Never Coming Home

by Evonne Wareham

  ‘Know what?’

  ‘That you’re not fucking Superman, but the woman doesn’t care.’ Hand on the door, Bobby looked back. ‘You have to tell her, Devlin. If she doesn’t want to hear, that’s a whole different story. Then I still may have to shoot you.’ He made a gun with the fingers of his right hand, popped off a shot and left his friend staring at a closed door.

  Devlin watched the door for a while. Nothing happened. No one came in. After a while he hitched his wallet and his cell from his pocket, extracted a business card, with fingers that shook very slightly, and began to dial.

  Bobby lounged in a chair in the foyer of the hotel, long legs spread out in front of him, wary eyes on the corridor and the door to the empty conference room, wondering what sort of explosion he might have set in train. He’d backed a hunch, giving Devlin a shove in what he hoped was the right direction. Hope was the right word. If Devlin came out of the door looking for trouble then it was going to be touch and go on some of Bobby’s favourite body parts.

  The door opened. Slowly. Devlin’s face looked curiously blank. Oh shit.

  ‘She wasn’t there.’ He stood in front of Bobby’s chair. ‘I spoke to some guy, at her business. She’s on her way to the airport. The Italian police located a vineyard that Elmore owned, away from the farmhouse. They found a grave.’

  Chapter Twenty-One

  ‘Signora Elmore is here. She is in the interview room downstairs.’ The messenger delivered the news and shut the door behind him, leaving the occupants of the room alone, to consider the information.

  The police Inspector sighed. ‘She has wasted very little time in getting here. Ah, I was afraid she would do this, when I telephoned her in London. A woman, searching for her child …’ He made a what-can-you-do gesture. ‘I cannot say I was not warned. Our colleagues in Florence cautioned me, when they knew I would have to contact her. They anticipated this.’

  ‘It would have been better if she had not come. You requested her to send the additional test material. She can achieve nothing here.’

  The Inspector looked up at his junior officer, standing at the window, watching the street. He sighed again. The callousness of youth. One day he would understand.

  ‘You have no children.’

  ‘No.’ The younger man turned from the window, frowning. ‘She arrives here, unannounced, expecting information –’

  ‘Not exactly unannounced.’

  ‘A telephone call, from Pisa airport?’ The junior officer indicated his disapproval, with an abrupt sweep of his hand. ‘You will see her?’

  ‘How can I not?’ The Inspector looked down at the brief forensic report on his desk. ‘But what am I to do with this? Until the … Ah!’ He lifted the phone as it began to ring. The call was brief. ‘The man from the forensic laboratory has arrived. Would you show him up? And then see that Signora Elmore has everything she needs. Tell her I will be with her soon.’

  He waited, impassive, fingering the report, until his visitor was brought in and seated. He offered coffee and it was declined.

  The Inspector surveyed his visitor and sighed. When had experts become so young? This one might perhaps begin shaving in a month or two. He was very nervous, fidgeting in his seat. Or was that the congenital inability to sit still that seemed to afflict the young these days? The report he’d presented had been careful and thorough, as far as it went. The Inspector felt another sigh rising, and stifled it.

  ‘Your results.’ He tapped the folder. ‘I realise this is only your initial report, but it presents me with several difficulties.’ He steepled his hands. ‘I requested your presence, in the hope of resolving the most pressing of them. You will appreciate my dilemma. Downstairs, in another office, I have a young woman, waiting to be told if we have found the body of her daughter.’

  The expert took off his glasses, polished them on the sleeve of his shirt and put them back on again. The Inspector knew a delaying tactic when he saw one. He waited for the younger man to gather his thoughts.

  When he had, ‘That report contains only my preliminary findings. I make that clear. The body was … not in a good state. I would wish to do more tests before presenting you with my final statement. As you are also aware, the remains had been moved.’

  ‘Buried at some other location, then reburied at the vineyard.’ The Inspector nodded.

  ‘Both those factors have complicated the situation. Also we cannot, at this point, determine the cause of death.’ The younger man ducked his head. ‘You already know that.’

