Hushabye (4 page)

Casey Fullman sat against the padded headboard, the sheets bunched and crumpled around her raised knees. She still looked like a child, something of the pallid Victorian waif of old-fashioned Christmas cards. She was hunched forward, her shoulders rounded, her hair tucked messily behind her ears. Every so often, she took a breath that was deeper, one that was almost a groan, as if a sudden pain caught her unawares every few minutes.

Kate, keeping her face blank, was wrenched with pity for this bereft mother. Someone who’d only been a mother three months. Was that all the motherhood she’d ever know? Kate took a deep, shaken breath, suddenly stabbed with pain herself.
Get a grip
. She sat up straighter and pushed, for the umpteenth time, those memories away. She reminded herself that, despite Casey’s genuine distress, there was the possibility that she was somehow involved in her son’s disappearance.

“Casey,” she said gently. “This must be very distressing for you so I’m sorry to have to ask you, but I have a couple of questions.”

Casey hunched her shoulders even more, pulling the duvet cover closer. “Okay.”

“Are you able to talk for a few minutes?”

Casey sniffed and nodded.

“Firstly, could you tell me whether Charlie–” \

At the sound of his name, Casey groaned again.

Kate hurriedly went on. “Whether Charlie has a passport?”

Casey shook her head, wiping her hand under her nose. “No. No he doesn’t.” She started to cry again. “Oh, Charlie...”

“Casey, I’m sorry–”

The room was filled with the sound of sobbing. A few minutes passed, and Casey seemed to struggle to pull herself together. She took a few shuddering breaths.

“Sorry,” she said eventually. “I’m okay now. I know you have to ask me things.”

“Thank you,” said Kate. She glanced down at her notes. “Can you just take me through what happened this morning, again?”

Casey kept her eyes downcast. Her long nails picked at a loose thread on the bed throw. “I woke up about eight o’clock. The light woke me. I knew something was wrong because it was too bright. I got up and went to see where Dita was with Charlie. She normally wakes me up when he wants his first bottle.” She stopped, cleared her throat. “I could see she wasn’t in her room, so I went to Charlie’s room and pushed open the door. I could see she was – she was – on the floor and her face was all – all wrong. And then I saw Charlie was missing.”

“What happened then?”

Casey shot a quick look at her. “I screamed. I just kept screaming. I think Nick came running and he saw Dita – he shouted out something but I can’t remember what – I just kept screaming for Charlie over and over again.”

“What did you think had happened?”

“I don’t know.” Casey put a hand up to her eyes. “I wasn’t thinking anything, I was just so upset, I couldn’t stop screaming.”

“Okay. What did Nick do?”

“Then?”

“Yes, immediately after he realised Charlie was missing – what did he do?”

“He got his phone and called the police, I think. He must have done.”

“He did that straight away?”

“Yes. Yes, I think so.”

Kate pulled her shoulders back, stretching out the ache in her neck. Casey’s statement tallied with the one she’d given earlier. The time of the emergency call from the Fullman’s house corresponded with the time Casey had given. It all seemed quite straightforward.

“You and Nick haven’t been married long, have you?” asked Kate, changing tack.

Casey looked at her in surprise. “Almost a year. We got married last April.”

“How did you meet?”

Casey almost smiled, her bunchy cheeks blossoming outwards. “At a party. I was in this TV show, and Nick came to the wrap party afterwards.”

“That was the show about the hairdressers, wasn’t it?”

“That’s right. Did you see it?”

Kate would rather poke her own eyes out with a fork than watch any kind of reality TV show, but this was probably not the time to mention this. “Um, I think I may have seen it once or twice. I don’t get time to watch much television, to be honest.”

“Oh, right. Yeah, I guess so. Anyway, it was pretty big, lots of media attention, you know. I got quite a lot of work after it, modelling and that.”

“Have you done much work lately? I don’t suppose you’ve had time with Charlie being so young.”

Casey’s face clouded. “Not much. We did the
Okay
shoot after he was born. That was about the last thing.” She pointed to the bedside cabinet. “There’s a copy in there.”

