The Lost Children

by Theresa Talbot

  ‘Right, let’s talk about this five grand, shall we?’ Davies pulled out a chair, twisting it round to sit on it backwards. He leaned over the wooden slats and switched on the tape machine. McVeigh nodded for the attending policeman to leave, and took his seat.

  ‘What five grand?’

  Davies threw a clear plastic bag down on the table. ‘That five grand,’ he yelled. ‘The five thousand pounds we found in St Patrick’s.’ Cranworth didn’t respond. ‘It has your prints all over it. Was he blackmailing you?’

  ‘Who?’

  Davies lost his rag. ‘You’re at it, sonny.’ He pointed his finger into Cranworth’s face. ‘Charles Antonio. The guy who dived off the balcony, straight into your arms, remember?’

  Again, Cranworth said nothing. Just sat back in his chair and let out a low moan. ‘How many times do I have to tell you? I didn’t know the man. Never saw him before in my entire life. You’ll really have a lot to—’

  Davies cut him off, waving his hand across his face. ‘Aye, aye, I know. You’ll have my job for this. Well, you’ll have to join the queue.’ He took a packet of cigarettes out from the breast pocket of his shirt and lit one with a green clipper lighter. He blew the smoke sideways, out of the corner of his mouth, away from his face, and held the cigarette under the table, flicking the ash on the floor.

  ‘We’ve spoken to your wife.’

  Cranworth sat up and his eyes widened. ‘What did…? I mean was she—?’

  ‘Doesn’t seem too bothered you’re in here. You two not get on so well, then?’

  Cranworth shrugged his shoulders. ‘As well as any other married couple.’

  Davies rolled his eyes. ‘As good as that, eh?’ For the first time he felt some sympathy for Oonagh’s lover. ‘Did your wife know Antonio?’

  Cranworth looked genuinely shocked. ‘Don’t be ridiculous. You’ve met her. Does she look as though she’d know someone like him?’

  Davies took a long final drag on his cigarette before stubbing it out on the floor. ‘If he was blackmailing you, then you might as well tell us. Save us all a lot of time. Do yourself a favour.’

  Cranworth stopped twirling his eyebrows between his fingers and sat forward in his seat. ‘Listen. I didn’t know Antonio. I’d never seen him before. I don’t know anything about that fucking money.’

  There was a timid knock on the door. Davies opened it and the uniformed officer who had been in earlier mumbled in his ear. He closed the door and leaned towards the tape machine. ‘Interview terminating at…’ he looked at his watch ‘… four thirty-nine p.m.’ He turned to Cranworth. ‘Right,’ he said, ‘off you go.’

  Cranworth stopped drumming his fingers on the table. ‘Me?’

  ‘Aye. Just go. You’ve got a visitor.’

  He opened the door and instructed the policeman waiting outside. ‘Usual rules apply,’ he told Cranworth. ‘Don’t go too far away, and keep in touch.’ He watched him walk down the corridor, his massive frame dwarfing the young policeman at his side.

  Davies watched through the glass doors and saw Oonagh at the front desk. Cranworth hesitated slightly when he saw her and then bent to kiss her. She pulled away and walked out of the door. Davies couldn’t help noticing that she barely reached his chest.

  ‘Was that wise, boss? Letting him go like that, I mean?’ said McVeigh.

  The relief provided by the full Scottish breakfast was proving to be short lived. The burning sensation had reappeared in his gut again, and was clawing its way towards his chest. He sensed the return of the grumpy old bastard.

  ‘Wise? If it’s wise you’re looking for, I suggest you go and buy yourself a fucking anorak and get off my back.’

  42

  Glasgow, 2000

  The air outside Govan Police Station was rank. The building itself was new, but there was the distinct smell of pee at the entrance. Oonagh walked to her car and unlocked the doors with the remote. Jack was at her back. They hadn’t spoken yet. As they reached the car she spun round and winded him with a sharp blow between the ribs.

  ‘What the fuck did you do that for?’ He crouched, clutching his stomach, trying to catch his breath.

  ‘Because I can’t reach your pigging face,’ she yelled. ‘Now get in.’ She tipped her head towards the car, opened the driver’s door and slipped behind the wheel. Her propensity for violence was on the up. She reasoned that all the wishy-washy liberals were indeed correct in their hypothesis that violence really does breed violence. Since the break in and subsequent attack she felt like kicking the shit out of everyone who crossed her path. And Jack was the third man in the last twenty-four hours to have felt the back of her hand.

