Tangled Web (3 page)

‘I know,’ agreed Gordon.

‘Why
not
the Palmer baby?’ asked Walters, wondering whether he was missing something.

Julie and Gordon looked at each other. ‘You don’t know?’ said Gordon.

‘Know what?’

‘Anne-Marie Palmer is quite badly disabled.’

Walters gave a low whistle. ‘I didn’t know that,’ he said. ‘The parents didn’t mention it.’

‘She’s a much-loved baby,’ said Gordon, not liking what he thought might be going through Walters’ mind.

‘Of course, sir,’ said Walters backing off slightly. He turned to Julie. ‘I wonder if I might just get a note of the names and addresses of the ladies you mentioned, Doctor Rees?’

‘Of course,’ shrugged Julie. ‘But I really think you’ll be barking up the wrong tree.’

‘It’ll just be a routine check, Doctor. We have to begin somewhere. It’s what DCI Davies terms, dotting our “i”s and crossing our “t”s – doing all the routine things so that no one can accuse us later of not having done them. I should think it’s probably the same in your job? You carry out a whole series of tests just so no one can say you didn’t do them, so you do them on autopilot while you consider what’s
really
wrong with your patient. ’

Gordon nodded his agreement with a smile.

Perhaps the kidnapper didn’t know about Anne-Marie’s disability when he or she took her,’ suggested Julie.

‘I suppose that’s possible,’ agreed Walters but she was taken from home. It wasn’t as if she was snatched from a nursery or from her pram outside a supermarket in a shopping mall.’

Gordon felt depressed at the observation. The idea that someone had targeted the Palmer’s baby specifically for abduction seemed hard to fathom. The lurking suspicion in the air of a more sinister explanation for the baby’s disappearance made him want to help redress the balance. ‘The Palmers have been trying for years to have children,’ he said. ‘It was what they wanted above all else; they kept on trying against all the odds.’

‘All the odds, sir?’

‘Mrs Palmer couldn’t conceive in the normal fashion,’ said Gordon, choosing to ignore the warning look from Julie. Doctor/patient confidentiality was important but so was common sense. ‘The details don’t concern you, Sergeant,’ he continued, as a sop to Julie’s unease, ‘but she and her husband persisted over several years with specialised help from various clinics. They had setback after setback but still they kept on trying. In the end their baby was conceived through
in vitro
fertilisation
carried out in Professor Carwyn Thomas’s unit at Caernarfon General Hospital.’

‘A famous clinic,’ said Walters.

‘And rightly so. It’s helped more childless couples than practically any other unit in the country bar Robert Winston’s.’

‘Yes sir.’

‘The point is,’ continued Gordon. ‘That if you go to all that trouble to have children, Sergeant, you really
want
to have them.’

‘But,’ said Walters, diverting his gaze for a moment, ‘It must have been a terrible disappointment for them when their child was born with problems.’

‘It was,’ agreed Gordon quietly. ‘It was a bloody shame.’

‘And so bloody unfair by the sound of it,’ agreed Walters. ‘After all they’d been through. How did the couple take it?’

Gordon’s spirits sank again as he saw where this line of questioning leading. ‘Not well,’ he confessed.

Walters remained silent but obviously expected more.

‘The baby’s condition came as a terrible shock to them, naturally.’

‘They hadn’t been warned beforehand?’ exclaimed Walters.

Gordon shook his head. ‘The pre-natal scans didn’t pick up on the problem, I’m afraid.’

‘What exactly was the problem, sir?’ asked Walters, leaning forward in his seat.

‘The bones in Anne Marie’s legs didn’t develop properly; in fact, they didn’t really develop at all. Her lower limbs were useless.’

Walters grimaced.

‘Surgical intervention was required to save her life.’

‘Intervention, sir?’

‘They had to amputate her legs.’

‘I see,’ said Walters. ’Must have been awful for the parents.’

‘Lucy rejected her baby when she first saw it, quite natural in the circumstances, I think.’

‘And Mr Palmer?’

‘John must have found it difficult too, but he didn’t show it; he was a tower of strength to Lucy throughout.’

Walters nodded.

‘It was only a short-term problem, I assure you,’ insisted Gordon. ‘They both came to terms with the situation quite quickly and now they love their baby as much as any other couple I know.’

‘I see sir, well, thanks for your help. I’d better report back to DCI Davies. He’ll be wondering where I’ve got to.’

