Damien nods.
“Not yet. But we might have a breakthrough soon. Have we got a list of the clothes she was wearing and the pram she was in? Brand? Condition?”
I check my emails on my phone, and there’s an initial forensics list in my inbox.
“Maxi-Cosi pram and accessories. Hood, reins. Clothes all from Next. Boots from Clarks. Pampers nappy.”
“And what was her general condition when you found her? Was she clean and tidy or were there signs of neglect?”
“Only what you’d expect. A bit of food stuck in her hair, some dried banana on her coat. Only the same as what Aiden would have . . .”
He stops writing.
“Aiden?”
I redden. Never mix business with pleasure.
“My son. Aiden. The missing one.”
I see him soften.
“And what . . .”
I shake my head and look away. Now isn’t the time.
He nods knowingly, as if this single fact now explains all my earlier irritation with him.
“Missing him I expect?”
I shrug my shoulder and stare at him. He finally breaks.
“Bloody hell, Jan, I’m just trying to be friendly. If we’re working together for a while, we should at least make the effort. I’m sorry I tried to be friendly. I’ll just leave it now, yeah?”
Suddenly, my invisible prickles, the ones I use to keep the outside world at bay, are clearly in view. I don’t want him to leave it. I just miss Mike. This is so different. I could have a laugh with Mike, and this is tense. And I’m scared. Scared like a hunted animal. Scared Connelly will find me. Scared I’ll never see Aiden again. I thought things were getting better, but clearly I’m still damaged. Damien carries on writing his notes until Lorraine comes back.
“How are you getting on?”
I shake my head, stalk over to Elise, and sit with her for a while. Then I phone HQ and speak to Stan.
“Any news on the mother, Stan? Anything on social networking?”
“No. Sorry, Jan. We’ve had comms looking at Facebook and Twitter, but there’s just nothing. Nothing at all. Maybe we could release a picture?”
I look at Elise. Damien is on all fours pretending to be a dog, and she’s looking at him vacantly.
“Yes. Good Idea. Get the picture ready, please, but give me a couple of hours, Stan. Let’s see what Dr. Booth comes up with.”
Chapter 6
I watch Damien out of the corner of my eye, scribbling in his notebook and drawing diagrams. I realize that I’m on dangerous territory here. This isn’t the way I’d do things. I need to get out there and look for Elise’s parents.
What if he’s a genius, and I’m picking holes in his outstanding work? The reporters seem to know him. What if he’s some big shot in London? Lorraine comes over. She sits down beside me and speaks in a low voice.
“Not going too well with him is it?”
I pull a face.
“No. I think it’s because I miss Mike.”
And Aiden. I miss Aiden. Like someone must be missing Elise. They must be.
She nods.
“He’s good, though. You can tell by the way he is with her. And me. He immediately put me at ease. Give him a chance, Jan. This is your first child case, isn’t it?”
I nod. She’s right. First direct child case. I’ve dealt with cases involving children but have not dealt directly with them. I’m used to dealing with dangerous gangsters. Drug deals. But this is a different kind of fear. Visceral. Primal.
She continues.
“It gets to you at first. You feel like it’s all personal, and because we’re good people we feel like we have to defend ourselves. But, like every other case, there could be a million reasons why this has happened.”
“That’s what he said. In a roundabout way.”
“Yeah. Like why whoever left her left a playlist but not any toys. Or why they didn’t just leave her with social services. Or a relative. But all we can do now is hope that we can find her parents and sort out whatever’s wrong at that end. Or, if we don’t, place her with a foster family.”
I try to put myself in the place of whoever has abandoned this child. Whoever has plucked her from the normality of her life and left her. I scroll through dozens of scenarios in my mind, and arrive on two—plain outright neglect or fear. It doesn’t seem right. Or fair. All those women with missing children, and this mother doesn’t want hers.
Damien’s sitting up now and talking to her. She’s looking at him, but she doesn’t say anything at all. He stands up and walks over.
“Have you got a large mirror anywhere in here?”
Lorraine nods.
“There’s a sensory room. Third door on your left. There’s a large wall mirror in there.”
She picks Elise up and we follow Damien. Once inside, he sits down on the floor with her. He smiles at her and then at us.
“Anyone got any lipstick?”
Lorraine fishes a Mac lipstick out of her bag.
“Thanks. OK. Teamwork. I’m going to show Elise herself in the mirror for a while, and I want you to play that ringtone she likes. Then I’m going to put a dot of lipstick on Elise’s nose. After a few minutes, when she seems settled, play your ringtone again.”
I call Lorraine’s phone and the ringtone plays. He takes Elise’s hand and points to her in the mirror and says her name, all the time dancing around. We watch as he paints her nose red, then builds some bricks in front of her. Then we pause the song for a while. He nods at me, I call Lorraine’s phone, and Katy Perry rings out again. Elise jumps up, and Damien jumps up, too. He’s dancing, crazy moves, and the faster he goes, the more Elise dances and laughs. Then he turns to the mirror and points.
“Who’s that? With the red nose?”
Elise laughs loudly and runs over to touch the mirror.
“Baby.”
