Death in the Family

by Jill McGown

  “What exactly is the problem?”

  “Kayleigh’s obsessive. Really obsessive. Lesley would never admit it, never use the word. She used expressions like ‘forming attachments’ or ‘becoming very involved,’ but it’s much more than that. Things consume her, take her over, and nothing is as important as whatever or whoever it is while she’s in its grip. It isn’t her fault—she can’t help herself.”

  “Has she done anything like this before?”

  “No.” He sighed. “And I don’t understand why she did it.”

  “I imagine she did go through with the termination. The loss of her own baby . . . emotional confusion—it’s not that uncommon. And it happens to people with more stable personalities than Kayleigh’s.”

  “No, I don’t mean that.” Phil took out his cigarettes and then remembered he was in a nonsmoker’s car and put them away again. “It’s just—well, Kayleigh’s not stupid; in fact, she’s anything but. She’s got a very high IQ, and . . . this is going to sound terrible, but . . . well, she’s quite calculating when she’s out to get whatever it is she wants. Like the business with Fletcher. I mean, you have no idea of the complex lies she told us so that we didn’t wonder where she was.” He wondered if they would ever have found out if Kayleigh hadn’t got pregnant and had to tell someone. “What I don’t understand is what she intended doing, once she’d got the baby. Kayleigh’s usually got a plan.”

  “This seems to have been spur-of-the-moment. The girl went off and left Emma—the park is right across the road from where Kayleigh was living in Malworth. If she had become very attached to Emma, she might simply have seen her opportunity.”

  Phil nodded his agreement, but he wasn’t convinced. And Lloyd was doing it, too; Kayleigh hadn’t become “very attached” to Emma. She had become obsessed with her. There was a big difference, one that Lesley had always refused to accept and which Lloyd didn’t appreciate. A silence fell then, as Lloyd drove through Barton’s busy streets to the police station and Kayleigh. When Lloyd spoke again, Phil’s heart skipped a beat.

  “Mr. Roddam, we have a witness who overheard an argument at the cottage shortly before we received the nine-nine-nine call at eleven o’clock yesterday morning. He heard a man telling a woman that she had no right to take his daughter out of the country, and the woman telling the man that he wasn’t her father.”

  Phil didn’t speak.

  “We assumed that this argument was between Kayleigh and Dean over Alexandra, and Kayleigh allowed me to believe that it was. I think she did that to protect you.”

  Oh, God, what a mess; Phil still didn’t say anything.

  “We also have a witness who claims to have seen you leaving the cottage shortly before we received the emergency call. Did you see Mrs. Newton at the cottage yesterday morning?”

  There was no point in denying it, not if he had been seen. “Yes. I’m—I’m sorry I lied to you.”

  “I will want you to come to Stansfield Police Station with me when we’ve concluded our business at Highgrove Street.”

  “Yes. Of course.”

  He got to have his cigarette when they arrived at the police station, standing outside the big double doors, talking to Mrs. Spears while Lloyd liaised with Superintendent McArthur. Phil was pleased to discover that he liked Mrs. Spears, and hoped Kayleigh did, too. Then McArthur and Lloyd brought him into their discussions before he, Mrs. Spears, and the two policemen joined Kayleigh in a small interview room.

  Kayleigh jumped up and hugged Phil when she saw him, but she still didn’t speak; now she was sitting looking at them, her face pale and frightened, her hands clasped in her lap, and he didn’t feel much better. All these people ganging up on her, poor little Kayleigh looked lost as she was cautioned, told that the interview was being taped. McArthur had agreed, reluctantly, that Phil could, at least to start with, ask the questions. And Phil knew what did and didn’t work with Kayleigh; pussyfooting around was not the way to get a response.

  “Kayleigh,” he said. “Whose is the baby that you took back to the cottage yesterday?”

  He saw Lloyd and McArthur look at each other apprehensively, but Kayleigh looked, if anything, relieved. Finally, she spoke.

  “It’s Mrs. Crawford’s baby.” Her voice was slightly hoarse, and she cleared her throat. “It’s Emma.”

  “Why, Kayleigh? Why did you take her?”

