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The clock read 4.17. The windows, black mirrors.
She took a penknife long and sharp aye-o
She took a penknife long and sharp,
And pierced the two pretty babes to the heart
Lay me down me dilly dilly downwards
Down by the greenwood side-o
Maybe Lauren would ask her to stop. The singing might wake Mrs Gooch. Plus, it was a horrible song, the words were creepy and the tune was weird, sort of sad and angry. She’d been pleased, initially, when she’d realised there was another woman on the ward with twins but she wasn’t sure she could be friends with someone who had no consideration for others.
The curtain had been pulled all the way around the cubicle, boxing it in. There was a gap of a few centimetres at one corner and Lauren widened it, peering through. The lamp was angled at her face, she was caught in the glare. She held a hand up to shield her eyes.
‘Excuse me,’ she said. The woman did not respond, kept humming the strange old tune. She tried again, a bit louder. ‘Excuse me?’
There was no hospital bed. The woman was sitting in the chair, the same as the one of pale green vinyl next to her own bed, next to all the beds on the ward. The scene was too small for the cubicle – without the bed there seemed too much floor space. The distance between Lauren and the woman was as wide as a river. The woman was leaning forward with her elbows on her knees and a large basket between her bare feet, feet dirty enough to stand out black against the floor. Rags from the woman’s dress were long fingers trailing against those feet, against the floor, forming a fringe over the basket. The glare from the angled lamp meant that Lauren couldn’t see the babies in the basket but she could hear them, ragged phlegmy breaths and two – definitely two – high-pitched voices murmuring. She took a step inside the cubicle, moving to get a better look, more from curiosity than anything else because she could see at once that this woman shouldn’t be there. She must be homeless. She wore several layers of clothing, as if she were cold even though it was oven-hot in the hospital. But when Lauren stepped closer she began to shiver. She was at once aware of the thinness of her hospital gown, cold air surrounding her, whispering around her exposed legs and entering the gown from below so that she wrapped her arms across herself to stop it. There must have been an air-conditioning outlet right there above them. It was a damp cold and there was a muddy, fishy smell which must have been coming from the homeless woman. Lauren sensed that she had been noticed, she knew it, but the woman hadn’t moved at all, not a millimetre. She was singing again.
She throwed the babes a long ways off aye-o
She throwed the babes a long ways off
The more she throwed them the blood dripped off
Lay me down me dilly dilly downwards
Down by the green-
‘Listen, I don’t mean to be rude but can you stop singing, please? You’re going to wake everyone up.’
The woman stopped singing with a sharp intake of breath. She raised her eyes from the basket. Lauren heard a high whining sound, another layer of hum but getting louder. It came from nowhere but inside her own ears. Run, it told her, leave, go, now. But her feet were rooted. Heavy as lead.
It took a long time for the woman’s eyes to meet hers and when the moment finally came Lauren had to blink away cold sweat to see her. She was young, perhaps eight or ten years younger than Lauren, but her eyes seemed ancient. She had hair that had formed itself into clumps, the kind of hair, a bit like Lauren’s, that would do that if you didn’t constantly brush it. The woman’s face was grimy, and when she opened her mouth to speak the illusion of a rather dirty youth who could even be beautiful if given a good scrubbing was destroyed. She seemed to have no teeth and a tongue that darted darkly between full but painfully cracked lips. There was something about the way the woman eyeballed her. What did she want?
‘You’ve twin babies,’ said the woman.
‘Yes.’ The word had tripped out, travelling in a cough. Lauren wanted it back.
‘Ye-es,’ the woman drew the word out lengthily, ‘twin babies. Just like mine, only yours are charmed.’
Lauren couldn’t think what to say. She knew she was staring, open-mouthed at the woman but she couldn’t not.
‘Mine are charmed too,’ said the woman, ‘but it’s not the same. Mine have a dark charm. A curse. You are the lucky ones, you and yours. We had nothing, and even then we were stolen from.’
She must have had a terrible time, this woman. And those poor little mites in the basket, what kind of life would they have? There were people who could help her, charities dealing in this kind of thing. She must be able to access something, at least get some new clothes. The long dirty hair hanging in dog’s tails each side of her face was doubtless crawling with infestation. It wasn’t healthy.
