Behind Dead Eyes (DC Ian Bradshaw #2) - Howard Linskey Page 0,151

enough to fill in the blanks. We’ll just ask your wife. I’m pretty sure she’ll be very forthcoming once we tell her you’re the prime suspect in her daughter’s murder.’

‘Shut up!’ yelled the politician and he got to his feet angrily then. ‘I did good by her! I stood by my wife when many a man wouldn’t have! Christ almighty, she made me look like a fool!’

‘No, she didn’t,’ Tom told him, ‘but she would have if you’d kicked her out. You couldn’t get a divorce back then if you wanted to succeed in politics, and you knew it. You had to keep your family together at all costs. You didn’t stand by her; you convinced her to stand by you and give your marriage another shot. The price you paid was a daughter who wasn’t your own.’

‘I brought that girl up! I treated her like my own daughter. I turned a blind eye to everything my wife had done.’

‘But you didn’t care about that, did you, Frank? You weren’t too bothered when she went elsewhere for what you couldn’t give her,’ and Tom shook his head. ‘What was she: seventeen or eighteen when you started walking out with her? She was already too old. You’re only interested if they’re very young and you enjoy it a lot more if they struggle. Christ, your wife must have been so lonely.’

‘Shut up,’ hissed Jarvis.

‘All the way up here I kept on thinking, He can’t have done it. He can’t have killed his own daughter. Oh I knew what you’d done to Diane and Callie and God knows how many other girls, but I kept telling myself murdering Sandra was against nature. The truth is, you could kill another man’s child when she was threatening to destroy you – and Sandra would never have seen it coming because she didn’t know, did she? Did the poor girl turn her back on you, Frank? Is that what happened?’

‘Shut up,’ he said again.

‘When did you kill her? During the argument up here, or was it later? We know she never left Newcastle. That was one picture that was a fake. When we find out which bent copper identified that girl at the railway station as your daughter and derailed a massive missing person’s enquiry, he’ll be arrested too. Maybe he’ll have a story to tell. Perhaps he’ll do a deal.’

‘What did you do with the body?’ asked Tom. ‘How did you get rid of it?’ And then Tom remembered something else, something someone had told him before his first meeting with Frank Jarvis. ‘She never left, did she, Frank?’ He looked round the allotment. ‘That’s why old Harry never saw her come down off the allotment that day. You killed her here, didn’t you?’

‘Shut up!’ he roared. ‘Just shut up, for God’s sake!’

‘No, Frank, I won’t shut up. Harry caught you out, didn’t he? You didn’t see him creep up here while you were digging a trench to bury Sandra. You panicked and told him it was for your potatoes but it was the wrong season. Harry thought you were a poor gardener but you were so proud of growing all your own vegetables you wouldn’t have got that wrong. Was Sandra’s body in the shed? Did you wrap it up in something and bury her here? I’ll bet you did, and Harry will be able to tell us exactly where, won’t he?’

‘I’ll get a team up here now,’ Bradshaw told him. ‘If you’ve got something to say, any mitigation you want to give before that happens, then now is the time to tell us.’

Jarvis turned slowly back to the bench and sat down.

‘Suit yourself, Jarvis,’ said Bradshaw. ‘You’re on your own now.’

‘Alright,’ Jarvis said wearily, ‘I’ll tell you. I’ll tell you everything.’

Chapter Fifty-Four

Tom, Helen and Bradshaw formed a semicircle around Jarvis.

‘Where is she?’ asked Tom, and the councillor answered by pointing to a rough area of overturned soil where nothing grew but weeds.

‘What happened?’ asked Bradshaw.

‘You may as well tell us,’ Helen informed him, ‘we know most of it already.’

‘I was sitting here that day,’ he began, ‘when Sandra marched up to me. She was angry. She said she knew about Diane Turner. I didn’t even know who she meant.’

‘You never bothered to learn their names,’ said Tom.

‘I didn’t want to know their names,’ Jarvis corrected him.

‘That made it too real.’ Helen hissed the words at him angrily.

‘Sandra told me she knew all about me,’ he said. ‘She called me such terrible names,