Second Opinion

by Claire Rayner

  She laughed, a fat chuckle that was so reminiscent of her younger self that for a moment George was transported to her childhood. ‘Remember how I used to make you read things by giving you quotes and not telling you what they were so you had to look them up? Here I go again. But like I say, don’t fret, honey. I’ll be OK for a while yet. I’m better at home, you know. I get a bit bewildered when things are new, that’s all.’ Again she touched George’s cheek and then looked over her shoulder at Bridget who was coming towards them with a carrier bag that was bulging cheerfully.

  ‘I know I’m stupid, I should have waited till I got to the duty-free part, but there you are — I could never resist shopping!’ she said. ‘Hey, you two, I hate to rush things, but we oughta be going through to the departure lounge, I reckon. Don’t you, George?’

  ‘Yes,’ George said. She got up and helped Vanny to her feet. She seemed so frail and, despite her cheerful words, so very much in need of care that George ached a little.

  ‘Now, I’ll carry that.’ Bridget was fussing helpfully and together the three of them made their way across the concourse to the entrance to passport control and the departure lounge, and as George stood on her side of the barrier and watched them go, the ache spread through her middle and made her feel heavy and slow and dull; but then, just as they reached the point where they would vanish, Vanny turned back and gave the signal she had used when George had been very small and scared of being left alone somewhere, like at a party full of girls in fancier dresses than hers, or on a carousel. She put her thumbs in her ears and waggled her fingers, and George laughed aloud and made the same gesture back. Vanny was right; there was no need to fret.

  Once they had gone she took a deep breath and tried to think about what to do next. Ever since she’d got home last night and listened to the messages on her ansaphone, she’d been worried about it. She’d told Gus, of course, and he’d been interested, but, as he said, couldn’t see any need to change his arrangements.

  ‘Tell me again what she said. Exactly,’ he’d said when she’d begun to protest, and she’d told him he could hear it for himself; and played the tape back at him, listening even more carefully herself, although she’d already listened several times.

  ‘Oh! You’re not there!’ the breathless little voice had said. Sylvia Hillman. ‘Oh, dear, not there. I’m not sure — Oh dear.’ Then there had been just the sound of breathing; and then she had started again, speaking rapidly and clearly in a state of high anxiety.

  ‘We’re leaving in half an hour. David said Florida. It’ll take my mind off — not that anything will really, but — Well, we’re leaving so it’ll have to be a message, won’t it? And I don’t know what to — Oh dear, what shall I — Well, I got a call, you see. My friend Mary, she’s the dearest — I mean she really does understand and care and she tries to help and she told me that she’d heard that another woman she knew who she told about the — who she told, just like me, that this woman could get babies, well, she told her, she said, and now she’s said that she’s getting a baby in the next couple of days, and she thought — Mary thought — that I should know in case I wanted to get in touch and tell her what happened to me and maybe find this woman and make her say what happened to Teddy and — Only David said no. He can’t take it any more. And he said I’m not to think about it at all and in Florida there may be babies because of all those Haitians and Puerto Ricans and — and, well, I said I wouldn’t tell you but I thought maybe I should because if you can find out who she is you can ask her what happened to Teddy. Oh! and don’t call me, will you, or David’ll be so — Oh! No, darling, not phoning, just checking the time —’ And the tape ended in a clatter as the caller hung up.

  ‘Hardly a clear message, is it?’ Gus had said and she had almost shouted at him.

  ‘Clear? Of course it isn’t! The woman’s half demented by grief and wanting and — I did explain to you, Gus.’

  ‘Oh, I know. Well, you’ve talked to her, so explain all she said to me, too.’

  ‘What she’s saying is that the same woman who gave them Teddy — and took him away — has made a deal with someone else. And promised that someone else a baby in the next few days. Which means there’s someone coming in to Heathrow with a baby any flight now —’

  ‘That’s one hell of an assumption,’ he interrupted. ‘How can you be sure it’s the same woman?’

