Tangled Web

Two

THREE DAYS LATER

For a big man, Chief Inspector Alan Davies could appear disarmingly tender and considerate. His voice dropped to a whisper and he clasped his hands in front of him as he leaned forward solicitously in his chair. He was in John and Lucy Palmer’s living room, sitting opposite them on the floral patterned couch that filled the window alcove. The fourth person in the room, Detective Sergeant Walters, sat away from the other three, on a dining room chair by the door. He watched the proceedings, notebook in hand but held discreetly out of sight for the time being in deference to the ambience of sympathy and understanding being fostered by his superior officer.

‘What more is there to tell?’ said John Palmer, letting go of his wife’s hand to spread his own in a gesture of bewilderment. ‘You must know absolutely everything there is to know about us by now. We’d been married for eight years and there wasn’t a day when we didn’t hope for a child of our own.’ He took hold of his wife’s hand again and kissed it gently before continuing. He did it in an unselfconscious way, suggesting that it was nothing out of the ordinary. ‘Then quite suddenly, out of the blue, Lucy fell pregnant with Ann-Marie and it seemed like a dream come true. All our prayers were answered; a real true-to-life miracle had happened. Sounds soppy but that’s the way it was.’

‘This was after you were referred to Professor Thomas’s clinic at Caernarfon General?’

‘Yes. We’d tried everything else. The doctors had just about given up on us: they kept trying to persuade us to consider adoption when Professor Thomas said he’d like to try out a new IVF technique.’

‘What kind of new technique?’

Palmer gave Davies a look that suggested it was really none of his business but he scratched his head and answered anyway. ‘It’s actually a modification to the standard in vitro fertilisation method called ICSI — that stands for, intra-cytoplasmic sperm injection. Instead of just mixing sperm and ova in a test tube and hoping for the best, the doctor actually picks up a single sperm in a very fine needle and injects it into an ovum. Then the fertilised egg is implanted in the mother’s womb.’

Davies shook his head and smiled. ‘Amazing what they can do these days,’ he said.

‘Professor Thomas warned us that there were risks attached to the technique and it was something they wouldn’t use for everyone, but they still felt it was safe and they were keen to try it for particularly difficult cases: we certainly qualified on that score — or rather, I did.’

Davies noticed Lucy give her husband’s arm a little rub, a simple gesture of support. He patted her hand in return.

‘Didn’t you have any qualms at all about the risks?’ asked Davies.

‘Not really,’ shrugged Palmer, looking at his wife who gave a slight shake of the head. ‘We were desperate, Chief Inspector. We were willing to try anything to have a child of our own.’

Davies nodded understandingly and said, ‘And it paid off in the end. You finally fell pregnant, Mrs Palmer.’

Lucy Palmer smiled distantly. ‘It was the best day of my life,’ she said, obviously remembering it with pleasure. ‘When the professor told me the implant had taken and I was going to have a baby I felt so happy I almost burst with pride. I wanted to tell everyone. I wanted to stand on street corners and shout out the news. I wanted everyone in the world to feel that good.’ As the memory faded and reality started to reassert itself, Lucy’s smile disappeared and emotion threatened to overwhelm her. John put his arm round her shoulders and hugged her to him, whispering reassurance in her ear.

‘Would you say it was an uneventful pregnancy, Mrs Palmer?’

John Palmer furrowed his brow at the question and interrupted, ‘I’m sorry, Chief Inspector, but I really don’t see the relevance of the details of Lucy’s pregnancy to our daughter’s disappearance.’

‘If you’ll just bear with me, sir.’

Lucy shrugged her shoulders and said, ‘There were a couple of scares along the way when I thought I might lose the baby, a bit of bleeding around three months but nothing too out of the ordinary, I don’t think.’

‘Morning sickness? Cravings for strange food?’

‘Look, Chief Inspector, I really must...’

Davies held up his hand without breaking eye contact with Lucy. Palmer stopped his protest.

