Blood Money
Page 25
‘It’s something to do with Foundry Road, I’m sure that’s the connection,’ said Mariner. ‘I wouldn’t mind betting that the staff at Jack and the Beanstalk sometimes have to cover at Little Beans, so Christie must have worked there from time to time.’
‘That still doesn’t mean she knew anything about Zjalic. If she saw him in the street she wouldn’t know who he was or what he did.’
‘Unless Zjalic approached her.’
‘But for what?’
‘Christie worked in a nursery, looking after children. Perhaps Zjalic needed someone to help him out while he was holding the babies at Wilmott Road. Nadia and Sonja’s babies are the ones we know about, but there may have been others. Christie was a bright girl. When she saw the set-up she sussed what was going on and established through her Internet research that the operation was illegal. She might even have tried to blackmail Zjalic.’
‘She was playing with fire if she did.’
‘It gives us a compelling motive for murder. When Zjalic wouldn’t cooperate, Christie decided to report it to you. You said she had a conscience. Then when you didn’t show up on Saturday night it occurred to her that she could make money from the intelligence in a different way and phoned Jez Barclay. Maybe she was going to anyway. She’d already told her nan that she would have enough money to buy a flat and she’d either get it through blackmail or the TV company, or both.’
But Knox still wasn’t convinced. ‘If Zjalic is as powerful as we think he is, I still don’t think he’d be the kind of character to just walk up to a kid like Christie in the street and let her in on something as big as that. It’s far too risky.’
‘I don’t think he had to. Once she was in she could easily have worked it out for herself.’ But they were grabbing at speculative straws and they both knew it.
‘And at the other end of it, how does Zjalic make contact with couples who want to buy a baby?’ Knox asked.
It was the bit that Mariner hadn’t thought through, but suddenly it came to him. He scrabbled around on the desk until he came up with the orange flyer. Reading it again it made perfect sense. ‘Take another look at this,’ he said handing it to Knox. ‘We made the assumption that it offers further fertility treatment, but the wording says nothing about “treatment”. All it says is: new hope for infertile couples. What greater hope could there be than the offer of a baby?’
‘Go on.’ Knox was still dubious.
‘This is the other end of the operation. Couples get these flyers, ring the number and Zjalic offers them a baby. Christie, it seems, wanted a baby, so the flyer’s how Christie got involved. She found it or was given it, called the number and was offered a baby. The first step of that is some kind of bogus “clinic” appointment, which would explain the entry on her calendar. Until she kept the appointment she wouldn’t have known what this offer was. She might even have got as far as meeting with Zjalic, then perhaps she recognised him from Foundry Road and realised what he was up to.’
‘But where would Christie have got hold of the flyer?’ said Knox. ‘She hadn’t been to the fertility clinic and we haven’t seen them around anywhere, so where did it come from?’
It was another question that Mariner couldn’t answer. ‘But all of this gives us two main priorities. Contact the immigration centre and find out if there are any other girls who have had babies in this country during the last twelve months, and had them sent home to their families or to an orphanage. And I want to find Goran Zjalic.’
Surveillance was an expensive option, but once Mariner had laid out his case, DCI Sharp could see its value. ‘Whatever may be going on here, I think Goran Zjalic will be an interesting man to meet.’
Knox quickly came through with a result from the immigration centre. ‘A couple of girls have come forward who were taken to other stations in the city and one from Stafford,’ he told Mariner. ‘One of them had her baby eight weeks ago. She had a picture that they’ve faxed through to us.’
‘Do you think we could run it by the neighbours in Wilmott Road, see if they recognise it?’ To him a baby was a baby, but maybe it was different for other people.
‘We don’t have to, boss.’ Knox handed Mariner the copied sheet.
Mariner stared in disbelief. Even he didn’t need any clues. There was no mistaking those big dark eyes. ‘It’s baby Ellie,’ he said.
‘Zjalic didn’t need Christie to help look after the babies,’ said Knox. ‘He put them into the nursery while they were waiting to be adopted,’ said Knox.
‘It’s like a holding station,’ said Mariner.
