No Child of Mine (20 page)

‘Don’t you?’ he prompted.

She nodded.

Raindrops began pattering on the window, and somewhere far in the distance the sound of a siren wailed through the gathering storm. The world was going about its business, fast, furious, totally apart from what was going on in here.

It was the way he wanted it to stay.

He went over it again.

‘A lady is coming to see us. She’ll tell you not to be afraid, that she won’t hurt you, but she will if you tell her certain things. Do you understand?’

Ottilie nodded, an urgency to please making her narrow shoulders shake. Her cardigan was inside out; her Velcro-top trainers were on the wrong feet. Noticing, he quickly sat her on the bed and pulled the shoes off. Ottilie turned her face into the pillow as giant sobs engulfed her.

‘I know it hurts,’ he soothed softly, ‘but the bruises will go soon.’ They were all over her, big purple clouds staining her baby-soft skin from her fall down the stairs. ‘We don’t want anyone to see them, do we?’ he whispered as he eased off her cardigan to put it on the right way
round. ‘We have to keep bruises all covered up until they heal.’

Ottilie was sobbing uncontrollably.

‘Ssh, ssh,’ he murmured, kissing her gently on the head. The bumps didn’t show, they were concealed by her hair. It was lucky nothing had been broken. So lucky, it could stop his heart to think of what might have happened if it had. ‘I’ll go gently now,’ he promised. ‘We just have to put your clothes on the right way, that’s all.’

Ottilie shielded her face with Boots, giving her father one arm at a time and hiding her eyes as he lifted one leg, then the other to refasten her shoes.

When she was straight, Brian sat her up and put a hand to her cheek. No cuts, thank God, just a small bruise beneath her left eye. ‘The lady will ask you questions,’ he told her, ‘and she’ll try very hard to make you say things about me and Mummy, but it’ll be a trick, because if you tell her about our secret games terrible things will happen after and we don’t want that, do we?’

Fear shone in Ottilie’s eyes.

He leaned forward so that his face was very close to hers. ‘No, of course we don’t,’ he said softly. ‘We need to keep you safe and secure so that no one can ever hurt you.’

Ottilie’s body shuddered as she tried to stop crying.

‘She might want to see your room,’ he cautioned, ‘but that’s all right. You can show her your toys and do some writing or drawing for her if you like, but you mustn’t tell her anything about me or the next thing we know she’ll steal your tongue.’

Ottile’s tender pink lips disappeared between her teeth.

‘Now, before I go back to school for the afternoon,’ he went on, ‘I’m going to tell you the story of William, a little boy who didn’t do as he was told. Would you like to hear it?’

Though Ottilie nodded, her eyes were showing uncertainty.

‘Come along then,’ he said, holding out his arms. ‘You can sit on my lap while I tell you all about how the wicked witch, disguised as a good fairy, put William’s hands and feet in the fire and taped up his mouth so he wouldn’t be
able to scream. That was a terrible thing to do to a little boy, wasn’t it? But we’re not going to let that happen to you, are we, my angel?’

Ottilie’s limbs were rigid with fear as she stared down at the floor.

‘No, of course we won’t let it happen to you,’ he murmured, running a hand over her hair. ‘My Ottilie’s a good girl, she always does as Daddy says and that’s why the wicked witch will never be able to get her.’

Erica didn’t hear the front door closing behind Brian; she only knew he’d left when she sensed Ottilie behind her, staring into her back. The power of the child’s eyes was unnatural.

They were in the kitchen. The radio was filling the room with Brahms’s Piano Concerto No. 2. It was dreamy, playful, pumped with pomp and drama, decrescendo-ing to shy, skittish melodies, rising to bold stanzas and wildly important arpeggios. There was joy in the piece; exultation; adventure; danger. A great story was being conjured from a world of sound and imagination. She didn’t want to leave it; it was where she belonged, in a place that had no rain streaking the windows, or wind howling at the door; a place where the telephone never rang, and children didn’t fall down the stairs, or get themselves murdered.

Today, this morning, she’d finally stopped feeling like a person. She was a nothing now, a no one, an entity that had no more substance or form than the voices in her head. They were silent now, but for how long?

