by P. F. Ford
‘Don’t you have a son?’ asked Slater.
The colour seemed to drain from Hudson’s face, and his mouth flapped open once or twice before he managed to squeeze any words out. ‘Jesus! That was another lifetime ago.’
‘I’m sorry,’ said Slater. ‘I can see this has come as a bit of a shock. Are you sure we can’t sit down somewhere?’
‘Err, yes, come on through.’ Like a man in a daze, he led them through a door into the kitchen. He pointed to a rather rustic-looking table. ‘Take a seat,’ he said. They took adjoining seats, and Hudson chose to sit opposite them.
‘I don’t understand,’ he said as he slumped into his chair. ‘There must be some sort of mistake. I know I fathered a son once, but that was years ago. I’ve never actually set eyes on him.’
‘I know this must be very confusing for you,’ said Slater. ‘The thing is, we’ve uncovered a little boy’s body, and DNA evidence tell us you’re his father.’
Hudson stared at Slater for a moment and then buried his face in his hands.
‘I’ll make us some tea,’ said Watson, getting up from the table.
‘Where did you find him?’ asked Hudson eventually. ‘And his mother? Was she with him?’
‘I’m afraid we found him buried just outside a village called Trillington,’ explained Slater, careful to avoid mention of the ditch he was actually found in. ‘He was alone.’
‘I always knew something like this must have happened,’ Hudson said. ‘I told the police at the time, but they wouldn’t listen to me. They told me I was making it up, that she’d run off with another man, but I knew that couldn’t be right.’
‘If you’re talking about your girlfriend, we haven’t found her,’ said Slater.
‘She wouldn’t have left the baby,’ said Hudson. ‘She just wouldn’t.’
Watson appeared with three cups of tea.
‘The child we found wasn’t a baby,’ said Slater. ‘We’re not sure of his exact age yet, but we believe he was between six and ten years old. He had been dead for about ten years when we found him.’
Now Hudson added confusion to his distressed face.
‘That can’t be right,’ he said. ‘I searched that village. They weren’t there, either of them. If they had run away, why would they have come back? It makes no sense.’
‘Do you know a woman called Diana Randall?’ asked Slater.
‘Yes, I know her. I used to work and live on a farm owned by a man called Major Stanley. Diana was one of his neighbours.’
‘How would you describe your relationship with her?’
A puzzled frown creased Hudson’s forehead. ‘I didn’t have a relationship with her. She was just a friend of a friend.’
‘But you socialised with her?’
‘The Major and his wife were very good to me. They treated me like one of the family. If he was having friends round, he would often invite me to join them so, yes, I would have had a drink with her and her husband on occasions. Why are you asking me about her? What has she got to do with anything?’
‘You know she lost a son?’
‘Yes, I did know. He disappeared a couple of weeks before I moved away. I did help with the first searches, but I’d taken this job here and they needed me so I had to leave.’
Slater produced some photos and set them down on the table. ‘These are one or two items found with the body that make us think the child we have found is Diana Randall’s son, but she says it’s not. Do you recognise any of them?’
‘But you just said he was my son,’ said Hudson. He frowned as he glanced at the photos. He was obviously confused. Then the frown suddenly vanished as he realised what Slater was suggesting. ‘What? You think I’m the father of her son?’ he asked indignantly. ‘That boy was born before I moved up there. I didn’t even know Diana Randall back then.’
‘I’m sorry, but I had to ask the question,’ said Slater, beginning to wish he had handled this some other way.
‘Why don’t you tell us what happened back then, Mr Hudson?’ Watson suggested quickly.
Hudson got up from his chair and walked across to a sideboard, slid a drawer open, and removed an old biscuit tin. He removed the lid as he walked back to the table and sat down again. He passed a couple of photos across to them.
‘Here she is,’ he said. ‘This is the only woman I’ve ever had a baby with. Her name was Kylie Mason.’
Slater and Watson looked at the photos. A pretty face surrounded by wild, blonde curls smiled back at them. She was obviously still in her teens.
