Little Face

by Sophie Hannah

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Florence has been bottle-fed from birth. She wouldn’t breast-feed, you see. The baby upstairs seems quite happy with the same Cow and Gate milk that Florence drank. Does that mean she’s likely to be Florence?’

  I nod. It’s a good question. Vivienne’s mind is open. She is trying to apply logic to the problem.

  ‘Well . . .’ Dr Allen hesitates. ‘A breast-fed baby might protest if she was suddenly switched on to bottles. But if she was bottle-fed in the first place . . .’

  ‘But there are several different brands of formula milk, aren’t there?’ says Vivienne impatiently. ‘Wouldn’t a change of brand pose a problem?’

  ‘Maybe, maybe not. Cow and Gate is one of the market leaders. And every baby is different. Some will only take breast milk, some will drink any old thing quite happily. The fact that the baby will drink Florence’s usual milk doesn’t prove anything either way.’ Dr Allen sounds uncomfortable, keen to leave. She is probably wondering if all the residents of The Elms are insane.

  I feel encouraged. In the absence of concrete proof, Dr Allen and Vivienne are completely at a loss. I might be miserable, tormented by my husband, desperate for my daughter and without even the hope of help, but at least I know the truth. I have that one thing in my favour.

  22

  7/10/03, 2 pm

  Going into prisons; Simon had never got used to it. He hated standing in the queue with the other visitors, some of whom he knew for a depressing fact were concealing about their persons – sometimes even inserted into their private parts – lumps of heroin, to be passed to their loved ones under the table at the appropriate time. The screws, mostly corrupt, knew it went on and did nothing about it.

  Simon stood with the half-dressed, undernourished girlfriends of this or that nonentity or gangster, depending on your point of view. Their bare legs were mottled, mauve with cold. They teetered on high heels, giggled and whispered. Simon heard the word pig. Even without the uniform, people knew.

  After the queue came the frisking, then all prospective visitors were sniffed by police dogs. Finally, approved, Simon headed through the dingy visits hall to HMP Brimley’s inner courtyard, waiting for the familiar din: ‘Fucking pig! Scum! Fucking filth!’ Accompanied by the rattle of cages from all directions. The courtyard was surrounded by cells, and the scrotes always chanted enthusiastically. It wasn’t as if they had a lot else to look forward to.

  Simon stared straight ahead until he’d made it to the secure cell block. The screw who was escorting him led him to a small mustard-coloured room with a brown, ribbed, threadbare carpet. The customary table and two chairs. A camera fixed to the wall, its dark, square glass eye peering down. On the table was a thick plastic ashtray. Any D with sense knew that it was pointless to turn up without tobacco and Rizlas, or a packet of B&H, depending on how generous you were feeling. Scrotes expected it, in the way that waiters expected tips. Optional-compulsory.

  Simon felt itchy and uncomfortable. The room stank of stale sweat and staler smoke. Also a salty, sexual smell. Simon didn’t want to think about that one. He shuffled on his chair. He’d had a shower that morning, tried to feel clean in spite of his surroundings.

  Look where you are, said a voice in his head. Disheartening to think that this was the grubby environment he inhabited, worlds away from Alice Fancourt, from The Elms. He pictured Alice as she was when he first saw her, standing straight-backed at the top of the curved staircase, then sitting on the cream sofa in the living room, her long, blonde hair fanned out against the cushion. People like her shouldn’t have to share the planet with the scum that ended up in here. Simon wasn’t sure who he had in mind, Beer or himself.

  Charlie had instructed him, without eye contact or a smile, to ask Beer about the murder weapon and Laura Cryer’s handbag. Whatever Proust had said to her during their head-to-head had done its work. She was making a big production of her new, conscientious approach. There was an unnecessarily large number one on the board in the CID room, with David Fancourt’s name beside it, and she had taken to talking in a loud voice about the importance of reviewing all the files on Laura Cryer. Simon wasn’t fooled. He doubted Proust was either. Charlie had done this sort of thing before, behaved in a way that was beyond reproach at the same time as making it clear that her head and heart were violently opposed.

