The Touch of Innocents

by Michael Dobbs

  ‘Paulette!’ Izzy exclaimed more sharply.

  Something crept into the girl’s eyes, a spark, a glowing coal of anger, yet again she said nothing, the arm band clenched firmly between her teeth, her irritation at being disturbed expressed only in the still more violent slapping she inflicted upon her circulatory system.

  Izzy was the first to react. She sprang across the room and before the girl could respond had snatched the plastic syringe.

  ‘Where is my baby?’

  ‘Give it back!’

  ‘My baby? What have you done with my baby?’

  With an animal’s screech of rage Paulette threw herself after her syringe but the low table was between her and Izzy; she stumbled and fell sharply on her exposed arm. For a while she lay there, whimpering with pain.

  ‘Give it back to me,’ she pleaded in pathetic voice.

  ‘Not until you tell me what you did with my baby,’ Izzy responded from a safe distance.

  ‘Who are you? Why don’t you leave me alone?’

  Paulette’s eyes were focused on nothing but the syringe. Izzy held it behind her, placing her body between the girl and her desires.

  ‘Look at me. Remember? The hospital!’

  Paulette’s eyes blinked in exaggerated pain. Everything was blurred, her needle had disappeared, and through the mists emerged a face. Something about a hospital. And she remembered.

  ‘You!’ she exclaimed involuntarily.

  ‘Yes. And my baby. You stole her, didn’t you? Where is she now?’

  ‘Let me have the bloody works. I need it.’ Paulette’s frail arm stretched out. ‘I’ll talk later.’

  ‘You’ll tell me now.’

  And Izzy had produced the syringe, waved it towards Paulette and depressed the plunger. A narrow stream of liquid sprang from the needle and splattered like rain across the table in front of Paulette. The girl uttered a primitive, wrenching cry. From behind her Izzy scarcely noted the groan of anguish from Daniel.

  ‘Please …’ the girl sobbed.

  ‘First, my baby. Then you can have it. If there’s any left.’

  ‘I know nothing,’ she lied.

  A fresh fountain of heroin arced across the room. The girl stared at Izzy, hatred twisting her features, but in the other woman’s eyes Paulette found a craving, an anger almost greater than her own, and a strength that her lies and deception could never match. Her needs grew, and her resistance crumbled.

  ‘All right, all right,’ the girl pleaded. ‘No more.’

  ‘What happened to my baby?’

  She wanted to lie, to deny, but her ability to invent had been diluted in pain. It took Paulette many seconds to fight for control of her shattered nerves and shaking limbs before she began, in halting words, to tell her story. To trade the truth, just as she had traded everything else.

  ‘I had … a baby,’ she stumbled. ‘Not mine. Someone else’s. A little girl, for adoption. Her foster mother had fallen ill, couldn’t cope, so I had collected the baby to take to her new foster parents.’ She was shivering all over. ‘But I dropped it. I must have blacked out or something. Stumbled. Next thing I knew it was at the bottom of the stairs and its eyes were closed. It was hurt, very pale. I couldn’t wake it. Didn’t mean to harm it,’ she sobbed. ‘So I took it to the hospital. I wanted to help it! Don’t you understand?’

  ‘Get on with it,’ Izzy demanded. She was trembling too.

  ‘I got to the hospital. The baby was in my arms. And everyone was running about, there was no one to pay any attention to me.’

  ‘The fire alarm,’ Izzy prompted.

  The girl nodded. ‘I was wandering around looking for a nurse. By this time I think the baby had stopped breathing. I was so scared! Then I went behind a curtain and there you were. Blood all down your face. Unconscious. And your baby. Just about the same age. Smiling.’

  ‘She’s … alive.’ Izzy scarcely dared breathe the words.

  The girl nodded.

  ‘Bella’s alive,’ she whispered. ‘Alive …’ Her voice faded away in a feeble, choked cry as the passion of release rushed to her throat. For a moment she was unable to fight through the tangle of emotions – to laugh, to exult, to shed tears, to shout or succumb to the feeling that someone had cut the wires holding her together inside. She felt light-headed, but through it all she clung fixedly to the fact that there was more, much more, still to be done.

