Frozen Charlotte

by Priscilla Masters

  Was it?

  It was late in the morning, almost Thursday lunchtime, that after painstakingly sifting through the earth, guided by the dogs’ noses, that the crime scene team unearthed a bone, then another bone. Both very small. Tiny in fact. Painstakingly they brushed the soil away until they had a perfect set. It was a very small pile of bones and the mood of the men quickly changed from concentrating on the work to one of sombre anticipation. Almost acceptance. It had been what they had half expected to find.

  WPC Shaw made her report to Alex Randall and he listened without comment until she’d finished. ‘You did well,’ he said. ‘It was a long shot but I agree with you. Get the report typed up and file it for now. It had to be done,’ he added kindly. ‘We have so little to go on in this case that we must explore all leads. Well done.’

  He made a note that WPC Shaw might be suitable to move to the plain-clothes division if she could use initiative like this.

  She’d barely gone when he received the call about the bones found in Bayston Hill.

  Martha received his call at a little after four p.m., Alex’s voice sounding grave and a little upset.

  ‘We’ve found some bones,’ he said.

  ‘Where?’

  ‘Under the patio of the house in Bayston Hill, the house the Sedgewicks lived in before they moved to The Mount.’

  Even Martha felt chilled.

  ‘It’s a very small pile of bones,’ he said. ‘I’m just waiting for clarification from the forensic team whether they’re human or not.’

  ‘What do you think, Alex?’

  ‘I’m not sure,’ he said. ‘I’m no expert. In my opinion the head’s too small but if it had just been born, well…’

  Microcephaly, Martha thought, with a shudder. Babies born with heads too tiny for life.

  ‘A small head doesn’t necessarily mean they aren’t human,’ she said.

  ‘We’ll have to wait and see,’ Alex responded. ‘If they are the bones of another child it probably means that the Sedgewicks are implicated in something grim, something… well, even I can’t imagine. In any case we’re going to have to speak to them again.’ He paused, adding, ‘I wish you could be there when we interview them, Martha. Sometimes,’ he said, ‘I think you have an insight – well, an instinct – that we police just don’t have. I don’t know. Maybe it’s the medical training. But it’s impossible for you to be there,’ he added then fell silent. ‘Unless…’

  She waited.

  ‘Maybe it could be arranged,’ he said slowly, ‘if we use the interview room with the one-way mirror. Unfortunately,’ he added, ‘the press have somehow got wind of this new development and are running a piece about the discovery of bones in tonight’s paper. I would have done anything to keep this secret. For a start if the Sedgewicks do have a connection it forewarns them. But I don’t want to interview them until I know for certain whether the bones are that of another child. If it’s just a dog or a dead pet or something I’d look silly hotfooting it round there.’ He paused. ‘There’s something else that’s troubling me, Martha.’

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘Well – according to her daughter Alice Sedgewick is unstable, unpredictable. We know she’s been treated for depression. There is the possibility that she might read of this new development. If she does…’ His voice trailed away miserably. ‘The trouble is that the story has attracted an awful lot of media interest. The press have been watching our every move.’

  ‘What’s your real concern here, Alex?’

  He groaned. ‘Oh, I don’t know, Martha. The thought of there being a second child, worrying that Mrs Sedgewick is, frankly, unbalanced. All sorts of things. You know me, Martha.’ He gave a short laugh and she could picture him running his hands through his hair. It was a familiar gesture when he was disturbed about something.

  He continued, speaking frankly, ‘I think it’s the fear of the unknown.’ He gave a short laugh. ‘So much scarier than facing something tangible. I suppose at the back of my mind is a fear that somewhere, deep inside these gruesome facts, lies a shocking truth. If this is a second baby’s body how crazy is Alice Sedgewick? And how many more are out there?’

  ‘Alex,’ she responded, concerned. ‘This isn’t like you, to start getting imaginative and unreal. Stop right there. You’re letting this get to you.’

  ‘Yes,’ he said wearily. ‘That as well.’