  Immature, undignified. But what irked Simon most was that he seemed to be the main object of her hostility. He couldn’t understand what he had done to offend her. He’d made some good points about the Cryer case. He’d hoped for praise, expected grudging admiration and a heated argument. Instead, Charlie had stopped looking at him. She spoke to him as if she were a zombie reading from an autocue. Sellers and Gibbs didn’t seem to have noticed; she was all charm and smiles to them, as if to underline the point.

  Simon had heard it said that women were irrational, but he’d thought Charlie was an exception. She had to know that Simon wasn’t responsible for the dressing down she’d had from Proust. Her own carelessness had got her into trouble, the stupid things she’d said at the team meeting that sounded more like gossip than police work.

  The door of the fetid little room opened, and a youngish man was pushed into the room by an even younger-looking screw. It took Simon a few seconds to recognise Darryl Beer. A crew-cut had replaced his ponytail, and he had put on weight. Beer had been a lanky little shit. He’d had the look and manner of an agitated rodent, scrabbling for scraps. Now his face had fleshed out and he looked more ordinary, like a man who might spend his Saturday afternoon buying garden furniture, power drills, firelighters for the barbecue.

  Simon introduced himself. Beer shrugged. He couldn’t have cared less who his visitor was, or why he was here. Simon was familiar with the attitude: a pig was a pig, and it was never nice to see one.

  ‘I’ve got some questions regarding the Laura Cryer murder.’

  ‘Aggravated assault,’ Beer corrected him automatically, folding his hairy arms across his belly. His top was too small. A pouch of pale flesh had escaped, spilling over his belt.

  ‘Stabbing a woman with a kitchen knife. Leaving her to bleed to death. I call that murder.’ Beer didn’t flinch.

  Simon produced a packet of Marlboros and a lighter from his pocket and Beer reached out a hand, one that had ‘HATE’ tattoed on its knuckles. He lit the cigarette, took a long, slow drag, then another. ‘Did you do it?’ Simon asked.

  Beer looked surprised, then amused. ‘You taking the piss?’ he said. Simon shook his head. ‘I pleaded guilty, didn’t I?’

  ‘What did you do with her handbag? What did you do with the knife?’

  ‘Do you know anything about who Laura Cryer was, the work she did?’ Beer asked. His tone was conversational. ‘If she’d lived, she might have found a cure for cancer. Her research team probably will at some point, thanks to the work she started. Did you know that she was the one who persuaded Morley England to invest forty million dollars in BioDiverse, to fund the work? She could be famous one day. I could be famous.’

  ‘What did you do with the bag and the knife?’

  ‘I don’t remember.’ Beer grinned, delighted to be of no assistance. He scratched his exposed midriff with the overgrown fingernails of his ‘LOVE’ hand. ‘I was out of it. Why do you want to know that now?’

  ‘Do you remember stabbing Laura Cryer at all?’ Beer’s attitude had lit the fuse of Simon’s temper. Fire crackled in his stomach. All for Beer, or had it been there already, lying dormant? He pictured himself taking an extinguisher and turning it on the flames, as Charlie had once advised him to do. ‘Think wet foam,’ she told him. ‘Even the words sound soggy.’ It worked. Could the sensible person who had said that and the overgrown bitchy schoolgirl stomping around the CID room today be one and the same?

  ‘I must have done it, mustn’t I?’ said Beer. ‘There was all that evidence.’ The sing-song sarcasm was intended to provoke.

  His face belonged in the ashtray. Simon’s a
rms itched to put it there. ‘Listen, shit-head. There’s a mother and baby missing. The baby’s less than a month old. If you tell me the truth, it might help us find them.’ As a boy, Simon had had his mouth washed out with soap on the one occasion when he swore in front of his mother. He’d heard the way other cops used profanities – with casual imprecision. His foul language was deliberate and meaningful. Grateful. He savoured each of these words that belonged to a world which excluded his parents.

  Beer shrugged. ‘You’re wasting your time, pig. I reckon your mother and baby are dead.’

  Simon took deep breaths. It wasn’t true. Was that what Charlie thought too? Why couldn’t he bring himself to ask her? Before she disappeared, Alice had made him feel uncomfortable by pointing out his inadequacies as a protector. Her death would confirm everything Simon feared about himself. To think of her as alive and missing was the only way he could banish her disillusionment from his mind, focus on the faith she had once had in him. It still gave him time. The story wasn’t over.