‘I’m so sorry,’ said Lauren, ‘shall I see if I can get someone to help you?’
The woman stood up and took a few steps around the basket, towards Lauren. The muddy smell became stronger and the air, colder. It seemed to come out of this woman, the cold. There was an odour of rotting vegetation stirred up with the mud and the fish. Lauren wanted to look into the basket but the woman was standing in the way. Closer now, she lowered her voice, breathy, hissing.
‘There’s no one can help me. Not now. There was a time but that time passed, and now there’s more than time in between me and helping.’
The woman moved slightly and Lauren could see that the basket was full of rags, a nest of thick grey swaddling and she couldn’t see a face, not even a hand or a foot. She hoped the woman’s babies could breathe in there.
‘Maybe social services could find you somewhere to stay,’ said Lauren. ‘You can’t be alone with no help, it’s not right.’
‘I’ve been alone. I’ll be alone. What’s the difference?’
‘But the babies.’
They both looked at the basket. The bundle was shifting, folding in the shadows. One of Lauren’s boys sneezed from behind the curtain and she was unrooted.
‘I’m sorry, I’ve got to go, my baby.’
She leapt away from the woman, out of the cubicle, into the dry heat.
‘Your baby,’ said the woman. And she lunged, crossing the space between them in an instant. A bony hand gripped Lauren’s wrist and she tried to pull it free but she was jerked bodily back inside the curtain walls. They struggled, but the woman was stronger.
‘Let’s deal,’ hissed the horrible woman, bringing her face up close to Lauren. ‘What’s fair, after all? We had everything taken, you had everything given. Let’s change one for another.’
‘What?’
‘Give me one of yours. I’ll take care of it. You have one of mine, treat it like your own. One of mine at least would get a life for himself, a taste of something easy. What’s fair?’
‘You must be mad, why would I do that? Why would you?’ She pulled against the woman, their arms where they were joined rising and falling like waves in a storm. Nothing could shake her off. Lauren felt her skin pulling, grazing, tearing in the woman’s grasp, filthy nails scoring welts that she was certain would get infected, would likely scar. ‘Get off me,’ she said through gritted teeth. She would bite the woman’s fingers to make her let go. But they were disgusting.
‘Choose one,’ said the woman, ‘choose one or I’ll take them both. I’ll take yours and you can have mine. You’ll never know the difference. I can make sure they look just the same. One’s fair. Two is justice done.’
The sound that came out of Lauren was from a deep place. It burst from the kernel at the centre of her, the place all her desires were kept, and all her drive. It was the vocal incarnation of her darkest heart, no thoughts between it and its forceful projection into the grimacing face of the woman. A sound of horror, and protection, a mother’s instinct, and her love. The shape of the sound was No.
And in that moment the sound took her arm from the iron grip of the woman, her body away to the trolley where her babies lay, her feet to carry her and the sleeping twins into the hospital bathroom where she swung the handle into place to lock the door.
Chapter 5
July 15th
7.15 a.m.
Police Headquarters
Jo Harper parked her white Fiat Punto in the underground car park. The place was almost deserted, only a few civilian vehicles dotted about and a line of sleeping patrol cars against the far wall. A cool early-morning breeze flowed down the ramps from outside, shivering around her knees and elbows, and she hugged herself as she walked across to the doors. The outfit she wore was too brief for the current temperature but she knew she’d appreciate the light cotton knee-length skirt and short-sleeved shirt later on in the day when she was out and about in the full force of the sun.
She stood in the lift, nostrils full of the smell of the sun cream on her skin and the car park’s oily, mechanical odour, waiting for the four-digit security code to register. A long beep, the lift doors slammed shut and a second later she stepped into the foyer.
The uniformed desk sergeant looked up as she walked towards him. ‘Morning, Harper, early again I see.’
‘Just very, very diligent, Gregson, you should try it one day,’ she replied, with half a smile.
‘Ha ha. I’m here too, aren’t I?’
