Trust Me

by T. M. Logan

  They were a dying breed. Wasn’t that the truth.

  He checked the corridor behind him – clear – and fished a couple of pills out of the little Ziploc bag tucked into his wallet, swallowing them down dry. As he was putting his wallet back he heard footsteps behind him and Holt came out holding two cups of dark coffee in identical white mugs. He handed one to Gilbourne and stepped back to the other side of the fire escape, as far away from the smoke as he could get.

  ‘What do you reckon then, boss? About her?’

  Gilbourne took another drag on his cigarette, holding in the smoke for a moment. He watched as a lone fox emerged below from behind a row of parked cars. It slinked from one side of the street to the other, its bushy tail held low to the ground, hunched as if ready for attack or escape. Gilbourne followed its progress, elbows on the steel railing of the fire escape, cigarette smoke curling up into the night sky. He had always admired them, these secret city dwellers who had adapted so well to new surroundings. They lived and thrived, bred, roamed and hunted in one of the busiest cities in the world – and they did it largely unseen, under the radar of regular life. They were loners who had made the night their own. Survivors.

  The fox stopped, turned, sniffed the air, and trotted off into the shadows.

  ‘You think she’s holding something back?’ Gilbourne asked, every word emerging with an exhalation of grey smoke. ‘Something about last night?’

  Holt smoothed his hair, swept back from his forehead, patting a few stray strands back into place.

  ‘Definitely.’

  ‘I’m not so sure. There’s something that doesn’t quite add up, but I’m not sure it’s down to her.’

  Holt studied him. ‘You believe her, boss?’

  ‘What makes you say that, Nathan?’

  Holt took a small sip of his coffee and gave him a shrug. A knowing grin. ‘I mean . . . the way you were with her in the interview. Seemed like . . . you know.’

  Gilbourne studied his new partner. He was still getting the measure of him: a fast-track graduate with a fancy degree in criminology and forensic science who couldn’t get out of uniform quickly enough. Who still wanted every case to be The Big One, with wall-to-wall national media coverage, a career-maker that would propel him up the ladder. Who didn’t yet appreciate that a case like that might only come up once in a career, that life was messy and the job was messier, that clean-cut victories were few and far between. The two of them had been teamed up for a couple of months now, Holt on a secondment to Major Crime after nine months on one of the Met’s task force operations targeting gang activity. So he wasn’t totally green, but he still had a lot to learn – if he ever paused long enough to listen.

  There was something about him, though. Was it the cockiness? Like he knew more than he was letting on. He had that young cocksure certainty that he would rise through the ranks, that he would make DI within a couple more years. He’d even had the front to say to his face that he’d be disappointed if he wasn’t a detective chief inspector by the time he was forty – a promotion that still eluded Gilbourne for reasons he didn’t like to dwell on. Maybe Holt didn’t realise he was doing it. Or maybe he did. He wasn’t sure.

  Just you wait, lad. Wait for the politics and the government targets and the PC quotas and all the bullshit that goes with it. Wait for it to start pressing down on you every day, like you’re carrying it on your shoulders every time you get out of bed in the morning. Shovelling the same shit every day, just to keep your head above it, without a word of thanks from anyone. Then we’ll see how high you can reach.

  Gilbourne was now less than six months away from completing his thirty years in the job, from hitting mandatory retirement. It seemed like a waste to him. He was forty-seven and still had a lot to offer. But maybe it was time to hand over to the fast-track graduates like Holt, the greasy-pole climbers, the politicians, the shiny people, and see how they managed. Until then – even though he was within touching distance of his lump sum and final salary pension – he still took pride in the job, in getting a result. Some of his colleagues, older guys who had gone before him, started letting things slide when retirement approached. Started phoning it in, cutting corners. Doing the bare minimum until they could check out.

  That wasn’t Gilbourne’s way.

  He was doing the opposite: working harder, putting in more time than before. And he was going to nail this new case fast. Make sure he covered all the angles, got the right result.

  He took another drag on his cigarette, pointed at his young partner with the glowing tip.

  ‘You’ve done some time on property crime right?’ He didn’t wait for a reply. ‘So, answer me this: what’s the easiest way into someone’s house?’

  ‘How do you mean?’ Holt looked confused. ‘Like . . . forcing a rear door?’

  ‘Easiest, most straightforward way in? What did you learn in those nine months?’

  Holt stared at him as if he was trying to work out the answer to a riddle and didn’t want to be caught out.

  ‘I guess a downstairs window, left open?’ he said. ‘Like, any unsecured window?’

  ‘Nope.’

  ‘Patio doors?’

  ‘Think about the question I’ve asked, Nathan.’

  ‘I mean, it would depend on—’

  ‘The easiest way into a stranger’s house is through the front door, if they’ve opened it themselves and invited you in.’

  Holt nodded slowly, eyes narrowing against the smoke from his partner’s cigarette.

  ‘Sure,’ he said. ‘You mean, kind of like a distraction burglary?’

  ‘Sort of. It’s the same with an interview. You’re more likely to get the full story if they invite you in. Less effort, less mess, less grief all around. Sometimes you’re more likely to get to the truth by being nice than by trying to smash the doors down with a battering ram.’