  ‘It won’t help, you know. Speaking as a friend, you need a break.’

  He gave a sour laugh. ‘My thoughts exactly. It would solve everything. Only it won’t. It won’t solve anything.’

  She had never heard this bitter tone in Detective Inspector Randall before and it concerned her. He was an excellent police officer. It would be a disaster if he cracked, but she sensed he was not far from that. She also knew that this sudden vulnerability wasn’t just because of the case. She knew now that it was compounded by a home life which she suspected, without knowing any real detail, was, for some hidden reason, equally nightmarish. He had said his wife wasn’t well. In what way ‘not well’? Mentally? Was she like Alice Sedgewick, unbalanced and unpredictable? Or was it something physical? Did she have some awful disease? Or was it possibly both?

  She sat back in her chair and closed her eyes. In his own time he would, one day, she was convinced, confide in her. Until then she must ignore the sarcasm and innuendo in his voice and concentrate on her own role. It would not help him if he knew she was so aware of his fragile state and certainly not if she delved into a place where right now she was not wanted.

  ‘I take it once you’ve photographed the bones in situ you will move them to the mortuary to have them examined?’

  ‘That’s what I’d intended,’ he said, sounding more normal now. ‘I thought I’d better run it past you first.’

  ‘Fine,’ she said briskly. ‘Let me know the result of the analysis as soon as you can. Please. Whatever time it is.’

  ‘I will.’

  ‘Alex,’ she said suddenly. And now it was she who was uncertain as she urged him on. ‘There’s a dark story behind all this. Find it. Otherwise…’

  ‘Otherwise?’ he prompted, surprised.

  ‘This is something which will continue.’

  ‘Why on earth do you say that?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ she said, ‘except that there is something malicious behind this case.’

  He gave a dry laugh. ‘Malicious? That’s a strange word to use. I’m spooked enough already, Martha,’ he said. ‘You’re usually the one to have your feet well on the ground. It isn’t like you to get fanciful.’

  ‘I know but I’m spooked too. Keep me informed, Alex. Day or night.’

  ‘I will. Goodbye, Martha.’

  She hung up then.

  Randall was just about to head for the mortuary when Delia Shaw stopped him. ‘Sir,’ she said. ‘I’ve been thinking.’

  Alex Randall took in her intelligent brown eyes, her scrubbed, eager face. ‘Yes?’

  ‘It’s something that the Isaacs pointed out, sir,’ she said.

  ‘Yes,’ Randall said again.

  ‘They said, “None of our friends would risk having a baby away from a hospital, doctors, a midwife, pain relief, that sort of thing”.’

  ‘Yes?’ Alex couldn’t see where this was leading.

  Delia Shaw ploughed on. ‘So the person who was delivered of the baby Alice Sedgewick brought to the hospital was outside these parameters.’

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘Someone not in that social strata. It made me focus on the baby’s mother instead of on the baby, sir. She is from a damaged and deprived background, sir. Someone outside society.’

  He looked at her. It was a new and interesting angle.

  ‘The house in The Mount is valuable, sir, but our mother was someone alien, someone without funds or access to the NHS.’

  Randall was silent. ‘Anything more?’ he asked gently.

  Delia Shaw dropped her eyes. ‘No, sir. I hadn’t really thought beyond
that.’

  Randall put his hand on the WPC’s shoulder. ‘Thank you,’ he said. ‘You’ve been most helpful and I think I agree with you. Perhaps you’ll consider being seconded to the plain-clothes department at some point?’

  WPC Shaw coloured up. ‘That’d be great, sir.’

  THIRTEEN

  Martha worried over the new development for half the evening. This case was haunting her more than any other. Was it simply because it was a baby who had died? Or was it to do with what she suspected lay behind the discovery. There was both wealth and poverty here, knowledge and ignorance, care and neglect. Behind every crime is a character, sometimes vulnerable, sometimes cruel. But behind this case she sensed someone who was so cold as to be devoid of any normal human emotion. We are all programmed to love babies, to want to care for them, protect them. They represent the ultimate vulnerability. So to discard one in this way shocked her.

