Hope to Die

Voicemail

DI Adam Fawley

Mobile

Transcription

Mrs Ward, it’s Adam Fawley. I’m sorry to miss you but I wanted to let you know as soon as possible that I was able to get a sample from Jeremy, and the lab have run the DNA test. If you can give me a call back as soon as you get this I can talk you through it. Many thanks.

* * *

Adam Fawley

26 October

09.48

‘Mr Ward? It’s Adam Fawley. We’ve had the results. Your brother wasn’t the father.’

I hear him exhale. ‘Thank God for that.’

‘Yes, I can imagine you’re relieved. Let’s hope you’ll be able to move on now.’

‘What do you mean, “hope” – the results are conclusive, aren’t they?’

‘Oh yes, there’s no question about the paternity. But just because he wasn’t the father, doesn’t mean he wasn’t involved in some other way.’

‘Like what?’

I can’t believe I need to spell it out, but if I have to, I will.

‘He could have helped her with the baby.’

I can almost hear him frowning. ‘In what way, exactly?’

‘He could have arranged an illegal adoption. For example.’

‘Nigel? You can’t be serious.’

There’s a pause. I can hear his wife talking to him at the other end. It’s not loud enough to hear what she’s saying, just a sense of tension, of urgency.

‘I’m sorry, Inspector,’ he says now, ‘but I don’t understand. Quite apart from the fact that I can’t see Nigel knowing the first thing about something like that, why would Camilla even need to have the baby adopted illegally when she’d already put a child through the normal channels?’

Well, that’s one way of putting it.

‘I don’t have an answer to that question, Mr Ward. All I do know is that a baby boy disappeared and ended up being brought up by someone else. I don’t know who, and I don’t know where, but somehow, it happened. I’m just trying to connect the dots.’

‘Fair enough,’ he says, after a moment. ‘But, like I said, I just can’t see Nigel being any use to her. He had no links to that sort of world, no “dodgy connections” – the very idea is insane –’

‘He was a solicitor, though.’

‘A high street solicitor, not attorney to the Mob.’

‘But he did do criminal work, didn’t he, as well as the usual property and divorce stuff?’

‘Well, yes, but –’

‘Then he must have had some clients with less than savoury backgrounds – petty thieves, tax evaders –’

He takes a deep breath. ‘I have no idea. Probably. On occasion. But this sort of thing – it would be on a completely different scale.’

‘I’ve been doing this job a long time, Mr Ward, and in my experience crime is no different from a lot else in life: it’s all about contacts. Someone who knows someone who knows someone.’

He sighs. ‘Well, yes, I can see that, I suppose. But like I said, why go to all that trouble when the state will do it for you at zero cost?’

‘And as I said, I don’t have a good answer to that. That’s why I have to ask these questions. However irritating they might be.’

There’s a pause.

‘Where was he, that night, Mr Ward? When he wasn’t at your mother’s and you stood in for him? You never said.’

‘I never said because I don’t know.’

‘You didn’t ask?’

‘He just told me someone needed his help – that it was important and he couldn’t get out of it.’ He sighs again. ‘And yes, it has occurred to me that that’s a pretty good description of what you think he was up to with Camilla.’

‘I didn’t say I thought that; just that it was possible.’

Another pause.

‘Was he having an affair?’

‘Not that I knew.’

‘Did he have other relationships? Either before that or afterwards?’

‘If he did, he kept it to himself. He certainly never told me. Look, Sheila could be a difficult woman to live with but I never saw any suggestion that he had anyone else.’

‘So you have no idea who this “someone” was he needed to help?’

‘I’m sorry, Inspector, your guess is as good as mine.’

* * *

‘If he doesn’t stop fucking smirking soon,’ mutters Quinn, ‘I swear I’m going to nut him.’

Gislingham glances across at Carter, then grins at Quinn. ‘Well, I guess you can’t blame him. It was pretty impressive.’ Quinn’s still frowning and Gislingham just can’t resist. ‘Bit of a surprise, though – him coming up with that. I mean, it’s not the sort of thing I’d expect him to know about – shoes and that. Fashion. More your area, I’d say.’

Quinn flashes him a look. ‘I’d never spend that much on a pair of sodding trainers.’

‘What’s this about trainers?’ says Chloe Sargent, dumping her bag on her desk. She’s just back from lunch and there are splatters of rain on her jacket. ‘Have I missed something?’

Baxter looks up. ‘Carter just bagged a humungous wodge of brownie points by working out that the vic’s shoes must have been bought in America.’

Her face falls. She glances towards Carter. ‘Really?’

‘Quite the little detective,’ says Quinn, raising his voice. ‘Aren’t you, Carter?’

Carter looks up and flushes. ‘Not really –’

‘Oh, come on,’ begins Quinn, but there’s a sharp edge to his sarcasm that Gis knows only too well. People are looking up, trying to work out what’s going on. Time to dial it down.

‘Ignore him, Carter,’ says Gis, deliberately jovial, ‘we’re all just jealous – me included. Credit where credit’s due, but –’ turning to the rest of the team now – ‘we’ve got a long way to go yet.’

It’s another five minutes before Carter pushes back his chair and goes out towards the coffee machine, by which time everyone’s returned to what they were doing. Apart from Ev, who’s just got back from lunch herself. Which is why she’s the only one who notices Chloe Sargent get up and follow Carter out.

* * *

Adam Fawley

26 October

14.15

I have to drive into London for the BBC interview so I go via Risinghurst and get a change of clothes. I wouldn’t have bothered because I don’t particularly care how I look, but Alex does. She would anyway, but as she’s already reminded me, this is about more than just making sure I don’t have baby sick down my sleeve.

‘You need to look like you’re at ease with yourself,’ she says as I stand staring at my tie rack. ‘In control.’ And an obvious choice for Thames Valley’s next new Chief Inspector. Which, of course, we’re both studiously avoiding mentioning.

‘I don’t feel like I’m in control. I’m not even in control of my bloody tie.’

She smiles. ‘All the more reason to look like you are.’ She pulls one out and threads it round my collar. It’s not the tie I’d have chosen – I’d have gone quieter, more conventional – but that’s why she’s better at these things than I am.

‘What would I do without you?’

She laughs. ‘Forget to pay the bills? Run out of clean socks?’

‘You know what I mean.’

I pull her into my arms, and her hands slip under my jacket and round my waist.

I put my lips to her hair. ‘I should come home at lunchtime more often.’

‘Harrison would notice,’ she whispers. ‘You’d never make it back in the afternoons.’

A laugh now, but not mine, and not hers. I swing round to see Lily staring at us from her cot, her little fists gripped on the bars, her face lit up in a smile.

Alex drops her hands. ‘Oh. My. God. Adam – she’s pulled herself up.’ She stares at me. ‘She’s never done that before – she’s only three months old and she’s pulled herself up.’

She rushes over to the crib and lifts Lily out, and now Lily’s laughing and Alex’s laughing and kissing her, and telling her how clever she is, and all I can think is, who gives a stuff about Camilla Rowan, or the bloody BBC, or the promotion, or any of it, because I’m the luckiest bastard in the whole wide world.

* * *

‘No, if he was brought up in the US it would make no difference to the familial search results. If the biological father was born in the US – or somewhere else overseas – then yes, that would definitely give us a significantly different gene pool, but that’s not what you’re talking about, is it?’

‘No,’ says Gislingham at the other end of the line. ‘Sorry, Nina, my bad. I should have thought.’

Mukerjee smiles to herself; it might have been a waste of time but it was very far from being the dimmest question a police officer has asked her about DNA. And in any case, she likes Gislingham; she’s glad to see him making a success of his step up to sergeantship.

‘No problem at all – really.’

‘I just remember the boss saying you were surprised you hadn’t found as many matches as you usually would and thought this might be the explanation.’

‘Well, the first half of that’s true, at least.’

Gis laughs. ‘Back to the drawing board, eh?’

* * *

www.bbc.com/transcripts/Behind_the_Headlines

BEHIND THE HEADLINES aired October 26, 2018 – 18:30 GMT

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

[18:00:18]

HELEN KERRIDGE, HOST: Good evening, I’m Helen Kerridge and this is BEHIND THE HEADLINES, where we take an in-depth look at a story that’s making the news this week. Tonight it’s an ‘infamous’ case from fifteen years ago that’s once again making the front pages. Back in 2003, Camilla Rowan, then 23, was accused of killing her newborn son six years earlier. She has always claimed she gave the baby to its natural father, a man called Tim Baker, but this man has never been found. Rowan was convicted of murder at the Old Bailey, and sentenced to life. And that seemed to be the end of it. But then in 2016, investigative journalist John Penrose revisited the case in a now-celebrated series for Netflix, which raised some serious questions about the reliability of the original police investigation. And now, two years on, the case has taken another sensational turn, and we have the man who made that documentary here with us tonight. John –

JOHN PENROSE: Thank you, Helen. Back in 2016, I ended Infamous: The Chameleon Girl by asking if the time had come to take another look at Camilla Rowan’s case. Had there, in fact, been a serious miscarriage of justice which led to a victim of child abuse being imprisoned for a crime no one could prove she had committed? A few months later, the Criminal Cases Review Commission did indeed look at that question, but they concluded that the answer, then, was ‘No’.

But now we know better. Because earlier this week the news broke that Camilla Rowan’s lost baby had been found. Not, sadly, alive and well, but dead; killed in the most bizarre circumstances. Here in the studio tonight we have Detective Inspector Adam Fawley, who is leading the investigation into that death for Thames Valley Police. Inspector Fawley, perhaps you could tell us how you came to identify this man as Camilla Rowan’s son.

DETECTIVE INSPECTOR ADAM FAWLEY: Officers were called to a house on the outskirts of Oxford last Sunday night after reports of an intruder. They discovered the body of a man in the kitchen.

PENROSE: He’d been shot. By the owner of the house.

FAWLEY: Yes, I’m afraid so.

PENROSE: The householder thought the man was a burglar?

FAWLEY: It would be a natural assumption to make.

PENROSE: So what led you to connect this incident to the Camilla Rowan case?

FAWLEY: Unfortunately, the dead man did not have any identifying documents on him, so we took DNA samples at the scene, which later proved him to be the biological son of Camilla Rowan.

PENROSE: It seems an awfully big jump from an unidentified corpse in 2018 to a baby last seen in 1997.

FAWLEY: Camilla Rowan is a convicted criminal; her DNA is in the National DNA Database. It was bound to produce a match.

PENROSE: So you’re 100% sure this man was her long-lost child?

FAWLEY: We are. Our task now is to establish exactly where he’s been for the last twenty years. Without any identifying documents, that’s proving a challenge.

PENROSE: Do you have any potential lines of enquiry at all?

FAWLEY: The only lead we have is that the man may have been brought up overseas, possibly in the US. But as you can appreciate, that doesn’t narrow the field down very much, so we’re hoping that someone who sees this programme may recognise him and come forward.

(SHOW STILL)

PENROSE: This is the man? At Oxford railway station, the evening he died?

FAWLEY: That’s right. If any viewers know this man, or can give us any information about who he is, please contact Thames Valley Police on the phone number or email address at the bottom of the screen now. All calls and emails will be treated confidentially.

PENROSE: (GESTURING AT THE PHOTO) He has a backpack with him – surely that must have contained something that would tell you who he was?

FAWLEY: Unfortunately, the backpack has not been found.

PENROSE: That’s a bit odd, isn’t it?

FAWLEY: An extensive search has been conducted –

PENROSE: It rather argues that the householders got rid of it, doesn’t it? Before your officers arrived?

FAWLEY: We don’t know what happened to it –

PENROSE: But why would they do that? If he was just a random burglar? Unless, of course, they knew who he was?

FAWLEY: I’m not in a position –

PENROSE: What’s the householder been charged with? Murder or manslaughter?

FAWLEY: He’s been released on bail. The CPS has not yet made a decision as to charging.

PENROSE: Because it would make a difference, wouldn’t it? A big difference. If he’s charged with murder there has to be an element of premeditation, and I’m finding it difficult to reconcile that with someone defending themselves against a burglar.

FAWLEY: To repeat, decisions as to charging will be made by the CPS –

PENROSE: But he must have been arrested, if he’s on bail, so what was he arrested for – murder or manslaughter?

FAWLEY: As you well know, we don’t release that sort of information.

PENROSE: I’m sure you understand why I’m asking: if you’re treating what happened here as murder, doesn’t that imply that the householder must have known the victim? Known him or even been related to him? Have you considered whether the people in the house might, in fact, be Dick and Peggy Rowan, Camilla’s parents? Who sold their home in Shiphampton soon after their daughter’s trial and severed all ties with their friends, and haven’t been seen since. Are they the mystery elderly couple at Wytham?

FAWLEY: Given that this is an ongoing investigation, we have not disclosed the names of the people in question.

PENROSE: Have you done DNA tests on them?

FAWLEY: That’s not something we would divulge at this stage.

PENROSE: Land Registry records for the house at Wytham show that it’s owned by a property company, the main shareholder of which is a Mr Richard Swann, who just so happens to have exactly the same date of birth as Dick Rowan. The same first name, the same date of birth – that can’t be a coincidence, surely.

FAWLEY: I think what’s important now is to focus on identifying the dead man and establishing exactly what happened back in 1997. We were hoping that Ms Rowan might be able to help us with this but, unfortunately, she has so far declined to do so.

PENROSE: Is she going to be released?

FAWLEY: That’s a matter for the Ministry of Justice, not the Police.

PENROSE: It’s quite simple, Inspector. She was convicted of murdering someone who we now know wasn’t murdered at all. She is, de facto, therefore, completely innocent and should be released immediately.

FAWLEY: We still don’t know exactly what happened to the baby, and until we do –

PENROSE: We know she didn’t kill it.

FAWLEY: Yes, we do.

PENROSE: So she’s not guilty of murder.

FAWLEY: Not of murder, no.

PENROSE: What then? What is she guilty of that justifies a prison sentence of fifteen years? Because that’s what she’s served, Inspector. Fifteen years.

FAWLEY: As I said, those are questions you need to put to someone else.

PENROSE: It was a pretty shoddy inquiry, wasn’t it? The original investigation?

FAWLEY: Nothing I’ve seen suggests that. South Mercia Police handled the case in the same way any other force would have done.

PENROSE: What about Nigel Ward? It was only thanks to me that anyone started looking at him. Me, working on my own, with no access to official documents or the ability to compel witnesses. Whereas South Mercia had dozens of detectives on that investigation, round the clock, for the best part of a year. It beggars belief that they didn’t at least think it was worth talking to him.