  ‘Sylvia Hillman said it is,’ she said. ‘And don’t ask me how I know it’s Sylvia Hillman, because I do. It’s her voice.’

  ‘I never doubted that,’ he said mildly. ‘I’m just asking how you can be sure that the other woman she talks about will be getting a baby from the same source.’

  ‘I’m not sure! I’m just saying it seems likely. I’m just saying you should be certain to stake out the flights from Romania for the next few days because the likelihood is someone’ll be on one with a baby under her sweater.’

  ‘But we are,’ he pointed out, all sweet reasonableness. ‘We’re staking out the Bucharest flights in Terminal Two.’

  ‘And the other places they might come from? Frankfurt and Vienna and —’

  ‘All of them,’ he said patiently. ‘We’ll concentrate on the other flights of course, but we’ll keep a particularly close eye on Bucharest. It makes sense, doesn’t it? So there’s no need to worry. We’ll be watching. It helps to be told there’s a high chance there’ll be someone, of course. I suppose we could send someone to Florida to talk to the Hillmans.’

  ‘Oh, no, don’t do that. They’ve suffered enough. You heard what she said. She doesn’t want David — her husband — to know she called me. I don’t want to make life harder for her.’

  ‘Fair enough. Anyway, I don’t really think there’s any need. We’re doing all we can. Leave it to us, George. I promise you we’ll be watching like the proverbials.’

  And she had had to settle for that. In the fuss of getting Vanny and Bridget off, it had been fairly easy to keep her anxiety at bay; now, however, it all came back. What was happening? Would they spot the courier and the baby or let her slip through? Would they —

  She stopped herself. This was silly. There was nothing else she could do. She’d told Gus what Sylvia had said; the rest was up to him. And now she stood and hovered uncertainly in the middle of the concourse at Terminal Three, not sure what to do next. She’d arranged to take the whole day off from the hospital and now it was only just gone eleven-thirty in the morning; how would she fill in the rest of the day? Gus had made it clear that there was little more she could do with the case; all day yesterday he’d been busy about what he called the nuts and bolts of detecting; chasing information about Julia Arundel’s car, setting up surveillance here at Heathrow, and today she had had no time to talk to him. She’d wanted, when she woke, to call him again and report her now total conviction that there would be a baby coming in today or the day after, but from the moment they had woken this morning, the old ladies had been in a fever of busyness and had drawn her into it, unpacking cases that had been packed the day before so that they could rearrange them and then starting all over again.

  But now she had got them here and safely into the departure lounge for the noon flight to New York, where they’d pick up a connection to Buffalo, there was nothing left she could do but think. And some of the thoughts were not as agreeable as they might be. Dear Ma, she told herself. Dear Ma. She’s all right, really. Isn’t she?

  She made a detour as she crossed the concourse, stopping at the book shop. It was a big one and there was always the possibility that they had a copy, but the girl at the till gaped at her when she asked for the works of Shakespeare, and pointed to the piles of blockbusters and blood-dripping thrillers that were everywhere.

  ‘We only have normal books,’ she said. ‘Sorree!’ George sighed and went. She’d have to wait till she got home to get Vanny’s message.

  It wasn’t until she was almost outside the building on her way to the underground station and the journey back to town �
� they had come in a taxi, she and the old ladies, but she saw no need to be so extravagant on the way home — that she saw the sign, and stopped. ‘Transfers to Terminals One, Two and Four,’ it was headed and then gave instructions. She bit her lip and thought for a moment and then headed in the direction of Terminal Two. At last she had something to do.

  ‘Do me a favour,’ Rupert Dudley said. ‘I got enough on my plate without having you here and all. If you don’t mind my saying so.’

