The Widow (19 page)

I went home alone and then the press came back.

I'm not a big newspaper reader, really. I prefer magazines. I like the real-life stories – you know, the woman who fostered one hundred kids, the woman who refused cancer treatment to save her baby, the woman who had a baby for her sister. The papers have always been more Glen's department. He likes the
Mail
– he can do the crossword on the back page and it's the sort of paper his former boss at the bank read. ‘Gives us something in common, Jeanie', he said once.

But now the papers and the telly – and even the radio – are about us. Glen is big news and the reporters have started knocking on the door again. I found out they call it ‘doorstepping' and some of them actually sleep in their cars outside all night to try and catch a word with me.

I sit upstairs in our bedroom at the front, peeking out from behind the curtain, watching them. They all do the same thing. It's quite funny, really. They drive past first, checking out the house and who's already outside. Then they park and stroll back to the gate, a notebook in their hand. The others jump out of their cars to cut the new one off before he or she can get to the door. Like a pack of animals, sniffing round the new arrival.

After a few days, they're all friends – sending one to get coffees and bacon sandwiches from the café at the bottom of the hill. ‘Sugar? Who wants sauce on their sarnie?' The café must be making a fortune. I notice the reporters keep to one group and the photographers to another. Wonder why they don't mix. You can tell them apart because the photographers dress differently – trendier, in scruffy jackets and baseball caps. Most of them look like they haven't shaved for days – the men, I mean. The women photographers dress like men, too. In chinos and baggy shirts. And the photographers are so loud. I feel a bit sorry for the neighbours at first, having to listen to them laughing and carrying on. But then they start bringing out trays of drinks, standing and chatting to them and letting them use their loos. It's a bit of a street party for them, I think.

The reporters are quieter. They spend most of their time on their phones or sitting listening to the radio news in their cars. Lots are young blokes in their first suits.

But after a few days, when I won't talk, the press send the big guns. Big beery men and women with sharp faces and smart coats. They roll up in their expensive, shiny cars and step out like royalty. Even the photographers stop messing about for some of them. One man who looks like he's stepped out of a shop window parts the crowd and walks up the path. He bangs on the door and calls out, ‘Mrs Taylor, what is it like to have a child murderer as a husband?' I sit there on the bed, burning with shame. It feels like everyone can see me even though they can't. Exposed.

Anyway, he isn't the first to ask me that. One reporter shouted it at me after Glen was rearrested, 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.

‘Jeanie, just stay quiet,' he said when he rang me from the police station. ‘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 paedophiles, tracking them through their card details, he panicked. I expect that's why he got me to report his card 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 make 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 was still my friend. But she wasn't. No one wanted to know us now. They just wanted to know about us.

T
HE INCIDENT ROOM
had been packed up four months before the trial; walls and whiteboards 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 post-coital 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 but, 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 grey 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, savouring the rare note of panic in Taylor's voice. Then he moved on to what he anticipated would be the
coup de grâce
. 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 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 11 February 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 foot-slogging, 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.

Chief among them was Glen Taylor's barrister, a patrician warhorse in ancient, fraying wig and gown, who stood up to cross-examine him.

The jury of eight men and four women, winnowed by the defence to ensure male sensibilities and sympathies were in the majority, turned their heads like a patch of sunflowers to focus on him.

The barrister, Charles Sanderson QC, stood with one hand in his pocket, his notes in the other. He exuded confidence as he began his attempt to undermine some of the nuggets of evidence and plant doubt in the jury's collective consciousness.

‘When did the witness, Mr Spencer, make a note about the blue van? Was it before he fabricated the long-haired man sighting?'

‘Mr Spencer was mistaken about the sighting. He has admitted that,' Sparkes said, keeping his voice level.

‘Yes, I see.'

‘His evidence will be that he wrote down that he saw what he thought was Peter Tredwell's blue van when he made his notes on the afternoon of 2 October.'

