No Child of Mine (59 page)

‘Moving on,’ Val said, ‘I’ve been chatting with your team leader, Tommy Burgess, again. He’s very keen to make it known how highly he rates your professional abilities, and after the local paper ran the interview with a couple of your colleagues last night, he feels it’s time for him to speak out.’

‘But the powers that be have issued a blanket ban on anyone speaking to the press,’ Alex objected. ‘I don’t want him getting into trouble for me.’

‘You’ll have to take it up with him, but frankly I think it’s time someone other than your team leader and union rep helped you to fight your corner. The press are tearing you apart out there, quite unjustifiably, of course, but we know how they love to go for people in your position when things go wrong. You’re the easiest and most obvious scapegoat.’

Since she blamed herself too, for everything, Alex had no words to defend herself. She’d call Tommy later and persuade him to see sense: there was nothing to be gained from him jeopardising his position when the department, the children, needed him far more than she did. Besides, it was all over for her now; they’d never give her back her job or let her near a child again after this.

‘Further developments notwithstanding,’ Val said, ‘I’ll stop by and check on you tomorrow. In the meantime, if anything else comes to mind, anything at all, you know how to get hold of me, day or night. Oh God, that reminds me, I’ve had a call from someone by the name of Maggie Fenn? She says she’s a foster carer ...’

‘Yes, I know who she is.’

‘Well, she’s very keen to get hold of you. She said you have her number so please ring it, any time, day or night.’

‘Thank you,’ Alex said softly, already knowing she wouldn’t.

‘She also said,’ Val continued, ‘to remind you that her brother is a lawyer.’

Alex’s heart clenched on a beat.

‘It might not be a bad idea to have one,’ Val said gently, ‘or at least someone to advise you on how to handle the press – and your employers when the time comes.’

‘Yes, of course,’ Alex said, her voice sounding as parched as her hopes.

As she rang off she was so close to losing it again that it took at least a dozen sharp, ragged breaths to get past it. What was she going to do? What the hell could she do apart from sit here and wait?

She went to put on some music to drown out the clamour of the press outside, and to mask the sobs that were tearing through her conscience into her heart. She barely listened to what was playing, couldn’t focus on anything apart from Ottilie and the way the world was folding in around her.

To the haunting sounds of one of her father’s Gregorian chants she took herself upstairs. She felt safer there, less able to be spotted by someone creeping up to the house to peer through a chink in the curtains and twist whatever she might be doing into some sort of news.

What would they make of it if they saw she had Boots, she wondered as she picked up the bear. Even the police didn’t know she had him – why would they when they had no idea he even existed, much less that Ottilie would never go anywhere without him? She should hand him over, she knew it, but she simply couldn’t make herself.

‘Ottilie,’ she whispered shakily, and as a terrible, wrenching horror escaped her she pressed the bear to her face as though to stifle her grief.

It was Saturday now, almost a week since Ottilie had disappeared, and Maggie Fenn, like so many others, was still glued to the regular updates of the search. One of the most tragic and in its way repulsive parts of it, she felt, was the fact that it had turned out so few usable photographs existed of the poor child. This was how DCI Gould had put it in one of his statements, ‘... hardly any usable photographs ...’ leaving the public to imagine the content of those the police did have. Maggie couldn’t allow her mind to go there. It was too terrible, too traumatic to think of such a tiny,
defenceless girl being subjected to the perversion of a grown man, and that grown man her own father. Instead she focused on the two grainy shots they were managing to show of a solemn, waif-like creature with dark curly hair and a pixyish face.

The owner of the Pumpkin playgroup had been on earlier, talking about how worried they all were for Ottilie. She’d spoken out for Alex too. ‘I’ve known her for a long time,’ she told the reporter, ‘and I’ve seen first-hand how good she is with the children. In Ottilie’s case she used to bring her here herself, three times a week. That in itself goes beyond the call of duty. I know for a fact that she was doing everything possible to socialise Ottilie and encourage her to speak. And actually she was making some progress. Ottilie did speak to her, and anyone with eyes in their head could see that the child was absolutely devoted to her. Knowing what I do now, about Ottilie’s parents, I’d say it was probably the first time in her life that Ottilie had felt what it was like to be loved in a normal, healthy way.’

