and you didn’t leave anything inside?
A. I told you.
Q. Like strands of your hair, for example? Such as were subsequently discovered by the police?
A. No, like I said. And I’d had my hair cut short weeks before. Where would I have got strands that long?
Q. You might have had some in your handbag? On your hairbrush?
A. How often do you clean your brush?
Q. That’s hardly the point –
A. I clean mine every few days. Like most women. The assault had happened four months before.
MR. BARNES: My Lord, if I may, we have already heard evidence from the police forensic scientist that hair recovered from a brush would have been knotted in a clump, not in the long ‘free’ strands retrieved from the garage.
MRS. JENKINS: One final question, Ms. Sheldon. The court has heard that you had never met Detective Sergeant Fawley prior to the night you were assaulted, on September 4th 1998. Is that true?
A. Yes, it is.
MRS. JENKINS: No further questions, my Lord.
* * *
It’s a man who opens the door. His hair is wet and he has a towel wrapped round his waist and another in his hand.
‘Who the hell are you?’
‘DC Erica Somer, Thames Valley Police, and DC Andrew Baxter. This is DI Giles Saumarez. Is Mrs Webb in?’
He stares at them all one by one. ‘Nah. She’s gone shopping for Patsie. Something to “cheer her up”, the spoilt little bitch.’
His contempt is palpable. The last time she was here Somer came away wondering whether this man could have been abusing Denise Webb’s daughter – so much so that she checked his whereabouts for the night Sasha died. But he was nowhere near the place.
‘Can we come in?’
‘What’s this about? The Blake kid again?’
‘Did you know Sasha, Mr Riley?’
If he’s surprised she knows his name, he doesn’t show it. ‘Yeah, I met her once or twice. Nice kid. Quiet. Polite. Never could see what she saw in bloody Patsie.’
He steps back and the three of them troop past him into the hall. There’s a bag of tools on the floor by the stairs and a high-viz jacket hooked over the bannisters.
‘You’re a builder, aren’t you, Mr Riley?’
He grins at her. ‘Fuck me, you really are a detective.’
‘Do you know someone called Ashley Brotherton?’
He starts a little, and a wariness creeps into his face. ‘Yeah. Worked with him a few times on jobs. Why?’
‘Did you know Patsie was seeing him?’
‘Seeing him as in shagging him? Yeah, I thought she might be. I saw them in town once.’
Jesus, thinks Somer – if only they’d thought to talk to this tosser before –
‘You didn’t tell her mother? She’s fifteen –’
A smile curls nastily about his mouth. ‘So fucking what? And in any case, Den’s made it balls-achingly clear that Patsie is her business not mine. So as far as I’m concerned, what that little cow does or doesn’t do is absolutely nothing to do with me.’
He’s towelling his hair now. He has tattoos all up one arm and a snake twisting across his shoulders – the same one, Somer suddenly realizes, that Denise Webb has.
‘Didn’t you search Patsie’s stuff already?’ he says. ‘Den said some of your blokes came and took her laptop.’
Saumarez takes a step forward. ‘Does Patsie have a TV in her room, Mr Riley?’
‘No,’ he says, frowning. ‘Just the one down here.’
‘And you have, what, Sky? Virgin?’
‘Sky,’ he says. ‘For the sport.’ He looks at Somer and then at the two men. ‘That’s what you want to see? The telly?’
‘If you don’t mind,’ says Somer.
He smiles again. ‘Go ahead – knock yourself out. If you can find anything to incriminate that little bitch you’ll be doing me a favour big-time. In the meantime, I’m going upstairs.’
* * *
28 August 1998, 10.45 p.m.
Kubla Nightclub, High Street, Oxford
It’s crowded in the bar. Friday night and everyone’s a bit wired. Apart, that is, from the young man with dark hair sitting at the bar, who’s had the same pint slowly warming up in front of him for over an hour. He hasn’t been alone all that time – he had a mate with him until a few minutes ago – but whatever they were talking about, it must have been something serious because he hasn’t been doing much smiling. But now his friend has gone and the young man has twisted round on his stool he can observe what’s going on in the rest of the bar. He’s good at that – watching people, working them out. There’s a scattering