She stood in the lift, nostrils full of the smell of the sun cream on her skin and the car park’s oily, mechanical odour, waiting for the four-digit security code to register. A long beep, the lift doors slammed shut and a second later she stepped into the foyer.
The uniformed desk sergeant looked up as she walked towards him. “Morning, Harper, early again I see.”
“Just very, very diligent, Gregson, you should try it one day,” she replied, with half a smile.
“Ha ha. I’m here too, aren’t I?”
“Yes you are, mate. And where would we be without you? We’d have to get an automatic door, for a start.”
Phil Gregson was probably ten or twelve years older than Harper, fifty or so, but the years had been less kind to him than they had been to her. Or perhaps he’d been less kind to himself. Either way he looked easily old enough to be her father.
“What on earth are you wearing?” He leaned over the desk to point at her feet.
She wiggled her toes. “Trainers.”
“They are not trainers. They’re gloves. Rubber gloves for feet. They’re the weirdest things I’ve ever seen.”
“They’re good. They’re for running better. Your feet are unrestricted, see?” She wiggled her toes again.
“Urg. Stop doing that. You won’t get away with those if Thrupp sees them.”
Harper curled her lip. She knew the five-toes trainers were a bit far out for work. She’d brought her shoes in her bag to change into before the boss arrived but she wanted to spend as much time “barefoot” as possible. It was meant to improve your technique; she was competing in a half Ironman in a few weeks.
“You can swim in them, too, you know.”
“Fascinating,” said Gregson, miming a big yawn.
Though the time Jo Harper spent outdoors had added wrinkles to her face, her body was lean and strong. Whereas Gregson looked as if he was gently melting into his swivel chair. Admittedly there may have been an element of genetic advantage—she had her mother’s great cheekbones and her father’s naturally not-yet-grey hair. Harper had slept with men older and greyer than Gregson, back when she’d thought she only liked men, but the desk sergeant elicited nothing more than a fond daughterly reflex in Harper that he no doubt would have been upset to be made aware of: she wanted to get him a haircut, feed him a salad and some peppermint tea, take him on a nice long walk and make sure he got an early night. Poor old Gregson, with his slowly broadening middle section held in by the wide black police utility belt, and his ear-length hair swept across the emerging scalp. Harper thought he could go up a size in shirts. Maybe two.
Harper made herself a bad coffee in a mug with a joke about dogs on it, the bottom of which got stuck to the tacky surface of the kitchenette that she shared with a hundred or more other officers, none of whom—from the evidence—knew how to work a cloth. The mug jerked as it came away, causing it to spill a little and scald her hand. She was still cursing when she reached her desk, but there was no one there to hear her; at that time in the morning the building was quiet, just the way she liked it. She took a sip of the too-hot liquid and grimaced, then fired up the system for her usual early-morning perusal of the overnight incidents. This was not technically part of her job as detective sergeant. It was a habit, a form of work-avoidance that she could just about justify because sometimes it threw up something interesting, something that hadn’t been handed to her by the DI.
The list from the previous night included the usual stuff—two calls from some angry people between 2 a.m. and 3 a.m. about noisy neighbours. Three kinds of drunk people: one who called by accident, asking for a taxi; one who called on purpose, because they’d lost their mates in a nightclub and they wanted the police to help find them; and one exceptionally drunk person calling because there really was an emergency—his friend had been assaulted, then he’d collapsed and stopped breathing. This was where the skill of the operator was crucial, because it was so hard to tell the difference with drunk people. There were also several calls from stupid people (who were sometimes drunk, too, which didn’t help): one calling because the cat hadn’t come back, one because someone had refused to make tea when it was their turn.
Some of it was funny, but much of it was deadly serious. The list itself might have been indecipherable to a civilian at a glance, just columns of lingo dotted with police code and numerical data. But Harper could see that, hiding in the midst of the crank calls, were those entries heavy with the weight of human tragedy. The cold record of the moment a person decided they were not strong enough to deal with whatever was in front of them. These were genuine cries for help.
