The Outcast Dead (7 page)

‘What does she do, Aliona?’

‘She’s a student.’

Nelson says nothing. After a moment, Bob says, ‘I met
her when I did some teaching at the university. She’s a good bit younger than me but she’s very mature.’

I bet she is, thinks Nelson. Aloud he says, ‘What did Liz think about you going out with someone new?’

‘She was fine about it,’ says Bob. Too quickly.

‘Must have been hard for her, left alone with a young baby. Especially when you consider the history.’

‘Of course it was hard,’ says Bob. ‘But things had got to the stage when it was worse to stay together.’ His voice drops. ‘It was torture.’

‘Torture?’

‘I didn’t mean that,’ Bob backtracks quickly. Nevertheless it is there, hovering in the air. Torture. Surely an odd, melodramatic choice of word.

‘It’s just …’ Bob turns to look at Clough, as if begging someone else to understand. ‘The marriage was over really, but when Liz got pregnant again we decided to give it another go. But sometimes you can’t go back. I wanted to leave as soon as David was born but Liz was so depressed …’ He stops.

Nelson and Clough exchange a look. There was no mention of post-natal depression on Liz Donaldson’s medical notes.

‘She was depressed?’ prompts Nelson.

‘No.’ Bob backtracks again. ‘It wasn’t full-blown depression. She was just tired. David wasn’t sleeping, I was working all hours …’ He stops again, as if he’s aware that he’s making things worse.

‘When did you leave?’ asks Nelson, his voice hard. Nothing excuses abandoning your child, he thinks. But then a voice inside his head says: isn’t that what you did?

‘In February.’

‘Depression all over then? Liz feeling full of beans?’

Bob can hardly miss the antagonism but he says, with an attempt at dignity, ‘There was never going to be an ideal time to leave.’

‘I should imagine not. David must have been, what, three months old?’

‘Four.’

‘And you met Aliona when?’

Bob hesitates. ‘Well, I already knew her.’

‘I see.’

Nelson can see Clough looking at him and knows that he sounds too disapproving. With an effort, he says in a more neutral voice, ‘Did you keep in touch with Liz and David?’

‘Of course,’ says Bob. ‘I saw David every week.’

‘When did you last see him before he died?’

‘The day before,’ says Bob. Tears begin to roll down his cheeks but he makes no attempt to check them. ‘I saw him just the day before. He looked so well and happy. He was just starting to crawl.’

‘And Liz? How did she seem?’

‘I didn’t see Liz. The babysitter was with David when I picked him up.’

So, far from the break-up being amicable, Liz
Donaldson couldn’t bear even to see her husband on his access visits. That must be the explanation, surely?

‘The babysitter?’

‘Justine Thomas. A lovely girl.’

She’s next on the list, thinks Nelson.

‘How long had Justine looked after David?’ he asks.

‘Since he was born. She looked after Samuel and Isaac too.’

‘Great names, your boys,’ says Clough.

Bob looked surprised. ‘Oh, thank you.’

‘From the Bible, aren’t they?’

‘I think so, yes. To be honest they were Liz’s choices. I prefer simple names for boys.’

‘Was Liz religious?’

‘No. She’d turned her back on all that stuff.’

‘What stuff?’

‘She was brought up a Seventh Day Adventist,’ says Bob.

Nelson doesn’t know anything about Seventh Day Adventists but the name stirs memories of another case involving a baby. In Australia, wasn’t it? Something about Ayres Rock and a dingo. He’ll look it up after the interview.

‘So she had no strong religious beliefs?’

‘No.’ Bob sits up and rubs his hand over his eyes. ‘Look, what are you getting at? Liz wasn’t a religious maniac, she wasn’t depressed, she wasn’t mad. She didn’t kill David. You’ve got no evidence that says she did.’

Nelson pauses to straighten the papers on his desk before replying. ‘The autopsy suggests he may have been suffocated,’ he says.

Justine Thomas agrees to see them but says that she is working.

‘But you can come here. My boss won’t mind.’

‘What does she do?’ asks Clough as they head out of town, Nelson at the wheel, Clough eating a bacon sandwich.

‘She’s a nanny. Works full time for a family in Chapel Road.’

Clough whistles. Not easy with a mouthful of bacon. ‘They must have a bob or two.’

Chapel Road is known locally as Millionaire’s Row and it’s not hard to see why. It’s a leafy area next door to the Sandringham Estate and some of the houses look fit, if not for a queen, at least for a member of minor royalty. The Rectory, inhabited by the family who employ Justine Thomas, is a sturdy Victorian house set back from the road and surrounded by trees. Nelson thinks that it could be the setting for one of those God-awful costume dramas the girls like to watch. Even Clough chews more respectfully.