  “Because I didn’t want to go to Australia and leave her.”

  There was more to it than that, Phil was certain. The name, for instance. She had given the baby a name. “Why did you tell the police that her name was Alexandra?”

  “Because that’s what I was going to call her. She’s a little bit younger than Alexandra, but not much. Alexandra was born on the twentieth of December, and Emma was born on the eighth of January.”

  Phil, who had once again credited Lesley with the sense she was born with, realized that once again he had been wrong. “Are you saying you did have the baby? You didn’t have a termination?” His mind was racing. If she had had the baby . . . where was it? He didn’t dare even ask.

  “Mum said it would be better if I had the baby, and then let her be adopted, like I was. She said that it was wrong to kill babies before they were born.”

  Adopted. The baby had been adopted. On the one hand, Phil was deeply, deeply relieved. On the other, he was toweringly angry with Lesley.

  “I didn’t mind, not then. I didn’t have to go to school, because she got someone to teach me at home. And she said not to tell you, because you would make a fuss. But then . . . after I’d had her, I wanted to keep her. But Mum . . .” She trailed off. “She . . . she said I should give her away. They said they’d ask the people who took her if they would call her Alexandra, but I don’t know if they did.”

  Phil felt impotent rage boil up and had to work very hard to keep it under control. He could, when Lesley wasn’t there, reasoning with him. How could she have thought that was the right thing to do? No wonder Kayleigh had resorted to stealing someone else’s baby.

  “I’m told that you didn’t go with your mother and Mr. Waring to Stansfield,” said McArthur, taking over the questioning. “Why was that?”

  Kayleigh answered him readily enough. Too readily. “Mum couldn’t find the keys to lock up, and she couldn’t phone Ian at the cottage because he’d lost his mobile phone, so I said I’d wait behind while she went to the cottage to get them. Then I found them, and rang Mum to tell her. I said I’d lock up and get the bus to Stansfield, because they had to unpack the van.”

  “And when did you see Emma?”

  “When I was leaving the house. I saw Andrea go into the park with Emma, and I just wanted to be with her for a little while longer. So I had to ring Mum, tell her that I would get a later bus, and Andrea went to get her phone for me. I was alone with her, and . . . and . . . I just took her.”

  “What were you going to do, once you’d got her?”

  That was what Phil wanted to know, but Kayleigh just shrugged. “I don’t know. I took her home, played with her. I knew really that I couldn’t keep her. But I could see all the police in the park, and I was frightened to take her back.”

  No, Phil didn’t believe that. He knew Kayleigh much too well to believe that she had acted on impulse; that wasn’t how it worked. Why was she alone in Malworth, instead of going to Stansfield with Lesley and Waring? Because the keys to the Malworth house had gone missing. And who had found those keys, used them to let herself back into the house with Emma? She stole a baby on an impulse, and as luck would have it, she had access to an empty house directly across the street where she could secrete herself and the baby within seconds of taking it? No, Phil thought, Kayleigh had had a plan.

  As it turned out, McArthur had something more than instinct to go on; he had evidence. “When you brought Emma to the cottage, she wasn’t wearing the same clothes that she’d been wearing when she went missing. Those clothes were found in a waste bin in Malworth. Can you explain that, Kaylei
gh?”

  Kayleigh’s face once again assumed the closed look that it did when questions got too difficult for pat answers.

  “Kayleigh.” Phil’s voice was sharp, making Kayleigh start a little. “This is very serious. You have to answer Mr. McArthur’s questions.”

  “I bought new clothes for her.”

  “When?”

  “About two weeks ago.” Kayleigh wasn’t looking at anyone as she spoke; she sat, eyes cast down, her hands clasped.

  “Are you saying that you planned to abduct Emma Crawford?” asked McArthur.

  “Yes.”

  “Did you deliberately get yourself left alone with the keys to the house? Did you deliberately trick Andrea Merry into leaving you with the baby?”

  Kayleigh didn’t answer, and Phil put his arm round her. “Kayleigh—whatever you were going to do, it’s over. The baby is going back where she belongs. But you must tell us the truth. Did you have the keys to the house all along?”

