Surrogate – a psychological thriller (17 page)

Strapping our baby into the passenger seat, I couldn’t wait to tell Mole our good news. "I have her. I am holding our daughter, and she's beautiful" were the first words I said, not quite believing them myself. Mole did not reply. Instead I sat there, looking out across the town centre at night, listening to my wife sobbing with gratitude.

When I arrived home an hour later, a police car was already waiting outside. Good. I had told Mole to give them the address of Alice's bungalow. Soon she would be under arrest, and we would have our money back. I kept glancing at the back seat where our baby girl had cried herself to sleep. The poor child must be starving, and I had asked Mole to prepare some baby formula for when I got home. Carrying the seat across the underground car park, I felt a mixture of elation and apprehension. Looking down at her on the lift floor, our child looked so tiny and vulnerable; how could anybody have done something to harm her? Alice using her as a pawn was unconscionable. My instinct was telling me there had to be somebody else involved telling her what to do; perhaps Mole was right and there was a boyfriend in the background. And where was Alice now? Probably frightened and on the run, knowing the police would hunt her down. It was hard not to feel a moment of triumph.

I unlocked our front door and carried our precious bundle into the sitting room, feeling quite the conquering hero. Mole would meet me at the door, and together we would gaze down at our darling daughter and both of us would dance around the room, whirling faster and faster–

Instead, Mole was seated on the sofa clasping her hands. To my surprise, Detective Inspector Syal was standing beside the picture window. The police must have responded to Mole's call quickly. Turning when she saw me, Syal looked her usual permanently dissatisfied self. There was also another policewoman with her in uniform, a younger woman with her hair in a ponytail. The atmosphere was funereal. This was not the triumphal homecoming I had expected.

Mole rose from the sofa and advanced towards me, eyes glistening. "Oh, darling, she's so beautiful." She bent down and unstrapped our precious girl, lifting her against her chest.

"She needs feeding," I said. "I don't know when she last ate."

"I'll take her and change her nappy," Mole said. "I'll only be next door if you need me."

Detective Inspector Syal waited until Mole had left the room. "We went to the address you gave us," she said.

"The neighbour said Alice had already gone," I said.

"We found Alice Adams there."

My heart leapt. "Where was she? Upstairs hiding? I told my wife there were no lights on when I got there. I tried the front door and looked in through the windows–"

"Alice Adams is dead."

I wanted to burst out laughing. Instead I said, "I'm sorry?"

"We found Alice Adams dead on the sitting-room floor."

The colour seemed to drain out of the room, and I had the peculiar sensation of looking down at the three of us, as if I was floating high up in the ceiling. "My God, she must have killed herself out of remorse."

"The thing is, Mr Cox, in my experience people don't commit suicide by hitting themselves over the head with a blunt instrument."

"I don't understand."

"When we broke into the house, we found Alice Adams battered to death. Somebody had attacked her with a metal ashtray."

"Surely you don't think I had anything to do with this."

Now it was my turn to sit down on the sofa. I looked down at my hands, but they seemed to be useless stumps. I suppose I was going into shock.

"Mr Cox, I want you to take me through exactly what happened. We spoke to the neighbour, who said you arrived at her front door looking worried, anxious–"

"Of course I was bloody anxious. I had just paid a ransom of a million pounds."

"Why didn't you come to us first?"

I shook my head. "What was the point? You would have tried to stop us. Have you ever wanted something, I mean
really
wanted something? That was how we both felt."

"When you got to the house, are you sure you didn't meet the victim? Before you knocked on her door, the neighbour said she heard raised voices, shouting. The walls are thin."

"I told you. There was nobody home. Then I got a text saying that our daughter was in this car park." Then, as if I had discovered something important, "Wait a minute, how did Alice take our daughter to the car park if she was already dead? There must have been somebody with her. She must have had an accomplice."

"We only have your word that you were told to go to the car park. Did anybody see you there?"

I shook my head. "I don't think so. I can show you the text if you want," I said, digging into my jacket pocket. "It's from the same number as the ransom demands."

"Look at this from our point of view. You could have sent the text to yourself using the victim's phone. Mr Cox, I don't doubt anything you're saying. However, I do need to eliminate you from our enquiries. Please would you accompany us to the station?"

While this was going on, the younger woman had been talking to somebody on her shoulder walkie-talkie. For some reason she reminded me of a prancing circus horse. She went over to Syal and whispered something. The two women stood huddled in conversation, I asked for permission with my eyes to go next door and see my wife. I desperately needed her support. Syal nodded and carried on listening to her PC, completely absorbed by what the woman was telling her.

