Stolen

by Lesley Pearse

  Puzzled as to why Fern would be putting anything in this file if it didn’t belong to her and Howard, Lotte flicked through it. There among the papers was a photocopied handwritten letter to a Mr J. C. Wetherall about items Mr and Mrs Gullick wished to have included in the purchase of the house. It was unmistakably Fern’s writing, and even if it was signed by E. Gullick, there was no doubt of the writer’s real identity.

  Lotte was stunned. Not just by the different name, for that could possibly be explained if Gullick was Fern’s maiden name and for some reason she and Howard found it more convenient for business affairs. But why had they pretended they were renting the house? What possible reason could they have for that?

  Unnerved, Lotte pulled out the file next to ‘Drummond’, which was labelled ‘Farnley’.

  This contained handwritten letters which were addressed to a Dr and Mrs Kent in Hartford, Connecticut, and sent from Marion Farnley from an address in Illinois. They appeared to have been sent on here by a third party, for there was a note to Fern attached to one, just saying, ‘I thought you’d better see these’, with an unreadable signature.

  It seemed the writer of the letters, Marion Farnley, was pregnant, with her baby due in July, and indeed all the letters were about the progress of her pregnancy, her visits to the ante-natal clinic and how much weight she was putting on.

  Lotte felt that the Kents were helping her financially, which suggested she could be a relative. The most recent letter, dated 12 May, seemed to confirm this, for Marion questioned whether everything was in place at the nursing home where the baby would be born.

  There was a slightly curt tone to this latest letter. Marion wanted to know when the money would be transferred to her account. But a cold chill ran down Lotte’s spine as she read: ‘I expect this to happen before I hand my baby over to his new parents.’

  Lotte stood there for a moment by the open drawer of the filing cabinet, her hand clasped to her mouth in shock. All at once she realized that Dr and Mrs Kent, like the Gullicks, were none other than Fern and Howard, and transferring funds in conjunction with a baby to new parents could only mean one thing.

  They were selling babies!

  Lotte went through all the other files one by one and to her horror she found she was right. Not just one isolated case, but dozens of mothers in almost every state in America, and most had handed over their child some time ago.

  It was all there in black and white for there were records of payments to the mothers, most of whom received a thousand dollars for handing over their baby. Then there were itemized accounts for the new parents, not just the Ramsdens’ fee of twenty-five thousand dollars, but also the costs for the mother at the nursing home.

  From what Lotte could gather there was someone else involved in this too, staying at the address in Connecticut and presumably running it while the Ramsdens were away. Yet it seemed that both Fern and Howard were in the habit of going back there on a regular basis, for there were several references in the correspondence to the patients seeing Dr Kent, including the date in March when they’d left the Dorchester to return fleetingly to America.

  There was nothing to tell Lotte how the Ramsdens found these women in the first place. Some, Lotte felt, had been pregnant when they first met, but certain remarks in some of the handwritten letters, many written by women who clearly had had very little education, suggested some of them had agreed to become pregnant with donor sperm.

  With all this appalling but riveting correspondence to go through, Lotte forgot the time. She wanted to read everything, and see the whole picture of how Fern and Howard had managed to keep this extremely lucrative business running for so long without detection. She guessed they had false passports to go with their aliases, but she wondered how they found couples desperate enough to pay thousands of dollars for a baby. It wasn’t as if they could advertise such a service.

  There was a thank-you letter from a couple in Dallas who had enclosed a photograph of a very pretty baby with dark curly hair. ‘We bless the day Muriel at Birthright slipped us your number,’ they wrote. ‘We had been given the run-around by them for over two years, we felt they were never going to help us. You took us seriously immediately, you fulfilled all our dreams for us. Bless you.’

  Lotte wondered if Birthright was a bona fide adoption society and this Muriel who worked there took kickbacks from the Ramsdens for every desperate couple she sent their way.

