Authors: Claire Mcgowan
‘It happens, doesn’t it?’
‘Yes, but—’ But Paula couldn’t get the idea to fit into her brain. A mother killing her child. Was that what she’d been like, when she looked up those flights to London?
No, for Christ’s sake, it wasn’t the same. She had to believe that. ‘OK.’ She shook herself. ‘If Caroline is like most infanticidal mothers, she may actually be keen to confess. It was either an accident she’s tried to cover up, or a genuine psychotic moment where she felt Darcy had to die for some reason. Though in those cases the mother almost always kills herself too. Plus any family pets, for some reason. Did they have a dog, a cat?’
‘I don’t think so. What about that thing, that proxy syndrome?’
‘Munchausen’s by proxy? We tend to call it Fabricated Illness in the UK. It’s rarer than you’d think from watching films. In that case she’d have courted publicity, got herself on TV, no doubt, all that. They do it for attention.’
‘She did that press conference,’ Guy reminded her.
‘That’s true. OK, it’s possible, but there’s another option too.’
‘Yes?’
‘She didn’t do it at all. Someone really did come and take Darcy. Someone else, I mean.’
Guy scoffed. ‘A dingo ate my baby? In Ballyterrin?’
‘Er, wasn’t the dingo case recently proved to be true?’
He paused. ‘You’re right.’
‘And they pilloried those parents. So let’s be careful, OK? Let’s not jump to conclusions. Jumping to conclusions is what’s sent us wrong from the beginning.’
‘You’re right.’ He turned to look her full in the face. ‘We’re good, you know. Me and you.’
A flush moved up from her neck to swamp her face.
We
. The loveliest word in the English language. ‘Sorry?’
‘On cases. You keep me tempered. I couldn’t do it without you, you know. This one – it would have broken me otherwise.’ She stared at her feet. ‘Paula. I’m aware that we still never did talk properly, after Katie went missing, and all of that.’ She presumed ‘all of that’ meant that they’d slept together and then he’d cut her off, terrified of prejudicing the case, and then his daughter had gone and he’d fallen off a cliff of grief, and she’d slept with Aidan and ruined everything.
She said, ‘Tess came back.’
‘Yes. I – what could I do? Katie needed us. And Tess, she – she isn’t coping very well at the moment. I can’t say more. But it’s not been easy.’
‘She’s your wife.’ They were speaking quietly, both of them looking in the window where Caroline Williams sat, a pale, silent wreck of a woman.
‘I know she is.’
‘So why don’t you go back? Why don’t you go to London, all of you? I’m sure Tess would be happier, and Katie hates it here, and you – the rain, the ignorance. I know you’d be better off. There’s nothing for you here.’
Paula knew he was looking at her. ‘You know why I’m still here. At least, I hope you do. I’d have been long gone, if it weren’t for you.’
She regarded the splintered frame of the window until the prickling in her nose subsided. Timing. Bloody timing. It was timing that brought you to your knees, crushed your pathetic human plans under the wheels of minutes and weeks and years. A day either side, and she’d maybe not be in this situation. She could go away herself and Guy could stay. She could get off this island, where the rolling land would never yield you up again. And for Caroline Williams, maybe a second here, a second there, and her baby would still be alive and she wouldn’t be sitting in a small room with peeling grey walls, initials scratched into the chipboard table, surveying the end of her life.
‘You better go in,’ said Paula. ‘Don’t keep her waiting. Whatever she did – she’ll be in hell. Either way, don’t make her wait.’
‘Come in with me.’
‘But Corry—’
‘I don’t know about you, but I’ve had about enough of Corry for one lifetime. I need you. Come on.’
Caroline started as they came in the door. She was rigid, ready to strike. Who knew what she was expecting.
Paula went towards her with an outstretched hand. ‘Caroline. I know nothing can make it better, but please let me tell you I’m so sorry about Darcy.’
Hesitation. Caroline bit her lip. Her hand in Paula’s was limp and cold. Her nose was red, blond hair lank.
Guy followed Paula’s lead. ‘It’s a terrible thing, to lose a child. In fact I lost my own son earlier this year. It’s devastating.’ He meant it, too. And that was why Paula couldn’t tell him to leave, go back to London, take his wife away and forget her. Because he thought this woman had killed her baby, and lied to them, and derailed their investigation, but he could still bring himself to shake her hand with compassion.
Caroline looked at them with pale faltering eyes.
