Changelings

by Jo Bannister

‘You’re talking about the lives and livelihoods of a dozen families!’ shouted Dr Chapel. ‘You have no right to destroy everything they’ve built!’

  ‘They had no right to build it on somebody else’s bones!’ retorted Donovan savagely.

  Payne finally made it through the door. He hurried across the hallway, shaking the key he wanted out of the bunch. Sarah stayed where she was in the study: she wasn’t coming with them. Donovan wasn’t surprised. He knew Payne was coming back here as soon as his daughter was safe.

  ‘All right.’ Donovan took Elphie by the shoulder of her coat and held her in front of him. He didn’t know what he was expecting Chapel to do, but he felt better keeping his own body between the old madman and the child. He opened the front door.

  Washing up against the house was a sea of faces. Most of East Beckham must have been here. They’d gathered in silence, and in silence they watched the big house, waiting for something to happen, for something to be decided. Some of them were armed with wooden staves and some with iron bars.

  4

  Donovan closed the front door quietly and turned. Jonathan Payne looked stricken, shock and fear mingling visibly in his round face. Sarah looked numb, as if the implications of what she’d just seen had yet to reach her.

  Dr Chapel looked as if he’d read once that gloating was not a particularly attractive habit but he’d decided he didn’t care.

  Only Elphie thought they were still going anywhere. She tugged at Donovan’s hand. ‘Everybody’s waiting for us.’

  ‘I know,’ he said softly.

  ‘So what’s his name?’ asked Liz.

  But it was never going to be that simple. ‘Honestly, I don’t know,’ said Margaret Crosbie. ‘Sheila’s hardly talked about him. The Child Support Agency wanted to know too and she wouldn’t tell them either. She said Jason’s father could be any one of half a dozen men, but I knew that wasn’t true. She knew who he was. She just didn’t want anything more to do with him.’

  ‘Do you know why?’

  Mrs Crosbie shrugged. ‘She calls him The Psycho. Says it all, don’t you think?’

  ‘If she felt like that about him, why did she get involved with him in the first place?’

  ‘Because he was clever and charming, and he had a bit of money, and she was flattered. I think he was older than her, and she was just young enough to find that attractive. She thought he was sophisticated. Maybe he was – I wouldn’t know. If sophisticated means scaring people till they daren’t say no to anything you want from them, I don’t want to.’

  ‘Did he rape her?’

  ‘Do you know, I’m not sure. She was that terrified by then I couldn’t be quite sure what happened. I think she was willing enough when he started; and by the time she realized what it was going to be like she was too scared to tell him to stop. Is that rape? Whether it is or not, it was reason enough for her to stay away from him afterwards. As far as I know, she hasn’t seen him since.’

  It was heavily circumstantial, the keenest of the old hanging judges would have raised both eyebrows at it, but it all made sense. Sheila helped the blackmailer because he threatened her baby and she knew enough about him to take the threat seriously. Liz still hadn’t got a name. But she was sure now that Sheila could give her that final piece of information, if she could be persuaded to.

  ‘It’s so damned frustrating,’ said Shapiro, raking thick fingers through his thinning hair. ‘Sheila could tell us who this man is in a moment. And she won’t.’

  ‘She’s afraid of him. He knows, or he soon will, that she’s here. If we turn up on his doorstep he’ll know why. We have to convince her that he can’t hurt her if he’s in prison.’

  ‘This is a perfectionist,’ Shapiro said again. ‘A man who whittles away with infinite patience until the block of wood he started with is a beautiful, delicate mobile – not a child’s toy, a minor work of art. If there’s one thing this man can do, it’s wait. So we send him to prison. But everybody comes out eventually; unless we get really lucky and he dies in there. Eight or ten years from now she’s going to answer the door and he’ll be back. And he won’t have caustic soda this time, he’ll have vitriol.’

  Liz sighed. ‘It’s a bit hard to see what we can offer her that makes the risk worthwhile. A pride in doing the right thing?’

  ‘It’s going to wear a bit thin while she’s waiting for the skin-grafts,’ Shapiro agreed ruefully.

