by Sam Hayes
Robert recoiled as Cheryl leaned forward, baring her teeth, her arms dangling and dribble foaming around her lips. Her head twisted from side to side and her eyes were big wet beach pebbles.
‘Your baby’s fine,’ he reassured her and then he turned to puzzled Ruby. ‘Look. See? She’s fine.’ His voice was suited to a four-year-old. Cheryl’s behaviour suggested she was exactly that age.
‘Come on, you.’ Louisa was beside Robert, encouraging Cheryl to calm down, taking control, cajoling and sweetening, all those things she was being paid to do. The role suited her.
Robert took hold of his stepdaughter’s arm – if she could be called that now – and pushed her gently towards Cheryl. Presenting Ruby to her real mother felt like peeling Erin’s skin from her body. Treachery flowed like blood through his veins.
Ruby was having none of it. ‘Get off,’ she complained and used Louisa as an anchor. A brief tug of war ensued, Ruby in the middle, and then suddenly everyone froze as a baby’s cry cut clean through the air. Small bleats at first but in a second it was shrieking at full volume.
Robert let go of Ruby and pushed through the door behind the crazed Cheryl. The howling grew louder. In a moment, he returned with a squirming packet wrapped in pink velour. The bald baby continued to cry for all it was worth, even when Robert attempted to rub its back. His inexperience showed in the way he held it – like a plastic doll.
‘Is this your baby?’ Robert asked Cheryl over the din. In a flash she snatched the infant from him, its head whipping forward as she sped down the steep stairs out of sight.
‘Oh God,’ Robert groaned.
They found Cheryl sitting in the living room cradling the baby, singing again, rocking again, back in the senseless state in which they had found her. The baby had quietened and was staring up at Cheryl.
‘Robert, I really think we should leave—’ Louisa’s words were interrupted by an urgent knock at the door. Because Robert was preoccupied with extracting sense from Cheryl, Louisa answered it.
A young Asian girl stood on the doorstep. She was the pregnant girl in the photographs.
‘Is Cheryl home?’ she asked. Robert looked up and beckoned her in. The girl’s eyes widened at the state of Cheryl. ‘Oh,’ she whispered and walked up to the distressed woman.
‘What do you think made her like this?’ Cheryl sat, inanimate, soulless, transparent but for the veil of grief draped over her and was completely oblivious of the gathering forming around her.
‘We just found her in this state,’ Robert said and he was about to ask the young girl about the baby but Louisa interrupted.
‘Rob, can I have a word?’
Robert raised his hand to put her on hold. He was listening to Cheryl as her song shifted to something else, something unintelligible.
‘I need to speak to you, Rob.’ The front door was still open and Louisa hovered between the house and front garden. An easy escape. ‘Rob, listen, I’m going to call James Hammond at the lab. The test results should be available now and we need to know.’
Louisa’s look told him to wait until she had news but he didn’t see it. He didn’t notice, either, the way her mouth curled into a tiny bittersweet smile of sadness as she watched him handle Ruby and Cheryl. The Asian girl did her best to break through the brittle glass house that surrounded the scene but Louisa could already see the shards glinting on the carpet. ‘Rob, just wait. I’ll be back in a minute.’
Robert glanced up. He caught the tail end of Louisa’s stare and acknowledged her intentions with a slow nod. This is it, he thought. This is confirmation of what I already know.
Cheryl sat rigid with her legs cooped under her. The baby continued to squirm on her lap but mostly it chewed its fist and gnawed in time with Cheryl’s ranting. Robert felt a breeze swill round the stuffy living room from the open door and it revived him a little, making him realise that only a few minutes in Cheryl’s company had affected his thoughts like lungfuls of carbon monoxide. The woman’s grief was palpable. He wanted to ball it up and hurl it far away.
‘Hi, James . . .’
Robert heard Louisa’s voice carry but a passing car obliterated her next words. Then the baby let out a long squawk and Louisa’s conversation with James Hammond was cut up into odd words and broken sentences. Robert tried to gather their meaning but all he could see was Erin stealing Cheryl’s baby. Then she ran for her life.