Justine, who meets them at the door, is a small woman (both Nelson and Clough think of her as a girl) with short hair and a sensible manner. She is carrying a baby and another child clings to her legs.

There are three children she explains, as she leads them into what she refers to as ‘the playroom’, but the eldest is at school. As far as Nelson can see the playroom is bigger than his entire house, a huge sunny space with French windows leading out onto the garden. Justine puts the baby into a playpen and gets the older child playing with some bricks.

‘Hope you don’t mind,’ she says, ‘but it’s easier in here because they can entertain themselves.’

As the room contains more toys than Hamleys, Nelson can believe this. But after a few minutes the little boy abandons the bricks and starts trying to climb on Justine’s lap.

‘He’s a bit clingy,’ she says. ‘He’ll settle down in a bit.’

Strange to cling to the nanny rather than your mother, thinks Nelson. Clough is probably thinking the same thing because he says, ‘They’re pretty young to be left with a nanny, aren’t they?’

‘Poppy’s just over a year,’ she says, indicating the baby. ‘Scooter here is nearly three. Bailey, he’s the one at school, is five. I’ve looked after them since Bailey was a baby.’

Clough leans over to shake a rattle at Poppy. Nelson still can’t get over the names.
Scooter
. What were the parents thinking? They give their poor kids outlandish
names and then push off and leave them to be brought up by a girl that looks younger than his daughters.

‘I’m twenty-two,’ says Justine, in answer to his question. ‘I became a nanny straight from school. I love it.’

‘And you looked after all Liz Donaldson’s children?’

‘I wasn’t their nanny but I babysat sometimes.’ Her face clouds as she gently disentangles Scooter and puts him back on the floor. ‘I can’t believe that you’ve arrested Liz.’

‘New evidence has come to light,’ says Nelson. ‘I can’t say more at present.’

‘You can’t believe that she killed those babies. It’s impossible.’

‘We’re trying to build up a picture of Liz,’ says Nelson. ‘What can you tell us about her?’

‘She’s lovely,’ says Justine. ‘She’s been through so much. Samuel and Isaac dying, Bob leaving her. I don’t know how anyone could stand it.’

Maybe she didn’t stand it, thinks Nelson. Maybe she cracked and, for whatever reason, killed her last surviving child. Or did she kill all three of them, this lovely woman admired by all.

‘When was the last time that you saw David?’ he asks.

‘The day before he died.’ Justine’s eyes, like Bob’s earlier, fill with tears. ‘Bob was coming round and Liz didn’t want to see him so I went and waited with David. It was my day off.’

‘Was Liz still upset about her old man leaving?’ asks Clough.

Justine’s eyes flash and, for a second, she looks like a completely different person. ‘What do you think? He left her for a girl who was barely out of school. Aliona.’ She says the name with a mock Russian accent. ‘She’s younger than me. Did you know that? He left Liz alone with a young baby and he knew what she’d suffered. I’ll never forgive him for that.’

‘Had Liz forgiven him?’ asks Nelson.

‘She never criticised him, not even to me, but I think she was still pretty sore about it. She said it hurt too much to see him with David. That’s why she went out that day.’

‘How did David seem?’ asks Clough. ‘Was he under the weather at all?’

‘No,’ says Justine. ‘He was his usual smiley self.’ She brushes away tears with the back of her hand. ‘He was such a lovely baby.’

Nelson thinks that the one person who is hardly ever discussed is David Donaldson. Yet he was eight months old. He knows from his own children that by eight months they have powerful personalities. He has seen pictures of David – a blond blue-eyed moppet straight out of central casting – but he has never really thought about his character. Was he cheerful? Serious? Did he like cars or teddies? Did he have a passion for Thomas the Tank Engine? He asks now.

‘Oh, he was a sweetie,’ says Justine. ‘Not a grizzler like Scooter here. But then he had his mummy at home with him. He had nothing to grizzle about.’

‘Was he healthy?’ asks Nelson. ‘A good eater?’

‘Liz sometimes used to worry that he wasn’t gaining weight,’ says Justine. ‘But he was pretty healthy. He had a few colds and sniffles, nothing serious.’

Nelson knows that David had visited the doctor several times, always for minor ailments. But he had never been admitted to hospital. Surely, if Liz Donaldson was suffering from Munchausen’s by Proxy, she would have taken him to A&E a few times?

‘And how was Liz with him? Loving? Patient?’