  The more information Lotte turned up, the angrier and more horrified she became at what Fern and Howard had been doing. She wondered how they had the nerve to pose as devout Christians when they were making a fortune out of childless couples. Lotte knew real adoption societies checked every last thing about the couples they gave babies to, but she guessed the only check Fern and Howard made was to be sure that the couples they intended to supply with a child could afford their charges. They wouldn’t know or care if they were sick, mentally ill or sexual deviants.

  And what of the natural birth mothers? Any woman who would agree to have a baby for money was suspect. They could have drink or drug addiction problems, sexually transmitted diseases, and possibly very low IQs. She wondered if any of the babies were given a thorough medical examination before they were passed over.

  Lotte’s heart was racing now, for she realized that what she had discovered was dynamite and she must get away quickly and inform the police. She went back to the files and removed a particularly incriminating letter from each folder which she tucked into a large manila envelope. Then, after shutting the drawers and locking the cabinet, she replaced the key where she’d found it, and ran upstairs to get her things together to leave.

  Lotte came out of the front door carrying her red suitcase and put it down to turn and lock the door with the mortice key. She’d just taken the key from the door when she heard the car turning into the drive.

  Her heart sank and a tremor of fear ran down her spine. It was too late to unlock the door and run in again and there was no escape. There was a gate to the side of the house but it was padlocked, and the fences and thick hedges on both sides of the house and drive ruled out escaping that way.

  The black Mercedes glided to a halt and Howard got out, keeping the driver’s door open, virtually barring the way to the narrow drive between the high hedges and overhanging trees. Fern got out on the passenger side and walked over to Lotte where she stood transfixed with fear on the doorstep.

  ‘Going somewhere?’ Fern asked.

  Her face was as cold as a January day, her green eyes almost black now. She was as always beautifully dressed and groomed, with a leopard-print scarf at the neck of her cream trenchstyle raincoat and makeup as flawless as when she’d left the house earlier; even her hair, which Lotte had swept up into a French pleat that morning, was still perfect.

  ‘Yes, I decided it was best if I left,’ Lotte blurted out. ‘I want to go home.’

  Fern had always had a commanding presence, but now as she walked closer to Lotte she seemed even taller and utterly formidable. ‘But you know you aren’t welcome at home,’ she said silkily. ‘Come on inside and we’ll talk about it over a cup of coffee. I’m so disappointed that you’d try and creep away like a thief in the night when we weren’t here. But maybe you can explain that!’

  Howard came up to stand behind his wife, and Lotte realized that if she was to try to dart by him, he’d catch her easily. She thought defence was the best line of attack.

  ‘You shocked me by suggesting I should have a child for you,’ she said. ‘It changed everything. I just want to go now.’

  ‘Oh, do grow up, Lotte,’ Fern said scornfully as Howard unlocked the door. ‘If you really hated the idea we wouldn’t have pressed the issue.’

  ‘You shouldn’t have even suggested it,’ Lotte said indignantly.

  Fern took Lotte’s arm firmly and led her inside. Howard picked up the suitcase and carried it in, shutting the door behind the three of them. He locked it, took the key out and put it in his pocket.


  ‘I really don’t want to stay for coffee and talk about anything,’ Lotte said, feeling very awkward and scared. ‘Just let me go!’

  ‘Why the hurry?’ Fern asked. ‘You wouldn’t have put anything in your case that doesn’t belong to you, would you?’

  ‘Of course not.’ Lotte felt sick now, for Fern had put the suitcase down on a hall chair and was about to open it. The manila envelope was right on the top.

  ‘Then you won’t mind me looking,’ Fern said and flicked the case open.

  She bypassed the envelope first, rummaging around among the clothes, but then stood up straight with it in her hand. ‘What’s this?’ she asked, giving Lotte a hard, cold look.

  Lotte knew all was lost now. Fern was going to open the envelope, and once she saw the contents there was no way on earth she was going to let her go.