‘You’re probably wondering why you’re here,’ said Guy, sitting down.
Nothing. She knew why she was here.
‘I’m afraid now we’ve found Darcy, we have to open a murder inquiry.’
The hands convulsed. Caroline put them under the table, very carefully.
‘Now, it can’t be linked to the other cases, I’m sure we can agree.’ Guy was leafing through his notes. Paula remained standing, so Caroline had to swivel to see both of them. ‘Do you agree with that, Caroline?’
‘I – I don’t know.’
Guy said, ‘Well, those babies are alive. Alek was given back, Lucy we hope was taken alive, and the pattern showed our suspect was moving onto younger babies, unborn ones. We never understood why they’d take one who was three months old. I don’t think it fits at all. So what happened to Darcy?’
‘I – someone took her.’
‘Who?’
‘Someone else. I don’t know.’ Her voice was small and cold.
‘Caroline. Do you know the odds of another random child abduction in Ballyterrin? It’s minuscule.’
She dropped her eyes.
‘You said the phone rang,’ said Paula, more gently, going over and sitting down. ‘You had Darcy outside. I don’t think she had her coat on, like you said. We found the coat buried in the snow beside her. Why would you have her in the snow?’
‘Well – it wasn’t that cold. It’s so stuffy in the house. She needed air.’
‘OK. So you went outside. I think you’re a tidy woman, Caroline. I think you had the phone back on its hook in the kitchen, and so when you went in to answer it, you could easily have seen Darcy out the window. I think you weren’t outside at all. No one hangs out washing in the snow, do they? It’d freeze. Then takes it back in, after their child has gone missing?’
Nothing. Head down.
‘The bath.’
Caroline’s head snapped up.
Paula went on, her voice quiet but merciless. ‘There was water in it, when I looked in the bathroom. It seemed odd, when your house is so clean. That’s how it normally happens, you know. You leave the baby for a minute, answer the phone, and then you get talking – the mortgage people, you said. Money troubles? You needed to take that call?’
Nothing.
‘Was she in the bath, Caroline?’
‘She’d been sick on herself.’ Caroline’s voice was small. ‘She was always sick. She’d boke up her lunch every day on her clean clothes.’
‘So you put her in the bath.’
‘Of course. She was disgusting.’
‘And you were only away a minute – but when you went back, she’d slipped, is that right? Under the water?’
Caroline looked at Paula. Her eyes were leached of colour. ‘You don’t have a baby, do you?’
The worst possible question. ‘I – no.’
‘Then you don’t know. When Darcy was born, I didn’t sleep for a second. Not a second for months. If you breathed on her, she’d cry. The car, the stairs, the knives – everything could hurt her. I was so exhausted. And she was sick all the time, you know? We practically lived in Casualty. And every day he comes home from work, it’s where’s this bruise from, why didn’t you watch her, and he’s in his office all day, where people don’t puke on you or scream in your ear for hours. And he can’t even do the one thing he’s meant to, and pay the bloody bills.’ All this was delivered in a flat monotone. Vicious in its quietness. ‘I tell you, miss. When you have a baby, it’s like someone turned you inside out, so all your skin’s on the inside. You’re raw. Totally raw. Like every single thing can hurt you, and you’ll never be safe again.’
Paula reached over the table and took the woman’s limp hand. She gripped it tight. ‘It’s nearly over, Caroline. You just have to tell us. She drowned in the bath, was that it?’
The first nod.
‘I need you to say it, Caroline.’
‘Yes. She went under. It was – I don’t know, less than a minute maybe. I took her out, and she was all wet, and I pressed on her . . . I blew. But it was too late.’
‘And you panicked – you put different clothes on her, and you hid her in the snow?’
‘I’d seen the news. There was someone going round taking babies. I don’t know, I just thought if I could hide her for a while, say someone took her – he wouldn’t blame me. I knew he would. I was useless as a mum. Useless.’
Paula looked at Guy. He cleared his throat. ‘Interview terminated. Mrs Williams, I think you might like to get yourself a lawyer now.’
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Paula didn’t sleep that night. Thinking of Caroline Williams, her white hands like little fluttering birds, the accepting nod as they’d taken her down to the cells and gone to tell the husband his wife had let their baby drown. Thinking of Aisling in hospital, clinging desperately to life, her child faltering inside her. Of Heather Campbell’s husband, both wife and child gone in a blizzard of blood. If it wasn’t Magdalena Croft doing all this, and it wasn’t Melissa Dunne, someone else was still out there, waiting for their next child. If they’d gone after Aisling’s baby, did that mean Lucy was dead? As they’d failed to get Aisling’s child, they’d be looking for another. That meant no pregnant woman was safe.
