From the Cradle (20 page)

Gill made a face. ‘I wondered if you might be involved in th
at –
I read about it. We’re allowed a newspaper sometimes, and the odd bit of supervised internet access, if we’re very good . . . The Child Catcher. I remember Breem from that case. Trafficking ring, do y
ou think?’

‘Could be. We know that at least one of the kids was taken by a woman.’

At that moment in the corridor outside they both heard a terrible screaming and wailing. The door burst open, an alarm went off, and a young, emaciated woman with a half-unravelled knitted sweater in pink wool and bandages on both wrists literally ricocheted off the doorframe into the room, like a human pinball, trailing a long pink wool thread behind her. She headed straight for Gill, shouting at the top of her lungs:

‘YOUBITCHI’LLKILLYOUYOUTOOKMYFAGSAGAINIKNOWYOUDID . . .’

Gill and Pat leaped up and Pat grabbed the woman in an armlock as two security guards ran in and took over, frogmarching her out again. The alarm was silenced. ‘Shit,’ Pat said, feeling shaken. ‘Does that happen often?’

‘All the time,’ Gill’s voice was calm. ‘Usually with her. She hates me. She thinks I nick her stuff. I don’t. I mean, I don’t even smoke.’

Pat just stared at her. ‘It’s awful in here, isn’t it,’ he said flatly.

‘Yeah.’ Gill didn’t meet his eye, but gazed at the horrible print on the wall behind his head, a bucolic scene of lavender fields he’d noticed on his way in, thinking how inappropriate a picture it was for people who were so confined. If he had to look at badly executed paintings of lavender every day when the closest he ever got to it was a plug-in air freshener, he was sure that it would drive him even more insane.

‘There are loads like her. They’re always trying to kill
themselves
.’

Pat was glad that she had said ‘they’ instead of ‘we’.

‘We have to use plastic cutlery and everything. That mad cow somehow managed to get into the kitchen and break a bottle a few weeks ago and hide the bits of broken glass everywhere, in toilet cisterns, behind pictures, in her shoes, everywhere. They search the whole place every single day but she still keeps appearing and slashing at her wrists with a new shard. She’s always in the Supervised Confinement Room – ‘solitary’, to you. Killed both her kids because her ex was trying to get custody, then tried to hang herself with a belt. She’s only twenty-eight, and she’s been in here for six years.’

Gill sat up straighter and met Pat’s eyes again. ‘I know trafficking’s the obvious thought, for your case, but if I were you, I’d be looking for someone like her. Recently released but probably still insane. Desperate. May have lost her kids already. Nothing else left to lose . . .’

Pat stared at her.

Nothing else left to lose . . .

Why on earth hadn’t he thought of that before?

Chapter 22
Patrick – Day 4

The air outside the secure unit was thick and tense with the tar and brimstone smell that rose up from the pavement before a storm. Sure enough, as Patrick reached his car the light dimmed as an armada of black clouds drifted over the sun and the heavens opened.

He sat in the car, watching fat raindrops bounce off the windscreen, sucking hard on his e-cigarette. The tip winked green to indicate the battery had died and he threw it angrily into the footwell of the passenger seat. He would give his right lung for a real fag right now.

He held his hands out before him. They were trembling. While he’d been in the room with Gill he had kept his emotions locked down tight, trying to pretend they weren’t there, ignoring them as if they were a crowd of rioters yelling abuse at him. And now – well, it felt like an emotional riot, so many conflicting feelings rampaging through his head and stomach, where he felt it most, that he couldn’t process it. He simply didn’t know how he felt. There was relief, that she had seemed so stable. Sadness, when she had asked about Bonnie and all he had to show her was his stupid key-ring. What else? Mostly he had felt awkward and tense. Not so long ago, Gill was the one person in the world that he felt fully comfortable with. Today – and he knew this shouldn’t surprise him – it had been just like talking to an ex-girlfriend.

He had wondered so many times if their marriage, their relationship, could ever be healed after what had happened. Now, after seeing her, the prognosis was as uncertain as it had been yesterday or last week. And the thing was, he didn’t even know if he wanted them to get back together. Of course, he wanted her to be well. He wanted Bonnie to have a mum. But could he imagine them being together again as husband and wife? Maybe. But just maybe.

