The Child

by Fiona Barton

  “I cannot believe this. How could this have happened?” Nick was saying. “Whose mistake is this?”

  “Nick, don’t,” she said.

  “We’re not sure yet, Nick. Mistakes in this sort of testing are rare. We’re trying to sort it out as soon as possible.”

  “But when will you know for certain?” her husband asked.

  DI Sinclair spread his hands helplessly.

  “I see,” Nick said.

  “But you will tell us as soon as you do know, Andy,” Angela said.

  After the officers had gone, they sat at the kitchen table and stared at each other. “It must be a mistake,” Nick said. “We need to sit tight until they sort it all out.”

  “No, she’s gone,” Angela said. “Our little girl has disappeared again.”

  SEVENTY-SIX

  Kate

  TUESDAY, MAY 1, 2012

  The results of the new DNA tests would probably come back today, she knew. DI Sinclair had pushed them to the top of the pile, anxious to get things back on track, he’d told Kate after his interview with Emma.

  He’d phoned her to check if Soames had anyone living with him. “I’m sending my blokes round there now, Kate. Just want to know if there are any complicating factors.”

  “No, there’s an ex-wife and two estranged grown-up children. But he’s Billy No Mates,” she’d said.

  “How did it go with Emma?” she added. He’d be expecting her to ask and she wanted to keep her own meetings with Emma quiet.

  “Poor woman was all over the place,” he’d said. “Shaking with nerves. Her eyes kept drifting off somewhere.”

  “Come on, Andy, wouldn’t you be all over the place if you’d been raped and had a baby when you were still a child?” Kate had replied.

  “She says she had a baby, Kate. But we both know it is unlikely to be true,” he’d said. “I mean, it’s a bit of luck for her story that no one else knew about it. A teenager having a baby and no one noticed? Really?”

  “It happens, Andy,” Kate had said. “There have been cases where it has happened. People can do the most extraordinary things.”

  “Okay, okay, but the body is Alice’s—the scientists say so—and that’s what I’m focusing on. We can’t get distracted by this sort of attention-seeking. We get it all the time in our job, Kate.

  “And, if you want my advice,” he’d added, “don’t get involved.”

  But she was already involved.

  • • •

  It was Angela who broke the news to her on that Tuesday. DI Sinclair had rung her to warn her that there was a new line emerging in the investigation and to prepare her for media calls.

  Fortunately for Kate, Angela didn’t think of her as the media.

  “Kate,” she said, close to tears, “something awful has happened. The DNA tests have linked a woman in London with the baby. DI Sinclair says she came forward to say the baby was hers and they thought she was a time waster. But it now looks like she was telling the truth. They’re retesting my samples, but I think I’ve lost Alice all over again.” She wept.

  “It is all such a mess,” Kate said. “I’m so sorry, Angela.”

  “The police can’t seem to get anything right,” Angela cried down the phone. “They got the timeline wrong and now they say it’s somebody else’s baby. I don’t think I can cope with much more . . .”

  “Come on, Angela. Is Nick with you? That’s good. Now, when did Andy Sinclair say he’d ring you back?”

  “In the morning. I don’t know what to think anymore.”

  “I know,” Kate said. “I’ll get off the phone in case he’s trying to get through, but ring me as soon as you hear anything.”

  She didn’t call Sinclair. He’d know immediately that Angela had called her and might order her not to speak to Kate again. It had happened in the past. She would bide her time until he called the Irvings with updates.

  • • •

  Kate sat in the goldfish bowl in silence while Terry ranted. It did him good to let it all out, she knew. He bottled too much up and something, eventually, had to give. He’d had a bad week, he said, and she was “the tin fucking lid.”

  “It’s still a brilliant story, Terry,” she said and then let him have his tantrum. “I knew Emma wasn’t making it up.”

  “No, it seems she wasn’t,” Terry replied. “Damn her. Okay, what can we write?”