My wife, a kidnapper, he thought, and in the same internal sigh he wrapped his arms tightly around her frail image because he wanted her back; he wanted her so badly he would have done anything to change the moment. But in an instant Erin was crushed and she floated away in a million pieces.
‘Say that again. I can’t hear you. Reception’s poor.’
The front gate creaked and banged. Robert saw Louisa through the window. She was pacing about the street, struggling with poor signal. He tried to lip-read her words but couldn’t.
What if he was wrong? He knew full well that any lawyer worth his salt would crumble the circumstantial movements of the young Erin, Ruth Wystrach, and sprinkle them under the jury’s noses. Just because the police had a hunch thirteen years ago and his own paranoia was likely to rear up annually didn’t actually mean that Erin was a kidnapper. Neither could anyone prove that she had actually ever worked as a prostitute or that Baxter King had been telling the truth. When it came down to it, Rob knew he was relying on gut instinct. What worried him most was that he was never usually wrong.
He glanced out at Louisa again, torn between trying to hear her conversation with the lab and Ruby quizzing him about what was going on. He knew the DNA test results would prove irrevocably what he already knew. He touched Cheryl’s hand then did the same to Ruby.
Let them sense the bond, he pleaded in his mind. Let them feel the connection.
Louisa stepped back inside the house. She pulled the band from her ponytail. Her hair flopped around her shoulders.
Robert looked up. His face was a white wall. Ruby tugged impatiently at his hand.
‘Dad, let’s go.’
The baby cried and Cheryl sobbed through another tormented song.
Robert was truly torn. He was in the eye of the storm and whichever way he turned, he faced bad weather. Then he saw Louisa shake her head from across the room. Her expression was blank, her gesture loaded.
‘Dad, I want to leave now!’ Ruby tugged at Robert and tried to walk away.
Shocked into stillness, Robert slowly brought together the cold hand of Cheryl and the squirming fingers of Ruby.
Louisa did nothing to stop him.
THIRTY-FOUR
Robert took a wool throw and draped it around Cheryl’s shoulders. His heart dug a deep hole in his chest. Like Cheryl, he was losing sight of what was real but he realised that for Ruby’s sake, he must remain in control.
‘Cheryl, is this your baby?’ He knelt beside the shaking woman, touching the infant. He hadn’t considered that Ruby might have a sister or brother.
‘She’s not well, is she?’ the Asian girl said. Robert glanced at her as she squatted beside him. She had a waterfall of black, silky hair and shifted to adjust the bump at her middle.
He shook his head. ‘And you don’t have any idea what’s happened?’
‘I’ve been coming to see her for readings recently. Usually once a week and she’s always been fine.’ A Midlands accent licked at her words. ‘But I’ve had some troubles at home and couldn’t make it this weekend.’ She smoothed a hand over her belly. ‘But earlier today I came to visit and when no one answered I let myself in the back door. I found her in a terrible state with this baby screaming in the spare room. I didn’t know what to do.’
‘And?’ Robert stroked Cheryl’s sweating head. He tried to prise the baby from her grip but she tensed and chanted louder. ‘Did you tell anyone?’
‘I went home and told my older brother. He said he’d go to the police station and alert them before coming here. I’ve just come back but it took me a while.�
�� Again, she cradled her belly. ‘Will she be all right? She’s been ever so good to me.’
Robert nodded. ‘I think so. She’s just had a bit of a shock.’ There was no way out of the guilt. If he hadn’t told Cheryl that he knew where her baby was, if he’d handled it with the full weight and consideration it deserved, she wouldn’t have fled from the pub. They could have talked, arranged a time for her to meet Ruby, involved counsellors, social services, done whatever it took to ease the blow. Now he expected the staccato of a neon blue light and the chaos that accompanied such an invasion.
‘This isn’t your baby, is it, Cheryl?’ The Asian girl stroked Cheryl’s back. ‘Come on, tell Sarah. If you think of all the things I told you, you can tell me.’ Her words caught everyone’s attention. She sounded wise beyond her years.
Cheryl gripped the baby harder. It stopped whimpering. ‘Natasha,’ Cheryl whispered, ducking her head and planting a kiss on its downy scalp.
