Кара Хантер - In the Dark

There’s a stone in my throat.

Jackson reaches out and touches my arm, just for a moment. ‘I am more sorry than I can say.’

I force myself to speak. ‘It’s been really hard on my wife – well, both of us. But especially her. She wants another child but, you know, at her age –’

He nods. ‘I see.’

‘She’s been pressuring me to think about adoption, but I’m just not sure. And now there’s this little boy who has nowhere to go –’

He watches me, quietly. Not judging. ‘And you have discussed it all – you and your wife?’

‘Last night, when we got home, all she wanted to talk about was plans and arrangements. Every time I raised anything else all she kept on saying was it was just for a few days. That he’d be going back to his mother before we knew it.’

‘Let’s hope that’s true.’

‘Why, don’t you think so?’

‘Vicky is making progress, but it’s slow, and we have to think of the child as well. We brought him up to see her again yesterday but she just turned her face to the wall.’

‘The officers who found them said they thought she’d been giving the food and water to the boy rather than having it herself – surely that must mean something?’

He shakes his head sadly. ‘Not wanting him to die is one thing; having normal maternal feelings for him is something else altogether. There’s a barrier between her and that child, Inspector. Not a bond. You don’t need to be a psychiatrist to work out why.’

He reaches for the door handle. ‘Shall we go in?’

*

This time, she definitely recognizes me. She sits up in the bed and there’s the shadow of a smile.

‘How are you, Vicky?’

Half a nod.

‘There are some questions I’d like to ask, and some things I need to tell you. Is that OK?’

She hesitates, then lifts her hand towards the chair.

I move forward slowly and sit down. She shrinks back in the bed, but only a little.

‘Are you able to tell us what happened to you?’

She looks away from me and shakes her head.

‘OK, that’s fine. I understand. But if you remember anything, you can just write it down for me like you did last night. OK?’

She looks at me again.

‘The other thing I wanted to tell you is that we’re going to put a picture of you in the newspapers. There must be someone out there who knows you – someone who loves you and has probably been looking for you all this time. There’s been stories about you all over the papers and the internet –’

I stop because I have to – because her eyes are wide and she’s shaking her head, and then as Jackson starts forward she seizes the paper I brought and gouges it in huge violent straggling letters.

No No No

***

BBC News

Thursday 4 May 2017 | Last updated at 11:34

BREAKING: New appeal for witnesses in Hannah Gardiner disappearance

Thames Valley Police have issued a new appeal for witnesses in relation to the disappearance of Hannah Gardiner in June 2015. Hannah was previously thought to have disappeared on Wittenham Clumps on the morning of 24 June, but police are now asking for anyone who saw her in Oxford that morning to come forward, especially anyone who saw her near her flat in Crescent Square, or talking to anyone in that area. This would appear to corroborate local reports that Hannah’s body was found in the garden of a Frampton Road house yesterday morning. They have also asked any young women who were walking with a child in a buggy at Wittenham Clumps that morning to make themselves known to the police, if they have not done so already.

Thames Valley has still not released the identity of the young woman and small boy found in the cellar at the same Frampton Road property. A press conference is scheduled for later today.

Anyone with information about either case should contact the Thames Valley Police incident room on 01865 0966552.

***

‘All ready, then?’

I’m really hating the sound of my own voice. The false brightness. It’s that tone nurses use when they ask you to ‘pop on’ a hospital gown or ‘slip off’ your trousers. I can’t believe Alex isn’t giving me one of her looks but it’s the measure of her absorption in the child that she doesn’t appear to notice.

The boy is standing between us, his arm round her leg, and in the other hand, the grimy toy they said he had with him in the cellar. The one he won’t let go. He’s wearing clothes I recognize. Clothes Alex must have kept, all these years. I don’t really want to think about that. He twists his head to look up at her and she reaches down a hand to caress his hair.

‘We’ve got everything we need, so yes, I think we’re ready.’ Her voice sounds as strained as mine. But for a different reason. She is brittle with happiness.

I reach out a hand to the boy, but he shrinks back and Alex says quickly, ‘It’s OK. He just needs a bit of space.’

She crouches down. ‘I’m going to carry you – is that OK?’

Apparently it is, because he offers no resistance, and the three of us make our way out to the car, where she straps him into the car seat I didn’t think we still had.

I was expecting him to react to the sound of the engine, but he seems remarkably unperturbed. As we pull out into the traffic I try to think of something to say. But Alex gets there first.

‘I wish I knew what to call him,’ she says. ‘We can’t call him “boy” or “child” all week.’

I shrug. ‘Hopefully Vicky will be able to speak to us in the next day or two. She’ll tell us his name.’

‘If she actually gave him one,’ says Alex, turning to look at the boy in the back. ‘If she’s so traumatized that she’s blocking the whole thing out, she may never have bonded with him at all. Giving a child a name, it’s all part of that – it’s how you signal your relationship. I think she’s in deep denial that he’s even hers. And, frankly, who can blame her – it must be tough, trying to love the child of your rapist –’

‘We don’t know that’s what happened, Alex. Not definitively. You’re a lawyer. You know better than to jump to those sorts of conclusions.’

It wasn’t meant to sound patronizing, but it does. Her eyes lock with mine a moment, but she’s the first to look away.

We grind to a halt as the traffic narrows to one lane. The roadworks on this stretch seem to have been going on for months.

‘You said “all week”.’

‘Sorry?’ she says.

‘Just now, you said we couldn’t call him “boy” all week. I thought it was just going to be for a few days.’

She’s not looking at me. ‘It will be. Probably. But with your parents coming –’

‘That’s next month –’

‘I think we should warn them, just in case.’

‘Warn?’

‘Don’t be difficult, Adam. You know very well what I mean.’

I do. I just wish I didn’t.

***

‘In the case of the young woman and child found in the cellar, all I can say at this stage is that enquiries are progressing.’

The press conference is packed and my general level of stress and irritation hasn’t been helped by the fact that I forgot we were holding this at the Kidlington media centre and only got here with ten minutes to spare. I look down the rows of faces and see a lot I don’t recognize. The nationals, no doubt; we haven’t had this much media interest since the Daisy Mason case. That was hardly surprising – an eight-year-old girl abducted from her own garden. But right now, the wheels are going round but I’ve run out of road. One of the hacks in the front row is muttering that he doesn’t know why we bothered getting them in here at all if that’s all we’ve got to tell them.