‘Yes you are, mate. And where would we be without you? We’d have to get an automatic door, for a start.’
Phil Gregson was probably ten or twelve years older than Harper, fifty or so, but the years had been less kind to him than they had been to her. Or perhaps he’d been less kind to himself. Either way he looked easily old enough to be her father.
‘What on earth are you wearing?’ He leaned over the desk to point at her feet.
She wiggled her toes. ‘Trainers.’
‘They are not trainers. They’re gloves. Rubber gloves for feet. They’re the weirdest things I’ve ever seen.’
‘They’re good. They’re for running better. Your feet are unrestricted, see?’ She wiggled her toes again.
‘Urg. Stop doing that. You won’t get away with those if Thrupp sees them.’
Harper curled her lip. She knew the five-toes trainers were a bit far out for work. She’d brought her shoes in her bag to change into before the boss arrived but she wanted to spend as much time ‘barefoot’ as possible. It was meant to improve your technique; she was competing in a half Ironman in a few weeks.
‘You can swim in them, too, you know.’
‘Fascinating,’ said Gregson, miming a big yawn.
Though the time Jo Harper spent outdoors had added wrinkles to her face, her body was lean and strong. Whereas Gregson looked as if he was gently melting into his swivel chair. Admittedly there may have been an element of genetic advantage – she had her mother’s great cheekbones and her father’s naturally not-yet-grey hair. Harper had slept with men older and greyer than Gregson, back when she’d thought she only liked men, but the desk sergeant elicited nothing more than a fond daughterly reflex in Harper that he no doubt would have been upset to be made aware of: she wanted to get him a haircut, feed him a salad and some peppermint tea, take him on a nice long walk and make sure he got an early night. Poor old Gregson, with his slowly broadening middle section held in by the wide black police utility belt, and his ear-length hair swept across the emerging scalp. Harper thought he could go up a size in shirts. Maybe two.
Harper made herself a bad coffee in a mug with a joke about dogs on it, the bottom of which got stuck to the tacky surface of the kitchenette that she shared with a hundred or more other officers, none of whom – from the evidence – knew how to work a cloth. The mug jerked as it came away, causing it to spill a little and scald her hand. She was still cursing when she reached her desk, but there was no one there to hear her; at that time in the morning the building was quiet, just the way she liked it. She took a sip of the too-hot liquid and grimaced, then fired up the system for her usual early-morning perusal of the overnight incidents. This was not technically part of her job as detective sergeant. It was a habit, a form of work-avoidance that she could just about justify because sometimes it threw up something interesting, something that hadn’t been handed to her by the DI.
The list from the previous night included the usual stuff – two calls from some angry people between 2 a.m. and 3 a.m. about noisy neighbours. Three kinds of drunk people: one who called by accident, asking for a taxi; one who called on purpose, because they’d lost their mates in a nightclub and they wanted the police to help find them; and one exceptionally drunk person calling because there really was an emergency – his friend had been assaulted, then he’d collapsed and stopped breathing. This was where the skill of the operator was crucial, because it was so hard to tell the difference with drunk people. There were also several calls from stupid people (who were sometimes drunk, too, which didn’t help): one calling because the cat hadn’t come back, one because someone had refused to make tea when it was their turn.
Some of it was funny, but much of it was deadly serious. The list itself might have been indecipherable to a civilian at a glance, just columns of lingo dotted with police code and numerical data. But Harper could see that, hiding in the midst of the crank calls, were those entries heavy with the weight of human tragedy. The cold record of the moment a person decided they were not strong enough to deal with whatever was in front of them. These were genuine cries for help.
At the top of the last page, one of the items caught her interest. In the early hours there had been a call from a mobile phone located in the Royal Infirmary Hospital. It was marked as 4 – the lowest possible priority, judged to be a false alarm. But the description read ‘Attempted Child Abduction’ so she clicked on it. Reading the notes, her breath quickened.
