‘You see the thing is,’ he suddenly becomes serious, ‘she didn’t handle the separation well and there are scars on her wrists to prove it. And when I saw you, running to me with this little baby in your arms, I could only think of my mum and what she would have wanted a man to do to help her if she’d managed to save me like you saved Aoife’s baby.’ He looks down at his hands. My heart is pounding.
‘I wanted you to have a chance to know her.’ He looks at me and his eyes are blue like the sea. ‘I wanted to keep her safe for you so you didn’t have to go through what my mum went through.’
‘Where is she?’ I whisper.
‘With my mum. She’s caring for her and I promise you there’s not a thing my mum won’t do to help her and you.’
‘She is mine. Mine and Aoife’s,’ I say, firmly.
He nods.
‘Well, I’ve sort of got myself in a bit of a hole now anyway. They know there’s a baby and they’re looking for it. So I’ve got to keep her hidden for now, anyway.’ He suddenly looks lost and I think how handsome he is. How old can he be? Twenty, twenty-one? I can see the emotion has exhausted him – not just from finding me but from finding his mum too.
I want to tell him I’m grateful and I am, in part, but she is still proof of what I did, so I could never keep her. I could see her, though? Say goodbye properly. Tell her about her mum and send her out into the world with all the love I can give her.
‘Thank you,’ I say, kissing his cheek. ‘It is the nicest thing anyone has ever done for me.’
Forty-nine
As Carla began dialling Hampshire Police she saw Gerry appear at the door with two takeout coffee cups in his hands. She hung up.
‘I thought I’d bring the coffee to you rather than make you come to it.’ He offered her a cup, then handed her a sugar.
‘Thanks.’
‘You OK?’
He sat opposite her, his back to the wall listing the people of interest in the O’Brian case. She glanced at Bremer’s office. She needed to get Gerry out of there.
‘Yeah, sorry, just busy.’
‘Any new developments?’
‘No, just plodding on, you know how it is.’
‘How was Eve in the interview?’ He took off the plastic lid and stirred in three sugars.
‘Prickly.’
Gerry laughed. ‘She’s mad at me because I gave you the letters.’
‘Why did you? Give them to me, I mean?’
Gerry kept stirring the coffee. ‘I thought it might help you in the O’Brian case, seeing as the author had mentioned it, but I suppose I also hoped you’d find out who was sending them.’ He looked at her.
‘We’re no further forward on that – sorry.’
‘That’s OK.’
‘Are you worried about them? About Eve?’
‘A bit. They’re unsettling. It’s making Eve distant and I’m not used to that.’ He smiled. ‘I always thought it might be nice to be a bit more independent of each other, but it turns out I quite like us being joined at the hip.’
Carla took a sip of her coffee. She should ask him about his phone call to Joanne. He could clear it up, tell her he was just warning her off, no crime in that. So why wasn’t she?
‘Did you find anything more on Mary? How she’s linked to the O’Brian case?’
‘No. Drawing a blank there too.’
He nodded.
‘And you’re sure there’s nobody Eve knows, past or present, called Mary?’ she asked.
Gerry suddenly looked sad.
‘Gerry?’
‘No, no one. Or if there was, she’s long gone.’
‘So, there was someone?’
Gerry shook his head but before she could press him further, Bremer opened his door, looking thunderous. He strode over to the desk, glaring at Gerry.
‘How can we help you, Sergeant?’
Gerry looked surprised. ‘Just popping in to say hello to Carla, sir. You know us sergeants, always wanting to look after the team.’
‘She’s not on your team, she’s on mine. Are you suggesting I don’t look after her?’
Her? The cat’s mother? Carla fought the urge to intervene. Bremer looked as though he was going to blow at any moment and she’d rather not be the focus if he did.
‘Not at all, sir.’ He stood, smiled down at Carla and said, ‘I’ll see you later. Hope the coffee helps.’ He glanced at the wall behind him. Bremer moved to block his view.
