The Touch of Innocents (18 page)

She snatched at the switch on the screen and the blue glow faded but the main drive still hummed, the computer was still toiling. Another light in the cottage went on and a dog howled; the world was waking. This might be her last chance.

More by memory than the pale light of a winter moon she found the box of computer disks at the back of the desk. Clean, empty floppy disks. Like sponges.

She couldn’t risk any form of illumination. She sat in front of the console and typed, blind, two fingers.

The computer stirred, fell silent again. She extracted the original floppy and replaced it with a new one. More stirring, more silence.

She was desperate to switch on the screen, to check, but she thought she could hear signs of movement from inside the house now. Sally. She switched disks once more, leaving the original back in its drive.

Had it copied, had the sponge soaked up the information?
No way of checking, not now. Clutching the new disk, she quickly retraced her steps back to her room.

So he had known, almost from the start. And had become part of it. For there could be no other interpretation, no other understanding of his diary entry. His reappearance in her life had been no coincidence. Now she knew the measure of her enemy, for enemy he surely was.

A parent driven by overwhelming obsession, and love, faith and hope, and perhaps guilt, to protect the child. No matter what.

It seemed all too familiar. Like looking in a mirror. She understood how determined he might be. As determined as she.

And that made Devereux a very dangerous man.

Daniel dropped them at the hospital. Only as she sat waiting for her check-up did she realize how little she had thought during the last few days of her medical condition. She had found enough strength to spring after Benjy, enough physical resource to see her through the days. No headaches. Her bouts of depression she put down to the loss of Bella rather than the clinical after-effects of the accident. She’d even begun some gentle aerobic stepping exercises to rebuild the muscle tone. No question she was getting stronger.

And Weatherup agreed. A slow, painstaking examination of her neurological signs, from the shape of her head and the reflexes of the retinas to the sensitivity of the soles of her feet, seemed to leave him well satisfied. Izzy Dean was working.

‘You’re a medical mystery, Izzy. A few weeks ago you were supposed to be dead. Now, apart from your spleen scar and that slightest nick by your eye, I
can find no evidence of the fact that you were ever in an accident. It’s as if you’ve found something within you which is repairing all the loose ends, retying all the knots, far more effectively than any drug I could prescribe.’

It’s called hope, she told herself.

‘Amazing what a few press-ups will do, doctor.’

‘Now, don’t you go overdoing things,’ he chided. ‘Any damage you received to the brain is irreversible and we simply don’t know enough about such matters to tell you what, if any, difficulties that might cause. Just take it easy for the next few weeks; your brain and your body will let you know of any problem much more effectively than we can. But, as far as I can tell, so far, so very good.’

‘You’re telling me that the medical profession isn’t omniscient? That it makes mistakes?’

He recognized her challenge. Cautiously he seated himself on the end of the examination couch, conscious of the fact that their last conversation had turned to confrontation.

‘In my job we understand so little. We struggle so hard with inadequate tools, and we pray. If we succeed, we still don’t know whether it’s because of our skills, our luck or simply our prayer. But also there comes a point when we have no choice but to bow our heads to the inevitable. When the struggle has to stop.’

He held up his hand to stall the protest he knew she was about to launch.

‘Please, Izzy, listen to me for just a minute. It’s very common for mothers to have difficulty in believing they’ve lost a baby; it’s not only natural, it’s normal. You have the added problem of not having been there to say goodbye.’ He licked dry lips, searching for the right words. ‘But you see, there
are too many steps in the system, too many people involved. A mistake simply couldn’t have happened. You’ve got to find some way of letting go.’

She wanted to shout at him. What about mistakes of hair colour? What about babies in Bournemouth? But he was trying to be genuine, she could detect no trace of craft in him. She held her peace.

‘Those ID bracelets are checked every step of the way, against all the medical records we make. For a mistake to have been made would take the entire hospital, every doctor and nurse who dealt with your baby. It simply couldn’t happen.’

He took her silence as acquiescence; his frown turned to an expression of encouragement. ‘Don’t just take my word for it. Go and prove it to yourself. Talk to those who looked after your baby, find out how much care she was given. Then perhaps you’ll find you can accept.’

Her shoulders dropped. He was right, not everyone in the hospital could have made a mistake, she had to accept that. Even more, it would have taken a mistake by the Coroner’s Office, the undertaker, the police … seemingly everyone in the country. No conspiracy theory could cover so many people. And what would be their purpose? Suddenly she felt tired, belittled. Her head fell forward, as though she no longer had the strength.

‘I shall do as you suggest.’

‘Good.’

‘So, when would you like to see me next?’

‘See you, Izzy? As far as I’m concerned, you’re as strong as a horse and as free as a bird. A remarkable recovery. In a word, go. So long as you don’t overdo it, listen to what your body is telling you, in my opinion you can leave. Fly back tomorrow, if you want. Spend Christmas at home. In fact, I would
suggest it, probably the best recuperation you can get.’ His voice softened to a whisper. ‘Get away from here and its memories. Give yourself a chance to forget.’

People forget, but not systems. They are built to retain, to store the myriad details of life. And, as Daniel was discovering, of death.

After dropping Izzy off at the hospital he had driven to the Coroner’s Office, with no idea of what he was searching for except, with the assistance of his press credentials, to test the version of events she had been given.

And for all the world it seemed to be correct. The Coroner himself was not available, it was not a full-time post, so the wizened clerk with the leathery skin and bottle-black hair informed him. But she offered her own help, delivered in a prim manner and pedantic voice which he later discovered was the legacy of half a lifetime of schoolteaching before her early retirement to the less stressful and considerably quieter enclaves of the Coroner’s Office. On medical grounds, at her doctor’s suggestion. She wore no ring.

