The Deceiver

by Priscilla Masters

  ‘No comment,’ he’d said.

  The problem for Claire was that as Arthur had acquired the habit of silence, keeping his thoughts and ideas firmly to himself, his mind and reasoning were a spiral proving difficult to unwind.

  Claire heaved out another sigh as she moved along the corridor, passing another door, another patient here for assessment. But this person was someone for whom she had a little less sympathy.

  Problem 2: Riley Finch.

  Riley was a twenty-eight-year-old woman who had her own personal gay mantra: I can have anything I want. Which had morphed into a more petulant phrase: Why shouldn’t I have what I want? But because Riley’s tastes were for the upper end of the designer market, clothes, household goods and toiletries, combined with the fact that she worked on a zero-hours contract in an off-licence, with wages that scraped the bottom of the minimum wage barrel, her desires could only be fulfilled by shoplifting, for which she had had numerous previous arrests.

  But that wasn’t why Riley had been pushed Claire’s way.

  Goods were one thing. They led to fines and non-custodial sentences. But the latest item on Riley’s shopping list had been a baby. Riley wanted a baby. And, as usual, she’d applied her tried- and-tested mantra. If I want one, why shouldn’t I have one? Other people do. So why not me?

  And when that hadn’t happened for various reasons, the mantra had morphed into: If I can’t have a baby, why should someone else?

  That was when the real trouble had started.

  Riley had had no current partner and she was far too particular and careful of the baby’s parentage (I want a perfect, blonde, blue-eyed, gorgeous little thing) to risk a one-night stand. The one thing Claire had found in her favour was that not anyone would do to have casual sex with. She was very particular about not contracting any sexually transmitted diseases. The very words made her small frame shudder.

  Another obstacle in Riley’s quest was that men, Claire reflected, had proved surprisingly perceptive of her cold charm and steered clear of her even though Riley was, actually, an attractive redhead with delicate features, pale skin and witchy green eyes. Perhaps it was the temper that matched her hair colour and sprang as hot, dangerous and unexpected as a tropical storm. Or the selfish coldness at her heart which turned them away. But without a man Riley had to be resourceful and find another way of acquiring this blonde, blue-eyed baby. Besides … waiting nine months for what Riley wanted was not exactly on her agenda. She was quite likely to have got bored with pregnancy halfway through and decided to terminate it. Much easier to pinch the result of someone else’s labour. Of course, to someone of Riley’s particular morals, this was as easy as acquiring a Calvin Klein jacket, a Zandra Rhodes gown or Louboutin shoes. And so, just like before, she trotted around the shops, found a target, waited for an opportunity and stole one.

  Simple. Except, fairly obviously, it was not.

  Riley was arrested two days later, still trotting around The Potteries Shopping Centre, still doing her own brand of shopping which involved no money, the baby asleep in her arms. She hadn’t got around to nicking a pram. Yet. The child had been returned to its distraught mother and Riley had been put on remand and referred to Claire for a psychological assessment.

  Not very hard to do.

  A first-year medical student with the barest knowledge of psychiatry could have arrived at the diagnosis. Claire had quickly decided Riley was, to put it bluntly, a psychopath. You could call it a dissociative disorder. You could say she was antisocial, amoral or a sociopath. Call it what you liked, but the result was the same. Riley’s mantra would remain firmly in place for the rest of her days. She would always be a danger to society. Not in the way that she would blast through a restaurant full of people shooting to kill, but she would always lie, steal, take what wasn’t hers if she wanted to. She wasn’t even an interesting case as she rarely moved on from her simple code. Why shouldn’t I have what I want? Why should someone else have it? If I want it, I can have it.

  Time to meet the psychopath.

  Claire pushed open the door.