‘That was when we first met,’ explained Hudson. ‘She was sixteen, and I was twenty, but I was still a kid really. I was in the army. Major Stanley had sort of taken me under his wing, and for the first time I had a bit of confidence. I’d never had the courage to ask a girl out before, and I was sure she’d turn me down, but she said yes! It didn’t take long before I knew she was the one for me, but her parents hated me. They tried everything to keep us apart. When I told them we wanted to get married, that was the last straw. They kicked Kylie out.
‘She got a little flat, but I had to help her out with the rent, and of course we spent a lot of time there, just the two of us, and it seemed sort of perfect somehow. So I decided I should leave the army. If her parents weren’t going to look after her, I thought it should be me. Then we found out she was pregnant and there was no way we could have raised a kid in that tiny flat so we looked around for somewhere a bit bigger.
‘We found a little cottage on the outskirts of that village, Trillington, and we were all set to move in. Kylie was going to move in towards the end of October, and two months later, after I finished my last tour, I was going to join her. I even spoke to a farmer nearby about the possibility of a job when I got out.’
He fished around in the tin and produced some more photos. This time, Kylie was in various stages of her pregnancy. Then another two of a tiny baby. ‘These were the last photos she sent me. I was away on that final tour.’ He took a long, lingering look at the photos before passing them over. ‘Fancy being away when your baby is born. I should have been there,’ he said, sadly.
‘That’s a very sweet-looking baby,’ said Watson.
‘He took after his mother,’ said Hudson, proudly.
‘So what happened when you came back?’ asked Slater.
‘I got back two weeks before Christmas, bags full of presents for my family, only when I got to what I thought was my home, there was no sign of them. The people living there said they’d never heard of anyone called Kylie. They claimed they had moved in in the middle of November and the place had been empty before that.’
‘You’d not heard from Kylie?’ asked Slater.
‘We didn’t have access to the internet back then,’ explained Hudson. ‘We couldn’t afford a telephone in Kylie’s flat, or at the cottage, so we had to rely on letters. I admit I was worried when the letters stopped, but what could I do?’ He fumbled through the tin again until he found a folded letter.
‘Here’s the last one she sent me. It was a couple of days before she was due to move into the cottage. She was a good mother – it says in the letter how the baby’s not a good sleeper, but he would fall asleep if she walked around with him. Kylie had taken to wearing one of those baby sling things so she could carry the baby in front of her. She’d go out walking late at night to get him off to sleep.’
Slater unfolded the letter, read through it, and passed it on to Watson.
‘Like I said, I was worried when she didn’t write again,’ said Hudson, ‘but she had a little baby to deal with, and a new cottage to worry about, and I was going to be there in a few weeks anyway—’ He came to a choking halt, and Slater gave him a minute or two to compose himself.
‘I assume you went to the police?’
‘They told me they thought I was making it up, or that she’d just run off,’ said Hudson. ‘They asked me how come there was no trace of them anywhere?’
‘How did you explain that?�
�� asked Slater.
‘I couldn’t,’ admitted Hudson, ‘but I just knew my Kylie wouldn’t do that to me. We had no secrets, she would have told me. I even showed that letter to the police, but he just ignored it.’
‘When you say “the police”, who exactly are you referring to?’
‘Detective Sergeant Norton,’ said Hudson. ‘You must know that. I’m sure you know I have a criminal record.’
‘Assault, wasn’t it?’ asked Slater. ‘What happened?’
‘I was getting frustrated that he wouldn’t listen to me,’ said Hudson, ‘and then, one day, he said he thought she had been leading me on all the time. He said I was just a sucker and that it probably wasn’t my baby at all. That’s when I punched his lights out.’
‘Do you have a short temper?’ asked Slater.
‘I don’t think so. It took me two weeks of being ignored, humiliated, and fobbed off to get to that stage, and even then I only hit him once.’