  “Just that DNA tests are being rerun at the moment. We won’t get a sniff of the results until tomorrow morning at the earliest. And if we say they are retesting, we’ll be alerting everyone else. Why don’t we wait and run the results exclusively?” Kate urged.

  “Okay,” he said, grumpily.

  • • •

  Joe was waiting at her desk. He’d watched the show through the glass and was desperate to be in on it. “What did Angela say? What did Terry say?” he asked.

  “Angela’s been told Emma’s DNA matches the baby.”

  “No! What about Angela’s DNA? Have they got it wrong in the lab?”

  “Must have. Poor Angela is in pieces. They’re rerunning the tests and Andy Sinclair is going to call her back when they’ve got the result.”

  “So it isn’t Alice?” Joe said. “What a story.”

  “And you thought it was going to be boring when I gave you that first packet of cuttings,” Kate said.

  “Well . . .”

  “It’s never boring,” she said.

  “Is that golden rule number two?” he asked and grinned.

  “Write it down. I’m ringing Emma, now,” Kate said.

  The mobile number went straight to voicemail and she left a message, urging Emma to call back.

  There was nothing to do but wait, but Kate couldn’t sit still.

  “I’m going round to Emma’s house,” she announced to Terry. Joe picked up his notebook and followed her out of the newsroom.

  • • •

  They knocked over and over again, peering in through the windows at the front and side, but there was no sign of life. Kate stood indecisively at the gate.

  “She’s not here,” Joe said.

  “Yep, worked that one out, Joe,” she snapped.

  “What shall we do now?” he asked. Like a lamb to the slaughter.

  “How the hell should I know?” she barked at him. “Stop whining, for God’s sake.”

  He’d looked away, pretending not to care. Like Jake had done that morning as he left for the airport. She’d let him kiss her good-bye and then said: “I expect we’ll hear from you when you need money.”

  Steve had nudged her hard to shut her up. “Keep in touch, Jakey,” he’d said, but their son was already walking through the door.

  “Why on earth did you say that?” Steve had said.

  “You baby him,” she’d said. “He needs a dose of the real world, not to be humored.”

  Kate had texted Jake from the car: Come home safe. Love you, Jake, mx. But he hadn’t replied.

  “Hello there!” a voice hailed her from down the street and an officious-looking woman hurried up to them.

  “Are you looking for the Simmondses?” she said.

  “Er, yes, I was hoping to catch Emma in,” Kate said.

  “She was on the tube this morning with my husband. He told me when he rang to say he’d got to work. I’m Lynda, Emma’s friend, by the way.”

  “Oh, pleased to meet you,” Kate said, registering that some wives required their husbands to clock in and out. “Did she say where she was going?”

  “No, Derek said she was very distracted, hardly said a word. Mind you, the Metropolitan Line is extremely crowded that time of the morning. It’s a funny time to travel if you don’t have to.”

  Kate pulled an understanding face.

  “Perhaps she is having one of her Bad Days,” Lynda a
dded disloyally. “She can be quite odd sometimes.”

  “Right,” Kate said and, thanking her for her time, pulled Joe towards the car.

  • • •

  Where’s Emma going?” Joe said as he did up his seat belt. “Just asking, not whining,” he added.

  “Sorry, Joe. Having a bad day myself. No idea.”

  She drove back towards the office in west London and let Joe talk about his ambitions and a reality TV show he’d watched the night before.

  Where are you, Emma? she thought. She pulled over when her phone pinged. “Bet that’s her,” she told Joe.

  When she looked, the text was from Jake. “Shit,” she said. The last thing she needed was more grief from her son.

  Love you, too, Mum. Sorry to be such a crap son, x, Jake had texted.

  She felt like bursting into tears but forwarded it to Steve instead. He texted back immediately: x.

  Joe sat patiently until she’d finished. “I’ve been thinking. What about Emma’s mum?” Joe said. “Why don’t we go and see her? We haven’t talked to her, have we? She might know where Emma is.”