He turned on the engine and watched the windscreen wipers fight against the raindrops. He pressed play on the CD player and The Cure’s ‘The Same Deep Water as You’ came on, a song that always soothed him. He smiled and ran a hand through his hair.
I probably need to see a therapist
, he thought.
Talk through my feelings. Listen to music other than The Cure
. He clenched his jaw. A therapist? A psychiatrist, more like. And as the rain slowed to a rhythmic drumming on the glass, he remembered what Gill had said. Over the past months he had conducted a thousand imaginary conversations with her, but had never dreamt on their first encounter they would talk about one of his cases.

What she had said though. It was like a break in the clouds. She had always been good at that, shining a light through the fog. And as the rain slowed and he reversed out of his parking space, he realised how keenly he had felt her absence from his life. How much he had missed her.

‘What are we looking for, sir?’

Carmella pulled a chair up to his desk as Patrick tapped at the keyboard.

He concentrated on the screen. ‘I’m looking for women who were committed to secure units for harming or abducting
children
.’

He felt rather than saw Carmella’s stare, knowing exactly what she’d be thinking.
Women like your wife
. And maybe she would be thinking why he hadn’t thought of it before. But, of course, they hadn’t known that the person who’d taken Liam – and, they had to assume, Frankie and Isabel – had been female, and as soon as Bowie had given them that explosive piece of information they’d set off after Denise, straight down an investigative cul-de-sac.

As Patrick entered search terms into the HOLMES database, he felt a presence behind him and heard an unwelcome voice.

‘Don’t tell me,’ Winkler said, ‘you’re about to crack this case wide open.’

‘Fuck off, Adrian,’ Patrick said without turning round.

‘Ooh. Someone’s prickly. In a bad mood, are we?’

Patrick gripped the arms of his chair, counting to five beneath his breath.

‘I’ll leave you to it,’ Winkler said. ‘Don’t want to disturb the great brains of the Met. Beside, I’ve got some proper investigating to do.’

After he was gone, Patrick shook his head. ‘It’s not just me, is it, Carmella?’

‘No sir. It’s not just you. That man is a twat of the highest order.’ She crooked her little finger. ‘I’ve heard he should be called Winklette rather than Winkler.’

Patrick couldn’t help but smile. ‘Who told you that?’

‘That would be telling. But he tried it on with me once, when I first worked here. He seemed convinced he could convert me.’

Patrick laughed, and scrolled down the screen. ‘Arrogant
bastard
. . . OK – let’s crack on. Don’t want to give him a second’s more head space.’

After an hour, he sat back, Winkler forgotten. ‘Right, these look like the most promising pair.’

They had identified two women. The first was called Sharon Fredericks, a 42-year-old resident of Richmond. Nine years ago, she had attempted to snatch a baby boy from a hospital, had only made it as far as the exit before she was stopped, at which point she had pulled a knife and threatened to kill both the baby and herself. A hospital porter had tackled her, getting himself stabbed in the process, but they had managed to rescue the baby without him getting hurt. At the trial, the judge had ordered Freder
icks –
who, it turned out, had suffered the devastating blow of SIDS twice, losing two baby boys in as many years – to be committed to a secure unit, the same one as Gill. She was released eighteen months ago. The photograph they had on file was of a pasty, hunched woman with frizzy hair, who could easily be the woman Bowie had described.

The other woman looked similar. Her name was Andrea Hertz, she lived in Teddington and, like all women in this area who were committed, she had also been in the same unit as Gill. Hertz had kidnapped her own children after custody of them was given to her ex-husband, who had convinced the court that Hertz was an alcoholic and an unfit parent. She had locked herself and the children in her car, connected a hose to the exhaust, fed it through the window and turned the engine on. Her ex had found them and smashed the car window with a brick. Andrea Hertz was still breathing, but the two children, a boy and girl, three and five years old, were both dead. This had happened twelve years ago and Hertz had been released last year.

‘Heartbreaking,’ Carmella commented.

Patrick tried not to picture the bodies of the children in the car. He said, ‘OK, Hertz is closer – let’s go talk to her first, then Fredericks.’

After two minutes talking to Andrea Hertz, Patrick knew she wasn’t their woman. She nervously invited them in to her tiny flat and offered them a cup of tea. Not wanting her to know the real reason for their visit – as it was, at this point he merely wanted to scope her out – Patrick said they’d had reports of teenagers causing trouble in the area and wanted to know if she’d had any problems. As she replied, stumbling over her words, his eyes fell on the framed photographs of two smiling children, a gap-toothed girl and cheekily grinning boy, on the sideboard.