  ‘It wouldn’t make any difference if I did,’ George said tartly. ‘Anyway, I’m not asking you to be glad I’m here. I’m only asking if I can be useful. I know the people in the hospital by sight a hell of a lot better than you do. If the courier’s one of them then I could identify —’

  ‘This is a police matter,’ Dudley said. ‘I don’t need a pathologist, thanks all the same. If I do I’ll put out a call for you in the normal manner.’

  ‘If Gus were here —’ George began and then bit back the words, realizing too late how foolish it might be to even mention him, and she was right. Dudley glowered and turned away with some ostentation to speak to one of his men, ignoring her completely.

  George seethed inside, but there was nothing she could do. She had had enough trouble finding them in the first place and then getting in to them. The Customs man leaning near the entrance to the observation room where they were able to overlook the Customs area had needed a good deal of convincing that she had a right to talk to the policemen who were in there, but had given in when she’d caught sight of Rupert behind him and called out, with a familiarity she had never used before, ‘Hey, Roop! Tell this guy you’re expecting me, will you?’ Dudley had been so surprised he’d just stared and the man had taken this as acknowledgement and let her in.

  Now as she came out of the room he looked at her sideways and she flushed a little, feeling his triumph, and went as fast as she could till she lost herself in the people milling around on the other side of the barriers that had been set up where the Customs Hall exit debouched into the main concourse. And then stopped.

  Dammit all to hell and back, she wouldn’t be thwarted. So Rupert Dudley didn’t want her there? Too goddamn bad. She’d stay out here and watch; even if they saw the courier and identified her as such — supposing of course she was going to be on the flight from Bucharest — they wouldn’t be able to stop her there in the Customs Hall, would they? Well, she amended then, they could but they wouldn’t. The person who mattered wasn’t the courier but the person who employed her, and would therefore meet her. Or him; it was always possible, George reminded herself, that they would use a man. Or was it? Could a man carry a baby strapped to his body through a long journey and not be spotted? She felt it was unlikely, without knowing why. OK, so whoever it was, even Rupert Dudley wouldn’t go off half cocked, surely, and try to intervene before contact had been made with whoever was going to meet that courier? So she would stay out here and watch …

  Passing the time was a major problem. She bought several newspapers and tried to concentrate on them, but reading standing up, as people pushed past, wasn’t easy. She could have gone away to the coffee shop of course and come back nearer the time when the plane was due in — which was, she had found out from the information desk, at three-thirty — but she feared doing that. There were a great many people meeting planes and the majority were forced to the back of the crowd and had to peer over the heads of those in front in order to see passengers emerging from the Customs Hall; she wanted a place here at the very front and was determined to keep it.

  She gave up the papers eventually and looked at the clock for the umpteenth time. The daily Bucharest flight was shown at the very bottom of the list of places from which flights were coming and she read them with a sense of awe at first; Vienna and Moscow, Frankfurt and Sofia, Budapest and Istanbul and Athens; it was like the fairy stories of her childhood of Golden Roads to Samarkand; but the glamour wore off very soon as she watched the Bucharest flight information creep up the board as one after another the planes before it arrived, decanted their passengers and let them out of the Customs Hall in squealing knots to be collected by the excited people waiting around her.

  She told herself stories about them, tried to forecast the sort of people the waiters were going to greet as their own, and never got it right. The young couple who looked like honeymooners she had marked down for the prosperous middle-aged parental types, half a dozen places along from her own spot, but were greeted boisterously by three small children in the charge of an au pair. The middle-aged couple, on the other hand, made excited welcoming gestures to a tall thin girl with a shaven head wearing outrageously excessive make-up and the shortest and tightest of skirts that even this season’s fashions had thrown up. A couple of ill-dressed people bearing several brown paper parcels in their luggage trolley were met by the most expensive-looking of uniformed chauffeurs, and a group of people who seemed, by their clothes, to be very unsophisticated indeed and likely to be thoroughly bewildered by the sheer size of Heathrow’s Terminal Two scattered confidently towards the exit, showing no need to be met and shepherded at all. She gave up her attempts at character-reading and wondered guiltily if she’d be as ineffective judging the people who arrived on the Bucharest flight as she had been judging those from Vienna, and decided to give up the exercise, gloomy though the prospect of long hours with nothing to do might be. Not until the clock crept round to three did she begin to cheer up. Only a half hour now; it wouldn’t be long.