  ‘If it was just her, perhaps we could talk her round. She’d give a lot to have this man out of her life. She might risk a lot too. But it isn’t just her, it’s Jason too. I don’t think she’ll take any risks with him.’

  Shapiro shook his head with a kind of wonder. ‘You never get used to it, do you? The depths some people will sink to. This is his own baby we’re talking about, and he’s prepared to hurt it to keep its mother in line.’

  Liz shrugged. ‘If he really is a psychopath, he doesn’t think of it as his baby. He doesn’t even think of it as a baby: he thinks of it as a piece on a chess board. He’ll sacrifice it without compunction if that’ll win him the end-game. It doesn’t matter to him. He never wanted a son.’

  Her voice petered out as her thought processes got ahead of what she was saying. Shapiro waited, unwilling to interrupt if there was any chance of her seeing a way through this. Sheila Crosbie was a woman and so was Liz: maybe there was something she could offer that he wouldn’t think to.

  ‘Frank,’ she said after a minute, and she was getting up as she said it, ‘I think I’ve got an idea. Let me talk to Sheila, see where it takes us.’

  ‘You’re not going to beat her up?’ asked Shapiro doubtfully.

  Liz laughed aloud. ‘I’m hoping that won’t be necessary.’

  Sheila Crosbie could have given lessons to a clam. She just about looked up when the door opened, registered Liz’s arrival, dropped her gaze back into her lap. Her eyes were dead.

  She’d already given up, and that made it harder, not easier, to get through to her. She saw no future for herself. All her energies now were focused now on keeping her baby safe.

  Liz sat down, introduced herself for the tape, put her hands and also her hand on the table. ‘Sheila, I know everything about this man except who he is, and I know that you know that. I also know why you aren’t telling us. Not to protect him; not even to protect yourself. Because you’re afraid he might get to Jason.

  ‘Well, you’re right to be afraid. He’s a deeply dangerous man. A man who uses other people, even those closest to him, to get what he wants. He burnt your hands, didn’t he? Because it was easier, and safer, than hurting a stranger. Then he sent you down here to play the injured innocent. He must have known we could suspect you; he didn’t care. He knew you wouldn’t give him away. He was holding something too valuable over your head. Jason. What did he say? – that if you didn’t do as he asked he’d burn Jason instead? No wonder you were so convincing. You didn’t have to pretend that your baby could have been hurt, it was a real possibility.

  ‘So I understand why you acted as you did. I understand why you’re still not prepared to help us. I’m talking about the threat to a town full of strangers: you’re only interested in Jason.’

  She breathed steadily for a moment, plotting her course. What she said next – perhaps, the precise words she used – were going to be critical. She was only going to get one shot at this: if she didn’t strike home this man was going to win.

  ‘So let’s talk about Jason. He’s in care now. Your mother would have taken him, but you weren’t convinced she could protect him from his father. I have news for you, Sheila. I’m not sure Social Services will be able to either.’

  That got the girl’s attention. Her head snapped up like a curbed horse’s.

  ‘Oh, they’ll try,’ said Liz, ‘of course they will. But if you insist on doing this, the point’s going to come where you’re in prison and he’s free. And he is Jason’s father, and the fact that we have our suspicions about him won’t count for much if we ca
n’t convict him in court.

  ‘So if he turns up at Dunstan House in twelve months’ time, and says he’s the child’s father and he wants to apply for guardianship, and he volunteers a DNA sample and right enough, it checks out – Sheila, I don’t know what would happen then. Social Services wouldn’t just hand Jason over. But if an application was made to the court, and the facts were that the mother was in prison and the father was an apparently respectable man with a clear record who was offering to provide him with a permanent home, they’d have to take that offer seriously.

  ‘They’d ask your opinion. You’d object. You might tell them what you won’t tell me, that Jason’s father was responsible for blackmailing Castlemere. But the evidence would be long gone. They’d want to know why you hadn’t said anything at the time. You’d tell them, but how much credence would they give to a woman who, by her own admission, had lied before? They’d think you were trying to get an early release.

  ‘They’d probably ask the police for our view. We’d say that we considered Jason’s father as a suspect, but we didn’t know who he was and anyway the evidence was so tenuous it could have applied equally to any man you’d been involved with. Sheila – in those circumstances I think he’d get the baby.’

