The Mammoth Book of Best British Mysteries 6

THE STOLEN CHILD by Brian McGilloway

The cry, when it came, was not what she had expected. For five months she had sat, night after night, her legs gathered beneath her on the sofa, the baby monitor resting on the arm of her chair, waiting, hoping to hear a cry. But, what she heard was not so much a cry as a ghost of a cry, like an echo without a source, its presence confirmed more by the flickering of the lights on the monitor than the tinny sound it produced. It was enough, certainly, to make her shiver involuntarily, to rub the goose-bumped skin of her arm with her palm. The second cry, though, was stronger, building in intensity then cutting short with a strangled yelp.

Thoughts tumbling, Karen stumbled to the foot of our stairs, staring up at the nursery door, willing herself to go up. Gripping the banister rail with whitened knuckles, she attempted to lift her foot onto the first step, but her legs weakened and she staggered. The floor seemed to shift beneath her and she had to grab the other banister rail in order to lower herself onto the step. It was there that she was sitting, her face bleary with tears when I got in from work later.

“What’s wrong?” I asked.

“I heard a baby crying. In the monitor. Will you check?” she urged. “I can’t go up; it might be Michael.”

I took the stairs two at a time, opened the nursery door and flicked on the light, but the room was quiet. A teddy bear had fallen off the dresser and lay on the floor, face down. I picked it up, smelt the newness of its fur.

“Is everything ok?” she called up, her mouth a tight white line.

“Fine,” I muttered, closing the door behind me.

She looked at me quizzically. “You don’t believe me, do you?” she said. “I did hear it. He cried so hard. Why would he cry so hard?”

I stared at her, but could think of nothing adequate to say.

“There was a cry,” she said, one week later. “I know you don’t believe me but I did hear a child. And I don’t think it was Michael.”

“I know it wasn’t Michael,” I replied.

“Where did it come from?” She looked at me pleadingly.

“There must be a simple reason for it,” I suggested. “I’ll find out.”

I dug out the box for the baby monitor on which was a help line number.

“Can I help you?” The voice was female, English, young.

“We have your monitor system,” I explained. “My wife heard a baby cry in it.”

A pause. “Is that not what the monitor is meant to do?”

“Yes. Sorry. I understand,” I said, a little flustered. “It wasn’t our baby. She heard someone else’s baby crying through our monitor.”

“Are you sure it wasn’t your own child?”

“Certain.”

“It could be that someone else in your street has the same monitor as you. If they are operating on the same frequency, you’ll hear their baby and they’ll hear yours.”

“I see,” I said.

“Can I help you with anything else today, sir?” English asked.

“I’m afraid not.”

One week later, Karen was sobbing when I came home, her arms gathered around her, her left hand at her mouth, her small teeth worrying her thumbnail.

“He’s been crying all night,” she whispered. “It’s Michael. He needs me.”

As I opened my mouth to speak, the monitor crackled with static. The lights registered the sound briefly, and subsided. But, when the crying started, there could be no doubt. It developed from a raw scream into coughing sobs, as if the child was tiring. But no one responded to its cries.

Karen, initially elated with vindication, began to cry. “Make it stop,” she said balling her fists against the side of her head. “Do something.”

I followed the curve of our street, pausing outside each house, straining to hear a child crying. At the second-last house, I believed that I did. I rang the doorbell. Through the door’s frosted glass I could see a figure move into the hallway, then retreat back into the room from which he had come. I heard something slam. Heard a cry seconds later.

But the cry was from the wrong direction. Karen was out of our house.

“I heard it,” she shrieked. “I heard it being killed.” “What?”

“The baby was crying. I heard a smack and it stopped,” she screamed. “You let it be killed.” She pulled back from me. “You let him be killed,” she repeated, then spat in my face.

The police officer squeezed into our armchair. “Devlin,” he’d said, by way of introduction.

“And it couldn’t have been your own child?” Devlin asked after listening to Karen’s story. “No,” she said.

“Where is your child?” he said, glancing around the room. “He’s Michael,” Karen answered.

“Can I see him, please?” he asked, putting down his notebook.

“No,” Karen said.

“I’d like to see your child, Ma’am.”

“You can’t, Inspector,” I replied, moving to my wife. “You see we… we don’t… we don’t actually have a child.”

Devlin returned a few moments later, having walked down to the house where I had heard the baby crying. I stood out on our pathway as we spoke, out of earshot of Karen, my hands in my pockets.

“Anything?” I asked him.

He shook his head.

“Did you check?”

He hesitated, glancing towards our doorway to check that Karen wasn’t listening. “I can’t check someone’s house on the word of your wife. I mean no disrespect, but she needs help.”

“She getting all the help she needs,” I said, defensively.

“It’s not working,” he replied. He stared at me a moment, as if deciding something. “What happened to her?”

So I told him about Michael. I told him about how he died at birth. I told him about Karen’s therapy, how she had set up the nursery as if Michael was alive, how she sat with the baby monitor we’d bought, hoping some night to hear her son. I told him everything because he was the first person in five months to ask. Because it’s the woman who’s affected in these things. Not the father. But then, I’m not a father.

Devlin considered all I said. “Do you know your neighbour up there?” he asked finally.

I shook my head.