‘When I brought Christie up here to your office for the efit, she thought she recognised that picture.’ Knox gestured towards the mock-up of Madeleine, still stuck to the wall. ‘She thought she’d been into the nursery. At the time it seemed too far fetched so I didn’t push it, but maybe she was right.’
Mariner was thoughtful. ‘We need to find out if Trudy Barratt recognises Zjalic.’
‘He wouldn’t do the business himself though, would he? The girl who was supposedly Ellie’s nanny came to collect her,’ Knox reminded him. ‘Boss?’
But Mariner didn’t respond straightaway, because the understanding of what was really going on had ploughed into him like a ten ton truck.
‘Boss?’ Knox tried again.
‘Mrs Barratt knows Goran Zjalic all right,’ said Mariner, eventually. ‘The nursery is all part of the scam.’
Chapter Sixteen
‘I don’t get it,’ said Knox, bewildered.
‘Think back to the day of Jessica Klinnemann’s abduction, ’ Mariner said. ‘We ruled out the possibility that she had been taken in error, on the grounds that every mother knows her baby. But what if the mother who came to the nursery that afternoon didn’t know her baby, because she’d never met it before. What if Goran Zjalic offers these babies for adoption and the nursery is a front for the handover.’
‘So on the day Jessica went missing the baby up for adoption was baby Ellie.’ Knox was catching up and Mariner was encouraged.
‘Ellie would be brought into the nursery, like Jessica, early in the morning and handed over to Trudy Barratt. Apart from her, the staff would have no way of knowing who the mother of the child is. The plan then is that sometime during the day the adoptive mother comes to the nursery and Trudy Barratt hands “back” the baby she has come to collect and presumably is handsomely rewarded for her trouble. The adoptive mother goes away with her new baby, and no one else is any the wiser.’
‘But on the day Jessica disappeared Trudy Barratt wasn’t there.’
‘Exactly. We assumed that the woman’s enquiry to Christie was to ensure that the manager was out of the way, but in fact it was the opposite; the woman needed Trudy Barratt to be there, to take her and introduce her to her new baby. When Christie told her that Mrs Barratt was out of the building and offered to take her to the crèche, the woman was left with no choice but to bluff her way through and take a baby. When she approached Jessica, Kam helpfully gave her the baby’s name. And the lack of reaction from the staff may have led her to think that she had, by chance, even chosen the right baby. After all, there was a one in three chance that she would. Either way she had to brazen it out and walk out of the nursery with a baby.’
‘But she took the wrong one.’
‘Yes, she should have taken Ellie, which is why Ellie was left behind in the nursery long after the other children had gone, and was eventually collected by the girl Trudy Barratt said was the nanny.’ Mariner recalled the so-called nanny who came to collect Ellie in the beaten-up car, and how he’d compared her with Katarina. The similarity was closer than he’d realised. ‘I’d lay bets that the phone call Mrs Barratt made when she got back to the nursery was telling Zjalic that there had been a cock-up, and urging him to arrange for Ellie to be collected. Otherwise she was going to have to account to us for a spare baby, which would be pretty embarrassing.’
‘It explains how it naturally came to the abductor t
o talk about “her” baby, too,’ added Knox. ‘She said it because in her mind she was collecting her baby, bought and paid for.
‘But if that’s what happened, why didn’t the woman who took Jessica come forward straightaway when she realised what had happened? She must have seen or heard something. It was all over the news.’
‘Because she would have uncovered the whole scam and jeopardised her chances of keeping the child.’
‘She’d go that far?’
‘There are few more single-minded people than women who want a child but are unable to have one. I think these women are carefully chosen.’
‘But how, and who chooses them?’
‘It all comes back to the flyer. I think the reason we haven’t come across any of these flyers is because couples are very carefully targeted. They’ll be couples who are desperate for a child and who won’t ask too many questions. They’ll have gone through a lot to get this far and they’re not going to give it up easily. Instead of immediately coming forward, this woman waited and worked out a way of getting Jessica safely and anonymously back to us. Jessica had to be returned. With all the publicity she could never have been absorbed into a family without arousing suspicion. Zjalic was probably behind that too. My guess would be that this woman, and probably her husband or partner, holed up in a place somewhere until the fuss died down.’