  She’d been willing to give up all of her life that was worthy of the name for that baby. Now someone was saying it wasn’t enough. It was too much to take in, and her expression froze while underneath the cogs whirred and the wheels spun. She wasn’t stupid. She’d understood Liz’s argument, and it had resonated with her deepest fears. She believed – she could not help believing – that she’d been tricked into abandoning her son to his fate. In another moment the superheated mix of terror and rage would be enough for the geyser to blow.

  She didn’t shout: she screamed. The piercing, primeval howl penetrated every wall in the elderly building. Superintendent Giles looked up, startled, from the monthly accounts. Frank Shapiro hunched his shoulders and plunged his fists deep into his pockets in a gesture he recognized, belatedly, as having learnt from DS Donovan. Sergeant Bolsover heard it, and so did four members of the public waiting in the front office. Sergeant Formby the custody officer leapt from his seat at the sound of it and dived for the interview room door.

  He had it open before he remembered it was DI Graham conducting the interview. He knew her for a determined, enthusiastic detective, but he’d never yet caught her using thumbscrews. He coughed to cover his confusion. ‘Sorry, ma’am. Er – everything OK?’

  Liz nodded calmly. ‘Yes, thank you, Sergeant. Ms Crosbie’s a little upset. I think she’ll be all right now.’

  Ms Crosbie was more than a little upset. She was shaking with tectonic emotion. She could hardly get out two coherent words. But her mind was crystal clear. She’d made a terrible mistake. For all the right reasons she’d done all the wrong things. There was time, if she acted now, to rectify that. But there might not be much time because – now or soon – he’d be on his way back.

  ‘I’ll tell you everything,’ she stammered, tripping over the words they came out so fast. ‘But you have to keep that animal away from my baby.’

  ‘Yes,’ Liz said simply.

  ‘Promise?’

  ‘Cross my heart and hope to die.’

  As they hurried down to the cars Shapiro said sidelong, ‘You realize we’ve been pretty dim?’

  ‘The information was there,’ admitted Liz. ‘Should we have recognized it?’

  ‘I think we should. Once we realized that Sheila Crosbie didn’t buy the bottle with caustic soda already in it, she applied it to her own hands.’

  ‘She says she didn’t. She says he made up a solution in the sink and held her hands in it. She says he put on rubber gloves first.’

  ‘Figures,’ said Shapiro tightly. The car was waiting at the bottom of the steps. ‘His hands are delicate instruments. Look what he can do with them.’

  Liz rolled her eyes. ‘That should have rung a bell. He made that mobile for the baby. That was the first Sheila knew he’d come back into her life: she answered the door ten days ago and there he was, holding the mobile and smiling at her. Until then she hadn’t spoken to him since the night Jason was conceived. She didn’t know he knew she’d had a baby: she’d dodged into alleys to avoid meeting him in the street. But he hadn’t forgotten her: he’d kept his eye on her, was just waiting until she could be of some use to him. When the moment came, he made it impossible for her to say no. He knew where she lived. He knew she’d had his son.’

  ‘It was Wilson spotted that mobile, you know,’ said Shapiro, just a shade sourly. Scobie started the car before they were even inside, took off quickly enough to flatten them in their seats. ‘Even then it didn’t occur to me what it meant. That Jason’s father was a skilled woodworker; that maybe it was something he did for a living.’

  ‘It might just have been a hobby,’ said Liz, soothingly, trying not to notice how quickly Queen’s Street had been left behind.

  ‘Yes, it might; but it wasn’t, and it should have occurred to me to find out. The facts were all there, for heaven’s sake! He’s a carpenter. We knew that. He works for Sidgwick & Mellors – he’s been at Castle High for six weeks refitting the school library. Plenty of time to work out how to make this work. The yoghurt was easy – no one was looking for him then. The school was easy – he had every right to be on the campus. The baby lotion and the cold remedy were a doddle: he bought them over the counter, did everything that needed doing in the privacy of his own home. He didn’t even have to put them back on the shelves: he just gave one to his accomplice, took the other himself.