Time: 0429: 999 report from a mobile phone
Details of Person Reporting: Lauren Tranter, address (unable to obtain)
Detail of Incident: reported intruder in maternity ward of Royal Infirmary, reported assault, reported attempted abduction of newborn twins. Reporter is calling from inside locked cubicle, both babies inside cubicle with reporter, intruder outside door attempting to breach
Opening Incident Classification: 1 (URGENT)
Action: hospital security alerted by telephone as first-on-scene
Action: mobile patrol officers alerted by radio e.t.a. 16 minutes
Time: 0444: contact by telephone from hospital security: false alarm: picked up by MHS
a. Action: Mobile Patrol cancelled by radio
6. Closing Incident Classification: 4 (NO ACTION REQUIRED)
MHS stood for Mental Health Services. So, whoever had called, the mother of the twins, was seeing things. Those with mental health issues often called the police, and it was quite often ‘picked up by MHS’. All seemed to be in order, in this case. The dispatcher had probably been correct in ranking it 4. Harper went back to the main screen, looked at the rest of the list. Drunk people, stupid people, Road Traffic Incidents. Nothing that needed her attention. Her cursor hovered over the red button in the corner of the programme window. Better be getting on with planning that training session I’m delivering later, she thought.
But she didn’t click the incident reporter shut and open PowerPoint, as she knew she ought to do. The call from the hospital was bothering her. A sliver of dread crept into her stomach, and she tried to dismiss it as ridiculous. But there it sat, black and heavy. Between the lines of text on the screen she read the mother’s fear, her sure knowledge that someone wanted to take her babies away. Harper couldn’t help but feel it herself, that threat of separation. Unthinkingly, she placed her hand low on her belly, where the skin had never quite tightened over the hard muscles beneath.
Perhaps she’d just make completely sure it was nothing, then she could forget about it and get on with her day. One phone call, that’s all it would take. Harper dialled the security service at the hospital.
After the introductions, the guy was nervy.
‘Oh, no, nothing to worry about, officer. The lady in the toilets? Maternity? She was just having a bad trip.’
‘She was on hallucinogenic drugs?’ Harper used a stern, alarmed tone.
‘No, no. No. She was, I dunno, spazzing out.’
‘She was . . . what?’
This what, delivered quietly but ripe with pointed incomprehension, implied a need for Dave, the security guy, to explain himself pretty quick and stop using such offensive out-dated language. Harper could pack a lot of meaning into one word. She was rather enjoying herself.
‘Look, officer, ma’am, I dunno what happened.’ Dave started talking too fast, about how ‘your lot’ had called him and said there was an intruder on the ward so he got up there sharpish. ‘I couldn’t understand how an intruder would get in – there’s a security door, and I hadn’t seen nothing on the monitor. I ran there, fast as I could – it’s about a mile from my office, you know. I made in it five minutes.’
Five minutes. The triathlete in her couldn’t help but think, not a bad time if it’s true, but he wasn’t about to get a medal from Harper for that. And, she didn’t put much stock in the fact that Dave hadn’t seen anything on his monitor. He sounded very jumpy. Very jumpy indeed. If she had to guess, she’d say he’d probably been asleep when the dispatch controller had rung him, when he should have been awake and alert for such emergencies.
When he’d got there, nothing. Just a ‘crazy woman in the toilet’. No intruder. ‘So I rang your lot back. I said, nothing doing here, the psychiatric team are dealing with it. Whoever I spoke to, they said they’d tell you, that they’d cancel it. Didn’t you people get the message?’
‘We got the message. I’m just following up on a few things, that’s all,’ said Harper.
Harper told Dave to get together the relevant CCTV on a disk for her, and that she would be there later today to pick it up.
‘Aw, man. I clock off in an hour, that’s going into my own time—’
‘Dave, I’ve asked you nicely. Please.’
She had a way with pleases. Dave capitulated, sulkily.
So, Dave the security guy said it was nothing. There was no one there, trying to abduct anyone’s baby. But the feeling of dread remained. If she was going to the hospital to get the disk anyway, she might as well have a chat with a few people at the same time. No hurry, of course. Maybe she’d go up at lunch time.
She glanced at the pile of notes she’d collated for the training she was supposed to be delivering, and then back at the incident on her screen. Then again, she thought, no time like the present.
