The Widow (6 page)

‘Brilliant. Thanks Bob.' He could hear the smile in the reporter's voice.

‘Hold on, it's not a done deal yet. Let me talk to her this morning and I'll give you a ring back.'

When he arrived, he found Dawn sitting in exactly the same spot as when he had first met her, on the sofa that had become her ark, among Bella's toys, crushed empty cigarette packs and pages torn from newspapers, cards from well-wishers and letters on lined notepaper from the mad and angry.

‘Have you been to bed, love?' he asked her.

Sue Blackman, a young woman in uniform acting as family liaison officer, shook her head silently and raised her eyebrows.

‘Can't sleep,' Dawn said. ‘Need to be awake for when she comes home.'

Sparkes took PC Blackman into the hall. ‘She needs some rest or she's going to end up in hospital,' he hissed.

‘I know, Sir. She's dozing on the sofa during the day but she hates it when it gets dark. She says Bella is afraid of the dark.'

K
ATE
W
ATERS ARRIVED AT
the house at lunchtime with a photographer and a bunch of ostentatious supermarket lilies. She'd parked down the road, away from the pack, so she could get out of the car without attracting attention. She rang Bob Sparkes to let him know she was there and swept past the journalists sitting outside the house in their cars, Big Macs in their fists. By the time they'd leapt from their vehicles, she was inside. She heard a couple of them swearing loudly, warning each other that they were about to be shafted, and tried not to grin.

As Bob Sparkes led the way, Kate took it all in, the shambles and stasis created by grief: in the hall, Bella's blue anorak with a fur-lined hood and teddy-bear backpack hanging on the bannister; her tiny, shiny red wellies by the door.

‘Get a photo of those, Mick,' she whispered to the photographer following her as they made their way into the front room. There were toys and baby photos everywhere; the scene took Kate straight back to her own early days of motherhood, struggling against the tide of chaos. She had sat and cried the day she brought Jake home from the hospital, lost in the postnatal hormonal wash and sudden sense of responsibility. She remembered she'd asked the nurse if she could pick him up, the morning after he was born, as if he belonged to the hospital.

The mother looked up, her young face creased and made old by weeping, and Kate smiled and took her hand. She was going to shake it, but simply squeezed it instead.

‘Hello, Dawn,' she said. ‘Thank you so much for agreeing to talk to me. I know how hard it must be for you, but we hope it will help the police find Bella.'

Dawn nodded as if in slow motion.

Bloody hell, Bob wasn't kidding, Kate thought.

She picked up a red Teletubby doll from the sofa – ‘Is this Po? My boys preferred Power Rangers,' she said.

Dawn looked at her, interested. ‘Bella loves Po,' she said. ‘She likes blowing bubbles, chases after them, trying to catch them.'

Kate had noticed a photo on a table of the toddler doing exactly that and got up to bring it to Dawn. ‘Here she is,' she said and Dawn took the frame in her hands. ‘She's beautiful,' Kate said. ‘Full of mischief, I bet.'

Dawn smiled gratefully. The two women had found their common ground – motherhood – and Dawn started to talk about her baby.

First time she's been able to talk about Bella as a child, not a crime victim, Bob Sparkes thought.

‘She's good, Kate. You have to give her that. She can get inside your head quicker than a lot of my coppers,' he had told his wife later. Eileen had shrugged and returned to the
Telegraph
crossword. Police work took place on a different planet, as far as she was concerned.

Kate fetched more photos and toys to keep the conversation flowing, letting Dawn tell her story about each item with barely a question needed. She used a discreet tape recorder, slipped quickly on to the cushion between them, to capture every word. Notebooks were a bad idea in a situation like this – it would be too much like a police interview. She just wanted Dawn to talk. She wanted to hear about the ordinary pleasures and everyday struggles of being a mum. Of getting Bella ready for nursery, bathtime games, the child's delight at choosing her new wellies.

‘She loves animals. We went to the zoo once and she wanted to stay watching the monkeys. She laughed and laughed,' Dawn told her, taking temporary shelter in memories of a previous life.