Including her. She was a pregnant woman. She had to face up to that. Sleepless, Paula got up and dressed warmly, ready for work. The cold seemed to have penetrated to her very bones, and she put on layer after layer. She’d misplaced her green scarf, absent-minded, so she rooted through the hall cupboard to find another, red and old and a little musty with perfume, winding it round her neck. ‘I’m off, Dad.’
PJ was still in bed for once, the cold making his bad leg stiff and sore. ‘It’s very early for you, pet.’
It was seven o’clock. Barely light. ‘I can’t sleep. I’m going to call at the hospital first.’ She went a little way into the room, the one her parents had slept in. Her mother’s perfume bottle still on the dressing table, with a thick coating of dust. She wondered why her father had never moved it.
‘Are you OK, love?’
Paula sighed. She sat down on the edge of the bed for a moment, shoving her hands in her coat pocket, where they brushed something. The packet of letters, still unread. ‘I’d be better if we could get this case solved.’
‘Aye. And Christmas round the corner too.’
‘Dad – if I told you I did something a bit stupid, would you help me?’
‘What is it this time?’
‘Um – it’s these.’ She drew out the packet of letters, explained how the man had approached her on the beach and she’d taken them, but still not told Guy.
PJ, to his credit, didn’t tell her she was an eejit, though she was. ‘And you think he wanted you to have them, this fella?’
‘Yes. I think he followed me there, whoever he was, so he could give me these.’
‘You’ve not read them?’
‘I was going to, but then with Aisling, and now the Williams baby being found, there just wasn’t time. They’re hard to read.’ She showed him the spindly writing, faded and washed with rain. ‘I think it’s to do with our case though. Would you look at them for me?’
‘Aye, OK. What can I do, though?’
‘Just tell me if they’re important, or they’d help us find this Bridget. If I’m going to get in trouble, it may as well be for something useful.’ She stood up, weary.
PJ coughed, stretching his leg. ‘Take care, pet. Drive safe on that ice. It’ll freeze again tonight, I reckon.’
‘You be careful too. See you later.’
Do you have a baby, Caroline Williams had asked. And Paula had said – no. But she did. She did have a baby. And it was time to start doing something about that.
Paula’s first call was the hospital, sitting squat under its blanket of melting snow, grit scattered over the entrances and steps. She stopped at the gift shop, dithering over the tired selection of blooms, before picking a bunch of yellow roses, budding and beaded with dew. Yellow in the snow. Some kind of hope, maybe. After paying she made her way upstairs to Intensive Care, showing her ID to the officer on duty outside Aisling Quinn’s room. Through the glass she could see the girl connected to tubes, her eyes shut, arms hanging limp on the hospital cover. Beside her were an older woman and three other blonde girls, one pacing, one with her arm round Mammy, who was crying, and one hanging over Aisling, gripping her lifeless hand.
‘Paula!’ She turned to see Fiacra, shuffling with two paper cups in his hand. He looked grey and exhausted, his fair curls hanging limp with grease. He was wearing a dirty grey hoodie and jeans.
‘Fiacra. I’m so sorry. I didn’t want to intrude, I just thought I should . . .’ She held out the flowers, awkwardly, and he took them under his arm. ‘I wanted to call by.’
‘Thanks. That was good of you.’
‘Is she . . . have they said anything?’
He shook his head. ‘They think she’ll wake up soon. We don’t want to leave, in case she does and no one’s here. We’re just trying to work out who’ll tell her she’s lost the wean.’
Shit. ‘I didn’t know. I’m so sorry.’
Fiacra scrunched up his face. ‘He couldn’t hold on, not after what she did to him.’ He took a sip of his drink, seeming not to even taste it. His hand shook. ‘They said all the blood from the artery – the oxygen, like, it couldn’t get through to his brain for too long. Aisling didn’t even know it was a boy.’
‘I’m sorry.’
‘I keep thinking – what if it was that Dunne woman? And I had her there in the interview room, and I fucked it up, and she got our Aisling?’
‘No, no, Fiacra, it wasn’t her. You did your best. It wasn’t her. I never thought it was, you know that.’