‘I was sick and yes I did develop a liking for beetroot sandwiches and tuna with jam somewhere along the way but I fail to see what this has to do with Anne-Marie’s kidnapping. Why are you asking these questions, Inspector?’ said Lucy becoming agitated.

Davies appeared to remain deep in thought for a moment then he smiled and said, ‘I’m just trying to get an idea of how you felt about your baby while you were you carrying her, Mrs Palmer.’

An uneasy silence fell on the room. It seemed to go on for ever until Lucy asked slowly and coldly, ‘How I felt about my baby, Inspector? How d’you think I felt about her? How does any mother fell about her baby when she’s carrying it? She was the most precious thing in the world; I loved her completely, as I do now.’

Davies held up his palms in a gesture of appeasement and apologised. ‘Of course, I’m sorry, I probably put it badly. ‘It’s just that sometimes pregnancy brings about changes in a woman. Unaccountable psychological changes.’

The Palmers looked puzzled.

‘Feelings of resentment are not unknown, even... hatred in some cases,’ said Davies. His eyes never left the Palmers.

‘There has never been a moment when I hated my daughter, Inspector,’ said Lucy flatly.

‘I see,’ said Davies, quietly. ‘So Ann-Marie was born three months ago on December the fourteenth at Caernarfon General?’

‘Yes.’

‘But very badly deformed.’

John Palmer winced and rubbed nervously at his forehead at Davies’s summation. Lucy looked down at the floor, unwilling to have her emotions scrutinised. The words hung in the air like a dark challenge.

‘Our baby is disabled, Chief Inspector. She was left without legs after surgical measures necessary to save her life. Now, where is all this leading, may I ask?’ said John Palmer when he’d recovered his composure. The tone of his voice suggested he was struggling to remain civil.

‘No legs,’ said Davies with a slow shake of the head. ‘Poor mite didn’t have much of a future to look forward to.’

‘Nonsense! And what on Earth has our daughter’s future got to do with you investigating her kidnap?’ demanded Palmer.

Davies ignored the question and pressed on. ‘Her deformation was such that you, Mrs Palmer, completely rejected her when she was born, I understand.’

Lucy buried her face in her hands and started sobbing. John put his arm round her and said through gritted teeth, ‘We were both very upset at the time: it came as a complete shock. We had absolutely no warning that anything was amiss with Anne-Marie.’

‘I thought medical science could predict just about everything these days,’ said Davies sourly.

‘Foetal monitoring failed to pick up the problem with her leg bones.’

‘I see, sir.’

‘You can appreciate, I’m sure, that it took us a little time to come to terms with Ann-Marie’s condition, but that’s all we needed... just a little time. I think that would be the case for most people in similar circumstances, don’t you?’

‘All the same, I was given to understand that you refused to have anything to do with your daughter after she was born, Mrs Palmer?’ said Davies. ‘Is that correct? You were quite adamant that you were not going to look after her? In fact, you insisted that the nursing staff take her away. “Get her out of my sight,” were the words you used.’

‘For God’s sake man, why are you doing this to us at a time like this?’ exclaimed John Palmer angrily. ‘I’ve already told you we were both very upset. It was a tremendous shock to both of us. We needed time to come to terms with it.’

‘“It”, Sir’

‘The situation,’ retorted Palmer angrily. ‘How many times must I say it? We were upset. We needed help and we got it.’

‘Go on, sir.’

Palmer took a deep breath as if reluctant to say any more but in the end he continued, ‘The people at the clinic were very understanding and the nurses were kindness itself. Lucy underwent a course of counselling, which did her the world of good, and Professor Thomas put us in touch with a support organisation, which was — and is run by wonderful people. They’re the kind of people who restore your faith in human nature and make you feel quite inadequate by comparison. Professor Thomas also arranged for us to contact parents in the same situation as ourselves so we didn’t feel so alone. We came to terms with our daughter’s condition quite quickly, Chief Inspector: we stopped seeing her as being disabled. She’s now just our Ann-Marie and we love her very much.’

Davies took a few moments to digest what he’d been told then asked, ‘What sort of person would you say has kidnapped your child, sir?’

