Baby Lies (Reissue)

by Chris Collett

  ‘I suppose I did.’

  ‘But that’s not what happened,’ Mariner enlightened him. ‘Sonja had her baby here, while she was working at the house on Foundry Road, in exactly the same way that Nadia did.’

  ‘So we’ve got a coincidence,’ said Knox, not getting it.

  ‘But don’t you think that’s weird?’ Mariner continued. ‘I mean, as a one-off you could just about understand it, but on two occasions a pimp allows a girl to go ahead with her pregnancy? The normal thing would be an enforced termination.’

  Knox thought it through for a moment. ‘Except, apart from a few weeks when they can’t work it’s no skin off his nose, is it? Maybe it was simpler to go with the flow.’

  ‘It’s possible,’ conceded Mariner. ‘And it could be that the pimp has already got somewhere lined up for these babies to go. Goran Zjalic is probably pulling the strings here, too. According to Katarina, Sonja’s baby was taken to an orphanage, and Nadia’s baby was meant to have been sent back to her family. The woman we met at Zjalic’s house could have been a courier, taking the baby back to Eastern Europe.’

  ‘So what’s the problem then?’ Knox asked.

  ‘I can’t square it,’ said Mariner. ‘I keep asking myself, why would he bother? It’s all unnecessary trouble and expense for Zjalic to go to. I mean, he’s not under any obligation to these girls, it’s not that kind of relationship, so why go to all that trouble, paying for a return flight to wherever for the courier, and lose several working weeks out of the girls, to boot? A man like Goran Zjalic is only interested in one thing: money. And I can think of a much more profitable way of disposing of a couple of surplus babies in this country.’

  ‘Which is—?’

  ‘To sell them.’

  ‘Which would be illegal,’ Knox pointed out.

  Mariner’s laugh was bitter with contempt. ‘Oh yes, and if what we know about Zjalic is true then we all know how much he likes to stay on the right side of the law, don’t we? I’m not saying he’s set up a market stall in the Bullring. He’d dress it up as something much more respectable, like private adoption. But the end result is the same.’

  ‘But if a couple wants to adopt they’d surely go down the social services route.’

  ‘And it’s a long and complicated process. Then what about the couples who are deemed unsuitable, or too old to adopt in this country, or the couples who specifically want a baby? There’s a shortage over here. Couples are encouraged to adopt older children. One of the reasons that adoption from abroad has become so fashionable is because of the lack of babies over here, but even that’s becoming harder.’

  ‘You think people would be prepared to break the law?’

  ‘If what you read in the papers is true, there are people out there who are prepared to do anything to have a baby. And they may not even realise that they’re doing anything illegal. Zjalic is a smart and resourceful man. He’d make it sound legit. And it would be lucrative. What could you charge for a baby? Twenty thousand, fifty thousand? This could be far more profitable than prostitution.’

  Knox was beginning to come round to Mariner’s theory. ‘Christ, no wonder these two girls weren’t encouraged to have terminations.’

  ‘No, instead they were sold some line about their babies being sent home to their families or to an orphanage, when in reality they are sold on to couples who are desperate for a child. The girls wouldn’t be any the wiser. Realistically they wouldn’t stand a hope in hell of tracing their child even if they ever succeeded in getting away from Zjalic in the first place.’

  ‘But Nadia’s baby wasn’t sold. We know what happened to him.’

  ‘But what’s the other thing we know about him? He had a cleft palate.’

  ‘He was damaged goods,’ said Knox. ‘So he couldn’t be sold.’

  ‘Perhaps Nadia realised that, feared for his future and refused to give him up, or perhaps the child died first and Nadia found out. We’ll never know.’

  ‘But where the hell does Christie come into all this? What was her stuff doing in Zjalic’s house?’

  ‘The last time Christie had those things with her was the night she was killed, so we have to conclude that someone who has access to Wilmott Road was involved with her murder, which in turn implicates Zjalic. She said she had something to tell you, and perhaps this was it. Christie had somehow found out about what Zjalic was doing. It would make sense of why she’d been on the internet looking at overseas adoption. She might have been checking out if what Zjalic was doing was legal.’

