Chapter 21

Chapter 21

Duncan Edwards’ address leads them to Essex and a high-rise building that’s clearly seen better days. Parking the car on a nearby street, Jennie and Zuri get out and walk across the road to the block of flats. The atmosphere is frosty between them and they haven’t spoken on the way over other than to prep for this interview. Jennie knows she needs to talk to Zuri about the photograph and her conversation with the DCI, but she wants to stay focused on the case right now, so she looks up at the building and tries to distract herself.

Built in the Sixties, the place is a blocky and brutalist pebble-dashed monstrosity. As they get closer Jennie sees that the intercom has been vandalised – the front panel has been ripped off and the electrical wires are spilling out like multicoloured spaghetti. She briefly wonders how they’re going to get inside, before realising one of the glass front doors has been propped open with a red fire extinguisher.

Inside, the lift is out of order and so they take the urine-scented concrete stairs up to the seventh floor. As they push through the graffiti-tagged door onto the landing, a combination of loud dance music, children screeching, and what sounds like some kind of drilling assaults their ears.

‘Jesus,’ mutters Jennie. She turns to her DS. ‘What flat is it?’

‘713,’ says Zuri, peering at the numbers on the doors closest to them. ‘I think it’s this way.’

They turn right along the corridor and follow it round. Gradually, the drilling noise fades, replaced by the sound of a crying baby from a nearby flat. 713 is at the far end of the corridor, next to a fire escape. The beige carpet tiles between Edwards’ flat and its nearest neighbour are spotlessly hoovered and there is a smart-looking welcome mat outside the door. Jennie presses the buzzer and steps back, waiting beside Zuri.

A few seconds later, the door is opened on the security chain and a cautious male voice comes from behind the door. ‘Yes?’

‘Duncan Edwards?’ asks Zuri, craning her neck to try to see the person the voice belongs to.

‘Who wants to know?’ The man’s voice has a slight tremor to it.

‘It’s the police, Mr Edwards,’ replies Jennie. ‘We’re investigating the murder of Hannah Jennings. Can we come in?’

‘I need you to show me some ID.’

‘No problem.’ Jennie takes out her warrant card and holds it up to the peephole in the door, then Zuri does the same. ‘Now can you let us in?’

There’s no answer, but she hears the sound of the chain being removed. When the door opens, the man standing there looks nothing like the attractive teacher pictured in the original case file. This man looks withered and grey, aged beyond his years.

‘Duncan Edwards?’ asks Jennie.

The man’s expression is wary. ‘You lot fucked up my life before, and now she’s been found, you’re back to finish me off?’

‘We need to ask you some questions,’ says Jennie. She wonders if her old art teacher will recognise her. He must have read her name on the ID she showed him.

‘How bloody marvellous.’ Duncan Edwards shakes his head and steps back, opening the door wider. He shows no signs of recognition.

The studio flat smells of pot noodle and mildew, and the cramped space seems barely large enough for the three of them. Edwards sits awkwardly on his unmade bed, Jennie perches on the only seat – a battered green leather armchair – and Zuri leans against the small fridge in the corner.

Edwards eyes Jennie with undisguised hostility. ‘What do you want to know, then?’

Normally, Jennie would try to build some rapport with a subject before going for the weightier questions, but given Duncan Edwards’ behaviour she doubts any amount of soft pedalling is going to help. ‘Were you having a relationship with Hannah Jennings?’

‘No, I wasn’t.’ Edwards crosses his arms. ‘Like I told you lot back when she first disappeared, Hannah and I had a professional student-teacher relationship, nothing more. I was in a relationship with a grown-up woman. I didn’t want anything more.’

‘But there were rumours that there was more to your relationship with Hannah than just a professional one?’ asks Jennie.

‘Yes, there were,’ says Edwards, scratching at his straggly beard. ‘Those bloody kids were always starting some kind of drama or other.’

‘You’re saying there wasn’t any substance to them?’ presses Jennie.

‘There wasn’t any substance,’ says Edwards, irate. ‘I was barely twenty-three when I was teaching at White Cross Academy – only a few years older than the students – so they thought I was fair game. It was like a sport to some of those girls – love notes tucked into their homework, topless polaroids left in my desk drawer, offers of staying behind to help “tidy up”. It was full on harassment.’

‘And Hannah was like that?’ asks Zuri.

