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  ‘Very gratifying. And it’s Anna, by the way.’

  They were back on the M5 within minutes and heading north.

  Hawley sipped his coffee. Eventually, he said, ‘Do you mind me asking why it is we’re doing this?’

  ‘Your idea that the victims on your list all had significant medical histories intrigues me. I need to know how it might have put them at risk.’

  Hawley’s response was a sour smile. ‘Why, so you can implicate me further?’

  ‘You’re not under suspicion, Ben. We’re undertaking a review. It’s not unusual to revisit the evidence in this way. Believe it or not, you’re my expert witness. I thought that if we got a better handle on what exactly happened that day, it might help.’

  Hawley turned to look out of the window, reluctant acceptance in his face.

  Everything she’d told him was true. That she was hoping for one little nugget of insight or trigger to crank the case forward. This was what investigating was all about. Not car chases or fights, though she’d had a few of those in her time. Mostly it was about patience. Re-examining the obvious to spot anything missed. If there was a link between the abducted children and their medical histories, a link that made them vulnerable, what could it be? More importantly, how would that information be obtained? If Edinburgh was to be believed, details had been shared between a ring of perpetrators. If on the other hand, as Anna believed, this was the work of one man, then how on earth had he gained access? She needed details, something small but vital that would plug the gap in her understanding.

  Taking the road less travelled for no other reason than the wind blows you in that direction.

  She’d learned to trust the wind.

  ‘How did you end up working in Cheltenham?’ Anna asked.

  ‘What can I tell you that you don’t know already?’

  ‘Humour me.’

  Hawley shrugged. ‘I was twenty-three. Had just finished my first-year foundation house jobs and was wondering what direction to take. It was my second six months in A and E and I was toying with a career in emergency medicine. I knew I’d need to move to a bigger unit, get on to a run-through training programme. I mean it was busy enough, don’t get me wrong, but I was still making my mind up then. A district general hospital like Cheltenham was a great introduction. The usual sort of set-up. Walking wounded on one side, the serious stuff on the other. I was getting good at dealing with most things that came through the door and the nurses knew I was good with kids. I’m one of four. I had two sisters younger than me so I wasn’t fazed if they cried or whined or screamed.’

  ‘And the day Rosie came in and you were on duty. Were you asked to see her, or was it a random act?’

  ‘I picked up the file… No, I tell a lie, one of the staff nurses gave me the file. The other junior was a locum. Older chap, not brilliant with kids. The consultant was dealing with someone having a fit and the staff grade was sorting out a fracture. So, the staff nurse found me. There was a room for eye casualties. Anything serious and we’d call the ophthalmologists, but they encouraged us to have a look and try and deal with the simple stuff. We had a dark room with a slit lamp—’

  ‘Slit lamp?’

  ‘It’s a kind of microscope used for examination. You know, you put your chin on a rest and there’s eye pieces for the observer. You’ve seen one in optometrist shops and every advert for glasses that’s ever been.’

  Anna pictured it and nodded.

  ‘Anyway, Rosie came in with her mum, clutching her eye. She wouldn’t let me examine her easily. She was photophobic from the scratches. Protocol is that you apply anaesthetic for a better look. Somehow, I managed to get her to let me put some drops in. Once they kick in, once the pain has gone, patients will open their eyes and it’s much easier.’ Hawley sat back, eyes front, remembering. ‘She was great. Chatty, cooperative. Some people hate small kids, and Rosie was Down’s, so her mental age was a bit less than eleven. In fact, I think it’s easier when they’re younger. They’re less cynical and self-aware.

  ‘I examined her on the slit lamp. The anaesthetic has a dye. It shows up scratches on the cornea. She had scratches on the upper half but no foreign body. In those circumstances, the thing to do is to look under the upper lid. Not easy in Down’s because of their lid shape, but Rosie was a trooper. She sat on her mum’s knee, I popped her lid over and there it was, the foreign body. I wiped it away, repositioned the lid and it was done.’

  ‘And you’d never seen Rosie before?’

  ‘No.’ He looked across at her. ‘And I never saw her again.’