At the top of the last page, one of the items caught her interest. In the early hours there had been a call from a mobile phone located in the Royal Infirmary Hospital. It was marked as 4—the lowest possible priority, judged to be a false alarm. But the description read “Attempted Child Abduction” so she clicked on it. Reading the notes, her breath quickened.
1. Time: 0429: 999 report from a mobile phone
2. Details of Person Reporting: Lauren Tranter, address (unable to obtain)
3. Detail of Incident: reported intruder in maternity ward of Royal Infirmary, reported assault, reported attempted abduction of newborn twins. Reporter is calling from inside locked cubicle, both babies inside cubicle with reporter, intruder outside door attempting to breach
4. Opening Incident Classification: 1 (URGENT)
a. Action: hospital security alerted by telephone as first-on-scene
b. Action: mobile patrol officers alerted by radio e.t.a. 16 minutes
5. Time: 0444: contact by telephone from hospital security: false alarm: picked up by MHS
a. Action: Mobile Patrol cancelled by radio
6. Closing Incident Classification: 4 (NO ACTION REQUIRED)
MHS stood for Mental Health Services. So, whoever had called, the mother of the twins, was seeing things. Those with mental-health issues often called the police, and it was quite often “picked up by MHS”. All seemed to be in order, in this case. The dispatcher had probably been correct in ranking it 4. Harper went back to the main screen, looked at the rest of the list. Drunk people, stupid people, Road Traffic Incidents. Nothing that needed her attention. Her cursor hovered over the red button in the corner of the programme window. Better be getting on with planning that training session I’m delivering later, she thought.
But she didn’t click the incident reporter shut and open PowerPoint, as she knew she ought to do. The call from the hospital was bothering her. A sliver of dread crept into her stomach, and she tried to dismiss it as ridiculous. But there it sat, black and heavy. Between the lines of text on the screen she read the mother’s fear, her sure knowledge that someone wanted to take her babies away. Harper couldn’t help but feel it herself, that threat of separation. Unthinkingly, she placed her hand low on her belly, where the skin had never quite tightened over the hard muscles beneath.
Perhaps she’d just make completely sure it was nothing, then she could forget about it and get on with her day. One phone call, that’s all it would take. Harper dialled the security service at the hospital.
After the introductions, the guy was nervy.
“Oh, no, nothing to worry about, officer. The lady in the toilets? Maternity? She was just having a bad trip.”
“She was on hallucinogenic drugs?” Harper used a stern, alarmed tone.
“No, no. No. She was, I dunno, spazzing out.”
“She was … what?”
This what, delivered quietly but ripe with pointed incomprehension, implied a need for Dave, the security guy, to explain himself pretty quick and stop using such offensive out-dated language. Harper could pack a lot of meaning into one word. She was rather enjoying herself.
“Look, officer, ma’am, I dunno what happened.” Dave started talking too fast, about how “your lot” had called him and said there was an intruder on the ward so he got up there sharpish. “I couldn’t understand how an intruder w
ould get in—there’s a security door, and I hadn’t seen nothing on the monitor. I ran there, fast as I could—it’s about a mile from my office, you know. I made in it five minutes.”
Five minutes. The triathlete in her couldn’t help but think, not a bad time if it’s true, but he wasn’t about to get a medal from Harper for that. And, she didn’t put much stock in the fact that Dave hadn’t seen anything on his monitor. He sounded very jumpy. Very jumpy indeed. If she had to guess, she’d say he’d probably been asleep when the dispatch controller had rung him, when he should have been awake and alert for such emergencies.
When he’d got there, nothing. Just a “crazy woman in the toilet”. No intruder. “So I rang your lot back. I said, nothing doing here, the psychiatric team are dealing with it. Whoever I spoke to, they said they’d tell you, that they’d cancel it. Didn’t you people get the message?”
“We got the message. I’m just following up on a few things, that’s all,” said Harper.