‘Yes.’ Justine looks at him defiantly over the head of Scooter, who has climbed back onto her lap. ‘She was a perfect mother. And I’ll say that in court.’

On the way out, Clough asks what Justine’s employers do. ‘Must have plenty of cash by the look of this place.’ Justine says that they run a toy company.

‘So, what do you think, Boss?’ asks Clough as they make their way back through the leafy streets. ‘Did Liz Donaldson do it?’

‘I don’t know,’ says Nelson, speaking slowly and driving quickly. Too quickly. A speed bump jerks them both out of their seats.

‘Jesus, Boss,’ says Clough. ‘Are you trying to kill us?’ It’s usually the junior officer who drives and Clough wishes he had insisted on this protocol.

Nelson puts on the brakes. They take the next bump at thirty and almost miss the mini-roundabout altogether.

‘Have you got enough to charge her?’ asks Clough, holding on to the safety handle.

‘I don’t know,’ says Nelson again. ‘Chris Stephenson
thought the autopsy definitely pointed to asphyxiation. But David could have suffocated by rolling on to his front. Remember, Bob said that he was just starting to crawl? He would have been mobile enough. There were fibres in his mouth but no bruises on his face. It’s all too ambiguous. And Liz Donaldson doesn’t have any record of mental instability.’

‘There was the depression,’ Clough reminds him.

‘We’ve only got the husband’s word for that. And wouldn’t it be enough to make you depressed, your husband going off with some foreign bimbo?’

‘She could be a religious nutter. What was that about the Seventh Day Whathaveyous?’

‘Seventh Day Adventists.’ Nelson had looked them up after the interview with Bob. ‘They believe in observing the Sabbath and preparing for the second coming.’

‘They all do that. Even your lot.’

Nelson ignores this reference to the Roman Catholic Church. ‘There was that case in Australia,’ he says, ‘where a baby disappeared in the outback. The mother claimed that the baby was taken by a dingo but she was charged with murder. They were Seventh Day Adventists and there was a lot of guff in the press about the church believing in infant sacrifice. The baby was called Azaria and there was some talk that it meant “sacrifice in the wilderness”. All rubbish as far as I can make out. The woman was acquitted later.’

‘Shame,’ says Clough. ‘We could do with something that links Liz Donaldson to a bunch of child sacrificers.’

‘Instead she seems to be a perfectly normal woman. No-one’s got a bad word to say about her.’

‘I thought you had her down for it,’ says Clough.

Nelson doesn’t answer for a few minutes. He doesn’t like to think that Clough can read him so well. ‘I do suspect her,’ he says again. ‘There are just too many coincidences. All three children dying when alone in the house with her. And there’s something about her. She’s altogether too perfect for my liking. Her house is perfect, she was the perfect mother, she looks perfect. It’s just too … manufactured.’

‘Maybe she
is
perfect.’

Nelson laughs. ‘Nobody’s that perfect. You’ll find out when you have kids.’

There’s a brief silence and then Nelson says, ‘I just don’t know if we’ve got enough for the CPS. There’s the forensic evidence but that could be challenged. We can paint a picture of this depressed, psychotic woman but she’ll be sitting in the witness box looking like Mary Poppins.’

‘I always thought Mary Poppins was psychotic,’ says Clough.

*

They park the car behind the station and walk round to the front. As they approach they see a young woman coming down the steps. She has long blonde hair and is wearing a green jacket.

Nelson puts a hand out to stop Clough. ‘That girl,’ he says, ‘she was one of the reporters this morning.’

Clough squints at the retreating figure. ‘She’s a looker all right.’

‘How can you tell from the back?’

Clough leers. ‘I can tell.’

Nelson sighs. Since splitting up with Trace last year Clough has reverted to full Benny Hill mode. He has had a stream of girlfriends but none has lasted more than a few weeks. Nelson thinks that Clough was deeply hurt by the news of Trace’s engagement, although of course he’d never admit it and Nelson would never ask.

He asks Tom what the reporter wanted.

‘She wanted to talk to you,’ says Tom. ‘I told her you were out on a case.’

‘What did she want to talk to me about?’ asks Nelson.

‘Scarlet Henderson.’

Ruth is making breakfast when she hears the news that Liz Donaldson, 37, has been charged with the murder of her son David, eight months old. She stops, toast in hand, wondering whether Cathbad knows this latest. It’s only on the local news (she has switched from Radio 4 to get a traffic update) so it’s possible that he hasn’t heard. She wonders whether to tell him but decides against it. Bad news travels fast and, besides, Cathbad has his sixth sense to rely on.