Ken McClure: Tangled Web

‘All the same, I was given to understand that you refused to have anything to do with your daughter after she was born, Mrs Palmer?’ said Davies. ‘Is that correct? You were quite adamant that you were not going to look after her? In fact, you insisted that the nursing staff take her away. “Get her out of my sight,” were the words you used.’

‘For God’s sake man, why are you doing this to us at a time like this?’ exclaimed John Palmer angrily. ‘I’ve already told you we were both very upset. It was a tremendous shock to both of us. We needed time to come to terms with it.’

‘“It”, Sir’

‘The situation,’ retorted Palmer angrily. ‘How many times must I say it? We were upset. We needed help and we got it.’

‘Go on, sir.’

Palmer took a deep breath as if reluctant to say any more but in the end he continued, ‘The people at the clinic were very understanding and the nurses were kindness itself. Lucy underwent a course of counselling, which did her the world of good, and Professor Thomas put us in touch with a support organisation, which was — and is run by wonderful people. They’re the kind of people who restore your faith in human nature and make you feel quite inadequate by comparison. Professor Thomas also arranged for us to contact parents in the same situation as ourselves so we didn’t feel so alone. We came to terms with our daughter’s condition quite quickly, Chief Inspector: we stopped seeing her as being disabled. She’s now just our Ann-Marie and we love her very much.’

Davies took a few moments to digest what he’d been told then asked, ‘What sort of person would you say has kidnapped your child, sir?’

Palmer became angry. ‘How the hell should I know?’ he exclaimed. ‘That’s your job, isn’t it? Why aren’t you out there trying to find out instead of sitting here on your backside asking us damn fool questions?’

Davies remained impassive and Palmer, unhappy with the ensuing silence, added, ‘It’s usually some sort of woman with a problem, isn’t it? Someone who has lost her own child... something like that.’

‘So you wouldn’t expect a ransom demand then?’

‘A ransom demand?’ exclaimed Palmer. ‘We’re not rich people and nothing about us suggests that we are. No one in their right mind would think of kidnapping our baby for money.’

‘You’re not even a bank manager,’ said Davies.

Palmer looked puzzled.

Davies explained, ‘You’re not in a position to give kidnappers access to other people’s money.’

‘I’m a science teacher for God’s sake; I earn twenty-two thousand pounds a year. I’ve got a fifty-thousand-pound mortgage and a bank loan for a three-year-old car.’

‘And you, Mrs Palmer?’

‘I was a teacher too until I gave up work after the birth of my daughter. I taught modern studies.’

Davies smiled. ‘Didn’t have that in my schooldays. Still, I don’t suppose it involves earning large sums of money.’

‘Of course not,’ snapped Lucy.

‘So, as you said, Mr Palmer, no one in their right mind would want to kidnap your daughter...’

‘For money,’ added Palmer.

‘What about any other reason?’

‘What are you getting at now?’ John Palmer was reaching the end of his tether.

‘She is badly disabled’

‘So what? Why are we discussing the feasibility of it all when our daughter already has been kidnapped? She’s been gone three days and we are climbing the walls with worry.’

‘Indeed sir,’ said Davies slowly and deliberately.

‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

Davies screwed up his face as if wrestling with some conundrum. ‘You see, sir, I have a problem with all of this,’ he said. ‘No disrespect, but for the life of me I can’t understand why anyone would want to steal a deformed infant.’

‘How dare you!’ stormed Lucy.

Davies looked surprised. ‘I simply meant that she would be readily identifiable wherever she was taken, Mrs Palmer.’

‘For God’s sake, man, why are you persisting with this? The motivation doesn’t matter. Someone has taken Anne-Marie — now will you please do something about getting her back?’

Davies looked down at his feet for a few moments before saying, ‘I fear that may not be possible, sir.’

An awful silence fell on the room before Palmer asked in quiet trepidation, ‘What do you mean, not possible?’

Davies looked him straight in the eye and said with sudden, chilling coldness, ‘Because I think she’s already dead, sir and I think that you and your wife are responsible for her death. I think you found the prospect of bringing up a severely handicapped child just too much and took matters into your own hands. You came up with your own solution to the problem.’

‘This is outrageous!’ exclaimed John Palmer in a barely audible whisper. Lucy’s eyes opened wide in disbelief at what Davies had said. She tried to find words but none came out. She was dumbstruck with horror.

Davies brought out a folded document from his inside pocket and announced, ‘I have here a warrant to search your house and its environs.’ He turned to DS Walters and nodded; the sergeant got up and left the room. The following silence only lasted for a few moments before Walters opened the front door and the sound of voices filled the hall as instructions were given to a police search team.

The words, ‘no stone unturned’ seemed to detach themselves from the general clamour to drift into the room and break the spell.

John Palmer got to his feet. ‘Crazy, crazy, crazy,’ he complained as he started to pace up and down and make gestures of hopelessness with his hands. Lucy maintained a steady sad gaze into the middle distance as if the last few minutes had been too much for her and her brain was refusing to acknowledge what was going on around her. The policewoman who had been detailed to look after her since Anne-Marie’s disappearance had come back into the room at Davies’s request but her attitude had changed; she remained standing and at a discreet distance.

Outside the sound of a heavy engine starting up made Palmer stop pacing and go over to look out of the window. A yellow JCB digger stood at the entrance to the short drive leading up to their house; its driver was talking to two policemen. Palmer turned questioningly to Davies. ‘What the hell?’

‘The garden too,’ said Davies without emotion.

Palmer’s eyes were tortured pools of disbelief as the digger lurched forward, its huge wheels cracking several of the concrete slabs where he hadn’t used enough bedding sand when he’d laid them during the previous summer. It made its way round the side of the house, lowering its shovel as it went and filling the air with blue exhaust fumes.

Time passed slowly as John and Lucy Palmer huddled together on the couch in their own private hell while strangers ransacked their house and destroyed their garden. Words had ceased to be of any use; they sat in disbelieving silence even as junior officers started to come into the room and make their reports to Davies.

‘Nothing upstairs, sir.’

‘Loft clear, sir.’

‘Nothing in the cellar, sir.’

The continual series of negatives gradually got through to John Palmer. After the third he found the confidence to look at Davies with ill-disguised contempt and said, ‘Now will you get your damned circus out of our house and leave us alone?’

‘All in good time, sir,’ replied Davies automatically and without emotion.

A few minutes later a police constable, wearing dark blue overalls and Wellington boots entered the room with scant regard for the carpets he was trailing mud over. ‘Can I have a word sir?’

Davies left the room and was gone for fully ten minutes. When he returned he stood directly in front of the Palmers and announced, ‘It’s over: we’ve found her.’