Erica came to London from Sweden last year to work as a nanny and to work with Britain's best judo instructors. She is the eldest of a large family and loves children, but her dream is to pursue her love of martial arts.
“The teaching here is excellent,” she raves, “and when I'm fully qualified to teach judo, I'm going to give up being a nanny and do that instead.”
Her judo instructor, Chaz Johns, a former national champion, describes her as “a natural.” Erica's got “guts by the bucketload,” he told us. “I'm not at all surprised she beat an attacker into submission.”
The police confirmed that there was an incident at the Ballantyne household last night, but refused to give details, saying they were still investigating. Erica describes the would-be kidnapper as white, middle-aged, with blond hair, but very strong and tall. No one has yet been detained in connection with the incident. Robin Ballantyne could not be reached for comment.
“Robin is out a lot of the time with her social life, so I look after the children all the day and they really miss their mother,” Erica told us. “They cry quite a lot. She's been difficult about money, employers often are. The house is cheap and many things are old [see pictures, right, of the children in their home, taken by Erica Schlim]. One day last week there was nothing to eat in the house, and she didn't give me any money for food. I just do the job for the children. Whatever she's like, the children deserve love and attention.”
Robin Ballantyne has been suspended from work at the Corporation pending the outcome of the inquiry into her former lover's death. The attempted kidnapping is only the latest in a series of dramatic events to hit the Ballantyne household. Just two weeks ago, Paula Carmichael jumped from a window in a house opposite and died on the ground outside Miss Ballantyne's flat, where the former television producer found her body. In the past week, Ballantyne has been questioned repeatedly by police in connection with the murder of her former lover, Adam Wills. Ballantyne's car is believed to be the vehicle that killed Mr. Wills when he was crossing a street close to her home.
Chapter 23
WHEN the rage at Erica's betrayal faded, it was my own guilt that remained with me. The responsibility for my children's safety resided only in me. Knowing that a threat existed, I had left them guarded only by the hired help. I had failed them.
I slept, but only to be tortured by nightmares. I dreamed that Adam and I made love, we slept in each other's arms, and then I awoke to find him lying dead and cold in a pool of blood next to me. I fled to the children's room, where I found more blood and tiny lifeless bodies, eyes staring open, rosebud mouths silenced and still. I seized their limp bodies and tried to thump life back into them, knowing I was too late, howling my despair … That was when I woke for real, heart pounding, terror searing through me. I switched on the light and lay on my back, staring at the ceiling, trying to shake the nightmare. But I had to get up and go to the children. They were there, of course, under their blankets, very solid, fast asleep, limbs flung wide, chests rising and falling, not a care in the world, not a pool of blood in sight. Still, I was badly shaken. I sat cross-legged on the floor in their room for a long time, leaning my back against the cool wall, just listening to them breathe. Gradually my own breathing slowed, my heartbeat returned to normal, but the fear didn't go. They were the best thing I had ever done. Now I had dreamed how it would feel to lose them, and even the presentiment was more than I could bear.
In the daylight, I reasoned with myself. The lives of my children had been precarious in my very womb. Twins are smaller, more likely to be premature, the weaker vulnerable to the needs of the stronger twin. Their birth, early but alive, was their first defiance of death, but death would dog them as it dogs us all: roads crossed in haste, planes boarded in bad weather, cigarettes smoked, chemicals inhaled or absorbed through their skin, disease, and sheer bad luck. After birth I could not, even with my constant physical presence, protect them against all that life threatened.
Erica's presence in our house was a sham. She had come back to work for us, I was now quite sure, simply to sell her story to the tabloids. She had brought a camera and she had photographed the children's tiny room, my unmade bed, our almost—but not entirely—empty food cupboards, my children while they were tired and crying. The newspaper had made a pinboard display of the lot of them. The attempted kidnapping, if such it had been, had been her opportunity. It was all so quick. I suspected that she had contacted the journalist, Bill Tanning, even before yesterday and negotiated a deal. She must have given him her story the moment she had finished giving her statement to the police, or it would not have made its way into the morning edition. She had not turned up the next morning and I had not even tried to contact her. I was too frightened of what I would do to her.