  ‘And afterwards?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘You said that it affected you?’

  ‘You know all about the questioning. They wanted to know where I was on the day Rosie was abducted. I’d been on nights. I was in my room at the doctor’s mess alone, asleep. They didn’t like that. No witnesses for sleep. Then the press got hold of it.’ Hawley’s smile was razor-thin and bitter. ‘In fact, it wasn’t so much the press as your lot. I was taken from a clinic. The officers who came for me made no bones about making sure everyone knew what it was about. That sort of mud sticks. They released me but I was branded. You’d think intelligent people like nurses and doctors and hospital administrators would see beyond the dirt.’ Hawley shook his head. ‘The next day, someone spray-painted ‘paedo’ on my car. Day after that the local papers printed a story about a health professional taken in for questioning. It spread like wildfire. I took the decision to leave the department.’ He turned away, looked out of his window at the traffic. ‘I don’t see children anymore. I make sure the departments I go into know that.’

  ‘Was that some sort of prerequisite? A requirement of you continuing to practise?’

  ‘No,’ Hawley said, still with his face turned away. ‘There were no charges. I wasn’t reported to the GMC. Nothing like that. It’s self-imposed. Punishment, if you like.’

  ‘Punishment?’ Anna tilted her head. It was an odd word to use.

  ‘Yes. Because for some bloody weird reason, your lot has managed to make me feel guilty for what happened. I… I don’t trust kids anymore.’

  His words were spoken quietly, dejectedly. Anna felt like she ought to say something but failed to find any words that would fit.

  They sat in silence for a while until Anna turned the radio back on. After a long contemplative beat, Hawley continued. ‘They never found out who spoke to the press. And they stopped short of actually naming me. But there was enough there to make life intolerable. The headline was something like, “Accused doctor in missing schoolgirl case asked to leave department.” None of it was true but the police made no attempt to clear my name. They simply made it obvious that I was a person of interest. And clearly I still am.’

  ‘You don’t like us much, do you?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘We’re not all like—’

  ‘Sergeant Woakes?’

  ‘I was going to say like the people who interviewed you at that time.’

  ‘But Woakes is. And there are still a lot of officers like him out there.’

  She thought about protesting but there was an element of truth in what Hawley said. She’d experienced the worst kind of institutionalised bigotry and poor policing when she’d investigated the Woodsman case a few months ago.

  ‘And here we are travelling to Cheltenham,’ Hawley continued, ‘because you still have that little worry. That grain of doubt I’m somehow involved.’

  ‘I am not Sergeant Woakes,’ she said, surprising herself again by the firmness with which she delivered it.

  He took his time before responding. ‘I’d like to believe that, Inspector. Truly, I would’

  ‘It’s Anna.’

  ‘OK, Anna.’

  ‘Then believe it.’

  Hawley let a beat go by. ‘Is that a Welsh accent I’m hearing, by the way?’

  She felt her defences come up. Other people had asked her this question. Men in bars, on courses,
people with opinions she didn’t want to hear. But this time it was different.

  It’s called having a normal bloody conversation, Anna.

  ‘It is.’

  ‘Wales is a small country. This is probably the point at which I’m supposed to ask if you knew my aunt in Sully.’ He laughed.

  ‘Never been to Sully until three days ago.’

  ‘So, what’s your story, Anna?’

  ‘My story is very boring.’

  ‘Not fair. You have my file. You know all about me. This is me wanting a little payback for cooperating.’

  ‘Not much to tell.’

  ‘Oh, I don’t believe that, Anna. Not for one minute.’

  He was easy to talk to. Damaged, clearly, but still a normal guy. Anna couldn’t find a good reason for not opening up.

  ‘What can I tell you? I grew up in a Welsh valley in post-industrial decline. My sister and I were the schoolteacher’s daughters. We got some stick for that. My dad insisted we live in the middle of the community. He was principled in that way. Until the burglaries in the street got too much for him to stomach and we moved out to a semi-rural semi-detached.’

  ‘It sounds rough.’

  ‘It was, looking back. But you accepted all the teenage pregnancies and made damned sure one of them wasn’t you.’

