Blood Ties (33 page)

‘She may yet be found,’ he offered the old couple. ‘Never give up hope.’

They both turned in unison. ‘But the locket,’ Mrs Wystrach pleaded. Her eyes were dots, shrunken from the sunlight. ‘You must tell us where you got it from. Ruth’s grandmother gave it to her for her tenth birthday. She always wore it. The picture in the locket is Edyta Wystrach, the mother of my husband, Vasil, and his brother Gustaw.’

‘Perhaps you could tell us more about your daughter’s disapearance,’ Louisa’s direct approach flicked a switch in the woman.

‘Ruth wasn’t just a runaway.’

‘Irena, don’t.’ Vasil Wystrach placed a warning hand on his wife’s arm and shook his head.

‘What harm can it do? The press told the world back then anyway.’ Irena shrugged off her husband’s touch. ‘The police believe that Ruth kidnapped a baby when she ran away from home.’

‘Why would she do that?’ Louisa edged forward and withdrew a pad and pen from her shoulder bag. ‘Why would a fifteen-year-old want to do such a thing?’

The woman hesitated before answering, swallowed away what she really wanted to say. ‘This is what we said to the police but it seems that they have their evidence and it all points at our Ruthie.’ The skin on Irena Wystrach’s face paled, ageing her further. She swallowed several times. ‘We don’t believe our daughter did such a thing, do we, Vasil?’

‘The evidence they had suited the police and the grieving mother of the stolen baby. What they didn’t realise was that we were grieving too.’ Vasil’s voice was thin, cautious.

‘What evidence did the police have that your daughter took this baby?’ Louisa jotted a few notes. ‘Don’t worry. I’m not a journalist but we think that your missing daughter may have something to do with someone we are trying to locate.’ She smiled in just the right place.

Irena riffled in the box of papers again and retrieved some later clippings. ‘Read this and see if you think it is evidence. If they thought our Ruthie was a kidnapper, then they should have tried harder to find her.’

Robert pressed close to Louisa, who removed her glasses to read the new thread in an otherwise routine missing teenager story.

‘Whoa,’ Robert said when he had finished reading. ‘Somewhat circumstantial, don’t you think?’

Then the knife dug deep in his heart.

‘What they print isn’t necessarily everything they know.’ Louisa handed back the clipping. She replaced her glasses.

‘Just tell us where you got the locket. It could only have come from our Ruth. She would never have given it away.’ Vasil Wystrach coloured with his demand.

Robert stepped in. ‘Most likely my wife bought it at a flea market. I’m guessing she gave it to my stepdaughter as a present.’ Robert pulled on the knife that was lodged in his heart but it wouldn’t come out. ‘Have you considered that your runaway daughter might have sold the locket? She would have needed the money.’ The pain in his chest didn’t ease. ‘Was she into drugs, Mrs Wystrach? Was your Ruth an addict?’

‘Rob,’ Louisa interjected.

‘Did your Ruthie have some terrible secret that forced her to commit this crime? Perhaps your daughter wasn’t the girl you thought she was. Have you considered that?’ Robert shifted uncomfortably.

Vasil balled his fists and made to move but his wife halted him. The first flicker of their daughter in thirteen years and she wasn’t going to have it end in a fight.

‘Take another look, will you? Have a good look at Ruth.’ Mrs Wystrach fluttered a different faded picture of Ruth in front of Robert.

He steadied the picture and stared into the vacant teenage eyes. He glanced at the date at the top of the page – Saturday, 11 January 1992. He controlled his rapid breathing and tried to recall what he might have been doing on such a day. Of course he couldn’t, and wouldn’t expect anyone to.

All Robert knew for sure was that he would have been twenty-four years old and fresh out of law school, and Erin would have been only nineteen. Ruby would have been barely born; an unwanted gift for such a young, troubled mother. He shook his head as the knife dug deeper. Robert removed his stare from the pleading eyes of the teenager. Erin’s eyes.

‘I’m sorry. I don’t recognise your daughter,’ he lied, trailing his finger over Ruth’s mousy fringe and long hair. Robert refused to reveal anything about Erin. Not until Louisa had researched the story further. There was something, he sensed, that the couple was hiding. ‘She’s pretty,’ he offered as consolation. ‘She’d be a grown woman now.’ He didn’t care if he upset them. He needed a cigarette and a chance to think. He stiffened his legs, as if to stand, and handed the clipping back to Mrs Wystrach. ‘We should go.’ He addressed Louisa and gave her a look that told her not to protest.

Robert realised she hadn’t finished with the old couple but he wasn’t sure how much more he could hear; wasn’t sure how much of the story Louisa had pieced together herself yet. Until he was somewhere safe, until he could let it come out, Robert would not allow himself to think of Ruby or her uncertain future. For now, the knife remained lodged in his heart.

He turned to Mr Wystrach. ‘I’m sorry about your daughter.’ Robert removed a business card from his wallet and left it on the tea tray. ‘If you think of anything, if you want to talk, then call me.’ Robert nodded at Irena Wystrach and showed himself out through the rear door, praying that Louisa was following.

He walked around the side of the house and bleeped the Mercedes unlocked, waiting without looking back until Louisa was beside him. He didn’t want to hang about any longer than necessary in the drab, concrete-lined street.

‘You look like you’ve seen a ghost.’ Louisa buckled up. She swapped to her sunglasses, allowing Robert to glimpse his reflection in stereo.

‘I have,’ he snapped and belted the Mercedes to the limits of each gear.