  ‘Right, do you want to tell me what the hell is going on?’ She started the engine and screeched out of the car park, refusing to swerve for the two beat coppers crossing the tarmac. She took a sharp left at the exit, almost clipping a single-decked bus on Paisley Road West. Her blood was growing hot and she chewed on her bottom lip to stop the swell of anger. She signalled right at the lights, heading for Pollokshields. ‘You can speak to me here or at home with your wife. I don’t care which.’ Her foot almost touched the floor as she raced along Dumbreck Road.

  Jack gripped the dashboard to steady himself. ‘All right. All right. Slow down for God’s sake, before you get us both killed.’

  ‘Oh, as opposed to just me getting killed.’ She turned into a side street.

  Jack exhaled a sigh of relief when she pulled over and stopped the car. As soon as she switched off the engine he reached across and grabbed her, burying his face in her neck.

  ‘Oonagh, thank God you’re all right. Oh, I’ve missed you.’ He held her too tight and she winced as her bruises ached under his embrace. She pushed him away.

  ‘Just one question. Did you…’ She hesitated. Jack was a mind games freak. Every question had to be planned and executed with military precision. She chose her words carefully. ‘Were you behind Charlie Antonio attacking me?’

  He looked her straight in the eye. ‘No,’ he said. ‘I wasn’t.’

  She didn’t have a clue whether he was telling the truth or not and it scared the shit out of her.

  ‘Well, what on earth were you doing meeting him at St Patrick’s?’ She choked back the tears. They were entirely justified, she felt. The worst thing most women would have to do was ask if a partner had cheated on them. Few would need to ask if they’d planned to have them killed. ‘You need to tell me what’s going on.’

  Jack banged the dashboard with his fist. ‘I wasn’t meeting him, Oonagh. I swear it.’ He pointed his finger into her face. ‘And if you can’t fucking believe me then that’s your problem.’

  She gave him a couple of seconds to calm down, then spoke very softly, belying her rage. ‘Jack, I was attacked and left for dead. I’ve lost my baby. I’m scared shitless to sit in my home alone, and you’re the one who’s angry. You don’t even care that I had a miscarriage, do you?’ She was getting nowhere. Jack was looking right through her. ‘You’re glad the baby’s dead, aren’t you?’ He continued to look straight ahead. ‘Aren’t you!’ she demanded.

  He nodded his head. ‘Yes, I am. I won’t lie to you, Oonagh.’

  Her softly-softly approach must have caught him off guard. He didn’t even duck when she drew her hand up and smacked him hard across the face.

  He grabbed her wrist. ‘Hit me again, Oonagh, and I swear, I’ll hit you back.’ The words were spat out.

  A sob hiccupped in the back of her throat and she rubbed her tummy. ‘How can you be glad the baby’s dead? What a thing to say! You’re evil.’ Her throat convulsed and her tears cut a ribbon through the make up on her cheeks.

  ‘Oonagh.’ Jack let her go and pushed his fingers up through his hair. ‘I can’t have children, Oonagh, not now, not ever.’

  Her grief turned into anger once more, and her voice became a scream. ‘Are you saying it wasn’t yours?’

  He shook his head. ‘Just listen, eh?’

  Oonagh fel
t a chill go through her stomach. She wasn’t sure that she wanted to hear what he had to say.

  He laced his fingers together and stared at the window, despite it having misted over. ‘You know I was brought up by my aunt.’

  Jack had told Oonagh early on about his childhood. They’d lain in bed one afternoon, swapping memories. He hadn’t been emotional as he’d unravelled his past. His parents had died in a car crash, and his aunt and uncle had reared him. He’d been lucky really. They were enormously wealthy. No children of their own. He’d just told her as a matter of fact.

  ‘Oh Christ, what a bloody mess.’ He rubbed at his chin and swallowed hard.

  Oonagh didn’t speak. The cool, controlled Jack was breaking down in front of her and she was terrified. She touched his arm. He glanced as if he’d forgotten she was there. It prompted him to continue. ‘Well, I’ve found out the truth. My mum’s not dead. She didn’t die in a car crash.’ He was crying now, and Oonagh was scared for him. For both of them. She stroked his hair and his mouth crumpled as he carried on.