  FOUR

  Riley was lying on the bed, fingers flicking through a magazine, eyes watching the television in the way that Riley did everything, with a sort of scornful half interest. Her gaze shifted and flickered over Claire, but there was no welcoming smile. Riley recognized the psychiatrist as an adversary. And so, she regarded her with curiosity mixed with dislike, contempt and insolence. Underneath that, she was guarded and watchful. Claire was perfectly aware that her patient was sizing her up, wondering how she could manoeuvre her into helping her achieve the best outcome for her: freedom. All Riley wanted was to get out and back on the streets to fill her larder and her wardrobe with anything else she wanted.

  ‘Hello, Riley.’

  The girl acknowledged the greeting with a wary staccato nod before returning her attention to her magazine.

  Riley was slightly built with a cute spattering of freckles over her face and forearms. She had a trick of turning her head and lowering her eyes to a shy, modest angle which gave her the air of an innocent, forties’ child star. She recognized a threat when confronted with one and knew full well that Claire was a worthy adversary who stood firmly between her and her desired freedom. She was equally aware of the psychiatrist’s influence and powers. Riley had considered her predicament from all angles and come to the conclusion that the best thing would be to try and win her psychiatrist over. And so now she smiled and laid her magazine down.

  Claire sat down in an easy chair near the window, so the light fell on Riley’s face. Two extra wards had been added to Greatbach in the sixties with the result that a wall was less than three feet away from the window. So instead of a landscape view you looked over an office, secretaries typing, a coffee machine. No one looked back at them. It was as though they were invisible, as insubstantial as ghosts. Riley’s eyes followed hers, flickering over the brickwork, eyes glancing off the absorbed workers.

  Claire studied her patient. Riley’s make-up was skilfully applied: black eyeliner, mascaraed long lashes, thick pink lipstick on a rosebud mouth. She had been over-lavish with the perfume. But then, to her even expensive perfume would have been extremely cheap. Free, in fact. She was wearing tight-fitting jeans and a large, sloppy T-shirt, white with a spatter of small gold stars over one shoulder. Her feet were bare, her toenails painted the exact same colour pink as her lipstick. She looked like so many of her age group, the twentysomethings – streetwise, casual, alert, wary, expensive clothes, designer goods manufactured specifically for this discerning and particular market.

  She did not look a danger. But Claire had to remind herself that this girl’s actions had left havoc in her wake. The mother of the eight-day-old newborn had been distraught for the dreadful two days it had taken the police to identify and locate the woman a couple had described. The mundane details were much more poignant than the dramatic shrieking newspaper headlines: Baby abducted on Mother’s First Outing; Infant Snatched, etc., etc.

  The picture which took up most of the front page of the tabloids must have been taken immediately post-delivery. It showed a knackered Julie Alexander, still in labour-ward shift, holding an unmistakable newborn coated in vernix and blood. Six days later, mother and baby had been separated by more than a cord clamp.

  Following the abduction, twenty-two-year-old Julie Alexander had sat at home, almost too numb to tearfully, optimistically express her breast milk every four hours day and night in the hope that her baby was still alive, would be returned and resume its place on her nipple. It had been her first trip out with her tiny baby. And it would be her last for almost a year. She would stay behind her front door, shopping done by family, friends and the Internet, baby bolted to her arms. The outside world had suddenly assumed the hostility and danger of a war zone. Because, like the shoppers in those Syrian markets, when horror had struck, Julie had been in familiar territory, at a convenience store she had visited almost every day for years.
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  And yet, she had not been safe.

  Her last moment of peace had been as she had proudly wheeled the pram down to the store, strangers peering in and admiring baby Imogen on her first trip out. Not wanting to wake the infant, Julie had nipped inside, her eyes straying all the time back to the door.

  For a second. That was all it had taken. The pram was there but the baby was not. To add to her guilt, she hadn’t even noticed until she had left the shop, because the cover was in order. Guiltily, afterwards, she would recall initial relief that Imogen was quiet at last, not crying. Seconds later, she had realized the baby was not there. Panicking, she had lifted the cover and searched beneath the sheets; even, stupidly, looked up and down the street. No baby. She had screamed and then fainted. Hit the floor while a crowd gathered around. Claire had read through the account. Not a mother herself, she could still imagine the poor woman’s reaction, exhausted from the birth and the responsibility of looking after a new baby. That would have been worst of all. The heaviest burden – guilt. The word neglect hovering in the air like an infection. The finger-waggers were judgmental. She should have taken more care. She shouldn’t have left the baby outside the shop. She shouldn’t have taken her eyes off it. Not even for a second. That had been her furious partner’s response. She should have kept a better watch on their baby.

