Contents
Cover
Title Page
About the Author
Dedication
Prologue
One
Two
Three
Four
Five
Six
Seven
Eight
Nine
Ten
Eleven
Twelve
Thirteen
Fourteen
Fifteen
Sixteen
Seventeen
Eighteen
Nineteen
Twenty
Twenty-one
Twenty-two
Twenty-three
Twenty-four
Twenty-five
Twenty-six
Twenty-seven
Twenty-eight
Twenty-nine
Thirty
Thirty-one
Thirty-two
Thirty-three
Thirty-four
Thirty-five
Thirty-six
Thirty-seven
Thirty-eight
Thirty-nine
Forty
Forty-one
Forty-two
Forty-three
Forty-four
Forty-five
Forty-six
Forty-seven
Forty-eight
Forty-nine
Fifty
Fifty-one
Fifty-two
Fifty-three
Fifty-four
Fifty-five
Fifty-six
Fifty-seven
Fifty-eight
Fifty-nine
Sixty
Sixty-one
Sixty-two
Sixty-three
Sixty-four
Sixty-five
Sixty-six
Sixty-seven
Epilogue
Acknowledgments
Copyright
About the Author
Merilyn Davies is a former Crime Analyst for the Metropolitan Police and she is married to a serving officer with the Met. She was co-founder of the Chipping Norton Literary Festival and now works for Oxford City Council. She lives in Oxfordshire with her family.
For Mum and Dad. I wish the former was here to read this, and hope the latter enjoys it. Sorry for the Ryvitafn1 crumbs.
Prologue
A screen sits to the left of the judge, and displayed on it is my child: a fragile, beautiful daughter, who had barely begun her life before the chance to live it was taken from her.
‘Not lost,’ the lawyer is saying, his wig a little frayed, in sharp contrast to the fresh youth of his closely shaven skin. ‘Her life wasn’t lost, it was stolen.’ He emphasises the words, ones I’ve heard endlessly during the two-week trial, by looking in my direction. He doesn’t linger, it’s more a glance – the way a painter uses a gentle brushstroke to shape the outline of an image before colouring it in – but it’s enough to make sure the jury remember I am the image he is painting: mother, killer, guilty.
I shift a little in my seat. The packed courtroom is hot and the white blouse I’m wearing sticks to my armpits, the polyester scratching against my skin. I see a juror glance in my direction and freeze; he’s the one my lawyer warned me about.
‘Third one from left, hipster beard,’ he’d said in the cell as we waited to be recalled on that first day. ‘Jeans and a tight jumper. He’s got it in for you, so make sure you don’t fidget too much or it makes you look guilty, but move a bit, because too little makes you look heartless.’
I am a trapeze artist – one wrong move and I fall into a cell, seven foot by nine. I steady my breathing and look down at my feet, concentrating on the new brogues I’m wearing, their brown shine complementing the sky-blue suit my husband bought me for the trial.
‘Here,’ he’d said, handing me the plastic bag he’d paid five pence for, then sitting down across from me in the noisy, smelly visiting hall. ‘I’m pretty sure it’s your size, but I kept the receipt just in case.’
I didn’t remind him we had no time to exchange it. I just smiled my thanks and stuffed it by my feet next to the cooler bag full of fruit and biscuits. He took my hand. ‘We’ll get you out of here, my love,’ he’d said. ‘As soon as they see you, they’ll understand, and then this nightmare will be over.’
I lost myself for a moment in his touch, the lightness of it, a soft caress. I marvelled again at how resolutely he’d stood by me. Against all evidence to the contrary, he’d refused to ever accept my guilt. But then his words returned – ‘This nightmare will be over’ – and they dragged me back to the bowels of the prison where the whispered threats told me otherwise.
Afternoon. I’m told juries are less focused after lunch, which would explain why the defence has called their next witness – a Thames Valley Police pathologist – because no one is going to fall asleep through her evidence. My heart is beating so hard, I’m convinced everyone can hear it as the woman walks silently to the witness box and raises her right hand. This is the evidence I’ve been dreading – the day my guilt is a medical fact, a not-to-be-questioned, scientific certainty – because who is going to question science? Certainly not the plumber sitting in the far right of the jury box, or the local-government worker sat two in from the left.
I reach to pick up my glass of lukewarm water – half empty from this morning – and sip at it. My hand is shaking and so, quickly, I lower it back down. I daren’t look at the jury in case they are looking back at me, reading the shaking as a sure sign of my guilt. Then, as glass touches wood, the pathologist begins and each word feels like a nail in my jail cell door.
‘The body showed signs of bruising consistent with being restrained.’
‘Restrained? Can you describe why you concluded that?’
The pathologist raises her wrists. ‘There was bruising on the inside of each wrist, inconsistent with normal movement.’
The barrister glances at the jury, letting them know this bit is relevant. ‘And what was it consistent with?’
‘Being restrained, and—’ She opens her mouth to say something more but the barrister holds up his hand and whatever it was is lost, to become part of someone else’s story, not mine. Because this is how my trial feels; I’m the lead in a story being written by this barrister as he deftly guides the jury down one plot line to another, each of them designed to get me fifteen to life.