  And then she reminded herself how silly she was being. Why on earth should there be a courier on the Bucharest plane at all? With all the fuss going on, wouldn’t Julia Arundel be pulling in her horns, playing safe for a while? To expect someone on this flight was absurd, no matter what Sylvia Hillman had said.

  Or was it? Julia Arundel didn’t know she’d been identified as the criminal. As far as she was concerned she’d got away with it. She had exchanged three babies, killed one, even killed Harry, and no one had come near identifying her. She must feel safe, George thought, must be sure it’s perfectly all right to continue. Oh, yes, there’d be a courier on this flight. No doubt about it in George’s mind. Sylvia was right.

  At twenty past three the information board coughed and clattered and produced the news that the Bucharest flight was now expected at four p.m. and she cursed. Her feet were cold and aching, and her back was screaming from the long hours of standing. She was also more than a little hungry — she hadn’t even thought about lunch — and furthermore her bladder was starting to make itself felt. Another half-hour. She could manage it, couldn’t she? Yes, of course she could.

  At five minutes to four the board again clattered with a new message about the flight from Bucharest. Four-fifteen, it announced, was the expected time of arrival now, and at this she stamped her cold feet both in anger and in an attempt to warm them a little, and this time her bladder shrieked urgently at the jolt and informed her that there was no way it was prepared to hold on that long.

  She used every control trick in the book; tightened her pelvic floor muscles, straightened her back and lifted her shoulders so as to enlarge her abdominal space and give her bladder more room, bit her tongue and thought of music, the best distraction she knew of, and the urgency began to ease; and then someone at the back of the waiting crowd began to whistle and the shrill sound pierced the air and moved straight into her belly. Again her bladder tightened and now she knew she hadn’t a hope of holding on any longer.

  ‘Please,’ she said to the woman beside her in the crush, also leaning on the barrier. ‘I must go to the ladies room, but if I go away and my friend comes and doesn’t see me she’ll be so upset. Will you hold my place till I come back? I’d be very grateful.’

  The woman looked at her wide eyed and startled. ‘Pliss?’ she said.

  ‘Oh, God,’ George said and asked the man on her other side. He looked over his shoulder and nodded so she flashed a smile at him and began to push her way out of the crowd. It was e
asier to control the urge now she was moving and once she was out of the thickest press of people she could run, and run she did, scanning the multitude of signs for the nearest women’s lavatory.

  She located it at last and shot in and found two women waiting and the available doors all showing the red engaged flash.

  ‘Oh, God,’ she said again. ‘I’m about to burst. May I go in front of the line?’ The waiting women looked at her, one with a glower and the other with a sympathetic nod.

  ‘Of course,’ the kindly one said just as a door opened, and George gasped her thanks and shot in.

  The relief was huge and she sat there with her head down, letting the freedom from pressure roll over her as she caught her breath, for her rush had been a considerable effort. Her pulses slowed at last and she felt ready to stand up and fix her clothes and hurry back to the crowded barrier to wait for the plane from Bucharest.

  The other stalls had emptied and been used a couple of times while she’d been there, and as she zipped her trousers and pulled her jacket straight, she became aware of voices coming from further down the line of cubicles. An adult with a child, she thought vaguely, and then stood very still.

  There were two voices coming from one stall. They were speaking softly but she could hear them. She was on a line with them and the doors closed off some of the racket from outside, while letting it travel laterally since the inner walls, unlike the doors, ended a couple of feet from the ceiling. She couldn’t identify words, but that there was an intense and hurried colloquy going on was beyond doubt.