The Vanishing Point (11 page)

14

S
cientists tell us that babies are genetically programmed to smile when they’re born. It’s a mechanism designed to save their lives. They smile, we fall in love. Because we are also programmed to be captivated by that smile. It’s nothing to do with biology. You’ll fall equally hard for the child of a complete stranger as you will for the fruit of your own loins. Think about it. It’s estimated that a quarter of all children are not the offspring of the man who thinks they’re his. And yet those fathers who persist in ignorance love their children as completely as biological parents. And it’s not only fathers. Think of those stories where children are accidentally swapped at birth and the mothers love the substitutes every bit as much as their other kids.

Which is a roundabout way of saying I bonded with Jimmy Joshu Higgins minutes after he was born. They hustled us out of the operating theatre and back into the side ward where we’d been earlier. They sat me in a chair, provided me with a bottle of formula milk and showed me how to feed him. I thought nothing of it at the time. I assumed it was standard operating procedure.

I learned differently a couple of years later, when I was telling the tale as a lure to a prospective client who had done pioneering work in treating infertility. She looked aghast. ‘Really? They got you to give him a bottle of formula?’

Baffled, I said, ‘Yes. They said he’d had a bit of a struggle being born, he’d be hungry. And he was. He polished off the whole feed.’

She gave a wry little laugh. ‘And the mum’s OK?’

‘She’s fine. Still moans about her scar, but other than that, she’s completely OK. Why?’

‘Well, it sounds like they thought they were losing her.’

‘You mean . . . as in, dying?’

She nodded. ‘That’s why they got you out of there so quickly. They didn’t want you in the room if she died on the table. And that’s why they got you to feed him.’

‘I don’t understand.’

‘They’re obsessed with breastfeeding these days. The reason they got you to give him a bottle was because they were afraid she wasn’t going to make it. And the kid has to bond with someone.’ I must have looked as appalled as I felt, for she burst out laughing. ‘They were setting you up as the foster mum.’

Which is all the more ironic, given where we’ve ended up. But at the time, I just thought, yeah, of course the kid’s hungry. And within the hour, Scarlett was back in the room. On a morphine drip and looking like she’d gone fifteen rounds with a brick wall, but indisputably there, smiling radiantly at the tiny bundle in her arms. ‘He’s beautiful,’ she kept saying. Frankly, I lost interest fairly quickly. Even though I did agree with her.

‘I’m going to let you two enjoy your lovefest,’ I said. ‘My work here is done now.’

Scarlett barely looked up. ‘Thanks,’ she said. ‘You’ve been a total star.’

‘What friends are for. I’m going to take Joshu’s car back to yours. Can I borrow your car to get me home? You can’t drive for six weeks anyway.’

‘You what?’ Now I had her attention.

‘You’ve had a caesarean. You’re not allowed to drive for six weeks. You’re not supposed to lift anything heavier than a kettle. Joshu’s going to have to wait on you hand, foot and finger.’

‘You’re joking?’

‘No. Listen, I’ll try to get hold of Joshu again when I get out of here. And I’ll also call Georgie. He’ll want to sort out the media deals. And I need to get some sleep.’

‘Thanks. See you later.’ I leaned over and kissed Jimmy on the forehead. ‘He’s gorgeous.’

Scarlett gave me an odd look, as if something had just occurred to her. ‘Would you be his godmother?’

‘Me? I know nothing about kids.’

‘Time you learned, then.’

‘I’d be crap at it.’

‘No, you wouldn’t. You wouldn’t let yourself. Go on. For his sake. He needs somebody in his life that isn’t mental.’

I don’t know why I agreed, but I did. And that’s how it started between me and Jimmy.

I tried to call Joshu from the hospital, but my phone had died. He’d probably have appreciated a little advance warning since he was fast asleep and stark naked on one of the leather sofas when I walked in. It wasn’t a pretty sight. I grabbed one of the cow hides and threw it over him. He grunted and stirred then his eyes snapped open. The sight of me in Scarlett’s clothes provoked a look of total bewilderment.

‘Wassup?’ he grunted, then gave a massive yawn that sent a blast of undigested alcohol my way. Belatedly, he noticed I was alone. ‘Where’s the wife?’ he added with a sly grin. ‘I saw you girls had taken off in my wheels.’ He dragged himself upright and yawned again. ‘Fuck, my head hurts. I need some drugs.’

