by Sam Hayes
‘Of course,’ I said. My shoulders were hunched and hurt whichever way I sat. Since Natasha had gone, my body had begun to shrivel and desiccate. I was managing to eat a little these days and had sips of water and tea but even so, my bones dug into whatever I sat on and ached as if they were going to snap. My hair was falling out too. ‘I’ll try to help.’
‘I’d like to start with the bootee.’ Lumley looked at his associate and nodded. The other man produced a sealed plastic bag from behind his clipboard. It contained Natasha’s knitted boot, the one that I’d found in the street. It was squashed flat and looked greyer than I remembered. ‘Do you recognise this item, Mrs Varney?’
I wanted to kick their legs under the table, reach out and punch their chins, gouge out their eyes to show them a fraction of the pain I was suffering, would always be suffering. But that would only bring them closer to their goal, to find a suspect. I would fit the bill nicely, because they hadn’t made any progress. Unsolved cases cluttering his desk obviously didn’t please DI Lumley. He’d never really been sympathetic to my trauma. Now he was reduced to searching under his nose for a solution. Futile follow-ups on the leads they’d so far investigated had driven them to me. I took the plastic bag from the policeman. Inside was Natasha’s bootee, a little muddy, but definitely the one I found that awful day.
‘Of course I recognise it. I’ve already told you all this.’
‘Take another look, Mrs Varney. Study it very closely. Is there any possibility that it isn’t your baby’s?’
‘No. It’s hers, I tell you.’ I gave the bootee another quick glance. ‘Sheila, my mother-in-law, knitted a pair of bootees and a matching hat. I found this on the high street when I realised Natasha was gone and I saw someone running away through the car park. They were carrying a baby. It must have fallen off Natasha’s foot when the . . .’ it’s hard but they’re making me angry, ‘when the kidnapper took her. They always used to fall off.’
‘I see.’ DI Lumley made some notes on his clipboard and then requested something else from his associate. He was handed a piece of paper. ‘Mrs Varney, what if I told you that this isn’t your baby’s bootee and that you are mistaken. Naturally, we have interviewed your mother-in-law, Sheila Varney, and requested that she provide us with a sample of wool from the bootee and hat set that she knitted. Fortunately, she had some wool left over and when the sample was analysed, it was found to be a completely different brand and mix of wool to the one this bootee is made from.’ DI Lumley took the bag from my fingers and held it up, shaking it so that the bootee danced. ‘The lab report is conclusive. This bootee is not the one made by Sheila Varney.’
DI Lumley slid the piece of paper across the table to me. I stared at it but didn’t understand it. It was scientific jargon from the police forensic department.
‘But it is Natasha’s, I swear.’ My voice began to crumble and my eyes filled with tears. How could they do this to me? It was the only glimmer of hope I had, a finger pointing them to Natasha, and now they were disputing the trail. ‘How many little bootees like this can there be? Perhaps Sheila gave you the wrong sample of wool. She’s got a whole basket stuffed full of wool.’ I was desperate for them to believe me.
‘Of course we considered that possibility so we also ran a DNA test on the skin cells harvested from the bootee.’ Lumley stopped there, his lips chewing together as if he could hardly contain the words he wanted to hurl at me. His partner slid another piece of paper across the table to me. I glanced at it but again it didn’t make sense. ‘We hoped to match it to Natasha’s DNA sample that we took from her hairbrush.’
‘And? ’ I gathered my thoughts and compacted my voice into a terse missile. I didn’t want DI Lumley to think that I was getting agitated.
‘The test was negative, Mrs Varney. No match. This bootee is definitely not your baby’s.’
How can they know all this? I wondered. Be so sure about the opposite of what I’m telling them?
I came out of the shop and my baby was gone. The car was empty. I saw someone running . . . I found the bootee . . .
‘Moving on, Mrs Varney, we also need to clarify about the cake.’
‘Are you going to show me that too, all sealed up in a bag? It’ll be a bit mouldy after all these weeks.’ My head dropped forward onto the edge of the table and I exhaled. PC Miranda was suddenly beside me, stroking my back, probably warning me to watch what I said. I’d heard of innocent people being arrested for crimes they didn’t commit. If I offered enough little signs of desperation, they would eventually add up to one big piece of evidence and I would be arrested. But what crime was I supposed to have committed? How could I steal my own baby? What were they implying?