‘Did you ever meet Ottilie’s mother?’ the interviewer asked.

‘No, she never came to the nursery. I believe she was an agoraphobic.’

From everything that had been reported over the course of this week, Maggie couldn’t be in much doubt that agoraphobia had been the least of Erica Wade’s problems. A mother with schizophrenia, a stepfather who’d been even more abusive than the man she’d gone on to marry; a serious drug addiction serviced, it seemed, by online pharmacies – and now a new inquiry had been opened up in Northumbria into the death of her three-year-old son, Jonathan.

Some news reports had claimed that Erica had confessed to the killing in an email found, but never sent, on her laptop computer, which had been seized by the police very early on. An officer with Northumbria Police had spoken briefly about the contact he’d recently had with Alex over the matter, but very few details had emerged as yet.

The predictable troop of experts had been paraded into TV studios to discuss why the death hadn’t been treated
as suspicious at the time, and most seemed to agree that panicked, inexpert lifesaving techniques might easily have caused the bruising around the boy’s nose and mouth. As for the motive Erica Wade might have had for killing her own son, apparently, according to the unsent email, it had been to save him from her husband’s abuse.

Naturally this had immediately raised the question, had she done the same to Ottilie? And was this the reason her husband had killed her, because she’d once again deprived him of his own personal plaything? Whatever the answers, they still didn’t seem any closer to finding Ottilie, and the vicious media attacks on Alex were showing no signs of letting up.

‘Will you listen to this fool?’ Maggie cried angrily as her husband and brother came into the kitchen. ‘I mean, who is he, for heaven’s sake, apart from some thug they’ve picked out of the Temple Fields estate who can hardly string two coherent words together. What the hell does he know about anything?’

Anthony and Ron watched in silence as Shane Prince garbled on about how Alex Lake was always coming round their way trying to snatch kids from their families. ‘It happened to ours,’ he snorted, hefting a gob of spit to the kerb, ‘but we wasn’t having none of it. We got rid of her right off, then she only went and called on the dudes what live over Cander Street. I’m telling you, man, she could have caused a riot that day, and it would have been us lot what was left to blame, when it wasn’t nothing to do with us at all.’

‘It’s crazy,’ Maggie declared, ‘there’s him saying she was always trying to take kids away and everyone else going on about how she didn’t act fast enough in Ottilie’s case. They can’t have it both ways, or I suppose they can, just as long as it paints her in as bad a light as Brian flipping Wade himself.’

Going to pour two coffees, her husband said, ‘I hear they’ve made five more arrests in connection with this paedophile ring.’

Maggie nodded grimly. ‘One of them a local GP. Dr Aiden.’ She shuddered with revulsion. ‘He was Ottilie’s
doctor, apparently. They’re saying it’s why the Wades moved here, because
he
thought being in with the GP would keep Ottilie out of the system.’

Anthony and Ron looked every bit as disgusted, as Ron said, ‘I take it there’s still no sign of the little girl.’

Maggie shook her head, then threw out her hands. ‘For God’s sake, she has to be somewhere, though thank God it wasn’t at the bottom of Moorland lake. They’re still searching over that way, though,’

‘Thanks,’ Anthony said, as Ron passed him a mug. ‘Good news from the
Kesterly Gazette
,’ he told his sister, but before he could continue the phone rang and Maggie snatched it up.

‘Hello, Maggie Fenn speaking,’ she announced.

As she listened her eyes widened in amazement, and she turned excitedly towards her husband and brother. ‘Alex, thank goodness,’ she gasped. ‘Oh my dear, I’ve been so worried about you. Are you all right? Well, of course you’re not, but we want to help if we can. Please tell us what we can do.’

In a hoarse and very tired-sounding voice, Alex said, ‘That’s so kind of you, Maggie. The police gave me your message ... I really didn’t want to bother you, but I was hoping your brother might ...’

‘He’s right here,’ Maggie assured her. ‘He’ll know what to do. I’ll pass you over.’

With an ironic glance at his sister, Anthony took the phone. ‘Hi Alex,’ he said. ‘I’m really sorry for all you’re going through.’

‘Thank you,’ she replied. ‘It’s been ... It’s ...’

‘Hell, I expect,’ he came in gently. ‘And worse, but like Maggie said, we want to help if we can.’

