Out of Mind (21 page)

The top story was about a baby seized from his home. I sat up with a start, spilling crumbs all over myself. There was a picture
of the child’s distraught mother, her long dark hair spilling over her shoulders, huge eyes welling with tears. It was Anita
Darling, pictured leaving her Sydenham home in the company of police officers, her head bowed, arms folded across her chest.

“Christopher Darling,” the presenter said, “is the son of a former soldier. The police say they are following all avenues
of investigation.”

Immediately I picked up the telephone. I dialed Justin’s home number, which I assumed rang somewhere on the gallery floor
of the strange, tall house. Jacqui answered, but she was in no mood for a conversation.

“I don’t know what happened,” she told me, desperation clawing at the edge of her voice. “If we knew, we could find him. Look,
talk to the police.” She held the receiver away from her ear, and I could hear her talking to someone. “It’s Robin Ballantyne,
I don’t know what to tell her. She doesn’t understand we don’t know anything.”

“Robin”—I heard a familiar voice on the other end of the line—“Sergeant Veronica Mann here.” Her voice was coolly professional.

“What’s going on? I just saw the news.”

“Good for you.” She lowered her voice. “Look, we cannot say anything at the moment. The baby was gone from his cot this morning.
That is all we know. We are looking at all the possibilities.”

“Well, of course you are, but what are the possibilities?” I asked, not because I was about to broadcast anything, but because
I couldn’t for the life of me imagine what they would be.

“Robin, a baby has disappeared, and I have to waste my time fighting you off? I am appalled. You do not get any special treatment,
no special access. Do you understand? There is a press conference at ten o’clock tomorrow morning.”

In the background I could hear a high-pitched keening sound that was as constant as the whine of a mosquito.

“Is that Anita?” I asked uncertainly, not even sure that it was human. If Christopher’s mother was on the edge before, surely
this would push her into a full-fledged breakdown.

“I will see you at the press conference,” Veronica snapped, and hung up.

I paced around, then checked on the children again. Hannah was sleeping soundly on the floor. I picked her up and put her
back in bed and pulled the sheet up over her, but she kicked it off immediately. In this hot, sticky weather, they wanted
nothing covering them. I left the bedroom and returned to the kitchen. I heard the front door close. There were footsteps
above, and then Carol’s feet appeared on the open staircase, coming down to the kitchen. She was back from a date with Antonio,
and her face was shining.

“Look”—she brandished a plastic bag—“I’ve got all sorts of goodies.”

I peered inside at the waxed-paper packages jostling inside.

“Parma ham, pepper salami, look at these olives, they’re so fat, lovely soft bread made with sun-dried tomatoes . . . oh,
and the meringues, have they survived? There’s cream.”

“I think he loves you,” I told her, but I was distracted.

“He does, doesn’t he?” She chortled gleefully, her eyes sparkling. “Maybe I should have my own shelf, what do you think?”
Carol mulled.

“Carol, I’m sorry. I mean yes, do clear a shelf, of course. But I don’t know how you’d feel . . . I’d really like to go out
for a couple of hours.”

I spoke tentatively. I was so afraid of scaring her away with excessive demands. Every time I walked out the door to work,
I felt guilty. I knew it happened to every working mother, I knew it was something I had to live with. But I also knew that
the moment Carol began to feel I was not keeping to my side of the bargain, that I was being less than a mother to Hannah
and William, she would leave. Without her, my life would fall apart—I had no spouse to cover for me, no margin of error; it
was me or nothing.

“They’re asleep,” I concluded apologetically, “but if you could just keep an ear out.”

“All right.” She looked up at me, the surprise on her face illuminated by the light from the fridge. “I’ll leave my door open.
I’ll hear them if they call out.” Her face was round and getting rounder by the day as Antonio fed her up. I would soon lose
her, I thought as I pulled on my coat.