  The Inspector acknowledged, with a wave of his hand. ‘But the findings of the DNA tests?’ he persisted. ‘You compared the sample from the body with that provided earlier this month, in Florence, by Signora Elmore?’

  The young man wriggled as if the chair was uncomfortable. ‘Yes, but that cannot be considered conclusive. I did not make a comparison with the father. There was a delay with the samples. I am still awaiting them,’ he declared, aggrieved. ‘But that does not matter. I will make further tests, with something from Mrs Elmore’s daughter. That is the approved course. Then I can make a commitment.’

  ‘But this report – ’ The Inspector put his hands flat on the desk. ‘The DNA matches.’

  The expert sat up straight. ‘I did not say that. I am not prepared to say that.’

  ‘Then what would you be prepared to say?’

  The scientist looked down at his hands, swallowed. ‘There are more similarities between the DNA of Signora Elmore, and that of the child’s body, than would be expected in two random samples.’

  ‘There is a relationship between Signora Elmore and the child who was buried in the field.’

  The scientist gave the Inspector a hunted look, before inclining his head. ‘My findings would support that. My preliminary findings,’ he emphasised. ‘Signora Elmore and the body share similar DNA.’

  ‘Just as they would if they were mother and daughter,’ the Inspector confirmed sadly. He stood, walking around the desk, to put his hand on the younger man’s shoulder. ‘Finish your tests as soon as you can, per favore. Signora Elmore will undoubtedly have brought the item you need. I will make sure it is at the desk downstairs, for you to take away with you.’ He moved towards the door.

  ‘What are you going to tell Signora Elmore?’

  ‘I can only tell her what you have told me.’

  ‘Do you have to tell her anything at all?’

  The Inspector considered. ‘I believe I do. She seems an intelligent woman. She will understand your position.’

  ‘You know what she’s going to think! That we have found the body of her child.’

  ‘Of course. And I will explain that until you conduct your further tests, we cannot declare ourselves certain. But in the circumstances it is difficult to see what other conclusion can be drawn. What other possibility is there?’

  Devlin leaned against the car he’d hired at the airport, watching the entrance to the police station. He’d been re-directed to the small hill town from police headquarters in Florence. An enquiry at the desk had confirmed that Signora Elmore had arrived. He hadn’t been invited to wait.

  He studied the building, inspecting the line of windows overlooking the street. Kaz was in there somewhere, learning God-knew-what about a small, abandoned grave. Devlin felt his stomach give an unaccustomed lurch. How the hell did a woman take that kind of news? Everything about Kaz Elmore turned him inside out and he was still coming back for more, but how did you ever make something like that right? All he could do was stand and wait. He’d positioned himself here, where she couldn’t fail to see him when she came out. Giving her a choice. There was sweat running along his spine. If she walked straight past him –

  He straightened up as a small figure appeared at the entrance to the building. God, he’d never realised how tiny she was. Fragile, delicate, but indomitabl
e. Every muscle in his body tensed as she looked directly at him. For a second she stood, just looking. Then she crossed the road and walked straight into his arms.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  He could feel her trembling, or maybe it was him?

  ‘What …’ She coughed, tried again. ‘What are you doing here?’

  ‘I was in Dublin. I spoke to a guy in your office and got on the next plane. I guess it was the right thing?’ He scanned her face. She was God-awful pale, with dark smudges under her eyes. And still beautiful. She gave a tiny nod. Something in his chest shifted.

  ‘Can we get out of here?’ She was looking at the car, then up at him. ‘I’d like to …’ She stopped, swallowed. Wordlessly Devlin opened the car door, settled her in the seat, fastened the seatbelt around her, then loped around to the driver’s side.

  ‘Would you take me … I’d like to go to the place where they found her.’

  ‘It …’ Devlin all but gagged on the words. ‘It is Jamie?’

  Kaz knotted her hands in her lap. ‘They can’t say for certain. Not yet. They found the place just after we left, and they’ve done some forensic examinations … enough to suspect …’ She stopped. ‘They still have to do more tests. The Inspector was very kind. He explained it to me very carefully.’ Hesitantly she repeated what the man had told her. ‘I want to still have hope. I want to think that they’re wrong, but how can it not be Jamie?’

