Until You're Mine (11 page)

It’s addressed to Claudia, and one end is caved in and damaged. Through the open bit I can see something straw-like but wrapped in plastic. Don’t they say you should check delivered items immediately? Or is that just my inquisitiveness getting the better of me? Either way, I don’t want to get into trouble.

I drag the box through to the kitchen and snip the remaining tape. I peel back the cardboard and inside I find a straw Moses basket wrapped up in polythene. I slide it out of its wrapping and find a crisp set of white sheets and drapery to go on it. I arrange the bedding and set the crib on the white metal stand it came with.

Standing back, admiring my work, I try to imagine Claudia’s newborn baby sleeping in this cot. For some reason, I can’t.

*

‘What are you doing in my room?’

I turn. My hands are shaking. She’s caught me even though I was doing something nice for her. I’m not rummaging through her private belongings.

‘This was delivered earlier,’ I say. ‘Isn’t it lovely? I thought I’d surprise you and set it up. The packaging was badly damaged and I wanted to make sure that whatever was inside was OK. Thought I might as well bring it upstairs for you.’ I step aside from the Moses basket. Claudia’s curtains are still closed and it’s dark outside now. ‘Isn’t it lovely?’ I say again as she silently walks up to the basket. I’ve put it beside her bed.

‘Yes,’ she says vaguely, squinting at me as if she doesn’t trust me. She’s still wearing her coat and leather driving gloves. Her handbag is slung over her shoulder and she smells of winter. She gives the basket a little wobble then stares straight at me, straight into my eyes. I see the tiniest muscle twitch on her cheek.

LIAM RIDER SAT
in the waiting area with his legs spread and an elbow resting on each knee. His head was dropped forward and his black and grey hair was mussed and unwashed and thinning at the crown. At first glance, he appeared nothing more than a Saturday-night haul, albeit on a weekday, a drunken misfit who was teetering on the edge of either vomiting or passing out. It took several moments for him to look up when Lorraine called his name. The others in the waiting room glared at him. The pierced woman with the irate toddler, the man in a suit, the couple of lads in tracksuits – they’d all happily queue-jump and take his place.

‘Mr Rider,’ she repeated. ‘I can see you now.’

Lorraine held the security door wide open until Rider got his act together and realised he was needed. He stood slowly with all the effort required by a man whose life was about to fall apart. Lorraine couldn’t help the little inward smile. He’d come here of his own accord, after all, so she’d made herself promise to be . . . to be
nice
to him, see what he’d got to say. He walked through the door and Lorraine caught the faint whiff of a man on the brink, a man whose bathroom habits had been bumped down the list of priorities. And all for what? A few shags with one of his students. She wondered if he thought it was worth it now.

‘Take a seat,’ she said once they were inside the interview room. It was a grey and dull space with not very much natural light. She didn’t bother flicking on the fluorescent strips. ‘What is it you want to see me about?’ she asked, perched on the corner of the second, smaller table in the room. Sitting down opposite him would have somehow signalled her approval of his presence and, in turn, his behaviour. She couldn’t condone that. If he’d come to say something helpful to the investigation, fine. If not, she would make this quick.

‘I am Sally-Ann’s baby’s father,’ Rider said quietly, shaking Lorraine from her thoughts. His hands were clasped together – fingers entwining like hopeless lovers – as they poked out from the ends of tweed sleeves. ‘She wasn’t sleeping with anyone else.’

What a total caricature
, Lorraine thought as she absorbed the smugness of what he’d just said. How did he know Sally-Ann hadn’t been sleeping with anyone else? The same way his wife no doubt believed in her husband’s fidelity, Lorraine supposed. She imagined him mixing with university professors and getting up to endless scholarly antics and jolly japes. Then she remembered he was just a teacher at the local community college – hardly an Oxford professor – and the leather elbow patches, untamed hair and thin-rimmed glasses suddenly lost their intellectual appeal. She wondered what on earth Sally-Ann, a pretty young woman, had ever seen in him.

‘I already know that,’ she said. The results had just come back from the lab.

‘But I swear I didn’t kill Sally-Ann.’ He bowed his head.

I know that too
, Lorraine thought, but didn’t say it. His alibis had checked out. Rider was teaching at the college on the day in question and there was CCTV footage to prove it. Russell Goodall’s movements, however, hadn’t been quite so easy to map. ‘Why should I believe you? You have a strong motive.’

