Kim sat next to Julie, holding her hand, rubbing it absently, looking through the window at the rapidly changing weather. When she’d left home storm clouds had been building and the wind had been getting up, blowing the autumn leaves from the trees. As they sat on the settee the light began to fade outside and it started to rain. Or so Kim thought. But the rattle on the glass was much louder than from rain. She stood and walked to the window, astonished to see that hailstones were battering the glass. As she watched them pile up on the pavement and the road, they turned the world white as though it was covered by deep mid-winter snow. But instead of the muffled sounds and feelings brought on by a blanket of snow, the hailstones bounced and crashed onto the roofs of nearby houses. They smashed into cars, striking the metal with a hollow ring. They flew through the trees and bounced off the road and pathways. The street was eerily empty, as no one seemed willing to risk the stinging pain of the hailstones.
As Kim watched and marvelled at the bizarreness of the weather, it was hard not to mull over the weird synchronicity of Tyler being snatched, just as Kim had been, during her last and what turned out to be her final investigation with the Branch. Kim had been left to rot in the middle of nowhere, hoping that she would be found. Clinging to the hope that Crane and the Padre would find her in time. She just hoped Tyler hadn’t been left to rot somewhere outside and without shelter. If she had, she’d surely be dead by now from cold and dehydration. Try as she might Kim couldn’t shake the picture in her head of tiny Tyler rotting away somewhere in a shallow grave that by now would be covered with a blanket of white, ice cold, hailstones.
27
Later on BBC News – Missing Baby Tyler –new hope as telephone calls from local residents flood into the Aldershot Police Station. They are responding to an appeal for neighbours to question any sudden appearance of a baby in their neighbourhood and urging them to report anything suspicious to the police.
“You’re sure about this, boss?” Billy asked as they walked along the landing to Kerry’s flat.
“Never been surer, Billy,” Crane said. “If nothing else, I’ve got to rid myself of the feeling that Kerry has something to do with all this - the baby left at the church and the disappearance of Tyler. And I won’t rest until I see with my own eyes what’s going on in that flat.”
“Okay, boss.”
“So, remember, this is just a friendly visit. We’re calling just to see how she is, nothing formal about it.”
“Boss,” acknowledged Billy although Crane could see the doubt in his eyes. Everyone in the office knew that Draper and Anderson had forbidden any further contact with Kerry. As far as the two men were concerned there was insufficient evidence for a search warrant, or for interviewing her. But Crane disagreed. The fact that Kerry had been seen on CCTV on the Garrison the morning the baby had been left at the church and in the Co-op in North Camp 10 minutes before Tyler had been snatched was too much of a coincidence for Crane. So he and Billy were out on a limb here. Following up Crane’s hunch.
Crane stopped at Kerry’s door and rang the doorbell. “Remember, Billy,” he hissed. “Nice and friendly does it. Be your most charming - that’s an order.”
As a result, he and Billy were both smiling naturally when Kerry answered the door.
“Morning, Kerry,” Crane said. “Hope you don’t mind, but Sgt Williams and I were in the area and thought we’d just catch up with you. See how you’re doing. How’s everything? Can we come in?” and before Kerry had time to argue Crane had manoeuvred the three of them into her small living room.
“Oh, right, yes, thanks,” Kerry mumbled. “Um, do you want tea?”
“That would be nice, thanks,” Crane said looking around the room while Kerry was busy in the kitchen. The room wasn’t as chaotic as before, but still looked a mess, as though someone had made an attempt at tidying up, but never finished the job. There were piles of magazines and newspapers in one corner of the room. Opened and unopened post lay under the coffee table. Muslin cloths were draped over the settee, which was now covered with a garish throw, presumably to hide the rips in the fabric, Crane surmised. Opposite the settee and next to the one armchair in the room was a highchair with a baby in it.