He nods at me, and I end the call. Elise looks at us, her eyes wide with surprise, and comes over to look at the phone. Damien writes a note. Then he motions us to sit down as Elise cautiously looks at some dolls.
“We’re not going to get much information from this little lady. She doesn’t know who she is yet. Which in a way is a good thing.”
I frown.
“Meaning what?”
“Well, it’s perfectly normal for young children up to the age of eighteen months not to have developed self-awareness. If she had tried to rub the mark off her own nose, then it would have indicated that she recognized herself in the mirror. As it is, she doesn’t. That has a knock-on effect for understanding and communication. But I wasn’t expecting much anyway.”
We all go back through to the main area, and Damien sits down opposite me. I sum it up.
“OK. So here’s what we have so far. The songs on the playlist. Without even hearing them, I expect she’ll be animated. I’m going to play them to her in a moment. But even without that reaction, we’ve got someone here who wants to keep a connection with Elise. Someone who’d left her, but not on the spur of the moment. Whoever it is, they’ve had time to think about a list of twelve songs. Second, the receipt. From that, we know she lived in Greenfield or was there on that day, at least. But the fact that it’s in the pram when the parent knew they were going to leave their child suggests that they weren’t so concerned about being found. That they didn’t leave Elise there to be found by social services or us.”
Lorraine is nodding.
“So what does that mean?”
I continue.
“I don’t know for sure, but the fact that there were no clothes or toys or even nappies suggest that they are elsewhere. Maybe they went on beforehand. Maybe they were following. But why include only the playlist? Elise isn’t neglected in a materialistic sense. She’s wearing branded clothing, and she seems well fed and cared for.”
I pick up the report on Elise.
“No bruising or signs of physical abuse. The only problem that stands out on the hospital report was that her leg muscles are weak; s
he’s been spending a lot of time sitting down. Inactive.”
Damien jumps up.
“I just want to try one more thing. Something I’ve heard about in cases like this.”
He walks over to the portable TV at the side of the room and switches it on. He grabs the remote control and selects the children’s channel. Elise walks over and sits down close to the TV. We watch as her eyes follow the characters on the screen, and she begins to mouth the words as the cartoons speak them. Then she laughs loudly. Then she begins to sing along, word perfect.
She’s swaying from side to side and moving her arms. She’s engaging with the characters in a way that she’s never engaged with us. We watch transfixed as she talks her way through the advertisements, then it’s time for a story. The presenter reads a story about a cat who has lots of dinners at all the neighbors’ houses, and she does the actions along with him. Then he tells us that it’s nap time and Elise shuts her eyes, leans against the side of a cupboard, and falls fast asleep.
I look at Damien.
“Maybe we should leave it there. I’ll contact forensics and see if they’ve come up with anything. So we’re looking for someone who’s left their baby in front of a TV. Someone who hasn’t socialized their child. This little girl is more attached to the TV than she is to human beings. Someone who can take care of all the material things—clothes, environment—but can’t give emotionally. Something is stopping her.”
Damien flicks the pages of his notebook backward and forward and rubs his head again with the heel of his hand, then writes down what I have said. Then he looks at me. I notice his intensity for the first time. His passion. He really cares about this.
Lorraine intervenes.
“Or him. The person who left Elise could be a man.”
I shake my head.
“No. I strongly think it’s a woman. The songs.”
We look at the playlist, and most of the songs are by women. I can feel them. I know what loss is. I nod.
“But where does this leave us? We’ve got to start looking for them. Her. We need to make an appeal. Get Elise’s picture out there. Someone must know her.”
Damien nods.
“It leaves us looking for a woman from Greenfield who’s got access to money and somewhere to live but can’t look after her child.”
I feel my anger rising.
“Can’t look after her child? Has she just decided this now, when the child is nearly two? And what about agencies? Like Lorraine said, if she were a newborn, it kind of explains itself. Fear. Shame. Still wrong, but you can kind of see why someone might do that. But just leaving her in the street?”
Lorraine speaks up now.
“But they could have been meeting someone. The father, maybe, and he’s not really into it, and he’s left her there? The mother might not even know she’s gone.”
We look at her. She’s still asleep, leaning against the cupboard. Her curly blonde hair slightly over her face, and her thumb in her mouth. She’s a beautiful child, and I just can’t see how someone could abandon her.
“Child neglect is a criminal offence, whichever way you look at it.”
Damien shakes his head.
“It is. But don’t the police and social services seek to avoid criminalizing vulnerable parents?”
“How do you know she’s vulnerable?”
We’re locked in now. I can’t stop myself.
“She’s abandoned her own child. That makes her vulnerable.”
“Unless she doesn’t give a shit.”
“She clearly does give a shit.”
“Oh? Really, Damien? She’s stuck her baby in front of the TV for almost two years, while she’s gone off and done something else, and taught her the lyrics to Katy Perry songs.”
“But you have to ask yourself why she’s done it? What’s motivated her?”
“I’m back to the fact that she doesn’t give a crap about her own child, Damien.”
“In which case she wouldn’t have left the playlist.”