  ‘Your sister – older or younger?’

  ‘Younger and from a different planet. You’d like her. Pretty, sociable, life and soul.’

  Hawley’s eyes narrowed. ‘Not the same planet as you, is that what you’re saying?’

  ‘Definitely not. Let’s just say she adapted to the situation better than I did.’

  ‘And why the police? As a career choice, I mean.’

  She told him about her three years at Goldsmiths and her criminology degree, and about how the challenge, the constant problem-solving, had appealed to her. He, in turn, told her about his normal upbringing in Devon and his training in London and the many stops and hops a junior doctor had to make before ending up in Bristol. But as they got closer to Cheltenham, conversation died away and he became increasingly subdued.

  ‘Is this the first time you’ve been back here, Ben?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Everything will have changed.’

  ‘Not everything.’

  Anna took the motorway exit. She didn’t know it well but she’d visited more than once and was close enough a neighbour of the Gloucestershire constabulary to know what went on under the surface. The plummy, Cheltenham Ladies College, Regency Spa veneer still worked for the busloads of tourists. Over the last twenty years, yummies and yuppies slowly infiltrated the town, piggybacking in on the back of lucrative jobs from the software companies. But with money comes drugs, and the nice middle-class Chelters retirees had a reputation for Nimbyism – the not-in-my-backyard brigade – that bordered sometimes on out-and-out racism.

  The centre of town possessed a character all its own. On its periphery, the hospital looked over the college and new bits had been added on to the sandstone facade. She’d rung ahead, and the receptionist in A and E made them wait while she contacted an administrator. Only half the seats in the reception area were occupied. The General, it seemed, was meeting its waiting times target.

  The administrator, when she arrived, looked even younger than Holder. She took them through and introduced them to an efficient but harassed-looking charge nurse in navy scrubs who listened to Anna explain what she needed.

  ‘Well, there’s never a quiet moment.’

  ‘We’ll try not to get in the way,’ Anna said.

  The charge nurse did not know Hawley and shook his hand when Anna made the introduction.

  ‘Could do with the help once you’ve finished,’ he joked.

  Hawley smiled, but Anna sensed the anxiety fluttering beneath the surface.

  ‘You remember the layout?’ the charge nurse asked.

  Hawley nodded and pointed to a central station with desks and screens separated from the treatment areas by etched glass. ‘Computer stations.’ He turned to his left. ‘Resus and major trauma.’ He turned back the other way. ‘Treatment cubicles and minor injuries and side rooms.’ He smiled and cocked an eyebrow. ‘That’s it. Now I’m trying to think who’s still here? Oh, wait, do you remember Coleen Bridges?’

  Hawley nodded, his expression softening. ‘Of course.’

  ‘She’s a junior sister now and you’re in luck. She’s on duty. Let me find her.’

  The charge nurse disappeared, leaving Anna and Hawley alone while all around them the unit buzzed with noise and people getting on with it.

  ‘You OK?’ Anna asked.

  ‘Yeah. Slightly weirded out maybe.’

  ‘This nurse Bridges, are you OK with her?’

  ‘Yes. She was on with me the day I saw Rosie.’

  ‘Ben?’ said a voice from behind them.

  Anna turned. A thirty-something heavy-set woman, dressed in navy scrubs and with her dark hair piled on the top of her head, walked up to Hawley and gave him a hug. Hawley turned a nice shade of pink and reciprocated.

  The charge nurse nodded. ‘Right, I’ll leave you three to it.’

  ‘My God, Ben, how have you been?’ Coleen looked him up and down.

  ‘OK. I’m fine. You?’

  ‘Same old. Can’t believe I’m still here, what is it, nearly ten years on? Tried Australia, didn’t like it. So back I came. Where are you now?’

  ‘Locum stuff. Bristol mainly.’

  Coleen sighed. ‘Is this still about…?’

  ‘Yes, it is. Coleen, this is Inspector Gwynne.’

  Anna shook Coleen’s hand. ‘Thanks for sparing us some time.’

  ‘There’s never enough of it, so I’ve stopped beating myself up. I don’t get paid for getting an ulcer.’

