Hope to Die

‘Mr Ward, you know as well as I do that it could have been crucial evidence in the trial. If there was any question of child abuse –’

‘If you must know, that’s precisely why I didn’t say anything. Because of the whole damn Pandora’s box that would have let loose if I had. And because, whatever went on between Camilla and my brother, it was not child abuse.’ He gives me a steady look. ‘You didn’t know Camilla back then. I did. And believe me, if they were having sex it’s because she wanted it just as much as he did.’

‘You said yourself, he was a grown man – she was fourteen –’

His jaw is set now. ‘All the same. She’d have had her reasons. She was very good at using people.’

‘And you still said nothing, even after the Netflix show came out and your brother was named?’

He looks away again. I can see a vein pulsing in his neck.

‘Why didn’t you say anything, Mr Ward?’

He takes a deep breath and turns to face me. ‘Because blood is thicker than water, Inspector, that’s why. And because that night – the night the baby disappeared – when he was late to the Christmas party and said he’d been at Mum’s – he was lying. He was never there.’

‘But your mother’s drugs were given to her as usual –’

‘I know. But he wasn’t the one who did it. It was me.’

* * *

Ev pulls up outside the B&B and turns off the engine. It’s the rather optimistically named Comfy Inn, a three-storey Victorian terrace just off the Cowley Road. She hasn’t been here for more than two years, but it hasn’t changed much. Though the general direction of travel is definitely down: a bit less paint on the window frames, a bit more rubbish bulging from the bins. The orange street light isn’t doing it many favours either. This was where she brought Sharon Mason and her son in July 2016, the night their house went up in flames. They were escaping an angry mob too. Perhaps that’s why the mere sight of this place has her stomach in knots. But this time, she tells herself firmly, things are different. Margaret Swann has a home to go back to, for a start. And even if – as Ev suspects – she was no better as a mother than Sharon Mason, there’s no question she’s a victim now.

She turns to Margaret, sitting huddled in the back. She’s been steeling herself for the old woman’s reaction the whole way here, waiting for the cutting remarks about the B&B being a dump and filthy and is this what she pays taxes for, but she’s just sitting there in silence, apparently not even aware that they’ve stopped. All the fight has gone out of her. Ev is reminded, suddenly, of her dad, the day she took him to the care home.

She gets out of the car and goes round to the boot for the bags, her throat tight with tears.

* * *

Adam Fawley

25 October

18.46

‘It doesn’t actually prove anything, though, does it?’

I’m on the phone, in the car. I’ve dropped off the DNA sample with CSI and I’m on my way home, about to hit the ring road, and (if I’m lucky) just in time to see my daughter before she goes to sleep.

‘Just because Nigel Ward wasn’t with his mum that night,’ says Quinn, ‘it doesn’t mean he had to be with Camilla. He could have been shagging someone else.’

Quinn’s always been a dab hand at devil’s advocate. But then again, he could pick a fight with the sky just for being blue.

‘I agree. But the one thing we do know is that someone took that child, and Ward was much more likely to know how to arrange an illegal adoption than Camilla. Added to which, South Mercia never found any evidence Ward was playing away with someone else, not as far as I know.’

I hear Quinn laugh. ‘Yeah, but by the time they started looking it was ten bloody years later.’

‘True, but if he really was with someone else that night he’d have had an alibi. Don’t you think he’d have mentioned that when people started accusing him of getting rid of a baby?’

‘But no one ever did accuse him of that, did they? That or anything else. Not officially. South Mercia accepted he’d been at his mum’s. End of. OK, maybe if they’d pushed harder Ward might have cracked –’

‘Or his brother –’

But even as I’m saying it I doubt it; the only reason Jeremy is talking now is that his brother is safely out of harm’s way.

‘But it didn’t happen, did it. Maybe because Nigel Ward was playing golf with half the South Mercia force. Or in the same bloody Lodge.’

There’s a silence. I can hear music in the background, the sound of a woman’s voice; Quinn must be at home.

‘So,’ he says, ‘what do you want us to do?’

‘Nothing yet. Let’s run the DNA and establish once and for all if Ward was the father, then I’ll do that damned interview and see what crawls out of the woodwork.’

‘And what if the lab says Nigel wasn’t the daddy?’

‘Doesn’t mean he didn’t arrange the adoption. If he’d “sorted it out” for her once before I can easily see Camilla turning to him again, even if he wasn’t the father.’

‘And she had one over on him too, didn’t she,’ says Quinn darkly. ‘He wouldn’t want all that coming out, now would he? I mean, a shagger’s one thing, a paedo’s quite another.’

* * *