She’d heard what he’d said to Ottilie, so she knew that their daughter would remain silent throughout the ordeal at four thirty, and so would she. Silent and meek, eyes lowered, hands folded; a craven, tormented soul trapped in a body that still felt pain.

Focusing on the knife she was holding, she turned it over and over in her hands, watching the light catch in liquid-like spikes, while seeing it plunge and lift, arc and slice in a frenzied sort of ballet, a steel bird of prey going in for the kill.

She looked down as Ottilie moved in beside her. The
child’s head was bowed as she opened a cupboard to take out the plastic beaker she drank from. Her skinny neck, the tiny bumps at the top of her spinal cord were exposed. When she walked away Erica’s eyes drifted to the studio shed at the end of the garden. His studio, his refuge, his private den of iniquity.

Turning around, she watched Ottilie put the beaker on a chair and take a carton of juice from the fridge. ‘Come here,’ she said.

Ottilie looked up, startled and already afraid.

‘I said, come here,’ Erica repeated.

Leaving the fridge door open, and still clutching the juice, Ottilie came to look up at her mother.

Erica met the gaze and saw her daughter’s unease. She knew exactly what she was going to do now, and thinking of Brian, it made her want to laugh. ‘The woman who’s coming later isn’t the wicked witch,’ she told her joyously, ‘she’s the good fairy, an angel even, and if you speak to her in whispers, telling her everything, she’ll make all your wishes come true.’

Ottilie regarded her in confusion.

‘She’s the good fairy,’ Erica growled angrily. ‘Just remember that, all right?’ and grabbing the juice she splashed some into Ottilie’s beaker and thrust it at her.

It was just after four thirty when Alex turned into the Wades’ stony drive and overgrown garden. The blustery day with its sudden downpours and random bursts of sunshine was darkening again, heralding the arrival of another storm. She’d already got drenched to the skin twice today, running to and from the police station with one of her teenagers who’d been giving further evidence against his sadistic uncle.

‘I don’t care what the police do to him in the end,’ he’d stated as she’d driven him back to the residential unit, ‘because I’m going to fucking kill him anyway.’

Now, as Alex parked behind a dark blue Citroën, she was trying to clear her mind of the past few hours, along with all the prejudice she’d sensed building up against Ottilie Wade’s parents, the father in particular. Just because
people didn’t want to cooperate with social services didn’t mean they were guilty of something. In many cases it meant they resented outside interference in their family’s affairs, and she couldn’t blame them for that – provided they were innocent of any crime, naturally. Establishing that could sometimes be one of the most testing parts of her job, for not every case of abuse or neglect was immediately evident. There were far too many harrowing situations she’d come across where the abuser was so clever at covering it up that the crime had gone undetected for years. Maybe if she and her colleagues weren’t so hidebound by red tape and political correctness these cases would be exposed more quickly, but as Tommy often remarked to her, theirs had always been a world in which they were damned if they did and damned if they didn’t, and he couldn’t see it changing any time soon.

However, she wasn’t approaching this visit to the Wades with the negative feeling of being unable to act if she needed to, because there were always steps she could take in any situation, and knowing that Tommy was back today, so at the end of the line ready to give his support if needed, was lending much confidence to her step.

Moments after she rang the bell a slight, balding man in his mid-to-late thirties opened the door, all smiles as if she were a dear friend, and though she couldn’t think where from, she felt sure she recognised him.

‘Ms Lake,’ he said cheerfully, holding out his hand. ‘Brian Wade. Do come in.’

Feeling the clamminess of his palm pressing against hers, and pudginess of his fingers, she stepped into the hall to be greeted by the welcoming aroma of a home-bake. A ruse to throw her off the real scent? Or a genuine, everyday custom in the Wade household? ‘Have we met?’ she asked him as he closed the door. ‘I feel as though I’ve seen you before.’

He gave a self-conscious laugh. ‘Maybe you know me from the school?’ he suggested.

Considering it unlikely, since Kesterly Rise wasn’t in her area, she simply shrugged and shook her head as she followed him along the hall.

‘Through here,’ he directed chirpily. ‘We’re in the sitting room. My wife’s made some tea and scones. I hope you like scones, they’re one of Ottilie’s favourites.’