‘Sergeant, please leave.’ Bremer still hadn’t looked at Carla but anger radiated off him.
Gerry turned to face him with a look Carla had never seen before. ‘Is there a problem with me asking how an investigation involving my wife is progressing?’
‘Yes.’
Gerry put his coffee down. ‘I’m getting the sense you think we’re involved somehow? All I did was give you letters that might assist you. If you can’t find out how they could help the case, I would suggest you try looking a little bit harder.’
‘Your wife is involved in the death of Connor O’Brian. I repeat, please leave.’
‘Involved?’ Gerry held Bremer’s stare. ‘How is she involved other than by doing her job?’
When Bremer didn’t reply, Gerry continued. ‘Do you have evidence or are you just fishing?’
Carla stood. ‘Gerry, please. Leave it.’
He didn’t look at her. ‘Come on, tell me what evidence you have?’
Bremer stepped closer to Gerry. ‘I gave you an order to leave.’
‘And I’m not following it.’
‘I will remove you if you fail to leave.’
They stood, face to face, for what felt like minutes before Gerry grabbed his coffee.
He left without saying a word and after he’d gone, they remained silent. Carla was shaking. She’d never seen Gerry like this before. What the hell had happened? He knew Eve was involved in the case because he’d damn well told his wife to give Carla the letter that indicated she was. So what the hell had made that kick off?
Bremer turned to face her, before sitting down next to her. ‘Carla—’
‘I couldn’t stop him,’ she interrupted. ‘He just walked in. I couldn’t tell him to leave.’
He nodded. ‘I know. And I’m sorry he put you in that position. Do you understand how inappropriate it is for him to request information on the case?’
‘Yes.’
‘He’s using your close relationship to get information he shouldn’t have access to.’
She wanted him to shut up. She got it, she really did.
‘That’s abusing a friendship. That means he’s putting his interests above yours.’
Was he? No, he just wanted to help his wife. That was a normal reaction to have.
‘He should respect your work and not pressure you into saying things you don’t feel comfortable with.’
‘He didn’t.’ But of course, he had.
‘OK.’ Bremer smiled, but a soft smile, not the normal full beam. ‘Have you rung Hampshire Police yet?’
‘No. I was just about to when …’ She stopped.
‘OK, well get on to it now.’
‘Will do.’
When Bremer had gone back to his office, Carla sat very still, trying to detangle her feelings. She was annoyed to have been a pawn in their power struggle; she was annoyed Bremer had seen fit to step in when she could have dealt with it; but mostly she was annoyed Gerry had even come to the office in the first place. Surely he should know it wasn’t on?
Her mobile bleeped. Checking it, she saw a message from Gerry. Sorry.
She stuffed her mobile in her bag, sick of the lot of them, and picked up the phone to Hampshire Police.
Fifty
Hampshire Police gave Carla the phone number for the senior investigating officer in the Waites case. They also told her he’d retired to a village in the Cotswolds, only twenty minutes away from HQ.
‘Mr Eyre? Carla Brown, analyst from Thames Valley Police.’
‘Anal
yst? They’re getting you to do their work for them now, eh?’ His voice was warm, not chiding, an upper-class accent Carla thought more suited to the military than the police.
‘Mr Eyre—’
‘Call me William.’
‘William, we were wondering if you could come in to speak to us about the Alf Waites murder case you were in charge of back in 1983?’
‘That’s a long time ago, Ms Brown. My memory is about as much use as my waterworks these days.’ He laughed and Carla couldn’t help but join him.
‘Well, we have toilets here, if that helps.’
More chuckling, which turned into a cough. ‘Sorry, lungs took a battering during the 1980s. Forty a day on the crime squad does that, you know.’ His tone became wistful.
‘The Waites case?’
‘Ah yes, sorry job that one.’
‘Could you come in? Say, about midday?’
‘Well, I’ll have to check my schedule. I have an important cribbage match to win.’ He laughed again, awkwardly. ‘But yes, I’ll be in to see you shortly.’