The glimpses of Bella and Dawn would bring the reader straight into the nightmare the young mother was enduring, Kate knew, writing the intro in her head.

A pair of tiny red wellington boots stand in Dawn Elliott's hallway. Her daughter Bella chose them two weeks ago and has yet to wear them …

This was what the public wanted to read so they could shiver in their dressing gowns over tea and toast and say to their spouse, ‘This could have been us.'

And the editor would love it. ‘Perfect womb trembler,' he'd say, clearing the front page and a spread inside the paper for her story.

After twenty minutes, Dawn began to tire. The drugs were starting to wear off and the terror crept back into the room. Kate glanced at Mick and he stood up with his camera and said gently, ‘Let's take a photo of you, Dawn, with that lovely picture of Bella blowing bubbles.'

She complied, like a child herself.

‘I'll never forgive myself,' she whispered as Mick's shutter clicked. ‘I shouldn't have let her go outside. But I was just trying to get her tea ready. She was only out of sight for a minute. I'd do anything to turn the clock back.'

And then she cried; dry sobs shook her frame as Kate held her hand tightly and the rest of the world came back into focus around the sofa.

Kate always marvelled at the power of interview. ‘When you're talking to real people – people without an ego or something to sell – it can be complete exposure of one person to another, an intense intimacy that excludes everyone and everything else,' she'd told someone once. Who was it? Must've been someone she was trying to impress, but she remembered every line of every interview that touched her like this.

‘You've been so brave, Dawn,' she said, squeezing her hand again. ‘Thank you very much for talking to me and giving me so much time. I'll contact Detective Inspector Sparkes to let him know when the story will appear. And I'll leave my card so you can get in touch whenever you want.'

Kate tidied up her things quickly, sliding the recorder into her bag and relinquishing her place beside Dawn to the family liaison officer.

Sparkes took her and Mick to the door.

‘That was great. Thanks, Bob,' she said in his ear. ‘I'll call you later when I've written it.' He nodded as she brushed past and out of the house to face her furious colleagues.

In the car, she sat for a moment, running through the quotes in her head and trying to assemble the story. The intensity of the encounter had left her drained and, if she was honest, a little shaky. She wished she still smoked, but rang Steve's number instead. It went straight to answerphone – he'd be on the wards – but she left a message. ‘It went really well,' she told him. ‘Poor, poor girl. She'll never get over this. I've taken a lasagne out of the freezer for tonight. Speak to you later.'

She could hear the catch in her voice as it recorded.

‘For goodness' sake, pull yourself together, Kate, it's work,' she told herself as she started the engine and drove off to find a quiet car park and start writing. ‘Must be getting old and feeble.'

Dawn Elliott began ringing Kate Waters the next day, the day the story appeared. She rang from her mobile, standing in the bathroom away from the ever-attentive Sue Blackman. She wasn't sure why she was making it a secret, but she needed something just for herself. Her whole life was being unpicked by the police and she wanted to have something normal. Just a chat.

Kate was thrilled – a direct line to the mother was the prize she'd allowed herself to hope for but hadn't taken for granted and she cultivated it carefully. There were to be no direct questions about the investigation, no prying, no pressing. No scaring her off. Instead, she talked to Dawn as if she were a friend, sharing details of her own life – her boys, traffic jams, new clothes and celebrity gossip. And Dawn responded as Kate knew she would eventually, confiding her fears and the latest police leads.

‘They've had a call from abroad. Near Malaga? Someone on holiday there has seen a little girl in a park they think is Bella,' she told Kate. ‘Do you think she could be there?'

Kate murmured reassurance while noting everything down and texting the Crime correspondent, a hard-drinking hack who'd had a couple of bad misses lately. He was grateful to be included in Kate's exclusive tips, putting a call through to a contact in the incident room and telling the news editor to book a flight to Spain, pronto.

Not Bella. But the paper got an emotional interview with holidaymakers and a perfect excuse for another spread of photographs.

‘Well worth a punt,' the editor had said to the news desk, adding as he passed Kate's chair, ‘Well done, Kate. You're doing a great job on this.'