FAWLEY: I can’t speak for South Mercia Police, but in a case like this, it’s standard procedure to follow up all potential lines of enquiry. If they’d found any evidence linking Mr Ward to Camilla Rowan there’s no reason why they wouldn’t have followed it up.

PENROSE: Perhaps they didn’t find any evidence because they were looking in the wrong place. Or looking the other way. After all, half of them were his mates. Rotary Club, golf club, who knows, perhaps another sort of ‘club’ …

FAWLEY: I’m not in a position to comment. You’ll have to ask South Mercia Police. It was their investigation.

PENROSE: And what about your investigation? Have you turned up anything, Inspector Fawley? You’ve got a team of your own, looking at this case. You don’t have an axe to grind, you don’t know anyone involved – your hands are clean. Have you found anything suggesting Nigel Ward may have been involved in the disappearance of Camilla’s baby? Did he help her in some way, either out of the kindness of his heart, or for other, more self-serving reasons, because he needed to keep his own previous ‘association’ with her secret?

FAWLEY: As I said before, we never comment on active investigations.

PENROSE: So you are looking into it then?

FAWLEY: What I can tell you, is that Nigel Ward was categorically not the father of the missing baby. We’ve run the DNA and there’s no question – he was not the father of that child.

PENROSE: So who is?

FAWLEY: That’s what we’re trying to find out. We’re running a familial DNA search but that’s a long and painstaking process and even then may not yield any results. That’s why we hope your viewers will be able to help us. Ms Rowan herself is still insisting that the father was a man called Tim Baker –

PENROSE: Do you really believe that? You’re an experienced police officer, you know how much legwork went into trying to find this man – do you really think he’s out there after all this time?

FAWLEY: I have no idea. But we have to assume he is. Unless and until someone can prove otherwise.

PENROSE: (TURNING TO CAMERA) Thank you, Detective Inspector Fawley. We’ll certainly be keeping in touch with this story as it develops. Back to you, Helen.

HELEN KERRIDGE: Thank you, John. A fascinating story, and one I’m sure we’ll be hearing more of in the coming weeks. And now, Brexit – with the UK and EU still unable to reach an agreement over arrangements for the Irish border, will Theresa May ask for an extension to the transition period?

* * *

‘What did he say when you confronted him?’

Ev and Sargent are in the Ladies. It’s about the only place they can avoid being disturbed, but that’s not why they’re here. They’re here because when Ev came in ten minutes ago she found Sargent at the mirror, reapplying her mascara. She’d clearly been crying.

Sargent sniffs a little now. ‘He denied it all – said he’d had no idea I’d been looking at the trainers – that we must have just come up with the same idea at the same time.’

Ev doesn’t buy that for a minute, but she’s trying to stay neutral. ‘Did you believe him?’

‘Of course I didn’t believe him, the lying little shit.’

She heaves a heavy sigh. Her pretty face looks drawn and pale.

‘I’m sorry,’ says Ev. ‘I’m not sure what to suggest.’

Sargent sighs. ‘It’s fine,’ she says, her voice slightly choked. ‘I just needed to vent at someone. Sorry.’

‘No need to apologize.’ There’s a pause. ‘Do you want me to talk to Gis?’

Sargent shakes her head. ‘I have to fight my own battles.’

‘I know, but he’s a mate – and it’d be less formal coming from me.’

‘There’s no point, is there? I can’t prove anything – I know someone sat on my chair but I can’t prove it was him, and I don’t see how he could have got into my PC.’

‘You definitely had the screen lock on?’

‘Of course – I always do. We had it drummed into us by my first sergeant.’

Ev looks hopeless. ‘Then I’m not sure what else I can do.’

Sargent tries a weak smile. ‘How about buy me a drink? After work?’

Ev checks her watch; it’s gone six. ‘How about right now?’

* * *

Adam Fawley

26 October

20.19

‘It was a bloody disaster – he crucified me.’

The phone’s on speaker but the line’s not good, and the noise on the motorway isn’t helping.

‘Honestly,’ says Alex, ‘everyone thinks that when they see themselves on TV – there was nothing wrong with it.’

I can hear her sshhing now, making little soothing noises. I’m not sure if they’re meant for me or Lily.

‘It was a bloody clusterfuck.’

‘Adam, it wasn’t – really. He’s trained to be a tricky bastard in interviews –’

‘So am I,’ I say with a sigh. ‘Allegedly.’

‘You gave as good as you got. I mean it.’

‘I actually heard myself say “what’s important” – for fuck’s sake. Who do I think I am, Tony bloody Blair?’

She laughs. ‘I didn’t even notice! But maybe there were one too many “unfortunatelys” –’

‘Gee, thanks, that’s all I needed.’

‘Stop it! It was fine – more than fine. You got out the message that you wanted to get out and you didn’t shoot yourself in the foot. If anyone came off badly it was South Mercia.’

I swipe at the phone screen. ITV, BBC, Sky. ‘At least we seem to be getting some decent coverage.’

‘There you are then.’

She starts cooing again. I can hear Lily’s little gurgly laugh.

‘I should only be an hour or so now.’

‘It’s pouring here so be careful – you know what you always say about most accidents being in the first or last ten minutes of a journey –’

‘Thanks, Mum.’

‘– and you have a meal in the oven and a glass of wine waiting to be poured.’

‘Have I ever told you I love you?’

‘Maybe,’ she says, with laughter in her voice, ‘perhaps once or twice.’

* * *

Sheila Ward goes over to the sideboard and pours herself a brandy. Her hands are trembling and she spills a few drops on to the silver tray. A wedding present from her parents. Nigel always hated it. Said it was just plate, not proper solid silver. Not the ‘real thing’. She remembers the tone he used every time he said it. As if it was her he was really talking about. As if she was substandard goods too. Not the woman he thought he was marrying. Not the real thing.

She goes back over to the sofa, feeling the hit of alcohol on her empty stomach. The TV is still on, some politician all hot under the collar about Brexit. As if it matters. As if any of it matters.

She sips again at the drink and tips back her head as the liquid burns down.

Not the father of that child

Not the father of that child

Not the father of that child

The words keep playing in her head. There’s something comforting in the rhythm of them. Like a nursery rhyme. ‘Three Blind Mice’. Or ‘Ring a Ring o’ Roses’. So charming and innocent and half nonsensical, until you find out where it came from and realize that the song your child is singing is about plague and death. Not her child, of course. No child of hers ever sang anything because she couldn’t have one. She wasn’t a proper woman, you see. Not the ‘real thing’.

Not the father of that child

Not the father of that child

Ring a ring the words go round. When Fawley phoned earlier she could tell he thought he was bearing good news – that she’d be happy and relieved. Vindicated. But there’d never been any doubt about it, not in her mind. She knew Nigel hadn’t fathered that baby, for the simple reason that Camilla had dumped him long before. She’d heard him, on his office phone when he thought she was asleep, begging the little tart to take him back and getting the cold shoulder because she was bored with him and had only let him screw her in the first place because it was her way of sticking it to her parents. Not that Nigel realized it, of course. He thought it was all about him. Men – men and their bloody egos.

She takes another shot of brandy, a larger one.

Not the father of that child

True. But very far from being the whole truth and she knows it. What about the other child – the one that came before? The one that wasn’t even given the chance to be born – what about that child?

She still remembers the look on Nigel’s face, the day it came out about Camilla. The day it was all over the news, and there were journalists at the door, and a police investigation, and he sat her down and gave her a brandy. It’s the only other time she’s ever drunk the stuff. Perhaps that’s why it’s coming back so vividly now. He gave her a brandy and he told her. What he’d done, and how ashamed he was, and how it had never happened again, before or since, and she had to believe him that he knew nothing – nothing – about the missing baby. That bit about other affairs was a lie, for a start, but she’d let him burble on, sitting there gripping her hand in his hot chubby fingers, wallowing in his terror and self-pity, and when he’d finished she told him she already knew. She’d known for years. She knew he’d got the little slut pregnant when she was barely fourteen. She knew he’d used their money to pay for her to get rid of it. She knew it all. The look on his face was almost worth the wait. His slack mouth opening and closing like some huge stupid goldfish. A rather tacky and unedifying pleasure, admittedly, but no less sweet for that. All those years, he’d thought he was the one with secrets, but he couldn’t have been more wrong.

Because there was something else she knew. Something she never told him. Not that day, not ever.

The message on his office phone, the message he never got. The woman didn’t leave her name, but Sheila knew it was Camilla – she’d have known that voice anywhere. Whining on and on, saying she was sorry for how she’d treated him in the past but she needed him now. That there was no one else she could turn to, no one else who could help, no one but him. That there wasn’t much time – if she waited any longer it would be too late – too late to ‘sort it out’ –

She knew what the little tart was going on about, of course. She’d gone and got herself banged up again, hadn’t she. Well, Nigel wasn’t going to be spending their hard-earned money fixing it – not if she had anything to do with it. Not this time. Not when it wasn’t even his kid. So she’d just pressed ‘Erase’ and walked away. But she hadn’t forgotten, and all those years later, when it started to come out, she’d wondered. Because she was pretty sure it had been that summer, the summer of 1997, right about the time the tart must have realized she was pregnant with that baby. The one they said she killed. Sheila didn’t feel guilty – oh no, the little cow deserved everything that was coming to her – but she’d wondered all the same. Because if Nigel had actually heard that message, none of this would have happened. Camilla would have had another abortion and that would have been the end of it. No missing child, no scandal, no court case. No press harassment either, and no bloody Netflix.

And no heart attack?

Maybe.

Maybe not.

She settles back against the cushions and closes her eyes. It doesn’t matter. Not really.

None of it does.

Not any more.

* * *

Adam Fawley

27 October

08.35

There’s a delay on the line. An international delay.

‘Inspector Fawley, is it?’

A man’s voice. An accent. Which I’m crap at, as Alex never ceases to tell me. But it’s definitely not American. Southern hemisphere, I think – Kiwi? Australian?

‘A friend of mine saw that interview you did – on the Beeb.’

My interest is ticking up. ‘Oh yes?’

‘It was the photo, really, and of course when I saw it – basically, I think they might be right –’

‘I’m not following you, Mr –?’

A quick laugh. ‘Sorry, mate, it’s just that it’s the first I knew about any of this – I’m still trying to get my bloody head around it, to be honest.’

‘Around what, exactly –’

‘I think I knew Camilla – back in the day. Sorry – I should have said. My name’s Tinus, but people usually just call me Tin. Tin Boekker.’

* * *

Chloe gets in a few minutes after Ev. She looks just as she always does: neat and professional. Only the faint shadows under her eyes give anything away. Ev watches her for a few moments, and sees Carter get up and go over to speak to her, but he gets nowhere. She moves briskly past him and goes to hang up her coat.

Hansen’s obviously noticed something too and flashes Ev a questioning glance, but she just gives a tiny shake of her head by way of response: Leave it be.

When she goes out to the coffee machine a few minutes later, Gis is already there. He smiles at her, stirring his tea.

‘So,’ he says evenly, ‘are you going to let me in on what’s going on?’

* * *

Adam Fawley

27 October

10.15

Safe to say it’s the first and only police interview I’ve done by Skype. But then again, I don’t have many options, not with my witness being in Cape Town. See, I told you I was crap at accents.

Tin Boekker looks nothing like the e-fit Camilla Rowan gave South Mercia back in 2003, but he does look unnervingly like the man on the Oxford station CCTV. Looking at that footage must have been like seeing his own ghost, back in 1997, when he was bumming across Europe on a gap year which included three months in the UK doing the odd bit of bar work. Which is how he ended up collecting glasses at a pub in Stroud. Though it wasn’t the King’s Head, like Rowan said, it was the King’s Arms. And I bet that wasn’t a memory fail on her part, either: yet again it’s the same pattern – all her lies steer tantalizingly close to the truth but swerve away at the crucial moment. The pub, ‘Baker’; so similar, yet crucially not quite the same. But even if South Mercia had known Tin’s real name, I doubt they’d have found him. He left the UK within a month of his two-night stand with Camilla, and by the time the case blew up he was a sous-chef at a crazily expensive spa retreat in the wilds of British Columbia with zero Wi-Fi. He tells me she said she was on the pill, and if he’d known about the baby he’d have done something, helped her somehow, even come back. And I think he’s telling the truth. There’s a disarming boyish frankness about him – even in his forties, even on a jumpy video call. And when he tells me he always wanted to be a dad and it’s never quite happened, and now he’s only found out when it’s too late, there’s a break in his voice I know he couldn’t fake.

It takes one to know one.

* * *

‘So as at now,’ says Quinn, looking round the room, ‘we’re waiting on the sample arriving from Cape Town, but I don’t think there’s much doubt we’ve got our man.’ He holds up a sheet of paper. ‘Boekker even managed to find a photo of him and Camilla from back then which is basically hashtag shagging.’

He turns and pins the picture to the board. Tin and Camilla are standing with their backs to the bar, he has his arm about her, she’s pulling him towards her and trying to bite his ear.

‘And Boekker can prove,’ continues Quinn, ‘that he was in Sydney by the time the kid was born, so that old lay-off in the lay-by story is the load of old crap we always thought it was. Trouble is, we’re no closer to finding out exactly what did happen.’

‘What does the DI think?’ asks Carter. ‘I mean, he’s not here, so –’

Quinn’s eyes narrow, just a little. ‘The boss, Carter, is in with Superintendent Harrison, giving him a briefing.’

Ev now. ‘So what do we do next? Where does that leave us with the Swanns?’

Quinn nods to Gislingham, who gets up. ‘The CPS still want to wait on the old man to see if we can clarify whether or not he knew who the vic was, and whether he gets charged will depend on what they decide. But as at now, they’re pretty relaxed – I mean, there’s not much risk of the old boy bumping anyone else off in the meantime. We’ve taken his bloody shotgun for a start.’

‘What about Camilla? Does she know?’

‘That we’ve found Tin Boekker? The boss has told her lawyers and asked to see her again, but I gather they’re stalling. I’m not holding my breath.’

‘And the airports?’ asks Hansen.

Baxter looks up. ‘On the case. But there are over a dozen possible entry points and half-a-million Yanks coming through them every month, and since we have no idea exactly when he got here –’

‘Has to be within the last five weeks, though, doesn’t it?’ says Hansen. ‘If we’re assuming that foreign letter the Swanns got was from him?’

Baxter gives him a heavy look. ‘That’s still a hell of a lot of people. Like the Sarge said, I’m not holding my breath.’