But the failings were mine. I had failed to understand her message about the threatening phone call and I had failed as a mother. I had seen it in everyone's eyes that night: Finney, my mother, D.C. Mann, the patrol officers who had turned up in answer to Erica's call. I had messed up.
“You know who it was, of course.” Finney was sitting on my sofa. Against my better judgment, against every thread of logic in my head, I was pleased to see him. At first, when he turned up unannounced, I didn't know why he had come to see me or why he had greeted me with more civility than had become the norm between us. Then I saw that there was diplomacy at hand.
“He was who he said he was, Adam's father.” It was obvious. Tall, white-haired rather than blond; elderly rather than middle-aged, and somewhat frail; former army, his fighting days long gone, rather overweight. But then if Erica had said that, her high kicks might have seemed a little overzealous. I thought Harold Wills could probably have been stopped with little more than a steady glare and a poke on the shoulder.
“It's Adam's funeral tomorrow,” Finney said softly. “A man's allowed to go a little mad before he buries his son.”
“Well he can't steal mine.” My voice was thin with anger and I got to my feet and stood, looming over Finney where he sat. “And I expect you to charge him with attempted kidnapping.”
“Maybe he just wanted to see them,” he said, cajoling. “Try to put yourself in his shoes. He's never seen his grandchildren. His wife brings back tales of neglect and abuse. Tomorrow's his son's funeral.”
“He lied his way into my home. You arrest him or I'll sue the police for harassment.” My voice rose again.
Finney ran his tongue over his lips.
“Do you hear me?” I was shouting at him now.
“Of course I can hear you. Half the street can hear you.”
I slumped back into the armchair, pushing my hair back from my face, irritated by its touch against my skin. Did I really want a grieving old man thrown into jail? What was happening to me? I sipped at a cup of cold coffee, but my hand was trembling. Finney was talking again and I tried to concentrate. I fixed my eyes on his.
“We've talked to Erica. She wanted to know whether you were angry with her. I said you were. Anyway, Erica didn't understand that phone call was threatening either, until she went into the Chronicle and sat down with Tanning, and he asked her to go through the day and tell him everything that happened. He's a worm but he's not stupid, so when he forced her to repeat exactly what had been said, or at least what she remembered, he realized the well-wisher was quite the opposite.”
“You don't think Tanning was just being creative?”
“I've gone over it again with Erica and I think his interpretation was right, even if it wasn't word for word.”
“I think a lot of the article was in Tanning's words,” I said wearily. “Erica doesn't speak like that.”
Finney nodded, then went on, “The thing is, I don't think Harold Wills made that phone call. He says he didn't, and it just doesn't make sense that he would. Adam's parents just want the children, why would they threaten you?”
“Of course he didn't make the phone call, it never occurred to me that he had,” I snapped, then a thought stru
ck me and I spoke slowly, “Unless they think threatening phone calls will convince a judge to remove the children to somewhere safer.”
Finney shook his head.
“They're not up to plotting anything. The other son is here with them …”
“David.”
“David. He's trying to hold things together, but they're both in a terrible state.”
David. Adam's sweet little brother. All the talent, none of the confidence, constantly put down by his father. He'd escaped to a job that he loved and now he was recalled for death duty. I wondered how he was coping with this grief for the better-loved brother.
“You could have made the call yourself, of course.” Finney was speaking quietly, and I almost missed it because my mind was on David.
“What?” I almost laughed, it was so absurd.
“You were out. You knew Erica would take a message. Threats to you make you look innocent.”
I regarded him curiously, incapable of further anger.
“You don't really believe that, do you?”
His face was unreadable. He shrugged.
“Why would I kill him?” I asked dully.
“Why wouldn't you? He abandoned you with two small kids.”
“So what? So I wasn't able to cope? It's a mess,” I waved my hand around the sitting room. There were toys littered about, and a pile of laundry had found its way onto the coffee table. “But it wouldn't be any less of a mess with Adam here. You think he'd be tidying up?”