  ‘Ben has agreed to help me understand what happened the day he saw Rosie Dawson.’

  ‘That’s easy. She came in with a sore eye.’

  ‘I’m familiar with all those details. I wanted to get a sense of place. A feel for the day.’

  ‘It was summer. They’d been out for the day as I remember.’

  ‘You had to give a statement, too. I’ve read it,’ Anna said.

  Coleen nodded. ‘We brought her in to the minor side. Sat her and her mum in a cubicle.’ They followed as Coleen walked past someone sitting in a chair, obviously out of breath, along a bank of blue chequered curtains, all drawn. She pulled one back and made a face before closing it again.

  ‘This is the one, I seem to remember. It’s occupied, I’m afraid. Hand injury.’

  Anna nodded, looking around. ‘Once she was in here, she’d be out of sight of everyone in the waiting room?’

  ‘Totally,’ Coleen said. ‘She was triaged in here. We tried washing out her eye, but she wasn’t cooperative enough. So, I called in the cavalry.’

  Hawley took over. ‘I came over, assessed her, no joy on the exam. I fetched some Oxybuprocaine drops from the eye room.’

  ‘Eye room?’

  Coleen walked a few steps further on. Three rooms at the end of the corridor in an L-shaped arrangement. The last one opened into what was nothing more than a large cubicle full of machines. Coleen pressed a switch, and a light box on one wall lit up showing an illuminated set of letters.

  ‘Acuity test,’ she said.

  ‘And this is the slit lamp I was taking about,’ Hawley said.

  In the middle of the room was a table on wheels on which sat a tall, thin, skeletal-looking instrument on one side of which were some eye pieces. Anna nodded and scanned the room. There was another chair and an array of instruments attached to the wall; she recognised a blood pressure cuff but the other bits slotted into holders meant nothing to her.

  Hawley caught her staring. ‘Ophthalmoscope, otoscope, electronic thermometer and sphyg,’ he said.

  ‘So, once you’d applied the drops to Rosie and they’d worked, you brought her in here?

  ‘Yes,’ Hawley said.

  ‘Erm well
, no, not actually here. We took her next door, remember?’

  Coleen took them to a second room, this one bigger with an adjustable couch, a desk, a couple of chairs and much better lighting. ‘Yes. We brought the slit lamp in here because equipment was being serviced in the eye room.’

  ‘OK,’ Anna said. ‘She came in here, you examined her on her mum’s knee. Then on the slit lamp.’

  ‘Yes. Then I sat at that desk.’ Hawley pointed. ‘Rosie and her mum sat on that chair.’ He pointed towards the other corner.

  ‘And you were the only other person in the room the whole time?’ Anna asked Coleen.

  ‘All the time.’

  ‘And afterwards?’

  ‘I think we put a pad on Rosie’s eye. One with a teddy bear on it,’ Coleen said. ‘I went back to the station to write everything up.’

  ‘OK,’ Anna said. ‘Great.’ She walked out into the treatment area and looked around, leaving Coleen and Hawley alone to catch up.

  She stared out into the treatment area, swarming with staff, at the sitting area beyond rapidly filling with the sick and injured waiting for succour. She knew she was clutching at straws in coming here. But something had pulled her in this direction. Hawley’s theory? Hawley himself?

  She’d read all the pertinent documents from the previous investigation. They’d taken statements from staff at the hospital to corroborate Hawley’s account, Coleen included. And later, they’d requested copies of the CCTV footage that backed up his story of where he was at the time Rosie was abducted. Their interest was not in the hospital; it was in the man who worked there and who’d had such intimate contact with Rosie.

  A one-off incident.

  There’d been no reason to extend the investigation into the unit or the hospital itself, other than to eliminate any possible known offenders. And that would not have been difficult since all hospital workers would have been run through the Disclosure and Barring Service as a matter of course prior to their employment. So where did you draw the line? You could not interview everyone who’d visited the A and E that day. What about the day-trippers who’d been to Sudeley Castle at the same time that Rosie had visited? Or everyone at the motorway service station the Dawsons stopped off at on their way up from Bristol that morning?