‘Betty Wrigley,’ said Knox.
‘Is that supposed to mean something?’
Knox described his encounter with the holiday cottage owner. ‘I had her taped as an interfering old bat, but if your theory’s right then she could have been on to something.’
Mariner was inclined to agree. ‘Renting a holiday cottage would be an ideal way of spending a few days with a new baby and getting to know it before introducing it to the family. The couple may have even had a cover story, that they were adopting from abroad. We should have a forensic team sent up to the cottage and go over it with a fine tooth comb. And let’s talk to Betty Wrigley again.’
‘She’ll be over the moon,’ said Knox.
Mrs Wrigley being supremely house-proud, the stone cottage, which lay in an isolated spot at the end of a rough track, had been thoroughly cleaned. ‘At the moment,’ Mariner told the forensic team, ‘we’re looking for any evidence that Jessica Klinnemann may have been here, or anything to link with the abduction.’
Meanwhile Mariner and Tony Knox went to talk to Betty Wrigley.
‘Could you talk us through the transaction again?’ Mariner asked.
Betty Wrigley visibly puffed up. ‘I advertise in a number of magazines and on the Internet. As generally happens, Mr Jones phoned at first to ask if the cottage was free for that week. He’d seen it online. It was available so I made a provisional reservation, and a few days later he sent me a letter confirming the booking and enclosing the cash deposit.’
‘Did you keep any of the paperwork?’
‘Of course. I file everything.’
But Mr Jones’s letter brought no new information, there was no postal address and nothing to identify the sender except for a Manchester postmark. With Mrs Wrigley’s permission Mariner kept it for forensic testing, but he wasn’t optimistic.
‘Mr and Mrs Jones must have driven here,’ Mariner said. ‘Do you know what make their car was?’
‘Yes, it was a nice black one. A hatchback,’ said Betty Wrigley, certain that she was playing a vital role.
Knox and Mariner exchanged a look. ‘Well thanks anyway,’ Mariner said, praying that the forensics team would turn up something. They were walking out of the door when Wrigley said: ‘I wrote down the number. Would that help?’
A short enquiry to the DVLA identified the black Renault Megane as belonging to a David Scanlon, 24 Goldfinch Drive, Salford, Manchester. A second vehicle was registered to his spouse, Paula.
‘Talks like Deirdre off Coronation Street,’ said Mariner, quoting what Christie had told them. She’d had an ear for accents too.
Mariner and Knox drove across to Greater Manchester right away, arriving in the late afternoon. They notified the local force that they were on their patch but initially it was simply a question of watching and waiting. Goldfinch Drive was a cul-de-sac of pebble-dashed bungalows, the lawns neatly tended. There were no cars on the drive of number twenty-four, but dusk turned to darkness and eventually a small hatchback appeared at the end of the road and swung into the drive, continuing down alongside the house, past the front door to a side door. A woman got out, opened the boot and unloaded a number of carrier bags into the house. Emerging again, she went round to the passenger side of the car and took out an infant’s car seat and, locking the car, went in again, closing the door behind her.
‘How do we play this?’ Knox asked, as they got out of the car.
‘Carefully,’ said Mariner. ‘Aside from taking Jessica by mistake, they may not even know that they’ve done anything wrong. The adoption might have been presented to them as entirely above board. Now that Jessica has been returned they probably think they’re in the clear. Let’s go.’
Paula Scanlon came to the front door almost immediately the bell was rung. Mariner held out his warrant card. ‘Mrs Scanlon? Might we have a word?’
Her eyes were instantly wary. ‘It’s not really convenient. I was just putting the baby to bed. Could you come back another time?’
‘Not really, this is important,’ Mariner persisted. ‘Can we come in?’