Suddenly Lorraine’s phone comes to life. We hear Ellie Goulding singing “How Long Will I Love You” and a little voice joining in. Elise has woken and taken the phone from Lorraine’s bag. She’s staring into the phone and turning it around in her hands. She finally holds it up to her ear and sucks her thumb. It’s the first song on the playlist. When the song finishes, she holds the phone up and shows us. Her eyes are innocent, and she is completely earnest when she tries to speak to us. The words won’t come at first, and she points at the phone.
Eventually she manages to say what she wants.
“Mummy.”
I grab her and hug her close to me. If no one else will do it, I will. I wish I could take her home with me, look after her, like I did with Aiden. Just the thought of him almost makes me cry, and I suddenly realize that I haven’t searched for him online for a couple of days. Scoured Brazilian webcams for any sign of him. Checked my Facebook messages hopefully. I’d do it tonight. Then I’d cross another day off the calendar. Lorraine takes Elise from me.
“Don’t worry, Jan, She’ll be well looked after. If her mother does turn up, or her father, we’ll be giving them some pointers in parenting.”
I smile through my tears.
“Will I see her again?”
“It depends on whether or not Damien needs to assess her again.”
He shakes his head.
“I don’t think there’s much more I can find out. I’ll sign her over to the duty psychologist at the hospital, and they can take a slower approach.”
Lorraine walks away with Elise, who stares at me over her shoulder until they’ve left the assessment room. I’m alone with Damien now, and he smiles at me.
“That wasn’t so bad, was it? We got to the bottom of it. Together.”
He makes a strange choppy movement with his hands, which I guess means he thinks we are synchronized. I smile back politely.
“That was very good. My approach would have been to go out and search the Greenfield area, maybe door-to-door.”
He nods.
“Yeah. But it does narrow it down, doesn’t it? Probably a single mother who has to work every hour God sends to feed her child.”
I laugh.
“Are you fucking with me, Damien? Half the families around here are single mothers. But none of them have left their kid strapped tightly into a pram in the Ashton town center. Until now.”
We walk to the car, and he looks at me.
“So. What now, Jan? How do we find her?”
“I thought you had all the answers. What would you suggest?”
He shakes his head.
“I don’t know. She could be anywhere. We could be totally on the wrong track, and she was abducted from the street, leaving the baby there. I’m just working on the most probable scenario.”
I start to drive. This is moving too slowly for me. Damien’s wondering about everything and taking no action is winding me up. So I speed out of Tameside and up into Greenfield. I don’t speak again until we stop outside the co-op. I need to think about this one, and the conclusion I come to is good old-fashioned policing.
“Let’s see if they’ve got any CCTV from last week in here. Something solid to go on. A real ID, maybe even a still of the mother.”
Damien nods and begins to get out of the car.
“No, it’s all right. I can handle this on my own.”
Chapter 7
This is my territory. It may be a village co-op, but to me it’s a mine of information. Outside, I can see a security camera pointing to the doorway, and as I enter, I spot two more cameras, one above the till and one trained on a far door, probably the stock room. Fourth rule of professional surveillance—find cameras and comms, and an exit. There’s a woman behind the till and an older man wearing a Manager badge. Jason Ellis. I approach him and show him my warrant card.
“Hi. I’m looking for whoever’s in charge of the CCTV in this shop.”
He looks at one of the cameras
.
“That would be me. What’s the problem, officer?”
In my wide experience of people who operate security cameras, most of them are extremely defensive. Mainly because they realize that their cameras catch their own behavior as well as everyone else’s. So I get straight to the point.
“Well, you might have heard already. A young child has been found in Ashton. No sign of the mother or father. We found evidence to suggest that the mother or father shopped here last week. On Wednesday. Around eleven sixteen. Would you be able to show me the security footage from then?”
I see his eyes move from side to side, wondering if there’s anything to incriminate him, then decide there isn’t.
“No problem. Come with me.”
We enter the stock room, and he shuts the door.
“So what’s happened to them? How come they’ve left a kid on her own? Disgusting.”
I nod.
“It is very strange. But all we can do is try to find out what’s happened so we can get that poor little girl back to her . . . whoever left her there.”
He shakes his head.
“Don’t deserve to have kids, women like that. If you want kids, you should be prepared to look after them. None of this balancing work and kids. If someone wants kids, they should stay at home.”
“That’s one view, Mr. Ellis.”
“Got kids yourself, have you?” I nod. Although at the moment it doesn’t feel like it. He’s finding the date on the digital display. Then the time. “Expect you have to work long shifts in your job? So how do you know they’re safe? You, of all people, must know what this world’s like.”
His words stab me directly in the heart. Although I’m not going to share my opinion with him, I feel it keenly in my soul. Keeping Aiden safe. My main motivation, as Damien would say. Yet he’s not safe, is he? Jason finds the time and runs the footage. We both look at the tiny screen, and there she is.
A young woman, maybe nineteen or twenty, with long blonde hair. She’s wearing skinny jeans and boots, with a raincoat and a scarf. I can’t see her face. He runs all the cameras, and we watch her buy milk and bread, but she keeps her head down. The footage ends.
“Have you seen her before?”
Playlist for a Paper Angel (DS Jan Pearce Crime Fiction Series Book 3) Page 5