Even without daytime traffic it took me an hour to drive down to Sydenham Hill Wood. With all the lights on and the cars parked
outside, the Tree House looked a darned sight more welcoming than it had when I had first visited. You could have been forgiven
for thinking they were having a party. I parked opposite the house. There was no point in even trying to gain access. Nobody
would want me there—not Mike, not Kes, and certainly not Veronica Mann. And even I—shameless as I am—would have felt a little
shifty about barging into a house from which a child had been taken.

Why had I come? I drummed my fingers on the dashboard. Journalists want to be where the action is. It sounds like a cheesy
recruitment ad, but it’s true; it becomes second nature, instinct. Perhaps it is because once you’re in the business, you
know how easy it is to distort news. So if you want to know what really happened, you know you have to be there yourself.
Especially when it’s your story. And somehow, deep in my gut, I knew this was my story. What the disappearance of Christopher
had to do with the disappearance of Melanie, I could not have told you, but I knew the two were not unconnected. Some people
go through life expecting disaster at every turn, but of course life is not, for the most part, like that. Real disaster is
rare, and the chances of serious crime touching any one life are small. I thought the disappearances of Melanie and of Christopher
were related, but I was basing that on nothing more than a rough calculation of probabilities.

I don’t know how long I intended to sit there, but as I watched, a woman emerged from the house. A cool breeze had picked
up, and she pulled on a jacket over her top. Sheryl, I realized. Even at a distance she gave off angry vibrations, marching
down the road, then into the driveway of a neighbor’s house. I wondered who lived there, then got my answer as the front door
was answered by Ronald Evans, his white hair flying untidily, pajamas covered by a dressing gown tied at the waist. He listened
to whatever it was that she had to say, then stood back and indicated that she should come inside.

A few moments later, a second woman came out from the Darling house, and for a moment I saw her illuminated in the light from
the hallway. She was tall, her hourglass figure defined in a tailored trouser suit, its pastel blue color light against her
mahogany skin, her jacket flapping in the wind. She carried authority with her now as she had not when I first knew her, her
hair cut tight against her handsome head, her neck long and straight. She did not stoop. As she came nearer, I rolled down
the window and leaned out.

“Veronica,” I called softly.

The woman halted, looked around, and spotted me. I waved.

She crossed the road and went straight to the passenger door, first bending down to look in and reassure herself that it was
indeed me, then opening the door and getting in.

“What are you doing here?”

“I don’t know. It was stupid. I just have this feeling . . . Is this an inside job?”

Veronica sighed and stared out through the windshield.

“The mother and daughter are both beside themselves. I am already practicing in my head having to tell her he’s been found
dead.” She shook her head. “The daughter, Jacqui, she’s so protective of her mother, she won’t let me near her. And she blew
up at her mother’s friend, who was really just trying to be helpful. Jacqui called her a manipulative cow. All living there
like that, they are bound to get on each other’s nerves. What on earth possessed them to come up with this arrangement?”

“How’s Mike taking it?”

“He’s in shock. He’s barely able to speak.”

“Don’t you think it’s strange? One day Mike Darling’s being questioned about Melanie’s disappearance. The next day his baby’s
vanished. If nothing else, it distracts attention from him.”

“What?” Veronica turned to me, her face less shocked than she might have intended. “You think he took his own child? Or that
the mother did?”

“I can’t believe she’s involved. She seems to be completely out of it.”

“I’m not even sure she’d have noticed he’d gone by now if it wasn’t for the daughter.”

“I’ve been told she has postnatal depression.”

“Her doctor said the same. He said her friend Sheryl made her come and see him, and he gave her some medication. But even
he thinks she’s acting strangely. He thinks maybe she’s been taking more than the recommended dose, or that she’s been taking
something else on top of it.”

“Couldn’t it just be a reaction to what’s happened?”

“It’s possible I suppose.” She didn’t seem convinced. “People react to emergencies in different ways. Perhaps Anita’s way
is to switch off.”

I asked how they had found Christopher was gone.

“Jacqui put Christopher to bed at eight. He doesn’t fall asleep easily, and she had to stay with him, stroking his head, until
he was asleep. Then she went to get something to eat.”

“With everyone else?”