‘I might have fucked things up with my wife and Sally-Ann but I’m not a murderer, for Christ’s sake.’ Rider gripped the table and, for a second, Lorraine thought he was going to cry. ‘I’d have done the right thing by her and the baby somehow. Taken a second job or something. Just don’t tell my wife.’ He hung his head again. ‘Please.’

‘Is that the only reason you wanted to see me in person?’ Lorraine suddenly felt powerful. He’d come to beg.

‘No.’ A glance up again. He swallowed. ‘I have the name of someone who might be able to help you.’

‘Oh?’
Bastard
, she thought. ‘So you want me to promise not to tell your wife about your misdemeanour in return for this little gem of information?’

Rider nodded.

‘You realise I could arrest you right now for that?’

Rider swallowed. ‘I . . . I’m not withholding anything. I just want it to be fair. Sally-Ann and I—’

‘You were cheating on your wife, Mr Rider. Why should any of this be fair?’ Lorraine felt her heart quicken. It was like a drug she couldn’t shift from her system; a drug she wished she’d never heard about.

‘Fair for my wife,’ he clarified. ‘I know what I did was a shitty thing to do. But it’s over now.’

‘Obviously,’ Lorraine stated.

‘So there’s no reason for Lesley to find out or get hurt then?’ He leant back in the plastic stacking chair.

‘You’d better ask the journalists,’ Lorraine said. She glanced at her watch. ‘They’ll print what they want.’

‘Look, Sally-Ann went to these childbirth classes. She’d seen them advertised in the local paper. Once or twice she asked if I’d go along with her but, obviously, I refused. It wouldn’t have been right. I think she saw some kind of future for us, hoped I would leave Lesley and my kids. There was no way I was going to do that. Anyway, Sally-Ann made some new friends at the class and got close to one woman in particular. Amanda Simkins. They hit it off right away.’

‘And?’ Lorraine was lost. ‘Did you ever meet her?’

‘Several times,’ Rider said. ‘But I didn’t like her from the start.’

Lorraine didn’t quite see the relevance of all this but she allowed him to continue.

‘They used to do breathing and yoga, learn how to spot the signs of labour and change nappies.’ Rider paused. ‘That kind of stuff.’ He made a face that indicated he’d never understand.

‘All sounds very normal to me,’ Lorraine said, sliding off the edge of the table. She folded her arms. ‘Pregnant women going to childbirth classes and making friends. Don’t tell me, I bet they went for coffee afterwards, too.’ She added a little chuckle.

‘They did indeed,’ he said. ‘But want to know something odd about that woman?’ Rider added, also rising.

He was a good deal taller than Lorraine so she stared up at his unshaven face. ‘Go on then.’ Her hand was on the door handle. She could hardly wait.

‘Amanda Simkins isn’t even pregnant.’

*

They didn’t tell the class instructor they were coming. Instead, they waited in the hallway of the old Baptist Church Hall, peering in through the glass square in the door at a dozen or so women in various stages of pregnancy writhing around on yoga mats.

‘You didn’t do anything like that when you were pregnant,’ Adam said through a sour smile.

‘No,’ Lorraine replied. ‘I was too busy catching criminals to have time for such luxuries.’

The woman taking the class, Mary Knowles, kept glancing at them through the foot-wide aperture with an increasing frown spreading across her brow. In the end, curiosity got the better of her and, once the women were lying down with blankets covering them and the blinds drawn and the lights dimmed, she came to the door and yanked it open.

‘Can I help you?’ she said in a fierce whisper.

‘I’m DI Lorraine Fisher and this is DI Adam Scott.’ They showed her their IDs. ‘We’re from the Major Investigations Unit.’ Lorraine paused to allow the introduction to sink in. ‘We were going to wait until your class was finished but . . .’ She trailed off and raised her eyebrows.

‘It’s about poor Sally-Ann, isn’t it?’

Lorraine nodded. ‘We’re interested in what you know about her. In particular, the women she got friendly with at your classes, like Amanda Simkins.’

‘Oh, I see,’ Mary Knowles said, almost apologetically. ‘That would have been at my Bordesley Green class. I run several in different areas of Birmingham. They’re very popular.’

‘We can wait until you’re finished, if you prefer,’ Adam said, peering back through the door at the women on their backs. ‘And talk properly after your class.’ Several of them were shifting uncomfortably.

