‘Tell me everything, George. It’ll be better for you in the long run.’
Collins took a deep sigh, his hands knotted together and his head bent down as he stared at the carpet.
‘I’m sorry, Julie called my office and they contacted me to say she’d rung. I’d normally have been at work, but I’d taken most of the day off to play in a golf competition. I’d just returned home when they called but I had no contact number for her so I couldn’t call her back.’
‘We have a witness who heard her making a call to you.’
Jane glanced at Bradfield. He appeared totally relaxed leaning back in his chair.
‘Yes, I did speak with her. I’d only been here about half an hour when she rang. She was hysterical and crying, and said she wanted to come home. You have to understand how difficult it was for me.’
‘So what did she say to you?’
‘Well, as usual she was belligerent and asking for money so I put the phone down on her. I was upset – she always made me feel wretched. Then she rang back again a while later reversing the charges from a payphone. She was calmer this time and begged me to help her, repeating over and over that she needed me, and wanted to come home. The truth is I didn’t want to talk to her, but I still loved her and so I relented. I told her she could come home, but she had no money for a bus so I went straight out and picked her up near a hospital in Hackney. She looked terrible, and was shaking and crying.’
‘What time was this?’
‘Erm, she called just after I got home from a game of golf. I’d not played a good round so I didn’t stay on and it would have been perhaps five or five thirty in the afternoon I picked her up.’
He paused and took a deep breath, clearly distraught at recounting what happened, and he continued to look down at the floor.
‘I heated up some soup for her. Her nose was running and she was shaking, her face was gaunt and her body so thin she was hardly recognizable as my daughter. And the clothes she was wearing were awful. I was glad her mother wasn’t here to see her.’
Bradfield was taking notes, but thought Mr Collins was being evasive and considered putting pressure on him to reveal exactly what he did do to his daughter. Realizing it could make him clam up Bradfield thought better of it and flicked through his notes before tapping a page with his pen.
‘So this was roughly about two weeks or so before her body was found?’
Mr Collins nodded and replied that it was a Thursday.
‘When she first called you, what exactly did she say?’
‘I just told you, she wanted money and-’
‘Sorry, yes, you said that, but did she call you “Father” or use any familiar term?’
Mr Collins looked perplexed and shrugged his shoulders.
‘She shouted and was very abusive and I believe she said, “Daddy, you have to help me.”’
Bradfield flicked a page of his notebook and Jane saw him underline something.
‘So what happened when you both got back here?’
Collins straightened up and leaned forwards in the wing chair. ‘On previous occasions when she had turned up unannounced she would make promises, but then steal from her mother’s purse, or take the housekeeping money, not to mention anything else of value that she could sell for drugs, then she’d disappear again. This time I was not going to be hoodwinked by her, so I said she could sleep in the box room. I wanted to make sure she couldn’t leave so I took my screwdriver and put a clasp and padlock on the door. All the while she was making promises: if I helped her she would straighten out and get her life back together. She promised to go back to school and sit her A levels – something I had heard many times before. She agreed to be locked in the box room for her own good, but only if I helped her.’
Bradfield doubted Julie Ann would have agreed to be locked up.
‘Why the box room, and what did she want from you?’
‘There was less in there for her to smash up as she came off the heroin and mostly she wanted money. She told me she had been raped, was now pregnant and had been to see someone in Brixton who would give her an abortion for a hundred pounds. It was hard to believe she was telling me the truth because she looked so wasted and undernourished. However, she said I could go with her so I would know she wasn’t lying.’
He paused and took a deep breath, still leaning forwards staring at the carpet with his hands held in front of him.
‘Go on, Mr Collins,’ Bradfield said, encouraging him to continue.
‘Well, I was shocked, but still wondered if she was telling the truth or after money. I told her that an abortion was wrong and if she had the baby then her mother and I would stand by her and help raise the child.’
His voice cracked as he continued and slowly explained how Julie held his hand, kissing it and promising to be everything he had ever wanted. Tears trickled down the side of his nose. He described how he had sat with her in the box room until she had fallen asleep exhausted. He had then padlocked her in the room before going downstairs.
