Helen looked. Her eyes and mouth were tight. ‘My God,’ she said quietly, through closed teeth, ‘you don’t want me here for the funeral.’

  It was a statement, not a question. Anita said, ‘I just don’t know when they’ll let me bury her. It’s all, it’s all . . .’

  ‘But that’s not it, is it, Nita? You let him run your life. Why you ever broke up with Thomas is beyond me.’

  Anita started to speak but her mother held up a hand.

  ‘I’m warning you! I kept my mouth shut, I never said a word about it, but there comes a time—’

  ‘A word about what, Mum? What are you saying?’

  ‘About why Jason wasn’t at school that Thursday – remember? About why you had to take Julie to the hospital, Christmas.’

  Helen was staring hard at her daughter, challenging her. All she could see in response was exhaustion.

  Anita shook her head slowly. ‘For God’s sake, Mum. Stop it, just stop it.’

  A scream came from the kitchen. It was Tony, in his high chair. He hated being left alone. Helen got up.

  ‘You’ll have to be in court,’ she said. ‘So will Peter. But, well, if you don’t need me, fine. I’ll go.’

  She went to attend to Tony. Anita folded her hands more tightly over her stomach and rocked in her chair. Never had she felt so alone. Now it was just her and the baby inside. Everything else was just a side show, a nothing.

  Helen came storming back from the kitchen, pulling Jason behind her. ‘He’s just dragged Tony out of his chair again! Here, you talk to him,’ she said angrily and hurried back to the kitchen.

  ‘Jason,’ warned his mother gently. ‘I told you not to play around with him. He’s just a baby.’

  Jason pouted.

  Anita got up and, wrapping her dressing gown around her, went into the kitchen. Helen was rocking Tony in the crook of her arm. She showed Anita a Gnutcrunch ice cream, from the freezer.

  ‘Can I give him one of these?’

  ‘I’ll do it, Mum. Give him me.’

  Back in the lounge, Jason looked round to see if anybody was watching. Then he slipped across to the sideboard and selected one of the framed pictures of his dead sister. He looked at it closely, his eyes about four inches from the glass. He ran his finger over the image of Julie’s face. Then he jerked his arm and threw the picture on to the floor. Then he began jumping on it, mashing the glass under his heel.

  *

  Walker returned from the remand hearing determined to get the budget sorted. He could never remember if the forensic lab charged a flat rate for a black sack of refuse, or whether they levied a fee for each article they pulled out. He’d already worked out a sheet based on £500 for a sack, but when he looked again at the faxed inventory of Dunn’s rubbish, he thought they might be going to sting him for something like £25 an item – and there were thirty-four items on the list. He groaned. He’d have to recalculate.

  The phone rang at his elbow.

  ‘Walker? Mallory!’

  ‘Oh, yes, sir. Anything new?’

  Mallory spoke deliberately, in his usual pompous manner. ‘On the matter of the material recovered from the dustbin of the suspect in the Harris case.’

  ‘Accused.’

  ‘I’m sorry?’

  ‘The accused, sir. He’s been charged. He’s on remand.’

  ‘I see. Well, I hope that’s not solely on the basis of what I have in front of me.’

  Walker sat up in his chair, his eyes wary. ‘What have you in front of you, sir?’

  ‘I have in front of me, Walker, one blue and red washing line. And yes, it is the same type of rope or washing line as was tied around the little lady’s neck. But it is not the rope. I think you’d better come and see me.’

  Walker all but slumped forward across the budgetary calculations on his desk. Not the rope?

  PC Barridge was in the Incident Room when Walker burst from his office and shouted to DI North.

  ‘Pat! I’ve just been talking to Mallory. It’s not the rope! Come on, let’s go!’

  Not the rope? Barridge walked across to the pinboard, where a picture of the ligature used on Julie was displayed. Looking at it always hurt but he forced himself to do it.

  *

  At the lab, Mallory showed both lengths of line to Walker and North. They looked identical and Walker said so.

  ‘Yes,’ said Mallory, taking the cut end of the murder rope in one hand and the end of the sample found in Dunn’s bin in the other. ‘As I said, they’re the same type of rope but—’

  Slowly and theatrically, he brought his two hands together until the cut ends of the lengths of line met.