When Carla collected him from the front desk, William Eyre was exactly as she had imagined. Dressed in tweed, with a wooden walking stick, his face ruddy from spirits, and his stomach round from good food. What she didn’t expect was how easily he slipped back into detective chief inspector mode.
‘So,’ he said as they walked towards the office, ‘have you got a lead?’
‘A lead?’
‘On Mary Balcombe. I was always convinced she was up to her eyes in it, so I assume the case has been reopened?’
‘Not exactly, no.’
Eyre stopped walking. ‘Then why am I here?’
Carla waited for a uniform to pass before replying. ‘We think it may be connected to another case, a more recent one.’
‘Ah …’ He continued walking, nodding, as if proved right about something. ‘So she’s struck again, has she? They always do – once a killer, always a killer. Although I expect you know that.’
Carla didn’t reply, just held the door open for him, for which he thanked her.
‘Of course it’s not me you should really be speaking to, it’s that young lad who made it his mission to “save” her.’ He shook his head. ‘Most unbecoming.’
‘Young lad?’
They’d reached the office, but as she held another door open, they both stopped. Eyre tapped the side of his head.
‘Memory isn’t what it was, but I’ll dig around for the name.’
‘Thanks, that would be really helpful.’
‘You’re very welcome, my dear.’
Bremer had a cup of tea waiting and Eyre seemed slightly put out. Not used to being a witness, she thought, taking the seat next to him. Bremer smiled his smile. Eyre looked unimpressed.
‘Thank you for coming at such short notice, sir.’
Carla noted the reference to his past rank; a clever move, she decided, when Eyre reacted with a nod.
‘I’d like to speak with you about Mary Balcombe. We’d like to know a bit more about who she was, where she went.’
Eyre let out a short laugh, but unlike the one Carla had heard earlier, this was pointed. ‘I think if either of us knew where she went, we wouldn’t be sitting here now.’
‘You said in the corridor you assumed we’d reopened the Waites case because we’d found evidence on Mary. Why do you think she was involved in Aoife’s murder?’ Carla asked.
Eyre sat back in his chair and placed his hands over his stomach.
‘It just never really sat well with me – you know the sort of case.’ He looked to Bremer, who nodded. ‘The kind you know is cut and dried on paper, but something just doesn’t feel right.’
‘Did you look into Mary?’ Bremer asked. ‘When you had this instinct there was more to it?’
‘Of course.’ Eyre seemed offended. ‘But it was man grooms girls, kills girl whose pregnancy proves his guilt, involves other groomed girl, who is left traumatised by the whole experience.’
Bremer was silent, waiting for Eyre to continue.
‘We see it now more than we did back then,’ he went on, ‘organised groups grooming girls for sex parties. But back then it was all new to us. We tried hard to unpick it, but it felt like trying to find one end of a roll of wool from another. And of course social services were no help; they were too busy conducting their own internal review of what’d gone wrong to think about helping out the police.’ He rolled his eyes. ‘Arse-covering reigned back then, especially where social services were concerned.’
‘It’s no different now,’ Bremer agreed.
‘So you never found out where she went?’ Carla asked.
Eyre turned to her. ‘No,’ he said, ‘by then the perp was behind bars and we had no need to look for her.’
‘You suggested to me earlier you always expected to hear about Mary again. Why was that?’
Eyre looked impressed she had remembered. ‘Because her story never quite added up. She was covered in blood – not her own, Aoife’s, as well as unknown DNA that seemed to link back to Aoife, but not sufficiently for us to prove another person was involved.’
Bremer frowned. ‘I don’t understand. You found DNA linked to the victim, but it wasn’t the victim’s?’
Eyre looked steadily at him.
‘Aoife had a child?’ Carla asked; it was the only thing that made sense.
‘We believe so. Aoife’s stomach was slit from side to side. The post-mortem showed she’d been pregnant, but there was no sign of the baby. We couldn’t prove the child’s gestation, so defence would have argued conjecture if we’d presented it, but the whole team felt it was relevant.’