  ‘I’d better look, for the cat seems to have got your tongue,’ Fern said.

  She pulled out the letters and blanched as she saw what they were. ‘You ungrateful wretch!’ she roared at Lotte, taking a step closer and slapping her hard around the face. ‘We’ve done everything we could for you, but you throw it back in our faces by going though our private papers.’

  ‘You’ve been selling babies!’ Lotte retorted indignantly. ‘There’s no way you can justify that! Is that why you helped me after the rape? Did you hope I’d be pregnant and you could get a good price for it?’

  Fern moved to slap her again but Lotte caught her hand and pushed her back against the wall. ‘Don’t you dare hit me again. You’ve spouted out all that religious claptrap at me, you’ve made out you cared,’ she yelled. ‘But all you are is a crook. The worst kind too, a lying, scheming swindler who preys on the weak and vulnerable.’

  Howard, who had been just standing there until now, leapt forward, grabbed Lotte’s arms and twisted them back behind her. ‘You can cool off in the basement,’ he said.

  He bundled her down there so fast she was hardly aware what was happening. The door at the top of the stairs was slammed shut and she heard the key turn in the lock, then footsteps walking away into the kitchen.

  Lotte was too angry with herself even to cry. She couldn’t really believe she hadn’t anticipated they might test her by coming back early. She might have known they would be extra vigilant since their suggestion she had a baby for them. Why did she spend so long reading everything? Why on earth hadn’t she just grabbed some of it and made off to the police?

  But the very worst thing of all was the knowledge that they would never let her go now. They couldn’t, for if they did, they’d be stuck in prison for years.

  It was forty-eight hours before they came to speak to her again.

  During that time Lotte tried yelling and hammering on the door. She tried to gouge through to the hinges with a nail file she found in a drawer, and she tried moving the wardrobe over to the tiny window to see if she could climb out that way. But once balanced precariously on the dressing-table stool on top of the wardrobe, she found the window was so small she wouldn’t be able to get her shoulders through it. She thought of breaking the glass and then shouting, but she knew the window was situated in a gully at the back of the house and it was unlikely her voice would reach either of the neighbouring houses. Besides, while Fern and Howard were in the house, they were likely to cover that window securely if they heard her, so she would use that as a last resort once they’d gone out.

  When Howard finally opened the door the smell of roasting chicken which wafted in from the kitchen made her almost faint with hunger.

  ‘Hungry?’ he asked, grinning as if that was funny.

  Lotte could only nod. She felt too weak for anything more.

  ‘You can come up and eat with us as long as you behave,’ he said. ‘We want to talk to you.’

  An hour later Lotte was staring speechlessly at Fern as she laid down what was going to happen.

  She had wolfed down the chicken dinner, convinced that the change of heart in feeding her meant they were ready to bargain. She expected to be offered money to forget what she’d discovered, and after two days of being locked up without food, Lotte was prepared to erase everything from her mind in return for a good meal.

  But that wasn’t what they had in mind at all.

  Fern said that Lotte had got to have a baby for them, with Howard as the father. When the baby was born she was to register its birth and apply for its passport, then the three of them and the baby would fly back to America. Lotte would then be free to return home and they would pay her five thousand dollars as long as she signed an agreement to say she’d consented to being impregnated with Howard’s sperm and to give him their baby when it was born.

  Howard said little, just sat at the table with his arms crossed, looking first at Fern and then at Lotte. It was tempting because of his fine features and gentle manner to think he didn’t really want any part in this, but it had been he who had posed as Dr Kent and convinced dozens of women he really was a doctor.

  ‘Why would you want me to come to the States with you?’ Lotte asked.

  ‘To keep an eye on you right till the end of course,’ Fern said. ‘We know that if you did go rushing off to a police precinct in New York, Philadelphia, or anywhere in America for that matter, with such a story and nothing to back it up, you’d be laughed at. And of course with your signature on the agreement you wouldn’t have a leg to stand on anyway. But we’re just trying to be fair, which is why we’d fly you home with enough money to start a brand-new life.’

