The Widow(23)

“Mike left the depot just before lunchtime—it’s a one-and-a-half-to-two-hour journey if the M25 doesn’t come to a standstill,” Mr. Johnstone said.

“What time did he deliver the parcel?” Sparkes asked.

“Hold on. I’ll have to call you back when I’ve got the paperwork in front of me.”

As he hung up, Sparkes shouted: “Matthews. In here now!” and handed over the computer search to his sergeant as his phone rang again.

“He dropped first at two oh five,” Johnstone said. “Signed for and everything. The second drop time doesn’t seem to figure on this sheet. Not sure why. Anyway, they didn’t see him come back. The office staff clock out at five and, according to this, the van was left on the forecourt, clean and hoovered out for the next day’s work.”

“Okay, that’s great. We’ll need to talk to him, just in case. He might’ve seen something helpful to us. Where does he live, your driver?” Sparkes asked, fighting to quell a note of excitement in his voice. He wrote down an address in southeast London on his notepad.

“You’ve been very helpful, Mr. Johnstone. Thanks very much for phoning in.” He ended the call.

An hour later he and Matthews were on their way up the M3.

At first glance the driver’s profile on the police computer hadn’t contained anything to make their pulses race. Mike Doonan was in his late fifties, lived alone, had been a driver for years, and was reluctant to pay his parking fines. But Matthews’s scan of the police database had pulled him up as “of interest” to the boys on the Operation Gold team. “Of interest” meant there was a possible link to child sex abuse websites. The Operation Gold team was working its way through a list of hundreds of men in the UK whose credit cards appeared to have been used to visit specific sites. They were concentrating on those with access to kiddies first—the teachers, social workers, care staff, Scout leaders—then moving on to the rest. They hadn’t yet reached Doonan (DOB 04/05/56; profession: driver; status: council tenant, divorced, three children) and, at the current pace of the investigation, were not due to knock on his door for another year.

“I’ve got a good feeling about this,” Sparkes told his sergeant. Everything was in position. Met officers had been discreetly placed to watch the address, but no one was to move until the Hampshire officers arrived.

The DI’s mobile buzzed in his hand.

“We’re on. He’s at home,” he said when he hung up.

Mike Doonan was marking his race card in the Daily Star when he heard his doorbell.

Swinging his bulk forward to stand out of his armchair, he groaned. The pain shot down his left leg, and he had to stand for a moment, to catch his breath.

“Hang on. I’m coming,” he shouted.

When he cracked open the door onto the walkway, it was not his Good Samaritan neighbor with his Saturday delivery of lager and sliced bread but two men in suits.

“If you’re Mormons, I’ve already got enough ex-wives,” he said, and made to close the door.

“Mr. Michael Doonan?” Sparkes said. “We’re police officers, and we’d like to talk to you for a moment.”

“Bloody hell, it isn’t about a parking ticket, is it? I thought I’d cleared them all. Come in, then.”

In the tiny sitting room of his council flat, he lowered himself into his chair slowly. “Back’s buggered,” he said, gasping from a spasm of pain.

At the mention of Bella Elliott, he stopped wincing.

“Poor little thing. I was in Portsmouth that lunchtime on a job. Is that why you’re here? I told the boss he ought to ring in when the papers said about the dark blue van—you know I drove one that color—but he said he didn’t want coppers sniffing around his business. Not sure why—you’ll have to ask him. Anyway, I was nowhere near where the little girl lived. Just did my job and came back.”

Doonan continued to be helpful to a fault, offering his thoughts on the case and what should happen to “the bastard who took her.”

“I’d do anything to get my hands on him. Mind you, couldn’t do much if I did, not the state I’m in.”

“How long have you been in this state, Mr. Doonan?” Sergeant Matthews asked.

“Years. I’ll be in a wheelchair soon.”

The officers listened patiently, then broached his alleged interest in Internet child pornography. He laughed when they talked about Operation Gold.

“I haven’t even got a computer. Not my kind of thing. Bit of a technophobe, if I’m honest. Anyway, all these investigations are bollocks, aren’t they? Clever blokes in Russia stealing credit card numbers and selling them on to pedos, it says in the papers. Don’t take my word for it. Have a look around, Officers.”

Sparkes and Matthews took up his offer, pushing through clothes jammed into a wardrobe and lifting the mattress on Doonan’s bed to look in the storage bags underneath. “Lot of women’s clothes, Mr. Doonan,” Matthews observed.

“Yes, bit of a cross-dresser when the mood takes me.” Doonan laughed easily. Too easily, Sparkes thought.

“Nah, the clothes belonged to my latest ex-wife. Haven’t got around to chucking them out.”

There was no sign of a child.

“Do you have kids, Mr. Doonan?”