Palmer became angry. ‘How the hell should I know?’ he exclaimed. ‘That’s your job, isn’t it? Why aren’t you out there trying to find out instead of sitting here on your backside asking us damn fool questions?’

Davies remained impassive and Palmer, unhappy with the ensuing silence, added, ‘It’s usually some sort of woman with a problem, isn’t it? Someone who has lost her own child... something like that.’

‘So you wouldn’t expect a ransom demand then?’

‘A ransom demand?’ exclaimed Palmer. ‘We’re not rich people and nothing about us suggests that we are. No one in their right mind would think of kidnapping our baby for money.’

‘You’re not even a bank manager,’ said Davies.

Palmer looked puzzled.

Davies explained, ‘You’re not in a position to give kidnappers access to other people’s money.’

‘I’m a science teacher for God’s sake; I earn twenty-two thousand pounds a year. I’ve got a fifty-thousand-pound mortgage and a bank loan for a three-year-old car.’

‘And you, Mrs Palmer?’

‘I was a teacher too until I gave up work after the birth of my daughter. I taught modern studies.’

Davies smiled. ‘Didn’t have that in my schooldays. Still, I don’t suppose it involves earning large sums of money.’

‘Of course not,’ snapped Lucy.

‘So, as you said, Mr Palmer, no one in their right mind would want to kidnap your daughter...’

‘For money,’ added Palmer.

‘What about any other reason?’

‘What are you getting at now?’ John Palmer was reaching the end of his tether.

‘She is badly disabled’

‘So what? Why are we discussing the feasibility of it all when our daughter already has been kidnapped? She’s been gone three days and we are climbing the walls with worry.’

‘Indeed sir,’ said Davies slowly and deliberately.

‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

Davies screwed up his face as if wrestling with some conundrum. ‘You see, sir, I have a problem with all of this,’ he said. ‘No disrespect, but for the life of me I can’t understand why anyone would want to steal a deformed infant.’

‘How dare you!’ stormed Lucy.

Davies looked surprised. ‘I simply meant that she would be readily identifiable wherever she was taken, Mrs Palmer.’

‘For God’s sake, man, why are you persisting with this? The motivation doesn’t matter. Someone has taken Anne-Marie — now will you please do something about getting her back?’

Davies looked down at his feet for a few moments before saying, ‘I fear that may not be possible, sir.’

An awful silence fell on the room before Palmer asked in quiet trepidation, ‘What do you mean, not possible?’

Davies looked him straight in the eye and said with sudden, chilling coldness, ‘Because I think she’s already dead, sir and I think that you and your wife are responsible for her death. I think you found the prospect of bringing up a severely handicapped child just too much and took matters into your own hands. You came up with your own solution to the problem.’

‘This is outrageous!’ exclaimed John Palmer in a barely audible whisper. Lucy’s eyes opened wide in disbelief at what Davies had said. She tried to find words but none came out. She was dumbstruck with horror.

Davies brought out a folded document from his inside pocket and announced, ‘I have here a warrant to search your house and its environs.’ He turned to DS Walters and nodded; the sergeant got up and left the room. The following silence only lasted for a few moments before Walters opened the front door and the sound of voices filled the hall as instructions were given to a police search team.

The words, ‘no stone unturned’ seemed to detach themselves from the general clamour to drift into the room and break the spell.

John Palmer got to his feet. ‘Crazy, crazy, crazy,’ he complained as he started to pace up and down and make gestures of hopelessness with his hands. Lucy maintained a steady sad gaze into the middle distance as if the last few minutes had been too much for her and her brain was refusing to acknowledge what was going on around her. The policewoman who had been detailed to look after her since Anne-Marie’s disappearance had come back into the room at Davies’s request but her attitude had changed; she remained standing and at a discreet distance.

Outside the sound of a heavy engine starting up made Palmer stop pacing and go over to look out of the window. A yellow JCB digger stood at the entrance to the short drive leading up to their house; its driver was talking to two policemen. Palmer turned questioningly to Davies. ‘What the hell?’

