Chapter 14
‘The little shit,’ said Ramouter, turning his phone around so that it was in landscape mode.
‘Who’s a little shit?’ asked Henley, switching off the car engine.
‘Ben Trezeguet. I checked out his YouTube. Take a look.’
Ramouter scrolled back to the beginning of the video and held up his phone. An aerial view of Fox-Carnell’s body swaying gently filled the screen with firemen and CSI officers milling below.
‘Who is the woman on the pier? That is the question that the police officers from the elite Serial Crimes Unit refused to answer this morning. My name is Ben Trezeguet and welcome to this special edition of Freedom News. Deptford has transformed itself into an “up and coming” area full of young families so you can imagine the shock that a local resident had when he discovered a woman’s body hanging by a bloody noose over the River Thames on Glaisher Street, while walking his dog.
The arrival of officers from the Serial Crime Unit, which you may recall were responsible for the investigation into The Jigsaw Man copycat case a few years ago, can only mean one thing: there’s a serial killer at large in South-East London’
‘He’s not working alone,’ Henley said. ‘I didn’t see him with a remote control for the drone when I dragged him away. The last thing we need is for that footage to be all over the internet when we haven’t even spoken to the family yet.’
‘Too late for that,’ Ramouter replied. ‘It’s not so easy to put the toothpaste back in the tube. He’s already shared it to all his social media channels and people are speculating in the comments.’
‘I suppose we should count our blessings that this Ben idiot wasn’t able to get any footage of Fox-Carnell’s face, but that’s not the only thing that concerns me,’ Henley said.
‘How did he get the information?’ said Ramouter and they began to walk along the pavement. ‘Some he could have guessed but to specifically name the SCU? Either he has a contact at the 999 control room or he has a police scanner.’
Henley stopped outside the last house on the terrace. She pushed the gate open and walked up a black-and-white checkered pathway towards the Victorian building. The wooden blinds inside the window were closed and a thick film of grey dust coated the slats.
‘What’s wrong?’ asked Ramouter as Henley moved closer to the window.
‘Take a look,’ Henley answered, pointing at the red smears on the window frame and paving stones.
‘If the paint matched the window frames or even the planter, I would have said that it was an accident. But red paint. Bright red paint?’
‘Red is a warning,’ Ramouter replied. He moved away from the window and pressed the doorbell.
Henley took out her phone and took a photograph of the frame. ‘A warning to whom?’ she asked. ‘The people inside or outside?’
‘Could be both,’ Ramouter went quiet when the door was answered.
Disappointment was etched in every wrinkle and crease on the face of the woman standing in the doorway.
‘Hello, Linda,’ said Henley, stepping towards the door. ‘I’m not sure if you remember me, I’m—’
‘I do and I bet you’re loving every minute of this,’ Linda replied coldly, her hands gripping the side of the door. ‘You lot kept my baby away from me. For so many years. And now you’ve got your bloody wish.’
‘This is my partner, Detective Constable Ramouter,’ said Henley as a man made his way down the hallway.
‘I don’t give a toss who he is,’ Linda replied angrily. Her swollen eyes reddened and filled with tears. ‘Just piss—’
Linda stopped herself but the anger on her face remained. The man behind her reached out and squeezed her shoulder.
‘Hello, Keith,’ Henley said to Sian’s stepfather.
‘Come in,’ he said, gently manoeuvring his wife away from the door.
Keith sat down in an armchair as Linda looked on disapprovingly, her features hardening as the minutes passed and the tea in her hand cooled.
‘We haven’t seen her yet,’ he said. ‘Linda doesn’t want to formally identify her because that will mean that it’s true.
That our girl isn’t coming back to us, but I need … need to see her for myself.’
Linda shakily brought her chipped cup to her lips and Keith fiddled with a remote control.