  This was a step too far for Tony Knox. ‘But how would she have found out about it in the first place? As far as we’re aware she didn’t even know Goran Zjalic.’ He’d identified the missing link.

  ‘It’s something to do with Foundry Road, I’m sure that’s the connection,’ said Mariner. ‘I wouldn’t mind betting that the staff at Jack and the Beanstalk sometimes have to cover at Little Beans, so Christie must have worked there from time to time.’

  ‘That still doesn’t mean she knew anything about Zjalic. If she saw him in the street she wouldn’t know who he was or what he did.’

  ‘Unless Zjalic approached her.’

  ‘But for what?’

  ‘Christie worked in a nursery, looking after children. Perhaps Zjalic needed someone to help him out while he was holding the babies at Wilmott Road. Nadia and Sonja’s babies are the ones we know about, but there may have been others. Christie was a bright girl. When she saw the setup she sussed what was going on and established through her internet research that the operation was illegal. She might even have tried to blackmail Zjalic.’

  ‘She was playing with fire, if she did,’ said Knox.

  ‘It gives us a compelling motive for murder. When Zjalic wouldn’t co-operate, Christie decided to report him to you. You said she had a conscience. Then when you didn’t show up on Saturday night it occurred to her that she could make money from the intelligence in a different way and phoned Jez Barclay. Maybe she was going to anyway. She’d already told her nan that she would have enough money to buy a flat and she’d either get it through blackmail or the TV company, or both.’

  But Knox still wasn’t convinced. ‘If Zjalic is as powerful as we think he is, I still don’t think he’d be the kind of character to just walk up to a kid like Christie in the street and let her in on something as big as that. It’s far too risky.’

  ‘I don’t think he had to. She could easily have worked it out for herself.’ But they were grabbing at speculative straws and they both knew it.

  ‘And at the other end of it, how does Zjalic make contact with couples who want to buy a baby?’ Knox asked.

  It was the bit that Mariner hadn’t thought through, but suddenly it came to him. He scrabbled around on the desk until he came up with the orange flyer. Reading it again it made perfect sense. ‘Take another look at this,’ he said handing it to Knox. ‘We made the assumption that it offers further fertility treatment, but the wording says nothing about “treatment.” All it says is: new hope for infertile couples. What greater hope could there be than the offer of a baby?’

  ‘Go on,’ Knox was still dubious.

  ‘This is the other end of the operation. Couples get these flyers, ring the number and Zjalic offers them a baby. Christie, it seems, wanted a baby, so the flyer’s how Christie got involved. She found it or was given it, called the number and was offered a baby. The first step of that is some kind of bogus “clinic” appointment, which would explain the entry on her calendar. Until she kept the appointment she wouldn’t have known what this offer was. She might even have got as far as meeting with Zjalic, then perhaps she recognised him from Foundry Road and realised what he was up to.’

  ‘But where would Christie have got hold of the flyer?’ said Knox. ‘She hadn’t been to the fertility clinic and we haven’t seen them around anywhere, so where did it come from?’

  It was the question Mariner couldn’t yet answer. ‘But all of this gives us two main prioriti
es. Contact the immigration centre and find out if there are any other girls who have had babies in this country during the last twelve months, and had them sent home to their families or to an orphanage. And I want to find Goran Zjalic.’

  * * *

  Surveillance was an expensive option, but once Mariner had laid out his case, DCI Sharp could see its value. ‘Whatever may be going on here, I think Goran Zjalic will be an interesting man to meet.’

  Knox quickly came through with a result from the immigration centre. ‘A couple of girls have come forward who were taken to other stations in the city and one from Stafford,’ their agent told Mariner. ‘One of them had her baby eight weeks ago. She had a picture that they’ve faxed through to us.’

  ‘Do you think we could run it by the neighbours in Wilmott Street, see if they recognise it?’ To him a baby was a baby, but maybe it was different for other people.

  ‘We don’t have to, boss,’ Knox handed Mariner the copied sheet.