  It was very quiet. A pocket of land, with a few rows of vines, under a hot blue sky. Police markers still surrounded an area in one corner, where the ground had been extensively disturbed. Devlin leaned against a rock that marked the field boundary. High overhead a bird hovered, and a small lizard darted across the boulder and disappeared under it. Kaz went quietly up to the edge of the markers and stood for a long time. Then she came back to him.

  ‘It’s a good place. If she’d stayed buried here, it would have been okay.’ She looked around. ‘I had no idea Jeff owned this.’ Her face worked. ‘The farmhouse, and all this land? The police said he bought it outright.’

  Devlin leaned back against the rough surface of the rock. There were a lot of things about Jeff Elmore that his ex-wife didn’t suspect. Now was as good a time as any.

  ‘Did you know that Jeff had Jamie insured?’

  ‘What?’ Kaz turned from her minute inspection of the ground, tilting her head. ‘Well yes – travel insurance. I signed some papers. It was for medical expenses, lost baggage, that sort of stuff.’

  ‘No,’ Devlin corrected. ‘Life insurance. Just over a year ago, Jeff insured Jamie’s life – for a million.’ He leaned forward, cursing, as Kaz swayed slightly. He gathered her hard against his chest. ‘Sod it, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have thrown that at you, after everything else.’

  ‘No.’ She put a hand to his mouth, to cut him off, looking up intently into his eyes. ‘There’s more, isn’t there?’

  Devlin nodded. ‘Me and Bobby Hoag – we’ve been digging. That’s why I rang your office. Get in the car, and I’ll tell you.’

  They sat in the shade of a tree, with the doors open. There was no breeze. Foraging bees hummed. The lizard came back out, to bask on the rock.

  ‘When I got back, I wanted …’ Devlin stopped, looking at his hands. How could he explain why he’d done what he’d done, when he didn’t understand it himself? ‘Bobby had already talked to a few people – the other girl’s mother, her grandmother, someone from the sheriff’s office, so he had a stake in it. We just carried on from there.’

  He stared through the windscreen, reluctant to continue. He’d sat like this before, in out-of-the-way places, making reports in terse phrases, but never to a woman who had lost a child. He almost flinched as Kaz’s hand found his forearm, fingers tentative against the tense muscles, prompting him to go on.

  At last he turned. ‘Bobby and I put this together. A lot of the stuff – I got it through contacts, people who have to stay anonymous, who’d deny flat out what they told me, or gave me, if they were asked. So – there are gaps, and not much of it can be proved. Not like a lawyer would need to prove it. It’s ugly, and it may not be true.’

  ‘But you think it is?’

  ‘Oh, yes.’

  ‘Then I want to hear it.’

  Devlin shifted, cleared his throat. ‘Okay, then. This is what we have. Jeff and his girlfriend picked up the other little girl, Sally Ann, way before the accident. She was with them and Jamie for five days at a motel. The day of the crash they moved to another place, fifty miles away. Jeff checked them in alone – two adults, one child. The Sheriff confirmed it when he investigated. It looked perfectly above board. Sally Ann had already dropped off the radar.’

  ‘You mean …’ Kaz’s voice wavered.

  ‘Sally Ann was selected for the switch. She wasn’t anything like Jamie, but that didn’t matter. She was there. Running away from her mother. They probably promised to get her to her grandmother in Lynchburg. On the night of the accident, according to Jeff’s account to the Sheriff, he and Gemma were breaking up. He was tired of her drinking and suspected she was taking drugs. Didn’t want her around his daughter any more. He bought her the car, as a sweetener, and told her to go. There was a row and she took off. The Sheriff checked it out. A few people at the motel remembered a bit of banging and shouting around about the time, but no one saw anything. When Jeff found out Gemma had taken Jamie with her, as some sort of revenge, he chased after them. She’d been downing vodka and popping pills. He was frantic to catch them, but he chose the wrong direction.’