* * *

Adam Fawley

27 October

10.20

I hit four on the Harrison bullshit bingo card, which is pretty good going. The BBC interview was apparently a ‘landmark moment’ and a ‘game changer’ which proved this force is ‘leading the way on best practice’; and giving it ‘110 per cent’. To be fair, the whole thing was his idea, so he’s allowed to crow a bit. And at least I left him in a good mood; he practically had the Chief Constable on speed dial. Let’s just hope it lasts.

* * *

The Guardian

Opinion

‘Milly Liar’?

What does the Camilla Rowan case tell us about the criminal justice system – and ourselves?

Tim Halston

Bungling and bias still play far too large a part in convictions

Sat 27 October 2018 10.30 GMT

I can’t be the only one who was left profoundly uneasy by the baying mob outside the Old Bailey in November 2003, after Camilla Rowan’s conviction for murdering her baby. The torrent of abuse, the cries of ‘baby-murderer’ and ‘kill the whore’, were more reminiscent of a Salem witchcraft trial than the workings of a modern, progressive legal system. Admittedly, this was fifteen years ago, but have things really changed so much?

Because it now appears that a conviction that was always based on circumstantial evidence may have been founded almost entirely on a lethal combination of incompetence and prejudice. Incompetence on the part of the investigating police force, who apparently failed to follow up a number of important leads, and prejudice because Camilla Rowan simply didn’t ‘play the game’. She didn’t fit our template of Caring Motherhood. She put her babies at risk while they were still unborn, she gave them away to complete strangers without appearing to be traumatised, and she walked away thereafter and she didn’t look back. It was all too easy a jump from this apparent callousness to the assumption that she was capable of a far more brutal cruelty. She may not have been ‘too posh to push’ but she was certainly ‘too posh to gush’: she had too much money, too much privilege, and – worst of all – she kept her emotions to herself; she didn’t cry. How many times did the media describe her as ‘stony-faced’, ‘hard’ or ‘cold’? And they hated her for it, oh, how they hated her.

The rejoinder here – inevitably, I’ve heard it at dinner parties already – is that she ‘didn’t tell the truth’. That ‘if someone else harmed the baby why didn’t she say so?’ I understand that response, and I imagine more than one member of her jury also stumbled at that, and ended up finding it an insuperable barrier to a vote for ‘Not Guilty’.

But as now seems distinctly possible, there could have been valid and deep-seated reasons why she didn’t feel able to ‘tell the truth’. As case after terrible case has surely taught us by now, some truths are just too dark to tell; they are literally ‘unsayable’. Though as things stand, in Rowan’s case, this remains mere speculation. Another police investigation is underway, which we must all hope will do a better job. And at the risk of stating the obvious, whatever else Camilla Rowan is, she is not a murderer. She has served fifteen years for a crime that no one committed, and she should be set free.

• Tim Halston is a Guardian columnist

* * *

Adam Fawley

27 October

12.15

‘We’ve found him, boss. Camilla’s kid – we’ve found him.’

It’s Gis, at my door, half out of breath, a sheet of paper in his hand.

‘Where?’

‘Stansted. He flew in from Italy on October the 19th. But Carter was right – he’s a Yank.’

He reads from the sheet: ‘Noah Randolph Seidler, resident in New York, but born in the UK.’ He glances up, then stabs a finger at the paper. ‘But this is the real clincher, the place of birth is listed as Birmingham and Solihull General Hospital on 14th September 1997. Here,’ he finishes, holding it out. ‘Take a look.’

I take the sheet from him. ‘But that’s more than three months before Camilla’s baby was born – it doesn’t make any sense.’

He makes a face. ‘I know. Just like the bloody rest of it. But it would at least explain why South Mercia didn’t find him.’

‘Are we contacting the hospital?’

‘Yup – Baxter’s doing it as we speak. Do you want to come and listen in?’

‘Yes,’ I say, ‘I do.’

I follow him back down the corridor to the main office, and word has clearly got about because people are gathered round Baxter’s desk. Hansen, Ev, Carter, Quinn. Right now, there’s only one call going on in the entire room.

‘So you definitely have a record of him?’ Baxter is saying, scribbling on the pad in front of him.

‘Right, and the parents’ names?’

More scribbling.

‘And when was he discharged?’

His face changes, there’s a pause and he’s writing again, faster now. ‘And you’re absolutely certain about that?’

A pause.

‘OK, I see. Can you email me copies of everything you have? Brilliant, thanks for your help.’

He puts the phone down, takes a long breath and looks up at me.

‘Noah Seidler was born at 3.45 a.m. on 14th September 1997. He was seven weeks premature, with severe breathing problems, and was transferred immediately to the neonatal ICU, where he was put on a ventilator.’

I think I know where this is going and I don’t like it –

‘He stayed there several weeks, and the records show him making good progress and being transferred to a general paediatric ward on December 20th. Then suddenly, out of the blue, the following day, he had a bad relapse – had some sort of seizure and stopped breathing –’ Baxter swallows. ‘He died at 2.30 that morning. It all happened so fast the parents were still on their way.’

Gis has gone pale; he’s had a premature baby. So have I.

‘Shit,’ Gis says under his breath. ‘Those poor bastards.’

‘What do we know about the parents?’

Baxter glances down at his notes. ‘David and Renee Seidler. Address in Edgbaston at the time, though they’re both Americans. He’s in the hospital records as “Professor” and she’s “Doctor” so one or both could have been academics teaching over here. If so, we should be able to find them easily enough.’

There’s a long silence. Everyone’s moving the jigsaw pieces about – trying to work out what the picture looks like now.

It’s Quinn who speaks first.

‘So the Seidlers took Camilla’s baby?’

Ev glances across. ‘Or bought it,’ she says darkly.

But Thomas Hansen is shaking his head. ‘It still doesn’t make sense – if Camilla gave them the baby, with or without money changing hands, why didn’t she say so, right up front, when South Mercia first questioned her? Why come up with that ludicrous story about “Tim Baker”?’

Ev nods. ‘You’re right. Even if it was a dodgy adoption, it would have been way better to admit to that than being sent down for murder.’

‘Perhaps the Seidlers stole it,’ says Quinn. ‘The woman saw the kid in a cot – she was grieving, maybe suffering from post-natal depression –’

‘Still doesn’t make sense,’ interrupts Baxter, folding his arms. ‘If the kid was snatched, why didn’t Rowan report it there and then?’

‘Maybe she was glad to be rid of it? Maybe she was planning to have it adopted anyway so thought – fuck it, this is a lot less hassle?’

They’re talking about a baby like it’s a second-hand bike. But it’s not because they’re insensitive, it’s because they’re following the logic of the case. If that’s how Camilla Rowan behaved, if that’s how she thinks, then that’s how they have to think. Even if it does ice my heart.

‘Yeah, OK,’ says Baxter, ‘I can see her reacting like that at the time, but like Ev says, what about later, when she was arrested? Why didn’t she admit what happened then?’

Quinn shrugs. ‘Perhaps she thought people wouldn’t believe her?’

Baxter scoffs. ‘Yeah, right, and all that crap about Tim Baker was such an obviously better option?’

‘One thing we do know,’ I say quietly, ‘is that the more we find out about Camilla’s lies, the more truth there is in them. Perhaps there’s some link between the Seidlers and Tin Boekker.’

Baxter looks sceptical. ‘Boekker never said anything. And he struck me as being pretty on the level.’

‘Me too. But maybe even he doesn’t know the whole picture. Maybe he introduced Camilla to the Seidlers?’

Quinn frowns. ‘He was a South African kid on a gap year working in a pub in Stroud, they were Yank academics living in a posh bit of Birmingham – sounds pretty damn unlikely to me.’

‘I agree, but let’s just make sure, shall we?’

Ev nods. ‘I can email Boekker – ask him if the name rings any bells.’

‘Good, and let’s get on to the US embassy too – find out what we can about the Seidlers. But we need to be diplomatic about it, please – and I make absolutely no apology for the pun. Whether it was a kidnapping or an illegal adoption, the Seidlers were quite possibly party to a crime, which means we could be looking at an extradition request at some point, so let’s not piss the authorities off gratuitously.’

‘It’s OK, boss,’ says Gis. ‘I’ll pick that one up myself.’

* * *

Interview with Jeanine Castellano, Consular Officer, US Embassy, Nine Elms, London

27 October 2018, 1.45 p.m.

On the call, DS C. Gislingham

CG: Ms Castellano, this is DS Chris Gislingham of Thames Valley Police.

JC: Nice to talk to you, detective, how are you today?

CG: I’m very well, thank you. And thanks for making time to talk to me, especially at the weekend.

JC: No problem, always happy to help.

CG: I believe you’ve received a copy of my email concerning Noah Seidler?

JC: I have it right here, and I’ve had one of my staff check Immigration records. It seems Mr Seidler left the United States on October 16th on a flight to Florence, but from what you say in your email he can only have stayed in Italy two days before catching a flight to London.

CG: Did he travel alone – from the States?

JC: Yes, it appears so.

CG: And is there anything you can tell me about the family?

JC: All I have right now is that the Seidlers moved to Brooklyn ten years ago, and prior to that were in Princeton. David Seidler was on the Political Sciences faculty there. And back before that they spent two semesters in the UK, in 1997. But you knew that already.

CG: And Mrs Seidler?

JC: Renee Seidler trained as a teacher after her postgrad and then taught junior high, but I have no record of her working since 2016. But putting it all together, it looks like that must have been around the time David was diagnosed, so I guess she gave it up to look after him.

CG: Diagnosed?

JC: He died last fall. The death certificate cites bowel cancer as the principal cause of death. Not a nice way to go.

CG: Were there other children?

JC: No, just Noah.

CG: And what do you have on him?

JC: Graduated high school with a GPA of 3.6 then got accepted on a liberal arts program at Columbia but deferred for a year, probably because his dad got sick. No criminal record, no trouble with law enforcement. Basically just a nice, bright kid.

CG: I assume you know that he was the victim of a fatal shooting?

JC: I’m aware. Have you spoken to his mom?

CG: We’ll be liaising with NYPD on that. But I’m afraid it’s not just a question of breaking the bad news: there are questions we need to ask about the circumstances of Noah’s birth.

JC: Yes, I have your note here – it says you believe he’s not the Seidlers’ biological child, as stated on his birth certificate and social security records, but a British baby that went missing in 1997? This ‘Milly Liar’ case?

CG: That’s right.

JC: Sounds like something out of Agatha Christie.

CG: I suspect it won’t end as neatly as that. More’s the pity.

JC: Please be sure to inform us when you have clarification – there could be consequences here. Possible fraud, conveying false or misleading information – you know the drill.

CG: Of course, we’ll certainly do that. Clearly, our first priority is to establish exactly what happened – what degree of involvement the Seidlers had.

JC: What does the birth mother say?

CG: Up till now she’s been sticking to her original story. But even she must realize she’s turning into King Canute on that one.

JC: [laughs]

The guy on the beach, right?

CG: Yeah, sorry.

JC: No worries. Well, if that’s everything, I have a family event at two o’clock. Let me know if I can help with anything else. You got a name at NYPD?

CG: No one specific, so if you –

JC: Sure, no problem. I’ll email over some details.

CG: Thank you. And thank you again for your time.

JC: You’re welcome. Enjoy your day.

* * *

It’s a bright cold morning in New York City. Clear skies but winter’s within touching distance and Ritchie Gonzalez and Marie Kimball pull on gloves as they get out of their car opposite the Seidlers’ house in Brooklyn Heights. It’s a brownstone: lower-ground floor, flight of steps up to an ornate porch, long windows, iron railings, planters. The sort of house people who don’t live there usually associate with New York, but very few New Yorkers actually get to own. The Seidlers have either made money or inherited it; perhaps a bit of both.

The two detectives stop on the front step and turn to face each other.

‘So how are we playing this?’ says Kimball. She only made Detective six months ago, so a fair proportion of what she gets to do each day is for the first time. Though telling a mother the child-that-isn’t-hers-after-all has turned up dead in a foreign country she might not even know he’d gone to definitely hasn’t cropped up before.

Gonzalez hasn’t done precisely this before either, not even in fifteen years. But he’s had a lot worse.

He gives a dry smile. ‘Start with the facts, see how she reacts. Take it from there.’

‘You think she’ll come in?’

‘Voluntarily? Let’s hope for the Brits’ sake she does, because otherwise this is going to get messy pretty damn fast. The minute she lawyers up, they’re sunk.’

‘Well, I wouldn’t,’ she says, shaking her head, ‘not if I was in her shoes. No way.’

‘Yeah, but not everyone’s as crabby as you, Kimball.’

She grins and he reaches to pull the bell. They hear it ringing somewhere back in the house, but there’s no answering noise, no sound of footsteps. Gonzalez rings again, then steps back to stare up at the house. No curtains twitching across, no faces at the window.

‘Looks like no one’s home.’

Kimball takes a few steps down towards the street and glances up and down. ‘Shall we try the neighbours?’

Gonzalez shrugs. ‘I guess so.’

Next door is divided into apartments. There’s no response to the ground-floor bell, but down the steps the door’s answered by a woman in dungarees with a bright print scarf tied round her hair and a paintbrush in one hand.

Gonzalez shows her his badge. ‘Gonzalez and Kimball, NYPD. We’re looking for Mrs Seidler?’

‘Renee? Oh, I’m afraid you missed her – she left this morning.’

‘Do you know where she went?’

The woman pushes her hair out of her eyes, leaving a smudge of green paint. ‘JFK. She took a cab.’

Kimball is making notes. ‘Did she say where she was going?’

‘Europe, I think. It was all a bit rushed –’

‘So it wasn’t a planned trip, then?’

‘Oh no, definitely not. She just knocked on my door at seven and said she had to go away and would I feed the cat for a couple of days. I usually do it – not that she goes away that often –’

‘How did she seem to you?’

The woman blinks once or twice. ‘Now you mention it, she did seem rattled – I mean, it was stupid o’clock and I was half asleep but yeah, she was a bit antsy –’

‘Upset? Mad? Worried?’

‘Worried,’ she says. ‘She said something about Noah and it was all a mistake but she had to sort it out. Noah’s her son.’

Kimball’s scribbling. ‘Did she say anything else?’

‘No, not really. Just some stuff about the cat food. Like I said, it was all a bit rushed.’

Kimball smiles at her. ‘You’ve been a great help, Ms –?’

‘Truchan. El Truchan.’