  Even in her grief and guilt, the phrase their baby had registered. So, for the first time, he wanted to be part of it?

  Claire had known, as she had read through the report, what the fallout from Riley’s crime would be. A traumatized mother, and trailing behind the unforgiving would be the lefties, the excusers, the people who always looked for a reason, who would say poor Riley with no baby of her own.

  The fallout would continue. Julie Alexander would not be taking her new baby to the shops any more. There would be angry exchanges between her and her partner, he accusatory and she defensive. She would wake at night and relive this dreadful moment, see the empty pram again and again and again. And when her child had children of their own, she would still relive these moments and apply these neuroticisms a generation on.

  It had been luck that the baby had been recovered without harm. Riley soon became bored with her acquisitions. Dresses, handbags, perfume, make-up, shoes, babies. Discarded. Chucked in the bin or stuffed in a black bin liner and abandoned outside the charity shop. Ill-gotten gains could soon be replaced. Why should a baby be anything different? Someone will find it and want it. Leave it outside a place where people care – hospital, medical centre, charity shop.

  What would Imogen’s fate have been when Riley had, inevitably, gotten fed up with the crying, the feeds, the dirty nappies? The sheer boring, fatiguing slog that is a new baby?

  It had been pure luck that Imogen, only six days old, had been found before it was too late. Riley had no conscience about the things she had stolen, the people she had cheated, the woman whose child she had just taken.

  That was her condition. And on the other side? The side of right and fairness and the law?

  The police had flooded the entire area within minutes. They had swiftly collated witness statements and looked at the CCTV helpfully installed to watch the Co-op customers’ comings and goings. They watched the woman lift the baby from the pram and replace the cover. But the angle was poor. They saw the baby clearly enough but only the top of the abductor’s head. Then along came help in the form of an elderly couple strolling down towards the Co-op themselves, who had proved to have wonderful memories. They remembered. Oh, yes, they remembered: a slim woman in tight jeans and a blue fleece with a cigarette burn near the pocket clutching a tiny baby to her as she walked quickly up the street.

  They had actually talked about it, hoping that she would not smoke when she was with the baby. Their tutting over this was what had led the police to such an early and satisfactory conclusion.

  Then came a bit more luck.

  Once this description was circulated to the team, one of the Specials, a young woman called Maud, had started to put two and two together. She too had had contact with a young woman only a week ago. She remembered the tight jeans and the blue fleece with a cigarette burn near the pocket. The girl had been lighting up in the doorway of Lewis’s department store. She remembered the girl particularly because of the glare the woman had given her when she had remonstrated, heavy with hostility and hate. It had spooked her. And she remembered the name.

  Riley Finch. A name well known to all the police who worked the Hanley area, particularly the officers who patrolled The Potteries Shopping Centre.

  And so, Riley was eventually apprehended and the baby returned to its mother.

  In fact, Baby Imogen would have been found earlier but for one fact: Riley had not returned to her own flat but decamped to a ‘friend’s’. A friend who appeared to swallow the fable that Riley was looking after the baby ‘for a friend’. No name – simply ‘a friend’.

  But behind the scenes, the police were inching closer. The Special, Maud Stevenson, had passed on the information about the pretty little redhead with a killer stare. Riley’s flat was searched. Without result.

  They’d cast their net wider to trawl in her known associates, by which time headlines were spreading faster than a virus, reaching more people than an epidemic: Midlands Today, Twitter, Facebook, text message and any other method by which news can be spread. But the clincher was the £10,000 reward put up by a local billionaire. The ‘friend’ fancied the £10,000 reward so rang Crimestoppers, and within an hour Baby Imogen was safely back where she belonged, on her mother’s luckily still-lactating breast.

