From the Cradle

by Louise Voss

  ‘We’re looking for Denise Breem.’ As the foreman frowned, Patrick said, ‘She’s a temp.’

  ‘Wait here.’

  The foreman walked over to the centre of the factory floor, where pots of jam were boxed and stacked on pallets, a group of women standing either side of a conveyor belt wearing blue and white caps and shapeless smocks.

  ‘That’s her,’ Carmella whispered.

  Patrick squinted. Carmella was right. At the far end of the conveyor belt, down which pots of jam trundled, was the woman they were looking for. And at the same moment Patrick recognized her, the foreman spoke to one of the women, who pointed at Denise – and she bolted.

  She ran towards the back of the factory and a row of huge cylindrical vats.

  ‘Come on,’ Patrick yelled, and he broke into a run, just as a forklift truck sailed into his path. He skidded to a halt, swearing at the man driving the truck, who lifted his ear protectors questioningly.

  Ignoring him, Patrick and Carmella dashed around the back of the truck and ran past the conveyor belt towards the vats. There was no sign of Denise.

  A door led out into a yard where dozens more pallets were stacked up. The two detectives went out into the bright sunshine. The yard was deserted.

  She had to be hiding behind one of the stacks. Patrick gestured for Carmella to go down the left hand side of the row, while he took the right. His heart was thumping fast with excitement.

  He crept along the row of pallets, Carmella doing the same on the other side. He could feel the sun burning the top of his head.

  There was no sign of their quarry.

  ‘Where the fuck is she?’

  Carmella was about to reply when Patrick saw her. She was crouched behind a forklift truck at the far end of the yard, her blue cap just visible.

  ‘Looks like we’ve lost her,’ he said loudly, walking slowly towards the forklift, keeping his eyes averted. Then as he drew level with the truck, he shot off to the left, Denise popping up and starting to run, but he had the momentum – and grabbed hold of the back of her factory smock as she made a half-hearted attempt to get away.

  ‘Get off me!’ she yelled. ‘I’ll have you for assault.’

  Patrick rolled his eyes. ‘Come on Denise. Why were you running? Something to hide?’

  She narrowed her eyes at him and spat, ‘What am I supposed to have done, eh?’

  ‘We can talk about that back at the station.’

  ‘I ain’t done nothing.’

  ‘Denise, we just want to ask you some questions,’ Carmella said in a soothing tone.

  Denise flicked her eyes up and down Carmella’s body. ‘Don’t call me Denise. It’s Miss Breem to you. What’s this about? Caspar’s been dead for seven years. Thanks to you lot.’

  Patrick leaned in. ‘Whatever happened to Doyle, he did to himself.’

  Denise folded her arms, perhaps not realizing how ludicrous she looked, trying to act hard in her factory smock and hat. ‘Whatever. I ain’t done nothing.’

  ‘So you said. But you can tell us more about this nothing at the station, Miss Breem.’

  Two hours later, Patrick stormed out of the interview room, slamming the door behind him. He went straight to the incident room, shoulder-barging the door, taking off his jacket and flinging it across the room. He picked up an empty coffee cup and chucked it against the wall, then kicked it as hard as he could.

  He punched the wall.

  ‘Fuck!’ He yelled out with pain and frustration and fury. He whirled round and saw the three children staring at him from the wall, talking to him with their big, beautiful eyes. Frankie’s in particular seemed to be calling to him.

  Help. I’m scared.

  He was letting them all down. All of them, and their families. The whole community, the people he was meant to serve, meant to protect. ‘I’m sorry,’ he whispered to the pictures on the wall. ‘I’m so sorry.’

  The door opened and Suzanne came in, eyes wide.

  ‘Patrick, what’s wrong? I heard a commotion coming from in here.’ She saw his face. ‘Oh, please tell me Breem isn’t another dead end.’

  He sat on a folding chair and sank his face into his hands. When he eventually lifted his head he said, ‘She has an alibi. She took great pleasure in telling us where she was when Liam was abducted. She was at work, in the factory, standing beside that conveyor belt all day with ten other women.’

  ‘You’ve called to check?’