‘And how did the defendant seem to you when you arrived at the scene?’
‘She seemed distant. She didn’t speak.’
‘Did she look at her daughter?’
The pathologist shook her head. ‘No.’
‘Not once?’
‘Not once.’
‘In your experience, did the defendant behave the way a woman who had just lost her child would behave?’
The pathologist paused and the barrister continued. ‘If she hadn’t killed her, that is.’
‘You mean, if it had been an accident?’
‘Yes, that sort of thing. A natural death.’ Another glance to the jury and I dig my nails into my thighs.
‘No, I would not say her behaviour was consistent with that of other mothers I have seen.’
The barrister nods, as if this alone is enough. I pick up the water again, not caring if my hand is shaking, and down it in one. I think of all my lost babies, the death of each as real as any scar across my skin, and wonder how it was we’d got to be here.
It took us years to get pregnant. If you added up all the money we spent on ovulation kits and pregnancy tests you could probably pay off the debt of a small country. So when at last we were, the joy was immediate. At least for the first one. We bought clothes, a pram, a car seat, and by twelve weeks we’d deco
rated the nursery in a neutral shade of green. We chose names – Jamie for a boy, Sammy or Ellie for a girl – and settled into our long nights dozing on the sofa waiting for whoever they were to arrive.
So when they’d arrived without a sound – when the second and the third babies did the same – we’d packed away the pram, the clothes, and painted the room magnolia; because there is only so much two people can suffer before the cracks begin to show.
The last was Charlotte. She’d taken root and we’d watched her grow, my stomach expanding with each week, our fear for her growing alongside it. But she’d come into the world mewing like a kitten and had curled up in my arms as if she’d always known she was meant to be there. And maybe she was, we dared to think. The day she died I’d been down at the bottom of the garden when my husband’s yell came from upstairs. I didn’t move; I think I knew it had always been too good to be true. I didn’t kill that child, but after so many dead, no jury alive is going to believe that; even I don’t, and I know it to be true.
The barrister has moved on to the crucial bit. I bow my head, not caring if it makes me look guilty.
‘And when you tested the item you considered to be the murder weapon, did you find any evidence to suggest it had been that used by the defendant to kill her own daughter?’
The pathologist nods. I glance at my husband in the gallery and he gently shakes his head, so I look back at the tall woman in the box who swore on the Bible she would tell the truth.
‘I found remnants of bone and blood from the daughter and DNA matches for the mother.’
There is a sharp intake of breath from the barrister but I barely hear it. The room has grown too hot; it starts to sway and I grab the wooden edges of my chair to steady myself. Not blood, not blood from my child.
‘And the blood matches that of the defendant’s daughter?’ he continues.
I stare at him, then at my husband, then at my barrister. I turn to the jury. This can’t be allowed. This is not the truth; the truth is I loved my child – all my children. I stand and see my barrister stand too. She reaches towards me, gesturing to the guard beside me but I push them off. Words that have been like fists thundering against the wall of my head are finally released into the room and I shout:
‘I DID NOT KILL MY BABY.’
One
DS Nell Jackson looked up at the shabby white-fronted flats with her usual sense of déjà vu – after eight years with Thames Valley Police she felt she knew this stubby block of flats better than she knew her own. Even the fading light couldn’t hide white paint peeling from window frames, or the makeshift clothes lines spanning balconies like decorations on a Christmas tree while toddlers’ bicycles hung from walls in a desperate attempt to utilise what little outside space there was.
‘Morse, it is not.’ DC Paul Hare’s tone was flat and Nell didn’t bother to agree. Two weeks into a heatwave that smothered Oxford like a duvet, she saved her words for less obvious observations. Besides, she was long past being surprised by the city. At first, fresh out of Wales, she’d found it laughable drunks urinated in shop doorways on Friday nights past closing, when only the kebab vans remained open; that the homeless hung remnants of past lives in century-old doorways, grand pillars marking the boundary to that night’s home.
She’d soon learned that Oxford’s estates pumped out the same old crimes they had in Wales. Same problems, different view. So, Oxford for Nell was now not so much spires as shitholes. Populated not by worldly professors, but by people whose weekly income didn’t even match what some students spent on a night out – all existing under the watchful gaze of Oxford University, which managed the city in a way that would have put the Corleones to shame.
Unbuckling her seat belt, Nell nodded towards an open door on the second floor. ‘Best let’s go up then.’ Reluctantly tucking a dog-eared notebook in her back pocket, she prepared for a blast of late-night air and pushed open the door.
‘Are the parents still in situ?’ She slammed the car door and as the heat hit her she resisted the urge to take off her jacket. This wasn’t the type of case you went into half dressed.
Paul nodded. ‘Yep.’
‘Any sign it’s not natural causes?’ Nell asked as they climbed the open-air stairwell, the smell of urine heavy around them, cigarette butts and broken bottles nestling at the edges of each step.
‘Not yet, but the pathologist has only just arrived.’
She hoped it was Eve, then they might stand a chance of getting out of there before midnight. Fishing her warrant card out of her jacket, she flashed it at the uniformed officer standing discreetly beside the open door: ‘DS Nell Jackson and DC Paul Hare.’