  When apprehended, Riley had not quite managed to act out remorse. Instead, rather grumpily, she had complained that babies were not all they were cracked up to be and that she had been getting bored with her. ‘Bloody smelly thing and never stops bawling,’ she’d said, opening her eyes wide for her final hit. ‘Even at night.’

  Many mums might have tossed their own comment in. Welcome to the real world, Riley Finch.

  But of course, Riley didn’t live in the real world. She lived in a place of her own manufacture. A place filled with provisions, designer luxury and crime without punishment, a world where nothing cost anything. A place where she had absolutely everything she wanted.

  A substitute real world.

  Riley’s world.

  And it was this world that Claire needed to explore if she was to convince the courts of the danger of Riley’s condition.

  She knew that, in one way, Riley had been telling the truth. To take the child had been an impulsive act. She hadn’t gone out that morning to steal a baby. The opportunity had presented itself and, like an expensive handbag left on show, she had simply reached out and taken it. She hadn’t prepared for the abduction with feeds, nappies and bottles – even a cot. Nothing practical, although Riley wasn’t a great one for detail. Or planning ahead. It had been a spur-of-the-moment decision. Riley didn’t do consequences. She would soon have needed to move on to something new.

  Claire wanted her put away for a very long time but she doubted she would ever persuade a judge and jury to recognize the true threat that Riley’s attitude posed. To see her as she saw her – a time bomb ready primed. With all this in her mind, Claire began with the blandest of questions. ‘How are you today, Riley?’

  The girl shrugged. ‘Same as ever. Wondering when I’m going to get out of here.’ There was a certain amount of indignation tucked into her voice.

  Riley emphasized her eyes with black eyeliner which curved upwards at the outer edge. It gave her the look of a clever cat.

  ‘I think you understand that we have concerns about the reasons why you took Imogen.’

  Riley shrugged. ‘Just wanted a baby,’ she said, stifling a yawn, already disinterested. She’d been here before.

  ‘Did you consider how her mother might feel?’

  Riley’s shoulders jerked and her head turned. For a moment, Claire could see the woman behind the facade. Riley Finch was
genuinely puzzled, uncertain how to answer this simple question. Why on earth should she be considering the baby’s mother? She just didn’t get it.

  She was devoid of empathy.

  Claire knew the police and the CPS would like it better if she made this uncomplicated for them, if she asserted that Riley just wanted a baby, that her mind was temporarily disturbed and they could let her off the hook, send her home with a smacked hand. But Claire knew that was not the case. The way Riley had acted was not a temporary disturbance but a permanent fixture. This was who she was. It defined her. Riley Finch was, in her opinion, likely to reoffend. But what this reoffence might be was anybody’s guess. It all depended on what she saw, what she wanted. But if what she still wanted was another baby, one day the outcome might not be so happy. Rather than smoothing over the cracks, Claire was determined to expose the true danger that currently lay dormant because she was being watched as an inpatient but which would, one day, cause real and even more permanent harm. Behind Riley’s sweet countenance was something capable of true evil. So, ignoring the fact that Riley had not answered her question, she continued probing. ‘You see, Riley, we worry that you might do the same sort of thing again.’

  Riley sat up, tucked her T-shirt around her legs. She knew her lines all right. ‘But I won’t take another baby,’ she said. ‘They stink. They bawl. They want feeds.’ Her eyes fixed on Claire’s as she held her palms out to underline her next injured phrase. ‘Like all the time. Night and day.’

  This was the truth. Riley had tried having a baby. The experience hadn’t pleased her. She might not repeat that performance. But what next?

  Claire tried again, scratching a little deeper below the surface. What was the depth of Riley’s detachment from society? She inserted a probe.

  ‘How do you think Imogen’s mother felt when she peered into the pram and her baby was missing?’