Crane studied it for some moments from his place near the door. The child was dressed in a pink all in one suit. In front of the child was a small plastic bowl with mashed food in and a pink plastic spoon by its side. The child seemed unusually still. She, for Crane assumed it was Kerry’s baby girl Molly, was looking straight ahead, but Crane didn’t see her blink. Maybe she had when he’d looked around the room. Or shared a knowing look with Billy. Or watched Kerry and her bouncing ringlet curls as she went to make the tea. Try as he might to spot it, though, he couldn’t catch the child blinking.
Molly’s arms were outstretched with one of them resting on the plastic tray of the high chair. A curled fist next to the pink spoon. Again Crane watched for a movement of the hand, an uncurling of the fingers, or a grab for the spoon. But saw nothing. The hand didn’t budge. Just as the eyes didn’t blink.
As Kerry came back from the kitchen with two mugs in her hand, Crane opened his mouth to ask about the baby when Billy said, “Thanks for the drink, Kerry. Um, is everything alright?”
“Yes, of course,” she replied, looking at him askance. “Why?”
“It’s just that when we came in I got a whiff of smoke.”
“Oh, that,” Kerry laughed, the strange hollow tone of it, making her sound slightly maniacal. “I burned the toast this morning and I’ve been trying to get rid of the smell ever since.”
“I see,” Billy said, but Crane could see Billy wasn’t convinced.
“How’s Molly?” Crane asked.
“Oh, lovely as ever, thank you,” Kerry replied, a smile breaking over her face. In that smile Crane could see what he saw in his wife Tina’s smile. Love and pride for her child.
“Good, but it’s just that…” and for once Crane faltered. He was finding social small talk with a possible suspect difficult.
“Just what?”
“She seems very still.”
“How can you tell?” Kerry looked very perplexed.
“Pardon?” Crane was unsure where this bizarre conversation was going.
“She’s in the bedroom, so how can you tell she’s very still?”
“No, she’s in the high chair.”
Crane was beginning to have a real sense of the woman’s madness. He was standing a foot away from a highchair with Molly in it. A Molly that wasn’t blinking, moving or making a sound. The child’s hair was exactly the same as in her photograph near the television. Molly’s cheeks had a lovely bloom to them and she was just perfect in every sense. Apart from the fact she was as still as a statue. Crane just couldn’t understand it.
“Oh, I see now,” Kerry said.
Crane didn’t see at all, so kept quiet, waiting for an explanation.
“That’s a doll in the high chair. It’s not Molly,” and Kerry smiled. An impish grin, as though she was pleased to have outwitted Crane.
“Bloody hell,” Crane’s surprise was genuine and he took the two strides to the high chair. He stretched out a hand tentatively and stroked Molly’s face. His finger, instead of warm, pliant flesh, met with cold hard plastic and he involuntarily jumped back.
Grinning, Billy joined him and took hold of the doll’s arm, waving it up and down. “Hello Sgt Major Crane,” Billy said in his best Punch and Judy voice, making Kerry laugh.
“It’s so life like,” he said to Kerry.
“I know, it’s really good, isn’t it? They’re called reborn dolls,” she replied.
“Never heard of them.”
“Neither had I,” said Kerry. “I found them on the internet.”
It was Billy who brought back some reality to the conversation. “So where’s Molly?” he asked.
“Why, she’s asleep in her cot,” Kerry said, indicating the bedroom.
Before she could object, Billy opened
the bedroom door, quickly followed by Crane and they both bundled into the cramped room. Lying in a cot was a larger baby, at least from the outline of the body. The signature blond curls were spread across the top of the mattress. Crane indicated with his head for Billy to stand in the doorway, blocking Kerry’s access to the room. He then reached out and put a hand on the blanket covering the child. To his relief and if he was honest, astonishment, the blanket moved up and down under his hand. The child was breathing. Leaning over the cot to better see Molly’s face, she had a healthy glow about her and beautiful eye lashes on her closed eyes. Crane stood still for a moment, but she kept breathing, so he had no choice but to back out of the room.