With clear reluctance Paula Scanlon let them into the bungalow, along a narrow hallway past what Mariner assumed must be bedrooms and into a lounge/diner at the back of the house. A door opened on to the kitchen and Mariner could see the side door by which she’d entered the house. In a corner of the lounge was the baby in her car seat. No doubt about it, this was baby Ellie who, like Katarina, seemed to have grown since the last time they had met.
‘And this is—?’ Mariner asked pleasantly, smiling at the baby who gurgled in response.
‘Lauren,’ Paula Scanlon snapped irritably, but the irritation masked a deeper, darker fear. It was in her eyes. She twisted her wedding ring round and round on her finger, leaving a white indentation.
‘And when was Lauren born?’
‘August twenty-eighth. She’s adopted, as I’m sure you already know.’
‘Yes,’ said Mariner. ‘We’d like to talk to you about that. All right if we sit down for a minute?’
‘If you must. I’d like my husband here. Can we wait until he gets home? He shouldn’t be long.’
‘That’s fine,’ said Mariner pleasantly.
‘While we’re waiting, can I get you a cup of tea?’ The offer was grudgingly made.
‘Thanks,’ said Mariner cheerfully. ‘That would be good.’ On her way out of the room she switched on the TV, for their entertainment presumably, though Mariner would have been content to enjoy the quiet. Paula Scanlon was gone for some time, during which they could hear taps going on and off and the clatter of mugs on a tray. Baby Ellie dropped the orange plastic teether she’d been holding and it fell to the floor. Mariner, who was nearer, picked it up and handed it back to her. ‘Hello,’ he said, smiling as he did so. Perhaps she recognised him because at that precise moment her little face crumpled and Ellie started to wail.
‘What did I do?’ said Mariner uncomprehending.
‘It’s what you said,’ remarked Knox.
In any event the noise prompted Paula Scanlon’s return. She practically threw the tray of mugs on to the table, urging them to help themselves, before hurrying over to baby Ellie, removing her from her car seat and holding her close. ‘It’s all right, darling,’ she soothed. At the same time the lounge door opened and David Scanlon appeared, clearly startled to see the gathering in his living room. Blond and bespectacled he looked shattered, his work suit crumpled.
‘These are the police,’ his wife told him.
Even in this situation good manners prevailed and Scanlon shook hands with them before asking, ‘What’s going on?’
‘Why don’t you attend to that, darling?’ said David Scanlon. ‘I’ll talk to the officers and you can join us when Lauren’s asleep.’ He leaned over and kissed the baby girl on her downy head.
‘Go ahead, Mrs Scanlon,’ Mariner said, if only for a bit of peace.
‘Can you bring her bottle when it’s ready?’ she asked her husband.
‘I’ll be through in a minute.’ As he spoke, Scanlon sat down in the armchair opposite the two policemen.
Mariner thought about asking for the TV to be turned off or at least the volume down, but knew that some people liked the background babble, and now that Ellie was out of the equation they were perfectly able to converse. ‘Mr Scanlon, we need to know exactly how you came to adopt Lauren, and we’ll need to see all the paperwork you have for her,’ Mariner began. They’d come on to baby Jessica later. ‘How did Lauren come to be with you?’
Unlike his wife, Scanlon seemed sanguine about it. ‘We went though a private adoption agency. Horizons,’ he told them, calmly.
‘How did you find out about Horizons?’
Something bleeped in the kitchen. ‘That’s Lauren’s bottle warmer. Do you mind?’
‘No, carry on.’
‘She’s well cared for,’ remarked Knox, when Scanlon was out of the room.
Mariner couldn’t disagree. ‘The irony is that she’s probably better off with them. But nonetheless, if we’re right, she has a mother desperate to be reunited with her, and what they’ve done is illegal. Not to mention the small matter of abduction.’
Moments later Scanlon was back again to pick up the story. ‘We were having treatment at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital,’ he told them. ‘It’s a long way to travel but the unit does some pioneering work and our GP had referred us. We had undergone a total of four cycles of IVF and the consultant was worried that this was taking its toll both physically and mentally on Paula. He suggested that we talk to a counsellor, so we did.’ Another piece of the puzzle slotted into place. ‘Sheila Fry,’ said Mariner.