‘Thank you,’ Alex said again. ‘I’d really appreciate that. The police are saying I ought to have someone.’

‘Yes, you should,’ he agreed, ‘if only to help you deal with the press.’ He didn’t utter the words
they’re flaying you alive
, but they were uppermost in his mind. ‘I shall be here for another week,’ he told her, ‘in Dean Crown Court from Wednesday, but I can make myself free to meet up before that if it suits you.’

Her voice faltered with emotion as she said, ‘I really appreciate that. My mother’s arriving from New Zealand tomorrow, so maybe Monday or Tuesday?’

Casting Maggie a curious glance, he replied, ‘As soon as you like. You tell me.’

‘What?’ Maggie mouthed.

He held up a hand as Alex said, ‘Would it be OK if I came there on Monday afternoon? I’d rather the press didn’t try to make something of you coming here.’

‘Of course. Will you manage to get through without them following you?’

‘I’ve no idea. Will it be a problem if I don’t? I’m sure Maggie won’t want them bothering her ...’

‘Don’t worry about that, she can deal with it. You’re our main concern right now, and it might help you in some small way to know that Ron and I have just come from the
Kesterly Gazette
. The editor has agreed to run a letter both online and in the paper from Ron and Maggie, detailing the occasions that you pointed out certain errors Heather Hancock had made in her reporting. They go on to suggest that she might bear a grudge for this, which she has serviced through the only bad review you received for your play – and of course through the interview with two of your colleagues, who very conveniently had to remain anonymous. The suggestion, obviously, is that they don’t exist.’

‘Actually, I expect they do,’ Alex confessed, ‘and I could probably name them, but I guess we all have our enemies whether we feel we’ve earned them or not. What really beats me about Heather is the fact that she’s making me a priority when a little girl in her own area is missing.’

‘This is precisely the point Maggie and Ron have made in their letter. So, shall we say two o’clock on Monday?’

‘That should be fine. Thank you, and please thank Maggie for me too. She hardly knows me, but the way she’s ... Sorry, I’m getting emotional, so I’d better ring off, just give Sophie a hug, will you? Tell her I’m sorry I won’t be able to see her for ... for a while.’

As the line went dead, Anthony handed the phone back to Maggie and because Sophie wasn’t in the room he said, ‘You never mentioned Alex has a mother.’

Maggie looked thrown. ‘Doesn’t everyone?’ she replied.

He cast her a wryly disapproving look.

‘Did I ever tell you how much you remind me of Grandad when you do that? He was a lawyer too, of course. Anyway, I take your point, I didn’t know she had a mother. So I take it she’s over there with Alex?’

‘No, apparently she’s on her way here from New Zealand.’

Maggie’s eyebrows rose. ‘Well, I must say she’s taking her time,’ she commented.

‘Careful,’ he warned, ‘you’re on the verge of making the same mistake as everyone else, drawing conclusions without knowing all the facts.’

Chapter Twenty-Five

THE STRAIN OF
being interviewed by DCI Gould from CID, the lead detective in the case, was showing in Alex’s face as she waited almost desperately for her mother to arrive. He’d come here, to the house, this morning, Sunday – exactly a week after Ottilie had disappeared – to talk through the investigation and find out if there was anything, just one tiny, seemingly insignificant detail she might not have told them.

With Val Bingham from CAIT sitting beside her she’d assured him there was nothing she could think of, but she’d be happy to go over everything again if he wanted her to. He did, and so for two solid hours she’d relived every moment she’d spent with Ottilie, from that first day in the park when she’d talked to her on the swing, to the brief glimpse Brian Wade had allowed her, just over a week ago, when she’d turned up at the house to take Ottilie to nursery.

Had she noticed anything suspicious in Brian Wade’s behaviour then, the detective had wanted to know. Though she’d answered the question several times over the course of the past week, she answered it again, saying that yes, she had felt there to be something suspicious in his manner, but she couldn’t be specific as to why she had thought so.

Had she had any reason to think while she was there that day that he intended to harm his wife? Not really, she replied, but he had made it clear that he wouldn’t be taking her to see the psychiatrist.

She knew from Val Bingham that the psychiatrist had been interviewed, but she had no details of what he’d told the police.