“I do,” Devlin said. “Trevor Conlon. Collects old clothes for charities.” He fished in his jacket pocket and handed me a folded green flier. “Funnily enough,” he continued, “he also runs a second-hand retro clothes shop. He has no children.” He paused. “None of his own, anyway.”

The phantom child slept in our bed, with us, alongside our dead son, Michael, whose presence was never more physical than that night, when he filled the space between us.

At dawn I sat in the kitchen, staring out at the grey pall of rain that hung over the city, misting the windows, clinging to the red brick of the houses opposite. I read the charity flier Devlin had given me. Clothes Wanted. Will collect. No donation too small. What had the policeman said? “He has no children.” Yet I had heard the child crying; it wasn’t just Karen’s imagination. There was a child in that house, looking for someone. Looking to be found.

I phoned the number on the flier just after nine o’clock. The man who answered sounded groggy. I told him I had a donation to make; suggested he call after eight that evening, gave an address far enough away to keep him out of his house for a good half hour. Long enough for me to search his house myself.

I watched his van leave at seven forty five, then went down the alley behind our houses, and climbed over his back wall. His house was like my own. A sash window at the back, the clasp so loose a bank card could flick it open. I slid the window up, the blistered paint flaking off on my hands. I stepped down into his sitting room. Black bags lined one wall. The settee was covered with clothes, labelled and priced.

To my right, the kitchen, dishes piled on the white work top, beer cans, bent doubled on the floor.

I crept out into the hallway and listened. The house sounded empty.

The staircase seemed to creak louder the more carefully I trod. The bathroom faced me at the top of the stairs, a toilet roll tube lying on the floor. There were no toys in the bath, no small tooth brushes in the scum-stained glass on the sink.

The other two rooms were likewise empty – no children, no toys, or clothes. One room was being used as a store. The other was the main bedroom. A duvet lay gathered on the floor, beside it an ashtray spilt butts onto the carpet.

The next set of stairs led to the attic room, filled with junk. The curtains were drawn, but the windows so dirty, the light from the street lamps made little difference. I scanned the room quickly. It was only when I turned to leave that I heard the soft thumping. It seemed to be coming from the cupboard. My stomach flipped as I approached the door, hand out. Hesitated. Opened the door.

The child had black hair. His blue eyes were wide, his mouth covered with brown parcel tape, a slit cut in the middle to allow him to breath. He looked up at me in terror. He kicked his foot against the bottom of the cardboard box in which he had been placed. It thumped softly against the inside of the wardrobe. He was the length of my forearm, maybe four or five months old. He reached out his arms to me, his small fists balled as I lifted him.

At that moment the door downstairs slammed shut, the window in the attic room shuddering with the force. I heard Conlon swearing as his footsteps thudded on the stairs. I tried to crouch down, hide behind the piles of lumber, but the child in my arms was squirming now, kicking to be free. He cried lightly; the sounds stopped below and I heard Conlon come to the stairs leading up to us.

“Who’s up there?” he shouted. I imagined his foot on the step. I heard thudding and it took me a moment to realize it was someone banging on the front door.

Conlon didn’t move for a second. More banging at the door, insistent. Finally I heard his footfalls as they retreated down the hallway.

I listened to the muffled conversation beneath us. Momentarily I heard someone mount the stairs.

“Just to keep you happy, Trevor,” a voice I recognized said. The policeman – Devlin. His bulk appeared in the doorway for a second.

“All empty,” he called without looking in.

Several minutes later I heard them leaving the house.

Weeks later we were at Sunday Mass. Afterwards, Karen stopped to light a candle for Michael, our stolen child. In the porchway I met Devlin again. He was waiting for us, a plastic bag in his hand.

“I saw you in there,” he said. “Thought you might be interested. We got a tip off a week or two ago. Saw someone breaking into your neighbour Conlon’s house. When we arrived, we arrested him labelling clothes from charity bags for his shop. He claimed there was someone in his house. When we went back later, we found birth certificates for a number of children. Turns out Trevor’s been smuggling children into Ireland for illegal adoption.”

Karen and I looked at him. He paused, as if waiting for us to speak, before continuing. “He brought in five children in all. We’ve traced four. One seems to have vanished.”

I had to swallow several times, before speaking. “What happened to him?”

“Well, I hope whoever has him will look after him a hell of a lot better than Conlon did. Or than the state would. Maybe he’ll be lucky.”

Karen placed her hand on my arm. “We need to go.”

Devlin nodded. “I understand.” He turned to leave, then faced us again. “I almost forgot,” he said, taking a small teddy bear from the plastic bag he was carrying. “I picked up this for your wee boy. Michael’s his name, isn’t that right?”

I could not respond. Karen, however, replied in a clear voice. “No. Paul’s his name. After his father.”

“Of course,” Devlin said, leaning into the pram. He placed the toy beside the sleeping child, rubbed his index finger against the child’s cheek. “You be sure to spoil him, now.” He straightened up, smiled mildly, scrunched the empty plastic bag into a ball which he stuffed into his coat pocket and walked away from us. He did not look back.

As Karen fixed Paul’s blanket, I dipped my finger into the water font and said a prayer to Michael. I prayed he would not mind our taking our second chance. I prayed he would not resent Paul’s place with us. I promised him that he still owned a piece of my heart that would never stop being his.

Then I stepped out into the sunlight with the rest of my family.