‘But why was this not made public?’
‘It was. There were a few reports of it in the local news but we asked the media not to over emphasise it.’
‘Because if someone knew it had survived, they might go after it?’
‘Exactly. And why else slit a young girl’s stomach in two?’
‘And you’d be looking because that child would have been proof of the abuse?’ Bremer offered. Eyre lifted his left shoulder slightly, an attempt at a shrug.
‘That’s what we decided. Aoife showed signs of significant gestation, possibly up to eight months, so any baby delivered would have been hard to get rid of. And you can’t tell me, in all this time, it wouldn’t have been found by some dog walker or amateur archaeologist by now? So whoever took it, kept it alive – but why?’
‘Do you believe Mary had something to do with it?’
‘Yes, but why she didn’t allow it to die like its mother, we never understood. And how did she rescue it between leaving the beach and hiding in the bin? We timelined the hell out of it and couldn’t make it work.’
‘What about that young man?’ Carla asked. ‘The one you said was unbecoming in his involvement. Could he have helped get rid of the child?’
‘We wondered that too, but then why would he? There was nothing to suggest he’d ever met Mary before that evening, so how could we believe he got rid of a child for her before calling for help? And if he did, there was only a maximum of twelve minutes before backup arrived, so where could he have taken it? We checked every hospital, charity and care home in a five-mile radius. Nothing.’
‘Are you sure he didn’t know Mary before that night?’ Carla asked. It seemed impossible to her that a man would help steal a child with someone he’d only just met. But then people did all sorts of unpredictable things, often for unfathomable reasons.
‘We checked it all out and there was nothing to link the two.’
‘Did you ask him if he saw a child?’ Bremer asked.
‘Of course we asked him. We weren’t completely incompetent! But he maintained he’d met Mary as she ran off the beach, saw the man he assumed was attacking her, and told her to hide in a bin while he radioed for help.’
‘And you believed him?’
‘I had no reason to disbelieve him.’
‘Why?’
&n
bsp; ‘Because he was one of our finest young officers.’
Fifty-one
Then
I sit with Aoife’s baby in my arms and cry. It’s so amazing to hold her and see how solid she is, how alive, but it reminds me Aoife has gone and that I’m alone.
‘Can’t we keep her?’ I look up and see him sadly shake his head.
‘How can we do that? Someone will notice her, put two and two together and we’ll be arrested.’
He’s right, but I still wish we could. Aoife was right, babies love you no matter what you are, so why can’t I have that love? In Aoife’s place.
‘We haven’t got long; the home will check on you soon.’
I lift her up and smell her soft pink skin. I hold her close and shut my eyes, imagining the warmth of her body is Aoife’s. ‘What shall we call her?’
‘What?’
‘While we have her,’ I open my eyes to look at him, ‘she has to have a name.’
He looks frustrated, but I know he’ll relent. I’ve learned that about him in the last week since Aoife died. He is kind and gentle and when I see him I get a lot of little butterflies dancing in my stomach.
‘What would you like to call her?’ he asks.
I look at the baby. What is her name? I try to think what Aoife would have called her and feel frustrated she didn’t tell me. I kiss the baby’s hair, so fine I worry it could rub off.
‘I think I’d like to call her Joanne. After my mum. Do you think that’s OK? Jo for short.’
He comes over and smiles down at her. ‘Hello, little Jo.’
I try to cross my fingers under her blanket – maybe now she has a name, he’ll let me keep her.
The police keep talking to me and we’re both worried they will find out about Joanne. I’ve been working hard at school so as to make the social workers, who watch me like hawks, think that I’m behaving myself, but it’s still hard to sneak out and see her.
‘Why don’t we run away with her?’ I say when I’m next at his house. ‘Just take her and go somewhere no one knows us.’
He’s washing Joanne’s bottles, his back to me. ‘A twenty-year-old man and a sixteen-year-old girl with a baby in tow will look suspicious wherever we go.’
When I Lost You Page 20