Behind Dead Eyes (36 page)

As they left the building, Bradshaw made a point of holding on to her arm and steering her towards the back seat of his car. He opened the door then pressed down on her shoulder, so it looked as if she was being coerced into the vehicle. He climbed into the front seat, then started the engine. Bradshaw glanced back at the care home and saw that Dean, as he expected, was watching from a window.

‘Oscar winner or what?' asked Carrie exuberantly.

‘Sorry?'

‘We totally fooled Freak Boy. Good, wasn't I?'

‘Exceptional,' he told her as he drove away.

He bought Callie a can of Coke and some crisps then took her to the interview room. He didn't tell any of his colleagues why she was there. He let her eat the crisps while they waited for Helen and Tom to arrive. Once she was settled, he picked up the envelope and withdrew the photograph and looked at it.

When Callie finally spoke, he almost started, for he had forgotten she was in the room with him by then. ‘Told you,' she said matter-of-factly.

‘Yes,' he said, ‘you did,' and he slid the photo back into the envelope. ‘Do you have any other photographs?' asked Bradshaw, not that he needed further proof.

Callie rummaged eagerly in her bag and handed him a
yellow envelope with a Kodak logo on it. She must have misunderstood him. When he opened the envelope, all that was revealed was a handful of snaps featuring Callie goofing around in town; sometimes on her own, but on occasions with another girl. Bradshaw didn't bother to tell her he meant other photos of the Councillor. She was watching him intently so he skimmed through them dutifully, taking the time to look at each one. If you didn't know anything about Callie's life or what she had been through you might have imagined she was a normal fifteen-year-old girl hanging out with ordinary friends just like thousands of others her age, but Bradshaw knew she had already been abused by countless men. It was heartbreaking.

‘This your friend?' he asked as he came upon a photograph of the two girls sitting on a wall together and laughing.

‘That's me and Di.'

A thought struck him then. ‘When did Diane disappear?'

‘She didn't disappear,' and he regretted using the word, ‘I get cards from her.'

‘Cards?' He recalled Tom mentioning something about this.

‘Postcards,' she said, ‘from London.'

‘Okay,' he said, ‘so when did you last see her?'

‘The day before she left.'

‘Did she tell you she was going to leave?'

‘She told me loads of times she was going to London.' Callie was evasive. ‘I'm going too, when I'm sixteen.'

‘But did she tell you she was about to leave that day?'

Callie hesitated for a moment. ‘No,' she said and he could tell this admission hurt her for she would have expected Diane to confide her plans to her best friend. ‘As soon as she had the chance to get away from Freak Boy she went. She had to go when she could.' Callie was defending her friend's
actions but he suspected she was also justifying them in her own eyes. ‘That's why she sends me the postcards,' Callie said, ‘so I know she's okay and she's waiting for me. As soon as she tells me where to meet her, I'm gone, out of there.'

‘And when exactly did she leave?'

‘I don't know the date,' she said, ‘but it was a Friday. I remember that.'

‘How many months ago,' he asked in as calm a voice as he could manage, ‘would you say, roughly?' He shrugged as if it was no big thing.

‘Five?' she offered. ‘Six maybe.'

There was no trace of anxiety, for Callie knew her friend was safe; she'd had the postcards, but the time frame she now described forced Bradshaw to take a long hard look at one of the photographs of Callie and Diane. He zeroed in on it and had to force himself to mask his emotions then. What he was looking at still wasn't entirely clear however.

Bradshaw took a moment to compose himself. ‘There's something I need to ask you, Callie,' he said carefully, trying to make this sound as routine as possible. ‘It might help us to find your friend when all of this is over.'

She nodded her understanding.

‘Does Diane have a tattoo at all,' he pointed to his own neck, ‘just here?' He traced the spot where the tattoo would have been if it hadn't been scorched from the skin of the burned girl.

‘Yeah, she does,' said Callie, ‘she's got a tattoo of a little blue bird,' and she smiled at the memory at first but then she regarded him oddly. ‘How'd you know that?'

Bradshaw
walked to his desk very slowly. The look on his face was enough to attract interest from several of his colleagues. Even DC Malone asked, ‘You alright, Ian?' but he didn't reply. He didn't even hear her.

He was about to sit down when a familiar voice called his name: ‘Bradshaw! Get in here,' and he looked up into the unsmiling face of his boss. DI Tennant did not look happy but, unlike Malone and the rest of Ian's colleagues, she was too angry to notice the almost robotic way Bradshaw moved from his desk to her office.

‘Ma'am …' Bradshaw began listlessly but she cut him off before he could continue.

‘I don't know what you're playing at …' Tennant told him ‘… but I'm not putting up with it any longer.'

