The Suffering of Strangers

by Caro Ramsay

  The roof terrace was deserted. Colin was comforted to know that his colleagues were there in the traffic and the lights below, listening to him. Somebody had his back. Sally had brought the bottle of brandy, and he had carried both their glasses right up to the railing and the small wall beyond. Anderson rested the glasses there and made a point of walking the length of the rail, peering over the edge. Sevastopol Lane was empty, only a couple strolling down to the river. ‘Are you still hearing me?’ he whispered.

  The lights on a transit van below flashed twice. Weird but still comforting, even though they were six flights below him.

  Sally approached him, swirling the glass, the brandy rising and falling in gentle waves. ‘There is much I have not told you, Colin. Things I think you need to know.’

  ‘There’s a lot you have not told me. But I am starting to figure it out, slowly. All is not roses in the garden, is it?’

  ‘Oh,’ was all she said, and closed her eyes, tears starting to fall. ‘You know?’

  ‘I know some of it.’ He was deliberately vague, forcing her to talk first.

  She placed her glass on the wall and laid her head on his shoulders. It seemed so natural to put his arms round her, glad that he was being kept on the right course by the three hairy apes sitting down below in the van, listening to every word.

  ‘Maybe better to talk now, before Andrew comes back.’

  That hit a nerve. She pulled back and swallowed hard, backhanding a few stray hairs from her face as she turned to lean on the rail, looking out over the river, the bridges lit up. It was cold, but very still.

  ‘I’m a cop. I can help you, Sally. I know you, you can’t be comfortable with all this.’

  She sniffled, on the edge of tears. ‘Do you ever think about all these people? Out there, living their lives.’

  ‘Yes, I do. They all have a story to tell. Every last one of them. That’s why I love my job. It’s endlessly fascinating. “The evil that men do” etc. Hopefully the good I do will live on after I have been interred.’

  ‘And you get their stories? The great and the good, the evil and the ugly? The innocent and the guilty?’

  ‘And which one are you, innocent or guilty?’

  ‘Depends what of?’ She picked up her glass, took a mouthful in desperation. The flirtation had gone.

  ‘When my mum died – was dying – in hospital there was a woman in the bed opposite. Nobody visited her. She was in there for three weeks, nobody came near. She wasn’t old, well not young but not old old. And she died. She was folded up and taken away, curtain round the bed. I wonder if anybody went to the funeral.’

  ‘That’s sad. How did she get like that, so lonely?’ He heard her take a deep breath. ‘You know I was raped.’ She said quietly, then repeated, ‘I was raped. It’s a long time since I said that, then you came along. And before you ask, I had no idea who by. But there were a lot of complications afterwards, that might be something that you are not aware of.’

  ‘Complications?’ Anderson persisted. ‘I know you lost the baby.’

  Sally looked away. ‘I got a bad infection. But I didn’t lose the baby.’

  ‘OK.’ His voice was comforting, engaging with her tragedy. She was a victim now.

  She pulled away from him, trailing a fingertip along the balustrade. Colin put his hand under his jacket collar and felt for the coil of wire that ran from the microphone secreted on the underside of his lapel. This was not for public consumption. He forced himself to let go the wire, leaving it in place. That kind of thinking could get him killed.

  ‘I let it go around the uni that I didn’t want to talk about it. I had an infection and I was kind of happy about that as there was a chance that we, you, the police might be able to catch him if that bastard was attending a clinic somewhere. That came to nothing. Days passed, I was getting all kinds of treatment for broken ribs and the damage to my shoulder. I took a long, long time to heal and the infection had appeared to respond to treatment, massive antibiotics. But it hadn’t, it had only worked its way further in as time passed. Then Andrew and I got married and tried to have a family. Nothing happened, and then it dawned on me why. There was damage. A lot of damage.’ Another tear.

  ‘And the rest of the story? The big bit you missed out there.’

  ‘Is that the bit you are interested in? Professionally.’

  ‘And personally. What happened to you back then has shaped your entire life. But you didn’t let it destroy you.’