“Sorry,” he said, closing the bedroom door. “It’s alright right, I didn’t wake her up.”
“Good,” said Kerry, “it took me a while to get her to sleep.”
“I’ll take the mugs back,” Billy said, grabbing their drinks and walking into the kitchen, while Crane engaged Kerry in baby talk. After a couple of minutes, he returned and said, “Well, we better be on our way, boss. Leave Kerry here to her chores.”
“Right, oh,” Crane said. Turning to Kerry he continued, “Thanks for the tea and for the fright over the doll,” he grinned. “Take care and if we can help at all, give us a shout. After all Alan was one of ours and we’ll do what we can for you.”
Kerry nodded, her eyes filling with tears, as she shut the door on them.
Crane and Billy didn’t speak until they turned the corner on the landing. When they did they both spoke at once.
“Bloody hell,” said Billy.
“Jesus Christ,” said Crane.
Crane shook his head. “I could have sworn that doll was real. I’ve never seen anything like it. I’ll have to look up those reborn dolls on the internet.”
“Damn creepy if you ask me, boss. Anyway there was nothing in the kitchen, nor in the bathroom. No Tyler and nothing to suggest that Tyler had ever been there.”
“Nothing unusual at all?”
“No. Just a normal kitchen with fridge and cooker in. What seemed to be a chest freezer was pushed in that utility bit the flats have, just off the kitchen. The whole place is just in a muddle, really. Stuff plonked anywhere. The bathroom was full of toiletries and towels, but again, nothing out of the ordinary. And definitely no snatched child.”
“Oh well, at least we had a look. What was that smell, by the way. I didn’t smell anything.”
“I don’t know. It was just a lingering odour really, but I don’t think it smelled of burnt toast.”
“What did it smell of, then?”
“You’re not going to believe me, boss.”
“Go on, give me a try.”
“Burnt flesh.”
“You’re right, Billy. I don’t believe you. Don’t you start going mad on me as well.”
They reached the car and Crane drove back to Provost Barracks, deep in thought. He’d tried and found nothing. But he still had this disquieting feeling that all was not right in Kerry’s world. Crane couldn’t get over how real that reborn doll looked. And how much she looked like the dead child from the church. But he had no explanation for a breathing baby in the cot. It must be Molly. Mustn’t it?
2
28
The only thing they had, as far as Crane was concerned, was his disquiet over Kerry Chandler. But he was the only one. No one else agreed with him.
He’d received the expected dressing down from Dan Draper for going to Kerry’s flat with Billy. Without authorisation. Against orders. The Captain hadn’t fallen back on his NCO days with any of the understanding Crane had hoped for. He’d well and truly become an officer. Crane was still stinging from the heated exchanges. Previously Draper had taken to calling Crane, Tom, which had moved their relationship to an even friendlier basis. Or so Crane had thought. That security of an understanding relationship with his new Captain had been shattered as soon as Crane stepped out of line.
Despite the telling off, Crane had continued his investigation. He’d spent a snatched couple of hours on the internet at home, learning all he could about reborn dolls. He’d found that many reborn owners were simply doll collectors, while others had gone through miscarriages, had no means for adoption, or suffered from empty nest syndrome. The dolls became substitute children, forever babies who would never grow. To Crane’s surprise some women dressed the dolls, washed their hair and even took them for walks in pushchairs.
Reborn hobbyists, as they were called, named the emotional response to holding their dolls ‘cuddle therapy’. It seemed studies suggested cuddling a baby caused a release of hormones which produced a sense of emotional wellbeing and some psychologists believed that this could happen with realistic dolls as well. One psychiatrist explained that mothering a real new born baby released the hormone oxytocin in the mother and hypothesized that this may explain why ‘reborn mothers’ become emotionally attached to their reborn dolls.
