The Trophy Child

by Paula Daly

  ‘Let me rephrase. Did you personally have a problem with the way she was bringing up Brontë?’

  ‘It’s not my place to comment on something like that.’

  Joanne nodded. The woman was a closed book.

  ‘What does Verity’s mother have to say about it?’ Joanne asked. ‘Jennifer, isn’t it? You read to her, too, I believe.’

  ‘I can’t say it ever comes up.’

  ‘Really? I hear you two are pretty close.’

  ‘If you met Jennifer, you would understand why. She has great trouble speaking, now that her multiple sclerosis has advanced. She enjoys being read to, but if you think we sit around gossiping about her husband’s other family, then I can assure you you’re greatly mistaken.’

  For the first time since the start of their exchange Madeleine Kramer’s tone had become slightly shrill.

  She was either genuinely offended by Joanne’s accusation or else she was acting as if she was. Joanne couldn’t tell which.

  ‘My apologies,’ Joanne said. ‘I didn’t mean to upset you.’

  ‘You did not upset me. You are simply incorrect in your assumptions.’

  ‘All the same, I apologize. Let me ask you this: Brontë Bloom made a number of home-made cards at school.’ As she spoke, Joanne opened Brontë’s case notes and retrieved the plastic envelope containing them. She placed each one in front of Madeleine and watched her reaction. ‘You ever seen these before?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Take your time. Open the first one and read what it says inside.’

  Madeleine seemed reluctant.

  ‘Go ahead,’ Joanne prompted.

  Gingerly, Madeleine fingered the card, lifting the flap before saying, ‘No. I have never seen this.’

  ‘Did you ever receive such a card from Brontë?’

  And her eyes wouldn’t meet Joanne’s. ‘No, detective,’ she said, shakily now. ‘I did not.’

  Joanne didn’t believe her.

  ‘I don’t believe you, Madeleine,’ she said.

  And Madeleine Kramer flinched.

  Joanne took her moment.

  ‘Look, I just chatted with Brontë Bloom,’ Joanne said casually, ‘and she got rather emotional when I mentioned you. Said how much she thinks of you, and talked of the special bond the two of you have together. If I didn’t know better, I’d say that some might misconstrue this relationship, maybe they might think there was something odd going on between the two of—’

  ‘She wanted me to take her!’ Madeleine Kramer said out of nowhere.

  ‘I’m sorry – what?’

  Suddenly, Madeleine’s breath was hard and ragged. ‘She wanted me to take her,’ she repeated, more quietly this time.

  ‘I’m not sure I understand,’ Joanne said. ‘We’re talking about Brontë, yes? She wanted you to take her where, exactly?’

  ‘Away from Karen.’

  ‘And why would she want you to do that?’

  ‘Because she was miserable. Because she was exhausted. Because Karen was a deluded tyrant who didn’t know how to love her own daughter properly. So yes, you’re right, those cards were meant for me. Brontë made many more. She gave them to me because I was nice to her. Because I liked being with her. Because I didn’t require anything from her other than to be herself.’

  For a second, Joanne wondered if Madeleine Kramer had a proper screw loose. Perhaps she was one of those women who steals someone else’s child because she lost a child herself years before. Or else can’t stand to see another woman with something she can’t have.

  But as she surveyed the slightly frayed but generally poised, self-possessed woman in front of her, Joanne really didn’t get that feeling.

  ‘She was just supposed to stay for a couple of hours,’ Madeleine explained. ‘We only meant—’

  ‘We?’ asked Joanne, frowning.

  ‘I meant I,’ she replied quickly. ‘It was a terrible lapse of judgement…and I meant Brontë to stay for only a short while, but—’

  ‘But you thought you’d keep her overnight to teach Karen a real lesson?’

  Madeleine Kramer closed her eyes.

  ‘I kept her overnight,’ she said steadily, ‘because she begged me. Brontë begged me over and over not to take her back to her mother.’

  48

  WHEN SHE ARRIVED at her desk, Joanne found Oliver Black, eyes focused on his computer screen. She put the cardboard box down and said, ‘So now we have Brontë Bloom’s abductor. Madeleine Kramer. She knows the kid from school but she also works at Applemead.’