  ‘Here’s what I think happened,’ he said. ‘Your brief advised you to cut a deal. After the DNA match, you were stuffed. He told you you’d get life if you pleaded not guilty. No jury’d believe a turd like you.’ Simon saw a flicker of discomfort in Beer’s eyes. He pressed on. ‘Most innocent people would have been furious, insisted on a chance to prove their innocence. But that’s the middle classes, isn’t it? The sort that society treats well. I know your background. I’ve been reading up on you, Beer. Deprivation, truancy, broken home, sexual abuse – if you’ve had that sort of life and then a lawyer tells you you’re about to get framed for something you didn’t do, you believe them, don’t you? Because it’s exactly the sort of shit that happens to filth like you every day.’

  ‘It’s filth like you that makes life what it is for me and mine,’ said Beer, roused from his complacency at last. An odd phrase to use, thought Simon, wondering who the ‘mine’ were. Beer was unmarried and childless. Was he referring to a criminal underclass, as if it were a group identity one might take pride in? A more general underclass?

  Simon pulled his chair forward. ‘Listen to me,’ he said. ‘If you didn’t kill Laura Cryer, I think I know who did. He’s a spoilt rich boy who lives in a big house with his rich mum. He’s the one you’re helping to get away with murder.’

  ‘I’m not helping anyone.’ The sullen mask again.

  ‘You were seen in the garden of The Elms twice in the weeks leading up to Laura Cryer’s death. What were you doing there?’

  ‘The what?’

  ‘The Elms. Where you stabbed Cryer.’

  ‘Dr Cryer, if you don’t mind. She’s just a fucking body to you, isn’t she?’

  ‘What were you doing at The Elms?’

  A shrug. ‘I don’t remember.’

  ‘If you’re worried about getting more jail time for entering a false guilty plea, don’t,’ said Simon. ‘You’d probably be charged, but with time already served taken into account . . . Or is it the prospect of getting out too soon that’s bothering you? You made a fair few enemies when you turned Queen’s and shopped a load of your old mates, didn’t you? Worried you might not last too long outside this place?’

  ‘You’re the one who looks worried, piggy.’ Beer lit another cigarette from the packet on the table. ‘Not me.’

  Simon could glean nothing from his expression. ‘Whoever’s gunning for you will still be around in five, six or seven years’ time,’ he said. ‘You’re going to need our protection, whenever you get out. So if I were you . . .’ – Simon picked up the Marlboros and put them back in his pocket – ‘I’d start thinking about the best way to make us want to help you.’

  Behind a cloud of exhaled smoke, Beer’s eyes narrowed. ‘Next time you come here, make sure you know who Laura Cryer was, what she achieved. You want me to talk because it’ll help you with another case, nothing to do with Laura. Or me.’

  Laura. Yet he hadn’t known her. How long had it been since Simon had thought of Alice as ‘Mrs Fancourt’? Significance and familiarity were not the same thing.

  ‘You don’t give a fuck about the truth, do you? You just want me to tell you what you want to hear.’

  ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘All the little piggies lived happily ever after. The end.’ And it was. No matter how hard Simon tried, he could not persuade Darryl Beer to say another word.

  23

  Wednesday October 1, 2003

  I open my eyes with a strangled moan. Waking up is the worst part, plunging headlong into the nightmare all over again. David is not in bed. Vivienne stands in the doorway, fully dressed in a smart black trouser suit and grey polo neck. Her face is covered in its usual mask of subtle makeup. I smell her perfume, Madame Rochas. I feel dirty, disgusting. I haven’t bathed, or even washed, since Monday. My mouth is thick and dry, my hair matted.

  ‘Do you feel better, after a good night’s sleep?’ she asks.

  I do not reply. I feel groggy. I cannot lift my eyelids, they are too heavy. It is misery. It must be; I stopped taking the Co-codamol tablets after I spoke to Dr Allen.

  ‘Why don’t you have a nice bath?’ Vivienne suggests, smiling determinedly.

  I shake my head. I can’t get out of bed with her standing there.

  ‘Alice, this is a struggle for all of us, not just you. Nevertheless, we must behave like civilised people.’