“You'd be less tired.”
“I doubt it.”
“He might at least give you financial support.”
“I'm not an imbecile. I can work. We'd have got by anyway, whatever happens about Adam's will. I'm not pretending it wouldn't be great to be able to move somewhere else, but …” My voice trailed off.
“So you killed him because you're doing fine without him, and suddenly he's trying to elbow his way back into your lives.” Finney's voice lacked all conviction, and I felt that we were playing no more than a game, a weary dutiful game.
“Make up your mind, Finney …” I looked across at him, and he shrugged as if to say, At least give me a comeback. “I didn't like the idea of him seeing the twins, but I was getting used to it. Anyway,” I warmed to the subject, “you know what I really think? I think he wouldn't have stuck with it. We'd have seen him once a year, if that.”
“That's fine with the benefit of hindsight,” Finney said.
“For God's sake.” I was exasperated now and I sat forward, pinning his eyes with mine, speaking fast and hard. “Tell me why I would kill the father of my children. They don't know the first thing about it now, but they will. They'll grow older, and they'll ask questions, and they'll hear what people say. Someone hated Adam enough to drive a car at him. What do you think that's going to do to his children? Well, I'm going to find out. I'm going to be dealing with this, and with my damaged children, for the rest of my life. Do you really think I'd have done that to my children? Would you do that to yours?”
Finney made a motion of surrender with his hands and hung his head. He'd puffed out his cheeks and didn't seem about to say anything.
“If you think I'm guilty, arrest me.”
He raised a palm. “Don't start shouting again, I have a headache.”
“If you think I'm guilty, arrest me.” I came over and knelt in front of him. My eyes locked on his. I spoke as softly as I had ever spoken, but I couldn't take the intensity out of my words. “You can't because you don't have the evidence. Or you have evidence that points to someone else. I don't know which. But you know I didn't do it and I need you to say it publicly. You're just hanging me out to dry. Get me my job back. Tell Adam's parents they must stay away. For God's sake, concentrate on finding who killed Adam, so my children don't have to spend all their lives wondering whether it was their mother.”
He raised his hand, pushed a strand of hair behind my ear, and my skin burned at his touch. His eyes were guarded.
“I have people to answer to,” he said quietly.
I turned away from him in disgust.
“Won't anyone stand up for what they believe?” I muttered angrily. “You have a heart, you have a brain, do you need permission to use them?”
He sighed, took his head in his hands. I stayed kneeling there in front of him, not because I was begging, but because I knew if I moved away I would break the line of communication. Put me back on a chair and we'd be back at square one with weary sarcasm dripping out of his mouth and me yelling. At last he raised his head to look at me again.
“The station got a call the night Wills was killed. There's a recording. The voice was distorted. It gave your car plate number, it told us where to look. We've checked your landline and your mobile. You didn't make that call from either.”
“That's not conclusive.”
“Whoever drove your car wiped it clean of prints. I mean the whole thing's been polished. There's no reason for you to do that. It's your car.”
“If there had only been my fingerprints, it would have proved that no one else had been in the car.”
“True.” He lowered his head. “Someone also dropped a tissue down on a seat.”
“It could be mine.”
“It's not yours. It has a few spots of blood on it, as though someone used it to blot up a shaving wound or a nosebleed or a small cut. We have all the DNA we need, we just don't have a match. Can you think of anyone who's been in the car?”
I thought back.
“No one. And the children haven't bled in the car. I mean they're always vomiting, but …”
“Our scientists can tell the difference between blood and vomit.”
I thought again and then there was a bolt of lightning. “I know how he did it,” I said, excitement speeding my voice. “There's a piece of metal that's come loose by the door frame on the driver's side, low down by the floor. I haven't caught myself on it for ages because you only do it if you shift the seat setting, you know, if you push it back or forward.”
“It would have had to cut through gloves.” Finney sounded doubtful.
“Thin gloves? You've got the car, check it out,” I instructed. “You have to sit in it like you're about to drive, then reach down and shift the seat.”
