Ken McClure - Tangled Web

Gordon ushered him to a chair. ‘You both need some help to get you through this,’ he said. ‘So no protests please, there’s nothing noble about unnecessary suffering. Just take the sedatives I’m going to prescribe for you and think positive thoughts. The police will pull out all the stops. They’ll find her.’

THREE DAYS LATER

For a big man, Chief Inspector Alan Davies could appear disarmingly tender and considerate. His voice dropped to a whisper and he clasped his hands in front of him as he leaned forward solicitously in his chair. He was in John and Lucy Palmer’s living room, sitting opposite them on the floral patterned couch that filled the window alcove. The fourth person in the room, Detective Sergeant Walters, sat away from the other three, on a dining room chair by the door. He watched the proceedings, notebook in hand but held discreetly out of sight for the time being in deference to the ambience of sympathy and understanding being fostered by his superior officer.

‘What more is there to tell?’ said John Palmer, letting go of his wife’s hand to spread his own in a gesture of bewilderment. ‘You must know absolutely everything there is to know about us by now. We’d been married for eight years and there wasn’t a day when we didn’t hope for a child of our own.’ He took hold of his wife’s hand again and kissed it gently before continuing. He did it in an unselfconscious way, suggesting that it was nothing out of the ordinary. ‘Then quite suddenly, out of the blue, Lucy fell pregnant with Ann-Marie and it seemed like a dream come true. All our prayers were answered; a real true-to-life miracle had happened. Sounds soppy but that’s the way it was.’

‘This was after you were referred to Professor Thomas’s clinic at Caernarfon General?’

‘Yes. We’d tried everything else. The doctors had just about given up on us: they kept trying to persuade us to consider adoption when Professor Thomas said he’d like to try out a new IVF technique.’

‘What kind of new technique?’

Palmer gave Davies a look that suggested it was really none of his business but he scratched his head and answered anyway. ‘It’s actually a modification to the standard in vitro fertilisation method called ICSI — that stands for, intra-cytoplasmic sperm injection. Instead of just mixing sperm and ova in a test tube and hoping for the best, the doctor actually picks up a single sperm in a very fine needle and injects it into an ovum. Then the fertilised egg is implanted in the mother’s womb.’

Davies shook his head and smiled. ‘Amazing what they can do these days,’ he said.

‘Professor Thomas warned us that there were risks attached to the technique and it was something they wouldn’t use for everyone, but they still felt it was safe and they were keen to try it for particularly difficult cases: we certainly qualified on that score — or rather, I did.’

Davies noticed Lucy give her husband’s arm a little rub, a simple gesture of support. He patted her hand in return.

‘Didn’t you have any qualms at all about the risks?’ asked Davies.

‘Not really,’ shrugged Palmer, looking at his wife who gave a slight shake of the head. ‘We were desperate, Chief Inspector. We were willing to try anything to have a child of our own.’

Davies nodded understandingly and said, ‘And it paid off in the end. You finally fell pregnant, Mrs Palmer.’

Lucy Palmer smiled distantly. ‘It was the best day of my life,’ she said, obviously remembering it with pleasure. ‘When the professor told me the implant had taken and I was going to have a baby I felt so happy I almost burst with pride. I wanted to tell everyone. I wanted to stand on street corners and shout out the news. I wanted everyone in the world to feel that good.’ As the memory faded and reality started to reassert itself, Lucy’s smile disappeared and emotion threatened to overwhelm her. John put his arm round her shoulders and hugged her to him, whispering reassurance in her ear.

‘Would you say it was an uneventful pregnancy, Mrs Palmer?’

John Palmer furrowed his brow at the question and interrupted, ‘I’m sorry, Chief Inspector, but I really don’t see the relevance of the details of Lucy’s pregnancy to our daughter’s disappearance.’

‘If you’ll just bear with me, sir.’

Lucy shrugged her shoulders and said, ‘There were a couple of scares along the way when I thought I might lose the baby, a bit of bleeding around three months but nothing too out of the ordinary, I don’t think.’

‘Morning sickness? Cravings for strange food?’

‘Look, Chief Inspector, I really must...’

Davies held up his hand without breaking eye contact with Lucy. Palmer stopped his protest.

‘I was sick and yes I did develop a liking for beetroot sandwiches and tuna with jam somewhere along the way but I fail to see what this has to do with Anne-Marie’s kidnapping. Why are you asking these questions, Inspector?’ said Lucy becoming agitated.

Davies appeared to remain deep in thought for a moment then he smiled and said, ‘I’m just trying to get an idea of how you felt about your baby while you were you carrying her, Mrs Palmer.’

An uneasy silence fell on the room. It seemed to go on for ever until Lucy asked slowly and coldly, ‘How I felt about my baby, Inspector? How d’you think I felt about her? How does any mother fell about her baby when she’s carrying it? She was the most precious thing in the world; I loved her completely, as I do now.’

Davies held up his palms in a gesture of appeasement and apologised. ‘Of course, I’m sorry, I probably put it badly. ‘It’s just that sometimes pregnancy brings about changes in a woman. Unaccountable psychological changes.’

The Palmers looked puzzled.

‘Feelings of resentment are not unknown, even... hatred in some cases,’ said Davies. His eyes never left the Palmers.

‘There has never been a moment when I hated my daughter, Inspector,’ said Lucy flatly.

‘I see,’ said Davies, quietly. ‘So Ann-Marie was born three months ago on December the fourteenth at Caernarfon General?’

‘Yes.’

‘But very badly deformed.’

John Palmer winced and rubbed nervously at his forehead at Davies’s summation. Lucy looked down at the floor, unwilling to have her emotions scrutinised. The words hung in the air like a dark challenge.

‘Our baby is disabled , Chief Inspector. She was left without legs after surgical measures necessary to save her life. Now, where is all this leading, may I ask?’ said John Palmer when he’d recovered his composure. The tone of his voice suggested he was struggling to remain civil.

‘No legs,’ said Davies with a slow shake of the head. ‘Poor mite didn’t have much of a future to look forward to.’

‘Nonsense! And what on Earth has our daughter’s future got to do with you investigating her kidnap?’ demanded Palmer.

Davies ignored the question and pressed on. ‘Her deformation was such that you, Mrs Palmer, completely rejected her when she was born, I understand.’

Lucy buried her face in her hands and started sobbing. John put his arm round her and said through gritted teeth, ‘We were both very upset at the time: it came as a complete shock. We had absolutely no warning that anything was amiss with Anne-Marie.’

‘I thought medical science could predict just about everything these days,’ said Davies sourly.

‘Foetal monitoring failed to pick up the problem with her leg bones.’

‘I see, sir.’

‘You can appreciate, I’m sure, that it took us a little time to come to terms with Ann-Marie’s condition, but that’s all we needed... just a little time. I think that would be the case for most people in similar circumstances, don’t you?’