Hope to Die

‘Anything I can do?’ says the officer in a low voice.

Rowan glances at her and their eyes meet.

‘Maybe.’

* * *

Interview with Camilla Rowan, conducted at Calcot Row Police Station, Gloucester

27 August 2002, 11.00 a.m.

In attendance, DIH. Lucas,DSL. Kearney, Mrs J. McCrae (Appropriate Adult)

LK: We’ve asked you back today, Miss Rowan, because we’ve still been unable to locate your missing son.

CR: He’s not missing, he’s with his father.

LK: So you say, but we haven’t been able to track him down either.

CR: [shrugs]

It’s a common name. Must be hundreds of them.

LK: Fifty-six, to be precise. Fifty-six men called Timothy Baker, born in the UK, who would have been between the ages of 17 and 30 at that time. We’ve spoken to every single one of them and none of them has your child, or knows anything about you.

CR: [silence]

LK: Do you have a photograph of this man?

CR: No.

LK: Can you describe him?

CR: Brown hair, brown eyes – he was just ordinary.

LK: Are you prepared to sit down with a police artist and draw up an e-fit of this man?

CR: Yeah, whatever.

LK: Did he have an accent? Birmingham, say?

CR: No, he just sounded ordinary. Like everyone else.

LK: And you’re sure you have the right name?

CR: [silence]

*Duration of silence confirmed as 27 seconds*

It could have been Dacre.

LK: You’re saying his name was Dacre?

CR: I’m saying it could have been.

LK: Tim Dacre?

CR: Or Tom. Maybe.

LK: You don’t know the first name of the man you were sleeping with?

CR: Slept with twice. Five years ago.

HL: I think most women would remember the name of the man who fathered their child, even if they did only have sex with them twice.

CR: [silence]

LK: So let me get this straight. It could have been Tim Baker, Tim Dacre, Tom Baker or Tom Dacre. That’s what you’re now saying? Or are you just deliberately throwing sand in our eyes?

CR: I’m trying to help you.

HL: You’re not helping yourself, Miss Rowan.

CR: [silence]

LK: We can’t find the baby, we can’t find the baby’s father. You must know how this looks.

CR: I don’t care how it looks – I’m telling the truth.

LK: I should tell you we are now conducting a systematic search along the route you say you took from Birmingham and Solihull General Hospital to Shiphampton. Lay-bys, parks, woodland, disused ground, anywhere you might have disposed of the body or buried remains. We’re searching it all.

CR: Search all you fucking like, you won’t find anything.

LK: It doesn’t concern you that your own child – your own flesh and blood – has disappeared off the face of the earth and no one can find him?

CR: Tim told me that he’d get in touch if there was a problem, and I’ve never heard anything.

LK: The mobile number you gave us for him – is that the only way you have of contacting him?

CR: He said he was going to be moving house so that was the best way.

LK: You’re aware that mobile number is out of service?

CR: [shrugs]

LK: In fact, it has never been in service. No one in the UK has ever had that number. If I was of a suspicious turn of mind I might be thinking you just made it up.

CR: [silence]

LK: Why did you say you lived in Cambridge?

CR: What?

LK: When you gave your first child up for adoption you gave your address as 13 Warnock Road, Cambridge.

CR: So what?

LK: That was a lie, wasn’t it? You were still living at your parents’ home in Shiphampton.

CR: What difference does it make?

HL: It makes a difference, Miss Rowan, because you knowingly gave false information on an official document. One can only infer that you did so in order to avoid being contacted.

CR: Look, I didn’t want my parents finding out, OK? I didn’t want a letter arriving and my mum or dad getting hold of it.

LK: So why Cambridge?

CR: [shrugs]

I’d just been there. It was nice.

LK: ‘It was nice’? That’s it?

CR: [shrugs]

LK: [turning to file]

But that wasn’t the only untruth on that form, was it? The GP practice you gave, the email address – eleven lies in all.

CR: They weren’t lies –

LK: What would you call them, then?

CR: I told you – I didn’t want anyone to find out –

LK: Do you lie a lot, Miss Rowan?

CR: [indignant]

No, I do not!

LK: Doesn’t look like it to me. Looks to me like you do it all the time. Indeed, I put it to you that you lie so often and so readily that you don’t even know you’re doing it any more –

CR: That’s not true!

LK: In fact, I’d go so far as to say that I can tell when you’re lying because your lips are moving –

JM: Detective Sergeant, that’s hardly fair –

CR: [to Mrs McCrae]

He can’t talk to me like that, can he? I’ve done nothing wrong.

HL: We’ve yet to establish that, Miss Rowan.