  ‘You bitch!’ Izzy had turned cold with fury. ‘You swapped them, didn’t you? My baby for yours.’

  ‘What else was I supposed to do? There was no one around. You looked as if you were dead anyway. I couldn’t admit to harming the baby. They would have found out everything.’

  ‘About the drugs. About how you and Fauld were farming babies through the Mission. Selling babies to the highest bidder.’

  The girl hung her head in exhaustion and shame.

  ‘And how your father was covering up for you.’

  The girl’s head sprang back. ‘My father! Help me?’ she spat incredulously. ‘Damn him, don’t you see this is all his fault? The big man who was supposed to be so much better than everyone else. The pillar of the community. The statesman everyone respected. But while he was out playing bloody God to the country, where was he when I needed him? When my mother needed him?’ She clutched her stomach in agony.

  ‘He’s fought ruthlessly to cover up for you.’

  ‘Guilt. Nothing but guilt. The bastard.’ And she sobbed, a cry of more than physical pain. ‘Please, let me have my needle.’

  ‘Not until you tell me what you did with my baby.’ Izzy lunged aggressively forward, barely conscious of the restraining hand from behind.

  Paulette’s eyes had begun to blur. ‘Please,’ she whimpered.

  More droplets spattered onto the floor.

  ‘What did you do with my baby?’

  The girl drew in a huge gulp of breath that shook her gaunt frame as though it might break. ‘I took her from the hospital. Nobody noticed. I came with a baby, left with a baby. And I gave a baby to the new foster parents, just like I was supposed to.’

  ‘So where is she now?’ cried Izzy in frustration, raising the syringe above her head as if to hurl it to the ground.

  ‘No!’ Paulette screamed, hiding her head in her hands and cowering like a dog. She remained in that position, whimpering.

  The silence stirred nothing but hatred within Izzy. This woman had ripped Bella from her, stolen her child and with it Izzy’s life, had inflicted evils that all but surpassed comprehension. Now she was pleading for sympathy.

  There was none to give. Izzy had no resources for sympathy. She thrust the hypodermic at Daniel, scarcely aware of the tormented hand that took it, then turned to face the cringing woman once more. She would not allow Paulette to cower from the truth. She lifted the girl’s shoulders, expecting to find tear-soaked eyes but to her surprise found not weakness but eyes that burned with malice. And action.

  Paulette pounced, her fury lending springs to her feet. She hurled herself at her tormentor, intent on gaining by strength what she could not extract through sympathy. Two women, two lives, collided, one touched by evil, the other by innocence.

  As she saw Paulette leaping for her, Izzy drew back her hand and crashed it full into the other’s face. Paulette flew across the room, her head crashing into the wall, blood spurting from a badly split lip. Without respite, Izzy was upon her, shaking her, forcing reality back between the closed eyelids.

  ‘Where is she now? Where?’

  Paulette mumbled, Izzy propped her against the wall, the girl’s eyes tightly closed.

  ‘With one of our fosterers, don’t know which. Waiting to be handed over to the new owners.’

  ‘Owners?’ Izzy flared, brutalized by the language. ‘Bella’s not some piece of second-hand furniture.’

  But of course, for Paulette, she was.

  ‘Owners?’ Izzy repeated breathlessly.

  ‘Foreigners.’

  ‘Foreigners? From where?
’

  ‘Abroad.’

  ‘Where abroad?’

  Izzy slapped her cheek hard and Paulette’s eyes flashed open. They were soulless, empty.

  ‘Somewhere in the Gulf. Not sure where.’

  ‘Why on earth would they want a baby like Bella?’

  There came no answer, but Izzy thought she knew. Judi had told her, igniting a bonfire of fears. White flesh. The ultimate status symbol. To be raised in the traditional way. And even if it were for some other reason, it scarcely mattered. They had sold her baby.

  She wanted to crush Paulette’s head against the wall, to scatter her brains and her life across this stinking drug den of hers, to inflict agonies to compensate in some small degree for the pain suffered. But even as she held Paulette up, ready to strike, to pound her head and life into oblivion, she knew there could never be any compensation, that she could never make Paulette suffer enough. Not like she had suffered. And the real enemy was not Paulette, but time. Once Bella was taken from the country, obliterated behind the mysterious sandstorms of the Middle East, Izzy knew the door would be closed on her baby forever. The thought numbed every muscle.

