The Widow

Chapter 24

Tuesday, 10 July 2007

The Detective

GLEN TAYLOR SAID he was tapping the keys softly, telling his new friend that everyone in the house was asleep apart from him.

Goldie, as he now called her, had sent a photo of herself, in baby-doll pyjamas, and he was trying to persuade her to take them off.

DI Sparkes had asked Fleur Jones to be present during all the private email sessions with Taylor and they sat behind Dan Fry, barely lit by the glow of the screen.

‘You are so sweet, Goldie. My lovely girl.’

‘Your bad baby girl. You know I’ll do what you want.’

‘That’s right. My bad baby girl.’

There followed a series of instructions from BB that Goldie told him she was obeying and enjoying. When it was over, Dan Fry took the next step. It wasn’t what Dr Jones had scripted but he was clearly growing impatient.

‘Have you ever had a bad baby girl before?’ Fry asked. Reflected in the window, Sparkes could see Fleur raise a hand to urge caution.

‘Yes.’

‘Was it a real baby girl, or like me?’

‘I like both, Goldie.’

Dr Jones signalled for him to get back on the agreed track. They were going too fast, but it felt like Taylor was ready to open up.

‘Tell me about the other bad baby girls. What did you do with them?’

And Glen Taylor told her. He told her about his nightly adventures online, his encounters, his disappointments and triumphs.

‘But you’ve never done it for real? In real life?’ Dan asked and all three of them held their breath.

‘Would you like that, Goldie?’

Sparkes went to put up his hand, but Fry was already typing.

‘Yes. I’d like that very much.’

He had, he said. He had found a real baby girl once. Sparkes wavered. It was happening too fast to think straight. He looked at Fleur Jones and she got out of her chair and stood behind her protégé.

Fry could barely type, he was shaking so hard.

‘I’m really turned on. Tell me about the real baby girl.’

‘Her name began with B, like me,’ he said. ‘Can you guess?’

‘No. You tell me.’

The silence suffocated them as the seconds ticked by and they waited for the final piece of the confession.

‘Sorry, Goldie, got to go. Someone knocking on my door. Speak later…’

‘Shit,’ Fry said and put his head on the desk.

‘I think we’ve still got him,’ Sparkes said, looking at Dr Jones, and she nodded firmly.

‘He’s said enough for me.’

‘Let’s put it in front of the grown-ups,’ Sparkes said and got up. ‘Excellent work, Fry. Really excellent.’

Six hours later, the three of them were sitting in the DCI’s office putting the case for arresting and charging Glen Taylor.

DCI Brakespeare listened carefully, read the transcripts and made some notes, before sitting back to give his judgement.

‘He never used the name Bella,’ he said.

‘No, he didn’t-’ Sparkes began.

‘Did Fry go too far in his prompts?’

‘We’ve talked to the legal team and at first glance, they’re comfortable with it. It’s always a fine balance, isn’t it?’

‘But,’ Brakespeare talked over him, ‘we have him talking about taking a real baby girl beginning with B. Let’s get him back in and put it to him. Say we have a witness statement from Goldilocks.’

They all nodded.

‘We’ve got very good reasons to have pursued this line: we’ve got him in the area on the day, the blue van, the child porn on his computer, his predatory nature shown in his chat-room outings, a shaky alibi from his wife. And, key, is the risk of further offences.’

Everyone nodded again.

‘Do you believe he’s our man, Bob?’ Brakespeare asked finally.

‘Yes, I do,’ Sparkes croaked, his mouth dry with anticipation.

‘So do I. But we need more to nail it. Fine toothcomb, Bob. Do it all again while we’ve got him in. There must be something linking him to the scene.’

The team were sent back up the M3 to the south London suburb to start afresh. ‘Bring everything he has ever worn,’ Sparkes said. ‘Everything. Just empty the cupboards.’

It was pure chance that they picked up Jean Taylor’s black puffa jacket. It was wedged between her husband’s winter coat and a dress shirt and was bagged and tagged like everything else.

The technician who received the bags stacked them according to type and started the tests on the outerwear, as it would have been likely to come into contact with the crime victim first.

The jacket pockets were emptied and contents bagged again. There was only one item. A scrap of red paper, about as big as the technician’s thumbnail. In the hush of the laboratory, he went through the process of examining it for fingerprints and fibres, lifting any evidence with sticky tape and cataloguing it meticulously.

No prints, but dirt particles and what looked like an animal hair. Finer than a human hair, but he’d need to look at it under the microscope to get more details of colour and species.

He took off his gloves and walked to the phone on the wall.

‘DI Sparkes, please.’

Sparkes jumped down the stairs two at a time. The technician had told him not to bother coming – ‘It’s too early to be sure of anything, Sir’ – but Sparkes just wanted to see the piece of paper. To reassure himself it was real and wasn’t going to disappear in a puff of smoke.

‘We’re comparing the dirt particles with those taken from Glen Taylor’s van in the original sweep,’ the technician told him calmly. ‘If there’s a match, we can place the paper in the van. And we can tell you what sort of paper it is, Sir.’

‘I’ll bet it’s a bit of a Skittles packet,’ Sparkes said. ‘Look at the colour. Get on with it, man. Do you know what sort of animal the hair comes from? Could it be a cat?’

The technician put up a hand. ‘I can tell you if it’s a cat quite quickly. I’ll get it under the microscope. But we can’t say if it came from a specific animal. It’s not like humans. Even if we have hairs to compare it with, we can’t say definitively that it came from that specific animal. Furthest we can go – if we’re lucky – is that it came from the same breed.’

Sparkes ran both hands through his hair. ‘Get samples from Timmy Elliott pronto and let’s see.’

He hovered and the technician waved him out of the door. ‘Give us some time. I’ll ring you as soon as we have results.’

Back in his office, he and Matthews drew a Venn diagram, putting all the potential new evidence in interconnecting circles to see where they were.

‘If the paper is from a Skittles packet and the hair is from a cat the same breed as Timmy, it could place Jean Taylor at the scene,’ Matthews said. ‘It’s her coat. Must be. It’s too small for Glen.’

‘I’ll go and get her,’ Sparkes said.