  ‘These ends don’t match.’

  Walker tried hard to control himself. ‘So – what have you got from the flat?’

  ‘We’re working on Dunn’s clothes. But so far, I regret, there’s nothing for you. We’ve taken up almost all the carpet but the problem here is, it’s hard to find an area without stains. There’s more than three hundred of them.’

  ‘You’re going to test them all?’

  ‘We’ve done most of them already.’

  He consulted the file, which lay open on his desk. ‘Semen, blood, soup, alcohol, chocolate, tea, coffee – you want one?’

  The police officers looked blank.

  Mallory said, ‘A coffee?’

  Walker shook his head. ‘No, thanks. What about the bottles I sent in? Foster said she might have been penetrated by . . .’

  ‘We’ve got numerous prints from the bottles, mostly Dunn’s, which is not surprising. Nothing to connect them to the victim, though. Now, what else? Oh, yes . . .’

  He went to the door and called out, ‘Jimmy! Shoe casts!’

  Haggard joined them, dressed in a lab coat, wearing a mask and latex gloves and carrying a muddy, down-at-heel shoe. He looked from Walker to North.

  ‘Oh, ah! Hello, Superintendent Walker, Inspector North. You heard about the rope, that it’s not—’

  ‘Yes, we heard,’ said Walker crisply.

  Haggard removed his mask. ‘Right, well. Shoe casts. We’ve cleared the backlog on the shoe casts. Eliminated twenty-four as officers’ footwear but this . . .’ He held up the shabby shoe. ‘This was taken off the suspect, right?’

  Walker nodded.

  ‘Well, a good selection of ground deposits similar to the terrain we are interested in – brick dust, soil, cement dust – turned up on it. Plus, the ground near where the victim was hidden in the sewage pipes contained a high percentage of clay, so any footwear with all four samples matching means we can be pretty certain he was by those pipes. It’s just that we have no shoeprint in that ground for this particular shoe.’

  Walker nudged North and put on his coat. They turned to leave but Mallory called after them.

  ‘Hang on, Walker, it’s your lucky day after all.’

  Walker turned round, his lip curled. He looked as if he might say something he would later find regrettable, but he curbed the impulse. Mallory was holding up the rope used in the murder.

  ‘You haven’t let me finish,’ he said, mock-wounded. ‘The section of line around the little girl’s neck can be matched to something after all. In fact, I know exactly where it came from – from a Miss Taylor’s back garden or, to be more specific, the post she used to hang her washing line from. Is that any help to you?’

  It wasn’t until they were in the car and on the way to Miss Taylor’s that Walker remembered he’d forgotten to ask Mallory about the cost of tests on the refuse sack.

  *

  At the Harrises’ place, Jason was playing. He lay on the floor, as near as he could to the action he was creating with the small plastic-moulded figures. His mouth made the explosive noises he imagined would come from their weapons as they fired. It was a dangerous ambush, led by his dad’s platoon against an attacking enemy force, riding in on their tank. Jason was so absorbed he never noticed Peter coming in.

  ‘Jason! How many times have you been told not to mess around with Tony?’

  Jason exploded the attackers’ battle tank. The enemy assault party went flying in every direction. It was satisfying.

  ‘You hearing me?’

  Jason pulled himself up on his elbow and scowled at Peter.

  ‘You’re not my dad. And you’re not Julie’s dad either.’

  Peter was standing with one hand behind his back. He kicked at the plastic tank, which skidded over the carpet and smacked the wall.

  ‘I know I’m not. Because I’d never produce a snotty little bastard like you.’

  He produced his concealed hand. It held the smashed photograph.

  ‘Did you break this? Did you?’

  Jason cowered. He knew what was coming next.

  ‘Get up!’

  ‘No! I bloody won’t. You can’t make me.’

  Quickly he began to wriggle under his bed. Peter tossed the broken picture on to the bed, grabbed at Jason’s foot and missed. He crouched, trying to fish the child out from the narrow space. His hand cast around but he couldn’t reach far enough in to get a fistful.