  ‘Right,’ Holt said, taking another sip of his coffee. ‘I get what you’re saying.’

  Do you though? Do you, really?

  ‘Feels to me like there are other factors in play that we might not be aware of. It’ll be interesting to see what forensics come up with from the stuff we recovered from the fire. Any joy with the CCTV from outside the café?’

  Holt shook his head.

  ‘Not yet. There’s a council camera at the junction but it’s too far down to pick up activity outside the Caffè Nero. The place opens in a few hours so I’ll head down then. Got the trace set up on Devlin’s mobile as well, just in case it turns up or she miraculously starts using it again when she gets home later.’

  ‘Did you track down the taxi driver yet?’

  ‘Working on it.’

  ‘Good. I’ll cover off the station staff at Marylebone.’

  ‘What about her?’ Holt nodded back towards the interview room down the corridor. ‘Our little navy wren?’

  Gilbourne flipped the cigarette away into the darkness, the glowing tip spinning end over end until it disappeared into the street below.

  ‘We let her think about things for a few more hours,’ Gilbourne said, blowing smoke. ‘Then we go again.’

  ‘Nicely?’

  Gilbourne gave him a half-smile.

  ‘You’re catching on, Nathan.’

  20

  There’s another hour in the interview room going back and forth over my story, a short conversation with the duty solicitor after both detectives have left, then I’m led into a frigid cell that’s bare apart from a thin blanket and a dull metal toilet in the corner. Finally, I’m woken by the clank of the door unlocking, the desk sergeant informing me that I’m being released for the time being.

  Betteridge, the duty solicitor, gave me a card for his firm when he left. He was evasive when I asked what would happen next: that was down to the police and any other evidence they might find. If they could corroborate my story with any of the other parties involved, then the threat of criminal charges would recede. If not . . . they would probably bring me in again and go f
rom there. I should be prepared for any eventuality, he had said. Until then, I have to remain in London, keep the officers informed as to where I was staying, make myself available for further questioning as and when required; and I’m prohibited from contacting any of the other people involved in my case. Which shouldn’t be difficult as I have no idea who any of them actually were.

  There are more forms to sign. The clock above the desk tells me it’s nearly five in the morning by the time a taxi is called to take me home. I need to find somewhere else to stay for a few days, but my exhaustion is blanketing everything and all I want to do is lie down in my own bed. It’s only as I’m walking up the short path to my front door that it occurs to me I have no keys to get into the house. I’m grateful, for once, for Richard’s old habit of leaving a spare back door key in the rockery by the side gate. It’s still there, tucked under the third rock from the left. I blow the dirt off it, breath steaming in the cold pre-dawn air.

  I let myself in, turn on the lights and stand in my little kitchen. The house is still, silent and cold, and it feels different somehow, as if it belongs to someone else. Maybe to my old life. That life was Richard and marriage and IVF, waiting and heartbreak, month after desperate month, year after year. But that world doesn’t exist anymore. It’s gone. History.

  This is a new world, a new day. A world with Mia in it.

  And not just her: a man who wanted to take her away, to harm her. A man who has my phone, who might know where I live. Am I safe here, with the pre-dawn darkness still pressing in around my kitchen windows? I fetch the landline and begin to dial, then stop, my thumb hovering over the keypad, my brain sluggish with fatigue. Slowly, I replace the handset in its cradle. It’s only just gone 5 a.m., too early to disturb Tara and wake her boys with a phone call. She gets little enough sleep as it is. Instead I check the chain across the front door, the deadbolt, the patio door and the back door, then check them all again before heading upstairs.

  I try to sleep, dropping my clothes in a ragged line across the bedroom floor and crawling under the duvet. But it’s already too late, the sun creeping into the bedroom, slanting through the edges of the curtains, rush hour traffic starting up its low hum nearby. I’m alert to every other sound, every creak of the house slowly warming up, every set of footsteps on the street outside, every car passing by. Try as I might, I can’t seem to drift off, even for an hour of sleep. My body aches with tiredness, with the throb of injuries, but my brain is still going a hundred miles an hour and refuses to stop. I’m still wired from a day and night full of confrontation and unanswered questions. The strange black-clad man on the train; Dominic, with his anger and paranoia; the two detectives with their questions.

  And now home. Or at least, my house. Our house, as it had been until three months ago. Richard and I had given up our one-bedroom flat on Highbury Park Road five years ago – the flat where we’d first lived together, where we’d dreamed and made plans and returned from honeymoon – in favour of a sensible family home a few miles further out. Five years in this modern end-terrace with its small garden and two-and-a-half bedrooms and a decent primary school nearby, a dozen Tube stops further out of London. Five years waiting for the arrival of a child that had never come. Richard increasingly distant and evasive over the last year, spending more time working late in the office, more time avoiding life at home. More time with the woman who was now carrying his child.

  After an hour I give up on sleep and shuffle into the bathroom, standing under the shower for fifteen minutes, letting the hot water pound the back of my neck. I think about Mia, the last time I saw her. The thin, bird-like woman from social services who had taken her away, who had made Mia cry as she manhandled her into the scuffed plastic car seat. Eventually I put on old jeans and a sweatshirt and a fresh bandage on my foot.