‘The police officers who were here earlier. They sounded as though they were still unsure. That it could be any ol’ Tom, Dick or Henrietta lying there in the morgue. That it may not be our kid,’ said Keith. ‘They give you hope. But it’s not true. Everyone knows that it’s your kid.’
The room was dark and oppressive. The only light came from the flashing images on the television in the corner of the room.
An old modular wall unit was filled to bursting with books, DVDs and family photos but the wall to Henley’s right was a photographic journal dedicated to Sian.
Henley watched Sian’s life progress from birth, to school, graduation, her first day as a nurse outside Guy’s Hospital and finally a photograph of Sian sitting on a sun lounger holding a wine glass.
Sian wasn’t Linda and Keith’s only child, but she’d clearly been the favourite.
‘I’m sorry for what you’re going through,’ Henley said, pulling herself forward on her chair, closing the space between her and the grieving couple. Ramouter remained seated on an unstable dining room chair.
‘You’re not sorry,’ Linda spat. She placed her mug heavily onto the floor, spilling tea that disappeared into the carpet pile. ‘You hated Sian. Hated her! She told me what you were like in court. Begging the judge to keep her locked up.’
‘That isn’t what she said, love,’ Keith said wearily.
‘Look at her,’ Linda continued. ‘She’s gloating. She’s got what she wanted. My Sian. My—’
Keith stayed in his seat as Linda sprang from hers, kicking over the remainder of the tea as she ran out of the room.
‘I’m sorry about that,’ Keith said, wincing when a door, somewhere upstairs, slammed shut.
‘You should have someone with you, when you attend the identification,’ Henley said gently. ‘You shouldn’t be alone.’
‘Linda’s brother, Alfie, is going to come with me. Better to get it over with.’
‘Keith, I’m not going keep you,’ Henley added. ‘We just wanted to ask you a few questions about Sian. How she was when she came home and her last movements before she went missing.’
‘The officers who were here when she didn’t come home that night said that Sian had been to see you. Been to your house,’ said Keith.
‘Not at my house exactly, but yes she was on my street.’
‘Did she threaten you?’
Henley hesitated.
‘You don’t have to spare my feelings, Inspector Henley. She wanted to throw it in your face, that she was out,’ Keith said matter-of-factly. He looked at Sian’s wall. ‘I don’t know where she gets it from. That need to see how far she can push people.’
‘Whose idea was it to put the money up for Sian’s bail?’ Ramouter asked.
‘That was her mum. She wanted her girl home. Linda and I had bought a flat donkey’s years ago.
We moved out when our first son was born but we kept it and rented it out.
We sold it four years ago and we did well on it.
Really well. I didn’t want to put our money at risk because who knows what the hell might happen. ’
‘But Linda insisted?’
‘Threatened to leave me if I didn’t get our girl home.’
‘Did you want her home?’
‘No,’ Keith replied his voice breaking. He sniffed and rubbed roughly at his tear-filled eyes. ‘No, I didn’t. We … the family. My grandkids have been through enough.’
Henley raised her head at the sound of creaking floorboards. ‘When did you last speak to Sian?’ she asked.
‘Tuesday morning. I wake up early. Always have done. I was a train driver and can’t break the habit of being up at 4 a.m.,’ said Keith.
‘Sian must have come downstairs at about quarter to seven. She was already dressed and impatient, counting down the minutes until her curfew ended. She was pissed off. Throwing a strop. Just like when she was a teenager but worse.’
Henley asked the question she already knew the answer to, ‘She knew that you didn’t want her bailed to your house?’
Keith nodded. ‘As soon as the clock hit 7 a.m., she was out the door.’
‘She left early because she had to be on the telly. Good Morning Britain,’ Linda said, reappearing in the doorway. She sat next to her husband. ‘She was also on Newsnight on Monday, but they pre-recorded that early because of her bail conditions.’
‘I offered to drive her to the studios, but she wasn’t interested,’ said Keith.
‘How did she get there?’ asked Henley.
Keith shrugged. ‘Bus, or maybe she took a cab. She had Linda’s card.’