She was on the inside, but she had to be careful. If Bob Sparkes found out about the secret phone calls, it would not be pretty.

She liked Sparkes. They'd helped each other out on a couple of the cases he'd run – he'd given her the odd bit of information to make her story stand out from the rest of the pack's, and she'd tipped him off when she got something new that might be of interest. It was a sort of friendship, she thought, useful for both of them. And they got on well. But there was nothing deeper. She almost blushed when she remembered she'd developed a bit of a schoolgirl crush on him when they had first met, back in the nineties. She'd been drawn to his quietness and brown eyes and had been flattered when he'd singled her out for a drink a couple of times.

The Crime man at her last paper had teased her about her cosy relationship with Sparkes, but they both knew the detective was not a swordsman like some of his colleagues. He was renowned for never straying and Kate didn't have the time or the inclination for extra-maritals.

‘He's a straight-up-and-down copper,' her colleague had said. ‘One of the last.'

Kate knew she risked burning Sparkes as a contact by carrying on with Dawn behind the detective's back, but having the inside edge on the story was worth it. This could be her story of a lifetime.

She rehearsed her arguments as she drove into work: ‘It's a free country and Dawn can talk to whoever she wants, Bob … I can't stop her phoning me … I'm not phoning her … I don't ask her any questions about the investigation. She just tells me stuff.' She knew it wouldn't wash with Sparkes. He'd got her in there in the first place.

‘Oh well, all's fair,' she told herself irritably, making a silent promise to tell Bob anything that might help the police. She crossed her fingers at the same time.

It didn't take long for the phone call from Sparkes to come.

Her phone rang and she picked it up and headed for the privacy of the corridor.

‘Hello, Bob. How are you?'

The detective was stressed and told her so. Dawn's latest bathroom conversation with her favourite reporter had been overheard by the family liaison officer and Sparkes was disappointed in Kate. Somehow, that was worse than if he'd been furious.

‘Hold on, Bob. Dawn Elliott is a grown woman – she can talk to whoever she wants. She rang me.'

‘I bet. Kate, this was not the deal. I got you in there for the first interview and you've been sneaking around behind my back. It could affect the investigation – you do understand that?'

‘Look, Bob, she rings me for a chat that isn't about the investigation. She needs some time, even a couple of minutes, to escape.'

‘And you need stories. Don't play the social worker with me, Kate. I know you better than that.'

She felt ashamed. He did know her better than that.

‘I'm sorry you're upset, Bob. Why don't I come down and meet you for a drink and we can talk things through?'

‘Too busy at the moment, but maybe next week. And Kate …'

‘Yes, yes. No doubt you've told her not to call me, but I'm not ignoring her if she does.'

‘I see. You'll have to do what you have to do, Kate. I hope Dawn will see sense, then. Someone has to act like a responsible adult.'

‘Bob, I'm doing my job and you're doing yours. I'm not hurting the investigation, I'm keeping it alive in the paper.'

‘I hope you're right, Kate. Got to go.'

Kate leant against the wall, having a completely different argument with Bob Sparkes in her head. In this version, she ended up on the higher moral ground and Bob was grovelling to her.

Bob would come round when he calmed down, she told herself, and texted Dawn to apologize for any trouble caused.

She got a message back immediately that ended ‘Speak later.' They were still on. She grinned at the screen and decided to celebrate with a double espresso and muffin.

‘To life's little triumphs,' she said as she raised the cardboard cup in the canteen. She'd drive down to Southampton tomorrow and meet Dawn for a sandwich in the shopping centre.

K
ATE GETS IN
M
ICK'S VAN
a couple of miles further on, in a supermarket car park. She laughs and says ‘the pack' had rushed up the path to see if I was in the house when she drove off alone. ‘Idiots,' she says. ‘Fancy falling for that.'

She has twisted round in the front seat so I can see her face. ‘Are you all right, Jean?' she says. Her voice has changed back to caring and gentle. I'm not fooled. She doesn't care about me. She just wants the story. I nod and keep quiet.