  ‘Oh Oonagh, my real mum was insane, mental, retarded, simple, whatever the fuck you want to call it. And do you know what? She was raped. Pinned down and raped, and I’m the happy product.’

  Oonagh reached across and held him, tried to calm his sobs. ‘There, Jack. Ssh now.’ There was nothing she could do to make it all better.

  ‘I can’t risk having kids. I’m a doctor for fuck’s sake.’ He wiped the back of his hand on his nose. ‘I know only too well how genetics work. Do you think I want to be responsible for bringing some poor bastard into the world with that sort of gene pool?’

  ‘Don’t torture yourself like this, Jack. There’s every chance any children you had would be fine. There’s nothing to say this… this mental illness your mum had will be passed down.’ She was trying to make him feel better, but realised she was coming across as trying to fight for them to have kids together.

  He squeezed the top of her arm. He was hurting her but she said nothing.

  ‘Will you just listen? Please!’ He was yelling into her face, slightly hysterical. ‘She wasn’t just raped, my mother. No, she was raped by her own father.’

  Oonagh’s insides turned to water and she slumped back in her seat.

  He held her hands in his, she was too weak, too shocked to respond. Her hands became limp. The shouting had stopped.

  His sobs subsided, and he affected a smile as he wiped away the tears with a tissue. ‘There’s a reason why relatives can’t marry and have children, Oonagh – why incest is illegal. We’d all be psychotic maniacs with two heads.’

  He was exaggerating, but she got the drift.

  ‘Fuck,’ he said, ‘it would’ve been better if I’d never found out. Better if I’d never been born.’

  The penny suddenly dropped and nearly deafened Oonagh. ‘Is that what’s been wrong these past few weeks? Is that why you were avoiding me?’

  He nodded. ‘As soon as I found out I… went to pieces. No, that’s not strictly true. I got a vasectomy, then went to pieces.’

  Despite her pity she was angry at being shut out. ‘You should have told me, Jack. Does Jean know?’ As soon as she said it she could have bitten off her tongue. She didn’t want to turn this into an emotional intimacy contest with his wife. ‘Sorry,’ she blurted out before he could reply.

  He shivered and she switched on the engine, letting the hot air blast through the vents to warm their feet.

  ‘I feel like a fucking time bomb,’ he said. ‘There could be a million things wrong with me that just haven’t manifested themselves yet.’

  She rubbed his thigh in pity as she pulled back out into the street. She wanted to be away from it all. Her nerves were shattered. It was too much to cope with. ‘I’ll take you home, eh?’

  Within moments the old Jack was back: controlled, assured, smiling. ‘Yes. I suppose I have to face the music.’

  It had always worried Oonagh that he could so easily switch on and off. She wondered if his revelation went some way to explaining his mood swings.

  They were nearly at his house when it suddenly hit her that he still hadn’t answered her original question. ‘Jack, what were you doing in St Patrick’s with Antonio?’

  ‘I wasn’t. I mean I was there, but that was just a coincidence. I didn’t know who he was.’

  ‘Yes,’ she said, unable to let it go, ‘but why go there in the first place? Please don’t say you’ve found Jesus and forgotten to tell me that wee snippet too?’ She pulled the car into the kerb outside his neighbour’s house.

  ‘Oonagh, it was nothing, honest.’ He leaned across and kissed her cheek. ‘Don’t worry about it. I was meeting someone close by and I had a few minutes to spare, so I just went in.’ He opened the door. ‘I really need to go in now. I’ll call you?’

  She raised her eyebrows. Not quite a nod.

  Oonagh watched him walk away, her heart a lead weight. Her dad’s warning rang loud in her ears. ‘You’ll know the devil when you see him.’

  43

  Glasgow, 2000

  Davies was standing outside the door of the station. He lit a fresh cigarette with the butt of his last one and watched PC Law help a woman out of the back seat of a police car. He stood aside to let them pass, then tapped her on the shoulder and beckoned her over.

  ‘Is that Antonio’s wife?’ he whispered, inhaling a mouth full of smoke.

  ‘Widow,’ she mouthed. ‘She’s in to collect his stuff.’