‘No, Cheryl,’ Robert intervened. ‘This baby is not Natasha.’ Now was the moment to explain fully. ‘This is Natasha.’ He caught Ruby, who tried to sidestep his reach but failed. He pulled her by the arm and once again set her before Cheryl.
‘Robert, what is this all about? Get off!’ Ruby struggled, her eyes two darts aimed at him.
Robert’s heart snagged on the impatient tone in his stepdaughter’s voice – that she had said Robert, not Dad, that she swiped at his shoulder with her free hand and glared at him as if she truly hated him. It was the first phase of letting her go.
‘Ruby, this is your—’
‘No!’ Cheryl screamed, halting the breeze that wound around them from the street. The knife cut cleanly through all of them as she sang in perfect tune, fondly caressing the baby in her arms.
Rock-a-bye baby asleep in the well,
I put her down there, now I’m in hell.
When the rope snaps, the cradle will fall,
And down will drop baby, cradle and all.
Everyone was motionless, no one knew what to do or say, all words or possible explanations had been surpassed. The temperature in the room dropped by several degrees and a darkness seemed to enter it.
Detective Superintendent George Lumley filled the doorway of the small house as if he’d been hovering outside, waiting for his prey to be still before he swooped. Three other police officers, one a woman, stood beside him.
It all happened so quickly, although by the end, time had become an immeasurable skid so that no one knew when they had last eaten or slept or been home or done anything that resembled normality.
Robert, Louisa, Ruby and Sarah were initially herded into the tiny kitchen to wait with the WPC. They were ordered not to leave the house. Voices shot like rapid fire from the living room, mostly the clipped questions of DS Lumley, who had briefly made his identity known to Robert. He was a solid man, a superintendent now.
‘It’s been a while, Cheryl,’ he said, a whip of annoyance detectable when she showed no signs of intimidation. It took up-close, space-invading interrogation to get anything other than song from her. Finally, she admitted that the baby in her arms did not belong to her. Through another song, Cheryl confessed to the infant’s abduction.
Paramedics arrived and examined the baby before removing it to hospital. The distraught mother, having notified the police of the kidnapping from the park earlier in the day, was already on her way to meet the ambulance.
The small terraced house was filled with the static of police radios, the stares of neighbours as they lined the street for a quick snatch of the fuss and a steady stream of officers coming and going through the guarded front door. But mostly the house was filled with the stench of death.
When the room was cleared, George Lumley lowered his body into a chair opposite Cheryl and prepared himself for the confession he had hoped for thirteen years ago. He didn’t want it in rhyme; he didn’t want it in song or poetry. George Lumley wanted Cheryl Varney to spill her story in plain English.
‘Mrs Varney,’ he began. He filled his lungs with air. ‘Did you murder your baby daughter Natasha on Saturday the fourth of January nineteen ninety-two?’
The WPC opened various kitchen cupboards and filled the kettle with water.
‘Might as well have a brew,’ she announced. No one else seemed to agree.
‘Dad, what’s happening?’ Ruby shifted her chair at the table closer to her stepfather. It was Dad again, he noted. A good omen written over bad.
‘Let’s just say I made a mistake. A terrible, ghastly mistake.’ He pulled Ruby’s hand into his. He felt Louisa’s cold stare on his face. ‘You OK?’ he asked. The ridges of her cheekbones were white and the flesh beneath visibly sunken. She looked as if she knew something he didn’t.
‘Yeah,’ she said vaguely, her thoughts somewhere else. ‘I’m OK.’
When DS Lumley ordered the garden to be searched, it was dark and floodlights were soon erected down the thin strip of land like brilliant sentries. Officers tramped through the small house, in the front door and out the back, carrying tarpaulin, shovels, camera equipment, and when the forensics team arrived, they carried metal cases containing precision instruments and technology. Everyone held their breath, waiting for a find.
Robert, Louisa, Ruby and Sarah were brought into the lounge one by one to make statements to DS Lumley. When it was Robert’s turn, he saw that Cheryl had gone – except for the sickening song that still hung in the air like steam winding out of simmering manure. The policewoman sat opposite Robert while Lumley questioned him about his involvement with Cheryl Varney.