  “Good call, Joe,” she said. “Find me an address.”

  SEVENTY-SEVEN

  Kate

  TUESDAY, MAY 1, 2012

  The traffic was horrendous, but they finally pulled up outside the converted house where Jude lived.

  Kate tried Emma’s number once more as she locked the car, but there was still no answer.

  “Come on,” she said.

  She and Joe were buzzed straight in when they pressed the bell—no questions asked—and they trooped up the stairs.

  An elderly woman in clothes that were slightly too young for her was standing at her open door.

  “Oh! Who are you?” she said. “I thought you might be my daughter.”

  “Ah, sorry, no, Mrs. Massingham,” Kate said.

  “It’s Ms. Massingham, actually.”

  “Right, well, I’m Kate Waters. I’m a reporter for the Daily Post. I’ve been talking to your daughter, Emma, over the weekend about the Alice Irving case and I need to find her again.”

  “Has Emma talked to you? Never a good idea to talk to a reporter. I used to be a lawyer and I always told my clients to avoid the press like the plague. No offense . . .”

  Kate laughed unconvincingly. “Good advice in some cases, I imagine. But the stories I’ve been writing about Alice have uncovered some important facts.”

  “Hmm,” Jude Massingham said. “But not the truth, I think. Slippery thing, the truth.”

  “Er, yes. There have been some setbacks in the investigation—the police would be the first to admit that.”

  “Would they? That was never my experience,” Jude said with a tight smile.

  “Look, something has emerged this morning that I want to tell Emma, but she’s not picking up her phone,” Kate said, trying to move the conversation onto firmer ground.

  “I have no idea where she is,” Jude said. “I’m not her keeper. What has emerged?”

  “Can we come in, Ms. Massingham?” Kate said. “It’s a bit public here. Don’t want your neighbors overhearing things.”

  “Oh, all right,” Jude said. “Mind the step.”

  They sat in a tight group in and on the two armchairs. No drinks were offered.

  “Right,” Jude said. “What has happened?”

  “I don’t know if Emma has told you, but the police have done some new DNA tests.”

  “No, we’re not really talking at the moment,” Jude muttered.

  “Well, the tests show there is a match between Emma and the baby on the building site.”

  “No,” Jude blurted and held her head in her hands. “It can’t be. How could she have had a baby without me knowing?”

  “She hid it from you, Ms. Massingham. And from your boyfriend, Will Burnside.”

  “What has she told you about him?” Jude said quietly, the tension in the room thickening.

  “Exactly what she told you.”

  “I didn’t believe her. I said terrible things to her. Said she was ill and jealous,” Jude said, almost to herself.

  “But she was telling the truth, Ms. Massingham. Did you really not suspect anything?”

  The older woman shook her head. “No, of course not. Do you think I would have turned a blind eye to something like that? You don’t know what it was like. I loved Will. Adored him. And it is hard to imagine that the man you love could do something so despicable. Could you believe that of someone you love, Miss Waters?”

  Kate instantly pictured Steve confessing and shook her head.

  “You see how difficult it would have been. It still is. I need some time to think about this. And to talk to Emma.” She seemed to be talking to herself.

  Kate leaned forwards to ask another question, but Jude suddenly exclaimed: “I knew it couldn’t have been the Irving baby.”

  “How did you know?”

  Jude looked flustered. “Well, that baby disappeared ten years before they say the body was buried. The whole police investigation has been cack-handed if you ask me.”

  “But the match with Angela Irving,” Joe said. “What about that?”

  “Lab cock-up,” Jude said. “I used to hear about it happening from colleagues with criminal practices when I was working. Test tubes in wrong racks, contamination from other samples, that sort of thing. There’s always room for human error.”

  “But there are lots of checks and balances to the process,” he said. “I’ve been reading up on it. It’s really interesting, actually—”

  “I’d like to tell Emma,” Kate said, cutting him off. “I’m a bit worried I can’t get hold of her. Her friend Lynda said she was on the tube into town this morning.”