Kimball hands her a card. ‘If Mrs Seidler gets in touch, let us know, OK?’

‘I can ask her to call you?’

‘No,’ says Kimball quickly. ‘We’d rather you just reached out to us. We’ll take it from there.’

Truchan is staring at the card, her face troubled. ‘Sure. She is OK, though? Renee?’

Gonzalez gives her a quick smile. ‘She’s fine. Don’t you worry about it. We just need to talk to her.’

* * *

‘So we checked with JFK and she left on Delta 4371, due to land in London at 20.05 your time.’

Gislingham notes down the flight number and checks his watch. Six fifty; plenty of time to arrange a welcoming committee.

‘Thanks,’ he said. ‘I appreciate it.’

‘You’re lucky,’ says Gonzalez, who sounds to Gis like he’s straight off the set of Law & Order. ‘She could have been fleeing the jurisdiction. But instead she’s walking straight back into your arms.’

‘Saves me the mother of all admin headaches, anyway.’

‘You and me both,’ says Gonzalez with a dry smoker’s laugh. ‘You and me both.’

* * *

‘Mrs Seidler? Could you come this way, please?’

She’s a petite woman, with small wire-framed glasses and auburn hair with a tinge of purple that betrays the dye. Her thick fringed wrap looks almost too heavy for her, and the dark circles under her eyes won’t just be down to the long flight. The crowd coming off the plane parts and sweeps past them like river water round a rock. A few curious stares, one little boy who starts pointing and is dragged away by his father. But most people have other things on their minds after eight hours in a thin tin box – they just want to get through as fast as they can and go.

‘Who are you?’

‘Detective Sergeant Chris Gislingham and Detective Constable Thomas Hansen. We’re from Thames Valley Police.’

A flash of irritation, but it’s gone almost as quickly, to be replaced by resignation. She must have known there was a high chance of this.

‘Is it him? Are you sure it’s him?’

‘I’m afraid so, Mrs Seidler.’

‘Can I see him? I need to see him.’

Gis takes a deep breath. ‘Let’s talk about that once we’re back at the station.’

* * *

Adam Fawley

27 October

21.50

The first time I see Renee Seidler is on a video screen. In Interview One. She’s sitting calmly, an untouched cup of – admittedly ghastly – office-machine coffee on the table in front of her. She gives a strange impression of being shrunken, of having once been larger. And perhaps that’s true; she’s spent most of the last two years watching her husband die.

‘Did you offer her a lawyer?’

Gis nods. ‘Yup. And someone from US consular services to sit in, but she turned us down.’

So she’s either conscience-clear or spectacularly stupid. She doesn’t strike me as stupid.

‘OK. Let’s see what she has to say for herself.’

* * *

Interview with Renee Seidler, conducted at St Aldate’s Police Station, Oxford

27 October 2018, 9.55 p.m.

In attendance, DI A. Fawley, DS C. Gislingham

CG: For the purposes of the recording, Mrs Seidler, we are interviewing you in connection with the disappearance of a baby in December 1997. We now know that you and your husband subsequently raised this child as your own son. You have been arrested, pending clarification of the circumstances that led to these events, and your involvement in them. You have been informed of your rights, and as you are aware, you can ask for legal representation at any time. Is there anything you need us to clarify at this stage?

RS: No. Thank you.

CG: So perhaps you could take us back to the beginning. To September 1997.

RS: [pause]

You don’t know what you’re asking, Detective.

AF: [quietly]

We do know what you went through at that time, and I’m sorry we have to ask. I know what it’s like to lose a child.

RS: [pause]

We’d almost given up – I’d had three miscarriages, I was almost 40. We’d even started talking to people about adopting. David had heard of a program to bring children to the US from Peru – orphans with no hope of a decent life. But then I got pregnant. Just after we arrived in England. I thought to start with it was just the disruption of moving, but when the doctor confirmed it we were beside ourselves. I don’t think I’ve ever been happier – not even when David and I first met.

AF: But the baby was premature.

RS: Thirty-two weeks.

[becoming tearful]

He was so tiny – all those machines – I couldn’t even hold him –

AF: I’m sorry.

RS: [wiping her eyes]

But then he started getting better and we thought – perhaps – just perhaps – it will be all right. And then they took him off the ventilator and he was breathing on his own, and we started telling people we thought it was going to be OK – that we’d be able to take him home –

[crying]

But then he had a relapse. Out of the blue – in the middle of the night. It was just so quick – we were still on our way to the hospital. I never forgave myself for that. Not being there – not being with him when he died.

CG: You couldn’t have known. And you must have been exhausted. All those weeks –

RS: You’re right. We were. But it was still no excuse. One of us should have been there.

AF: [pause]

And that was 21st December 1997.

RS: [nods]

AF: But you didn’t tell anyone. Your family, friends –

RS: [shaking her head]

It wasn’t like it is now. No WhatsApp or putting a running commentary of your life online. We hadn’t even sent anyone any pictures – not with him in an incubator with all those horrible tubes. And then he was dead and we were going to have to call people and tell them and we just couldn’t face it. Not straight away. It was too raw.

AF: And two days later? The 23rd?

RS: [takes a deep breath]

It was raining. I remember. Just sheeting down like the whole world was drowning. But it was suffocating in the house – I couldn’t breathe – all that stuff everywhere you looked about Christmas and the miracle of birth and ‘Away in a Manger’ – I just couldn’t deal with it. I had to get out. So I walked. I can’t remember – hours – in the mud and the cold, feeling the water just running down my face. Miles and miles till I could barely stand up. By the time I got home it was dark. And the lights were on and there was this lovely smell – tea, and toast, and warm milk, and there was David and he was holding a baby in his arms – a tiny baby, making these little mewling noises, and I thought – I really thought – that I had gone mad. That I was hallucinating – I wanted this so much and it had been taken from me and my mind had broken –

[breaks down]

AF: [silence]

What did your husband say – about the baby?

RS: He wouldn’t tell me anything. He said it was best I didn’t know. That I couldn’t be blamed if I didn’t know.

AF: Nothing else – nothing at all?

RS: He said that the baby was ours now. That we were rescuing him. That was his word. Rescuing.

AF: Do you know where your husband had been that day? Had he been out?

RS: I don’t know.

AF: You didn’t ask?

RS: No, I didn’t ask. I didn’t want to know.

CG: And you had already registered the birth of Noah?

RS: Yes, David had, just after he was born.

CG: And applied for a passport for him? Because you knew you were going back to the US that January?

RS: [nods]

Every single day before we left I sat at home waiting for the knock at the door. For someone like you to come looking for him – to take him back. But no one ever came. And when we went to the airport to go home I was so terrified I thought I was going to pass out but still no one said anything, and when we arrived back at JFK no one said anything, and when we got home everyone simply accepted that he was our son and they were just happy for us, happy that he had pulled through. And then more weeks went by and went by and eventually we realised that no one was ever going to say anything, because no one was looking for him. And I started to believe what David had said. We had rescued him. No one was looking because nobody cared. Nobody except us. We loved him. And he loved us.

AF: [silence]

But then he found out.

* * *

21 August 2017, 7.45 a.m.

175 Toussaint Street, Brooklyn Heights, NY 11201

She never saw it coming. Perhaps she should have. But all those years of make-believe and disavowal can layer on a cocoon, erode your watchfulness. So when it did come, she was utterly unprepared. No speech carefully rehearsed, no easy explanation ready to hand. Just sharp words breaking into a fitful day-sleep full of phantoms.

‘Mom, can I talk to you?’

When she opens her eyes, he’s standing there. Her son. Her kind, thoughtful, considerate son. But he looks none of those things now. There’s a frown across his dark-blue eyes.

She struggles upright. There’s an ache in her neck where she’s lain crookedly. This sofa was never designed for sleep. Just as her bed was never designed for hours of waking. Her days are all the wrong way round.

‘What’s the matter?’ she says groggily, checking her watch.

‘This,’ he says, holding out something. ‘As in, what the hell is it?’

It’s a piece of paper. No – not paper. A photograph. There’s a rush of bitterness in her mouth. She knows exactly what it is. Buried, like the memories, all these years, but like those memories, never lost. She wasn’t supposed to keep it; she promised David she’d destroyed them all, and he’d held her as she sobbed and said he knew how hard it was but it was the only way, the only safe way, because he’d looked into the future and seen a day like this, seen the abyss it would open up in their lives.

‘Where did you get it?’ she says. Faux-naif. Buying time.

Noah’s frown has deepened. ‘In that box of yours. In your underwear drawer. As if you didn’t know.’

‘What on earth were you doing in there?’

‘Just answer the question, Mom.’

He’s been talking, lately, about going to law school. On this showing, perhaps he should.

‘It’s a picture of you, sweetheart. In the hospital.’

The one David took the day the hospital moved their baby to the general ward. The first day they were allowed to hold him properly, after all those dreadful weeks when they thought they’d lose him. Their miracle son. Doing so well. Putting on weight, his little cheeks rounding out –

‘It can’t be,’ he says.

‘Why not?’

‘Because of this.’

A second photograph. And this has no secret history. It’s the one they took, After. The one they had no choice but take because they’d promised everyone back home that they would send a photo and there was no excuse any more because he was out of the hospital and home for Christmas – their first Christmas as a family …

That tiny sitting room in Edgbaston she always hated, Noah on her lap, David’s arm around her. And yes, looking at it now, perhaps his grip is a little tight, perhaps the smiles are a little stiff, but no one back then thought that was odd because everyone knew what they’d been through.

Or thought they did.

‘It doesn’t add up,’ he says, stubborn now, pointing again at the first picture. ‘Look.’

She doesn’t need to. She knows what he’s talking about. That bright strawberry mark on her son’s brow. The one they told her would fade over time; the one she never even began to fret about because it was so trivial, so inconsequential, compared to everything else they were dealing with.

She swallows.

He’s watching her face. ‘I googled them – those birthmark things. It can take years for them to fade.’ He holds up the other picture. ‘But here, two months later, max, and it’s gone. There’s nothing there at all. It’s as if it was never there.’

He’s still staring at her, waiting for her to deny it – waiting for some sort of explanation. But nothing comes.

‘It’s not me, is it? The kid in the hospital. It’s Noah, but it’s not me.’

She looks up at him, expecting anger, fury, incomprehension. But his eyes are full of tears.

‘Who am I, Mom?’

* * *

AF: What did you say?

RS: I told him exactly what his father had told me. That we had rescued him. That that was all I’d ever known.

AF: How did he react?

RS: [sighs]

He didn’t believe me. He wanted to go straight to his father and demand the truth. He said he’d been lied to his whole life – he wanted to know where he came from, who his ‘real’ parents were.

AF: That must have hurt.

RS: Yes, it did. But I couldn’t blame him. He was right: we had lied to him. Out of love, and for the best reasons. But right then, all he could see was the lie.

AF: And did he speak to your husband?

RS: No.

AF: You’re sure? Noah never spoke to him about it at all?

RS: David was in the hospice by then. He was on so many pain meds he barely knew me. He probably wouldn’t even have understood what Noah was saying. And I didn’t want him dying with that on his mind. So I made Noah promise not to say anything.

CG: [hesitantly]

And I’m guessing you didn’t want your husband’s last days disturbed by the possibility of prosecution? I mean, you don’t just ‘rescue’ other people’s babies. Even if you didn’t know exactly what David had done, you knew he’d almost certainly committed a crime. You both had.

RS: [quietly]

That was a consideration, yes.

AF: And all this was when, exactly?

RS: Last August. August 2017.

AF: And fourteen months later Noah flies to the UK, by which time he evidently knows exactly who he is and who he’s looking for. How did he find out?

RS: I don’t know.

* * *

3 June 2018, 10.15 p.m.

175 Toussaint Street, Brooklyn Heights, NY 11201

He sits back in his chair, staring at the screen. He hadn’t expected it to be so easy.

He kept his promise. He never did speak to Dad. He’d thought about it, once or twice, but just the sight of him, in that bed, his skin like yellow paper – he couldn’t do it. And then Dad died and it all went to hell for a while, and though he toyed with doing some digging about that baby in the picture, the more he thought about it the more likely it was that the truth – whatever it turned out to be – would end up bringing down a whole load of shit, and he just couldn’t do that to his mom. Not then, not in the state she was in. And that’s where his head stayed.

For a while.

Then other thoughts came creeping. How could they be so sure his real mother didn’t want him? Did she know where he was? What if they didn’t ‘rescue’ him at all – what if they took him? What if he’d been snatched?

And that’s why he started looking. Because if that really was what happened, there’d be something to find. If his mother had given him up willingly there’d probably be nothing, nothing he’d be able to track down, anyway. But if he’d been taken – if he’d been lost – there’d be a trace. A search, a story –

A crime.

And there was. He’s found it. Only it isn’t the one he expected.

Not a kidnap, not a snatching, not a looked-away-for-five-minutes-and-gone.

A murder.

His mother is in prison for murdering him.

Because the woman he’s staring at on the computer screen – cowed, harried, abused as a baby-killer – she’s his mother. She has to be.

There are just too many coincidences. A baby boy last seen on December 23rd 1997, who’s never subsequently been found. A baby boy born at the exact same hospital he was. That birthmark that disappeared so miraculously. It makes sense; it all makes sense. Even the fact that he doesn’t look like either of his parents and never did.

And now she’s in prison. His mother.

He reaches for the keyboard and does another search. Seems it’s quite easy to track down a prisoner in the UK. Pretty easy to write to them too.

The harder part is knowing what to say.

* * *

AF: You’re aware that we’ve identified Noah’s biological mother?

RS: This woman Camilla Rowan. Yes, I am aware.

AF: Do you know her?

RS: No.

AF: You don’t recall ever meeting her? At the hospital? You were there at around the same time.

RS: We were in the neonatal ICU. She must have been in the main ward. It’s a big place. And in any case, we weren’t there to make friends – we hardly spoke to anyone.

AF: Could your husband have met her? In the cafeteria, say, or at a coffee machine?

RS: [sighs]

I guess he could have. Though she wasn’t in there very long, as far as I can make out – there wouldn’t have been much time. David certainly never mentioned anyone. Like I said, we were just focused on Noah –

CG: But it is possible – that they could have met?

RS: I suppose so – though why –

AF: The day your son died – the 21st – was that the last time you were at the hospital?

RS: Yes. I never wanted to go there again.

AF: And your husband?

RS: [hesitates]

Yes. He did go back. A couple of days later, I think. There were some papers he had to sign? I don’t really remember – I wasn’t in a good place.

