‘That he wasn’t there,’ said Potter, slightly surprised that she’d said it out loud.
‘Tell me about the baby’s dummy,’ said Charlesworth, turning to Dixon when he’d finished glaring at Potter.
That hadn’t taken long. Dixon had only updated the Policy Log twenty minutes ago.
‘We found it in the glovebox of Deirdre Baxter’s car, and it’s being tested for DNA.’
‘What are the chances of that?’ scoffed Yeend.
‘It’s the same car she had at the time, and probably drove to the Palace Hotel for the bridge tournament. It’s been sitting in her garage for the last twenty years without moving, so who knows?’ replied Dixon. ‘It’s unlikely, I’ll give you that. Are you suggesting we shouldn’t check it?’
‘Of course not.’
‘Is the father’s DNA on the system?’ asked Potter.
‘No.’
‘Good luck getting that,’ said Yeend.
‘He’s a suspect, isn’t he?’ replied Dixon. ‘So, if he doesn’t volunteer it, I get a warrant.’
‘A suspect?’
‘Someone has killed the Somerset bridge team. It could be the father out of revenge because he thinks they were complicit in the abduction of his son. It could be the son himself, come back to exact his revenge. Either that or they’re being silenced for some reason.’
‘Silenced?’ Yeend was glaring at Charlesworth now.
‘Why else leave George Sampson alive?’ Dixon folded his arms. ‘There’s no need to kill him, is there, no need to silence him, because he’s got dementia.’
‘So, what happens now?’ asked Charlesworth, clearly keen to move the conversation along.
‘We’re revisiting all of the witnesses to the fire and asking them specifically about the baby boy. We’ve got the CCTV to go through, and I’m going to see Sean Rodwell at his halfway house in Weston in the morning.’
‘Oh, that’s bloody marvellous, that is.’ Yeend was seething now, his teeth gritted. ‘He lied, and the CPS fell for it in the end. They dropped the charge. And we did all this at the time. We had posters up, it was even on Crimewatch for heaven’s sake; a woman with a red coat carrying a baby, and no one came forward. No one.’
‘All right, Andrew,’ said Charlesworth, his tone conciliatory. ‘I really don’t think there’s any suggestion here that Devon and Cornwall got anything wrong, that there were any gaps in the investigation or anything like that. That’s right, isn’t it, Nick?’
‘Yes, Sir,’ replied Dixon. ‘I’ve got the statements the murder victims gave at the time. They were clearly asked the question and, if Rodwell was telling the truth, they must have lied. It explains perhaps why they went their separate ways after the fire; none of the pairs ever played bridge together again competitively.’
‘And Devon and Cornwall are part of the regional task force looking at it again, aren’t they?’ Charlesworth was looking at Yeend, pleading almost.
‘I understand that, David. I’m just concerned how it’s going to look for us if it turns out the boy was alive all along and we didn’t find him.’
‘What do you say to that, Nick?’
‘There’s not a lot I can say to that, Sir. Whether he’s alive or not is a question of fact. It might be a PR disaster for Devon and Cornwall, but there’s not a lot I can do about it. I’m sure you wouldn’t expect interforce collaboration to extend to covering it up.’ He gave an apologetic shrug. ‘If you’ll forgive me, shit happens.’
‘I’ve always fancied one of these,’ said Louise, admiring the display of hot tubs from the passenger seat of Dixon’s Land Rover as he drove into the small industrial estate on the edge of Glastonbury. ‘Look at the size of them. Some are as big as small swimming pools.’
No doubt there’d be a comment about a hot tub adding value to a house. Dixon braced himself.
‘Good selling point too.’
It was a meeting Dixon had been dreading, even before Campbell’s comment about his own encounter with the boy’s father all those years ago. No doubt the fire still burned brightly, even with the passage of time.
William Hudson had moved on by all accounts. He had married again and had two children with his new wife – Dixon never ceased to be amazed by the information people gave away freely on Facebook. There was even a post on what would have been Patrick’s birthday each year; a picture of the baby boy, ‘gone but not forgotten’.
‘Let’s not forget, first and foremost, he’s a suspect in the murders of four people and we’re going to need chapter and verse about where he was at the relevant times.’ Dixon was saying it out loud more for his benefit than Louise’s. ‘A DNA sample too.’
‘Are you going tell him about the baby’s dummy?’ she asked.
‘Yes.’ Dixon parked outside the hot tub showroom, only one other car in the car park. ‘We need to see if Patrick had one the same.’
A man sitting at a glass desk glanced at them through the windows, quickly turning back to his computer; a young couple in a beaten-up old Land Rover, hardly the stuff of a hot tub sale late on a rainy Thursday in January.
‘Probably thinks we’re a pair of tyre-kickers,’ said Louise. ‘No one’s spoken to him yet.’
Tall, smartly dressed in suit trousers and a shirt, open at the neck, a jacket slung over the back of his chair. It had been a conscious decision to catch him at work, just before closing, away from his new wife and family. If he was going to talk freely about his old life, then it was best done away from the new.
‘Let’s get it over and done with,’ said Dixon, opening the driver’s door.
Hudson Spas; Campbell had said the family were not short of a bob or two.
They were through the glass doors before he looked away from his computer again, appearing surprised that they were ignoring the hot tubs.
‘William Hudson?’