  Mariner stared in disbelief. Even he didn’t need any clues. There was no mistaking those big dark eyes. ‘It’s baby Ellie,’ he said.

  ‘Zjalic didn’t need Christie to help look after the babies,’ said Knox. ‘He put them into the nursery while they were waiting to be adopted,’ said Knox.

  ‘It’s like a holding station,’ said Mariner.

  ‘When I brought Christie up here to your office for the e-fit, she thought she recognised that picture.’ Knox gestured towards the mock-up of Madeleine, still stuck to the wall. ‘She thought she’d been into the nursery. At the time it seemed too far-fetched so I didn’t push it, but maybe she was right.’

  Mariner was thoughtful. ‘We need to find out if Trudy Barratt recognises Zjalic.’

  ‘He wouldn’t do the business himself though, would he? The girl who was supposedly Ellie’s nanny came to collect her,’ Knox reminded him. ‘Boss?’

  But Mariner didn’t respond straight away, because the understanding of what was really going on had ploughed into him like a ten-ton truck.

  ‘Boss?’ Knox tried again.

  ‘Mrs Barratt knows Goran Zjalic, all right,’ said Mariner, eventually. ‘The nursery is all part of the scam.’

  Chapter Sixteen

  ‘I don’t get it,’ said Knox.

  ‘Think back to the day of Jessica Klinnemann’s abduction,’ Mariner said. ‘We ruled out the possibility that she had been taken in error, on the grounds that every mother knows her baby. But what if the mother who came to the nursery that afternoon didn’t know her baby, because she’d never met her before. What if Goran Zjalic offers these babies for adoption and the nursery is a front for the handover?’

  ‘So on the day Jessica went missing, the baby up for adoption was baby Ellie.’ Knox was catching up and Mariner was encouraged.

  ‘Ellie would have been brought into the nursery, like Jessica, early in the morning and handed over to Trudy Barratt. Without Trudy, the staff would have no way of knowing who the mother of the child is. The plan then is that sometime during the day the adoptive mother comes to the nursery and Trudy Barratt hands “back” the baby she has come to collect and is presumably handsomely rewarded for her trouble. The adoptive mother goes away with her new baby, and no one else is any the wiser.’

  ‘But on the day Jessica disappeared Trudy Barratt wasn’t there.’

  ‘Exactly. We assumed that the woman’s enquiry to Christie was to ensure that the manager was out of the way, but in fact it was the opposite; the woman needed Trudy Barratt to be there, to take her and introduce her to her new baby. When Christie told her that Mrs Barratt was out of the building and offered to take her to the crèche, the woman was left with no choice but to bluff her way through and take a baby. When she approached Jessica, Kam helpfully gave her the baby’s name. And the lack of reaction from the staff when she approached Jessica may have led her to think that she had, by chance, even chosen the right baby. After all, she had a one-in-three chance of getting it right. Either way she had to brazen it out and walk out of the nursery with a baby.’

  ‘But she took the wrong one.’

  ‘Yes, she should have taken Ellie, which is why Ellie was left behind in the nursery long after the other children had gone, and was eventually collected by the girl Trudy Barratt said was the au pair.’ Mariner recollected the so-called au pair who’d come to collect Ellie in the beaten up car, and how he’d compared her with Katarina. The similarity was closer than he’d realised. ‘I’d lay bets that the phone call Mrs Barratt made when she got back to the nursery was telling Zjalic that there had been a cock-up, and urging him to arrange for Ellie to be collected. Otherwise she was going to have to account to us for a spare baby, which would have been pretty embarrassing.’

  ‘It explains how naturally it came to the abductor to talk about “her” baby, too,’ added Knox. ‘She said it because in her mind she was collecting her baby, bought and paid for.’

  ‘But if that’s what happened, why didn’t the woman who took Jessica come forward straight away when she realised what had happened? She must have seen or heard something. It was all over the news.’

  ‘—because the mistake would have had to be explained. Potentially she would have uncovered the whole scam and jeopardised her chances of having a baby.’

  ‘She’d go that far?’

  ‘There are few more single-minded people than women who want a child but are unable to have one. I think these women are carefully chosen.’