CG: So he could have met Camilla Rowan then – perhaps even found out that she was thinking of having her baby adopted?

RS: [looking bewildered}

But why not tell me?

CG: You said you were in a bad place – perhaps he wanted to wait until you were feeling better?

RS: I still don’t understand – none of this makes any sense.

* * *

JUNE 5 2018

NOAH SEIDLER

PO BOX 5653, NY 11201

I DON’T KNOW WHAT TO CALL YOU. CAMILLA, I GUESS.

I’M NOAH. AT LEAST, MY PARENTS HAD A KID THEY CALLED NOAH IN 1997.

BUT THAT KID ISN’T ME.

THAT MUCH I KNOW, BUT IT’S AS FAR AS I’VE GOT. MY MOM CLAIMS SHE DOESN’T KNOW WHAT HAPPENED – SHE WENT OUT AND CAME BACK AND MY DAD WAS THERE WITH A BABY. HE SAID HE’D ‘RESCUED’ IT. RESCUED ME.

BUT THAT’S IT. SHE NEVER ASKED, HE NEVER TOLD. AND NOW HE’S DEAD AND I’VE NO WAY TO FIND OUT.

SO IS IT YOU? ARE YOU MY MOTHER? DID YOU GIVE ME AWAY?

AND IF YOU DID, WHY ARE YOU IN JAIL? WHY DID YOU LET THEM THINK I WAS DEAD? WAS IT LIKE THAT NETFLIX THING SAID? WAS THAT MAN WARD MY FATHER? IS THAT WHY YOU LIED – BECAUSE OF WHAT HE DID TO YOU?

SORRY – TOO MANY QUESTIONS. I KNOW THIS HAS PROBABLY COME AS A SHOCK. IT DID TO ME – I REMEMBER WHAT IT FELT LIKE, FINDING OUT. AND IT’S PRETTY SHITTY HAVING TO DO STUFF LIKE THIS BY LETTER. MUCH BETTER TO TALK TO PEOPLE, BUT RIGHT NOW I DON’T HAVE MUCH CHOICE.

AND I COULD BE WAY OFF ABOUT ALL THIS AND IT’S NOTHING TO DO WITH YOU. IN WHICH CASE, I’M SORRY.

BUT EITHER WAY, CAN YOU JUST WRITE ME AND LET ME KNOW? I’VE PUT A PO BOX ON THIS – I DON’T WANT A LETTER COMING FROM ENGLAND AND MY MOM SEEING IT. SHE DOESN’T KNOW I’M DOING THIS AND I DON’T WANT TO HURT HER – NOT IF THIS IS ALL JUST A FALSE TRAIL.

THEY’VE BEEN GOOD TO ME, MY PARENTS, BY THE WAY. IN CASE YOU WONDERED.

IN CASE YOU CARE.

NOAH

* * *

AF: Talk me through the days before Noah left for Europe.

RS: He was doing a Renaissance arts program this fall and he talked me into letting him go to Florence.

AF: You had no idea he intended to come to the UK?

RS: None at all. I thought he was still in Italy.

AF: Do you think he’d already been in contact with Camilla Rowan by then?

RS: If he had, he hid it from me. I didn’t know.

CG: He’d obviously found out who his mother was.

RS: Like I said, I didn’t know that. I didn’t know about any of it. Look, I’ve answered all your questions – I want to see him –

AF: I’m sorry, Mrs Seidler, that’s not possible.

RS: He’s my son – I have a right to see him –

AF: I know how painful this must be –

RS: Doesn’t someone have to identify him? How can you even be sure it’s him? It could all just be a terrible mistake –

AF: We’ve done a DNA comparison with Camilla Rowan, and we’ve also identified him on CCTV footage at Stansted. There’s no mistake.

[hands across photo from Border Control]

This is your son, isn’t it?

RS: [begins to weep]

* * *

Adam Fawley

27 October

22.15

Bryan Gow has been in the adjacent room all this time, watching on the video screen. I suspect he’s had more enjoyable Saturday nights; I know I have. When I open the door he looks up and makes a face.

‘Grim.’

I nod. ‘She looks shattered.’

‘Small wonder. Keeping a secret like that all these years – it’s like living over an unexploded bomb, never knowing when it might go off.’

I take a step closer. ‘You think she was telling the truth?’

‘When she said she didn’t know where the baby came from? Yes, I do. I suspect that’s the defence mechanism she’s been clinging to all these years: “I didn’t know – it wasn’t my fault.” The human mind is extraordinarily good at self-exoneration.’

‘I wonder how the husband coped.’

Gow shrugs. ‘Perhaps he didn’t. Didn’t you say he died of cancer? There’s some truth in those old wives’ tales about the dangers of suppressed emotions. Perhaps the guilt got to him in the end.’

‘Yet the wife seems to have believed him when he said they were “rescuing” the child.’

Gow raises an eyebrow. ‘Well, what else could he say? What would you say? “Hi honey, I just snatched this child from a loving home”?’

‘Fair enough.’

He gets up and reaches for his notepad.

‘Oh, by the way, I had a look at those other tapes you sent me.’

‘The Swanns?’

‘Right. And I agree with you – I don’t think either of them knew Noah was coming that night. They definitely weren’t expecting him.’

‘And afterwards? Do you think they realized who he was?’

‘Ah, now that’s more interesting. If you ask me – and you are, of course – the old boy was still in the dark. I don’t think he had a clue. As for her – well, there, I’m not so sure. She’s very hard to read.’

‘Like mother, like daughter.’

He raises an ironic eyebrow. ‘Quite. I read Camilla Rowan’s pre-trial report. Now there’s someone I’d pay good money for a closer look at.’

I smile. ‘Funny you should mention that, Bryan. I think I’m about to make your day.’

* * *

‘What’s that?’

Baxter looks up. It’s Chloe Sargent, staring at his screen. He’s getting to like her – she takes an interest and she listens properly: he hasn’t had to repeat himself once, which is some sort of record.

‘Noah Seidler’s social media,’ he says.

She squints slightly. He’s spotted her doing it before. He suspects she needs reading glasses but isn’t fond of the look.

‘Lots of pictures of Florence,’ she says.

‘Yup. Even after we know he’d left Italy for the UK. Though he’s taken the location tagging off those. And I suspect he didn’t take a lot of these later ones himself. Looks suspiciously like a Flickr job to me.’

She glances at him. ‘So, what – they were just a smokescreen?’

Baxter gives her a heavy look. ‘Probably didn’t want anyone knowing where he was. Least of all his mum.’

She nods; makes sense. Baxter reaches for his keyboard and scrolls to the end of the feed. A shot of a plate of spaghetti and a beer; in the background, tourists throng a sunlit square.

Sargent sighs. ‘Look at all the comments. A lot of people liked him.’

‘It’s not just that, though, is it,’ says Baxter. He points at the screen. ‘Look at the time. Two hours after this was posted he was dead.’

* * *

Adam Fawley

28 October

11.15

Gow can barely contain his excitement. The last time I saw anyone look that thrilled was when we got Jake a unicorn cake from the shop in the Covered Market for his ninth birthday. And perhaps the analogy isn’t actually that far off: Camilla Rowan must be the psychiatric equivalent of a horse with a horn. Gow drives himself because he’s going on to something in London afterwards, so DC Carter gets the short straw of working Sunday morning. Not that he seems to mind; he’s positively chipper. Like a dog getting an unexpected walk. With added mud. And yes, I know, Carter probably wouldn’t have been your first choice of bag-man – he wasn’t Gis’s either and Quinn made no secret of his scorn.

‘Why him? He’s just out for himself.’

I was tempted to ask if he was playing the role of pot or kettle on that one, but you don’t get anywhere with Quinn when he’s in that mood.

‘I’m taking Carter because he made a genuine breakthrough identifying those trainers and I want to give him some encouragement.’

Quinn gave me a dark look. ‘Just make sure he knows it’s you running the show.’

‘I have done this before, Quinn. And we have this useful thing called “rank” in the police force, just in case anyone’s ever in danger of forgetting who’s in charge.’

That last was actually meant for Quinn, but as usual with him, I suspect it didn’t land.

That said, and even though I wasn’t about to admit it to Quinn, I was more than a bit wary of spending so much time in the car with Carter, but he just seemed intent on impressing me with his driving skills, so there wasn’t much by way of conversation. And judging by the way he reacted when we got to Heathside, I’m pretty sure he’d never set foot inside a prison before. He was trying to look like an old hand, but managed to drop his car keys twice before we even got to security. Gow, on the other hand, was taking it like a regular. Which it turns out he is: one of the warders greeted him by his first name.

When they show us into a private meeting room – we’ve gone up in the world, evidently – Camilla’s lawyers are already in situ. A black woman and an Asian man. They introduce themselves (‘Madeleine Parrish’; ‘Dev Desai’) and I do the same. Gow is safely out of the way in an adjacent room. No point frightening the horses.

Parrish turns to me. ‘I’m not sure what you expect to achieve with this, Inspector. Ms Rowan is going to be released – all we’re waiting for is the paperwork.’

I’m about to reply when the door opens again and they bring in Camilla. She clearly has more perks, now she’s on the verge of freedom. Her hair looks washed and she has a can of Coke in one hand.

She makes a point of ignoring us, turning instead to Parrish. ‘Any news?’

The lawyer shakes her head. ‘It’ll be Monday now. But I’ll chase them again then.’ She glances at me and then back at Rowan. ‘Why don’t you sit down, Cam.’

Rowan does what she did before, dragging the chair backwards until it’s practically against the wall.

‘Perhaps you could begin, Inspector,’ says Desai, pen in hand, ‘by explaining exactly what you hope to achieve from this meeting?’

‘As Ms Rowan knows, we’ve been looking again at the events that preceded the disappearance of her baby. We’ve made significant progress, and I’d like to update her on that, and ask for her help in confirming certain facts.’

See, I can do police-lingo bullshit with the best of them, when I put my mind to it.

Parrish looks towards her client, but there’s no response. No words, no change of expression.

‘So I’m going to offer you a deal, Ms Rowan.’

A ripple at that. No more than a blink, but enough.

I sit forward. ‘I’ll tell you what I know, if you tell me what you know.’

A silence. A longer silence. But two can play at that game, and I’m an old hand.

She lifts her chin. ‘OK, I’ll bite. What exactly do you know?’

I make her wait. And she’s better at it than her lawyers, who look respectively unsettled and sardonic.

‘I know a number of things. I know, for example, that you did not, after all, hand the baby to its father as you’ve always insisted.’

She raises an eyebrow. ‘I see. So you’ve spoken to him, have you?’

‘We have.’

That stumbles her, though again, the flicker across her face is gone as quickly as it came.

‘Turns out his name’s Tin Boekker, not Tim Baker. He’s South African. But, of course, you knew that, didn’t you.’

She looks away.

‘You don’t want to hear what he said?’

She throws me a glance but says nothing.

Parrish clears her throat. ‘Well, I for one would like very much to know what he had to say.’

I turn to her. ‘Mr Boekker freely admits having had a – very brief – sexual relationship with your client but denies knowing she was pregnant. He can also prove that he wasn’t even in the country when the child was born.’

Parrish and Rowan exchange a glance. Rowan gives a minute shrug. So what?

‘I also know that by the time Ms Rowan was arriving at that Christmas party in 1997, her son was already in the care of an American couple in Edgbaston, who took him back to the US with them a few weeks later.’

Rowan is still unmoving, but there’s a rigidity about that stillness now. A tension and a watchfulness.

‘What I don’t yet know is what happened in the two hours between you leaving the hospital and your baby’s arrival at that Edgbaston home.’

She fixes me with her slatey stare. ‘You should be asking them that. Not me.’

‘The wife wasn’t there when the baby arrived. When she got back later that evening her husband refused to tell her what had happened. All he would say is that they had “rescued” the child.’

She starts chewing the side of her thumb. Which I know – and I’m sure Gow, sitting next door, has guessed – is the closest thing she ever gets to a ‘tell’.

‘What’s he saying now, this man?’

‘Nothing.’

She frowns. Parrish looks at Rowan, then at me. ‘But surely you’ve questioned him –’

‘As I said, right now, he’s saying nothing. Which gives Ms Rowan the chance to give us her version first. So,’ I force her to meet my gaze, ‘over to you.’

Silence.

‘Now’s the time, Ms Rowan. If you handed your baby to this man – if you met him at the hospital and made some sort of arrangement –’

Still nothing.

Carter sits forward. ‘Look, we all know you didn’t want that child, any more than you wanted the others. There’s no way you were going to bring it up on your own. So perhaps those Americans seemed like the perfect solution – perhaps you took pity on them –’

She flashes him a look, then turns away again.

‘Is that where you went?’ I ask. ‘Edgbaston? After you left the hospital? The timing adds up – it would have been barely out of your way –’

Rowan sighs, then takes a deep breath and turns to face me.

‘OK,’ she says. ‘OK.’

‘OK what?’

‘That’s what happened.’

‘You went to their house?’

She picks up the can and throws back a slug, then wipes her mouth on her sleeve.

‘No. I met him on the way back from the hospital.’

‘You definitely didn’t go to the house?’

‘I never knew where they lived.’

‘So why didn’t you say all this back in 2003? Why go to prison for something you didn’t do?’

She hesitates, then shrugs. ‘I don’t know – I suppose I wasn’t thinking straight.’

I sit back. ‘I find that hard to believe.’

She smiles. ‘Well, thankfully, that’s not my problem.’

OK, I’ll run with this. See how far she takes it.

‘How did it come about – this arrangement to give them your son? How did you meet?’

‘At the hospital, like you said.’

‘Where?’

She picks up the can. ‘In the café. I met him in the café.’

‘He approached you – you approached him – what?’

‘He came to me.’

It’s like drawing teeth. Desai is already on his second page of notes.

‘When was this?’

She gives me a sarcastic look. ‘Well, it must have been the 23rd, mustn’t it, genius?’

‘You only gave birth that morning – you’d really recovered enough to nip downstairs for a coffee?’

She raises an eyebrow. ‘I don’t tend to let these things cramp my style, Inspector. As I’m sure you know.’

And I can’t argue with that. She’d been on her feet within hours of the other births.

‘So what did he say?’

Another deep breath, a draw on a fag she doesn’t have. ‘He said he’d seen me on the ward and I was obviously a single mother –’

‘Had he? Seen you on the ward?’

She shrugs. ‘Maybe. I don’t remember seeing him, but he was pretty nondescript.’

‘What did he look like?’