‘And he is sure he didn't fabricate – sorry, make a mistake about seeing – a blue van?'

‘Yes, he is sure. He will tell you himself when he gives evidence.'

‘I see.'

‘Now how far away was the witness when he saw the blue panel van?

‘And does Mr Spencer wear glasses?'

‘I see.'

‘And how many blue panel vans are there on the road in the UK, inspector?'

‘I see.'

It was the ‘I see's that did the damage, ‘I see' meaning ‘Oh dear, another point to us.'

Chip, chip, chip. Sparkes parried the blows patiently. He'd faced a number of Sandersons over the years – ‘Old Boy' show-offs – and knew this sort of grandstanding didn't always play well with a jury.

They reached the sweet-paper discovery and Sanderson took the expected line about the chances of contamination of evidence.

‘Detective Inspector, how long was the sweet paper in Jean Taylor's coat pocket?'

Sparkes kept his voice steady, making sure he looked across at the jurors to emphasize the point.

‘Seven months, we believe. She said in her statement that she found it in the van on 17 December. It was the only time she was allowed to go on a delivery with her husband so she remembers it well.'

‘Seven months? That's a long time to gather other fluff and hair, isn't it?'

‘Hair from a grey Burmese cross, like the Elliott family's cat? We will bring expert testimony to say that is statistically extremely unlikely. And the likelihood of a coincidence drops still further when that cat hair evidence is found on a Skittles packet. Both a Burmese-cross cat and a Skittle sweet were present at the scene when Bella Elliott was abducted.'

Sparkes saw that the jurors were writing notes and Sanderson moved swiftly on. Sparkes took a gulp of water from the glass at his elbow. He knew his adversary was building up to his big moment: the Goldilocks conversations.

Sparkes had prepared with the lawyers to make sure he was ready. He knew every nuance of the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000, every step of the authorization procedure, the careful preparation of the CHIS and the preservation and chain of evidence.

The team had spent a significant amount of time prepping him to emphasize Taylor's use of chat rooms and his porn habit.

‘The jury won't be interested in sub-clause 101 or who gave permission for what – we need to tell them about the risk of Taylor feeding his appetite for baby girls,' the CPS team leader had urged, and Sparkes knew he was right.

He felt ready when the barrister marched into the minefield of pornography addiction, challenging the police action every step of the way. Sanderson's goal was to force him to concede that Taylor could have inadvertently downloaded some of the ‘more extreme' images found on his computer.

‘The images of children being sexually abused?' Sparkes had answered. ‘We believe he deliberately downloaded them – that he couldn't have done it accidentally – and experts will testify on that matter.'

‘We also have experts who will say that it could have been accidental, Inspector.'

Sparkes knew the defence was helped by the fact that Taylor looked nothing like the perverts who normally stood in the dock. The prosecution team told him that Sanderson had shown a photo of his client to the juniors and solicitors in his chambers and the phrase most often used to describe him in his impromptu focus groups was ‘clean-cut'.

With the images filed away, Sanderson challenged the detective head on about Bella Elliott's disappearance.

‘Detective Inspector Sparkes, isn't it right that Bella Elliott has never been found?'

‘Yes, that is correct.'

‘And that your team has failed to find any leads to her whereabouts?'

‘No, that isn't right. Our investigation led us to the accused.'

‘Your case is based on suspicions, supposition and circumstantial evidence, not facts, Inspector, isn't it?'

‘We've clear evidence to link the accused to the disappearance of Bella Elliott.'

‘Ah, the evidence. Forensic guesswork and unreliable witnesses. All a bit flimsy because, I suggest, you were always after the wrong man. You were so desperate you resorted to leading my client into a fictitious and mendacious relationship.'

The jurors didn't look as if they knew what a fictitious and mendacious relationship was, but they looked interested in the spectacle. Four stars and ‘compelling performances' was how the
Telegraph
might review it the next day, Sparkes thought as he finally stepped down from the witness box at lunchtime and returned to his seat in the audience.