Kate retrieved the magazine. Casey took it from her and leafed through it, fairly pointlessly, as the magazine quickly fell open at the required page. Kate guessed that the article had been looked at many, many times already. Casey handed it to her.

“Very nice,” said Kate. She folded it up again, not wanting to see Charlie’s little pink face in the photographs. “May I keep this?”

“Sure. We’ve got several copies.”

I bet you have
, thought Kate.

She began to gently question Casey again about her relationship with Nick, their first meeting, the quick progression of their romance, their marriage. From Casey’s rather hesitant answers, she gathered that neither Nick nor Casey had been exactly footloose and fancy-free when they’d got together. Still, what could you expect from these sort of people – a Z-list model and a social climber? She inwardly grimaced as soon as the thought had crossed her mind. What was the matter with her? What had Anderton said?
I don’t want anyone steaming in and upsetting anyone with clumsy innuendo or their own prejudices
.

There was a knock at the door and Anderton poked his head into the room.

“Mrs Fullman, I hope you’re feeling better.”

“Yes,” said Casey, unhappily.

“We’ll be off now, but we’ll be in touch very soon. There’ll be a family liaison officer staying behind to support you and of course, if there are any problems, don’t hesitate to get in touch. DS Redman, could you come with me?”

“Of course, sir.” Kate got off the bed. Casey clutched at her arm suddenly.

“Will you find him, find Charlie?
Please
.”

Kate sat back down. “We’re doing all we can, Mrs Fullman. I know it’s hard to wait, but you must believe that we’re doing absolutely everything we can.”

Casey sagged back against the headboard. She was quiet for a moment and as Kate watched, her eyes filled with tears. She made no attempt to wipe them away and they trembled on the edge of her eyelids before sliding down her cheeks. She gasped. “Who could have taken him? I can’t bear it. What if I never get him back?”

Kate leaned forward. She fought down the impulse to take Casey into her arms and rock her like the baby she was missing. “We’ll get him back, Casey.” She fixed the crying woman with her eyes. “We’ll get him back for you.”

I don’t care what it takes
, she added mentally.

*

It was nine thirty at night by the time Kate unlocked her front door. She kicked off her shoes and considered collapsing face down in the hallway before deciding to at least make it to the sofa. She sat back against the cushions, dropping her head against the back of the couch. She was so tired that if she sat there for more than a minute, she would fall asleep.

After thirty seconds, she got up, got undressed and into her pyjamas and stood by the fridge, contemplating what was inside it with little enthusiasm.
Another ready-meal heated up, then.
She made herself a hot chocolate and cradled the cup in both hands, feeling the steam gently heat her face. So comforting, like a memory of childhood, although not
her
childhood. She picked up the phone, glancing at the clock.  A bit late to call, although there was always a fighting chance that her mum would still be fairly sober. She dialled.

“Hello?”

“Mum, it’s Kate.”

“Who?”

“It’s
Kate
.”

There was silence on the other end of the phone.

Kate sighed and gave in. “It’s Kelly.”

“Oh, hello love. What you doing calling me so late?” Her mum’s voice had a trace of a slur, nothing too bad yet. Perhaps she’d even remember her conversation with her eldest daughter in the morning. Kate never knew whether her mum genuinely forgot  that she’d changed her name when she was eighteen, or whether her refusal to remember was a way of signalling her disapproval.

“Coppers treating you well, are they?” Mary Redman always said that.

“Fine, thanks Mum.”

“So, what’s up? Why you calling me so late?”

Kate was silent for a moment. Why
was
she calling? All of a sudden, she felt like crying.

“Just wanted to make sure you were all right,” she managed, after a moment.

“I’m all right, love.”

In the background, Kate heard the clink of a bottle as it chimed on the edge of the glass. She sighed again, inwardly. She really needed to get some sleep. “Well, it
is
late,” she said. “I’ll let you go, Mum. Sorry if I disturbed you.”

“Come’n see me soon.”

“Will do. Night night.”

After she hung up, Kate drank the rest of her cooling chocolate. She had her second shower of the day, dropped her clothes into the laundry basket, cleaned her teeth and her face, patted in moisturiser. She made the last round of the night, checking everything was neat and ordered and clean and tidy. She set her alarm for the morning. There was something to be said for going to bed dead on your feet – it stopped you thinking so much.

