Behind Dead Eyes (DC Ian Bradshaw #2) - Howard Linskey Page 0,148

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