  ‘She up to having a wee chat?’

  The policewoman shrugged her shoulders and pressed her lips tight together, sucking in breath between her teeth. ‘Dunno, it’s a heavy one. But to be honest, now’s about as good a time as any I suppose… I really don’t think she knew too much about what he got up to, y’know. So go easy on her, eh?’

  ‘Okay, give us a couple of minutes then bring her through to my office.’ He held open one half of the double doors and took three more long draws before throwing the half finished fag outside.

  *

  The few meagre belongings looked pathetic. They were laid out on top of a large manila envelope on the table. A mobile phone, gent’s watch – the face cracked in the fall – a brown leather wallet and a gold wedding ring. Davies stood up as the two women entered the room. He offered them a seat, pointing to the two chairs in front of his desk.

  Mrs Antonio sat down first. He noticed a ladder in her tights, running from her ankle and up her calf. She caught Davies’ line of sight and stretched her hand down to cover the tear. As though it mattered.

  ‘Do I have to sign for them?’ She leaned over and touched the items on the table.

  ‘Mrs Antonio, I’d like to ask you a few questions.’

  She held up the small gold wedding ring. ‘This wasn’t his you know.’

  ‘Eh?’

  ‘I mean I didn’t give it to him. It was his mother’s. He wore it on his pinkie.’

  ‘Mrs Antonio, please, if you could just—’ Davies was interrupted by the electronic twang of ‘The Sash’. It took him a few seconds to register that it was coming from Antonio’s mobile. He gestured to the widow. ‘Would you…?’

  She waved her hands in front of her face, and asked him to take the thing away.

  Davies looked at the number withheld display and clicked the answer button. ‘Hello—?’

  ‘What the fuck’s going on?’ The woman’s voice was urgent and high-pitched. Loud enough for Antonio’s widow to hear.

  ‘Who is this?’ asked Davies. The telltale breaths of a woman smoking a cigarette lasted just a few seconds before the line went dead. Davies picked up the internal phone.

  ‘Get McVeigh in here.’

  His sidekick appeared within seconds and Davies handed him the mobile phone. ‘Find out from the network if they can trace any incoming calls to this phone.’

  ‘What’s the number?’ McVeigh asked.

  ‘Mrs Antonio?’

  ‘What? Oh right…’ She rhymed it off and McVe
igh wrote it down on a sticky note.

  ‘Actually, get someone else to take care of it,’ said Davies, standing up. ‘I need you with me.’ He had one arm stuck in the sleeve of his jacket by the time he stopped at the door. ‘Can you take care of things here for the minute?’ he asked the young female officer before nodding towards Charlie Antonio’s widow. He didn’t wait for a reply from either of them.

  *

  Rush hour traffic was building up as they raced towards Pollokshields.

  McVeigh clung to the passenger seat as Davies weaved in and out of the traffic.

  ‘I take it we’re paying Dr Cranworth another wee visit? Told you we shouldn’t have let him go so soon.’

  ‘Wrong Dr Cranworth, sunshine.’

  Hamilton Avenue was as quiet as ever. Huge oak trees lined the pavement, their branches bent towards the road and their autumn leaves gathered against the kerb. Davies didn’t slow as he swung the car into the driveway. He heard McVeigh take a deeper breath than usual as they narrowly missed one of the stone towers supporting the wrought iron gates. He brought the car to a dead stop outside the front door.

  He ignored the bell and pounded on the door. It was the knock he usually reserved for rundown council flats on the sprawling housing schemes that littered the outskirts of the city.

  Jack Cranworth answered the door after just a few seconds. He was out of breath and blood was trickling from three deep scratches gouged into his left cheek.

  ‘Your wife in?’ Davies asked, his foot already in the front hallway.

  ‘What do you think?’ He dabbed at the wound with a handkerchief.

  Davies barged past him into the main living room. Jean Cranworth paced the floor by the huge fireplace. Davies noticed two brightly painted fingernails on her right hand were broken down to the quick. A lamp lay on its side on the floor.

  ‘Trouble in Paradise?’

  ‘Piss off,’ she said, turning her back on the two policemen and folding one arm defensively across her chest.

  ‘Dr Cranworth, you told me you didn’t know Charlie Antonio.’