Baby Drop

by Jennie Melville

  ‘I think he came from his office, got a telephone call, and walked across to the Incident Room.’

  The Incident Room had its own small interviewing room which had been much in use.

  ‘He won’t have had his supper,’ said Rewley, ‘and he’s a tall man turning fat who likes a square meal, so he’s probably not too happy.’

  A wily, hungry Dan Feather didn’t bear thinking about. No mean protagonist at the best of times, on an empty stomach his mood might be alarming. But she could be formidable herself and she too was superpowered tonight, charged with energy derived from anxiety.

  ‘What about you?’ she asked Rewley.

  ‘I’m going home.’

  ‘Yes, you’ve done your bit.’ She was undoing her seat belt, and fastening the lock on the brake. Even though this was a police car park, theft was not unknown.

  ‘I hate having to walk on eggshells, don’t you?’ said Rewley.

  ‘Not so you’d notice and certainly not at this moment. I shall trample as suits me best.’ She looked down at her neat black shoes, she could do damage.

  An alarming lady, thought Rewley, who was fond of her as Kate’s godmother but respectful of her as his boss.

  ‘I’m wondering if Dan Feather brought me in that certain locket to keep me occupied on that matter, and out of his way. He’s devious enough. Thank goodness for you, Rewley, you’re my magic trick.’

  ‘They know what I do, you know. That I’m your lookout man, that I watch out, observe and read.’

  ‘Didn’t know tonight.’

  ‘No, not tonight; he agreed. But it wouldn’t last for ever, he thought. People would go on guard, or take to wearing face masks. ‘I’m off.’ He was useful to Charmian Daniels, he knew that much, and he owed his rapid promotion to her, but also knew that he was good and would get it anyway and that in some respects her patronage might have harmed him, since she was not universally loved. But he worked for her because she was almost always on the side of right … I’m not a mind reader or great on intuition, in spite of what some think, I operate on logic and application. What she operates on I don’t know but it must be high-octane fuel. Sometimes she seems to fly.

  He watched her walk firmly towards the Incident Room, where all lights were on. At the entrance, she turned and waved. She wouldn’t be welcome in that room, as she well knew.

  Daniels into the lion’s den. And he waved back.

  Dan Feather had his back to Charmian talking to another officer as she walked into the room, but he felt her eyes on him and swung round. ‘ Hello, there.’ It was a jovial sound to cover up surprise. Possibly displeasure too, she thought.

  She gave Feather a friendly smile. ‘You must be hungry … no dinner.’

  He hardly hesitated for a second. ‘ I grabbed a few sandwiches.’

  Ham or beef with a large dose of mustard pickle; he was not a cheese or egg and salad man. She knew those sandwiches in the canteen.

  He seemed to have brought a supply of them in with him, she could see a large plateful and several mugs of tea on a central table.

  ‘Not guilty,’ he said, seeing her look. ‘They were here before me.’

  ‘For the prisoner?’

  ‘Hardly. And we aren’t calling him that yet, just talking to him … I don’t think he can eat. He’s scared silly.’

  ‘Where is he?’

  He nodded towards a door. ‘In there. We have an interview room rigged up for him.’

  He did not ask her how she knew and when she had learnt of the detained man, but he could probably guess.

  So she answered the question he hadn’t asked. ‘Bush telegraph.’

  He grinned. ‘Always works well for you, ma’am.’

  ‘Who’s questioning him?’

  ‘Archibald and Simes? You know them?’ Charmian nodded, she knew the detective inspector and the sergeant, although she had never worked with them, they belonged to what she called the ‘macho team’. ‘But you don’t have to question – he’s pouring it out like …’ He hesitated, decided that none of the usual profanities would do and left it hanging. ‘He’s being encouraged to talk about both Joe and Sarah just in case, Archibald and Simes are on the Sarah Holt case. But there are lookers on from both teams.’

  As she followed Feather into the interview room, she realized the truth of what Rewley had said; he was not entirely happy. Something about this set-up discomforted him.