  ‘That wasn’t the version I got.’ She pushed her hair away from her face. ‘I didn’t talk directly to the police. Thinking about it now, Jeff made sure that he kept me away from them. I wasn’t a witness, so they didn’t need to see me, and it never occurred to me to ask to see them. Jeff said he had no idea why Jamie was with Gemma in the car. That he’d left them at the motel, by the pool.’ Her voice iced in horror. ‘He knew all along that the girl in the car wasn’t Jamie.’ Her hand crawled down Devlin’s arm, found his fingers and held on.

  ‘Neither version was true. None of it was.’ Devlin’s voice was flat. ‘Gemma Smith didn’t drink and she didn’t do drugs. Hated them, in fact. I don’t know how she was persuaded to take the stuff. It was probably forced into her. If she’d been assaulted and terrified, she would have been desperate to get away, even though she wasn’t fit to drive. She ran, and she took the other child with her. She was allowed to get away, and to take the old wreck of a car Jeff supposedly bought to sweeten her. That car …’ He stopped, shaking his head. ‘It was an accident in waiting. The airbags were blown and the brakes were defective, and there’s evidence it was deliberately run off the road. I don’t think Jeff did go looking in the wrong direction. I remember a car passing, when I was … when I was with Sally Ann. I’m betting that Jeff was meant to be the one who found the wreck. He must have been shitting bricks when I got there first.’ Devlin gave a harsh bark of laughter, with no warmth in it. ‘The whole thing was a setup, from start to finish. They picked up a suitable child, and kept her with them until they had everything in place, then they got Gemma Smith high, scared the living daylights out of her and shoved her off the road. It was a very carefully orchestrated plan. And I walked into the middle of it.’

  ‘You said “they”. Jeff … he didn’t …’ She couldn’t go on.

  ‘He didn’t do it alone. He may not even have been there until it was time to find the wreck. It was a professional job. Hell, it fooled me.’ He turned to look at Kaz. ‘Jeff was part of it, he had to be. I guess he commissioned it.’

  ‘For the insurance money?’ Kaz frowned.

  ‘It hangs together.’

  ‘He got Jamie and all that money,’ Kaz spoke slowly. He could hear her putting it together in her own head. ‘It wasn’t just that he saw an opportunity to identify the wrong girl and
took it. The thing was planned – for over a year.’

  Abruptly she doubled over, leaning out of the car to retch, dry heaving. Devlin dug a bottle of water from between the seats and handed it to her. When she gave it back, her eyes were dark not just with pain but with fury. ‘He paid for his girlfriend and that little girl to die. No wonder he killed himself.’

  ‘Yeah, well.’ Devlin looked away. He wasn’t ready to share what he felt on that, when it was no more than a feeling. A memory, and something cold at the back of his neck. It was impossible, yet it all fitted. And if anyone could organise that accident, and scare a women into driving to her death …

  He stared out, over the vineyard. ‘You only have my take on this. This was the guy you married. Fathered your child.’

  ‘Are you telling me I shouldn’t trust you?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ He swung round. ‘I guess I’m checking that you do. Asking. I don’t know,’ he repeated. Something was catching in his chest, something important that had come out of nowhere. ‘You know sod all about me, yet you believe me.’

  Kaz closed her eyes, thinking back. When had she started to trust? Then it came. It hadn’t been a matter of starting. She’d trusted him, ever since he’d sat at her feet in her own sitting room, after she’d realised he wasn’t a journalist after a story. In what felt now like another life.

  ‘If the body they found in that field is my daughter, and I don’t see how it can not be, then that proves the key point of what you told me. My daughter didn’t die in a car crash.’

  ‘Christ.’ She could see the tension in his jaw. ‘I’d rather any way but that.’

  ‘You didn’t make it that way. Jeff did. And I would rather know than not.’

  There was silence between them for a while. Devlin broke it. ‘There were a couple of other things. After the accident, Jeff wasn’t the one who took Jamie out of the country. When he left, he left alone.’