  She worried about Alex too. They had worked together on a number of cases and she had watched as life had twisted and turned for both of them. He had become a trusted colleague, though not a close friend. He was not someone who invited intimacies. Somewhere, she sensed, there was, carefully and deeply buried, some private tragedy in his life that made him keep people at arm’s length. He struggled to conceal this secret from everybody and particularly her. She sighed. No one would call Randall a handsome man with his craggy, irregular features, lean, spare frame and a tendency to restlessness, but as so often happens, the odd collection of physical and mental characteristics made him attractive. He was also a very proud person and she sensed that to uncover his secret would be to leave him exposed and raw. He would do anything to preserve his facade. But real friends do not hide behind walls.

  One of the things that puzzled her was that the concealment of a newborn’s body was not necessary in these modern times. Ever since abortion had been legalized in 1967, there had been no need to give birth to an unwelcome baby, and if you did, there were plenty of willing arms to stretch out and adopt it.

  So, why give birth in a house? Why hide a baby’s body unless you had murdered it and – according to Mark Randall – this could not be proved. She asked herself other questions. If this case wasn’t solved would it have serious repercussions? Would it leave someone free to commit the same crime again – and again? Were there other babies hidden in various places, an attic, beneath a patio? She tried to put herself in the position of just having given birth, the baby dying, concealing it, and felt only an overwhelming sense of vulnerability. She gave up; it was all beyond her comprehension. Her feeling of unease wasn’t helped by the headline in the evening paper.

  Police find bones in suspect’s house

  Police have searched a second house connected with the woman who brought a child’s body to the Royal Shrewsbury Hospital just over one week ago.

  There was little else of substance but as she read through the text her heart sank. It was just what Alex had feared. She couldn’t object to it. The article was factual but it was the omitted details which made it dangerous. The paper failed to mention that it had not been confirmed that the bones were human. As she read it through for a second time she wished that the paper had chosen some other lead story.

  It could have repercussions.

  Even switching the television on she couldn’t escape the story. It was repeated by the local news correspondent, standing right outside number 41, The Mount. She studied the background and made a silent plea that Alice Sedgewick was not tuned in to the local news. She studied the background as the report was aired. There was no sign of life around the house. The curtains were drawn. There was one car in the drive and no movement at all.

  What, she wondered, was going on inside?

  She spent the evening fretting and unable to enjoy it even when Sukey, Agnetha and she sat and watched Casino Royal for the umpteenth time. It was a few years old now, but still one of their favourite films. But tonight even Daniel Craig couldn’t lift her out of her concern.

  She was still distracted when she got ready for bed and spent a fitful night, tormented by dreams of babies crying, tiny legs kicking, baby hands grasping.

  Alex Randall too was having a troubled evening. As he had been driving home he had been chewing over Delia Shaw’s words and as though he had punched a hole through a paper wall, he saw the new dimension it would give to the case. So he forced himself to consider the case from this new and different angle and ask the right questions. What sort of woman would have had a child under these circumstances? Someone very young. Someone naive. Someone ignorant and vulnerable. Someone who could be exploited. Someone who had failed to access the very accessible National Health Service.

  He turned into his drive, almost avoiding looking at his home, feeling the usual sinking sensation. He sat for a while in his car, reluctant to move and enter the house. Then the front door opened.

  Friday

  He rang her so early he broke into the tail end of yet another distorted and distressing dream, this time of a large bird hovering over a tombstone, squawking throatily and pecking at the moss that obscured the chiselled lettering on the stone. It was a very vivid dream. She could see all the detail of the bird, feathers stuck to its beak where it had pecked carrion, strands of pinkish flesh, the blue-black on its feathered wings. As it pecked she deciphered some of the words of the engraving: In Loving Memory of Poppy, darling daughter . A few more pecks and she would read more detail. But the bird stopped pecking and perched on the top of the stone, giving a harsh caw. And then the cawing translated into a telephone ringing. She picked up the receiver and couldn’t stop herself from giving an enormous yawn into it.