  The room was brightly lit and stuffy, and crowded, it smelt of tired hot men. Both Archibald and Simes swung round to look at her, looked at each other, took an inward vote, and stood up. Simes had extra-long arms which gave him a simian look but he had a kind face (not necessarily a true indication of what he was) whereas Archibald was tall, thin, and hostile. He frowned and drew in his lips. That was how he looked, but there again, it might not reflect his soul.

  Charmian took a deep, controlling breath; she must move carefully. She was a guest, no one had asked her in, and although, because of her rank, she could not easily be moved out, still she could be given the frozen treatment. She had had this treatment several times in the past and had learnt how to survive it.

  Or even, as she intended in this case, to circumvent it.

  She kept a grave face, made a small movement that almost amounted to a bow and intimated that she was there to observe only.

  In practical terms this meant that she sat on a chair and planted her feet firmly on the ground while she looked at the man being questioned.

  Totty Bow, a small, pale young man, was sitting across the room from her in an upright chair that allowed of no relaxation. If he had been talking, pouring it all out, as Feather had said, he had gone silent now. The recording machine had been turned off, perhaps he needed that. Although everything about him was clean, surprisingly clean, pale blue jeans, a white shirt, he still managed to look stained.

  Dirt really does work from the inside out, Charmian acknowledged. He had small neat white ready-to-bite-you-with teeth, and watery pale-blue eyes. She wondered why his eyes were watering so young – he was in his late teens – and wondered if Archibald or Simes had hit him.

  Feather drew up a chair beside Charmian, gave some secret signal to Archibald which started him off.

  ‘Let’s start again, Totty, shall we?’

  Totty opened his childlike, horrid mouth, showing his milk teeth, and started to talk.

  ‘It was all an accident, see, not meant, nothing on purpose.’ He dabbed at his eyes with the back of his hand so that Charmian got a good view of his long grubby fingers with bitten nails.

  ‘Not your fault, you saying?’ It was Archibald speaking. ‘But you would, wouldn’t you?’

  Totty made a noise which was something between a groan and wail.

  ‘Worries you, does it, that you’ve killed her?’

  ‘I didn’t say she was dead.’

  ‘She is, though, isn’t she? And the boy. Was he there?’ Silence.

  ‘You’ve admitted you knew him.’

  ‘Saw him, just saw him.’

  ‘Where? Let’s have place and time, shall we? Where did you see him?’

  Silence again.

  Archibald tried again. ‘Let’s go back to the girl. You killed her?’

  ‘Not on purpose, I never said on purpose, it was just one of those bad things.’

  ‘That happen to you, Totty? Come on, be more specific, let’s have the details.’

  ‘I’ve said, told you once. I’ve confessed.’ He seemed pleased with the word because he said it again: ‘ Confessed.’

  Charmian looked at him twisting and twirling on his chair. His mouth was saying one thing and his body was saying another: I am uneasy with what I am telling you.

  I know you, Totty, Charmian thought. Where have I met you before? She thought about this as she listened. Totty had a sweet baby voice which seemed natural to him and which she could swear she had never heard before so they had not had a talking acquaintance. Just his face, and the way his body leaned forwa
rd from the waist.

  She thought about the neighbourhoods where she might have met him. London, she ruled out, because she hadn’t been there for long, and Deerham Hills where she had once worked because he was too young.

  Nearer in time and space was Merrywick, an expensive village on the edge of Windsor but with its quota of weirdos. One or two cases had taken her there.

  Not to forget Cheasey, that sprawling industrial suburb beyond Eton, with its large, indigenous criminal population of long standing (all Anglo-Saxon family names) superimposed on a small, hard-working honest population which was always declining in size both physically and numerically – it must be something in the genes. The bottom of the heap were the Cheasey dwarfs, lovely little men (the women were huge) whom none would own to. If you had no record and had not married into a criminous family, you never admitted to living in Cheasey, you said Slough or Hounslow or Eton Wick.

  ‘Let’s go right to the beginning. Begin with Sarah. You knew Sarah?’

  ‘Didn’t know her name, knew her.’

  ‘And you got to know her how?’