  Oliver Black looked up. ‘You’re not bringing her in?’

  ‘Long story. Turns out the child asked to go with her, and so of course went willingly.’ Joanne rolled her eyes, thinking back to the wasted hours they had spent trying to find Brontë. ‘Apparently, she wanted to escape her mother for a while. Anyway, I’m not sure where we stand, legally speaking, so I’ll need to run it by the CPS before I think about charging her.’

  ‘I have something for you,’ Oliver said, and he pushed a piece of paper her way. Then he leaned back in his chair with his fingers laced together behind his head. He looked smug, which could only mean one thing.

  ‘What is it?’ she asked.

  ‘You know about familial DNA?’

  ‘Of course,’ she replied.

  And Joanne had the sudden urge to smack her forehead.

  ‘You checked it,’ she whispered. ‘Why didn’t I check it? Why didn’t I think to put in a request for familial DNA?’

  ‘You’re impressed, right?’ Oliver said. ‘It’s okay, you can say it. I get it a lot. I’m used to the compliments.’

  Joanne sat down heavily in her chair and let this breakthrough settle upon her.

  Oliver said, ‘So even though the blood you found on the tree didn’t match to a criminal on the DNA database, when they compared it to other DNA profiles they found it shared the DNA of someone else who is on the list. There was a fifty per cent match – which means the two people are closely related. It means they’re family.’

  Joanne felt giddy. ‘A fifty per cent match means the person on the database is either the parent of Karen Bloom’s killer, or else their child is the killer.’

  ‘Yes, exactly. And the match is to a forty-nine-year-old male,’ Oliver said. ‘So let’s assume for now that Karen Bloom’s killer is the match’s son, rather than his aged father…’

  ‘Low odds that the killer is seventy-plus,’ said Joanne.

  ‘The match’s name is Dominic O’Riordan,’ he said. ‘He’s from Windermere.’

  Joanne immediately thought of Sonny O’Riordan, her hard-to-trace drug dealer and wearer of offensive T-shirts. Were they related?

  ‘Dominic was imprisoned for a series of robberies back in 2003,’ Oliver said. Joanne hadn’t worked CID then.

  ‘Nothing major,’ Oliver went on, ‘just houses, small businesses, and so on. Problem is, he doesn’t have just one son.’

  ‘How many does he have?’

  ‘Three,’ he said. ‘Two daughters as well but, as we know, the DNA’s from a male.’

  ‘Tell me you know where this Dominic O’Riordan lives?’ she said, and Oliver smiled.

  ‘I’ve got a pretty good idea.’

  —

  Joanne drove. She had a good feeling. ‘We’ll do a spot of house-to-house first,’ she said to Oliver.

  ‘If you like.’

  Whenever Joanne had a lead like this, she liked to ask around first. Granted, she had Dominic O’Riordan’s record, but she wanted to find out more about him and his sons before she tried to locate them. And there was no better place to start than with the neighbours.

  You generally got the truth out of neighbours. If they had an axe to grind, they came right out with it; you heard about it in the first sentence. And unless folk had particular reasons to hate the police (that is, were criminals themselves), they were generally happy to offer up anything incriminating about a person who, say, repeatedly took their parking space,
or kept unsociable hours, or became abusive to their wife in the front garden after a few cans. In Joanne’s experience, with perhaps the odd exception, most people who resided outside of the law would display one or more of these tendencies.

  Joanne drove over Bannerigg, some twit in front braking too hard in the dip, forcing her to drop down to third gear. She could feel her guts starting to respond in their usual way, loosening up, giving her the feeling of anticipation she’d come to know and love when she was close to solving a case. That extra feeling of nervousness she was experiencing right now came from not wanting to screw up.

  She had to keep reminding herself that she had only a blood sample. That was it. Something that could put one of Dominic O’Riordan’s sons in the general area of Karen’s murder. Right now, it was circumstantial evidence, not enough to secure a conviction, by a long shot. But if Dominic O’Riordan’s son was your typical criminal (so particularly stupid, as well as having a skewed sense of his own invincibility), then she had a shot at tripping him up.

  She had a chance of getting him to say just the right amount of stupid to warrant an arrest.