  ‘He-e-llo?’

  She wasn’t really surprised to hear Alex’s voice. He had been so much in her thoughts, even through the nightmare.

  ‘I’m sorry to ring you so early,’ he said, speaking in a steady, controlled voice which didn’t fool her for a moment, ‘but I have both good news and bad news and you did ask me to keep you up to date,’ he reminded her.

  ‘I’m beginning to regret it,’ she said, smiling. ‘I’m not even properly awake yet. I saw the headlines last night, Alex,’ she added. ‘I wish they’d left it for a day or two. Anyway, you’ve interrupted a particularly unpleasant dream for which maybe I should be grateful.’ She reflected. ‘Good or bad, you said. Well… it’s too early for bad news.’ She sat up, awake now. ‘So, give me the good. Aaagh.’ She gave another huge yawn.

  ‘The good news is this,’ he said. ‘The bones are not human but that of a small dog. It was confirmed by Dr Sullivan last night. He took a quick look and had no doubt. Some time ago someone must have buried a pet dog and then a year or two later a patio was built over the grave.’ He paused. ‘There’s nothing suspicious about it and nothing else sinister in that area.’

  ‘That is good news,’ she said. ‘And a relief, though it doesn’t explain why Aaron Sedgewick reacted in such a dramatic way when he learned the patio was to be dug up, does it, Alex? What did he suspect his wife had done? Not buried a family pet, that’s for certain. He’d have said.’

  ‘I don’t know, Martha. But we’ll almost certainly get nothing more out of him.’

  ‘And her?’

  ‘We’ll never get anything more out of her, Martha,’ he said quietly. ‘Alice Sedgewick committed suicide some time in the night.’

  ‘No? Oh no. Alex.’ The worst of it was that she knew that the dark shadow that both of them had sensed yesterday evening had been exactly this, that Alice Sedgewick would kill herself.

  Alex repeated the news slowly and factually. ‘I worried half the night about her fragile state of mind and the story in the newspaper. If only they’d kept it back just for twenty-four hours. We could have released the fact that the bones were not human. It would have made all the difference. I hoped she wouldn’t read it or hear it on the television but she obviously did.’

  ‘You’re certain it was suicide?’

  ‘Pretty much so. Barbiturat
es and alcohol and she had a history of mental instability. Just look at the way she behaved last Saturday. Irrational.’

  ‘Yes. So it would appear. Did she leave a note?’

  ‘It appears not. At least none has been found.’

  ‘Was her husband at home at the time?’

  ‘No,’ Alex said dryly, ‘he was away on business yet again. Not far away. Coventry this time. According to him he’d planned to be away until the middle of next week. He tried to ring her this morning and got no reply so he was worried.’

  ‘It must have been very early,’ she observed, glancing at her bedside alarm. It was seven fifteen.

  ‘A friend rang him late last night, apparently, telling him about the newspaper article. He tried to ring his wife but got no reply. He imagined she was either watching television or had had a couple of drinks and gone to bed with some sleeping tablets so didn’t worry too much. When he got no reply again this morning he asked Mrs Palk to call in and check that everything was all right. She has a key to the house.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Yes. I thought that. Anyway she let herself in and found Alice spreadeagled across the bed, fully clothed, bottle of barbiturates in her hand, a glass of water spilt on the floor. She said the body was cool to the touch which inclined us to think that she had died some time during the previous evening or the early part of the night. The police surgeon was called at six and pronounced her dead at seven a.m.’

  He’d wasted no time in letting her know.

  She was silent for a minute, gathering her thoughts. Then she spoke. ‘Check it, Alex,’ she urged. ‘Check it all. Is there a newspaper at home? Was she in the habit of watching the local evening news on the television? Which friend called him, the hotel he’s at. Log the calls to his home and to Mrs Palk. Check it,’ she repeated. ‘Check it all.’