  Howard escorted her back to the cellar then. He said she needed to think over what they’d said to her.

  Lotte had no real need to think it over, for they hadn’t offered her any kind of choice. Whatever they said, they were not going to let her go free, not in America, here or anywhere else, not now, not ever. They couldn’t; she knew too much.

  She could bend over backwards to convince them she was willing to go along with this baby thing, that she wanted the money and she’d never blab to anyone, but they were never going to trust her completely again.

  The bottom line was they’d have to kill her. Either now if she didn’t agree to go along with their plans, or later once they’d got what they wanted. A couple of months ago she could never have thought it possible that they could even lie, let alone sell babies or kill. But she had no doubt about it now.

  She wondered why she’d never noticed that fanatical look in Fern’s green eyes before, or the slyness in Howard’s. When he said prayers or read from the Bible he acted out the part of a preacher. Who knows what other parts he acted in different places? She knew about the doctor, but perhaps there were more. How could she have trusted either of them so implicitly for so long?

  It was another twenty-four hours before Fern opened the basement door again.

  ‘So what’s it to be?’ she asked, leaning back against the door post, her lips curved into a cruel smile. ‘Are you going to be cooperative? Or do you want to stay down here for a few more days without food?’

  Lotte felt sick with fear. ‘How can you do this to me?’ she asked tearfully. ‘You were so kind and patient when I was raped. You said you thought of me as a daughter, and now this.’

  ‘It’s because of our feelings for you that we chose you to have Howard’s seed planted within you,’ Fern said, smiling broadly as if that made her terrible proposition quite ordinary. ‘After all we’ve done for you I expected you to be glad to do this small thing.’

  It struck Lotte then that Fern was truly deranged, for surely only a madwoman could think this was a small thing.

  There was nothing to be gained by holding out. She knew Fern would happily leave her to starve for days. If she played the game their way, maybe luck would smile on her and give her an opportunity to escape.

  ‘OK, I’ll have a baby for you,’ Lotte said, forcing herself to sound, if not enthusiastic, then resigned.

  ‘Good girl.’ Fern beamed. ‘I knew you’d come round in the end. Now you can come up for
supper.’

  Chapter Eleven

  ‘I’m home!’ Simon called out as he came in through the front door of the flat soon after five, carrying a bag of groceries.

  When Lotte didn’t respond he assumed she must be having a nap and went into the kitchen to put the shopping away in the fridge. He was surprised by the unwashed lunch dishes on the draining board; it wasn’t like Lotte, who always cleared up immediately after meals.

  He made himself a cup of coffee and crossed the hallway into the sitting room. He could see the indentations on the sofa where she and Dale had been sitting. Lotte’s sandals were still there on the floor as well as glasses and an empty wine bottle.

  Simon smiled. This was the explanation for the unwashed dishes – the wine must have gone straight to Lotte’s head. He put down his coffee and picked up the glasses and bottle to take them to the kitchen. As he crossed the hallway he could see into Lotte’s bedroom through the open door, but she wasn’t lying on her bed.

  In alarm he went right into her room. She wasn’t there and nothing was out of place at all.

  She wasn’t in his room or the bathroom and although he wanted to believe she had just popped out to a shop with Dale, somehow he knew she wouldn’t have done that.

  With a hammering heart he grabbed the phone and rang the number DI Bryan had given him.

  Adam came in a few minutes later while Simon was still waiting for the police to arrive. It was he who discovered putty had been put over the lens of the CCTV camera and that confirmed Lotte hadn’t gone out shopping with Dale.

  ‘But I don’t understand why she would open the door if she couldn’t see who was there,’ Simon said wildly, beside himself with anxiety. ‘I thought we’d made her as safe as could be.’

  ‘Calm down, Si.’ Adam hugged him. ‘Someone’s bound to have seen something; the police will find her.’