  “Was she? How odd. She never comes into town if she can help it. Too many people,” Jude said and fell silent.

  “I suppose we could ring her husband,” she offered. “He’ll be at work. I’ve got a number for him. Emma wrote it in my address book in case of emergencies.”

  She dialed slowly, punching the numbers deliberately, and waited. “Paul, it’s Jude. I’m trying to get hold of Emma. Do you know what she’s doing today? Right. Well, she’s not. She was seen on the tube this morning. Right. Well, if she calls you, will you tell her to give me a ring? Yes, and you. Bye.

  “He thought she was working at home this morning. Sounded a bit rattled when I said about the tube. She’s not in great form at the moment. As you probably know,” Jude said, her tone accusatory. Her voice shaky.

  When Kate and Joe got outside, Kate’s phone rang.

  “It’s Andy Sinclair, Kate,” he said. “I’m trying to reach Emma Simmonds. She seems to have disappeared. You don’t know where she is, do you?”

  SEVENTY-EIGHT

  Jude

  TUESDAY, MAY 1, 2012

  When the phone rang late that night, Jude snatched it up. “Emma?” she said.

  “Jude, it’s Harry,” the voice said. “Sorry to disturb you, but I’m worried about Emma.”

  “We’re all worried about her,” Jude said. “I’ve had the press here, asking for her, too.”

  Jude felt shaky and she sat down too quickly on her chair, jarring her elbow and dropping the phone.

  “Sorry,” she said when she put it back to her ear. “Have you heard from her?”

  “No, she’s vanished. Paul just called me to say he still can’t get hold of her. He thinks she’s turned off her phone.”

  A dark curl of dread twisted itself round Jude’s heart.

  “I need to know what’s been happening, Jude,” Harry insisted. “Paul won’t tell me.”

  “Emma’s been to see the police, Harry. To tell them the baby in the garden of Howard Street was hers. That she was raped by Will and got pregnant,” Jude said, hardly believi
ng what she was saying.

  “Will?” Harry shouted down the phone. “Will Burnside? Are you serious?”

  “Yes, I can’t believe it either,” Jude added.

  “Oh my God,” Harry said.

  “Did you know she’d had a baby, Harry?” Jude asked. “You two were thick as thieves. Did she tell you anything?”

  “Not until much later. And then I got hold of the wrong end of the stick. She was trying to tell me, said she’d got pregnant, but I thought she’d had an abortion. I didn’t press her. Not like that reporter.”

  “The reporter came here today, Harry. Do you want to speak to her? I’ve got her number,” Jude said, longing for someone else to take control of the situation.

  “No, I don’t,” Harry snapped. “What gives them the right to meddle in people’s lives like this? How is this news? This is a personal tragedy, not some story for everyone to gawp at. Emma must be in pieces.”

  There was a terrible, echoing silence. Jude listened to the static on the line. “Harry?” she said finally. “Are you still there?”

  “Yes. I’m here. Can I come round? Now?”

  “Yes,” Jude said. “And Harry, I’m going to ask Kate Waters to come, too. She’s very much a part of this and Emma seems to trust her, whatever you may think. She was the one she told . . .”

  “Okay,” Harry said. “Give me half an hour.”

  Jude called Kate immediately. She couldn’t think about anything but Emma. What was she doing? Where was she? What had she driven her to?

  • • •

  Kate arrived just after Harry had pulled up and buzzed Jude’s bell. When Jude walked out of the door, she could see that the reporter had pulled her jeans on under her nightie and put a coat on top in her haste to get on the road.

  And Harry was talking frantically into her phone.

  “It’s Emma,” she mouthed, and Jude took a deep breath to calm her fear about what was coming next.

  “Emma, stay there. I’m coming to get you. Promise me you’ll stay there.”

  When she hung up, Harry turned to Kate and said, “We’re going back to Howard Street. She’s gone to the building site.”