Surrogate – a psychological thriller (14 page)

Incongruous palm trees bent in the wind as I drove towards Falmouth town centre. Mean-looking bungalows lined both sides of the road, and I wondered who lived here and how they could possibly earn a living. Perhaps people just came down here to die. My satnav arrow was directing me around the town periphery, and I followed its directions past rows of Bed and Breakfasts with hanging "Vacancy" signs. "Slight right," the satnav intoned. Everything looked so shoddily built, as if it would collapse in the wind. Could there be anything more depressing than an out-of-season holiday resort?

Through the trees I glimpsed a hotel on the seafront that stirred dim childhood memories. I remembered this area. The hotel had been big and overstuffed, like a faded chintz armchair. I remembered running along a hotel corridor and eating in a children's dining room, and Mum taking my hand as we walked through the garden. She told me that, right at that moment, she was truly happy. I must have been about eight or nine years old, a hot-looking boy dressed in a woollen jumper in the height of summer. Twenty-five years on, and the hotel sagged in the winter rain.

The car wended its way past bungalows until the satnav told me I had arrived at my destination.

My BlackBerry rang just as I was about to kill the engine. Dad calling. I thought about ducking the call but, unable to resist, I pressed answer.

"Hello, Dad. I was just thinking of you."

"Brian says you won't sign off the accounts. Why aren't you in the office? He said you've taken the day off."

"I've just got a couple of questions, that's all." Like why have you been siphoning money out of the company for years, I thought.

"Listen, we need this deal to go through. It's going to make you a rich young man. But it all depends on you signing off those accounts. If the Americans sense anything's not kosher, they'll go somewhere else. Walk away. There are plenty of other reinsurers who would like to be bought out. Do you understand?"

I really did not want to get into this right now. "Yes, but Dad, even I can see something’s not quite right, and if I can see it, you can be bloody sure that the Americans will too.” I waited for him to say something before continuing. "Brian told me that Twyford Limited is registered in your name." That stopped the old bugger in his tracks.

"That was just between the two of us. It’s all legit. He told me to set the company up, for God’s sake. It’s tax planning, not tax avoidance.”

I threw one of Dad's favourite expressions back at him. "You'd have to be a one-eyed Egyptian not to see there's a bloody big hole in the accounts."

I could hear him breathing down the phone. "I want you to come and see me. Where the fuck are you anyway?" Was it just me, or was there the faintest bat squeak of panic in his voice?

"Something's happened. Alice, the girl we hired to be our surrogate mother. She's disappeared."

"What do you mean, she's disappeared? Where's she gone to?"

"That's just it. We don't know. She's gone and taken our child with her."

"What about the money you paid her? Are you going to get that back?"

It was always the money with him. He saw everything in terms of half a pound of carrots. "It's more complicated than that. Turns out the agreement we signed isn't legally binding. It's her baby to keep if she wants to."

"So she's just fucked off and taken your baby with her?"

"That's about the sum of it, yes."

"I told you not to get involved in this, but did you listen? Nah." Pause. "How's the wife taking it?"

"Badly. As you can imagine. She invested everything in this, and now–"

Dad's voice softened. "Listen, son, I'm sorry ... Emily's a lovely girl. You don't deserve this. I know how much having this baby meant to you both."

Surprised by his sudden warmth – normally he spent his time trying to make me feel stupid – I ventured, "I know. It's been a hell of a shock. She's only a couple of months pregnant as well. I'm worried that she'll do something stupid, that she'll–" Thinking about what Alice might do, self-pity crept nearer, and I could feel myself losing it. I sniffed hard to stop my eyes pricking. Dad despised men who cried. "So, how are you, Dad? Feeling any better?" I said, recovering.

"I have good days and bad days. Today's a good day. If it wasn't for Eliska, I don't know what I'd do. That woman is an angel." Solemn-faced Eliska, the woman in black, was nobody's idea of an angel but Dad’s.

"I'll be back in the office first thing. I'm in Falmouth. Where we used to go on holiday."

"Falmouth? What the fucking hell are you doing down there?"