  I hear David in the nursery, talking to Little Face in an animated voice. She gurgles in response. I feel exiled, as if I am a million miles away from any possibility of happiness. ‘I want to look after the baby,’ I say, tears escaping despite my best efforts. ‘Why won’t David let me? He won’t let me go anywhere near her.’

  Vivienne sighs. ‘The baby is fine. And David’s just worried about you, that’s all. Alice, don’t you think you ought to concentrate on looking after yourself? You’ve been through a terrible ordeal.’ Her sympathy confuses me. ‘That long labour, and then an emergency Caesarian. I think you’re putting far too much pressure on yourself.’

  She said the same thing when I told her about the trouble I was having coming to terms with the death of my parents. ‘Don’t fight your grief,’ she said. ‘Embrace it. Make friends with it. Welcome it into your life. Invite it to stay for as long as it wants to. Eventually it will become manageable.’ It was the best advice anyone gave me. It worked, exactly as Vivienne said it would.

  ‘I’m going to take the baby with me today,’ she says. ‘We’ll drop Felix off at school, then go shopping.’

  ‘You don’t want to leave her alone with me and David, do you? You don’t trust either of us.’

  ‘Babies like a bit of fresh air,’ says Vivienne firmly. ‘It’s good for them. And a bath will be good for you. It really will make a difference, you know, to clean yourself up, put on some nice clothes. It won’t make your problems disappear, but it’ll make you feel more human. If you feel strong enough, that is. I don’t want you to over-exert yourself if you’re not ready.’

  I believe that Vivienne wants me to love her. More than that, she sees it as her right to be loved by me. At the forefront of her mind is not that she locked me in the nursery or that she is undermining my sense of reality by treating me like an invalid, but all the kind and helpful things she’s done for me over the years.

  I turn on to my side, away from her. Now that I understand this new sympathy, I feel like a fool. Vivienne wants me to be ill. Of course she does. Her preferred outcome would be for Florence not to be missing, for my mind, rather, to be severely disturbed. I think about well-meaning Dr Allen, who believed I wanted Little Face to be sick.

  ‘Well, you get some rest then.’ Vivienne is determined not to let my unresponsive behaviour get to her. She bends down, kisses my cheek. ‘Goodbye, dear. I’ll see you later.’

  I close my eyes, begin to count in my head. Vivienne is taking Little Face out on a shopping trip. Everyone can come and go as they please apart from me. What would happen if I said, as
Vivienne just has, ‘I’m taking the baby out today’? I would be stopped, of course.

  When I hear the front door thud, and, a few seconds later, Vivienne’s car engine, I open my eyes and look at the clock. It is quarter to eight. She has gone. I climb out of bed and stumble towards the landing, feeling as if I haven’t walked for years. I rub my bare toes against the velvety wool of the stone-coloured carpet and stare down the long corridor, at the rows of white doors on either side. I feel like a person in a dream, the kind in which each door will lead to a room that has a clear purpose, distinct from all the others, and to a radically different outcome. Why is the house so silent? Where is David?

  The door to Florence’s nursery is open. I weigh my need to go to the toilet against the chance to go into my daughter’s room without being watched or monitored. No contest.

  I enter cautiously, as if trespassing on forbidden territory, and walk over to the empty cot. I lower my face and inhale the scent of new baby, that lovely, fresh smell. I pull the cord that dangles from the smiling sun on the wall above the cot, and ‘Somewhere Over the Rainbow’ begins to play. My heart twists. All I can do is hope that Florence is not suffering anywhere near as intensely as I am.

  I open the doors of the fitted wardrobe and stroke the piles of her freshly laundered clothes, the ridges of pink and yellow and white, the layers of bobbly wool and fleeces as soft as I imagine clouds would be. Such an optimistic, joyful sight should make me happy, but in the absence of Florence it has the opposite effect.

  I close the wardrobe doors, stiff with misery. I should go. Being in here only makes me feel worse, but somehow, despite my growing need to use the bathroom, I cannot bring myself to leave. This room is evidence that I have a precious daughter. It links me to Florence. I sit in the rocking chair in the corner, where I once foolishly imagined I would spend many hours feeding her, holding and stroking Monty, Florence’s cuddly rabbit with long, floppy ears. My yearning for my baby tingles in every nerve ending in my skin.