‘The garden too,’ said Davies without emotion.

Palmer’s eyes were tortured pools of disbelief as the digger lurched forward, its huge wheels cracking several of the concrete slabs where he hadn’t used enough bedding sand when he’d laid them during the previous summer. It made its way round the side of the house, lowering its shovel as it went and filling the air with blue exhaust fumes.

Time passed slowly as John and Lucy Palmer huddled together on the couch in their own private hell while strangers ransacked their house and destroyed their garden. Words had ceased to be of any use; they sat in disbelieving silence even as junior officers started to come into the room and make their reports to Davies.

‘Nothing upstairs, sir.’

‘Loft clear, sir.’

‘Nothing in the cellar, sir.’

The continual series of negatives gradually got through to John Palmer. After the third he found the confidence to look at Davies with ill-disguised contempt and said, ‘Now will you get your damned circus out of our house and leave us alone?’

‘All in good time, sir,’ replied Davies automatically and without emotion.

A few minutes later a police constable, wearing dark blue overalls and Wellington boots entered the room with scant regard for the carpets he was trailing mud over. ‘Can I have a word sir?’

Davies left the room and was gone for fully ten minutes. When he returned he stood directly in front of the Palmers and announced, ‘It’s over: we’ve found her.’

‘Don’t be ridiculous! How can you have? You’re lying,’ said John Palmer springing to his feet.

Lucy Palmer suddenly screamed and made a headlong dash to the door, bursting out of the room past the startled constable who made a late grab for her but missed.

‘Stop her!’ cried Davies but she ran round the back of the house to where canvas screens were now being erected around an excavated section of the garden about twenty metres back from the house. Two police officers stepped forward to restrain her but not before she got a good look at what lay in the shallow pit. There was a moment when all of them seemed to freeze like a tableau before Lucy let out a scream that tore at the nerves of all present. She collapsed unconscious on to the wet grass at the feet of the officers.

Davies and John Palmer reached the scene and it was Palmer’s turn to see what lay there. He was left to stare down at the tiny little legless corpse lying in the mud between the Wellington boots of the officer who had dropped down into the hole to reach it. He shook his head slowly as if unwilling to believe what he was seeing. His eyes didn’t blink and he seemed oblivious to everything around him, even his wife’s unconscious condition, leaving her welfare entirely to the policewoman who was kneeling beside her, loosening her clothing and trying to bring her round.

Palmer didn’t appear to hear the murmured angry comments of the police search team as he moved closer to the edge of the hole and squatted down on his haunches. Davies warned his officers off with a glance. When he judged the time to be right he asked the policewoman if Lucy Palmer was going to be fit to caution in the near future.

John Palmer interrupted her reply. ‘No,’ he said, turning to look at Davies directly. ‘Leave Lucy out of this, she had nothing to do with it. It was me, I did it. I’m sorry, I just couldn’t cope any longer.’

As two police officers took hold of his arms John Palmer looked down into the grave and said sadly, ‘I’m so sorry, my darling.’

Lucy Palmer was still unconscious as he was led away.

‘Well, what d’you make of that?’ Davies asked his sergeant as they drove back to the station.

‘Bloody unsatisfying,’ Walters replied.

‘You’re kidding — we’ve just cleared up a murder.’

‘But it’s just a mess, isn’t it sir. I mean it’s not like catching a real murderer, is it?’

‘Isn’t it? That’s how the law will see it.’

‘I suppose. Maybe that’s why it feels, like I said, unsatisfying. I feel for them, don’t you? All their prayers were answered; they were so happy and then it all went wrong The baby is born like that and it all ends in tragedy for everybody.’

‘Mark my words, we’re in for an emotional sports day over this one,’ said Davies. ‘The Bible-thumpers, the disabled lobby, the euthanasia mob, they’re all going to start shouting the odds but let’s look on the bright side, boyo, we’ve just cleared up a kidnapping and solved a murder. Not bad for a day’s work, wouldn’t you say?’