disregarding the fact that he was a professional and that you had to use charm and subterfuge when you dealt with kids as a doctor. How easily they dismissed that as something sleazy. It had made him ill then and he felt sick again now.
The cuttings boards were still leaning against the wall. The inspector, Gwynne, had seemed genuinely interested but he knew part of that was because she only wanted to pour oil over the tsunami that Woakes had threatened to cause. He’d told her everything, knowing how mad it sounded, how desperate and pathetic, because what else could he do? And now they had him down again as a bloody person of interest.
Hawley closed his eyes and let his head fall onto his forearm resting on the table.
Stupid. How could he have been so bloody stupid!
He lifted his head back up, staring out into the conservatory and the garden beyond, remembering the look of hate on Woakes’ face and still not understanding how someone who knew nothing at all about him could despise him so for something that’d taken just a minute of his time, once, in a clinic years ago.
Hawley’s eyes drifted across to the tool shed in the garden. He’d painted it earlier in the year. Put new locks on the door. He wondered if the police had seen that.
For all he knew they might have someone watching the bungalow and him. Like they did last time. Hawley grimaced; it was starting again. All over again.
But they hadn’t asked to look inside the shed.
For that, at least, he was grateful.
Seventeen
Woakes was leaning against his car, arms folded, as Anna pulled in to the car park at HQ. He pushed off and walked towards her when she got out. They stood a few feet apart, out of earshot of anyone.
Anna raised her eyebrows. ‘I thought you’d prefer I do this here than upstairs in the office because two bollockings in two days will get people talking.’
He gave her a guarded shrug.
‘Tell me you know how wrong what you did was?’
‘I told you he was hiding something.’ Woakes’ tone rang sullen.
‘He was. And now he’s on the back foot and knows we’re looking at him again.’
Woakes let his gaze drop and put his hands in his trouser pockets. His left leg kept jiggling, like a puppet on a string.