  Thank God she still had time. Bella was still with foster parents. Here. Close.

  ‘Where is Bella?’ she insisted once more.

  ‘Waiting to be delivered,’ the girl repeated. ‘A nurse will fly her out to the Gulf. Hand her over there.’

  ‘But that’s not possible,’ Izzy protested, remembering Fauld’s words. ‘The parents are supposed to be here. For reports.’

  ‘Supposed to be,’ Paulette agreed hollowly. Reports. Another deception. Like so much else in her life.

  ‘But they can’t do that …’

  ‘Paperwork,’ came the fumbled reply. ‘All paperwork. They paid extra. Door-to-door delivery.’

  ‘The court hearing. The judge …’ Izzy protested.

  ‘The new parents might fly over for it. Or not. Probably not. Why bother, for a two-minute hearing? Maybe pay someone else to do it for them, like a driving test. Fool of a judge would never know.’

  ‘So, when is the handover?’

  ‘Can’t remember.’ She was mumbling badly now.

  ‘Then throw that rubbish out the window, Daniel,’ Izzy snapped, not taking her eyes from Paulette.

  The girl beat her head, protesting, trying to clear the haze and sickness that enveloped her mind. ‘Gideon wanted it to be when everyone was busy. No time for questions. Just rubber-stamp and run.’

  ‘So when, woman? Remember! You must remember. Remember. Then you can have what you want.’

  The girl’s eyes were far away, as though in trance. Then she shivered, clutched her stomach once more, her lower lip bitten almost to blood.

  ‘Christmas shopping,’ she whispered.

  ‘What?’ screamed Izzy, fearful that Paulette’s mind had gone completely.

  ‘Christmas. When everyone was busy, he said. Rushing to do their Christmas shopping. Rubberstamp and run …’ She was panting now, exhausted by pain and effort. ‘Friday. Exactly a week before Christmas. Fly her out to the Gulf. Abu Dhabi. From Gatwick when it’s choked with charters. Friday before Christmas.’

  The truth dawned slowly upon Izzy. For weeks she had been preoccupied, distracted, dates no longer meaningful. But Christmas is a date impossible to ignore. And it was precisely a week away.

  Today. Today. Today. TODAY!

  She had no more time. Her mind rebelled at the coincidence; the truth was beginning to fall in on her like a collapsing wall of hope, burying her alive.

  ‘I’ve let you have what you want. Now my stuff,’ Paulette demanded. Her eye had at last caught the syringe in Daniel’s hand.

  ‘Give it to her, Daniel,’ she cried, ‘and for God’s sake let’s get out of here.’

  But even as she began to move for the door she saw that he was incapable of responding. His face had been transformed into a lurid, fear-wrecked mask. The hand that held the syringe was trembling, uncontrollably, and had been ever since his fingers had closed around the hypodermic. His head was shaking.

  ‘I cannot give it to her,’ he whispered. ‘Not this.’

  He stood frozen, but not so Paulette. With astonishing agility for a body so badly abused she had once again flung herself across the room, this time at Daniel. But he was too far away; she fell short and he backed off, towards the balcony door, as though to hurl the drug away.

  ‘No. I can’t let you,’ he whispered.

  To Izzy it would always remain the most mournful sound she had ever heard.

  Through her pain Paulette could see nothing but the syringe. Every fibre of her body and mind was set upon it; it had been held from her too long and nothing else mattered in her world. It was her lifebelt, her oxygen, her saviour. Survival. For she felt as though she were swimming in a pool of molten lead and someone had leapt upon her, forcing her down. Unable to breathe. Choking her. Panic. Syringe. Survival. Daniel. Needle. Now!

  With the ferocity of a pouncing cat she had flung herself at Daniel, clawing for the hypodermic, her full weight meeting him in the chest.

  She was not heavy but he had flung his arms wide to keep the syringe from her, placing himself off balance, and he was propelled backwards. As he staggered, the bottom of his heel hit the lip of the open balcony door. He tripped, fell back, his shoes scrabbling for purchase on the raw concrete floor of the balcony.

  But they found nothing but fresh ice. Christmas frost.