"The police aren't interested. They say no crime has been committed. I'm trying to track down Alice myself."

"Who do you think you are? Fucking Columbo?"

"Well if the police aren't going to do anything–"

"Did she give any reason why she upped and left?"

"No, not really," I lied.

"I always thought there was something rum about a woman wanting to carry somebody else's child. Not natural. Listen, I want you to come and see me when you get back. Come to the house. We need to get this sorted."

We rang off, and I sat there for a moment contemplating what to do. Mary Sneddon was probably a girlfriend of Alice's who left her husband at home when they went out on the town. I pictured the two of them queuing outside a nightclub in the cold, wearing miniskirts far too short for them and not much else.

Shangri-La was an ugly-looking building facing the gunmetal-grey sea. Big, too. Something told me this was not a private house; it looked more like an old people's home, I thought, taking in the wheelchair-access ramp. I got out of the car feeling stiff after the four-hour drive. Perhaps Mary Sneddon worked here, changing beds and helping residents in and out of chairs. Overhead the sky was as solid as cement. Pulling my flapping coat around me, I walked up and rang the doorbell.

A large, matronly-looking woman in a nurse's uniform came to the frosted door. "May I help you?" she asked.

"I've come to see Mary Sneddon. I rang earlier. I've driven down from Wiltshire."

"Ah, yes, you're Alice's friend. Come in. Mary's been waiting for you."

So this nurse knew Alice? Curiouser and curiouser. She led me into an overheated hall with a hideous swirly carpet. Everything smelled of greasy food and dust, and there was a tang of urine in the air. This wasn't just a nursing home; it was a place where people came to die.

"I expect you'd like a cup of tea," the nurse continued, showing me in to a room with a television in one corner. An old woman sat lolling in an armchair with her hands folded in her lap. The television was on but the volume was much too loud, distorting the game-show voices and canned laughter. "Here's your visitor, Mary," the nurse said in that sing-song voice people use when speaking to the elderly. "He's a friend of Alice's." Mary started and sat up a little. She had been asleep. Then she smiled and nodded as if by reflex. If she saw me, she certainly didn’t show it. The nurse reached over and switched the television off. "I'll leave you two alone to chat," she said.

There was awkward silence as we sat there listening to the hum of the fish tank. "So, how long have you known Alice?" I began.

"Who's that?" said the old woman, groping for my hand.

Mary Sneddon was blind. She grasped my hand and squeezed it. "My name's Hugo. Hugo Cox. I'm a friend of Alice's."

"Alice came to see me yesterday," said Mrs Sneddon.

Alice had been here already?
"Yes, and how was she?" I asked, trying to keep the excitement out of my voice.

The old woman smiled and nodded. "Alice came to see me yesterday," she repeated.

"Yes, you said. Do you know how I can get in contact with her? I'm an old friend of hers."

Mary Sneddon had that soft look people have when they've given up. Not only was Mrs Sneddon blind but, I realised, she also had dementia. Inwardly I sighed. This was going to be a complete dead end. Somehow Alice had managed to fake her CRB check and got this woman to be her referee. How had she done it? There must be some connection between the two of them, and I was wondering what it could be when the kitchen door banged open and the nurse reversed into the room holding a tea tray. I watched with some relief as she set the tray down beside us.

"Alice came to see me yesterday," Mrs Sneddon repeated.

"No, Mary, you've got it confused. Alice is coming to see you today. Do you take sugar, Mr Cox?"

"Did you say that Alice is coming today?" I repeated, trying to sound offhand. "Did she say when she was coming?"

"Yes, I spoke to her this morning. She said she would be here before the residents' tea."

According to my watch it was already half past five. I felt my heart hammering through my chest. How often did Alice come to visit? I asked. About once a month, the nurse replied, pouring out a cup for me. Mary Sneddon sat there smiling and nodding as if everything was settled. Was that why Alice had put her down as a referee? So she could duck awkward questions about her past? Either way, I would be able to ask Alice myself shortly. Alice Adams was in for a big shock when she walked in.