  He nodded wretchedly. ‘And we checked Mike’s theory, that maybe she was scouting out kids for the old family lodger, McLean. Turns out he died of cancer two years ago.’

  ‘Oh, shit.’

  ‘We’re back at square one.’ His gaze turned towards the photos of the children again. ‘Maybe I’m not the right man for this job. Maybe I shouldn’t be leading the investigation. I’m tired. So fucking tired after everything that’s happened in the last couple of years.’

  Suzanne pulled up a chair and sat down beside him. ‘Patrick—’

  ‘Perhaps you should let Winkler take over. He’s gagging to.’

  She put her hand on his forearm. It was warm. ‘No, Patrick. Don’t be so hard on yourself. You just need a break.’

  ‘Yeah, a long bloody holiday, preferably somewhere tropical …’

  She smiled. ‘I don’t mean that kind of break, you idiot. I mean a break in the case. Some luck. Listen, we’ve got the photofit now, which we didn’t have this morning. We’ll go back over the lists from the Dads’ Club. We’ll talk to the travellers again. Whatever it takes. We’re going to find them. You’re going to find them, DI Lennon.’

  His phone started ringing. He glanced at the screen – his mum – and silenced it.

  Suzanne said, ‘I have faith in you, alright?’ Her hand was still on his arm. It felt good there. ‘Now stop feeling so fucking sorry for yourself. That’s an order.’

  He pulled himself straight. ‘Okay. No more feeling fucking sorry for myself.’

  After she left the room, he took out his phone and saw he had a voicemail from his mum. Thinking it might be something about Bonnie, feeling that familiar lurch of anxiety in his stomach, he listened to the message.

  ‘Patrick, it’s me. Listen, I just had a call from the unit. It’s Gill. She’s asking to see you.’

  Chapter 19

  Patrick – Day 3

  In the eighteen months since Gill had been locked up, Patrick had tried to visit her four times, and each time she had refused to see him. Each time, he’d been both upset and relieved. He had not set eyes on her since she stood, head bowed, in the dock, and the sight of her had shattered his heart into irreparable pieces.

  Patrick realized that he could barely recall the way they had been together when they were happy. He remembered bits and pieces – arms round one another on the sofa, her whispering ‘don’t die’ urgently into his ear as he laughed and told her he had no intention of doing so. Their shared jokes and rituals. Singing Take That songs in the style of elderly pub singers. The way she had to turn the duvet round so the end with the poppers was always at the bottom. Taking baths together. Date nights and movies and weekly supermarket shops. Normal, happy married life.

  After a year apart, he stopped wearing his wedding ring. He wondered if she still wore hers.

  It still seemed impossible that everything had changed so irrevocably, so quickly.

  When he thought back to it, the first warning sign had been the departure of Gill’s sense of humour, flying away on stealthy black batwings, so quietly amid all the chaos of Bonnie’s birth and first couple of months that it took him a while to realize it had gone. At the time, of course, he put it down to the veil of tiredness that had settled over them both. Neither saw much of the funny side of anything – how could they, when sleep only came in such mean portions? But Gill had always been so funny. It was what had made him fall in love with her; her bone-dry, intelligent, self-deprecating and surreal humour. Tiredness used to bring it out in her – after a long, tough day
in court she would stagger back in through the door and within minutes they would both be roaring with laughter at her impressions of the hapless jurors or the jobsworth court clerks.

  After the seventh consecutive day of him coming in from work to find Gill sobbing, he realized he hadn’t heard her laugh about anything in almost a month, even though the five-month-old Bonnie had a giggle that would melt the heart of Attila the Hun. Once she had stopped crying, Gill would list their daughter’s new achievements every day with just a tiny almost-sad smile, relating escapades that would previously have had her in gales of laughter.

  But postnatal depression was normal, wasn’t it? They had talked about it, and the three of them went to see the GP together. Patrick carried Bonnie in her Baby Bjorn, loving the feel of her warm fluttery breaths on his chest as the GP got Gill to complete a checklist of symptoms: Irritability – check. Tearfulness – definitely. Inability to cope with simple daily tasks – yes. Mood swings – check. Difficulty sleeping – well, duh. Lack of appetite – the weight had dropped off her.