  Kayleigh still didn’t look at anyone. “Yes,” she said, her voice sulky. “And I put Ian’s phone in the glove compartment of his car, so he wouldn’t have it, because he was lending the car to his friend. That way Mum wouldn’t be able to phone him about the keys, and she would have to go and get them. Mum nearly spoiled it. She told him he’d probably left his mobile in his car, but it was all right, because he’d lent it to his friend by then.”

  “Do you still have the keys?” asked Lloyd.

  Kayleigh went into the pocket of the jacket she was wearing, and drew them out. “The estate agent’s supposed to have them.”

  Lloyd took them. “I’ll see they get there,” he said.

  “Why did you do it, Kayleigh?” Phil asked.

  Her shoulders moved slightly.

  “Kayleigh, I know . . . I understand . . . how you felt about the baby. And I know that you don’t mean to do bad things, that you get carried away. I’m not blaming you. I just want to know what you intended doing once you’d got her. Did it have something to do with Dean Fletcher?”

  But this time even he got the silent treatment, and he felt that shock tactics would have to be used. “I know he was in Stansfield, Kayleigh. He was on that little bridge over the stream that runs along by the road. I saw him when I left Lesley.”

  Kayleigh’s head shot up when he said that, and Phil gave her a little hug of reassurance. “The police know I was there. I didn’t want your mum taking you off to Australia, and I lost my temper, but I only broke a mirror. I didn’t have anything to do with what happened.” He felt Kayleigh relax a little and wished that he could.

  “What was Dean Fletcher doing in Stansfield?” Lloyd asked.

  Kayleigh’s head went back down, but this time she did answer the question. “I wrote to him in prison and got him to ring me. I told him Mum had made me tell the police and say all those things about him in court.”

  “Kayleigh!” Even Phil had a tolerance level and Lesley might have been misguided and pigheaded, but what Kayleigh had said in court was exactly what she had told him and her mother. “That’s not true!”

  “I had to tell him that, or he wouldn’t have done what I wanted!” She looked up, her eyes blazing. “I wasn’t going to go to Australia and leave Emma!”

  “And what did you want him to do?” asked Lloyd.

  “I said I wanted a photograph of him holding Alexandra. So she would know who her father was. I thought if I could get him to meet me, I could persuade him to take us away with him, and I wouldn’t have to go to Australia and leave her behind.”

  “Take you away where?” asked Phil.

  “We could live in his camper van, and no one would find us. They didn’t find us before, not till I got pregnant and had to tell Mum.”

  She would probably have succeeded, Phil thought. Kayleigh could be very persuasive, and she was always one step ahead of everyone else.

  “Did you tell Dean all that?” asked Lloyd.

  “No!” Her voice was impatient; Lloyd wasn’t keeping up, a position in which Phil had often found himself with Kayleigh. “He wouldn’t have come if I’d told him what I really wanted.” She looked down again. “But it all went wrong.”

  It certainly did, thought Phil.

  “Andrea didn’t come to the park for ages. I thought she wasn’t coming at all. But then she did come, and I did it. I took Emma to the house, and I put the new clothes on her, and fed her. And then I dumped the Winnie-the-Pooh clothes, and took her to Stansfield on the bus. But I was an hour later than I’d said, and when I got to the bridge, Dean wasn’t there.”

  “Did you see Dean at all on Friday?” Lloyd asked.

  “No. I waited in the wood, where I could see the bridge, but he didn’t come, so in the end I took Emma to Mum, because I didn’t know what else to do. I thought she’d sort it all out.” She looked up at Lloyd. “But you were there, and—” She swallowed. “I was scared. I didn’t know what to do. Then you said someone had been arguing with Mum, and I knew it must have been . . .” She glanced at Phil. “I thought if I said who Emma was, they would work out that you must have been there. So I didn’t say anything.”

  “When did you decide to steal Emma?” asked McArthur.

  Now perhaps Lloyd understood what he was dealing with, Phil thought as he saw him sit forward a little, listening intently to Kayleigh now that she was talking at last, finding out just how detailed, how intricate, a plan it was. How long it had been in preparation. How she had used Andrea, and her mother, to bring it to fruition.