And very interested in what you have to tell him, thought Gordon. He was left with an uncomfortable feeling inside of him.

Walters left and Julie said thoughtfully, ‘Well, what d’you think?’

‘Just what I told him,’ said Gordon, slightly annoyed at the question. ‘I
know
that the Palmers love their baby; if they say that Anne-Marie’s been kidnapped then that’s exactly what’s happened. And you? What do you think?’

‘I don’t know them well enough,’ replied Julie guardedly. ‘They were Dad’s patients and then they became yours but it does seem odd that anyone would snatch Anne-Marie from home like that … ’

‘I’d better get over to the house,’ said Gordon. He was anxious for the conversation to end.

The Palmers lived in a comfortable modern villa on a small, private housing development, just outside Felinbach on the way to Caernarfon. Although the snow had started to melt on the main road, Gordon was glad of the Land Rover’s four-wheel drive as he coaxed it up the steep hill leading to the estate. He parked it in front of the Palmer’s house, behind the two police cars that were already sitting there, and walked up the path. As he did so, the front door opened and two men emerged: one was DS Walters who introduced him to the other man, Detective Chief Inspector Davies.

‘Well, Doctor, ‘said Davies. ‘I think Mrs Palmer could do with some medical help. She’s a very distraught lady.’

Gordon had the distinct impression that Davies had said this in order to measure his reaction. He looked directly back at the man and thought he knew the type, physically big, a bit of a bully who probably thought he was a lot brighter than he actually was, an illusion reinforced by his position of authority.

‘I’m not surprised,’ said Gordon. ‘Have you anything to go on at all, Chief Inspector?’

‘We’re currently checking out the ladies your colleague mentioned to the sergeant here although, bearing in mind what she said, we’re not too hopeful. We’re also in the process of asking the hospitals if they’ve had any dealings with likely candidates for child abduction in the last few weeks. Apart from that, our lines of investigation are somewhat limited. Do you have any ideas yourself, Doctor?

There it was again, the appraising gaze. ‘Absolutely none at all,’ replied Gordon, shaking his head. ‘I suppose my fear …’ He broke off.

‘Yes, Doctor?’

‘It was something your sergeant said,’ confessed Gordon. ‘I was going to say my great fear is that Anne-Marie has been taken away by someone with a deranged mind.’

‘A
real
nutter, you mean’ said Davies. ‘A psycho, not just some woman who thinks she’s found a new doll to play with and will look after it until we find her alive and well-cared for as is usually the case with missing babies?’

‘Yes,’ agreed Gordon reluctantly, ‘A
real
nutter.’

‘God forbid. Such people are notoriously difficult to trace because neither rhyme nor reason comes into their thinking. Motive is usually non-existent or so convoluted as to be beyond normal comprehension,’ said Davies. ‘Happily, such people are far fewer on the ground than many of the papers would have us believe, Doctor. Chances are, that’s not what we’re dealing with here.’

‘In that case, I hope you find her soon,’ said Gordon. ‘I’d better see to my patients.’ He squeezed past, feeling uncomfortable in Davies’s presence, although he recognised that it wasn’t entirely the policeman’s fault. There was an element of conflict going on inside his own head that was contributing to his unease.

‘Tom! Good of you to come,’ said a relieved sounding John Palmer, getting up when Gordon entered the room. A woman police constable was sitting on the couch with Lucy who looked up and smiled wanly. ‘Hello Tom,’ she whispered.

‘This is a nightmare,’ said Gordon, ‘but I’m sure the police will find her soon and bring her back unharmed.’

‘I hope to God you’re right,’ said John Palmer. ‘Why on earth would anyone do this? It’s like some kind of sick punishment. We wait for years to have a baby then we get one only to have her taken away like this …’ Palmer broke down, putting his hands to his face to hide his silent sobs, only his shoulders gave him away.

Gordon ushered him to a chair. ‘You both need some help to get you through this,’ he said. ‘So no protests please, there’s nothing noble about unnecessary suffering. Just take the sedatives I’m going to prescribe for you and think positive thoughts. The police will pull out all the stops. They’ll find her.’