Andrea Hertz was like a walking corpse, her spirit as emaciated as her flesh. Her hair was white; she looked twenty years older than her true age. Nothing like Bowie’s description. Carmella asked if she could use the toilet while Patrick chatted to her, so she could have a quick look round. When she returned she subtly shook her head and they left.

‘That poor, poor woman,’ Carmella said as they got back into the car.

‘Her poor children.’

They didn’t talk about it any more on the way to the address they had for Sharon Fredericks, a small terraced house on an estate on the outskirts of Richmond. The sun was shining again, the air clear and fresh following the earlier storm. As they stood outside the house waiting for someone to come to the door
Patrick
felt a tingle in his veins. They were on the right track now. He felt sure.

But there was no response.

He pressed the doorbell again and waited. Nothing.

‘Wait here,’ he said, pushing open the side gate and going into the back garden. The grass was overgrown, daisies and weeds choking the garden. The curtains were drawn across the back windows, but through a side window he could see into the hallway. Mounds of junk mail were stacked up behind the door.

He went back round to the front. ‘Looks like she hasn’t been here for some time.’ He checked the time. Five o’clock. He felt torn: he was sure this was important but he was desperate to see Bonnie, especially after everything that had happened today.

As if she’d read his mind, Carmella said, ‘Why don’t I go back to the station, try to find a new address for Fredericks, and you can get back and see Bonnie before she goes to bed?’

‘I don’t know . . .’

‘Go on. It won’t take both of us to look up an address.’

‘Have I ever told you what a great partner you are?’

‘I don’t think you have, actually.’

‘Well, I should have. I’ll go and see Bonnie and then meet you back at the station. Unless you want to get home.’

Carmella put a hand on his arm. ‘I’ll see you later.’

Patrick told Carmella to take the car and called a taxi for
himself
. While he waited he took the printout with Fredericks’ details from his inner pocket and scanned through it. Her psychiatrist’s name was Dr Catherine Hudson.

Patrick called the secure unit and asked to speak to Dr Hudson, but was told she’d gone home for the day.

‘It’s extremely urgent,’ he said. ‘Can you give me her phone number?’

After a few minutes of arguing about confidentiality, the receptionist agreed to give Dr Hudson Patrick’s number, and would ask her to call him. He had no choice but to agree.

Ten minutes later, his phone rang. Finally, someone who didn’t enjoy obstructing the police. Dr Hudson told him she was at home and that she would be happy to talk to him there.

Her house was a five-minute drive away, not far from Helen and Sean’s place. Another detached property with a ridiculous price tag. Not for the first time, as he waited for the psychiatrist to come to the door, Patrick muttered to himself that he was in the wro
ng game.

Two minutes later he sat in Dr Hudson’s home office, surrounded by stacks of paper and hundreds of academic books with titles that made his head hurt. Dr Hudson was a good-looking black woman in her late forties, with smooth skin and an amused look in her eyes.

‘Thank you so much for agreeing to talk to me,’ he said.

He wondered if she knew the connection between them. There were a lot of doctors at the secure unit, and Dr Hudson probably wasn’t treating Gill, but there was a good chance this woman had encountered his wife or at least knew of her. He decided not to bring it up.

He explained that he was trying to find Sharon Fredericks.

‘I know there are proper channels, and that you’re probably going to cite patient confidentiality, but I’m going to be open with you. I’m investigating the so-called Child Catcher case—’

Dr Hudson’s eyes widened.

‘—and this is very urgent. I need to find Ms Fredericks ASAP, so we can eliminate her from the enquiry.’

Catherine Hudson perched on the edge of her desk and ran her forefinger across her chin thoughtfully. ‘Hmm. Well, yes, there is patient confidentiality, of course. But I couldn’t help you with her whereabouts anyway. I referred her on to another practitioner very shortly after she was discharged. Someone who I thought could do more for her.’

‘Can you give me their name?’

She rocked her head from side to side and said, ‘Hmmm.’

‘Come on, Dr Hudson . . . please?’

Without replying, Hudson went over to her vast bookcase and scanned the shelves. ‘Uh-huh,’ she said to herself, taking down a thick book with a white spine and laying it on the desk.

‘I’m sorry, detective, but I can’t tell you.’ She looked at the book meaningfully and Patrick smiled, picking it up.

‘I know this book,’ he said. It was
The Snapping Point
by
Dr Samuel
Koppler. He had a copy under his bed at his parents’ house.

‘Really? Is this the kind of thing they get you to read when you join the police?’