“No, there was no mealtime as such. They ate in batches when they were hungry. Jacqui prepared an omelet for Justin and Mike
and Anita, and Sheryl cooked a ready meal for Kes. Actually she cooked one for Justin, too, but he refused to eat it. It was
Jacqui who checked on Christopher before she went to bed—I gather there’s something going on between Jacqui and Justin, so
I think she went to her own bed way after everyone else, she thinks at about one in the morning, which means Christopher must
have been taken early morning, rather than late at night.

“You know she and Christopher share a room—well, I should say they share an alcove. Talk about open-plan living. I’d want
a door or two in there myself. Anyway, that aside, in the morning Jacqui woke up and was surprised she hadn’t been woken by
Christopher. She went over to his crib, and there was a pile of blankets, and I suppose they must have been roughly baby sized
and baby shaped, and she assumed Christopher had burrowed down inside his bedding. She picked up the bundle, thinking she
was picking up the baby, and the blankets unraveled and slipped away, and she realized there was no baby there, which really
spooked her.”

“What did she do about it?”

“She went to find her mum, obviously, and when Anita hadn’t got him, she began to race around in a panic. They even thought
maybe he’d got out of his crib on his own. Eventually, they called us.”

I gazed out into the dark street. There were lights blazing from the ground floor of Ronald Evans’s house, but the rest of
the street was dark. Veronica Mann pulled a card from her pocket and handed it to me. “I have got to go or they will think
I have been abducted, too. This is my mobile number, and my home number has changed. We will keep in contact. Do not ring
me at the office. Maybe we can have a chat over the next few days as things develop. I mean a quiet chat. Nothing on the record.
Do not remind anyone that we know each other.”

“They may remember.”

“Try not to jog their memories. That includes Finney.”

“Okay. I didn’t know you’d transferred,” I said.

“It was a promotion. Otherwise there would be no reason to leave one police station for another. There are idiots everywhere.
I don’t mean Finney, he’s not an idiot. There was another guy.”

This wasn’t the time for it, but I couldn’t help myself.

“Did you ever meet Emma?” I asked.

Veronica looked at me. “Shit,” she said. “You didn’t know she’d come back.”

“I did once you told me.”

She sighed, then shook her head in irritation. “He should have told you. . . . I met Emma once at a Christmas party.”

“What’s she like?”

Veronica considered, then shrugged. “She thought she was too good for him. She was all sweetness and light, but she had itchy
feet, she was always unsatisfied, always on the lookout for something better. She flirted with anything in trousers just to
make him jealous, and she got annoyed when it just made him work harder. But then I fancied him myself, so I’m hardly an objective
observer.”

I stared at her.

“Oh, come on. I got over it. I’m not stupid. He was my boss. I was fine with you and him.”

“He’s not your boss anymore,” I pointed out.

She shrugged, opened the passenger door, and twisted around.

“We’ve all moved on,” she said.

A
T ten o’clock the next morning, Anita entered the press briefing room in front of a couple of hundred reporters. Those who
had arrived earliest were on chairs, the rest of us were pressed around the edges of the room. As she climbed the three steps
to a podium and took a seat, the room was silent except for the soft clatter of camera shutters.

She was flanked by women: Veronica Mann to one side of her, Sheryl to the other, her hand holding Anita’s tightly, her head
bent so low that I could not see her face.

Mike was nowhere to be seen, and neither was Jacqui. All of which seemed to me to be ludicrous. To have the father of the
missing baby absent was to raise questions with a screaming red light. And where was the missing baby’s older sister?

I watched Veronica Mann’s face, hoping for an indication of what was going on. When I first met Veronica she was a lowly police
constable, and she wore volcanic orange and reds. With promotion had come gravitas. She wore a pin-striped trouser suit and
a white shirt. I could see the toll that Christopher’s disappearance was taking on her. The skin under her eyes was puffy
and creased with lack of sleep, and the whites of her eyes were pink. She murmured a word in Anita’s ear and gave her a comforting
pat on the arm. Anita sat for a moment behind the forest of microphones as a man farther along the podium identified himself
as Inspector Mitford, introduced her, and asked her to say a few words.