TWO

THREE DAYS LATER

For a big man, Chief Inspector Alan Davies could appear disarmingly tender and considerate. His voice dropped to a whisper and he clasped his hands in front of him as he leaned forward solicitously in his chair. He was in John and Lucy Palmer’s living room, sitting opposite them on the floral patterned couch that filled the window alcove. The fourth person in the room, Detective Sergeant Walters, sat away from the other three, on a dining room chair by the door. He watched the proceedings, notebook in hand but held discreetly out of sight for the time being in deference to the ambience of sympathy and understanding being fostered by his superior officer.

‘What more is there to tell?’ said John Palmer, letting go of his wife’s hand to spread his own in a gesture of bewilderment. ‘You must know absolutely everything there is to know about us by now. We’d been married for eight years and there wasn’t a day when we didn’t hope for a child of our own.’ He took hold of his wife’s hand again and kissed it gently before continuing. He did it in an unselfconscious way, suggesting that it was nothing out of the ordinary. ‘Then quite suddenly, out of the blue, Lucy fell pregnant with Ann-Marie and it seemed like a dream come true. All our prayers were answered; a real true-to-life miracle had happened. Sounds soppy but that’s the way it was.’

‘This was after you were referred to Professor Thomas’s clinic at Caernarfon General?’

‘Yes. We’d tried everything else. The doctors had just about given up on us: they kept trying to persuade us to consider adoption when Professor Thomas said he’d like to try out a new IVF technique.’

‘What kind of new technique?’

Palmer gave Davies a look that suggested it was really none of his business but he scratched his head and answered anyway. ‘It’s actually a modification to the standard
in vitro
fertilisation method called ICSI – that stands for, intra-cytoplasmic sperm injection. Instead of just mixing sperm and ova in a test tube and hoping for the best, the doctor actually picks up a single sperm in a very fine needle and injects it into an ovum. Then the fertilised egg is implanted in the mother’s womb.’

Davies shook his head and smiled. ‘Amazing what they can do these days,’ he said.

‘Professor Thomas warned us that there were risks attached to the technique and it was something they wouldn’t use for everyone, but they still felt it was safe and they were keen to try it for particularly difficult cases: we certainly qualified on that score - or rather, I did.’

Davies noticed Lucy give her husband’s arm a little rub, a simple gesture of support. He patted her hand in return.

‘Didn’t you have any qualms at all about the risks?’ asked Davies.

‘Not really,’ shrugged Palmer, looking at his wife who gave a slight shake of the head. ‘We were desperate, Chief Inspector. We were willing to try anything to have a child of our own.’

Davies nodded understandingly and said, ‘And it paid off in the end. You finally fell pregnant, Mrs Palmer.’

Lucy Palmer smiled distantly. ‘It was the best day of my life,’ she said, obviously remembering it with pleasure. ‘When the professor told me the implant had taken and I was going to have a baby I felt so happy I almost burst with pride. I wanted to tell everyone. I wanted to stand on street corners and shout out the news. I wanted everyone in the world to feel that good.’ As the memory faded and reality started to reassert itself, Lucy’s smile disappeared and emotion threatened to overwhelm her. John put his arm round her shoulders and hugged her to him, whispering reassurance in her ear.

‘Would you say it was an uneventful pregnancy, Mrs Palmer?’

John Palmer furrowed his brow at the question and interrupted, ‘I’m sorry, Chief Inspector, but I really don’t see the relevance of the details of Lucy’s pregnancy to our daughter’s disappearance.’

‘If you’ll just bear with me, sir.’

Lucy shrugged her shoulders and said, ‘There were a couple of scares along the way when I thought I might lose the baby, a bit of bleeding around three months but nothing too out of the ordinary, I don’t think.’

‘Morning sickness? Cravings for strange food?’

‘Look, Chief Inspector, I really must … ‘

Davies held up his hand without breaking eye contact with Lucy. Palmer stopped his protest.

‘I
was
sick and yes I
did
develop a liking for beetroot sandwiches and tuna with jam somewhere along the way but I fail to see what this has to do with Anne-Marie’s kidnapping. Why are you asking these questions, Inspector?’ said Lucy becoming agitated.

Davies appeared to remain deep in thought for a moment then he smiled and said, ‘I’m just trying to get an idea of how you felt about your baby while you were you carrying her, Mrs Palmer.’

An uneasy silence fell on the room. It seemed to go on for ever until Lucy asked slowly and coldly, ‘How I felt about my baby, Inspector? How d’you think I felt about her? How does any mother fell about her baby when she’s carrying it? She was the most precious thing in the world; I loved her completely, as I do now.’