Behind Shadows: A Psychological Mystery Thriller (The Adam Stanley Series Book 1) (23 page)

Chapter 42

Amanda

My head spun. "I don …I don't understand."

"Your baby—our baby. I took her from her new family," he said.

I'd never found out who fathered the child. Maybe it had been Andrew, but it could have been my dad or any of the other men they forced on me. I think the police did tests, but nobody ever told me the results. I didn't see the point in mentioning this right now. Instead, I concentrated on the main point.

"I don't believe you. I'd have known. Nobody ever told me the baby had been kidnapped."

"You were in a foster home. The police interviewed the social worker. She assured them you weren't involved, and considering your mental state thought you shouldn't be told."

"How do you know all this?" I whispered, shaking my head.

"I made it my business."

"What about Judy?"

"What about her?"

"Does she know everything?"

"No. Though she knows some and has guessed some more in the past few days.

"Tell me how you did it—why they never found you."

"When I first left I got on a ferry to France. We'd been learning French in school and I'd dreamed of going. I hitched a ride to Dover with a group of guys I met in the motorway services. They were going on a booze run. I needed to get as far away from Dad as possible. I knew he'd kill me if he got his hands on me. The beatings had been getting harder to walk away from. You know, he filmed that last beating—I think he got off on them."

"Why didn't you go to the police?"

"Why didn't you?" he snapped, and then admitted, "Because I was scared. Ashamed."

"I'm sorry. Go on."

"Once I was in France, I travelled around, doing labouring jobs for food and lodgings. I met another traveller, Steve, who was much older than me and on his way to join the French Foreign Legion. He never told me what he was running from, but I knew it must have been bad. Although I looked older, I was only fifteen, but he helped me get fake documents. Drew Joseph Pitt emerged that day in France—Joseph was the name of the farmer we were working for, and Pitt—well, that's what we were digging. An offal pit. DJ I became known as.

A week or so later we both joined the Legion. I'd always been into electronics and was lucky enough to get in with the right people. I specialised in communications."

He stood up and walked towards the window. "I spent three years and four months there, including training. I gained a lot of computer knowledge, both legal and illegal. That's where I learned about hacking. I managed to hack the adoption records to find out where Mary was and I twinned your social worker's computer and mobile phone. I knew you were settled. Your foster parents loved you."

He turned to me, a faraway look in his eyes. "I intended to come for you at first, but you seemed so happy."

"You should have. I missed you so much," I cried.

"Do you remember when you all went to the Christmas market at the Millennium Dome and then ice skating?"

I nodded.

"I was never more than six feet away from you that night. You had your first mulled wine, a treat you begged your foster parents for, and a huge German sausage. After a few laps around the rink, you had to go and throw up."

I was in total shock. How could I not have noticed him if he was that close? But it was as he said—I had knocked myself sick. I still couldn't drink mulled wine to this day. "Why didn't you say something? I wasn't a kid anymore. I must have been seventeen? Eighteen?"

"I had no intention of disrupting your life. Mary, on the other hand … her new parents had split up and Mary lived with her mother. The woman would leave her with anybody while she went out partying, often bringing the party back home. Allowing strange men around a three-year-old girl—no way could I allow it. I took Mary, Bella as she was called then, during one of those parties. Do you know, they never reported her missing until the next afternoon? By then we were already in France."

Hundreds of questions whizzed through my mind, but I had no idea where to begin. I found it hard to believe it was possible to kidnap a child in this day and age and never get caught. "What did Mary say? She must have been distraught."

"You'd think so, wouldn't you? However, she was used to being passed around and she never batted an eyelid. She made one comment about her 'Mummy' after a couple of weeks then nothing else, and that's the truth."

I tried to imagine someone taking Emma. They'd probably bring her back after five minutes—she could be very vocal if her screams at the zoo were anything to go by.

Andrew continued, shocking me out of my daydream. "After about a year in France we came back. The media hype had settled, and since there'd been no recent photographs taken of Mary, prior to her going missing, no one ever recognised her.

We both had valid documents—illegal ones, but as real as you can get. Getting those kinds of documents is easy if you have the right connections and deep enough pockets.

I rented a basement flat in Tottenham and set up a technology company, working from home. With the training, I’d had and the job I was doing, there was no reason I’d ever get found.

I met Judy when Mary was almost five. She was a client, the editor at her parents' small newspaper, and we hit it off. I told her Mary was born in France and that her mum was an old girlfriend who'd left us over there. Mary had the cutest French accent and birth certificate to match and so she never had any reason to doubt me. Once we were married she took Mary on as her own."

Still standing at the window, Andrew put his hands shoulder-width apart on the glass above his head and leaned his body onto them, and his forehead touched the window. Pushing himself back, he spun away from the window and began pacing the floor.

"We never had any problems. Judy realised you and I had to be related when you arrived here yesterday. Mary did too. But neither of them knows the full story. Nobody does, except you."

"How the fuck could you do this to me, Andrew?" The enormity of his confession began sinking in. "I detested that baby. Detested everything about it. The months it grew inside me were the worst of my life." I glared at him, unable to control the words spewing from my mouth as I relived the memories of that awful time. "Whenever I felt it move I would be physically sick."

I noticed that I was digging my fingernails into my arms hard enough to draw blood. "Towards the end my whole stomach would move in the most obscene way. I often imagined a horrible alien would burst through my skin." I shuddered. My lungs felt as though they were filled with rocks, with no room left for air.

"She's not an alien, Mindy. Just an innocent little girl—so like you were at her age. She's not to blame for the awful abuse. She was just a by-product that's all."