Bradshaw failed to comprehend her meaning but for once he wasn't unduly concerned about his boss's opinion of him. He was preoccupied with thoughts of the young girl in the interview room and how he was going to find the words to break the news to her that her best friend was dead. DI Tennant's foul mood was of minimal concern.

‘Ma'am?' he offered again but he had to make a conscious effort to concentrate on the conversation because he was in danger of zoning out.

‘This charade you are conducting with DCI Kane …' she began.

‘Oh,' Bradshaw said, ‘that,' because it really didn't seem remotely important any more.

‘Yes,' she said, ‘that!' Kate Tennant couldn't understand why he was being so calm. She had known they were up to something ever since Kane asked Bradshaw to drive him home. Her suspicions were intensified by the ludicrous mentoring programme Kane had signed Bradshaw up to; as if the older man even knew the meaning of the word. ‘At least you're not denying it …' She launched into a lecture about Bradshaw having the bloody nerve to ignore the chain of command, spy on her, go behind her back and undermine her authority all at the same time. When Bradshaw failed to respond to this she asked him outright what he had been up to and whether he had anything to say for himself.

‘Up to?' he asked dumbly.

Bloody hell,' she hissed through gritted teeth, ‘I'm trying to give you a bollocking here, Bradshaw, and you're just standing there like a spare prick at a wedding. You don't even have the decency to look embarrassed. What have you been doing for fuck's sake?'

‘Following a new line of enquiry,' he told her blandly.

‘What?' she asked and she looked as if she was about to completely lose it. ‘Is that all you have to say for yourself?'

‘Yes,' he said simply, ‘and I know who the burned girl is.'

DI Tennant didn't quite hear him at first. Her mouth was already open as she had been about to administer an arse-kicking of immense proportions in which trust, honesty, integrity and professionalism would have played a major part. ‘What did you just say?' she asked him instead.

Later, when Ian Bradshaw released Callie McQuire without charge, she went straight to the car where Helen was waiting
for her. He had not yet found the nerve to tell her about Diane and reasoned it was best to leave this till their investigation was concluded. Ian beckoned Tom over and told him everything he had learned from the girl.

‘And the photograph?' asked Tom.

‘Looks genuine,' said Bradshaw.

‘Christ,' hissed Tom, for even now he half expected it all to be some kind of con, or a case of mistaken identity, ‘it's definitely Jarvis?'

Bradshaw nodded.

‘Were is it now?'

Bradshaw patted his chest to show it was safely in his jacket pocket.

‘Anything else?' asked Tom when his instinct told him Bradshaw was holding something back.

‘Yeah,' he told Tom quietly, ‘I'm pretty sure Diane Turner is the burned girl.'

‘Oh dear God,' said Tom and he instinctively turned to look at Callie in the back seat of the car. ‘She doesn't know? Let's keep it that way for now. If she finds out …' He didn't need to complete his sentence. Both men knew there was no telling what Callie would say or do if she discovered her friend had been murdered.

‘Let's get her away from here,' said Tom.

They drove to Tom's house and went inside.

‘Let's see it then,' said Tom.

Helen and Tom stared at the photograph for a long time without comment. There was a single grey line across the middle of the picture where one of the slats on the ventilation grille had obscured Callie's view but she had done a good job with the camera. The top left-hand corner of the
photograph showed the face of a much older man forcing himself upon an underage girl. Her face was pressed downwards and to one side so she was facing the camera in the bottom left-hand corner of the photo. There was no doubt that this was Frank Jarvis and the girl he was raping was Diane Turner. Helen and Tom exchanged looks, both of them deeply affected by the image.

‘Callie?' asked Helen eventually, ‘did Diane show this photograph to Sandra Jarvis?'

‘I dunno.' The denial was automatic, a reflex action Callie always employed to avoid trouble. Perhaps she belatedly realised she was with the only people in the world she could trust, for she opened up then: ‘Yeah, she must have done.'

‘What did Sandra say she would do?' asked Tom. ‘For Diane, I mean.'

‘She said she would try and help her,' said Callie.

‘But she didn't, did she?' said Tom. ‘Not at first.'

‘Did she hell. She went back to uni,' admitted Callie, ‘but Diane didn't expect Sandra to help her. How could she?'

‘She just wanted to tell someone about it,' said Helen.

‘Yeah,' said Callie, ‘she told me she felt like she was going to explode if she didn't tell somebody. She knew Sandra was alright, see, so she could tell her.'

‘A few weeks went by,' said Tom, ‘then Sandra got back in touch with Diane.'

‘How'd you know that?'

Tom didn't want to admit it was obvious from the timeline. Diane had told Sandra about the abuse during the Christmas holidays; Sandra had gone back to university in January and completely fallen apart. By the end of February, she had decided to do something about it. She was going to
confront her father and rescue Diane. It was the only explanation for their joint disappearance.