‘You need tea,’ I said. ‘Because you need to go and check out your wife and son.’ I turned on my heel and marched off to the kitchen. I didn’t trust myself to speak to the shiftless, feckless, heedless little shit.

I’d barely got the kettle on when he staggered in, the cow hide wrapped round his waist like a bizarre kilt. ‘Did you say “son”?’

‘While you were spending your wedding night out on the razz with your homies, your wife was giving birth, Joshu,’ I snapped. ‘Wondering, in between contractions, where your sorry ass was hiding.’

Water off a duck’s back. ‘I’ve got a son?’ He shook his head, incredulous. ‘Am I hallucinating this? I mean, who knows what I took last night, but it was a serious head-fuck. Is this for real? I’ve got a son?’

‘Six pounds two ounces. His name is Jimmy.’

‘But she’s not due for another . . . what? Six weeks?’

‘She got her dates wrong. She’s probably a couple of weeks early, but no more than that.’ I popped a pod into the coffee machine for myself.

He laughed affectionately. ‘Silly bitch can’t count. Well, shit me a rainbow. I’m a dad.’ He rubbed a hand over his hair and lurched towards the breakfast bar where he’d apparently left the contents of his pockets. He grabbed for his cigarettes and lit up. ‘It’s supposed to be a cigar, but this’ll have to do for now. You might have bought me a cigar on the way home, Stephanie.’

‘Funny, it never crossed my mind. You better get yourself cleaned up and over there. Oddly enough, she’s not best pleased with you.’ I plonked a cup of tea in front of him. ‘Get that down you.’

‘Was you there, like, with her?’

‘I was. It was really scary. They had to do an emergency section.’

‘A what?’

In my head, I sounded like my mother.
What do they teach them in school these days?
‘The baby got stuck coming out. So they had to cut her belly open and get him out in a hurry.’

He took a tentative sip of his tea, then swigged the whole cup back in one. He shuddered, then straightened up. ‘What? They cut her belly open? That’s horrible. She gonna have a scar and that?’

‘Christ, Joshu. She lost more than half of her blood. They thought they were going to have to give her a blood transfusion. I think a scar was the least of her worries, frankly.’

He gave me a placatory nod. ‘Well, I suppose that means she’ll be OK down there. Like, still tight and that.’

I closed my eyes for a moment, wondering whether I should just throw my coffee over his head. I reminded myself that he was Jimmy’s father and Scarlett’s husband and better that he went to hospital as a visitor than as a patient. ‘You won’t have the chance to find that out for a while, you selfish bastard. She’s had major abdominal surgery, Joshu. You’re going to have to run around after her for months.’

He gave a nervous laugh. ‘I don’t think so. Georgie can sort somebody out to take care of her and the kid, yeah? That’s what we fucking pay him for, innit.’ He grinned again, and I caught a glimpse of the roguish charm that had captivated Scarlett. ‘I’ve got a son.’ Then he frowned. ‘Wait a minute. Did you say she’s called him Jimmy?’

‘That’s right.’

‘No, that’s all wrong. Jimmy Patel? What kind of name is that?’

Actually, it was going to be Jimmy Higgins. But I thought I’d leave that revelation for Scarlett. ‘It’s the one she wants. And since you weren’t around when he popped out, I reckon you’ve forfeited the right to have a say.’

‘Fucking Jimmy,’ he said, turning away and stubbing out his cigarette. ‘I’ll have something to say about that. I’m going for a shower, then I’m going over to see my son. And he’s not going to be Jimmy for much longer, you can count on that.’ And off he went, chest puffed out like a bantam cock.

The coffee was bitter and dense in my mouth. I was too tired to taste properly. I knew it was crazy to drive back to Hackney, only to return in a few hours to visit Scarlett and Jimmy. Joshu was about to go out. And there was a perfectly good guest room down the hall. The temptation was irresistible.

15

H
earing Stephanie describe Joshu’s reaction to his son’s birth, Vivian found it hard to resist the notion that he regarded the boy as his property. A man with that attitude would be the natural suspect in a case like this. The over-whelming majority of abducted children were stolen by or on behalf of the parent who didn’t have custody. In a case like this, where the person who had charge of the boy wasn’t even a relative, the father was the obvious person of interest.

‘You said you know where Joshu is,’ Vivian said. ‘I have to tell you, it sounds like he’s the person with the strongest interest in taking Jimmy away from you. Are you so sure he’s where you think he is, and not here in the US?’

Stephanie looked amused. ‘He’s definitely not in the US. He—’

‘Maybe not. But does he have the resources to hire people to kidnap Jimmy and bring the boy to him.’

