Maxim Jakubowski - The Mammoth Book of Best British Mysteries 6

William is a rich man-and so am I-for William was a beneficiary of Silas’s will. Indirectly, that is. In fact, through me.

There never was a seventeenth will, not a genuine one anyway. Silas only wrote sixteen. With so many other wills before them, all with the same text and signatures, save for the legatee’s name, how likely was the court to notice that one was forged? Or that, faced with such overwhelming evidence of the letter’s truth, the signature to that too was forged. Silas’s original letter had stated only sixteen wills. I myself added the seventeenth.

I developed many useful skills during that period of work. I could hardly make the forged will out to myself, but in William I had seen the opportunity I was waiting for. We have gone fifty-fifty on the proceeds. Can I trust him to hand over my share? Of course. He isn’t going to risk his inheritance going up in smoke if the will is declared a forgery. Can he trust me not to blackmail him for more? Of course he can… I’m a lawyer.

I told you I was a wicked old man.

The cry, when it came, was not what she had expected. For five months she had sat, night after night, her legs gathered beneath her on the sofa, the baby monitor resting on the arm of her chair, waiting, hoping to hear a cry. But, what she heard was not so much a cry as a ghost of a cry, like an echo without a source, its presence confirmed more by the flickering of the lights on the monitor than the tinny sound it produced. It was enough, certainly, to make her shiver involuntarily, to rub the goose-bumped skin of her arm with her palm. The second cry, though, was stronger, building in intensity then cutting short with a strangled yelp.

Thoughts tumbling, Karen stumbled to the foot of our stairs, staring up at the nursery door, willing herself to go up. Gripping the banister rail with whitened knuckles, she attempted to lift her foot onto the first step, but her legs weakened and she staggered. The floor seemed to shift beneath her and she had to grab the other banister rail in order to lower herself onto the step. It was there that she was sitting, her face bleary with tears when I got in from work later.

“What’s wrong?” I asked.

“I heard a baby crying. In the monitor. Will you check?” she urged. “I can’t go up; it might be Michael.”

I took the stairs two at a time, opened the nursery door and flicked on the light, but the room was quiet. A teddy bear had fallen off the dresser and lay on the floor, face down. I picked it up, smelt the newness of its fur.

“Is everything ok?” she called up, her mouth a tight white line.

“Fine,” I muttered, closing the door behind me.

She looked at me quizzically. “You don’t believe me, do you?” she said. “I did hear it. He cried so hard. Why would he cry so hard?”

I stared at her, but could think of nothing adequate to say.

“There was a cry,” she said, one week later. “I know you don’t believe me but I did hear a child. And I don’t think it was Michael.”

“I know it wasn’t Michael,” I replied.

“Where did it come from?” She looked at me pleadingly.

“There must be a simple reason for it,” I suggested. “I’ll find out.”

I dug out the box for the baby monitor on which was a help line number.

“Can I help you?” The voice was female, English, young.

“We have your monitor system,” I explained. “My wife heard a baby cry in it.”

A pause. “Is that not what the monitor is meant to do?”

“Yes. Sorry. I understand,” I said, a little flustered. “It wasn’t our baby. She heard someone else’s baby crying through our monitor.”

“Are you sure it wasn’t your own child?”

“Certain.”

“It could be that someone else in your street has the same monitor as you. If they are operating on the same frequency, you’ll hear their baby and they’ll hear yours.”

“I see,” I said.

“Can I help you with anything else today, sir?” English asked.

“I’m afraid not.”

One week later, Karen was sobbing when I came home, her arms gathered around her, her left hand at her mouth, her small teeth worrying her thumbnail.

“He’s been crying all night,” she whispered. “It’s Michael. He needs me.”

As I opened my mouth to speak, the monitor crackled with static. The lights registered the sound briefly, and subsided. But, when the crying started, there could be no doubt. It developed from a raw scream into coughing sobs, as if the child was tiring. But no one responded to its cries.

Karen, initially elated with vindication, began to cry. “Make it stop,” she said balling her fists against the side of her head. “Do something.”

I followed the curve of our street, pausing outside each house, straining to hear a child crying. At the second-last house, I believed that I did. I rang the doorbell. Through the door’s frosted glass I could see a figure move into the hallway, then retreat back into the room from which he had come. I heard something slam. Heard a cry seconds later.

But the cry was from the wrong direction. Karen was out of our house.

“I heard it,” she shrieked. “I heard it being killed.” “What?”

“The baby was crying. I heard a smack and it stopped,” she screamed. “You let it be killed.” She pulled back from me. “You let him be killed,” she repeated, then spat in my face.

The police officer squeezed into our armchair. “Devlin,” he’d said, by way of introduction.

“And it couldn’t have been your own child?” Devlin asked after listening to Karen’s story. “No,” she said.

“Where is your child?” he said, glancing around the room. “He’s Michael,” Karen answered.

“Can I see him, please?” he asked, putting down his notebook.

“No,” Karen said.

“I’d like to see your child, Ma’am.”

“You can’t, Inspector,” I replied, moving to my wife. “You see we… we don’t… we don’t actually have a child.”

Devlin returned a few moments later, having walked down to the house where I had heard the baby crying. I stood out on our pathway as we spoke, out of earshot of Karen, my hands in my pockets.

“Anything?” I asked him.

He shook his head.

“Did you check?”

He hesitated, glancing towards our doorway to check that Karen wasn’t listening. “I can’t check someone’s house on the word of your wife. I mean no disrespect, but she needs help.”

“She getting all the help she needs,” I said, defensively.

“It’s not working,” he replied. He stared at me a moment, as if deciding something. “What happened to her?”

So I told him about Michael. I told him about how he died at birth. I told him about Karen’s therapy, how she had set up the nursery as if Michael was alive, how she sat with the baby monitor we’d bought, hoping some night to hear her son. I told him everything because he was the first person in five months to ask. Because it’s the woman who’s affected in these things. Not the father. But then, I’m not a father.

Devlin considered all I said. “Do you know your neighbour up there?” he asked finally.

I shook my head.

“I do,” Devlin said. “Trevor Conlon. Collects old clothes for charities.” He fished in his jacket pocket and handed me a folded green flier. “Funnily enough,” he continued, “he also runs a second-hand retro clothes shop. He has no children.” He paused. “None of his own, anyway.”

The phantom child slept in our bed, with us, alongside our dead son, Michael, whose presence was never more physical than that night, when he filled the space between us.