  ‘I know you did it. I know!’

  ‘Stay away from me! You bastard!’ Jason was crying now, snivelling and crooning, like a trapped animal. ‘I hate you. Julie hates you too!’

  Peter got up. He stood for a moment over the bed. His voice suddenly became calm and cold. ‘You got this room all to yourself now, Jason. And you’re going to stay in it today, all day. And all night, too. You hear me?’

  Jason crammed back into the furthest, darkest corner. He felt something digging into his back but so long as Peter didn’t start pulling out the heavy bunk bed, he reckoned he was safe. Then he knew he was, at least for the moment, because he heard Peter slam out of the room. He twisted round and got a hand to whatever it was he had felt. He pulled it out and put it in front of his eyes – Julie’s bloody Barbie doll. Yuck!

  He pushed the doll back into the darkest corner under the bed, slid carefully out into the room and began reassembling the enemy force. There was to be a renewed assault and no mercy on either side.

  CHAPTER 13

  MONDAY 9 SEPTEMBER. 11.30 A.M.

  ANN TAYLOR was a surprise to Pat North. The disabled parking space outside her house on the new brick-built housing development next to the estate, the spinsterish ‘Miss’ on Barridge’s visit report, the prissy, fanatically neat interior of the house all seemed to indicate someone in her sixties. But the woman who opened the door was only a little older than herself.

  ‘Yes?’

  Walker showed his warrant card. ‘We’re police officers, Miss Taylor. We are following up the house-to-house inquiries made by our constable yesterday. May we come in?’

  North and Walker were escorted into the lounge with a ritual apology. ‘Sorry about the mess. If I’d known you were coming . . . You’ll have some coffee?’

  Walker looked around with raised eyebrows at the incredibly tidy room, cheaply but carefully furnished. ‘It’s about this washing line. May we see your garden?’

  Ann Taylor was surprised. ‘The washing line? Oh, yes. I’ll show you.’

  She took them through the kitchen and out the back door. Walker inspected the posts from which her washing line had once hung. He walked around the perimeter of the lawn and peered in at the windows of the garden shed. A small padlock secured the door.

  Back in the lounge, she brought in coffee.

  ‘I thought you were investigating the murder of that poor child.’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘But I don’t see how that’s connected to my washing line?’

  Walker took a token sip of his coffee and put the cup down.

  ‘We’re trying to establish one. Now, Miss Taylor, when you mentioned to our constable that your washing line had been stolen, was that the first time you reported it missing?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘So you never reported it stolen – officially I mean?’

  ‘No. I didn’t think it was worth it. I’m sorry – should I have?’

  ‘No, no. Don’t worry, it’s just that there’d be a record if you had, you see. So, when exactly was it stolen?’

  ‘One night, just after the fence had been painted. About two weeks ago. Only there wasn’t anything on it – washing washing I mean. Or they would have stolen that as well, wouldn’t they? Biscuit?’ She offered a plate of custard creams.

  Walker shook his head. ‘No, thank you. Now, do you know Michael Dunn?’

  Ann Taylor’s eyes were fixed on the carpet. ‘I know who he is, yes. It was in the papers – that he’d been arrested.’ She twisted her hands together in her lap, the fingers of one gripping those of the other. ‘Er, he used to come round knocking on doors to do odd jobs.’

  Walker seemed indifferent to this information. He simply asked, ‘When did you last see him?’

  ‘Oh, a long time ago. More than nine months, maybe a year. He looked terrible. Unwashed, filthy dirty. I didn’t open my door. Just told him to go away.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘He just walked off.’ She looked nervously to Walker then clasped her hands. ‘They’ve been to take tests on the fence. Will they be coming back? I mean, it was only a rope.’

  Walker got up suddenly, slightly knocking the table on which stood his barely touched coffee. The cup rattled. ‘Thank you for your time, Miss Taylor.’

  North took a hurried gulp of coffee as Walker moved towards the hall. She got up to follow him. ‘Lovely house, you have. You live here alone, Miss Taylor?’

  ‘Yes – since Mummy died.’