  Of course, what she really hoped for was a confession. Then she could put this case to bed and not worry about spending the next Christ knows how long substantiating her reasons to the Crown Prosecution Service, persuading them to let her charge him for the murder of Karen Bloom.

  ‘What are the names of Dominic’s sons?’ she asked Oliver.

  Oliver reviewed his notes. ‘Kyle, Shane and…Michael. Kyle and Shane are listed as still living at home with the parents. Michael’s proving harder to pin down. He’s been arrested but never charged. Suspicion of supplying—’

  ‘Michael O’Riordan,’ Joanne said flatly.

  ‘Aye.’

  ‘Michael O’Riordan as in Sonny O’Riordan.’

  Oliver flicked a page. ‘Yes. That’s his nickname. You know him?’

  So it was him. ‘Not personally,’ she said. ‘But I’ve spent plenty of time trying to find him. He moves various class As around the area, but we’ve never been able to collar him. I had a DC watching his parents’ house about a month ago, but he never turned up there. He’s a nasty little shit. It’ll be him who killed Karen, for sure. When we’ve swabbed and got a DNA match for him, I’m going to push for a confession. Okay?’

  ‘Easiest way to go,’ agreed Oliver.

  —

  Dominic O’Riordan rented an ex-council property not far from the recreation ground, along with his wife, Yvonne, who was claiming disability allowance for a syndrome Joanne had never heard of.

  ‘What is a syndrome?’ Joanne asked Oliver as they waited nose to tail in Windermere village. An articulated lorry full of Dutch flowers was making a delivery.

  ‘I had to look it up,’ admitted Oliver. ‘It’s a collection of symptoms rather than a straightforward disease. So if you’ve got, say, ten out of the twenty symptoms, they issue you with a diagnosis.’

  ‘So we don’t know what kind of state this woman’s in? Is she wheelchair-bound? Bed-bound?’

  ‘No idea.’

  The lorry finally moved on and they made their way along Oak Street, past Joanne’s house, in fact. She pointed out the small mid-terrace to Oliver, saying, ‘My humble abode,’ and he said, ‘Humble, my eye. I know how much these places cost.’

  ‘I rent,’ she said.

  Outside Dominic O’Riordan’s house was a brand-new Honda 4x4 with a Motability sticker in the window. Joanne parked further along, in front of a row of garages set back from the road with DO NOT PARK HERE notices displayed. She didn’t park there by choice, though. She did it because there wasn’t a scrap of road left on which to leave the Focus. ‘Don’t these people have jobs to go to?’ she complained to Oliver.

  They climbed out. ‘You okay with the right side, and I’ll take the houses on the left?’ she asked, and Oliver said he was fine with that.

  Joanne stood outside a house three along from the O’Riordans’. It was a run-down property. There was pebbledash render scabbing off in pieces, old aluminium window frames blackening in the corners and unlit Christmas lights strung around the door frame. The light cable disappeared through the letterbox and Joanne thought that the occupant was either very late in removing their decorations or else premature in putting them up.

  She rang the bell and the door opened. There stood an elderly gentleman in a dirty cardigan. He had bloodshot eyes. A wiry tabby was weaving around his ankles.

  Joanne showed her warrant card.

  ‘Police?’ he said accusingly.

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘About time,’ he said gruffly. ‘Follow me.’

  He shuffled off inside, leaving Joanne perplexed on the doorstep. She hadn’t got the chance to say she only wanted to ask him a few questions.

  She took a step forward and quickly drew back. There was a smell. Not nice.

  ‘Sir?’ she called out.

  Nothing.

  ‘Yoohoo! Excuse me,’ she tried. No answer. ‘Shit,’ she muttered and crossed the threshold. She walked on her tiptoes, wary of planting her feet fully on the sticky carpet.

  This was the thing she had hated most when she was back in uniform – people’s homes. A lot of folk the police had to deal with lived in absolute squalor. But it was the animals that most upset Joanne: large dogs kept in cages in the corner of the room, turds in their beds. Cats with tumours on their faces. Birds that had pulled out all their feathers.

  Joanne picked her way through the mess in the living room to where the man was standing by the kitchen window.

  ‘I’d really like to ask you a few questions about your neighbours, the O’Riordans, if that’s okay,’ she said.

  The man was frowning at her.