  Gill cried steadily throughout the appointment, and added a couple of extra tick boxes of her own to the bottom of the list: Guilt. Hopelessness.

  Patrick looked over the top of Bonnie’s head at his weeping wife, her lank hair, unmade-up face, grey complexion and thought, I don’t even recognize her any more. For a split second, he resented Bonnie for taking away the wife he adored and replacing her with this sad, grumpy shell of a woman.

  ‘Have you ever suffered from depression before?’ asked the GP, scrolling through screens of Gill’s medical records.

  Gill wiped her hooded eyes and nodded slowly. ‘When I was at law school,’ she whispered, looking away. ‘I took an overdose. Had to get my stomach pumped.’

  The doctor, a plump Indian lady with half a dozen noisy gold bangles and a kindly face – a locum, not Gill’s regular GP – scribbled a note on a pad shielded by her elbow so that Gill and Pat couldn’t see what she was writing. Pat could imagine, though.

  ‘I didn’t know that,’ he said incredulously. ‘How could I not have known that?’

  Gill turned back to face them, and her face was bleak and empty. She opened her mouth to speak and Pat waited for the shamefaced apology – not an apology for trying to top herself, but for keeping such a huge secret from him, when he thought they had no secrets.

  Instead she narrowed her eyes and spoke to the doctor:

  ‘Could you take off those bloody bangles, please? They’re doing my fucking head in.’

  Pat and the locum both gasped. ‘I’m so sorry,’ the locum said evenly, sliding off the offending bracelets. She stacked them neatly on her desk, and for a moment all three of them gazed at them, saying nothing. Pat felt numb.

  Then the doctor seemed to snap out of her reverie. ‘Mrs Lennon – may I call you Gill? – I think it’s pretty clear that you are suffering from postnatal depression – PND – but what I want to be very clear about is that this is a temporary condition, and with the appropriate treatments you should feel completely recovered again, hopefully in a very short time. Many women go through a bout of it, especially with a first child – you must never underestimate the physical and emotional stress you have both been placed under, suddenly having responsibility for a newborn baby. Add to that the lack of sleep, pressure to be good parents, and for you, Gill, drastic hormonal changes. Personally I’m amazed that more women do not go through it.’

  Pat buried his face in the fluffy crown of Bonnie’s warm fragrant head. He suddenly wanted to cry too.

  Over the next month or two, Gill did start to feel better. She had a course of cognitive behavioural therapy and went on to anti-depressants and she, Pat and Bonnie settled back into a new kind of routine. Bonnie was such a delight to them both that, if he was honest, Pat could not understand how Gill could possibly be depressed. She had all day to herself, coffee with friends, play dates with Bonnie, gym sessions while Bonnie was entertained in the crèche. She said she welcomed the break from the Bar, along with its endless case notes to be read and briefs to be prepared.

  She didn’t cry nearly so much anymore – but then a new, and possibly even less appealing emotion took precedence, one that she didn’t want to inflict on Bonnie, so she saved it up for Pat instead. He’d just be through the door making an innocent enquiry about their day, and it would start:

  ‘What did I do today? Well, let’s think – I slept in till noon, had a long boozy lunch with the girls at Oxo Tower, came home, entertained my twenty-five-year old lover – what do you fucking think I did? I changed eight nappies, ironed a pile of clothes that can be seen from space, scraped carrot mush off the floor and fed some ducks.’

  ‘There’s no need to be so sarcastic,’ became Pat’s new catchphrase.

  He tried to be patient. But he was tired too, sleep-deprived and working as hard as ever at the station during the day – harder, as he’d recently been promoted to DI and it became a matter of principle to be better than Winkler at his job. He felt as though he was mourning the loss of his happy marriage, his happy wife, their sex life. So he threw all his energies into work instead.

  Until the day he came home and found Gill sitting on the stairs, and Bonnie half-dead in her cot.

  It was four months before he went back to work after that. For the first few days he stayed with Bonnie on the paediatric ward of Kingston Hospital, watching her bruises fade and her colour slowly return. The look of bewilderment in her eyes was more heartbreaking than the bruises around her neck.