  His body slammed into the railing, his hands held above his head, centre of gravity high. As Izzy looked on, impotent in disbelief, his body performed a slow cartwheel around the railing.

  Momentarily he seemed to hover, like a kestrel testing the winds, wings outstretched. Quivering. Reaching for her.

  Their eyes met. He whispered her name.

  Was gone.

  Too late she had reached the balcony. Noise assailed her. Noise from the rail shunting yards, from the traffic that rumbled along an elevated section of motorway, from the pounding of a pile driver on the banks of the canal that ran close by. Above her, through the clouds, came the scream of engines from an airliner hitting the flight path into Heathrow, its undercarriage lowered. Drowning her own scream.

  As she gripped the balcony rail and looked below, the sun burst through the cloud. A shaft of sunlight split the sky and travelled down, a stairway of celestial brilliance against grey winter, hitting the ground and glancing off a rail track into Izzy’s eyes. Like the opening of a great door.

  Then it was gone.

  And twenty-five floors below, on a dilapidated parking area, lay a crumpled form.

  In the room behind her Paulette cursed once, then again, and fled. Through the door, pursued by demons – as Izzy was now and would ever after be pursued by demons. Daniel had asked only that he be allowed to love her. Yet she had demurred. Not now. Later. Tomorrow.

  Never.

  As Izzy looked once more to the scene below, there was sudden activity. Bouncing into the parking area came two police cars, lights flashing, screeching to a halt. Officers swarmed like termites around the body. Then another car drew up, a black limousine, the rear door opened and a man stepped out. He straightened, looked up.

  Even from twenty-five floors up she knew him. No question. Below, beside the body of Daniel, her lover who would now never be, was standing Paul Devereux.

  The car was forcing its way through the tumble south of the river, headed for the motorway and the airport. Gatwick was a bastard by road. Even with the screaming lights and sirens of the police escort it was proving slow progress through the early evening rush hour. Particularly on the Friday before Christmas.

  Devereux sat composed. He knew what he had to do. It took only seconds to reach the Divisional Commander of the Gatwick Airport police divisions on the phone.

  ‘A problem, Commander. Not too many details, not on a car phone, you’ll understand. But it’s possible we may have an incident on our hands at the airport. A potentially vio
lent incident. May be a complete hoax, you understand, but I’ve been contacted personally by an American woman, recently released from hospital and known to be in a highly disturbed state. She’s believed to be on her way to Gatwick now, making threats of bloodshed. Mid-thirties, red hair. Possible Middle East connections. Wouldn’t normally have taken her too seriously, but it seems she is after all highly dangerous; already left one body behind her just an hour ago. Looks like a drugs-ring murder. Can’t afford to take chances, not with the holiday crowds. She’s disguised as an American correspondent called Isadora Dean. Dean is genuine but is known to be in America; the imposter may be on your doorstep any minute. I’m on my way there myself; if it’s a hoax we can clear the matter up the moment I arrive; if not … Yes. I agree. No point in risking a tragedy. Full security alert. Watch the Gulf flights in particular, is my advice. Anything you have to do. Stop her, Commander, don’t let her get near a flight and turn it into a Christmas hijacking. You’ll have my full personal support.’

  He sat back in his seat, the influence of his position having won police co-operation yet again. Their questions would wait. And, once the flight had left, taking the baby beyond reach, their questions would be so easy to answer.

  Beside him, curled like a foetus, slept Paulette. His daughter. The wax mask where once had been a smiling face, the body, now withered, which he used to swing about his head on summer days, the scabbed and pus-pocked arms that every evening would fling themselves around his neck, the soreinfested mouth that once had launched laughter throughout the corners of his world. The wreckage of a life. Her life. Of all their lives.

  ‘For pity’s sake get a move on!’ he pleaded.

  There was no time for subtlety. Scarcely any time left at all. Her taxi had been submerged in the same congestion as Devereux’s car; she had no telephone, nothing to allay her fears, no means of information or solace, nothing with which to fight back. Brake lights taunted. Intersections jammed. Car horns jeered. She had no thoughts. Every time she disengaged her mind from the numbness she felt only pain, remembered only Triumph Towers. It was safest not to think.