  ‘It’s out there,’ he said. ‘I rang your lot yesterday and no one came. I don’t know why I bother paying tax.’

  Joanne got this a lot. And she was pretty sure everyone who said it didn’t actually pay any tax.

  ‘I’m not certain what I’m looking at,’ Joanne said.

  What she was looking at was a small back garden. The grass was knee-high, with a broken, revolving washing maiden in the centre. The garden was enclosed by a low fence, also broken.

  The man gestured to the row of garages to the left of the garden. ‘There,’ he said. ‘You see them?’

  ‘Do I see what?’

  He looked at Joanne as though she was stupid. ‘Flies,’ he said.

  ‘Flies,’ she replied.

  ‘Bluebottles. Lots of ’em. There’s summat dead in there. You don’t get flies this time of year.’

  ‘Well, it has been particularly warm,’ she reasoned. ‘That’s why we’ve had so much rain.’

  Joanne couldn’t see any flies. And she didn’t have time for this. She had a murderer to apprehend.

  ‘Listen,’ she said, trying to get back to the point. ‘What can you tell me about the O’Riordans?’

  The guy tutted. ‘He’s a first-class crook,’ he said. ‘An’ his wife’s no better, cheating the system. There’s nothing wrong with her. I should film her. They’ve never done an honest day’s work in their lives.’

  ‘Do you ever see anyone else around there? Anyone visit on a regular basis?’

  ‘There’s a lot of O’Riordans,’ he said. ‘And they’ve all got a load o’ kids. Catholics,’ he said by way of explanation. ‘They don’t know when to stop.’

  ‘Have you noticed any strange behaviour recently? Anything out the ordinary?’

  He thought for a moment. Then he hawked up some phlegm and spat it into the sink. ‘Pardon me,’ he said, running the tap. ‘What have they done this time?’

  ‘Have you noticed anything at all?’ Joanne said, ignoring the question.

  And he looked at Joanne steadily for a good fifteen seconds.

  Then he shook his head, a sad look in his eye. He seemed disappointed he had nothing at all to give.

  —

  Joanne joined up with Oliver. ‘W
hat have you got?’ she asked.

  ‘They’re not exactly Windermere’s most popular, are they? What about you?’

  ‘Nothing as yet. And I feel quite soiled after being in number thirty-six.’

  Oliver wrinkled his nose.

  ‘Okay,’ Joanne said, ‘you carry on with the neighbours. I’ll head over there.’ She gestured to the house behind her. ‘Let’s see what the O’Riordans have to say about their lovely offspring.’

  —

  ‘Mrs Yvonne O’Riordan?’

  The woman was the wrong side of fifty and had yellow hair hanging past her shoulders, frayed at the ends like a fancy-dress wig. She wore heavy, air-hostess make-up.

  Her eyes seemed to take Joanne in but at the same time look entirely past her.

  Hearing her full name, the woman snapped to attention, grabbing a crutch from a nearby umbrella stand and leaning her weight on it heavily. Wincing from, Joanne assumed, some imaginary pain.

  ‘Who are you?’ she asked.

  ‘Detective Sergeant Joanne Aspinall. Mind if I come in and ask you a few questions?’

  ‘About what?’

  Joanne dropped her voice. ‘Mrs O’Riordan, I need to discuss something of a rather sensitive nature. You might prefer it if the neighbours can’t hear our conversation?’

  Joanne wanted to get inside. There was always the chance of stumbling on something she wasn’t supposed to.

  Yvonne O’Riordan hesitated. ‘I’m not sure,’ she said.

  ‘You’re not sure about what?’

  ‘I’m not sure it’s a good idea.’

  Yvonne O’Riordan’s eyes were alive now, furtive. She looked from side to side. She was like a cat about to step on enemy territory.

  ‘We could always do this at the station, if that’s easier for you?’ Joanne said pleasantly. ‘Although that would be Kendal, Mrs O’Riordan, not Windermere. That’s where I’m based…Is your husband home today?’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Dominic. Is he home?’

  She dropped her gaze. ‘He’s out. I don’t know where.’

  It sounded like a rehearsed answer.

  ‘What about your sons?’ Joanne asked. ‘They around?’

  ‘They’re out, too.’