  ‘I found out I was pregnant.’ Her eyes creased over. ‘And that wasn’t as easy as it sounds. First test was negative, I thought I was OK. Then it was all too late, well, too late for me.’

  ‘Did you go away to have the baby?’

  She turned to stare at him, lower lip trembling. ‘You seem very sure that I didn’t get rid of it. I could be telling you anything, any lie that makes me look better.’

  ‘Because I know you, Sally. You couldn’t do that. Way too soft-centred. It wasn’t your choice or your fault. But I bet you figured it wasn’t the fault of the baby either. That must have been a very tough call.’

  ‘You must be a very good policeman. You are very good at reading people.’

  ‘Not really, you forget that I know you.’

  ‘You knew me a long time ago.’

  ‘People don’t change that much.’

  ‘Maybe you are right. I needed to have that child. And all of a sudden my life was public property. Everybody telling me to do this or do that. It was amazing the bloody experts that crawled out the woodwork to support me. But yes, you are right, you do know me well, detective chief inspector. I couldn’t get past thinking that life was life. I still think it is. In that position, I would still make the same choices. I am sure I still would.’

  He rubbed her arm, trying to comfort her and keep her talking.

  ‘There was a presumption that I would have an abortion but I wanted to keep it. You never know until you hold that baby in front of you what that can feel like. I wanted to have that feeling, I wanted to hold my baby daughter. I have never felt it since. Won’t get the chance now, will I?’

  Colin leaned back on the rail. ‘I know exactly what you mean. That amazing feeling when I first held Claire. Thrilled, scared, and a feeling of overwhelming love. I was terrified that something would go wrong, that she would get hurt, get ill. Brenda was so pragmatic, “This is a healthy baby she will be fine”. I was panicking at every cough, at any sign that something was not right. I’d cut my right arm off to give her a happy life.’

  ‘And I bet nothing has changed.’

  ‘It’s worse now. I have to let go of her, see her ride off in to the horizon with some man who can’t even climb the stairs properly. It’s bloody terrifying. Turtles have the right idea. Lay your eggs and then go for a swim. No sleepless nights, no Chinese meals, no driving lessons.’

  ‘And I bet you would do it all again in an instant.’

  ‘I would. Can’t imagine what it was like for you. There must have been people around to give you support.’

  ‘My parents said they would support my decision. At first. Then Mum took me to one side and said that they couldn’t, in reality, have the “wee bastard” running around, reminding them every day of what had happened to me. My dad couldn’t take it. That was why I pulled out of your campaign. I was in danger of not knowing my own mind. And that was more frightening than anything else. I had to get away.’

  ‘To India?’

  ‘For a bit, yes. But then I came back. I had my daughter.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘And then.’ She took a deep breath, closing her eyes. ‘I think I need another brandy.’

  ‘And I sold her.’

  Colin nearly dropped his brandy glass. ‘Sorry?’

  ‘This is the part when you realize that soft-centred Sally is a hard-nosed bitch.’

  ‘I’d never think that.’

  ‘I thought that everybody else was getting something out of it. Why not me? I didn’t
want to abort it and I knew a couple who were desperate for a child.’ Sally rubbed the side of her face with the palm of her hand. The tears made her cheek glisten. ‘Talk about the suffering of strangers. I thought Oscar and Abby had everything they could want in life. They were a perfect couple, but behind closed doors … That woman had tried everything to have a family, was almost suicidal with it. It became all consuming. Abby did get pregnant eventually on her fifth round of IVF. God, they had remortgaged the house by then – and then the baby died during birth. It got caught in the birth canal. They tried to pull it out, tried pushing it back to do a section. Forty minutes. And Abby got so damaged there was more surgery. And she was prepared to go through all that again. Imagine? She was distraught, of course, couldn’t even talk about it. The worst bit was going back to the house afterwards, everybody’s expectations of their child, the nursery all ready. Pink. They knew it was a girl. So I said they could have, could buy, the baby I was carrying. And my world went into meltdown.’