Of particular relevance to Kerry was the opinion that grieving parents could form emotional bonds with reborn dolls, substituting their deceased child with the doll. Some grief counsellors used them to symbolise a step in the grieving process. However, if a woman who had lost a baby grew too attached to their reborn, it could indicate their grief was not getting resolved. In that case, the likeness of the doll to the deceased child risked being harmful by becoming a permanent replacement for the grieving parents.
Crane didn’t feel quite so stupid when he read that reborn dolls looked so real they had been mistaken for real babies. In July 2008, police in Australia smashed a car window to rescue what seemed like an unconscious baby only to find it was a reborn doll. The police stated that the doll was ‘incredibly lifelike’ and that bystanders who thought a baby was dying were frightened by the incident. A similar episode was reported in the United States in which police broke the window of a Hummer to save a baby that turned out to be a reborn doll.
Some psychiatrists stated it was typical to think something is weird or creepy when it’s unknown, far from the norm, or common only to a different culture. It was natural for people to find ways of preserving memories of those they loved - from making photo albums, to visiting gravesites, to keeping an urn of ashes on the mantel.
But, Crane wondered, could an inanimate doll - one so realistic as to look alive - really replace a living being? In many ways, such a thought reminded him of a scene from the films Stepford Wives or Invasion of the Body Snatchers. It was a disturbing thought to have something that was not alive, take the place of a real human.
He decided to talk to Tina about it, so that night he gave her the information he’d printed out. She sat in the kitchen and read through it while he tidied up.
“Tom, this is really giving me the creeps. Are you seriously thinking that Kerry has replaced her dead child with a reborn doll?”
“I’m afraid I am. The question is how do I go forward on this one? I wanted to talk to the Padre about it, but he’s still away on exercise at the moment. I’m not sure what Draper will make of it, so I might run it past Derek first.”
“Will that theory give you any basis for making a case against Kerry for manslaughter of her daughter Molly? And don’t forget you saw Molly in her cot.”
“Did I though, Tina? Perhaps that was a reborn doll as well.”
“At least you didn’t find Tyler there.”
“No, but I wish I had. I’ve absolutely no idea where she is or who may have her. Kerry was my one lead on that case as well. But there was no sign of Tyler anywhere in the flat.”
“It seems there’s no sign of Tyler in any flat or house in the local area,” Tina beckoned to the copy of the Daily Mail on the kitchen table, where the disappearance of Tyler Wainwright was still front page news.
“Have you any idea how many calls are coming in from articles like that? The paper asking everyone to question what is happening in their neighbourhood. Bloody Diane Chambers has started something yet again.”
“Hasn
’t it helped?”
“Helped? Every bloody nutter in the area is calling about children playing outside their door, babies crying at night and pregnant mothers who’ve just come back from the hospital after giving birth! The trouble is they’re tying up valuable resources. We’ve had to have extra telephone lines channelled into the police station and Anderson has had to enlist extra bodies from other local stations. And they are already stretched to the limit as it is what with the searches and door knocking.”
“But you might get a lead from the appeal, surely?”
“We might,” he ran his hands through his hair. “But what if that lead is buried under an avalanche of useless information?” He began pacing the kitchen. “How long do you think it will take us to find that one lead? The one that is actually useful under all this dross?” Crane’s voice became louder as his frustration took over and he reached out and swept the offending paper off the table.
***
Derek was rather more pragmatic about Crane’s theories, when he talked to him about the reborn doll Crane had seen in Kerry’s flat.
“Sorry, Crane, I just can’t see it.”
“See what exactly, Derek?”
“See that Kerry has replaced Molly with a reborn doll. I can’t get around the fact you and Billy saw a larger baby in the cot and when you touched it, you could feel the baby breathing. Until you can explain that to me, there’s nothing for us to go on.”
“There’s only one thing that would confirm if Kerry is the mother of the dead child found at the church and that’s DNA.”
“I know that, Crane, but you haven’t got a basis for getting any sort of warrant. You can’t just go around taking people’s DNA on a hunch.”
A Soldier's Honour Box Set 2 (Sgt Major Crane crime thrillers Box Set) Page 36