  McArthur put Kayleigh under arrest and arranged for her to be released on bail, then, after he and Lloyd had spoken briefly, he left to take the baby back to her parents, and Mrs. Spears waited at the door of the police station for Kayleigh.

  “Aren’t you coming with us?” Kayleigh asked.

  Phil explained that he and Lloyd had some business to attend to, and Kayleigh looked troubled.

  “Go on, love,” said Phil. “I’ll ring you.”

  Reluctantly Kayleigh went off back to the children’s home, and Phil walked with Lloyd to his car. “What’ll happen to her?”

  “That’ll be up to the court. But obviously, they’ll take her circumstances into account.”

  Neither he nor Lloyd said much on the drive to Stansfield, where Phil was taken to an interview room.

  DC Marshall set up the tape, cautioned Phil, and, the formalities observed, Lloyd sat in contemplative silence for some time before speaking. “Tell me about the row you had with Lesley.”

  Phil sat back a little. “Well, as your witness said, it began with me telling her she had no right to take my daughter out of the country without even consulting me, and Lesley very quickly put me in my place, reminding me that Kayleigh was her daughter, not mine.” That was presumably all that their witness had heard; no wonder he had thought it was about this baby Kayleigh had turned up with. “And I said that was beside the point. Kayleigh thought of me as her father, and what she was doing was wrong. She said she was doing what was best for Kayleigh. I’m afraid I got very angry.”

  “Why?”

  “Because she never knew what was best for Kayleigh—she never understood Kayleigh at all. She was abandoned because her mother couldn’t cope with her when she was two and a half! But Lesley saw her as a challenge.” He screwed up his face in disgust at himself as he heard his own voice, and felt obliged to retract what he had said. “No—no, that’s not fair. She really wanted to help her.” He explained about Lesley’s own underprivileged background and her desire to use the money and influence that she had acquired to help other underprivileged people. “She really wanted to help . . .” He held his hands out in an all-embracing gesture. “. . . everyone, anyone who needed help.”

  “What was wrong with that?” asked Marshall.

  “Nothing. She was very well-meaning. Kindhearted. But she never really understood other people—she could never put herself in someone else’s shoes. She thought she could . . .” He searched for the right word; There
sa had called it bullying, in one of their telephone conversations, but that was too harsh. “. . . could . . . impose her will on everyone. And she would never accept that some things were beyond her. Kayleigh was way, way beyond her.”

  “And that made you angry?”

  Phil didn’t know if he could make these men understand the complex nature of Lesley’s personality. She would never have adopted a child who hadn’t come with a health warning; that would have been too easy. And when she had discovered that he, too, was a flawed human being, that he was given to flying into a rage, she wasn’t worried or alarmed; she was interested. Lesley had interests, and Kayleigh was one of them.

  “She had no idea what went on in Kayleigh’s head. And she wouldn’t face up to the fact that she was seriously disturbed. She would just take her away every time anything happened. She would never have gone to the police about Fletcher—she would just have moved again. She meant well, but all she was doing was allowing Kayleigh to get worse and worse. And this time she was dragging her off to Australia!” He shook his head. “She thought it was this girl that Kayleigh was obsessed with—she didn’t even get that right.”

  “Kayleigh went to considerable lengths to make her believe that,” said Lloyd.

  Phil nodded. He was being unfair again; he knew that. But Lloyd hadn’t known Lesley. “I’m telling her that Kayleigh should be getting help, and she’s blithely telling me that Australia isn’t really that far away, I can always come and visit. I just . . . just saw red.”

  “And what did you do,” asked Lloyd, “when you saw red?”

  “I picked up the table and threw it at the mirror.”

  “Why the mirror?” asked Marshall.

  “Because I could see Lesley’s reflection in it.”

  “So, in effect,” said Marshall, slowly, “you were throwing the table at Lesley?”

  “In effect. It’s how I manage my anger, as Lesley would say. I direct it at inanimate objects. And Lesley’s image happened to be in that particular inanimate object, yes.”