 

Robert called Louisa on his mobile even though she was in room 224, the one right next to his. He hadn’t planned on staying the night in Northampton and he hadn’t planned on bothering Louisa again. They’d both agreed an early night was needed and parted in the corridor after a hasty and tasteless hotel meal.

He let his head sink into the dough of the fresh pillow while the phone rang. It hadn’t been easy booking them into separate rooms when the receptionist assumed they were partners. Partners in crime, he’d said. God.

‘You’re still awake then.’

‘No,’ she said. ‘What’s up?’ It was still early but Robert knew she was sleepy and fuzzy from the wine they had shared.

‘Natasha Jane Varney is what’s up.’

‘We’ve been over this, Rob. Goodnight.’

‘Wait.’

‘What? I’m tired. I’m only staying the night so that we can visit the local register office in the morning. Then you can get whatever’s in your system out of it.’

‘I want you to find the abducted baby’s mother.’

‘Her name was in the newspaper report. Why don’t you look in the phone book?’ Louisa yawned. ‘Let me sleep, Rob. You won’t like me tomorrow otherwise.’ She hung up.

Robert smoothed out the newspaper pages he had taken from the Wystrachs’ house on the bed. He felt like a historian piecing together someone’s missing past, only in this case he’d been handed the entire puzzle on a plate, each piece of the jigsaw numbered clearly and fitting perfectly. Strangely, miraculously, tragically, he was the only person in the whole world who could see the picture it made, the consequences it bore.

Such a small square of copy for a life-changing event. Heading the story was a picture of the infant and Robert stared long and hard at her shiny jet hair and depthless eyes. Her long fingers curled round the edge of the blanket and her newborn gaze was distant, a coincidence caught in the split second the shutter opened and closed, but so similar to Ruby’s distant stare, when her mind seemed to wander off to that other place. The baby’s mother, Cheryl Varney, was barely discernible in the picture.

Fighting the paranoia in which Louisa would claim he was drowning, Robert reached for the telephone directory that sat squarely next to the phone and flipped to the Vs. There were only a handful of Varneys and only one with the initial C. Robert entered the address and number into his phone and snapped it shut.

He didn’t think telephoning was appropriate to let someone know that his stepdaughter was their kidnapped baby.

Oh yes, he thought, making a lunge for the minibar. He could see exactly what had happened back in January 1992 and suddenly possession being nine-tenths of the law had never seemed so wrong.

 

The setting sun was virtually hidden by clouds rumbling from the west. Robert sensed rain; he sensed a storm and snorted as he wiped his mouth after cleaning his teeth with a courtesy pack he had purchased at reception.

He didn’t particularly care what the weather did and wondered if Erin’s phone needed charging because it consistently diverted to voicemail without even ringing. He wasn’t sure he’d know what to say to her anyway. He splashed water on his face and slicked his damp hair back with his fingers. He gathered his car keys and room key and, after requesting a local map from the reception desk, left the hotel. Louisa, he assumed, would be asleep by now or at the very least immersed in the bath or a movie.

Twenty minutes later, Robert turned into Windsor Terrace, a narrow street of tiny red-brick properties, as if each one was a building block rather than a whole house. The single front windows gazed into the ones directly opposite and Robert noticed that most had net curtains hanging in them all except one. Instead of nets, the curtains were completely closed. A finale of orange sunlight tracked a runway down the deserted road.

All the parking spaces were occupied and Robert was forced to park at the far end of the street. He walked back towards the Varney household with a light patina of sweat glossing his face. The evening was muggy and he reckoned the temperature between the two rows of houses was a couple of degrees higher than in open space. Robert wondered just how much the residents knew about each other’s lives, living this close. He wondered if Cheryl’s neighbours knew about her years of misery.

Number 18 was small and neat but strangely devoid of character. Many of the other houses had baskets of summer flowers dangling over the pavement or window boxes crammed with geraniums. Music or the low chatter of television slipped from open front windows and, like in the Wystrachs’ street, Robert heard a baby wail, a toddler scream in anger. This time, the infant noise crashed into Robert’s heart. One house wouldn’t have any baby noise. One house would be filled with sadness.

Without knowing or thinking about repercussions or what he would say, or wouldn’t say, Robert went through the front gate of number 18, tucked between two identical houses, and knocked on the door. This was the house that had the front curtains closed so when there was no answer, he wasn’t able to peek inside to see if anyone was home. There wasn’t any visible way to the rear either, being mid-terrace. He knocked again, louder and more urgently. A middle-aged woman came out of next door, a dog yapping at her heels, and stared at Robert as if he had just knocked on her door.

‘She’ll be out late,’ she said briskly. ‘Give her a call and make an appointment.’

Robert turned and leaned on the low wall that separated the two tiny front gardens. When his feet sank, he realised he was standing on soil. ‘Do you know when she’ll be home?’

‘Late, like I said.’ The woman wiped soapy hands on a tea towel. ‘If it’s urgent, she’s at the Stag’s Head up on the road into town. You might get to see her if she’s not too busy.’ The woman grinned as if she knew something Robert didn’t and clicked the door shut.

The Stag’s Head was crowded and filled with the smoke of seared steak and cigarettes. One by one Robert studied each of the bar and waiting staff to see if any of them matched the image of the woman he held in his mind. Of course, he might not recognise her now. The photograph in the newspaper was thirteen years old and focused mostly on the baby. She would have suffered over a decade of misery and grief, which would have taken its toll on her looks. He didn’t think any of the staff at the Stag’s Head even vaguely resembled the woman in the picture. Robert edged towards the bar and ordered a pint.