‘In your statement from the afternoon of Saturday, the fourth of January, you told us that you parked your car in the supermarket car park, see attached plan for exact location of vehicle, and went into the shop carrying your purse in order to purchase a cake to take to your mother-in-law’s house. You left your baby Natasha asleep in the car. You paid cash for your cake at the express checkout and when you returned to your vehicle Natasha was not there.’ He stared at me, his trained eyes boring into me.
‘That’s right,’ I said.
‘Perhaps you could explain then, Mrs Varney, why the supermarket’s accounting records show that you paid for your cake on your Visa debit card a full twenty minutes after you claim that you purchased the cake for cash?’
How could I explain to Detective Inspector Lumley and his mute assistant that I had paid for the cake twice? Would it not alert their police instincts that something was amiss if I told them that the pathetic woman sitting before them had actually purchased the cake for a second time when she should have been alerting the police and searching for her stolen baby?
‘I didn’t mean for her to scan the cake again. I was going to tell her.’
‘Who?’ Lumley snapped.
‘The girl at the checkout.’
‘Tell her what?’
‘That I’d lost my baby.’
‘So why didn’t you?’
‘Because . . .’ This is hard. I’ll be in a pickle, I know, but he’s asking me for the truth. ‘Because I thought I was mistaken. When the checkout girl scanned my cake, it all seemed so real. Like I’d just gone into the supermarket for the cake as I’d planned and anything bad that had happened was all in my mind. For a few minutes I convinced myself that Natasha was still in the car and I was buying my cake.’
‘For the first time?’ Lumley added.
‘Yes. I thought I was buying it for the first time and Natasha was still in my car.’
‘But really Natasha was missing at this point and you were buying the cake for the second time.’
‘Yes.’ I hated myself. I was going to tell the checkout girl, who could have called the police. But I didn’t. I didn’t tell her. It was my first mistake.
‘Why do you think you got muddled, Mrs Varney? After having already seen that your baby wasn’t in your car, what was it exactly that made you think she was in your car when you were waiting to buy the cake for the second time?’
I swallowed and coughed. PC Miranda slid the cup of tea towards me and I sipped but it had gone cold.
‘I don’t know,’ I whispered. ‘I was tired. I’d been up all night. I got confused.’
‘Why had you been up all night?’ Lumley pushed back in his chair. It creaked under his weight. He was the kind of man who would have to buy his clothes at the big and tall shop.
‘Natasha wouldn’t sleep. I couldn’t settle her.’ It struck me that perhaps she sensed what was going to happen to her and that had caused her screaming fits.
‘Did you often have nights like that? Was she a good sleeper or a bad sleeper generally?’
‘Was?’ I said.
‘I mean “was” to describe the period before your baby was abducted, Mrs Varney. Not “was” in the terminal sense of the word. Well, was she a good sleeper?’
I nodded at Lumley and
suddenly they both began scribbling notes frantically. Lumley glanced across at his associate.
‘We have the health visitor’s report, Mrs Varney, and it would suggest that Natasha wasn’t a good sleeper at all. Since her birth in November, it appears that you visited or telephoned the health visitor thirty-seven times reporting problems with Natasha, mostly to do with sleeping or crying. Did Natasha cry a lot, Mrs Varney?’
I shrugged my shoulders. ‘She was a baby. Babies cry.’ Is a baby, I screamed in my head.
‘Did you ever harm Natasha because she cried continuously or wouldn’t sleep?’
I stared at Lumley. I fixed him with cold eyes. I wouldn’t let him do this to me. Someone had stolen my baby.
‘Perhaps you shook her to shut her up? Maybe held the pillow over her face for a few seconds too long, just to get some peace?’ Lumley leaned forward across the table. I could smell coffee on his breath. ‘Is that what happened, Mrs Varney?’