Harper told Dave to get together the relevant CCTV on a disk for her, and that she would be there later today to pick it up.
“Aw, man. I clock off in an hour, that’s going into my own time—”
“Dave, I’ve asked you nicely. Please.”
She had a way with pleases. Dave capitulated, sulkily.
So, Dave the security guy said it was nothing. There was no one there, trying to abduct anyone’s baby. But the feeling of dread remained. If she was going to the hospital to get the disk anyway, she might as well have a chat with a few people at the same time. No hurry, of course. Maybe she’d go up at lunch time.
She glanced at the pile of notes she’d collated for the training she was supposed to be delivering, and then back at the incident on her screen. Then again, she thought, no time like the present.
Fifteen minutes after she’d first sat down she was up again, leaving her disgusting coffee to progress from undrinkably hot to undrinkably cold without her.
“You off already, Harper? Not as diligent as all that then, are we?” said Gregson as he buzzed her out of the building.
“Oh fuck off, Gregson,”
He winked at her and she mimed making herself puke, then she stood in the lift again waiting for the long beep, the slamming doors, to shoot back down to the car park.
CHAPTER SIX
The maternity ward doors were locked. Harper pressed the intercom. Enough time passed to make her consider pressing it again, but just as she reached for the button there was a burst of static and a flinty voice barked, “Yes?”
She gave her name and rank, and was buzzed through without another word.
A length of harshly lit corridor led to the central nurses’ station, which surveyed the openings to several bays. Each was designed to hold between four and six beds, but none of them were fully occupied. New mothers were here and there, sitting in chairs, sleeping. A bleary-eyed man walked past gingerly, wearing a blank expression, holding a pink flowery wash bag.
There was the sound of crying babies and a strong smell of antiseptic. The ceilings seemed very low. Harper got a sense that there was not enough air to breathe comfortably, and the strip lights were giving her a headache. For a fleeting moment, she was cast back to her own brief time in a different maternity ward, back to another life that no longer seemed like her own.
Harper had been nearly fourteen when she’d discovered she was pregnant, and by then it was too late to think about abortion. Her parents were shocked, but they never said an unsupportive word to her. As for the baby, she was kept in the family, adopted by her parents who themselves had tried and failed for years to conceive a second child. Her “sister” Ruby was twenty-six now, and though her biological origins were not a secret, the four of them kept to the script. On the surface they were just like any other family: Mum, Dad, and two kids. It wasn’t talked about, and they rubbed along fairly well. The scars didn’t show. At least, Harper thought they didn’t. She kept a lid on it, good and tight, and it was only in moments like these that it all came flooding back. She remembered the maternity ward, where she’d been given a private room. The pain of the labour, and the kind eyes of the nurses who cared for her. She tried to forget the boy she had loved, who had been lost to her completely from the moment he found out about the pregnancy. His closed, childish face, his total rejection. She remembered her mother’s face when she held the baby for the first time, the gratitude and the love in it. She tried to forget her instinct to snatch the baby back and run away, somewhere that she could be a mother properly, not a child, not a sister.
Harper checked herself. She allowed herself one deep breath and pushed the surfacing feelings back in the box, where they belonged.
When she reached the sweeping semicircle of desk, she flashed her warrant card at the uniformed woman behind it, and noted that the woman’s name badge read: Anthea Mallison, Midwife.
“Yes?”
It was the same sharp “Yes” that had shot from the static at the door.
“I’m here about Lauren Tranter,” said Harper.
“Bay three, bed C,” said Anthea. The “Yes” had gone up at the end, a demand for information. “Bed C” went down, with a strong sense of conclusion. Anthea Mallison, Midwife was done here. Her eyes had barely left the screen.
Over at Bay three, a man in a grey shirt was leaving. He fixed his eyes on the ward exit doors and headed straight towards them, radiating busy. Harper stood in his way.
“Excuse me,” said the man, meaning get out of my way. He wore an ID on a lanyard. Harper caught the word psychiatrist as he stepped sideways to go around her.