Doing as she always did when going into a child’s home for the first time, Alex began taking in details of the place in a way the owners – usually parents – would no doubt object to if they knew. However, she wasn’t here to please them, but to gauge everything from Ottilie’s point of view, or with Ottilie’s best interests at heart. So far she wasn’t seeing, hearing, or smelling anything to trouble her. What she was sensing, however, wasn’t great, since Wade’s ingratiating smile was already coming across as false, making her think that he was trying too hard. As she glanced around the large, high-ceilinged sitting room that overlooked the front garden, she was noting its warmth – a coal fire was glowing in the hearth, and its furniture and carpet appeared to be of fairly good quality and condition. No signs of dents in walls, suggesting uncontrolled violence, or stains on carpet or ceiling indicating many other possibilities.

There was a guard in front of the fire, a doll’s house and pram in one corner, a TV tuned to CBeebies, and various toys scattered about the floor. The pictures on the walls were mostly old-fashioned landscapes and still lifes, and the books on the shelves seemed to be mainly reference and classics, apart from an untidy pile of children’s books with the usual battered covers and crayoned-over pages. What she hadn’t spotted yet was a photograph.

Or, more importantly, Ottilie.

‘This is my wife, Erica,’ Wade was saying as he ushered her towards the woman who’d just risen from a wing-back chair.

Mrs Wade turned out to be a good few inches taller than her husband, and was as lean as a ballerina with a posture to match. She was clad entirely in black, and so pale it was as though grief (this was what Alex imagined it to be) had sucked all the blood from her veins. Her sunken eyes, probably once beautiful, conveyed neither warmth nor animosity; they simply seemed to skim across Alex’s as she mumbled a hello, and drifted on again.

Something definitely wasn’t right there.

And what a mismatched pair, at least on the face of it.

‘Please sit down,’ Wade invited, pointing Alex towards the sofa. ‘Will you have a cuppa? It’s ordinary builders’, I’m afraid, but I’m sure we can find something a little more exotic if you prefer.’

‘What you have is fine,’ Alex assured him, picking up a remote control and putting it on the table next to the tray.

Erica reached forward to take it, pointed it at the TV and plunged the room into silence.

‘Ottilie was watching it before you came in,’ Wade explained. ‘She’s rather hooked, I’m afraid, but we do our best to make sure she doesn’t overdo it. Milk and sugar?’

‘Just milk,’ Alex replied. ‘Where is Ottilie?’ she asked mildly.

Wade smiled, and Alex noticed the way one side of his upper lip rose higher than the other.
Where had she seen him before?
‘She’s upstairs preparing a little surprise for you,’ he said in a half-whisper. ‘I’ll go and get her in a moment. I thought it might be easier if we had a little chat first, just the three of us.’

Prepared to play along with the manipulation for the moment, she took the cup he was passing her and smiled a thank you. However, if either he, or his wife, thought she was leaving here without seeing the child, they were going to find out very soon that they were gravely mistaken.

‘Scone?’ Wade offered, thrusting a plateful Alex’s way.

Since they looked delicious, she took one and set it down on the plate that came swiftly behind it.

‘So,’ Wade said brightly, as he settled into an armchair with his own afternoon treat. ‘What can we tell you about Ottilie?’

Alex glanced at the mother who’d returned to the chair the other side of the hearth, and was now staring vacantly into the fire, apparently ignoring the tea her husband had put in front of her, and possibly everything else as well.

‘Well, to begin with,’ Alex replied, ‘I’m wondering which nursery she attends. I haven’t been able to find a record of her at any of the local schools.’

Wade’s expression became fondly despairing. ‘I’m afraid
our little angel is terribly shy. We keep trying to encourage her to go, naturally, but she gets so upset when we leave her that neither of us has the heart to force her.’

Alex wouldn’t have been impressed by the answer coming from any parent; from a deputy headmaster it wasn’t acceptable at all. ‘I’m sure, in your position,’ she said, ‘that you come across this sort of problem with small children all the time, so I’m surprised you’re not taking a firmer stand, especially when you know very well how beneficial it is for a child to have social contact and stimulation ...’

‘Oh, indeed I do understand, and I can promise you, we haven’t given up, and nor will we.’ He glanced briefly at his wife before giving Alex a helpless sort of smile. From this Alex guessed he was trying to let her know that Erica, the bereaved mother, was clinging to their daughter out of fear of losing her too.