‘We’re still waiting for the monitoring company to give us a full report of Sian’s movements, but did she tell either of you if she was meeting anyone? Her legal team, friends, any—’
‘Sian didn’t have any friends,’ Keith said firmly. ‘No one wanted to be associated with her, not after what she did.’
Henley glanced at Ramouter. It wasn’t lost on them that Keith wasn’t jumping out of his seat to defend his daughter and protest her innocence.
‘What about her husband? Her children? Did she have any contact with them?’ Henley asked.
‘Ex-husband, Charlie. No. Absolutely not,’ Keith clarified. ‘Sian only kept his surname because she wanted to punish him for not supporting her. Linda was trying to convince him to let Sian see the kids, but he point-blank refused.’
‘You last saw Sian on Tuesday morning. What about Monday, when she came home from court?’
‘We were told at 11.15 a.m. that the court had the bail money. We thought she was going to come straight home, but she didn’t.
She went back to her solicitor’s office because the Newsnight people were interviewing her there.
Her solicitor then brought her home at around 4 p.m..
But she went out again almost immediately and came back home a few minutes before her curfew started.
She had a bath, something to eat and stayed in her room until the Soteria people turned up just after ten.
They fitted her tag, and she went back upstairs to her room. ’
‘Did she have any visitors? Had there been any trouble?’
‘No one knew she’d been bailed here. We moved into this house after the first trial, and we keep ourselves to ourselves. We didn’t go around broadcasting that we were the parents of Sian Fox-Carnell who was in prison for killing her patients, for trying to kill a kid.’
Keith took hold of Linda’s hand as she looked at him expectantly. ‘Wrongly convicted of course,’ he added.
Henley looked across at Ramouter, wondering if the same thought had also crossed his mind, that Keith hadn’t answered the question: had there been any trouble?
‘Keith, why have you got the blinds and curtains closed?’ Ramouter asked.
‘No one was supposed to know that Sian was here,’ Keith said.
He stood up and rubbed the base of his back.
‘We told no one. We didn’t even tell Charlie that she’d been bailed here in case he stopped us seeing the grandkids.
’ Keith sat back down, and lowered his voice, as though he was worried that someone was listening.
‘But on Tuesday morning, I came downstairs to put the coffee on, but I didn’t even make it to the kitchen because there was a smell in the air. I could smell it as soon as I stepped out of the bedroom.’
‘What was the smell?’
‘It smelt like shit and when I turned on the hallway light, I could see it.’ Keith wrinkled his nose as though the smell was still in the room. ‘And it wasn’t dog shit either. It was disgusting.’
‘Has anything like that ever happened before?’
Keith shook his head. ‘Never. Not even when we had Sandy, our dog. She knew that she had to do her business outside. It was revolting. I cleaned it up as best as I could. Washed the door down, threw the door mat out. Bleached out the entire hallway. Of course, I had to explain to Linda why the entire downstairs stank of Domestos and why I had to go and buy a new doormat.’
‘Did you tell Sian what had happened?’ asked Henley. ‘To warn her? Did she say anything about the smell of bleach?’
Keith shook his head. ‘I was going to tell her, but she was angry and out the door as soon as the clock struck seven. She didn’t look back,’ Keith said sadly.
‘But that wasn’t all.’ He took a deep breath.
‘On Wednesday morning, something else happened. I saw drops of red paint on the floor outside the front door. I thought it was blood at first, but then I stepped back and looked at the door and there was paint everywhere and all our plants had been destroyed.’
‘Do you have any idea who might have done it?’ Henley asked. ‘The damage I mean.’
‘Ain’t got a clue. But whoever it was knew that Sian was staying here. Which doesn’t make sense because no one was supposed to know.’ Keith pulled out his phone and handed it to Henley.
Henley felt the breath constrict in her throat at the photo on Keith’s phone: an image painted on the front window. A noose.