‘How did Sandra get in touch?' said Tom.

‘She came up to the burger bar and bought Diane some chips.'

‘Just an old friend from Meadowlands meeting up with the girl she used to help out?' Callie nodded. ‘So the men in the place didn't mind,' Tom said, almost to himself. They probably thought they would get their hands on Sandra too if they let her hang out there, he reasoned. ‘But Sandra had a plan, didn't she?'

‘She knew Diane was going to be sixteen soon. Sandra told her she could leave Meadowlands and she'd arrange it so that no man ever hurt her again.'

‘And not long after that Diane left for London.'

Again Callie nodded. ‘She got away real easy and no one ever went looking for her. Sandra was right. Even Dean didn't kick off about it, so whatever Sandra did must have worked.'

‘Then Sandra disappeared too,' said Tom. ‘What do you think happened to her, Callie?'

‘I dunno.'

Tom could have pressed Callie further but she knew far less about Sandra's disappearance than he did. Why upset the girl by telling her the truth: that Diane Turner was dead, her face sickeningly disfigured so that her secret would die with her. If Diane Turner really was the burned girl, they now knew the reason she was killed – but not who did it. Frank Jarvis was the reason behind Diane's death, but was he capable of such savagery on his own? Did Sandra Jarvis suffer the same fate, Tom wondered and could her own father really be responsible for it if she had?

They needed a babysitter for Callie and Bradshaw figured it ought to be a woman, so he asked DC Malone to stay with her at Tom's house. He could have asked Helen but she had no power to prevent Callie from running off and she had every right to be there. They drove out to confront Councillor Frank Jarvis together, with Bradshaw at the wheel, Helen and Tom in the back seat. They all agreed it was better this way. He wouldn't know they were coming, and if Bradshaw dragged him in for questioning at the station, he'd be on his guard or he'd simply clam up and demand a lawyer without telling them anything.

‘He might give something away,' said Bradshaw, ‘if we can rattle him.'

‘Oh we'll do that alright,' said Tom.

As Bradshaw drove, nobody said anything for a while. They were still trying to accept what they had learned. Whatever any of them had expected to find, it could never have been as devastating as the truth.

Helen was trying to comprehend what it must have been like to be Sandra Jarvis, a young, good-hearted woman willing to stay up all night and listen to a damaged girl and offer her comfort. Then she had been shown a photograph of her dad raping an underage girl in her care. Helen wondered how she had been able to hold it together, without blurting out that it was her own father who was abusing Diane. Her entire world must have tumbled down around her.

Tom spoke then. ‘I understand why Sandra Jarvis confronted her father. She must have threatened to expose him or tried to convince him to hand himself in. I can imagine him denying everything and her not buying it because she'd seen the photograph; all of that I can visualise … just …'
he said, ‘but I still can't comprehend a world in which a man would kill his own daughter to cover this up …'

‘I know,' said Bradshaw. ‘I keep going over the exact same thing. Jarvis killing his own little girl? It seems impossible.'

‘Fred West did,' said Helen, for the infamous serial killer had recently hanged himself while on remand.

‘But West was a maniac,' said Bradshaw, ‘he murdered twelve people. West
enjoyed
killing. This is different. We're talking here about a man murdering his daughter to protect his name.'

‘It goes against everything,' said Tom, ‘it goes against nature. As a father, wouldn't he be more likely to kill himself than his own little girl?'

‘But surely she can't be alive somewhere,' reasoned Helen, ‘after all this time?'

‘I don't know. Maybe she just ran off to get away from all of this and she's working behind a bar somewhere in Ibiza.'

‘And maybe I'm mistaken and Diane really is alive and scratching a living in London somewhere,' said Bradshaw, ‘but we both know that isn't true.'

‘So who murdered Diane Turner?' said Tom. ‘Did Jarvis do that too?'

‘Why would he hire you,' asked Helen suddenly, ‘to look for Sandra, if she was already dead and he did it?'

‘I keep thinking about that, and there is only one explanation. I never thought for one minute that the grieving father so desperate to find his daughter could ever be responsible for her death,' said Tom, ‘and that's exactly how he wanted it. No one suspected him: not the police, the press or any of us. Frank Jarvis came up with the perfect mask for his actions, a campaign to find the missing woman he already
knew was gone,' he shook his head, ‘and I was taken in by it, just like everybody else. What an idiot.'

‘That is so cold,' Helen shook her head in disbelief, ‘
if
he killed her.'

‘Maybe he didn't do it himself; maybe someone else did it but she died because Diane told her secret to Sandra. That much I am certain of. It's too big a coincidence.'

‘Agreed,' said Bradshaw, ‘so now let's sweat the bastard.'