  ‘In the kids’ playcentre in Prinny’s Park?’

  ‘That is the playground in Prince Consort’s Park.’

  ‘I said.’

  ‘Say it again.’ Then with a hint of menace and a sideways look at Charmian. ‘ Please.’

  The Prinny’s Park playcentre was a carefully superintended playground with swings and slides and roundabouts. Totty claimed that he had worked there and that was how Sarah knew him, she had been in it often.

  ‘Oh come on, Totty, don’t tell me you worked there, you’re the sort of person they work to keep out … I can check, remember.’

  ‘Well, I did work there one day … when I was at my best.’

  ‘Not looking too sleazy, you mean? Couldn’t they smell what you were?’

  Apparently they could, the one day, unpaid and unacknowledged appeared to be it, he was warned off. Anyway, that was what could be read behind the statement: ‘Told me they could manage.’

  After that he had seen her several times when he had been sitting in the park near to the playground. ‘I talked to her and she talked back. She was a nice kid.’

  ‘She wasn’t on her own?’

  ‘No, with a woman … I guess it was her mother.’

  ‘Did the mother see you?’

  Totty was silent. – Not if I could help it, could be read in his face. ‘Might have done,’ he said.

  ‘And after that?’

  Well one day last week he had seen her just wandering around on the loose, on her own.

  He had not meant to kill her, she was a nice kid, but she fell and banged her head.

  ‘Where was this exactly? We’ll need to know, Totty, got to go down there and take a look.’

  ‘Under the railway arch …’

  The two observers across the room from Charmian stirred and looked interested. Archibald responded to the silent thought.

  ‘Was anyone else there?’

  Silence. You could almost see Totty working out what it was best to say. Should he say he was on his own, or should he claim that there were others there too?

  If he had a problem deciding then it meant there were others.

  Suddenly an even nastier picture than the one already presented was building up. A group of men and maybe Joe there as well. Sarah had been killed and then Joe.

  Or had Joe helped? And then been killed because he was dangerous?

  ‘Do you know this boy?’ A photograph of Joe was handed across from the other pair of detectives, one of whom Charmian knew by sight: Bill Fletcher, a CID sergeant of some repute. Totty decided silence was safer, his baby lips shut.

  They left him alone for a little while, took a break in the outer Incident Room which had gone quiet, it now being after midnight. One telephone line was open and manned, and a couple of detectives sat hunched over their desks, pulling papers around, but otherwise the room was empty.

  The room still stank of cigarettes, so Charmian went outside to lean against the door and look up at the sky. The rain had stopped, the air was cold and chill, she could see the stars.

  No one invited her to go back in, possibly there was a hope she would melt away, but when she heard movement inside the room, she followed the group back inside to where Totty sat.

  Dan Feather drew a chair forward for her.

  ‘Thank you.’

  No answer, just a polite nod from a face increasingly in need of a shave. He seemed to want to deflate her, but he need not have bothered, she felt empty.

  There had been, she decided, a kind of confab between the men while she was outside, she could see it in their eyes. Whether it was aimed at keeping her out or counting her in, she could not decide.

  They seemed to have settled on a change of voice: Feather took up the questioning.

  ‘Tell us more about Sarah, how you got to know her.’

  ‘Didn’t really know her, just saw her and liked her. Then I thought she was lost and I would help her.’

  The thought of Totty being a help to a lost child made the blood run cold. Feather clearly felt the same, she saw his lips tighten but went on trying to get more detail out of Totty.

  He did not admit that he had known where she lived, and he did not admit to being the man who had collected her. He was shifty here, no, he had seen her lately. Asked again about Sarah’s mother, he had said yes, her mother might know his face, he couldn’t say.

  ‘You’re not saying much now, are you, Totty? You’re not giving us much. Where is she? What did you do with her?’

  ‘I’ve said.’ Totty dabbed his left eye, he had confessed once and more could not be asked of him. ‘It’s gone a blur.’

  ‘You saying you’ve forgotten what you did with her?’