Gathering all the strength I had left, I leaned forward also, bringing our faces close. ‘I didn’t kill my daughter, if that’s what you’re implying, Detective Inspector. I’m only speaking calmly like this now, instead of screaming at you, because I scarcely have the will to live any more. If you knew how I had to force myself to even take the next breath, you would withdraw what you just asked me. If you have just one nerve of compassion running through your body you will let me go home and grieve with my husband.’
But Lumley was relentless. ‘Grieve, Mrs Varney? Surely grieving is a little premature? We mustn’t give up hope of finding Natasha alive and well. You’ve said so yourself. You’ve let hope keep you going this far.’
‘OK, I meant—’
‘Interview with Mrs Cheryl Varney concluded at fourteen seventeen p.m.’ Lumley stood, looming over me like a cold front from the north. ‘You’re free to go. We very much appreciate you helping us and rest assured we’ll be in touch if there’s any news of your baby.’
The two policemen left the interview room and PC Miranda guided me to the reception area where I was told a car would take me home. I waited for an hour and a half and when nothing happened, I called a taxi. I went home and slept.
Two days later, Lumley arrived on my doorstep at 6 a.m. with three other officers and a warrant to search my house. For twelve hours I watched as they sifted through drawers and cupboards and took apart furniture and discovered things that I’d long forgotten. They crawled in the loft and picked through old photos and books, helped themselves to my underwear and clothing and spent a curiously long time bagging items from Natasha’s room.
Then they went into the garden. I made myself a cup of tea and sat at the kitchen table, watching them crawl through my untidy patch like giant beetles. There was a flurry of activity when they exhumed the skeleton of our long-dead cat. They didn’t find anything else.
I ask Sarah how she thinks her father will react to her having a christening for the baby. She says that her father will have used up all his rage and cut her off from the family by then anyway so he will never know about the christening. She wants to do it for the baby’s English father, Jonathan. He is in the year above Sarah at school and she tells me that Jonathan isn’t his real name, like Sarah isn’t hers, but she still wants to keep coming to see me because I provide her with comfort and a safe place to be.
‘Will you tell me your baby’s real name?’
‘Of course,’ she replies, biting into one of my home-baked scones. Crumbs settle on her bump. I am a bit upset that, after the six or seven weeks she has been coming to visit me, Sarah has not been able to tell me her real name. I know that she worries I will tell her father and give away her secret but surely he will find out anyway soon, when his daughter arrives home with a baby.
‘Why don’t you bring Jonathan round to see me one day? I’d like to meet him.’ Sarah looks shy and just eats her scone. She doesn’t reply.
We talk for a couple of hours and watch television and I fetch some photographs down from the spare bedroom to show Sarah. I sit close to her and put my arm around her. Her shoulders feel bony so I make her eat another scone. I don’t want her baby to be underweight. You’d barely notice she’s pregnant and she’s nearly due. I’ve left one box of photographs upstairs. That box contains pictures of Natasha.
‘There’s Andy and me on holiday. What a state I looked!’
‘Was he your husband?’ Sarah asks.
‘Yes. We divorced a long time ago.’
‘You had a husband and you let him go?’ Sarah is wide-eyed and has crumbs on her bottom lip. She is beautiful and I know her baby will be too.
‘We had many problems,’ I tell her. ‘Problems that could never be worked out.’
I miss out the bit about Andy transforming into a festering, nervous sack of hate who spat at me and beat me and destroyed my clothes and cut my hair when I was asleep.
I don’t tell Sarah that Andy rigged my car so that I crashed into a hedge and how he tried to poison my food with turpentine. She perhaps wouldn’t understand that Andy’s anger towards me grew so colossal that I could feel it rubbing red-hot against me even when he was out of the house. He dragged it around like a stretched and infected tumour, refusing to let go of it or get help or let anyone lance it. Andy blamed me entirely for Natasha’s disappearance.
‘Jonathan and I won’t have any problems. We love each other.’ Sarah lifts her toes and warms them in front of the electric fire. She is wearing a sari today to help conceal her bump and she has luminous pink and green toe socks on her feet. The material of her sari flows over the baby in generous folds of emerald and purple, which are stitched and edged with gold. She isn’t wearing any make-up and now that she is in her final trimester, her skin looks like finely brushed suede and her hair is long and glossy. I am so excited about the baby.