Slater looked at the size of Hudson’s hands, and thought one punch would probably be more than sufficient to flatten most opponents.
‘I have to tell you, we’ve been unable to find a missing persons report made out at that time for Kylie and your son,’ said Slater.
‘Are you trying to tell me you think I’m making this up, too?’ asked Hudson. ‘Why don’t you look up my court case? It’ll tell you in there what my excuse was for punching him. The magistrate seemed to think it was a pretty good reason. And what other reason would I have for leaving the army and heading for that village in the middle of nowhere? Why would I have spent the previous two weeks making daily visits to that police station? You must have spoken to the Major. What did he say?’
‘He says it’s a pity you didn’t go to him for help.’
‘I’d just left the army, I didn’t think I could go straight back begging for help. I was supposed to be standing on my own two feet.’
‘Why did you give the Major a false address when you moved out?’ asked Slater.
Hudson sighed and gave them a rueful smile. ‘The Major and his wife are wonderful people,’ he said, ‘and what they did for me probably saved my life, but at the same time they were a permanent reminder of my past. I came here because I wanted to get away from everything to do with my past, turn over a new leaf, and start again. I’ve often thought I could have handled it better, but when the Randalls’ son disappeared we were all under suspicion, and then out of nowhere DS Norton turned up on the scene. I didn’t trust him not to start accusing me, so I decided covering my tracks might be a smart move.’
‘What makes you think you’re not still a suspect?’ asked Slater.
‘If you want to arrest me, can you wait until my wife comes home? I wouldn’t want her worrying where I was. But was I difficult to find? No, because I’ve done nothing wrong, and I’m not hiding.’
‘Did you contact Kylie’s parents and tell them what had happened?’ asked Watson.
‘I tried,’ said Hudson. ‘But they wouldn’t speak to me, except to say running away from me was probably the best thing she could have done.’
‘Do you think she went back to them?’
‘I didn’t know what to think back then,’ said Hudson, ‘but I’ve always believed she would have been there waiting for me unless something terrible had happened to her.’
‘Do you have an address for her parents?’ asked Slater. ‘I’d quite like to talk to them.’
‘I’ve got the address where they lived back then,’ said Hudson, fumbling through the tin once again, ‘but I have no idea if they’re still there. They might be dead for all I know.’ He handed Watson a slip of paper.
Watson wrote the address in her notebook and offered it back to Hudson. ‘No, you can keep it. I shan’t need it again,’ he said.
Slater didn’t really think they were going to get much more out of Hudson. Now was probably a good time to leave.
‘Look, Inspector,’ said Hudson, ‘I’m not stupid. I know you probably think I’m involved in this affair in some way, but I can promise you I haven’t been near Trillington village since I came out of prison. I hardly ever went out when I was living at the Major’s, and I haven’t been back to England once since I moved here.’
‘I won’t pretend you’re wrong,’ Slater said. ‘In cases like this, everyone tends to be a suspect until we can eliminate them. We’ll check what you’ve told us and see where we are after that.’
‘So you’re not going to take me back with you?’
‘I don’t think that will be necessary,’ Slater said. ‘I don’t think you’re going to run away.’
‘What’s going to happen to my son? I think I’d like to arrange the funeral.’
Slater smiled sadly. ‘I don’t think the body will be released just yet. We’ll have to let you know.’
Chapter 15
Slater had been driving in silence for the fifteen minutes since they had left David Hudson. He was hunched over the steering wheel, totally focused on the road. Watson had been quiet since they had left; he appreciated her knack of knowing when he wanted to be left to his thoughts.
At last, he let out a sigh and sat back in his seat. ‘So now we know why Hudson’s son didn’t appear on that list of missing kids. The poor devil didn’t even know he was alive.’
‘You believe his story?’ asked Watson.
He glanced across at her. ‘Didn’t you?’
‘I’m just trying to keep an open mind.’
‘His story tallies with what the Major told us.’
‘They’ve had years to concoct a story,’ Watson pointed out.