  ‘That wasn’t legal.’

  ‘That’s crap. There was nobody else involved, they were friends and I just said … My baby was going to become the possession of the court. Abby wanted a baby as soon as possible. So she took the baby, and she gave me money to get back to uni and get my life back. Some good came out of it.’

  ‘It was illegal.’

  ‘The rape was illegal but the moral outrage caused by the thought of me selling the baby was worse. This is a weird world we live in. What you need to understand was that I was in danger of losing everything, I had been raped, scarred, everything and I didn’t want to add murder to that. I didn’t want the baby to float away. I wanted to be sure it would be loved and wanted.’ She slapped at the air like a child, mentally pushing him away.

  ‘Everybody was still telling me to abort, time was moving on. The agencies who counselled me were patronizing. My mum and dad had made their opinion clear. They couldn’t live with the memory of what happened to me on that day. So I came back once I had had the baby. Andrew paid for me to be in a private clinic in London, I had it there under Abby’s name.’ She started to cry, deep sobbing from the root of her being.

  The cop in Anderson wanted to take her down to the station for further questioning, but he was a human being, and she was distressed so that was not going to happen. Not yet.

  ‘Shall we go downstairs now? It’s cold up here, you are getting too upset.’

  She shook her head. ‘I need to tell you it all.’

  As long as they were getting this on tape, it was his call.

  It seemed like a long time but was probably a matter of ten minutes or less as they tried to quell their panic, reassuring each other with both kindness and caustic comments. The door they had come in was closed firmly and a quick search round with their torches showed there was no easy way out of there. So they came back down the old stairwell, crossed the central way following in Valerie’s footsteps to the very narrow clean stairs and the brand new door at the top, sitting smugly closed with a keypad at the side. Mulholland was for pressing the button and getting someone to let them out. Costello argued that it wasn’t in the interest of anybody who knew how to open the door to actually do it for them.

  It wasn’t as if they’d be in here forever. Wyngate and Noakes sitting outside knew exactly where they were and would come looking eventually. There had been a chain of suspicion about that door being a Black Donald, it was Wyngate who had voiced his suspicion about it.

  But the act of sitting here underground meant that Costello wasn’t outside. And their plan necessitated her being on the outside. She had her part to play or the whole thing would go tits up, so they walked over to the railings that separated this old car dump from the modern car park on the other side. It was now shrouded in the same darkness that showed night had fallen outside. They stood and looked at the railing, there was a foot gap at the top about ten feet from the ground. The gap between each railing was too narrow for them to slip through but there was a horizontal bar five feet from the ground and another one along the top. It was Mulholland who pointed out that the one on the top was decorated with nasty sharp spikes. They looked at each other.

  ‘Who’s going first?’

  ‘Well, you should punt me up as I’m a female and you’re a male and that’s the way of the world.’

  ‘Alright, so that’s why you’re always banging on about equal rights for women and the fact my bad leg should keep me tied to a desk job. I’m going to play the disabled card here and suggest that you punt me up.’

  ‘You’re the one that goes to the gym and lifts weights on his day off so why don’t you do it now and get paid for it.’

  ‘I’m not lifting you anywhere, I could break my leg again.’

  ‘I refer to my earlier point about you only being fit for a desk job, but in fact I’m your superior officer so I’m telling you to get down on all fours.’

  Mulholland looked at the grimy oily concrete underfoot and said, ‘You’ve got to be joking.’

  In the end the need to get out won over the need to score points. Costello took off her bulky jacket and put it on the ground and made a cushion for Mulholland to kneel on, then she put the handle of her baton between her teeth and pulled herself up on to the rail getting one foot on the crossbar. Mulholland then got to his feet and handed her the jacket which she threw up so that it cushioned the sharp end of the spikes at the top. Mulholland, standing at his full height, let her stand on his outstretched hand as she placed the baton between the spikes, and holding it in both hands she pushed and pulled herself up and over, rolling on landing, her baton clattering across the concrete. Mulholland being much taller, could stand on the boot of an old Ford Granada and pull himself on to the middle railing. He then did the same trick as Costello, ripping her jacket even further. Once he had his feet on the crossbar on the modern side of the car park, he threw her jacket down to her and then he froze.