‘And did she mention all this when she told your fortune?’ Lumley’s tone was unnecessarily mocking, his smirk too obvious. He wafted a hand, indicating he was referring to the situation generally.
‘She said a few things that impressed me. But like I said, I didn’t originally track her down because I wanted my fortune telling. I went to see Cheryl Varney because I believed I had found her abducted daughter.’
‘Let me get this clear one last time.’ The smirk fell away and was replaced by a grim expression, one that consisted of a tight jaw, narrowed eyes and the flushed, veined cheeks of a man who drank too much. ‘Certain evidence led you to believe that your stepdaughter was in fact the kidnapped baby of Cheryl Varney?’
‘Yes.’
‘Having located your wife’s parents, Mr and Mrs Wystrach, they then told you that their runaway daughter stole—’
‘No,’ Robert interrupted. ‘They showed me newspaper clippings reporting that their runaway daughter was a suspect in the Varney kidnapping case. It happened the same day.You, the police, stated that you wanted to locate the runaway Ruth Wystrach, now my wife Erin, in connection with the abduction. And my wife has a daughter the same age as Cheryl’s baby. You do the maths, Superintendent.’
‘I will.’ He paused, swallowed. ‘There was certainly reason to believe that the missing teenager was linked to the abduction. A girl fitting her description was seen running through a car park carrying a baby. The same car park in which Cheryl Varney had left her baby unattended in the car.’ Another pause. ‘Of course, if you are unsure, you need to think about the identity of your stepdaughter.’
Robert stopped to think. The detective was correct. He had obviously misread Louisa’s solemn head-shake after she had spoken to James Hammond. Ruby’s paternal heritage was still uncertain and would possibly always remain a mystery. But what he did know was that he would love her as if she were his, as if her entire life, past and present, rested in his hands.
‘Tell me one thing, Mr Knight. You’re a lawyer, a sensible man, a fair man, a level-headed man, no doubt with the canny ability to see the truth when it knocks on your door.’ DS Lumley removed the pen from the WPC and slid the statement pad from her grip. He placed them on the table. ‘Off the record, what made you first suspect that your wife was a criminal?’
Robert folded his tired body forward, leaning his forearms on his knees. He stared at DS Lumley.
> ‘Honestly?’ Robert said, eyeballs rolling upward. ‘It was the fear of losing her.’
Suddenly a young constable came running through the house and pushed through the front door into the street. His hand was cupped over his mouth and his face was ashen.
‘I think I’m needed,’ Lumley said, rising. He sighed. ‘Hang on to your wife, Mr Knight. Running away isn’t a crime. Being unduly paranoid should be.’
The major scramble occurred at 2.25 a.m., when Ruby had finally given up demanding answers that Robert couldn’t supply, and she’d fallen asleep.
Young Sarah had been sent home, her older brother escorting her away. She offered Robert a brief smile as she left, lips the colour of hazelnuts, her eyes like coins.
‘Rob,’ Louisa said. They were still waiting in the small living room, hoping for DS Lumley’s dismissal at any time. He was preoccupied in the rear garden, off limits to non-police.
‘Yeah?’ Robert yawned, wondering how he would stay awake on the drive back to London. Ruby was a puddle on his lap.
‘There’s something I should tell you.’ Louisa’s face had lost its usual glow over the course of the evening. Her eyes appeared skinned with cataracts and the natural sheen on her hair was missing. She was wrapped in Robert’s jacket – fear and the night responsible for lowering her core temperature. She stared somewhere beyond Robert’s shoulder, looking for the right words.
Then two police officers clad in white coveralls, masks and gloves guided an unmarked metal casket the size of a coffee table through the house and out into the street. The officers’ eyes, the only portion of their faces visible to tell a tale, showed nothing.
The crate was labelled simply: Police Property. A clear plastic sheet protruded from the lid as the procession, flanked by DS Lumley, made its way out of the house. Moments later, blue lights flared silently down the street. DI Lumley returned to the house and spoke to Robert.
‘You can leave now but we’ll need further statements from you in the coming days.’ The superintendent was weary, the lines on his face disappearing into his grey hair. It had been thirteen years.