‘A baby girl,’ Daniel explained. ‘Unknown identity. Died in a car accident.’

She retrieved a slim manila file from a locked cupboard, wiping it meticulously with a bright yellow cloth although nothing in the office bore any trace of dust. ‘You’re not the first to enquire, as it happens. A lady from the social services just last week. Strange accent. Forin, I believe.’ She pronounced the word with particular emphasis. Very English.

So Katti hadn’t ducked out …

‘Sad case. The baby had died in a car accident. Death certificate, after post-mortem.’ She shuffled
through the few forms in the file. ‘All here, the paperwork … Cause of death, sub-dural haematoma – a nasty bang on the head. Here’s the Coroner’s “E” certificate, releasing the body for disposal.’ She read. ‘Cremated.’

‘No trace of family?’

‘It seems her mother was in the hospital, in a coma. Inquest adjourned. No other traceable relatives, all the usual enquiries were made.’

‘But the body was disposed of even though the mother was still alive in the hospital?’

‘In a coma, young man,’ she insisted in schoolma’amly fashion. ‘And not expected to live, according to the doctor’s report. Little point in waiting.’

‘Even so, it seems a little hasty, to dispose of the body only a couple of weeks after death.’

‘Just what the forin lady suggested. So I took the trouble of enquiring from the Coroner himself. There’s no mystery. Our mortuary facilities were simply overflowing with …’ – she hesitated in search of a more delicate word – ‘unfortunates. It’s quite common for them to be stacked two to a tray, and sometimes even that’s not enough. We really do need expanded facilities but, you know, the cuts …’

Cuts, the last resort of the bureaucrat, the eternal explanation for inadequacy. The same cuts that had produced the new A&E wing at the hospital, the indoor sports complex with Olympic-size swimming pool, and an additional primary school. But no new fridge facilities at the mortuary. The dead have no votes, he reflected.

‘So on rare occasions the Coroner, most reluctantly, is forced to issue his “E” simply to make room, you see. Unless the police have questions or
suspect foul play, which was not the case in this instance.’

‘That’s …’ – he wanted to say convenient – ‘understandable. And that’s what you told the other lady?’

‘Would have done. But she never called back, and that after I’d gone to the trouble of contacting the Coroner himself. Not very good for social services, is it? You wonder at times why they can’t find local people to do these jobs, don’t you, Mr Blackheart? Maybe it’s the cuts again. Although you would have thought they could find room for such a tiny baby,’ she added wistfully.

‘You have to sweep out the mortuary very often?’ His tone was deliberately casual which he knew she would find offensive.

‘
Very
rarely. And I certainly wouldn’t put it like that.’

‘So you haven’t had to get rid of a large number of bodies?’

‘Absolutely not. Very few, in fact.’ She was defensive. ‘This was a most exceptional circumstance.’

‘An unusual case, you’d say?’

‘Yes, a most unusual case. Unique. Pity, really.’

‘A great pity.’

He found mother and child seated on the plastic chairs in the corner of the hospital’s main reception area, as though trying to separate themselves from the rest of the world as it bustled past. Izzy seemed deflated, grown smaller since he had dropped her off.

‘You OK?’

‘Fine. Fully fit,’ she replied without enthusiasm, her hair in uncharacteristic disarray from lying on the examination couch. She looked her age. The skin around the eyes had a slight waxiness. For the first
time he noticed the face appeared drawn, and it wasn’t just the hospital lighting.

‘They say I can go home.’ She made it sound like a sentence.

‘But you’re not going.’

‘I need … I need something more. There’s still no reason, no motive for all this. I feel … Frankly, I feel ripped apart.’

He sat beside her, placing an arm around her shoulder. ‘Come on. What’s wrong?’

‘Hell, I don’t know. Because my hair’s messed up, my clothes make me look ridiculous, the doctor all but convinced me there couldn’t have been a mistake – how many more reasons do you want?’ She paused. ‘Because every time I close my eyes I see Benjy standing in front of that lorry. And because no matter how hard I try I can’t remember what Bella looks like. And because …’ For a moment she thought she might tell him that her hormones were conducting civil war inside her, that this was the first time since her coma and they were taking their revenge for all the months of oestrogenal regimentation which the accident had brought to an end, but men were so damned juvenile about such things.

She couldn’t help herself. She felt the tear creeping down her cheek; normally she would have fought it, summoned up her professional self-respect to obliterate any possibility of them branding her as weak, of giving men the excuse to categorize her as another faint-willed woman. But Daniel was different. He had a manner about him that was entirely non-judgemental, uncritical, that encouraged others to express themselves freely and without inhibition – that suggested he had been there, too. With him she had begun to find her emotions once more; she’d smiled, even remembered how to laugh, and now
felt the freedom to shed tears. Her head fell on his shoulder as though dragged down by an intolerable weight. Without wanting to, she noticed how firm and unfleshy he was beneath the shapeless stitching of his jacket, how unlike any other man she had known for a long time, unlike Joe had ever been. She found it a confusing thought, with her child at her feet – a child who refused to be left out.

‘Mumee, Mumee,’ Benjamin exclaimed.

‘Yes, dear?’

‘Danny huggling you. Danny nice.’

‘Yes. He is, isn’t he,’ she mumbled, her face buried in his shoulder.

‘You’re a beautiful lady, Isadora Dean,’ he whispered into her hair, ‘but you can’t sit round all day falling into the arms of strange men who bear nothing but lecherous intent. At least, not while you’ve got a job to be getting on with.’

Her head stayed down. He decided to try a different tack.

‘Interesting news, Izzy. The disposal of the baby’s body was completely in order, all the legal requirements taken care of, all their little forms present and correct. But what wasn’t correct was the rush with which it was handled. It’s almost unheard of to dispose of an unclaimed body so quickly.’