‘Read my palm again.’ She laughs, snuggling up against me. ‘Show me the baby lines.’ Sarah smells of cardamom and cumin and cinnamon. She is like a big tandoori cooking pot. I take her hand and study the crazed brown grooves in her beige palm.
‘Look, that’s your baby.’ I don’t mention the broken lines or all the other children she will bear.
She grins and takes my left hand, tracing her long nail around my palm. ‘So that must be your child line there. Cheryl, look, you’re going to have a baby!’
I smile too and slowly look up at her, our faces so close, our thoughts so far apart.
‘Yes, I am,’ I say and bring her hand to my mouth for a little kiss.
EIGHTEEN
Robert spent the night on Ruby’s bed. He was fully clothed and when he woke, his neck was creased with pain and his legs were cramped and tingling. He didn’t remember immediately but as his eyes adjusted to the early morning sunlight, Erin and Ruby’s sudden departure cut through his drowsy consciousness.
He sat up and the remains of Den’s cognac and Tula’s rich food coupled with the nauseous truth curdled his stomach. Calmly, without overreaction, Robert showered, dressed in fresh clothes and drank a gallon of black coffee while he decided what to do. He called Den at home but was greeted by the answer machine. At seven thirty, Den would most likely still be asleep and wouldn’t even be thinking of going into the office for another two hours. Robert left a brief message telling his partner he would be taking the day off. He left another message on Tanya’s voicemail asking her to cancel all his appointments.
Then he called Louisa. On the second ring, she answered with a cheery although breathless greeting.
‘You just caught me. I’ve been in the hotel gym,’ she said. ‘I didn’t fancy running in the rain.’
Robert glanced out of the window. Large droplets of a weighty summer shower had begun to pelt the glass. His stomach rolled at the thought of Erin and Ruby out in bad weather.
‘You’re a driven woman, Louisa.’ He paused, hoping she would make another idle comment but she didn’t. She perhaps sensed the underlying layer of stress in his words, like one of those voice lie detecting devices
. ‘Look, something’s happened,’ he confessed.
‘Oh?’
Robert thought he heard her sipping on something. ‘Erin and Ruby have left me.’
‘Oh,’ she said, swallowing. ‘That’s not good.’
‘Will you come over?’ Robert didn’t like the sound of what he’d just asked. It made him sound needy, and while in one way he was, he knew that a needy man would likely turn Louisa off helping him. He scoured his hand across his stubbly chin, making a mental note to shave, and wondered why he was bothered what she thought.
He was married. His wife had just left him.
He continued resignedly. ‘I’d like you to get started on this case as soon as possible. I want to know where Erin and Ruby have gone and I have to know the truth about Erin’s past. If I get involved, I’ll get swept sideways and mess things up. I need you to take control, Louisa.’
‘Give me half an hour. I’ll bring my laptop and by then I should have received the birth certificate results.’ She was eating something now.
‘That was quick work.’ Robert poured more coffee, wishing he could be as disciplined as Louisa.
‘They don’t mess about. We may not need to take this any further, you realise, Rob. When Ruby’s birth certificate is located and Erin comes back with her tail between her legs, you can kiss and make—’
‘It’s not that simple any more, is it?’
‘Look, I can’t possibly know where they’ve gone but what I can do is prove a few basic facts to you to illustrate that actually nothing is wrong in your life.’ Robert started to speak but Louisa wouldn’t have it. ‘Rob, half an hour and I’ll be there.’ The line went dead. He sighed. She was still acting as his friend, not a private investigator.
Despite Louisa’s promise, Robert felt something unfurling and stretching within him, a phoenix-like creature that had lain dormant for over a year since Jenna had died and suppressed by the magic of his marriage to Erin. But now that she had gone and the lid on suspicion had lifted, the phoenix was rising, woken by the heat from Robert’s welling anger and paranoia. A fire deep inside him was sparking and spitting with familiar obsession. It felt as if Jenna had returned and was making him live through it again, perhaps this time to get it right.