The uniform nodded and tipped her head down the hall. ‘Parents in the front room, second on left,’ she said, her voice low. ‘Deceased on right, directly across from them.’
‘Pathologist?’ Nell asked. Her heart pumped a little faster, adrenalin and nerves kicking in.
‘In with the child.’
‘OK, thanks.’ She looked at Paul, who gave a weary smile.
‘Child first, parents second, OK?’
He nodded, then smiling her thanks at the uniform, Nell said, ‘Right, let’s go and get this over with.’
In contrast to the hall – with its frayed pink carpet and tobacco-stained walls – the nursery was freshly painted, albeit unprofessionally. Despite the darkness – blackout blinds still down from the night before – Nell could make out paint spots on the carpet beneath a large cream cot; stuffed toys cramming the end of the mattress; a red blanket folded neatly over the wooden bars. And in the far corner of the room, a lone chair, next to which sat a bottle on a table, barely touched. There had been care given to this room, Nell thought; the best had been made of a bad job. So what had gone wrong?
Eve Graham was standing by the cot, gloved hands on the frame, staring downwards. The pathologist’s short white hair caught the light from the hall, but her face – the wide cheekbones, thickly carved jawline – remained in the shadows. There was a stillness about the scene that Nell felt uncomfortable interrupting.
‘Why hasn’t she started?’ Paul asked, voice low.
‘She likes to get a sense of the scene before she starts, to take it in as it was, before we arrive and swarm all over it.’ But Nell conceded the delay was unusual, even for Eve. She must have been there for half an hour at least.
At the sound of Nell’s voice, Eve straightened, drawing in air as she removed her hands from the cot and turned to face them.
‘Better late than never, I suppose.’ Her gravelly voice betrayed years of late nights smoking Benson & Hedges while drinking whisky and wine. Her tone was light; there was no chastisement, rather a bored disinterest in their arrival. Nell relaxed. This was the Eve she knew.
Approaching the crib, Nell felt Paul hanging back. She didn’t blame him. No reason they both had to see the body, not when statistics told her this was probably going to be a sudden infant death – a tragedy, but not a crime.
The baby was wrapped in a yellow polka-dot blanket and looked for all the world like she was sleeping but for the sense of absence, a feeling impossible to describe, but which was immediately felt.
Nell felt Eve’s eyes on her and looked across at the pathologist.
‘Have you met the parents yet?’ Eve’s blue eyes were hard, so Nell assumed she had and it clearly hadn’t gone well.
‘No,’ said Nell.
Eve puffed her displeasure. ‘Nasty man. Can see the control he has over the mother just from one glance.’
Nell felt the adrenalin surge again. ‘You think he did something to the baby?’
Eve looked down at the cot. ‘Wouldn’t surprise me. Men like him don’t like competition, even if it comes in the form of a baby.’ She looked at Nell. ‘Especially if it comes in the form of a baby,’ she corrected.
Nell watched as Eve began to work, taking in the milky-white skin of the child, free from discoloration or bruising; noting the baby’s hair still fl
uffy from her evening bath.
‘What are your thoughts?’ she asked.
Eve didn’t reply. Her forehead furrowed as she gently examined the baby. Nell looked around the room for signs of neglect but found only a well-cleaned carpet, clothes neatly placed in a small white wardrobe, toys perfectly stacked in three clear plastic boxes. Sudden infant death. She was sure of it. Her heart slowed. The sickly smell of regurgitated milk and perfumed baby wipes was giving her a headache and the heat in the room was claustrophobic. The sooner they could close this one, the better.
‘It’s not a natural death.’
Nell turned. ‘What?’
Eve’s words jarred with the whole feel of the room.
‘This baby was killed, Sergeant.’ Noting Nell’s scepticism, she added, ‘Trust me, DS Jackson, this baby is dead because someone wanted it to be. And I don’t mean that person to be God.’
Nell looked down at the baby, at the dried dribble of milk in the corner of her mouth, the sleep crusted around her eyes. She looked peaceful, not the recipient of a violent attack but a baby who had just forgotten to wake up. A mad moment, then? The baby crying for too long and too late, parents’ frustrations spilling over into a single act of violence?
As if Eve could sense Nell’s doubt, she said, ‘Distended stomach, fluid from her ear, suggesting head trauma. Obviously, I’ll find out more when I get her down the emergency room.’
Nell nodded. Babies didn’t get taken to the mortuary, sensitivities rightly ensuring they were treated with more consideration than that, but even babies couldn’t escape Eve’s clinical eye. As the pathologist leaned down to put the blanket in an evidence bag, Nell felt the headache move above her left eye.
‘The dad then?’
‘No comment. Yet.’
‘But deliberate?’
‘Oh yes.’
Nell waited for more but Eve continued to slowly bag the contents of the cot.
Irritated, Nell turned to Paul. ‘Let’s go see the parents.’
He nodded, giving a quick glance at the cot before exiting the room, his relief obvious. Nell hesitated.
‘Something worrying you, Sergeant?’
When I Lost You Page 1