The Widow(20)

Chambers told his lies and they listened. Just a quick pee. Didn’t choose a playground deliberately. Didn’t see the children. Didn’t talk to the children. Completely innocent mistake.

“Tell me, Mr. Chambers, where were you on Monday, October the second?” Sparkes asked.

“God, I don’t know. Working probably. Monday is one of my regular days. The cab controller would know. Why’d you ask?”

The question hung in the air for a beat, and then Chambers was all eyes. Sparkes almost expected an audible ding.

“That’s when that little girl went missing, isn’t it? You don’t think I had anything to do with that? Oh God, you can’t think that.”

They left him to stew for a bit while they joined their colleagues already searching his address, a bedsit in a converted Victorian house in the city’s run-down red-light area near the docks.

Leafing through the extreme porn magazines beside Chambers’s bed, Matthews sighed. “This is all about hating women, not wanting sex with kids. What’ve you got?”

Sparkes was silent. Photos of Dawn and Bella had been cut from newspapers and slipped into a clear plastic folder on the floor of the wardrobe.

The minicab controller was a bored-looking woman in her fifties, bundled up against the cold of her unheated office in a cable-knit green cardigan and fingerless mittens.

“Lee Chambers? What’s he been up to? More of his accidental flashing?” She laughed and slurped a Red Bull.

“He’s a nasty little man,” she said as she flicked through the records. “Everyone thinks so, but he knows a friend of the boss.” She was interrupted by the fizz of static and a voice rendered robotic by the tinny speakers and gave some incomprehensible instructions back.

“Right, where were we . . . ? Monday, October second. Here we are. Lee was in Fareham early on—hospital run for a regular customer. All quiet until lunch, and then he picked up a couple from the airport at Eastleigh to go to Portsmouth. Dropped about fourteen hundred. Last job of the day.”

She printed out the details for them and turned back to the microphone as they left without saying good-bye.

“They call this firm Rapists’ Cabs in the nightclubs,” Sergeant Matthews said. “I’ve told my girls never to use them.”

The team was all over Chambers’s life; his former wife was already waiting for a chat with Sparkes and Matthews, and his colleagues and landlord were being questioned.

Donna Chambers, hard-faced with thick, homemade highlights, hated her former husband, but she didn’t think he would hurt a child.

“He’s just a wanker who can’t keep it in his trousers,” she said.

Neither of the detectives dared catch the other’s eye. “Bit of a Romeo, then?”

The list was long—almost impressive—as she detailed how Lee Chambers had worked his way through her friends, work colleagues, and even her hairdresser.

“Every time he said it would never happen again,” the wronged wife said. “He had a high sex drive, he said. Anyway, he was very bitter when I finally left him and threatened to come after any bloke I saw, but nothing came of it. All talk. The thing is, he’s a born liar. He can’t tell the truth.”

“What about the indecent exposure? Is that a new thing?”

Mrs. Chambers shrugged. “Well, he didn’t do it when we were married. Maybe he ran out of women who fell for his lines. Sounds desperate, doesn’t it? Horrible thing to do, but he is a horrible man.”

The landlord knew little about him. Chambers paid his rent on time, made no noise, and put out his rubbish. Perfect tenant. But the other drivers had stories to tell. One of them told the detectives about the magazines Lee Chambers sold and swapped from the boot of his car.

“He used to set up a stall at motorway service areas for lorry drivers and other blokes who like that sort of thing. You know, photos of violent sex, rape, and kidnap. That kind of stuff. He said he made quite a bit of money.”

He was a horrible man, everyone agreed, but that didn’t make him a child abductor, Sparkes said miserably to his sergeant.

During their second interview with Chambers later that afternoon, he claimed he’d kept the cuttings in the folder because he fancied Dawn Elliott.

“I cut pictures of women I’m attracted to out of the papers all the time. Cheaper than the skin mags,” he offered. “I’ve got a high sex drive.”

“Where did you go when you finished the job in Portsmouth, Mr. Chambers?”

“Home,” he said emphatically.

“Anyone see you there?”

“No. Everyone was out working, and I’m on my own. I watch telly when I’m off-duty and wait for the next call out.”

“Someone says they saw a man with long hair walking down the road where Bella Elliott was playing.”

“Not me. I was at home,” Chambers said, touching his ponytail nervously.

Sparkes felt dirty when he came out of the interview room for a short break.

“He deserves locking up just for breathing,” Matthews said, joining his boss in the corridor.

“We’ve spoken to the fare, and they say he helped them in with their suitcase and they offered him a cold drink but he left straightaway. No witnesses to his whereabouts after that.”

As they talked, Chambers sauntered past them with an officer. “Where are you going?” Sparkes snapped.