  ‘But how, and who chooses them?’

  ‘It all comes back to the flyer. I think the reason we haven’t come across any of these flyers is because couples are very carefully targeted. They’ll be couples who are desperate for a child and who won’t ask too many questions. They’ll have gone through a lot to get this far and they’re not going to give it up easily. Instead this woman waited and worked out a way of getting Jessica safely and anonymously back to us. Jessica had to be returned. With all the publicity, she could never have been absorbed into a family without arousing suspicion. Zjalic was probably behind that too. My guess would be that this woman, and probably her husband or partner holed up in a place somewhere until the fuss died down.’

  ‘Betty Wrigley,’ said Knox.

  ‘Is that meant to mean something?’

  Knox described his encounter with the holiday cottage owner. ‘I dismissed her as a busybody, but if your theory’s right then she could have been onto something.’

  Mariner was inclined to agree. ‘Renting a holiday cottage would be an ideal way of spending a few days with a new baby and getting to know it before introducing it to the family. The couple may have even had a cover story — that they were adopting from abroad. We should have a forensic team sent up to the cottage and go over it with a fine-tooth comb. And let’s talk to Betty Wrigley again.’

  ‘She’ll be over the moon,’ said Knox.

  * * *

  Mrs Wrigley’s stone cottage lay in an isolated spot at the end of a rough track. Being supremely house-proud, she had made sure to give the place a thorough clean. ‘At the moment,’ Mariner told the forensic team, ‘we’re looking for any evidence that Jessica Klinnemann may have been here, or anything to link with the abduction.’

  Meanwhile Mariner and Tony Knox went to talk to Betty Wrigley.

  ‘Could you talk us through the transaction again?’ Mariner asked.

  Betty Wrigley visibly puffed up. ‘I advertise in a number of magazines and on the internet. As generally happens, Mr Jones phoned at first to ask if the cottage was free for that week. He’d seen it online. It was available so I made a provisional reservation, and a few days later he sent me a letter confirming the booking and enclosing the cash deposit.’

  ‘Did you keep any of the paperwork?’

  ‘Of course. I file everything.’

  But Mr Jones’s letter brought no new information, there was no return postal address and nothing to identify the sender except for a Manchester postmark. With Mrs Wrigley’s permission Marine
r kept it for forensic testing, but he wasn’t optimistic.

  ‘Mr and Mrs Jones must have driven here,’ Mariner said. ‘Do you know what make their car was?’

  ‘Yes, it was a nice black one. A hatchback,’ said Joan Wrigley, certain that she was playing a vital role.

  Knox and Mariner exchanged a look. ‘Well, thanks anyway,’ Mariner said, praying that the forensics team would turn up something. They were walking out of the door when Wrigley said: ‘I wrote down the registration number. Would that help?’

  A short enquiry to the DVLA identified both the car — a black Renault Megane — and its owner: a David Scanlon of 24 Goldfinch Drive, Salford, Manchester. A second vehicle was registered to his spouse, Paula.

  ‘Talks like Deidre off Coronation Street,’ said Mariner, quoting what Christie had told them. She’d had an ear for accents too.

  * * *

  Mariner and Knox drove across to Greater Manchester right away, arriving in the late afternoon. They notified the local force that they were on their patch but initially it was simply a question of watching and waiting. Goldfinch Drive was a cul-de-sac of pebble-dashed bungalows, the lawns neatly tended. There were no cars on the drive of number twenty-four, but dusk turned to darkness and eventually a small hatchback appeared at the end of the road and swung into the drive, continuing down alongside the house, past the front door to a side door. A woman got out, opened the boot and unloaded a number of carrier bags in through the side door. Emerging again, she went round to the passenger side of the car and took out an infant’s car seat. Locking the car, she went in the house again, closing the door behind her.

  ‘How do we play this?’ Knox asked, as they got out of the car.

  ‘Carefully,’ said Mariner. ‘Aside from taking Jessica by mistake, they may not even know that they’ve done anything wrong. The adoption might have been presented to them as entirely above board. Now that Jessica has been returned they probably think they’re in the clear. Let’s go.’