‘No. Hannah never pulled any of that shit. She was a good student, that was it. I encouraged her painting. She had talent. Like I told the officers back when she first disappeared, there was never any funny business.’

Jennie isn’t sure she believes Edwards. He’s too twitchy. ‘You said you were in a relationship at the time?’

Edwards exhales loudly. ‘We were engaged. We’d been together nearly three years when Hannah went missing, but with all the press attention, and the way people would come after us, me, in the street … let’s just say she ended things pretty fast.’ He glares at Jennie. ‘Even though I wasn’t guilty of anything.’

Jennie has read about the relationship in the original investigation file, but she needs confirmation. ‘Can you tell us who you were in a relationship with?’

Edwards frowns. ‘Angela Totley. It should be in your files. I had to repeat it to your lot often enough when you hounded me before.’

Miss Totley had been one of the English teachers at White Cross Academy. ‘And have you seen her since?’

‘Yeah, right, like she’d want anything to do with me,’ says Edwards, bitterly. The springs creak as he shuffles back on the bed. ‘I wasn’t guilty of anything but ever since the papers printed my picture back in 1994, I’ve been treated as if I am. I mean, I wasn’t even a bloody suspect, but that didn’t matter, did it? No one cares about the bloody truth.’

‘So you haven’t seen her?’ asks Zuri.

‘No. She made it very clear she didn’t want anything more to do with me, so I’ve stayed away. I always hoped Hannah would come forward one day, alive and well, and maybe then I’d be able to rekindle something with Angela.’ He laughs bitterly. ‘That’s never going to happen now, is it?’

Jennie and Zuri say nothing.

‘Yeah, I’m a lost bloody cause, and it’s all because of you lot. Do you know I was top of my class in teaching training? I got a bloody first-class degree as well. I should have been a head of year or even a headteacher by now. Instead, I’m stuck in this shithole tutoring morons online.’ He looks at Jennie, his hands clenching into fists. ‘You lot fucked me over, screwed my career and buggered the only relationship I ever cared about. And now you’re here dredging it all up again.’

‘Hannah Jennings is dead.’ Jennie holds his gaze, fed up with his self-pitying bullshit. ‘I’m sure as one of her former teachers, you’re as keen as we are to find the person responsible.’

‘Well, yes.’ Edwards unclenches his fists. Looks away, out through the grubby window. ‘I am sorry she’s dead. She was a good student, like I said.’

Jennie sees no hint of compassion in Edwards’ expression, just a man wallowing in his own bitterness. ‘Can you tell me where you were on the night Hannah Jennings went missing?’

‘I was at home, with my fiancée, having dinner,’ replies Edwards, his voice getting louder, angrier.

‘And Angela Totley will confirm that?’ asks Jennie as Zuri scribbles notes onto her scratchpad.

‘I can’t confirm anything my ex-fiancée, who I haven’t seen in over twenty years, will say. How could I?’ shouts Edwards. Cursing loudly, he gets to his feet signalling that the interview is done. ‘All I know for sure is that I never touched Hannah Jennings.’

They leave Duncan Edwards, descend the uncared-for communal stairs to the ground floor. The stench of urine is almost unbearable, and Jennie can understand how hard it must be for Edwards, having fallen so far from the leafy, picturesque town of White Cross to this rundown, concrete-covered environment. No wonder he’s bitter. But even so, his lack of sympathy for Hannah’s death shocks her. Surely, if he was truly innocent, he’d express greater sadness?

As they exit through the propped-open foyer door, Jennie turns to Zuri and nods back towards the stairs. ‘That man really creeps me out.’

‘Yeah, he’s a creep, but I’m not sure he’s guilty of anything more,’ replies Zuri.

Jennie grimaces. Her intuition tells her Edwards is dodgy, but they’ve got nothing concrete from the interview. It’s so frustrating. The harder she digs, the murkier things become. ‘He’s hiding something.’

‘Maybe, says Zuri, thoughtfully. ‘But he’s not the only one. Rob Marwood withheld a hell of a lot of information from the first investigation. Elliott Naylor did too.’

Jennie nods. Zuri’s clearly still gunning for the darkroom crew but she has a valid point. Although Jennie isn’t totally convinced, she can feel doubt starting to niggle at her resolve. She wonders if schoolyard loyalty has blinded her to the truth.

Has she been looking in the wrong place all along?