‘I just told you – nondescript. Brown hair. Boring.’

She said the same thing about ‘Tim Baker’ to South Mercia, all those years ago.

‘Go on.’

‘He said he could see I was a single mother – that it would be understandable if I was feeling daunted. That if I was considering giving up my baby, then him and his wife would give it a great life.’

‘What did he say about his circumstances?’

‘Nothing. He just said they were desperate for a baby.’

I stare at her. ‘And that’s it. You gave your child to a stranger, based on that?’

Her eyes flash. ‘I gave the others to strangers. What’s the bloody difference?’

‘Those were strangers who’d been carefully vetted by the adoption service – this man could have been anyone – a paedophile, a child trafficker –’

She rolls her eyes. ‘He didn’t look like a paedophile.’

‘They rarely do. As I’m sure you know.’

She shrugs again. ‘If you say so.’

But it’s just a diversion and I didn’t come down in the last shower of rain.

She empties the can and puts it down on the table. ‘He showed me a picture of his wife, OK? She seemed nice.’

‘But you never met her.’

‘No.’

‘What did she look like?’

She frowns. ‘What?’

‘You saw her picture – what did she look like? I mean, I can’t believe you don’t remember. This was the woman who was going to bring up your child.’

She starts making circles on the table in the moisture dripping from the can. ‘I don’t know. Ordinary. She looked ordinary.’

‘You’ll have to do better than that. If you want us to believe you.’

She looks irritated now. ‘Small, probably smaller than me.’

‘How do you know that?’

Her lip lifts in a sneer. ‘They were both in the picture, weren’t they. He was a lot taller than her.’

And it’s true – Renee Seidler is relatively short. But it could just as easily be an educated guess.

‘Anything else?’

‘Her hair was dark. Reddish. She had it in a long plait. And she wore glasses. With wire rims.’

This is different – and way too specific to guess out of nowhere. I see her following my thought, and the tiny curl of triumph in her mouth.

‘See? I am telling the truth. Whatever you might have thought.’

‘So what happened? How did you arrange the handover?’

‘He gave me a phone number and told me to call him when I was leaving the hospital.’

‘And you met on the A417?’

Half her mouth smiles and she points at me. ‘You’re sharp. For a plod.’

‘I’ve been doing this a long time. So you meet him at a lay-by on the A417, then what?’

‘I gave him the kid. Like I said.’

‘So why did you say you gave the baby to its father?’

She sits back. ‘By the time anyone started asking, he was the kid’s father.’

‘That’s sophistry, and you know it.’

And she knows what the word means too, as the expression on her face makes clear.

‘I don’t believe you, Ms Rowan. Frankly, I don’t even think you believe you.’

‘I don’t give a shit what you think. He’d been with them five years by then – he was their kid, not mine. I didn’t want him taken away from them.’

‘You didn’t know that would definitely have happened.’

She laughs drily. ‘Yeah, right.’

I sit forward. ‘It meant that much to you? You were prepared to sacrifice decades of your life – to go to prison – rather than incriminate two complete strangers?’

‘Complete strangers who were bringing up my kid. And in any case, I didn’t know I was going to be convicted, now did I?’

‘Fair enough. But you could have raised it afterwards – when you filed all those appeals.’

There’s a silence. She’s drawing circles on the table again.

‘It makes no sense,’ I say in the end. ‘You know it makes no sense.’

Rowan looks up. But not at me. She leans forward and whispers to Parrish, who nods and turns to us.

‘I think Ms Rowan has given ample evidence that she knew the people who took the child. More importantly, there is now incontrovertible proof that Ms Rowan did not harm her son. If any crime was committed – and I, for one, remain to be convinced – it was at worst an offence under the Adoption Act 1976, which would certainly not have resulted in a custodial sentence of the length Ms Rowan has served. Whichever way you cut it, she should now be released.’

‘Not my department, Ms Parrish, sorry.’

That’s a bit of a sorry-not-sorry, if I’m honest. But I’m not sorry about that either.

Parrish frowns. ‘Are you charging these people – the as-yet-unnamed Americans?’

‘As per my previous answer. That’s up to the CPS, not me.’

She and Desai confer for a moment, then she turns briskly to me. ‘So are we done?’

Desai has already flipped shut his notebook. And like I’ve said before: when you’re at a brick wall, stop pushing.

‘We’re done.’

* * *

JULY 2 2018

NOAH SEIDLER

PO BOX 5653, NY 11201

YOU HAVEN’T EVEN WRITTEN ME BACK. NOT EVEN TWO FRIGGIN LINES.

IF I’M NOT YOUR KID JUST SAY SO, SO I CAN WRITE THIS ONE OFF AND MOVE ON. BUT THAT’S NOT REALLY IT, IS IT. YOU KNOW I’M YOUR KID AND YOU’RE JUST HOPING THIS ALL GOES AWAY BECAUSE YOU CAN’T FACE DEALING WITH IT. WELL IT WON’T GO AWAY – YOU HEAR ME? AND IN ANY CASE, DON’T YOU THINK I DESERVE THE TRUTH? EVERYONE CLOSE TO ME HAS BEEN LYING TO ME MY WHOLE LIFE. I’M PISSED. YOU KNOW THAT? I. AM. PISSED.

YOU KNOW WHAT ELSE I’M PISSED ABOUT? YOU DON’T EVEN WANT TO KNOW ABOUT ME. WHAT I’M LIKE. WHAT I DO, WHAT I’M INTO. NOTHING. I’M YOUR LONG-LOST KID AND YOU DON’T ASK ME A SINGLE FRIGGIN QUESTION. AREN’T YOU EVEN JUST A LITTLE BIT CURIOUS? DO YOU REALLY NOT CARE?

OK RANT OVER. AND THERE’S A BIT OF ME THAT KEEPS SAYING THAT MAYBE YOU’RE JUST FREAKED OUT BY THIS WHOLE THING – THAT YOUR LIFE MUST BE SHIT BECAUSE YOU’RE IN PRISON AND YOU NEVER KNEW THIS WAS COMING AND IT’S JUST THROWN YOU FOR A LOOP. SO I’VE DECIDED I’M GONNA GIVE YOU THE BENEFIT OF THE DOUBT. FOR NOW.

SO I’VE PRINTED YOU OUT A COUPLE OF PICTURES. EVEN THOUGH YOU DIDN’T ASK FOR ANY. ONE’S OF ME AND MOM WHEN I WAS LITTLE. CUTE, HUH? I ALWAYS LOVED THE ZOO. AND ONE FROM A COUPLE OF YEARS AGO, JUST AFTER DAD WAS DIAGNOSED. IT’S HIM AND ME AT YOSEMITE. HE ALWAYS PROMISED ME WE WOULD GO. IT WAS OUR LAST TRIP.

AND I MEANT TO SAY – I’M TRYING TO GET MOM TO LET ME COME TO EUROPE FOR FALL BREAK. I’M GONNA DO A MODULE ON THE RENAISSANCE AND I’M THINKING FLORENCE MIGHT BE GOOD. AND ENGLAND’S JUST A HOP FROM THERE, RIGHT?

NOAH

* * *

Adam Fawley

28 October

11.55

‘What do you think?’

We’re in the car park. Parrish and Desai are still inside, having a con with their client. And I’m out here, trying to decide whether ‘con’ is, in fact, the word of the day.

Gow takes his time replying. The wind’s getting up and I’m starting to wish I’d brought a coat. Carter’s looking smug in a waxed Barbour thing that I bet isn’t a real one.

‘She’s a piece of work,’ Gow says eventually. ‘That’s what I think.’

I give a dry smile. ‘I didn’t need to pay for a profiler to know that.’

But maybe it’s a more revealing answer than it seems. When a forensic psychologist is reduced to that sort of reaction, that alone should tell you something.

‘Deftly handled, by the way,’ says Gow. ‘Managing not to let on that Seidler’s dead.’

‘I think, Dr Gow, that you’ll find every word I said was strictly true.’

He smiles. ‘Indeed. Dead men aren’t terribly talkative as a rule, are they. Like I said, deftly handled.’

‘You still haven’t told me what you think.’

He draws a breath. ‘I think she has an innate capacity for mendacity.’

‘She’s a pathological liar?’

‘It’s risky making any diagnosis on the basis of such limited observation, but if she took a polygraph I suspect she’d beat the machine. Lying is as natural to her as breathing. She has none of the moral or socially conditioned qualms that trip up the rest of us.’

I’m frowning now. This wasn’t quite the angle I expected him to take. ‘You’re saying she was lying back there?’

‘I’m saying I doubt if even I could tell the difference.’

‘But there were things she said that she couldn’t have made up – or guessed. Like what Renee Seidler looked like –’

‘You’re sure about that?’ he says. ‘Because she doesn’t look anything like that now, does she?’

I show him my phone. ‘I just texted her. She sent me this.’

A picture of Renee Seidler with her son. A dribble of snow on the ground, a gaggle of kids in woolly hats and mittens, and what looks like a polar bear in the enclosure behind. It must be Central Park zoo; Alex loves that place. On the screen, Noah’s laughing and clapping his little hands. He must be around two. And Renee – crouching, smiling, her hand gently steadying him – has a long auburn plait slipping over one shoulder.

‘I just don’t see how Rowan could have guessed she wore her hair like that.’

Gow’s frowning now. ‘I see what you mean. And you’re absolutely sure, are you, that Noah never contacted her? Because that’s the only way I can think of that she could have found out something that specific.’

‘The governor wasn’t aware of anything. According to her, all her post was just fan mail. Though she did say she’d check.’

‘Might be worth chasing up on that. Given that we’re here.’

I turn to Carter, but he pre-empts me. ‘You want me to go and ask, sir?’

‘Thank you, Carter.’

We watch him go, then Gow turns to me. ‘So what now?’

I shrug. ‘The lawyer was right. There’s no reason why Rowan shouldn’t be released. I’m sure that’s the line the CPS will take.’

His face darkens.

‘I know, Bryan – I’m as uneasy about it as you are. But what possible reason can there be to hold her? The murder conviction’s void, and she’s just come up with a story that tallies with what we now know.’

‘As far as it goes, yes. But there are still gaps – huge gaps –’

‘I’m with you, but what can I do? With David Seidler dead there’s no one to challenge her. Rowan’s story is the only game in town. There’s nothing I can charge her with. Unlike her poor bloody father, who’s almost certainly going down for manslaughter, if not murder.’

He sighs. It’s probably the most emotional I’ve ever seen him, and I’ve known him upwards of five years.

‘You still want a report?’

I nod. ‘Please. I need to talk to the CPS, but I suspect they’re just going to tell us to close this one down. As I’m sure Superintendent Harrison will agree.’

* * *

JULY 10 2018

NOAH SEIDLER

PO BOX 5653, NY 11201

I DON’T CARE WHAT YOU SAID ABOUT NOT BEING ALLOWED VISITORS, I’M COMING. WHETHER YOU LIKE IT OR NOT. I’M COMING.

YOU KNOW WHY? I GOT SOMETHING FROM OUR LAWYERS TODAY. A LETTER FOR ME, FROM DAD. HE LEFT IT WITH THEM WHEN HE WAS FIRST DIAGNOSED. SAID HE DIDN’T WANT IT GIVEN TO ME TILL NOW TO GIVE ME TIME TO DEAL WITH ALL THE CRAP AFTER HE DIED. AND HE DIDN’T WANT MY MOM UPSET SO I WASN’T TO TELL HER, BUT HE THOUGHT I SHOULD KNOW THE TRUTH. THAT HE WAS THE ONLY ONE WHO COULD TELL ME, BECAUSE MOM NEVER KNEW WHAT REALLY HAPPENED. BUT I HAD A RIGHT TO HEAR IT, AND HE DIDN’T WANT ME EVER BLAMING MOM BECAUSE ALL SHE’D EVER DONE – ALL EITHER OF THEM HAD EVER DONE – WAS LOVE ME. IF I WAS GOING TO BLAME ANYONE IT SHOULD BE THE PERSON WHO DESERVED IT.

YOU.

YOU’VE BEEN LYING TO ME. DON’T EVEN TRY TO DENY IT BECAUSE I KNOW. I KNOW THE TRUTH. NOT ALL OF IT, NOT ALL THE DETAILS, BUT ENOUGH. THE SMELL AND THE PISS AND THE DIRT. I KNOW. YOU HEAR THAT?

I KNOW WHAT YOU DID.

* * *

Adam Fawley

29 October

08.35

‘So that’s where we are. I’m not happy about it and I doubt any of you are either, but sometimes this job just isn’t black and white.’

It’s a grey Monday all round. In here as much as outside, where low cloud has settled into an insistent spitty drizzle. Some towns manage to wear rain well; trust me, Oxford isn’t one of them.

‘I still don’t understand why she didn’t say any of this years ago,’ says Ev.

‘Bloody waste of time, the whole sodding thing,’ mutters Quinn.

‘Yes,’ counters Ev, turning to him, ‘but most of all, hers. All those years inside – and for nothing?’

‘She claims,’ I say, ‘that she didn’t want the child taken from its adoptive parents.’

Baxter makes a face. ‘Even if you buy that – and she doesn’t strike me as that altruistic, in fact quite the bloody opposite – surely she could have said something once the kid got older? He was legally an adult at eighteen, that was over two years ago.’

‘I know. Yet again, it makes no sense. But what else can we do? Her story tallies with Renee Seidler’s, and she knew things about them that she couldn’t possibly have found out any other way, including what Renee looked like back then –’

‘And we’re absolutely sure, are we, that she hadn’t been in touch with Noah?’ says Quinn. ‘Because that makes a damn sight more sense to me –’

‘DC Carter checked. When we were at Heathside.’

Not an answer calculated to appease Quinn. He turns to Carter. ‘And what did they say – precisely?’

Carter starts a little. ‘Just what the boss said – that as far as they were aware, Rowan doesn’t get letters from people she knows, just sad losers with nothing better to do –’

‘Did they remember anything from the States?’

Carter shakes his head. ‘I did ask, but there’s no one person who handles the post so it’s hard to pin down. But she did say no one had mentioned anything.’

‘“She” being –?’

He glances at his notebook. ‘Prison Officer Andrea Sullivan.’ He looks up. ‘She was trying to help, but there wasn’t much more she could do – prison letters don’t have to have the sender’s address on the envelope and they don’t read all of them anyway.’

Quinn frowns. ‘What about outgoing mail?’

‘Same story,’ shrugs Carter. ‘Not as far as anyone could remember –’

‘Did you ask them to search Rowan’s cell?’