Finney was sitting back in his chair now, looking more at ease. I realized I was clutching his knee. I removed my hand. I still didn't dare move in case I broke the spell. Because that was what it seemed like. As though I'd unlocked some magic and with it Finney's mouth.
“This stalker …” I said. “There is a stalker, isn't there?”
“In the two weeks before his death, Adam reported nuisance phone calls and then, just days before he died, he reported an anonymous letter.”
“What did you do about it?”
Finney looked sheepish.
“We advised him to use an answering machine to screen his calls, and save the letters to show us if he got any more. Frankly, we wouldn't have done much about it. Every celebrity has their share of cranks. Most of them don't have guns.”
“And some of them don't have cars,” I said grimly.
We sat for a minute.
“Am I the only one with anything approaching a motive?”
Finney scrunched his face up. “There were people he'd pissed off professionally. He was an ambitious man. I don't have to tell you that.”
“Richard Carmichael thought he was losing his wife, and he thought he was losing her to Adam,” I said. “How about that for motive?”
“Except for the fact that by the time Wills was killed, Paula was already dead. Motive gone.”
“He blamed Adam for her death?” It was all I could come up with, but Finney shook his head. I stood up and paced around to get my circulation going again. I could tell from the expression on Finney's face that he would say no more. He too had got to his feet, and he was looking uncomfortable, annoyed with himself, as though he knew he'd said too much. He wandered over to the mantelpiece and glance
d at the photographs, just as Richard Carmichael had on the morning after his wife's death. Finney picked up a framed print of myself, Jane, and Suzette. Redhead, black, and blonde, arms around each other's shoulders, strappy dresses, raising glasses of champagne. We looked like an ad for shampoo.
“Good times,” he said, with that dry tone back in his voice.
“Good friends,” I corrected him. “It was taken at Suzette's wedding, three years ago.”
“I don't see a groom,” Finney said.
“He was there somewhere. They've split up. I think he's in Australia now.”
Finney replaced the photograph.
“I have to be going,” he said. “I've been here too long.”
Chapter 24
THE rain is falling like shards of iron, hard and fast and vicious. Above me the sky is dark. It is only ten in the morning but it might as well be dusk. My rented car is parked outside a crumbling mansion on Hill Rise, squeezed in between a minicab and a van with painted-over windows. I have grappled the double stroller out of the trunk and set it where the pavement should be but isn't. My bare head is soaked, my hair dripping onto my sodden shoulders, but the stroller has a raincover. I remove the children one by one from the shelter of the car, trying in vain to shield them from the downpour, and I strap them into the stroller with slippery fingers. By the time they are in, both they and the stroller are damp. Hannah and William are cheerful, nonetheless. I have not taken them on many outings recently, and they are prepared to be doused in water if I think it's a good idea. We maneuver our way between the cars and down the hill, then turn right and up Wood Vale, a steep incline. I am bent double, and I can see Hannah through the window in the back of the stroller, her face lifted toward the plastic of the raincover, her finger pointing, mouth burbling pleasure as raindrops splat against it. We are on our way to see David, Adam's brother. We used to be friends and I want him to help me.
For twenty-four hours I have been all but incapacitated. With Hannah and William clambering all over me, vying for my attention, I sat at home and watched the television coverage of the funeral of their father. No channel carried it live, but because of the nature of Adams death, it had become a huge story and there were extended clips on news bulletins and lengthy reports on the state of the investigation into his death. I sat flicking from channel to channel, horribly fascinated. I was not going to make a fortune from libel suits. The lawyers must have pored over proposed scripts, cold-blooded and calculating. How much could be safely said? How much implied? The reporters, each one of them, stopped short of declaring me guilty, but there were no other suspects, no alternative paths of inquiry. Adam was killed by my car. Increasingly, it seemed to me, the only dramatic tension left in the affair was the question of when I would get my comeuppance. There was hurt outrage in the commentaries that accompanied the funeral, and I knew I was lucky that so far, aside from a single oped piece, no one had publicly bayed for my blood. Finney's beautiful smile was no good to me if he was too spineless to stand against the tide that was rising and threatening to engulf me.
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