  ‘He didn’t get cholera from the cold remedy,’ grunted Shapiro, ‘he didn’t even get food poisoning from it. He picked himself some suitable mushrooms, put some in the opened bottle and had the rest for his tea. Then he waited to get sick and called the ambulance.’

  A squeal of protest from the tyres and they were on to Cambridge Road. All that would stop Scobie now were the flashing lights of a level crossing; probably.

  ‘And all the time we’ve been looking for him he’s been in hospital, sipping rehydration salts and nibbling digestive biscuits!’ exclaimed Liz.

  ‘Which explains the delay,’ shrugged Shapiro. ‘The days where nothing was happening. He couldn’t come looking for his money any sooner, he was sick. He set it all up – the yoghurt, the school, Sheila’s contribution and the ransom note on the area car. “Get it and wait.” Of course we’d have to wait: he was going to be sick for the next few days. It’s the classic way to avoid suspicion: convince everyone that you’re a victim.’

  ‘The second note, the one posted in Cambridge on Friday,’ said Liz. ‘He must have written that as soon as he could sit up and sent someone out with it. Cambridge, for God’s sake: we knew who was in Cambridge. We should have wrapped this up then.’

  ‘Martin Wingrave,’ said Shapiro disgustedly. ‘Martin bloody Wingrave!’

  5

  Without looking at him Donovan asked Payne, ‘Where’s your mobile phone?’

  There was no reply. Donovan turned on his heel, his eyes like coals. ‘Where? I know you have one – Sarah called you on it. If you want Elphie to be safe, use it now. Call Queen’s Street. They’ll be here in fifteen minutes.’

  Payne’s voice was so low Donovan genuinely couldn’t hear him. ‘What?’

  ‘I said, I left it in the Land Rover!’

  Donovan let his eyes fall shut. ‘And I don’t suppose you can fix the land line from inside the house, can you?’

  ‘We cut it back up the road. We thought you might try one of the other houses.’

  ‘You were that determined to keep me here?’

  ‘Until we were sure you were no threat to us,’ said Dr Chapel, ‘damn right we were.’

  ‘You people are crazy,’ said Donovan thickly. ‘I’m a police officer. You can’t really believe you can make me turn a blind eye to this?’

  ‘No,’ said Chapel.

  ‘Then what do
you hope to achieve? Maybe you can keep me a prisoner here – for a week, for a month even. But sooner or later either I give you the slip or you get tired of feeding me and let me go. Either way, when I leave here you’re going to have to face the music. You know that.’

  Chapel was nodding. ‘Yes, that’s pretty much how we read it too.’

  ‘Then – ?’ And then he understood. The anger, the confusion drained out of his face, leaving it smooth. ‘Ah.’

  Even after all that had happened, finally it came as a shock. He’d been threatened before; attempts had been made on his life before. But there was something peculiarly sickening about being threatened in a place where, and by people among whom, he had once felt safe. The old man had saved his life; Sarah and her son had cared for him. But he’d been too curious, taken too much interest in their affairs, and now they would only be safe when Donovan was dead.

  When they’d taken him from the boat it had been a calculated risk. They’d known that if they made no effort to help him they’d be asked to explain why not, and it seemed safer to bring him here, get him well and send him, suitably grateful, on his way. The phone was cut and Tara was moved to control his access to the outside world until he was fit to leave.

  But before that he’d become interested in the Turner family history. Mere habit had led him to ask questions that rang alarm bells the length of East Beckham. Once he knew there was a mystery here – that a pattern of deceit involving everyone in the village had been woven around the events of fourteen years ago – and realized that a suspicious death was the only thing important enough to warrant that, they could never let him go.

  And still the habit of inquiry was grained so deeply that he had to know why they needed him dead. ‘This isn’t because of a fourteen-year-old fraud, is it? Because a dozen families in East Beckham agreed to take advantage of a nasty accident to secure their future. Sure, you lied about it; but that isn’t why the whole damn village is waiting on the front step to beat my head in. They’re ready to do murder because they did it once before. Simon Turner didn’t turn that tractor over. You killed him.’