  ‘She had a lucky escape,’ the doctor said. ‘There’s no lasting brain damage. Good thing you weren’t doing overtime that night.’

  Patrick had shuddered. He had indeed been so close to staying late that evening to pore over some witness statements, but at the last minute hunger and a burning desire to hold his baby daughter had propelled him out of the office and into his car.

  Gill was arrested, sectioned, and locked in a mental ward in Hanworth. Pat had not gone to see her for three weeks. He couldn’t. Whenever he thought of that day, bile rose in his throat. It was as though he had become physically allergic to his own wife. When he did go, she refused to see him.

  His mother did visit her, though. Mairead reported back that Gill was heavily sedated, under 24-hour suicide watch, and not speaking at all. Gill had been told, of course, that Bonnie had survived and would be fine, but she became hysterical whenever either Patrick or Bonnie was mentioned.

  Gill’s trial took place at Kingston Crown Court. Attempted murder on the grounds of diminished responsibility. She was found guilty and sentenced to be indefinitely detained in the local secure mental hospital.

  People say, of things like that, that it was ‘all a bit of a blur’, but unfortunately for Pat, it wasn’t. Every detail of the trial was etched indelibly into his brain, and snapshots would pop back up in his mind with traumatic regularity at all hours of the day or night, regardless of what he was doing. It had got a little better of late, especially seeing Bonnie so hale and hearty, seemingly happy with the arrangement of living with his parents. Time was doing its much-trumpeted healing thing. He could only hope that the same was true for Gill.

  But whether it was or not, he was really glad that she had finally decided she would see him. There were things that needed to be said.

  Chapter 20

  Winkler – Day 4

  The Philips bird was fit, in a damaged goods way, like a little sparrow that had fallen from its nest and needed looking after. DI Adrian Winkler had always been attracted to women like that. Vulnerable, with wounds that needed licking. Not mental birds, though, like Lennon’s missus. She was way beyond the pale, a proper nut job who’d tried to kill her kid, the type who should be sterilised and locked up forever. Though he supposed he could understand her going gaga with Lennon as her husband, probably writing down everything she said in that poncy notebook of his, not to mention having to contend with his massive crush on DCI Laughland. He almost felt sorry for the po
or bitch. And another thing: if it was down to Winkler, tattooed Goth weirdoes would be barred from joining the Police even if they were ex-Goth weirdoes and kept the tats covered. It was a sure sign of not belonging, of not being normal.

  He stopped thinking about the Lennons and focused on Helen Philips’ arse, snug in a pair of designer jeans, as she led him towards the study, pausing only to look at his reflection. He found it impossible to walk past a mirror without gazing at himself, and who could blame him? If being handsome was a crime, he’d have to arrest himself. He smirked at his little joke and ran a hand through his thick black hair.

  ‘Um … Detective Inspector?’ The Philips woman stood in a doorway, checking him out. ‘The computer’s in here.’

  He knew this was going to be a waste of time. Some internet troll pretending to know what had happened to the missing kids. What next – a clairvoyant who was receiving messages from the dead? He’d just wanted an excuse to come and meet the Philips family, do something productive, get away from the fucking search teams. The need to push this investigation forward, to achieve a breakthrough, made Winkler’s bones ache. Lennon was a screw-up, especially since his wife had gone infanticidal. Anyone with eyes could see that – but for some reason the guv was blind where Patrick was concerned. Well, he was going to show her what a real detective looked like. He was going to solve this case, even if he had to do it on his own. Thinking about it made him feel like a maverick cop in a movie, the hero bucking the system, the rebel outsider. He drifted into a reverie in which his colleagues stood and applauded him, the papers called him HERO COP, the Prime Minister invited him to Downing Street to ask him what could be done about crime. Maybe the PM would make him a Tsar. He fancied himself as a Tsar …

  ‘Are you alright?’

  ‘Huh? Oh, yeah. I was just thinking what a nice place you have.’

  ‘Right. Well, thanks. But do you want to see the messages I received on Facebook?’

  He gave her his most charming smile. ‘I certainly do.’