This time, Slater turned his head to study her face before he turned back to the road ahead. ‘But you don’t believe that any more than I do.’
‘Good heavens, no,’ she said. ‘He convinced me, and I can’t see the Major being a party to anything like that. Anyway, it’s like Hudson said, what other reason would he have had for coming to Trillington? If he just wanted to get arrested, for some bizarre reason, why not punch the first policeman he came across? Why create such an elaborate charade when you don’t have to?’
Slater smiled to himself.
‘And I’m no expert,’ continued Watson, ‘but he’s not exactly classic murderer material, is he? He’s far too gentle, even if he did get six months for assault.’
‘He’s certainly got more patience than me,’ confessed Slater. ‘I don’t think I would have waited two weeks before I punched Norton, but I also think you’re right about keeping an open mind. We can’t rule anyone out just yet, but I think we can safely push David Hudson to the back of the queue.’
‘Agreed,’ said Watson.
‘Of course we have two new suspects now,’ said Slater.
‘You mean Kylie’s parents?’ asked Watson. ‘I don’t know. Did they even know where Kylie was?’
‘But she’d just had a baby. What if she wrote and told them they were grandparents?’ asked Slater. ‘That could have been a real red rag if they hated Hudson as much as he says. Or, even more provocative, what if she had turned up on their doorstep with a baby?’
Watson pulled a face.
‘What’s happened to keeping an open mind?’ asked Slater. ‘We can’t ignore the possibility.’
‘No, I suppose you’re right about that, anything’s possible.’ She thought about this for a moment. ‘What about this DS Norton? He doesn’t sound like the most sympathetic officer you’ve ever met, does he? And it worries me that we know exactly when Hudson reported Kylie missing, yet we still couldn’t find any report to back up his story.’
‘Yeah, that’s been nagging away at me, too,’ admitted Slater. ‘I think it’s high time we had a little chat with Detective Sergeant Norton, his name seems to be cropping up all over the place.’
‘There’s another thing that concerns me,’ said Watson. ‘If Norton was right, and Kylie did run away with the baby, we have to assume she had somewhere to live, and that she went on to raise her son alone, or with s
omeone else. If that’s the case, and the body we found is the same child, why didn’t Kylie report him missing? That doesn’t sound like the caring mother that we’ve just been told about, does it?’
‘I hate to say it, but people change,’ said Slater. ‘Who knows what might have happened in the intervening years. Maybe she died. Maybe she became some sort of smack-head and doesn’t know what day it is.’
Watson gave him a look that could have been contempt, or perhaps pity.
‘Yeah, I know,’ he said, ‘it’s not a very nice thought, but it happens. You know it, we all know it.’
Watson picked up her mobile phone and thumbed through her contacts, lifting the phone to her ear once she had found the right one. ‘We’ve got a name for the mother now,’ she muttered as she waited for the call to connect. ‘Let’s see if the team can track her down.’
Chapter 16
Because of Slater’s pathological dislike of tunnels, Watson had been left with no choice but to book ferry tickets for their journey back across the channel too. It was as they neared the ferry terminal that Slater’s mobile phone began to ring. It was Henry Cutter.
‘Where are you?’ Slater’s phone was hands-free, and Henry’s strident voice filled the car. ‘I’ve been waiting all day to speak to you.’
‘We’re just queueing for the ferry back from France. We won’t be home until the morning,’ said Slater. ‘What are you so excited about?’
‘We thought it might be an idea to widen our search area around the initial burial site, just to see if we could find anything else to help you before we pack up and leave.’
‘That means you did, right?’
‘Yes, we did. It was such a tiny thing many of us might have missed the significance, but fortunately we have Nadira. She immediately recognised it as a distal phalange. That’s your starter for ten.’
Slater looked at Watson, his face suitably ignorant.
‘Isn’t that a piece of finger?’ asked Watson.
Cutter sounded impressed. ‘Ten points to the young lady. It is indeed a piece of finger, the tip, to be precise.’