Fifteen minutes after she’d first sat down she was up again, leaving her disgusting coffee to progress from undrinkably hot to undrinkably cold without her.
‘You off already, Harper? Not as diligent as all that then, are we?’ said Gregson as he buzzed her out of the building.
‘Oh fuck off, Gregson,’
He winked at her and she mimed making herself puke, then she stood in the lift again waiting for the long beep, the slamming doors, to shoot back down to the car park.
Chapter 6
The maternity ward doors were locked. Harper pressed the intercom. Enough time passed to make her consider pressing it again, but just as she reached for the button there was a burst of static and a flinty voice barked, ‘Yes?’
She gave her name and rank, and was buzzed through without another word.
A length of harshly lit corridor led to the central nurses’ station, which surveyed the openings to several bays. Each was designed to hold between four and six beds, but none of them were fully occupied. New mothers were here and there, sitting in chairs, sleeping. A bleary-eyed man walked past gingerly, wearing a blank expression, holding a pink flowery wash bag.
There was the sound of crying babies and a strong smell of antiseptic. The ceilings seemed very low. Harper got a sense that there was not enough air to breathe comfortably, and the strip lights were giving her a headache. For a fleeting moment, she was cast back to her own brief time in a different maternity ward, back to another life that no longer seemed like her own.
Harper had been nearly fourteen when she’d discovered she was pregnant, and by then it was too late to think about abortion. Her parents were shocked, but they never said an unsupportive word to her. As for the baby, she was kept in the family, adopted by her parents who themselves had tried and failed for years to conceive a second child. Her ‘sister’ Ruby was twenty-six now, and though her biological origins were not a secret, the four of them kept to the script. On the surface they were just like any other family: Mum, Dad, and two kids. It wasn’t talked about, and they rubbed along fairly well. The scars didn’t show. At least, Harper thought they didn’t. She kept a lid on it, good and tight, and it was only in moments like these that it all came flooding back. She remembered the maternity ward, where she’d been given a private room. The pain of the labour, and the kind eyes of the nurses who cared for her. She tried to forget the boy she had loved, who had been lost to her completely from the moment he found out about the pregnancy. His closed, childish face, his total rejection. She remembered her mother’s face when she held the baby for the first time, the gratitude and the love in it. She tried to forget her instinct to snatch the baby back and run away, somewhere that she could be a mother properly, not a child, not a sister.
Harper checked herself. She allowed herself one deep breath and pushed the surfacing feelings back in the box, where they belonged.
When she reached the sweeping semicircle of desk, she flashed her warrant card at the uniformed woman behind it, and noted that the woman’s name badge read: Anthea Mallison, Midwife.
‘Yes?’
It was the same sharp ‘Yes’ that had shot from the static at the door.
‘I’m here about Lauren Tranter,’ said Harper.
‘Bay three, bed C,’ said Anthea. The ‘Yes’ had gone up at the end, a demand for information. ‘Bed C’ went down, with a strong sense of conclusion. Anthea Mallison, Midwife was done here. Her eyes had barely left the screen.
Over at Bay three, a man in a grey shirt was leaving. He fixed his eyes on the ward exit doors and headed straight towards them, radiating busy. Harper stood in his way.
‘Excuse me,’ said the man, meaning get out of my way. He wore an ID on a lanyard. Harper caught the word psychiatrist as he stepped sideways to go around her.
She stepped sideways with him as if in a dance, blocking him, holding up her warrant card. ‘Hello, I’m DS Harper. I won’t keep you. And you are?’
Irritated, by the look of you, thought Harper. And tired. Very, very tired.
‘Dr Gill. I’m the duty psychiatrist. And I’m afraid I’ve just had an emergency call, so I really must leave, I’m sorry.’
There was a time, probably only ten or so years ago, when DS Harper’s delicate stature and artfully messed-up blond ponytail caused people to utter that line about police officers getting younger every day. The comments trailed off as the years passed, and now they didn’t seem to happen anymore, ever. She was thinking about what it might mean for her, that not only had people stopped saying she looked young for her profession but that this doctor – this fully qualified, adult doctor standing in front of her now, looked about twelve.