Carter blinks, glances at me. ‘Er –’

Time for me to intervene. ‘I’m not sure there’d have been much point, Sergeant. If Noah did write to Rowan, she’s hardly likely to have kept it – it’d be far too incriminating.’

Quinn’s frown deepens. ‘But –’

‘And as far as I’m concerned we’ve done as much as humanly possible to establish whether there was any such letter and come up with nothing. You can only go so far trying to prove a negative.’

Silence.

‘So what happens next?’ asks Baxter.

‘Rowan will be released. Apparently, she could be out of Heathside as early as the end of this week.’

Ev makes a face. ‘And straight from there to a TV station.’

But Baxter’s shaking his head. ‘Nah. Not yet. She’ll want to negotiate a big fat fee for that.’

Quinn glances across. ‘How do you know she hasn’t done that already? She has enough bloody lawyers.’

The exchange is getting tetchy and, more to the point, pointless: whatever Rowan chooses to do – whatever mud she chooses to throw – there’s sod all any of us can do about it.

‘Let’s just concentrate on our jobs, shall we? The next one being to try to close the case on Richard Swann. The CPS still have some questions before they can make a decision on charging, specifically what exactly he did or did not know. So we’re going to have another go at getting some answers, now he’s had time to consider his position. Uniform are picking him up this morning.’ I look round. ‘Anyone have anything else? No? In that case, can you wrap up the rest of the paperwork on this one ASAP, please. No point in hanging around.’

* * *

The problem with Wytham is that whichever route you take there’s always a risk of the Tractor Factor. A twenty-minute journey can easily take you twice that, and more in a downpour. Which goes most of the way to explaining Ian Barnetson’s less than sunny mood as they finally signal to turn into Ock Lane.

‘I actually feel quite sorry for him,’ says Puttergill, breaking the silence. The rain’s coming down so hard they can barely see, even with the wipers on full speed.

‘Who? Swann?’

‘Right. I mean, poor old sod – must be tough finding out you killed your own grandson by mistake. Even if you did think he was dead already.’

‘We don’t know it was a mistake,’ says Barnetson darkly.

Puttergill glances across at him. ‘That’s what they told you? CID?’

Barnetson turns to look out of the window. ‘Quinn gave me a pretty heavy hint. He reckons the wife definitely knew who he was. After, even if not before.’

Puttergill gives a low whistle. ‘Jesus.’

There’s a lorry coming towards them now and the lane isn’t wide enough for them both. Puttergill pulls over and comes to a halt.

‘But why would the old couple want him dead? Makes no sense.’

‘Nope,’ says Barnetson. ‘In that family – nothing ever does.’

The lorry up ahead isn’t moving and Barnetson starts cursing. ‘Stick the bloody siren on, can’t you? Get that bloody thing out of the way.’

Puttergill looks faintly alarmed. ‘I assumed we didn’t want Swann to know we were coming.’

Barnetson flashes him a look. ‘What’s he going to do? Make a quick getaway on his Zimmer frame?’

Puttergill suppresses a smile and reaches for the switch. ‘You’re the boss.’

* * *

BBC News

29 October 2018 Last updated at 10:09

BREAKING: Camilla Rowan could be released ‘within days’

According to the lawyers acting on her behalf, Camilla Rowan could be freed ‘within a few days’. No official announcement has been made with regard to a release date, but it is understood that her lawyers are in advanced discussions with the Ministry of Justice about ensuring this is done in ‘an orderly manner’. For technical reasons, she is likely to be released on licence pending a review of her conviction by the Court of Appeal, but it is understood that will be ‘just a formality’. Press speculation about the case has been rife since proof emerged that Rowan’s baby son was not in fact murdered in 1997 – proof which came to light as a result of a fatal shooting at a property outside Oxford on October 21st. The property has been widely rumoured to be the home of Rowan’s parents, Dick and Peggy, who are believed to have changed their name after their daughter’s 2003 trial.

Thames Valley Police are now leading an investigation into the original inquiry. They have made no comment about the timing or circumstances of Rowan’s release.

More news on this as we hear it.

* * *

Adam Fawley

29 October

10.11

I’m on my way in to see Harrison when his PA waylays me. ‘Ah, DI Fawley, how fortuitous. I just picked up a call from downstairs. There’s a woman there to see you. She says it’s urgent –’

‘I’m afraid I can’t –’

She raises her voice a notch, in the way of people who intend to finish and are not accustomed to being interrupted.

‘Her name is Alison Toms. She seems to think you’ll know who she is –’

‘Well, I don’t – and I don’t have time –’

But then I stop – because I do, in fact, recognize the name. But why on earth –

‘Actually, Maureen, I will see her. Give my apologies to the Super, would you? And ask DC Hansen to meet me at the front desk.’

* * *

Barnetson pushes open the car door, pulls up his collar and strides towards the lorry.

The wind has picked up, throwing squalls of sharp rain against his face. He was already pissed off, and now he finds that the lorry hasn’t just stopped, it’s parked, and the cab is empty. There’s a small pack of journalists behind the tape at the end of the drive who are pointing at him and grinning. It’s been thin pickings stuck outside in the rain all morning with no one going in or out, so this counts as cabaret.

‘For fuck’s sake, you could at least have put your bloody hazards on,’ Barnetson mutters, edging his way along the hedge to the back of the truck.

But then he stops.

Stops, hesitates a moment, and then – despite the sudden clatter of camera noise – starts running.

* * *

Adam Fawley

29 October

10.18

The woman in reception manages to come off as both tired and anxious all at once. She looks every year of fifty but could well be younger; she’s wearing a crumpled linen dress, a cotton cardigan and espadrilles, which were a bad choice in this weather and are now soaked through. She gets to her feet as soon as she sees us, hauling one of those striped hessian bags off the chair next to her.

‘DI Fawley, is it?’

I nod. ‘And this is DC Hansen. How can we help you?’

‘We spoke before,’ begins Hansen, but the woman isn’t listening.

‘I left home as soon as I heard – on the news – has it happened yet? Am I in time?’

‘In time for what, Ms Toms?’

She stares at me, her lips trembling, white about the eyes. I’ve seen that look before. This is someone at the point of no return.

‘Ms Toms?’

She takes a breath, then presses her lips together, swallows. ‘In time to do what I should have done twenty years ago.’

* * *

By the time Puttergill gets to him, Barnetson is halfway down the garden, running full tilt along the line of plastic piping snaking its way across the grass towards the rear fence. Puttergill can just about see the lorry driver bent double in one of the borders, his back to them, apparently unable to hear Barnetson’s increasingly desperate shouts.

‘Police! Stop what you’re doing!’

* * *

Interview with Alison Toms, conducted at St Aldate’s Police Station, Oxford

29 October 2018, 10.55 a.m.

In attendance, DI A. Fawley, DC T. Hansen

AF: This isn’t a formal interview, Ms Toms, and you’re not under arrest, but it may be necessary for us to do that, depending on what you have to tell us. You can ask for legal representation at any time. Is that clear?

AT: Yes.

AF: So, let’s start at the beginning. December 23rd 1997.

AT: I was the social worker at Birmingham and Solihull General at that time. It was my first job.

AF: And you were interviewed by the police in 2002, when the disappearance of the baby first came to light?

AT: Yes, I was.

AF: [consulting file]

According to that statement, you said you only spoke to Ms Rowan once during her short time in hospital.

AT: Yes, that’s right.

AF: [reads from file]

‘Miss Rowan bonded well with her baby, and expressed no interest in having him adopted.’ That’s from Ms Rowan’s hospital records, entered and signed by you on the morning after she discharged herself. Do you remember writing that?

AT: Yes, I do. But it wasn’t true. She didn’t bond with him at all.

AF: Enough to worry you – as a professional?

AT: Yes.

AF: But you didn’t raise this with anyone else at the hospital – you can’t have done – there’s nothing in the records.

AT: It was different back then – people weren’t so quick to rush to judgement. And like I said, it was my first job – I wanted to be sure – to watch her for a little longer before I did anything. She’d only given birth a few hours before she discharged herself – I had no idea she would leave hospital so quickly.

AF: On the afternoon of 23rd December. When the baby was only a few hours old.

AT: Yes.

AF: And yet the following morning you made an entry in her records saying all was well, when you clearly had significant cause for concern. Not only that, by not raising those concerns, you could actually put the child at more risk. Why on earth would you do that?

AT: [silence]

AF: Ms Toms?

* * *

23 December 1997, 2.45 p.m.

Birmingham and Solihull General Hospital

She’d popped down to the shops to buy a sandwich and stopped off to collect her dry cleaning on the way. There was a queue – four women ahead of her collecting party dresses they probably hadn’t worn since last Christmas – so she ended up being ten minutes late getting back. She thought a lot about that, afterwards. Those ten minutes. Because if she hadn’t had to wait, she’d never have seen. Nothing would have happened. Not to her, at any rate. It might have been months before the news broke. Years even. And by then she’d have forgotten – by then it would have been nothing to do with her.

But it didn’t happen that way. Alison was late, and she saw, and her life was never the same again.

Though it took her a while to realize what exactly it was that she was seeing.

When she first pulled up in the car park she didn’t even notice her. It was only when she released the seat belt and turned for the door handle that she realized Camilla Rowan was walking towards her, a handbag over one shoulder, the baby held against the other, wrapped in a hospital blanket. She was confused for a moment, wondering if the girl was heading in her direction, but then she stopped by a black VW Golf two cars over. But that didn’t make any sense – Rowan couldn’t be actually leaving – it was way too soon. OK, Rowan was young and healthy, but as far as Alison knew, the baby hadn’t even had its heel-prick test, and Rowan still hadn’t managed to breastfeed him, wasn’t even holding him properly – you only had to look at her now –

Alison was about to get out of the car, but hesitated – she wasn’t exactly sure what authority she had, and perhaps she was being a bit too judgemental. Maybe Rowan was meeting someone – her parents or her boyfriend: none of them had been in yet. Perhaps they’d come to see her and brought some things for the baby.

But when the young woman unlocked the car door and yanked it open it was obvious there was no one else there. She was alone, and she was leaving.

Alison watched as she threw her handbag on to the passenger seat and then opened the back and bent over the rear seat. It was impossible to see exactly what she was doing but it didn’t take long – a mere two or three seconds later she straightened up again and swung the door shut. Alison grabbed at her own car door and started to get out of her car – she couldn’t possibly have strapped the baby in correctly in that time – was there even a proper car seat in there? But it was too late – the Golf had already started and was beginning to reverse.

She had no choice.

That’s what she told herself, afterwards.

She had no choice.

* * *

AF: You followed her.

AT: Yes.

AF: You didn’t think to alert someone? Flag her down?

AT: How could I alert anyone? I didn’t have a mobile phone – no one did, back then. And she was driving fast – it was all I could do not to lose her.

AF: So you followed her – where to exactly?

AT: She got on to the M5, going south.

AF: And then?

AT: She came off at Brockworth and headed towards Cirencester. On the A417.

* * *

As far as Puttergill is concerned, Barnetson should be looking pretty chuffed right now, seeing as it looks like he’s cracked it. But he just looks grim.

‘I should have thought of this before,’ he mutters, staring down into the open manhole. ‘It was odds-on they weren’t on the mains, not all the way out here.’

‘Well, to be fair, this one ain’t that easy to find,’ says the lorry driver. ‘Not if you don’t already know. Most of the time I come it’s covered in leaves and crap.’

As for Puttergill, he didn’t know people even had septic tanks in this day and age, especially this close to a town. He’s certainly never seen one before. He wrinkles his nose. ‘So is it, you know, actual shit down there?’

The driver glances up from the other side of the hole. ‘It’s a tad more sophisticated than that, son, but yeah, there’ll be plenty of faecal sludge at the bottom if you get down far enough.’

Puttergill looks alarmed. He can’t seriously be suggesting –

Barnetson gives a hard laugh. ‘Don’t worry, I’m not looking for a volunteer. I’m sure Mr –’

‘Tull,’ says the driver. ‘Dennis Tull.’

‘I’m sure Mr Tull knows exactly what to do.’

But Puttergill doesn’t reply. He’s staring up towards the house. Barnetson turns to look and sees at once what’s distracted him. There’s a figure at the upstairs window. A pale face, a hand pressed against the glass.

Richard Swann.

Barnetson’s mouth sets in a grim line. ‘They must have thought they’d got away with it.’

* * *

23 December 1997, 3.50 p.m.

A417, Gloucestershire

She remembers thinking that Rowan knew where she was going – that she must have been there before. But she didn’t realize what that meant. Not then.

At the time, it was all she could do to keep up with the car in front, which barely slows, even after they leave the main road. It’s as if there’s a task to do and not much time to do it in. That’s something else she remembers, later.

Alison had only been to Cirencester once before, and that was the quaintsy tea-shop chocolate-box bit, certainly not this colourless every-town-has-one area of warehouses and industrial buildings. She couldn’t think of a single good reason why a woman who’d only just given birth could possibly want to come here. There were bad ones, yes – desperately bad ones – but at the time her mind simply didn’t allow those to gather into words. Not yet.

A left turn, a right, another left. They’d passed two cars on the way in, but now, nothing. It was starting to get dark and there was no one around; the day before Christmas Eve, of course there was no one around.

When the car in front finally slowed, turned into a car park and disappeared out of sight, Alison pulled over and switched off her engine. She never could explain why she held back – it must have been pure instinct, nothing more. Because everything would have been different if she’d followed her in there – if there’d been a confrontation, if she’d demanded an explanation, offered help –

But she didn’t. She just sat in her cold car, her hands sweating against the steering wheel, until the Golf appeared again, picking up speed, passing her –

Gone.

* * *

AF: Do you know where this place was? Would you remember it again?

AT: It’s hard to forget.

AF: All the same, such a long time ago –

AT: That’s not what I meant. The road was called Love Lane. Love Lane. You don’t forget something like that. Not in those circumstances.

TH: So what did you do next?

AT: I got out of the car. I wasn’t sure what to think – I just couldn’t work out what she was doing there –

TH: And then?

AT: I walked over to the car park.

TH: What did you see?

AT: Nothing. It was completely deserted. Just a cat somewhere. Yowling.

[silence]

* * *

23 December 1997, 4.05 p.m.

Love Lane industrial estate, Cirencester

It wasn’t a cat.

Some part of her knew that. She’d had cats, growing up. None of them sounded like that.