‘No. If you’d just let me finish what I was about to say . . . Unless I’ve been burgled since we left for the airport, Joshu is exactly where I last saw him. Sitting in an urn on my mantelpiece. Joshu’s dead, Agent McKuras. His and Scarlett’s ashes sit in my living room like bookends above the fireplace. Jimmy says good morning and good night to them every day.’

Vivian felt ambushed. The blood rose in her cheeks and she drummed her fingers on the desk. She wanted to yell at Stephanie, but that wasn’t an option while the woman still might be the repository of information about the kidnap. ‘What happened to him?’

‘Like everything else connected to Scarlett and Jimmy, it’s a long story.’

This time, Vivian was not about to be seduced by narrative. Stephanie Harker was a terrific raconteur, so good that Vivian risked losing sight of the importance of time in tracking down a missing child. And maybe – just maybe – there was a deliberate point to Stephanie’s meandering stories. After all, who knew better than she that she’d be stopped by security? Who was better placed to set this up? She’d been left in charge of a rich woman’s brat with no money to pay for it. Maybe she’d decided to extort some cash from the charitable foundation she’d mentioned earlier. ‘These long stories aren’t taking me any nearer a valid suspect,’ she said, her voice cold. ‘Tell me, Stephanie. If you got a ransom demand for Jimmy, who would pay?’

Stephanie looked startled. ‘I . . . I don’t know. I never even thought about it.’ She spread her hands in a gesture of openness. ‘I don’t have that kind of money.’

‘What kind of money?’

She looked puzzled. ‘Well, when you hear about ransoms, it’s usually seven figures and upwards. I’m not a rich woman. I make a decent living, but I’m not a millionaire. I’d do my best to raise the money, but I don’t have much.’

‘Couldn’t you approach his mother’s charitable foundation?’

‘No chance,’ Stephanie said. ‘It was set up to benefit an orphanage in a remote part of Romania. Scarlett went there in 2007 as part of
Caring for Kids
– that’s a big charity telethon in the UK – and she was completely bowled over by the children. A lot of them have AIDS, and that’s how her dad died. She was appalled by the conditions there. So she set up the trust to take care of them. The orphanage is the sole beneficiary and there’s no way round it. I’ve got a friend who’s a trust lawyer and I asked her to check out whether I could claim anything for Jimmy’s education or maintenance. She said the trust was watertight. Unless we can transform Jimmy into a Romanian orphan, I’m all he’s got.’

‘What about his father’s estate?’

Stephanie snorted her ridicule. ‘What estate? Joshu spent money like water. Faster than he could earn it, latterly. He was too fond of drugs and fast cars and stupid women. The only thing he left Jimmy was his music, which is all boxed up in a storage unit. It might make a few grand if I sold it off on eBay, but not enough to pay a ransom. No, if somebody’s taken Jimmy for money, they’ve made a serious error of judgement.’ She ran a hand through her hair. ‘But at least they’ve got a vested interest in keeping him alive. Which is better than the alternative.’

‘Which means we’re back to square one.’ Vivian couldn’t help showing her impatience. ‘If you can’t take me closer to a viable suspect, who can?’

Stephanie gave her a nervous glance. Not for the first time, Vivian felt there was something lurking between them. Something Stephanie didn’t want to give up. Something she didn’t even want to contemplate. She looked down, studying her neatly manicured nails. ‘There is someone it might be helpful for you to talk to. He’s a detective with Scotland Yard. Detective Sergeant Nick Nicolaides.’

Vivian was taken aback. Out of nowhere, two hours into this interview, Stephanie Harker was introducing a cop who had something to bring to the party. ‘Who the hell is Sergeant Nick Nicolaides? And what does he have to do with this?’

‘When Joshu died he was the officer who did all the interviews. He was really sympathetic but he seemed to be thorough too. Anyway, when I had some problems of my own this past year, I rang him because he was the only cop I knew. So he knows Jimmy and he knows the background too.’ She raised her eyes and met Vivian’s incredulous stare.

‘And I’m only hearing about him now?’

‘I’m sorry.’ The talkative Stephanie seemed to have run out of steam. She rubbed her eyes, her face a grimace of pain. ‘None of this is easy, you know. I’ll give you his number, shall I?’ She recited it from memory and Vivian keyed it into her phone.

‘Wait here,’ she said grimly. ‘I need to see what this Nicolaides guy has to say.’