‘It’ll be over in five minutes,’ Mary said. ‘They’re just relaxing now. It’s important.’

Lorraine and Adam retreated to a wooden bench and waited. Lorraine wished she could relax. She let out a huge sigh and turned round. Notices of several events taking place at the hall were pinned on a cork board above them. An indoor car boot sale, a brownie cake sale, a youth disco. One or two had already passed and the leaflets were outdated. There was one advertising Mary Knowles’s antenatal classes. Apparently she hired out water-birth pools as a side-line.

‘Does it take you back?’ Adam asked as they waited.

‘Not really,’ Lorraine replied, but then wished she’d said yes as the door opened and a stream of chattering women waddled out, some having to open both of the double doors to get through. Their daughters were fourteen and seventeen now, young adults, and it made Lorraine sad to think about the relentless passing of time. These women were just starting out, with sleepless nights, endless nappies and guilty feelings of inadequacy stretching ahead of them. But then she felt suddenly relieved to have got to this point in her life without too much maternal trauma. She’d been a good mother, hadn’t she? And now that the girls were older and more independent, as well as beautiful, loving, popular and hard-working, she was technically more able to do what she wanted in the little free time she had. It was just that she never had any.
Although everybody else bloody well does
, she thought, glaring at Adam.

‘Do come in now,’ Mary said from within the hall after the last woman had left. She’d opened the curtains at the tall windows and a low winter sun grazed in across the dusty wooden floor. She wriggled her arms into a grey tracksuit top, snuggling her pert breasts within as she zipped it up. Lorraine didn’t fail to notice Adam watching her as she did this. It was pathetic.

Or was she the pathetic one for noticing him noticing, she wondered? Or perhaps he wasn’t even noticing them at all and she just thought he was? Paranoia, then. Perhaps they should try another counsellor after all.

‘So,’ Mary said rather authoritatively, as if she was the one in search of information, ‘Sally-Ann Frith.’

She broke the words down into precise syllables. It made the poor lass seem still alive, somehow, Lorraine thought. She remembered the girl’s mother, Daphne, how strangely in control she’d seemed despite the terrible death of her daughter. If it had been one of her girls . . . she shuddered, shaking the thought from her mind. Golden rule: don’t personalise cases. Ever.

‘She was due any time, if I remember correctly. Let me recall . . . yes, I think she was having a C-sec, wasn’t she?’ Mary Knowles stared at Lorraine and Adam down a long nose. Her whole face was long, like a horse, Lorraine thought.

‘Yes. Someone beat the hospital to it, I’m afraid, as you’ve no doubt heard,’ Lorraine said.

‘My ladies are a bit twitchy about it, you know,’ Mary replied, as if admonishing them for not having caught the killer yet.

‘Twitchy?’ Adam said stupidly. He probably thought it was a side-effect of being pregnant.

A slim finger with an unfeasibly long scarlet nail tucked back a strand of hair. ‘What if he strikes again? What if he’s a serial killer targeting pregnant women?’ Her voice was virtually begging Adam to save her, Lorraine thought.

‘It’s not wo
men
,’ she said, in order to stress that this was an isolated case. Of course, to pad out the short statement they’d so far fed the press, several of the national papers had delved into similar stories in the States where babies had been ripped from their mothers’ wombs in jealous fits of foetal abduction. It was enough to stir speculation. ‘We have no reason to believe Sally-Ann was targeted because she was pregnant. What would be really helpful is if you could tell me something we don’t know about Miss Frith.’

Mary thought for a moment. ‘She was lovely and a popular member of my class.’ Her voice quivered a bit. ‘And she was taking care of herself and the baby. You know, keeping healthy and eating all the right things. I don’t think it was a planned pregnancy, but she’d resigned herself to being a mother.’

Lorraine nodded. ‘What about Amanda Simkins? Do you know her? Did she come to your classes?’

‘What about her?’ Mary said with a laugh, without actually answering any of Lorraine’s questions. ‘She’s a one, that’s for sure.’

‘What do you mean, “a one”?’ Adam said.

‘You know, a
one
. Someone who stands out but not necessarily for the right reasons.’

‘In what way did she stand out?’ Adam asked.

Mary glanced out of the window as if that might help the words come. She wrinkled up her nose. ‘She’s what I call a wormer-inner,’ she said finally. ‘Always trying to get in on the act, never wanting to miss a trick, desperate to be the centre of attention. You know.’