But she still wanted to believe that’s what it was, even when she realized where the sound was coming from. The big green dumpster by the wire fence on the far side, half hidden by a pile of old tyres.

Some bastard abandoning kittens – shits like that deserved dumping themselves –

Even now, she still doesn’t remember walking over, or struggling to get the lid open, or whether there were sounds from inside as she did.

Just the rush of sour sweet odour – warm and fetid and unmistakable.

* * *

AF: The baby.

AT: [nods]

The baby.

AF: You could see that – straight away?

AT: [swallows]

No. She’d – she’d put rubbish over it. Him. Plywood, broken tiles. Builders’ stuff.

TH: She’d put it on top of the baby?

AT: [nods]

I know – I felt sick, just seeing it. But it wasn’t just that. When I dragged it all off and found him – he was in a plastic bag. A bin liner. She must have brought it with her – she’d planned it – all of it –

[becoming distressed]

No one would have realized – the bin men – not after – not once he was –

[weeping now]

AF: Take your time, Ms Toms. I know this must be distressing.

AT: I’m sorry – it’s just that all this time, I’ve tried not to think about it.

AF: What did you do next?

AT: I took him back to the car. He still had his blanket and I had some wet wipes so I could clean him up a bit.

AF: But you didn’t take him back to the hospital, did you? Or to a police station. Or to the adoption services, who would have found him a loving home.

AT: No, I didn’t.

AF: You took him to Edgbaston. To the Seidlers.

AT: I’d sat with them every day for weeks – I’d seen what they’d gone through. I knew they could give him a good life. That they might not get another chance -

AF: [softly]

You played God.

AT: If you want to put it that way.

TH: You must have known what you were doing was wrong.

AT: In your book, perhaps. Not in mine.

TH: Why didn’t you say something to the police after Camilla was arrested? You perjured yourself at that trial –

AT: I know. But remember how young the child was at that stage – barely five. He’d have been taken from them. My job wasn’t the only thing at stake.

AF: All the same –

AT: I would have done, OK? I would have said something. If she’d been acquitted, I’d have said something. But she wasn’t, was she? Justice was done. No one knew that better than me.

TH: And since then?

AT: What do you mean, since then?

TH: What have you done since then?

AT: [apparently at a loss]

I’m not sure I understand what you’re getting at.

TH: Have you stayed in touch with the Seidlers? Kept tabs on the case?

AT: Of course not – that would be far too dangerous, both for them and for me. And in any case, I’ve done everything I possibly can to forget the whole thing.

TH: [silence]

But that’s not strictly true, is it?

AT: I don’t know what you mean.

TH: I’ve been spending a lot of time in true-crime chat rooms lately, looking at what people say about this case. The theories they have, what they think really happened.

AT: So?

TH: So, I think you’ve been doing the same. There was one name that kept coming up – one person who’s been talking about this case on a regular basis ever since that Netflix documentary. Always taking the same line, always insisting that Camilla Rowan got what she deserved. The user’s name is ‘AllieCatz76’. It never occurred to me till now, but as soon as you make the connection it’s blindingly obvious. It’s you, isn’t it? AllieCatz – Alison Toms. And you were born in 1976.

AF: Is that true, Ms Toms?

AT: [silence]

TH: I can only imagine how horrified you were when John Penrose started suggesting Camilla could be innocent. No wonder you wanted to do what little you could to redress the balance. To make sure she stayed where she was.

AT: [silence]

AF: Alison Toms, I am arresting you on suspicion of child abduction. You do not have to say anything –

[Door opens and DC Sargent enters]

CS: I’m sorry to interrupt, sir, but we’ve had a call – I think it’s important –

AF: Really?

CS: Yes, I think so.

AF: [getting to his feet]

DC Hansen, could you continue, please.

TH: Ms Toms, you do not have to say anything, but it may harm your defence if you do not mention when questioned something which you later rely on in court. Anything you do say may be given in evidence.

[DI Fawley exits the room]

TH: Would you like to speak to a lawyer now, Ms Toms?

AT: Yes. I think that’s probably a good idea.

TH: Interview terminated at 11.26.

* * *

23rd December 1997, 5.25 p.m.

116 Ruskin Road, Edgbaston, Birmingham

‘Allie? What are you doing here?’

The porch lamp above his head throws long shadows down his face, making him look even more gaunt. He’s lost so much weight in the last few weeks.

She steps forward, into the light, and his face changes. Confusion, apprehension, disbelief –

‘What on earth –’

The baby is mewling now. He’s cold and hungry and needs changing, but she didn’t dare stop on the way to get him anything – she couldn’t run the risk.

She gathers the child, feels his weight, then steps forward. ‘Take him.’

‘But –’

‘Take him – please – before I change my mind.’

He reaches out and lifts the child gently into his arms. And the tenderness of that gesture, the unconditional acceptance, despite the shock and the filthy blanket and the smell of sick and urine, is enough. She no longer doubts what she has done.

She starts to back away down the path. ‘Don’t tell Renee. About me.’

He frowns. ‘But I have to say something –’

‘Just say you rescued him. And you have. Believe me. You’ve rescued him.’

* * *

Richard Swann watches the two policemen walk up the garden towards the house. They’ve been down there for what seems like hours. But it was only a matter of time, once they’d found the manhole; he knew the game was up. It was a miracle they didn’t find it the first time. The taller officer, the sergeant, is talking on his phone, and the younger one has a large evidence bag – a bag he’s holding as far away from himself as he possibly can. As they near the house the sergeant looks up and stares straight at Swann. Their eyes lock, just for a moment, then Swann bows his head and turns away.

* * *

Adam Fawley

29 October

11.30

‘What the hell is it, Sargent?’

OK, that sounds a bit tetchy. My bad. It’s just that ‘no interruptions’ is Interviewing 101 – a rule you just don’t break –

She flushes. ‘I’m sorry, sir, it’s just that we’ve had a call from Heathside. Camilla Rowan’s release has been brought forward. I thought you’d want to know –’

‘When?’

‘Later today –’

There’ll be time to apologize to Sargent later – time to commend her for taking the initiative – but not right now. Right now I have other priorities.

I drag my phone out of my pocket and fumble to find the Heathside number.

‘Victoria Winfield, please. DI Adam Fawley. She’ll know who I am.’

I turn to Sargent. ‘Get on to Surrey police – tell them to get someone over to the prison – they’ll get there quicker than we will.’

She nods. ‘Right, sir.’

‘And when you’ve done that, find DS Gislingham and DS Quinn and tell them what you told me.’

There’s someone on the other end now.

‘Is that the governor’s office? I need to speak to her. Yes, it is bloody urgent and no, I don’t care if she is in a meeting, just get her. Right now.’

* * *

The object in the evidence bag is coated in thick brown slop. ‘Like chocolate sauce,’ Puttergill had quipped when Tull finally dragged it out. But it doesn’t smell like chocolate sauce, and in here, with the windows closed, it’s near-nigh unbearable.

Richard Swann is standing on the other side of the table. He didn’t say anything when he came to answer the back door, and he hasn’t said anything since. He’s just staring down at the bag.

‘I assume you know what this is, Mr Swann?’

The old man flickers a look at them but that’s all they get.

‘It’s the backpack your intruder was carrying. When you shot him.’

Still nothing. Barnetson and Puttergill exchange a glance, then the sergeant reaches for the backpack and starts to unfasten it. Not for the first time, he gives thanks for the sturdiness of forensic gloves. The zip sticks once or twice, but – hallelujah – the inside is almost clean.

Passport, wallet, keys. Everything they expected to find.

And something they didn’t.

* * *

Cathy Doyle is only three months out of prison officer training, and days like this are making her wonder whether this job is really a keeper, after all. First Sullivan throwing her (frankly, considerable) weight around, and now the bloody police. Two of them. The bloke looks quite nice, but the woman he’s got with him just looks bored out of her brain. Perhaps she’s regretting her career choices too.

‘As I explained,’ says the male officer, ‘we’ve had a call from Thames Valley re Camilla Rowan –’

‘And as I explained,’ says Doyle, ‘there’s nothing I can do –’

‘What’s going on?’

Even without turning, Doyle knows that voice. What’s the governor doing down here? She hardly makes a habit of waving prisoners off at the gates, so why today, of all shitty days? Doyle takes a deep breath and turns round.

‘Doyle, isn’t it?’ says Winfield, with a frown.

Doyle is about to reply, when the police officer steps in. ‘PC Hugh Tomlinson, Surrey Police, Governor. As I was explaining to your colleague, we’ve had a call from Thames Valley –’

‘I know,’ says the governor quickly. ‘I’ve had one too. That’s why I’m here. Apparently we need to put a temporary hold on Camilla Rowan’s release – I gather TVP are talking to the MoJ as we speak.’

‘I’m sorry, ma’am,’ says Doyle, ‘but it’s too late – Rowan left half an hour ago.’

The governor’s frown deepens. ‘Left? What do you mean, left?’

Doyle’s shit day is clearly about to get a whole lot shittier. She feels herself going red, even though none of this crap has anything to do with her.

‘I know the email said noon, ma’am, but Officer Sullivan said she’d handle it before she went off shift.’

And ‘handle it’ was the operative phrase, thinks Doyle. That full search that even Doyle knows was totally unnecessary. The two of them giving each other furtive looks when they thought Doyle wasn’t watching. But they’re not fooling anyone – the whole bloody prison must know by now. Except, by the looks of it, the governor.

‘I’m sorry, ma’am, but given it was only an hour or so early I didn’t think it would make much difference, and Officer Sullivan kept saying we needed to do it before the press started turning up –’

‘Where is Officer Sullivan now?’

‘Like I said, ma’am, she went off shift.’

‘Can I see the release form, please.’

Doyle hands her the sheet of paper; even the bored policewoman looks interested now. ‘Rowan’s been given a hostel place in Dorking – she said she was going straight there –’

‘Call them, please. Now.’

She can feel the three of them staring at her as she finds the number. As if she’s the one who fucked up – frankly, even if she had tried to stop Sullivan she wouldn’t have got anywhere, there’s never any reasoning with her when she’s in that mood –

‘Hello – HMP Heathside here – just checking that prisoner Rowan has arrived as scheduled? Ah, I see. Could you call us when she does? No, no cause for alarm.’

Though as she finishes the call it’s clear that last bit was rather wide of the mark, judging by the looks she’s now getting.

‘So we have no idea where she is?’ says Tomlinson.

Winfield glances at him, then down at the release form. ‘She has an appointment with her probation officer at three fifteen – she’ll have to attend for that or she’ll be recalled.’

Tomlinson makes a face. ‘It’s a long time till three fifteen –’

‘I am aware of that,’ snaps Winfield.

‘Actually, ma’am,’ begins Doyle, not sure at all if this is a good idea, ‘it might be worth trying Officer Sullivan –’

‘I thought you said she’d gone off shift?’

Doyle feels herself going red again. Like she’s a kid in the playground crapping herself about snitching on the school bully. ‘No, I mean, she may know where Rowan is.’

The governor is frowning but Tomlinson’s sharp; he’s got there already. ‘They were an item, those two?’

Doyle nods. ‘I think it’s been going on a while.’

The governor is the one flushing now, dark-red blotches creeping up her neck. She turns to the officers. ‘I suggest you accompany me to my office,’ she says briskly, ‘and I’ll get you Sullivan’s home address.’

They head off down the corridor but, just as they reach the stairs, Winfield turns back and nods.

‘Well done, Doyle. That was the right call.’

Doyle allows herself a small smile at the governor’s retreating back. Seems today is not quite so shit, after all.

* * *

Adam Fawley

29 October

12.30

I really don’t want to be standing as near as this to Ian Barnetson. Even the other side of the table is way too close. It’s hardly his fault; in fact, he deserves props for quick thinking. We might never have found this stuff otherwise. But, Christ, he smells.

Quinn’s actually holding his nose and even Gis is looking a touch bilious, though Nina Mukerjee doesn’t seem that bothered. But I guess liquid excrement is all in a day’s work for her. And unlike the rest of us, she has a mask.

‘It’s all in miraculously good condition,’ she says, looking up at Barnetson. ‘Considering it’s been underwater for over a week.’

He nods. ‘The backpack was good quality – kept most of the shit out. We’ve entered the wallet and the rest in evidence, but I thought these were best left to you.’

Mukerjee’s eyes give little away behind her mask. She nods and reaches for the evidence bags.

* * *

It’s a small 1970s block on the outskirts of Claygate. Red brick, windows a shade too small, balconies that say more than a census about the people inside: an orange space hopper and a tricycle on one, assorted plastic plant pots crowding out a single garden chair on the next, a washing line strung with running gear on the top storey, a tattered pro-EU banner draped across the railings.

‘Andrea Sullivan lives at number three,’ says PC Tomlinson, ‘which by my reckoning should be on the ground floor.’

‘You don’t say,’ mutters his colleague.

‘Come on, Malloy,’ he says, with just a touch of irritation, ‘this is what qualifies as interesting, in this job. This woman, Rowan, she’s all over the papers.’

That’s as may be, thinks Malloy, as she follows him towards the entrance, but I reckon the chances of her actually being here are approximately zero. If she’s doing a runner, she’s long gone.

They push through the heavy main door, which opens with a wrenching squeal, then go down the corridor to the third door. A brass number, a sign saying no junk mail, no hawkers. There’s no sound from inside.

Tomlinson raps on the door. ‘Surrey Police, Ms Sullivan. Can you come to the door, please.’

They can hear voices from somewhere above their heads, the sound of steps on the concrete stairs. But nothing inside.

Tomlinson tries again, louder now. Still nothing. Malloy has the jaded face of the cynic who’s rarely wrong.

‘OK,’ says Tomlinson. ‘You stay here, I’m going to check outside – see if I can find her car.’

* * *

Adam Fawley

29 October

12.33

Mukerjee opens out the two letters and lays them flat on the table. They’re stained, and still a little damp, but they’re both legible. One’s a thick textured sheet of notepaper with a lawyer’s comps slip still clipped to the top: Brockman Fells LLP, and a New York address. The writing on the sheet underneath is shaky and irregular, as if completed at several attempts. One word at the bottom: ‘Dad’. The other letter is handwritten too, this one on cheap lined stationery. And even without the standard wording at the top, I know where this one came from. I’ve seen paper like that before. I bend to read the first, then gesture to Quinn and Gis to do the same. A moment later Quinn looks up.

‘So the social worker was telling the truth.’

I nod. ‘Not that I ever doubted it. She had no reason to lie.’

Gis takes a deep breath. ‘But it’s not just that, is it?’