  It’s Wednesday. It’s supposed to be a normal working day but I’m owed some time off in lieu so I take the day off, emailing my boss to apologise for the short notice. What else is happening this week? Shopping delivery arriving tonight, Pilates tomorrow, work drinks on Friday night – someone’s leaving do that I already know I won’t be able to face. As for next week, next month? I can’t think that far ahead anymore.

  I call my bank and credit card company to cancel all my cards and have new ones reissued. I dig out my old iPhone from the bedside drawer and walk the ten minutes to the high street to buy a new SIM card. Back home I log into my iCloud account, saying a little prayer that the automatic backup has worked as it was supposed to. I feel a little thrum of happiness in my chest as the saved images begin to drop in and there is Mia, tiny and perfect, sleepy and content after the bottle I gave her in the café. One picture. This is all I have of her. But it lifts me, warms me, a bright spot on a dark day.

  I call my mobile provider to get my old number transferred to the new SIM. All this practical everyday stuff seems ridiculous, meaningless, set against the last twenty-four hours. I keep flicking back to the picture of Mia, just to remind myself that it’s still there and that she really exists. I set it as the new screensaver on my phone, then remove it again, feeling like a thief, a fraud, for having someone else’s child on my screen. I’ll just keep it in the phone’s gallery instead. A secret.

  At noon, I give Tara a call. The conversation is full of noise from her three boys, fighting and shouting and screaming in the background all at once, a wall of yelling that makes me hold the phone away from my ear. During a short lull in the mayhem, she tells me that the eldest is off school with a sick bug, the middle one has an ear infection and the youngest, Charlie, a raging case of the terrible twos manifesting itself in some epic potty-training failures.

  ‘This morning he decided to do a dirty protest behind the sofa,’ she says, ‘just took his pants off and left them there, fully loaded. Not sure I’m ever going to get it out of the carpet. Anyway, how are you? How did it go yesterday? I left you a couple of messages.’

  I want to tell her everything, to sit down with her with a glass of wine and go over the whole story from start to finish.

  ‘Sorry I didn’t get back to you, it was a bit of a crazy day yesterday—’

  There is a fresh explosion of screaming at the other end of the line, small voices rising in competing howls of protest, followed by Tara’s exasperated voice asking one of them to stop doing something to his brother.

  ‘Say sorry to your brother,’ she says firmly. ‘Say sorry. Or there’ll be no TV and no iPad and you’ll go to your room until tea-time, do you understand?’ There is a pause in the hostilities and an inaudible response from whichever of her sons she’s telling off, then she comes back on the line. ‘Sorry, Ellen. What were you saying about yesterday?’

  I close my eyes and lean against the kitchen wall, hit by another wave of fatigue. I don’t even know where to start the story, explain how I went through the looking glass and ended up in a police station interview room. I don’t even have the heart to ask if I can crash in her spare room for a few days.

  ‘Long story,’ I say instead. ‘Listen, it sounds like you’ve got your hands full. I’ll let you go. Give me a call later after the boys are in bed?’

  ‘If they survive until bedtime,’ Tara says with a humourless laugh. ‘OK, talk later. Take care, Els.’

  Maybe I should move into a hotel for a few days instead. I google a few that are local. How long for? A couple of days? A week? I’m in the process of buying Richard out of his share of the house and money’s been tight anyway since he left. Can I justify the extra expense? I bookmark the pages to look at later.

  There’s a message on the answer machine from my mum, the only person I know who still uses the landline. I make a note to call her back later. She’s on her own and prone to worry, to catastrophise every situation; I can’t remember when I started censoring myself when talking to her, but it’s been a while now since I just sat and told her the unvarnished truth. First the parent lies to the child, I think, then the child lies to the parent.

 
I find my iPad and search for news about Mia and Kathryn. The latest story on the BBC relates that the baby has been ‘found safe and well’ but doesn’t identify her. Presumably the media is restricted in what they can report because of the involvement of a child whose anonymity is supposed to be protected. The grainy CCTV image of me at Marylebone features lower down the story and I wonder briefly what my mum or Tara – or my work colleagues, for that matter – will make of it if they recognise me. But I haven’t got the headspace to worry about that right now. A half-dozen other news websites are all carrying the same basic details and the same quote from Detective Inspector Stuart Gilbourne of the Major Crimes Unit. ‘We are still very keen to hear from Kathryn Clifton to confirm that she is safe. If you think you’ve seen Kathryn, or have any information on her whereabouts, please contact the police on 101.’ But some of the heat has been taken out of the story with the news that Mia is no longer missing; the articles less prominent, lower down the page, the stories more factual and concise. A missing woman is far less newsworthy than a missing infant, I suppose. I scour all the stories for any more information about Kathryn. There is very little, just a few generic facts and a picture that looks like it was grabbed from her Facebook account. No quotes from family members, friends or from a partner. She’s twenty-four years old and from Buckinghamshire, but apart from that the story is strangely light on details.

  None of them say she is Mia’s mother.