  ‘Totty’s forgotten.’ He was deliberately, knowingly regressing into childhood. It made Charmian want to hit him, she was alarmed at the active fury that arose inside her. He put his head on one side. ‘River? Totty likes the river.’

  ‘But that would be difficult for you on your own. Who helped you, Totty? You didn’t do it all on your own, now admit it.’

  His neat little feet in their soft grey suede boots crossed and recrossed as he did not answer.

  Outside, the distant church clock of St Alcuin chimed the hour.

  ‘It’s a mismatch. Bits of it seem real, most don’t.’

  ‘Is he the sort that confesses to everything?’ Simes asked the air.

  ‘Wouldn’t put him down as that.’ Feather frowned. ‘Wish I could. But he’s feeding us lies, I’m sure of that much.’

  ‘But not all lies,’ said Anstruther quickly. In a backhanded way he was Totty Bow’s patron, it was to him Totty had first confessed, he had an interest in maintaining his guilt. ‘ He knew the girl. We showed him a gallery of different photographs and he picked her out at once. Oh, he knew her.’

  ‘But has he killed her?’ This was Feather. ‘ You can’t work him out, can you? Where’s the body? He doesn’t seem to know, might be in the river … We need more background on him. I mean, what is he?’

  Charmian spoke, almost for the first time. ‘I don’t know exactly what he is now, but I know who he was.’

  Feather looked at her.

  ‘He was Tommy Brosser. Kept the same initials, you see. He was only twelve at the time, so he won’t be on the records anywhere, too young.’

  ‘So what did he do?’

  ‘Bestiality it was that time, but he may have progressed onward and upward since then. On present evidence, I’d say he had. Not a high IQ, but I never knew whether that was an act.’

  ‘Where’d he come from?’

  ‘Need you ask? Cheasey.’

  ‘Did you see his face?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Feather shortly. ‘He’s a liar.’

  Charmian nodded. ‘And did you see his shoes?’

  ‘New, spitting new. And not cheap.’

  So Feather had seen what she had seen. ‘He’s i
n the money. And he isn’t frightened. He’s confessed to killing her, but he says it was an accident. He doesn’t seem to know where her body is, it’s all a blur. He doesn’t think much is going to happen to him.’

  ‘So what will you do?’

  ‘Hang on to him for the time being … And look for the body.’

  Feather sounded matter of fact and calm as if he knew he was doing the right thing. Sarah Holt might be dead, her body might be in the river or it might be elsewhere.

  A doubtful meal had been offered him but he had eaten of it and was satisfied.

  Totty had sounded as if he too was satisfied. An appetite filled here as well?

  Charmian mouthed a few quiet words: Do some dogs eat and fall quiet?

  She let herself into the quiet dark house in Maid of Honour Row.

  Muff wound herself round her ankles and she bent to stroke the soft fur.

  ‘Humphrey? You still here?’ He was of course, he had to be, there was his car in the street.

  No one answered.

  He was lying on the bed, asleep.

  She drew the cover over him with a gentle touch. In the middle of the night she put her arms round him and held him. He had come home to her for comfort and support and assurance and she knew she could offer it.

  Whispers from the Past

  ‘She’s a girl, you have to talk to her, let her know how to behave, tell her how dangerous it is to be a woman if she doesn’t tread careful, keep the rules.’

  ‘Nan, times have changed.’

  ‘They never change for girls, more fool you if you think they do.’

  Jane Cooper was very sick during her confinement, poor and naked. Hanged.

  Sarah Allen had been forced to leave her work when she became pregnant. She suffocated her infant in the workhouse.

  Hanged also.

  Chapter Ten

  ‘I did what I could to make the baby’s rest the prettier and gentler; laid it on a shelf and covered it with my own handkerchief.’

  Bleak House

  In the night, she whispered: ‘I think, I really do think, that Feather’s been got at in some way. I can say this now aloud, to you, because you are dead asleep and not listening. I also think that Totty Bow is a bloody liar and has been paid to tell lies, but maybe bits of the truth are there too.’ She leaned closer to Humphrey. ‘Unluckily, which bits are far from clear. Is the girl dead or alive? Is she in the river or not?’