She stepped sideways with him as if in a dance, blocking him, holding up her warrant card. “Hello, I’m DS Harper. I won’t keep you. And you are?”
Irritated, by the look of you, thought Harper. And tired. Very, very tired.
“Dr Gill. I’m the duty psychiatrist. And I’m afraid I’ve just had an emergency call, so I really must leave, I’m sorry.”
There was a time, probably only ten or so years ago, when DS Harper’s delicate stature and artfully messed-up blond ponytail caused people to utter that line about police officers getting younger every day. The comments trailed off as the years passed, and now they didn’t seem to happen anymore, ever. She was thinking about what it might mean for her, that not only had people stopped saying she looked young for her profession but that this doctor—this fully qualified, adult doctor standing in front of her now, looked about twelve.
Dr Gill tried to side-step her once again, but she went with him. He sighed in frustration.
Harper spoke quickly. “This won’t take long,” she assured him, “no need to worry. A patient, Mrs Tranter, called 999 this morning. Is there anything you can tell me about that?”
“Yes,” said Dr Gill, apparently pleased to be able to provide a speedy answer, “it was a medical emergency, not a police matter. I had hoped someone would contact you about it.”
“They did, but I wasn’t quite clear about the circumstances.”
“Well, that’s standard, you wouldn’t be. It’s confidential. All I can tell you is that the patient in question, when she called you, was experiencing problems relating to a temporary impairment of her mental health.”
“So, nothing to do with an intruder?”
A flicker of incredulity crossed the face of Dr Gill, before the curtain of professionalism dropped down. Very tired indeed.
“In my field, officer, patients often see things that are not there. And a lot of the time they call the police about it, believing what they see to be real. I’m surprised you haven’t come across it before.”
Harper gave the child-doctor a long look. She wondered how old she would have to be for him not to talk down to her. But then, maybe that was it. Maybe she was already so old at thirty-nine that he saw her as a geriatric, losing the plot.
“Can I talk to her?”
As he shrugged a don’t-see-why-not, something vibrated in Dr Gill’s pocket and he pulled out a
small device, checking its screen. “Look, I’ve really got to go. You go ahead though, officer. On the left, by the window. She’s a bit sleepy because we gave her a mild tranquilliser to calm her down. But she’ll talk to you. I’m sure you’ll find there’s nothing to worry the police with.”
As Dr Gill strode away, Harper flipped open her notebook and wrote the words: Dr Gill: sceptic. 8:07 a.m. Royal Infirmary Hospital.
In some areas of the police service they had devices with note-taking apps, but nothing could beat a paper notebook. It meant that Harper could burn her notes if she needed to. The fact you could no longer erase things properly from computers or phones meant her job was easier in a way and harder in another, depending on which side of the fence one stood and whether or not one had anything to hide. She herself didn’t usually have things to hide, of course. But it was nice to have the option.
The bay had four cubicles, but only two had beds in them. In cubicle A there was a red-haired woman, her baby’s hair even brighter than her own. Diagonally across, by the window, the woman in cubicle C sat in bed holding two sleeping infants, one in the crook of each arm. Brown hair, very curly, long enough to cloud around her shoulders. Late twenties, light brown skin, silver wedding band. Harper couldn’t tell height and weight with any accuracy while Mrs Tranter was sitting but she seemed average, perhaps a tad taller than average. Her face was slack, motionless. The babies were paler in complexion than their mother, and both had wisps of curly blond hair. One was dressed in a green sleep suit and the other in yellow.
There was a spot of blood seeping through a bandage on Mrs Tranter’s left wrist. She was dressed in a hospital gown. On the floor between the bed and the wall there was an open suitcase spilling its contents—baby clothes, nappies and what were presumably Mrs Tranter’s own clothes. She’d dressed the babies, but not herself.
Something about her face reminded Harper of a photograph she had of her own mother as a young woman; the large brown eyes rimmed with sadness, gazing softly into the distance, unreachable. Harper was gentle when she spoke.
Little Darlings Page 4