I found Mole sitting in the nursery rocking chair, and it took me a moment to adjust to the dim light. Our baby was lying on a pillow while Mole bottle-fed her. It should have been the perfect moment, out little family reunited for the first time, but instead fear gnawed my insides.

"She's feeding beautifully," Mole said.

"Mole, the police want to take me in for questioning. They think I had something to do with Alice's death." Mole would not meet my eyes, she was so fixated with our daughter. "I swear to God, everything I told you was true." I pressed on. "There was nobody at the house when I got there. Then I got the text message."

"I know that. Just tell the police the truth." Mole seemed distracted, unable to decide who to give her attention to. Suddenly I wanted to shake her. This was serious, goddammit, the police had called me in for questioning, and right now I was their only murder suspect. Mole seemed to be in a dream world. I marched forward and stood over them.

"Mole, listen to what I am saying. The police want to interview me. They think I might have killed Alice."

Mole was having difficulty tearing her eyes away from our daughter. "Tell the police what you told me. I know that you couldn't have done anything like that."

"You do believe me, don't you?"

"Of course I believe you."

Was it just me, or was there was a scintilla of doubt in her voice?

I gripped the arms of her rocking chair, hanging on as if for dear life.

"For God's sake, Mole, you must believe me. You must."

The policewoman with the ponytail showed me into the interview room. The detective inspector would be with me in a few minutes, she said.

Syal bustled in holding a manila file full of papers, accompanied by a younger man. Squeezed into a suit, he looked like a bodybuilder whose idea of breakfast was something powdered that you shook up in water. He even cracked his knuckles as he sat down.

"Are you comfortable?" Syal asked. "Do you want any kind of refreshment? Did they bring you a cup of tea?"

"I'm fine, thanks. It's been a long day. I just want to get this over with."

The DI reached across to the chunky Neal recorder sitting on the table. The red light came on.

"Thursday. March the seventh. The time is eleven thirteen pm. Present in the room are Hugo Cox; myself, Detective Inspector Deepa Syal; and my colleague, Detective Constable Dan Thomas. Could you identify yourself please?"

I did so.

"At eight thirty-four this evening, police were called to Brook Farm Cottage in Goudhurst, Kent. Breaking into the house, officers found the body of Alice Adams, a woman in her mid-twenties, lying on the sitting-room floor. She had been bludgeoned to death with a blunt instrument, possibly an ashtray. Forensic tests are on-going. Would you say that's a fair summary, Mr Cox?"

"If you say so."

"Police were called to the house by Emily Cox, wife of Hugo Cox. Mrs Cox told me that her husband had driven to the house to collect their baby, who had been kidnapped by Alice Adams."

She waited for my approval, and I nodded for her to continue.

"According to Mr and Mrs Cox, the surrogate mother they employed had disappeared six months ago carrying their child. She then contacted them, demanding a ransom of a million pounds, which Mr Cox paid this afternoon."

By now Syal was writing on a pad of A4 paper, which I guessed was my witness statement. She put the pen down and looked at me.

"How did you pay that money, Hugo?"

"My financial adviser organised it. He transferred the money to a bank account in Panama." Syal shrugged and sat back in her chair, the corners of her mouth turned down. "And you can come up with that sort of money easily, can you?" In her tight-fitting trouser suit, you could see her thinking, entitled City boy brat. "A million pounds. Just like that." She snapped her fingers and raised her eyebrows. The junior detective beside her smirked.

I tried smiling. "It wasn't easy. I had to liquidate everything I owned and take a mortgage out on my flat. She wiped me out."

"And you hand over a million pounds, just on the basis of a text message? I can’t decide whether you’re naïve or gullible or both. There’s no guarantee you’re ever going to see your money again."

"I know. I realise I’ve behaved rashly," I said, shaking my head. "You have no idea what it’s been like. The strain has been intolerable."

"How would you describe Alice Adams?" the DC asked. I could tell that he disliked me, but there wasn't a lot I could do about it.

"She could be sullen. Not easy to live with, I'll tell you that. Either up or down. My wife and I had this nickname for her, 'Eeyore-ina'." Syal looked blank. "You know, like Winnie the Pooh?"

"So, mood swings," Syal said, writing it down. "What was your reaction when she disappeared carrying your baby?"

"Well, you saw when we came to see you. We were devastated. You know how upset we were, you were there. But you told us this was her baby, so there was nothing we could do about it. After a while, when it became clear that she wasn't going to get in contact, we hired a private detective–"

"–Yes, we're still investigating that. We believe we are looking at a murder case."