  The woman hesitated, flicking a glance at North’s face, then looking down at her hands. There was something more to this, North was sure of it. But Walker was impatient to be on his way. He was already standing by the front door, his hand groping in his coat pocket for cigarettes.

  Miss Taylor smiled wanly. ‘I’ll show you out.’

  On the way to the car, North spoke her mind. ‘Bit abrupt, if you don’t mind my saying so, sir.’

  But Walker was having none of it. ‘In case you’ve forgotten, Inspector North, we have a meeting with the Crown Prosecution Service tomorrow. And I can tell you exactly what they’re going to say – we don’t have a case. So I don’t have time for small talk, OK?’

  North decided not to push her luck.

  *

  Within five minutes of their arrival back at Southampton Street, Arnold Mallory was on the line. His voice was triumphant. ‘We’ve got what I believe you would call a result from the shoes.’

  ‘I know,’ said Walker. ‘You said four matching samples. But, as you also pointed out, as Dunn lived there he was likely to walk across the building site.’

  ‘Four matching samples would be good, Walker. But five is very hard indeed to get out of.’

  ‘Five? You’re talking about Dunn’s shoes?’ Walker was taking the call in the Incident Room. As members of the team picked up on the conversation, the area fell into an expectant silence.

  ‘Dunn’s shoes – yes. I said we had soil, clay, brick dust and cement, right? All from the area around the pipes. But now I’m also talking about the victim’s shoes too.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘And your suspect and the little lady walked in the same dog shit. Do you understand what I am saying to you, Walker? Traces of the same turd are on both shoes!’ Mallory guffawed. ‘You found the post for the washing line, all you’ve got to do now is find the dog that dropped the load!’

  Walker attempted to join in with Mallory’s frivolity, and to everyone gathered in the room it sounded like a bark, but no one laughed. Walker’s eyes were like chipped ice. Deliberately Walker replaced the receiver. He remained still for a moment, then started walking jerkily around the room in a kind of muted dance of celebration. He was clicking his fingers.

  ‘Yes! Yes, yes, yes! We’ve got him. We’ve bloody got him!’

  There was a low cheer from members of the team. It died away as family liaison’s Meg Richards came hurrying in looking for Walker.

  ‘Sir, I’ve got a Mrs Gillingham in my office. I think you’d better come and see her. She says she fostered Michael Dunn.’

  Walker was enjoying the moment. His eyes were shining, the crows’ feet laughter-lines etched into his temples. He rubbed his hands together.

  ‘Better and better. Lead me to her!’

  *

  Mrs Gillingham was dressed in sweater and jeans under a brown car coat. Walker immediately had her down as a middle-class liberal, a teenager in the sixties who now got by on charitable work and reading the Guardian. She also happened to be very tense, sitting bolt upright in the chair with her hands laced so tightly there was no blood in the knuckles.

  Walker positioned himself on the edge of Richards’s desk. ‘Now, Mrs Gillingham, I believe you know Michael Dunn.’

  ‘Yes – I read you had arrested him so I—’

  ‘I’d appreciate anything you can tell us about him. Anything at all. He doesn’t communicate much with us, you understand?’

  ‘All right . . . Well, let me see . . . Michael was an orphan and he was shuffled round various foster homes, adopted once but returned to an orphanage. He was too much of a handful, apparently. But at the children’s home he was subjected to, well, sexual and emotional abuse. Over a period of years. He made no less than three suicide attempts and . . . Well, we didn’t know all the facts about his past when we – my husband and I – agreed to foster him. We only found out afterwards . . .’

  She stopped, but she had a lot more to tell. Richards looked at Walker warningly and he took the point. This was a witness you didn’t push too hard. He simply nodded encouragingly and waited for the woman to go on.

  ‘He was fourteen when he came to us, a very quiet, unassuming boy, and we felt he was really benefiting from being in a stable family environment.’ She paused and cleared her throat.

  Coming to the difficult bit, thought Walker.

  ‘My daughters were then aged five and seven . . . We trusted him, you see. We did.’ She swallowed. Her voice had gone shaky. ‘And we left him to babysit one time and he, well, he abused both my daughters, you see.’