I'd never allowed myself to think about the baby I'd given up. I'd never craved to hold it in my arms or gazed longingly at babies in the street. I'd blocked all those feelings.

I never even remembered her birthday.

I felt light-headed. If I'd been standing, I would definitely have toppled over. I lay backwards on the sofa, trying to calm my raging pulse. Suddenly, the vision of a timid, slight little thing with dark smudges under her eyes popped into my head and made my heart flutter. Mary was my daughter.

I couldn't take much more. The walls zoomed in and out at me and it felt as though my heart was stomping on my ribs.

Andrew was still standing at the window and turned to face me. "Are you all right, Mindy? You look terrible."

I glanced at him. The concern in his face made me melt. I'd dreamed of a loving reunion for years. Longed for him to turn up and look out for me as he used to. At nine and a half months older, he was my big brother and he'd always tried his best to protect me. Most of the beatings he'd received had been for defending me.

"I prayed for you to come home, but if I'm honest, I never imagined you would. The police even dug up the garden once, searching for you. I always feared the worst."

Sobs racked my body. How would we ever get over this? Although I understood the reasons for what he'd done, my brother was a murderer.

The tears began to slow. I glanced at Andrew, who had his back to me again. We had always looked very similar, often being mistaken for twins, which was a fact our dad had played on for the sick videos he’d produced.

Although he was a couple of inches taller than me now, he didn’t have a big build, and I understood how he managed to convince everyone he was me. His shapely, lean body filled out his skinny jeans and tee-shirt, the way most women only dreamed of doing. Blond hair tied at the nape of his neck was shorter than mine, but not by much. His hands were manicured and his eyebrows waxed. Add a bit of makeup and lose the stubble and I could have been looking at myself.

"Why did you do it? After all this time, why now?"

"When Dennis got out I watched him and I wondered if he'd actually changed at all. I bugged his room at the hostel and soon discovered he hadn't. Watching him trawl the internet for young girls knocked me sick and brought back all the old feelings. I easily lured him to me in a chat room. Once I got rid of him, though, I couldn't stop until our darling stepmother had paid too. Three stinking years she'd served for the part she played. It was a fucking joke!"

"What about Brian? Of all the people involved back then, he had been the least abusive. He hardly did anything."

"Just a fluke. The night you got home from the police station I'd just arrived and noticed the light on in your bedroom window, but your car wasn't there. The next thing I knew that detective bloke arrived and ended up chasing me through the garden. I doubled back and followed him home. I wasn't sure what to do about him. Nobody else had seen me and it kinda spoiled my plans. I sat outside his house and after a few minutes he rushed out again. I followed him to the station. You can imagine my surprise when Brian sauntered out as large as life a few hours later. I couldn't resist following him. He was the only other person I actually knew back then, and although he wasn't as bad as the others, he'd still got away with everything."

"So you killed him, just like that?" I clicked my fingers.

He nodded. "What will happen to me now, do you think?"

I shrugged. "If you turn yourself in, they'll go easier on you. Most people will understand why you did it. We had a horrendous childhood. I can vouch for that. We'll stick together, Andrew, like we should have done all along, and we'll get through this."

"What about Mary? I need to make sure she's cared for. I can't bear the thought of our beautiful daughter going into care."

"I'll do what I can, of course I will. I won't lie to you though, Andrew, I'm still in shock. But I'll do all I can. I promise."

Andrew turned to face me. Tears poured down his cheeks and he held his arms out towards me.

Standing up, I slowly stepped into them. I don't know how long we stayed that way. Maybe minutes, maybe hours; time didn't matter.

We started as the nurse called from the hallway. "Mr Pitt, come quick."

Andrew raced from the room. I followed close behind and got as far as Judy's bedroom door before I heard Andrew's stricken wail. "No, Judy. No! Wake up, my darling, wake up."

He had partially lifted Judy's lifeless body into his arms and buried his face in her hair. The sounds of his pain were too much for me to bear.

I walked out of the room and closed the door.

I couldn't get my head around everything I'd learned in the past few hours. Finding my brother after all these years was enough to blow my mind, but learning his daughter was, in fact, my daughter felt too much for my brain to compute.

I glanced at my watch and realised I'd been sitting here for almost an hour, curled up in the armchair and going over and over what Andrew told me.

I thought I should check in with Sandra, but couldn't find my phone. I must have left it behind. I knew the kids would be okay, although Michael was probably doing his nut.

I hadn't noticed much activity going on in the rest of the house since leaving Andrew with Judy. Now I heard a buzzing coming from the hallway and I got up to investigate.

A white plastic box at the side of the front door had a small screen with a red light flashing in conjunction with the buzzing. I guessed it was the gate. The black-and-white image on the screen was very grainy because of the rain, but I could make out a vehicle. I pressed the most obvious button.

"Hello?"

"Doctor Kessler." A deep voice boomed from the speaker.

"Oh, erm, hang on …" I stuttered, pressing the only other button. The car moved out of view so I guessed the button had worked. I opened the front door.

Doctor Kessler was a tall Indian man in his twenties who splashed from the car with his briefcase held above his head. His cheap grey suit looked as though it had seen better days.  He introduced himself to me, and I led him to Judy's room. I knocked before opening the door.

The nurse sat on the floor next to the sideboard packing away medical supplies from the bottom drawer into a red plastic box.

Judy lay on the bed. Her hair had been brushed and now framed her face. Her lips had a dark tinge to them and her skin a waxy sheen. Other than that she could have been asleep.