"Do you think there's any connection?"

"We don't know yet. The thing is, Hugo, I don't understand why you caved in so quickly. There were less than twenty-four hours between you receiving the ransom demand and you paying up. Why didn't you come to us first?"

"I told you. There was too much at stake. You would have told me not to pay or have sent somebody in my place. Either way it was too risky. She had us over a barrel."

"There's always another way. I think there's something else, something I'm not quite getting ..."

"My plan was always to call you once we had our baby. That way, you could arrest Alice, and our money would be returned."

"Except that Alice Adams is dead, and you don't know where your wedge has gone," the DC grunted.

Silence. The strip-light overhead was strobing ever so slightly, just enough to bring on a headache.

DI Syal shifted in her chair and did that thing of tapping her pen against her teeth. "Why don't we look at it another way? You get to the house, and Alice has changed her mind. Now she doesn't want to stick to her part of the deal; she wants to keep the baby. You're angry. Understandably. You want your child. You start fighting for your child and she attacks you. She's attacked you before. You reach out for anything to fend her off. Suddenly she's lying dead on the carpet."

The atmosphere in the room thickened. That’s not what happened, I thought, stop trying to push me into a corner.

"I've told you. I didn’t see Alice at the cottage."

Syal got up and started pacing, gesticulating with her hands as if this all now suddenly made sense to her. "So you're panicking. You take your baby and put her in your car. Then you go and knock on the neighbour's door, saying you're looking for Alice. You drive to Tunbridge Wells and pretend to go to the car park, isn't that right, Hugo?" She placed both hands on the desk and looked at me. "Why don't you just tell us the truth, Hugo? Wouldn't it be better than holding it all in? The strain must be killing you."

"I told you. I had nothing to do with Alice's death," I said coldly. Adrenaline was going through my body like a mob in a riot. "Why don't you check with the neighbour? She didn't plan this alone. A bank account in Panama? Come on."

Eventually Syal terminated the interview, and I asked her whether I was a suspect or a witness. "I don't know," she said. "I can’t make up my mind about you."

Mole had waited up for me, and I told her how the police were trying to push me, their only suspect, into a corner. Me, their sole witness. We finally staggered up to bed and Mole wrapped herself around me, but I lay there unable to sleep. The photograph the detective had slid across the table was tormenting: one half of Alice's face was beaten so badly it was almost black.

Next morning, DI Syal was waiting downstairs ready to take us both to the morgue. As we were the only people in London who seemed to know who Alice was, we had been asked to identify her. It was bloody cold in her car as we slid across the leatherette seats. Syal offered me a sip of her plastic cup of coffee, which I took. Laced with sugar, the coffee tasted delicious.

The waiting-room walls of the morgue were painted coral pink. Somebody had thoughtfully placed a box of tissues on the coffee table.

Syal sat with us while we waited to meet the pathologist. I squeezed Mole's hand, trying to reassure her. "It's going to be okay," I said. When the pathologist came out, my first impression was that this man was an angel. He was younger than I expected, tall with café-au-lait skin and startling blue eyes, bluer than his hospital gown. The four of us shook hands. "Shall we go through?" he asked. "We'll try and make this as quick as possible. I know how distressing it is." I stood up with a queer feeling that this was all happening to somebody else. I had to get through it, I must. Mole nodded when I asked her if she was okay. She looked as grim-faced as I felt.

The pathologist held the door open, and we walked through into the mortuary. The powerful air conditioning and glaringly antiseptic white walls made it colder on this side. One wall was taken up with drawers where the corpses were kept. A sign read, "Please ensure all bodies are placed into storage units head first."

The pathologist was standing in the doorway. Beyond him you could see what looked like an operating theatre, except more basic. It was almost as if the pathologist himself was poised between life and death. A counter ran along the back wall that appeared to be used for eviscerating organs, blue hoses neatly coiled along the counter. Through the doorway I could see what must be Alice's body covered with a sheet, her head facing away from us towards a metal sink.

A memory of Alice, the curve of her waist where the sheet had ridden down back in the hotel room. I started to feel faint, and I almost had to grip the floor with my toes, determined not to embarrass myself. Mole looked unsteady as well, and Syal asked if she wanted a chair. The pathologist stood over Alice, ready to lift the sheet and reveal her bashed-in face.

Even though Alice's good side was turned towards us, I saw a row of battered teeth. The pathologist was careful to shield most of the damage with his hands, but one of Alice's eyes had rolled open, looking as dead as the dead eye of a fish. She looked at me accusingly, as if to say, look at me, look at the state of me, look at what you did to me.