In her bed, clean and ironed duvet cover drawn up to her face, she remembered Casey, marooned on her giant white bed. Her last thought was of the photographs of Charlie in
Okay
magazine, his little face wrapped in sleep, tiny fists clenched.
I’ll find you
, she murmured.

Unconsciousness broke over her in a grey and smothering wave.

Chapter Four

The post-mortem of Dita Olgweisch took place the next morning. Kate attended with Anderton, minus Olbeck who had the unenviable task of gently questioning Dita’s grieving parents. The Olgweischs had arrived on the first available flight from Warsaw that morning. Kate was heartily glad not to have that particular job – watching a corpse being dissected and examined would be the easier option.

The pathologist was a young woman of almost ethereal fairness; her white-blond hair was drawn back severely from a central parting, a hairstyle which emphasised her wide forehead and long, narrow nose. With her pallor, her colouring and her extreme thinness, she looked a suitably macabre doctor of the dead. But Doctor Telling, despite her bizarre appearance, was deft and gentle in her examination, explaining her findings in a quiet, measured tone. Her skilled fingers had repaired some of the damage to Dita’s face, and Kate was glad, knowing her parents would soon be seeing the body.

“The blow to the head is what killed her, as you can probably see,” said Doctor Telling. “Someone swung something hard into her right temple. I’m not sure what yet. Whatever it was fractured her skull and caused severe traumatic damage. It would have been instantaneous.”

“I’m assuming that it was a deliberate blow?” said Anderton.

“You would assume correctly. Of course, we can’t possibly know that it was meant to kill. It could quite easily have been meant to disable. It’s impossible to say.”

Anderton raised his hand, hefting an invisible weapon.

“Kate, face me for a sec.”

Kate hurried to comply, a little unnerved at how intimate it felt to be called by her first name. Anderton pretended to strike her across the face, quite slowly, stopping his hand about an inch from her face. He struck with one hand, then the other, forehand and backhand. Kate tried not to flinch and then tried not to smile. Doctor Telling watched them impassively, the shrouded body of Dita Olgweisch between her and the police officers.

“Hmm,” said Anderton, eventually. He dropped his hand and nodded at Kate. “Thanks Kate. Well done, you’ll live.” Kate did smile at that. He looked at the pathologist. “Seems easy enough to do – to strike a hard blow, I mean, without trying hard.”

“Easy enough for a strong man,” said Doctor Telling.

“So a woman couldn’t have done it?”

“No, either gender could do it, given enough force. It would just be easier for a man to – to overdo it accidentally, is what I meant.”

“Right.”

The traffic was heavy on the drive back to the station, and the car was stationary for minutes at a time. Kate found the silence between her and Anderton awkward, although she hoped that feeling wasn’t mutual. She struggled to think of an appropriate topic of conversation, either case-related or small-talk line. She opened her mouth and shut it again. Anderton glanced over.

“We’ve thrown you in at the deep end with this one, DS Redman, haven’t we?”

Kate smiled, a little uncomfortably. What happened to “Kate?”

“I’ve never worked a child abduction case before, sir, that’s true.”

“Always hard,” said Anderton. “You never get used to the kid cases. Never.” He indicated to turn right. “I’ve got three myself and you always find yourself thinking, well, what if it was one of mine?”

“Yes, I can see that.”

“You don’t have any kids yourself?”

Kate looked down at her hands folded in her lap. “No. No, I don’t.”

“Still hard,” said Anderton, briefly. The police station car park gates were opening for them. Anderton swung the car into an empty bay.

Olbeck was shepherding a middle-aged couple through the foyer of the station as they came into the building. The couple looked bludgeoned, stunned into silence; the woman clutched her husband’s arm as if it were the only thing keeping her from collapse. Kate and Anderton stood back, letting Olbeck steer the murdered girl’s parents out towards his car, on their sad journey to view the mortal remains of their only daughter. Kate felt the first welcome surge of anger towards the perpetrator, the first real pulse of rage at whoever had done this; they had wrecked lives and shattered dreams for whatever selfish reason of their own.