  ‘For a while it went well. It helped that Andrew had trained as an obstetrician in the past.’

  ‘I’m sure it did.’

  ‘He knew what to do. Nobody was at risk. I don’t want you to think that we ever put anybody at risk. But we knew childless couples who wanted a child. We knew women, girls really, who were pregnant and happy to give the baby away, knowing where it was going to go.’

  ‘Could be an emotional minefield,’ counselled Anderson, hoping to God, they were getting all this out in the van.

  ‘Not really. The girls were fine knowing the child was going to a good family where it would be loved. And they knew that from early on so it was more like surrogacy, that bond never had time to grow. We took the DNA, checked for abnormalities …’ She faltered, remembering Little Moses on the front of the newspaper. ‘I don’t know what he did with her, how that child slipped through.’ Sally looked weary now, worn down by her tears. She reached out for a hanky and blew her nose loudly. ‘I really don’t know what he did with her, the girl who had the Down’s baby.’

  ‘Who’s he?’ asked Anderson softly.

  ‘Andrew. And her name was Adele, like the singer. Well, that’s what she told us. She said that she wanted to be a singer, and God you should have seen her, she could hardly string two sentences together, not daft but brash and … awkward. And,’ she took a deep breath, ‘I think that was the one where I noticed it was all starting to change. Before, Andrew had only taken level-headed intelligent women that understood the discretion required. Adele was a rebel, didn’t understand the meaning of the word discretion. Well, I do know why he did it, we had somebody offering us a lot of money for her child. Over a hundred thousand pounds.’

  ‘Jesus. But you can’t just bank money like that.’

  ‘You can if you own a place like this. Money laundering is easy when you have a place to clean it.’ She pointed out as if he was simple.

  ‘What happened to Adele?’

  ‘I don’t know. But he did something to her. Adele came here, had the child. Moses. The media gave h
im a name – his mother never did. She wanted to sell it. The other woman wanted it. Downs or not. The dad didn’t. Andrew said he would sort it out and I think he did. He said the new parents changed their mind and accepted the baby once they saw him. He said Adele was happy to take the money. She was going to use it to have some plastic surgery to get her nose fixed, and get singing lessons, and she was going to go on the X Factor and win it. She knew the money wasn’t going to last for ever but she was going to do some modelling in the meantime.’

  ‘Have you heard from her?’ he asked, knowing the answer.

  ‘No. But she was so young—’ she shrugged – ‘early twenties. Old enough to know better than have dreams like that.’

  ‘How did she know to come to you?’

  ‘I think she came here to see Andrew about her nose. It had been badly broken and she wanted his opinion on getting it straightened. And she was pregnant, but Andrew side-lined her into having the child. She was little more than a kid herself if I am honest. She was the kind who’d treat a baby like a doll, you know – wrap a ribbon round its head and get its ears pierced but not change the nappies often enough. She stayed up in that flat, watching music videos and he monitored the growth of the kid,’ Sally said, talking almost absentmindedly. ‘But it was only later I found out just how far Andrew had drifted from what we had started out to do. That baby was born with Downs. I think he swapped it for Roberta Chisholm’s boy.’

  Anderson twitched a little at that. He thought about that eyewitness, her evidence pointed to slim Sally, not a bulky guy like Andrew. And Sally was the one with access to the car seats; she had access to it all. Was he being played?

  ‘It wasn’t rocket science.’

  And Anderson remembered the inshot outside the perfumed lift, the safe parking place to leave buggies. Easily seen and traced. God, he would have their addresses on file up in the gym. She did also.

  ‘And where is Adele?’

  ‘I don’t know. I had the feeling she was not somebody who was going to go away. And then she went away.’