We sat there mostly in silence, sipping the thin tea. The nurse asked me about my work, and I told her I worked in the City. I asked her some questions about the nursing home, how long she had worked there, how many residents she looked after. Our conversation dribbled on, and we sat there listening to the bubble of the fish tank. How soon would Alice be getting here? Should I phone Mole to say that I had found her?

A gong sounded. Other residents shuffled past us towards the dining room, some of them on walkers. They were all wearing bedroom slippers. God help me if I ever get like that, I thought. But of course you will; everybody does in the end.

Finally the doorbell rang, and the dog started barking again. The nurse bustled through to answer it, and I rose from my chair, getting ready to meet our surrogate. Although I was apprehensive, I also felt I going to enjoy this. Hello, Alice, I would say coldly and watch her surprise. The words formed in my mouth and then died.

The woman the nurse showed into the room was not Alice Adams.

Instead, she was a large woman wrapped up in a coat. Buttoned-up. She regarded me suspiciously. Here's your friend, the nurse said beaming.

The stout woman looked at me sharply. "I've never seen this man before in my life," she said with a voice deep enough to summon fish from the ocean.

The smile faded on the nurse. You could see how confused she was. "I thought you knew each other–" she began.

The front door slammed, and another man came into the room. Small and Dickensian in appearance, he looked as if his wife could pick him up under one arm. "All right, love, I parked the car," he said.

The four of us were frozen in a tableau that could have been called "the fraudulent visitor unmasked". "Everything all right?" he said uncertainly.

"Malcolm, this man says he's a friend of mine. I've never seen him before. Call the police."

"Wait a moment," I began. "Let me explain. There's been a case of mistaken identity–"

"You stay where you are," the husband said. "I used to be a Special Constable. They'll soon sort this out." His wife nodded beneath her coat and scarves. He was the type who'd let her become his mother, not his wife.

"I'm looking for another woman called Alice Adams. She's about twenty-six. She gave Mrs Sneddon–" I gestured to the woman in the armchair" –as her referee. Do any of you know this other Alice Adams? It's important that I find her."

"But Mrs Sneddon's been one of our guests for years," the nurse said. "Nobody comes to see her apart from her daughter."

"Malcolm, don't listen to him. Call the police now."

The nurse looked thoughtful and then turned to me. "This Alice Adams. Can you describe her?" she said. "Northern girl? On the heavy side?"

"Yes, yes, that's her."

The nurse deliberated for a moment, deciding what to do. "I thought so," she said finally. "She used to work here. Last summer. As a care assistant. She was calling herself Helen then. I always knew she was a bad'un. She became close to Mrs Sneddon, almost the best of friends. I wanted to encourage it: it's not often you see a friendship between a woman in her nineties and a young woman. In the end, though, we had to get rid of her. We found that she'd been pilfering from the residents. Bits of money, clothes."

"Do you still have her paperwork? Forwarding address, that kind of thing?"

"I could look in my office. She told us she was going to London. To be honest, I didn't really care if I ever clapped eyes on her again. It was only holiday cover. The other staff complained about her. I wanted her out."

It was well after midnight when I arrived back home. Mole had waited up for me and poured me a large glass of red wine. I felt utterly drained from all that driving. London to Cornwall and back again on the same day. Ugh. Mole cooked me a cheese omelette while I went over everything that had happened – how Trevor Wallace-Jones had given me Mary Sneddon's telephone number because he was afraid I might sue, while it turned out that Alice, or whatever her real name was, had worked in the nursing home last summer.

"They must have contact details for her. You don't just get a job in a place like that without anybody knowing where you come from," said Mole.

"I don't think Shangri-La is too picky about who changes people's bedpans," I said. "I suspect they have a constant turnover. Mostly teenage kids, and maybe some illegals. The nurse I talked to got quite shirty when I asked for Alice’s contact details. I think she thought I was about to blow the whistle."

"So that's it, then. A dead end," Mole said quietly as she slid my omelette onto a plate. Her shoulders slumped.

"Not necessarily. Remember what the detective said about hiring a private investigator? I asked Karen in the office to get me some numbers. One of them phoned me straight back. We're meeting tomorrow ... I mean, today."

"What good can they do? She's gone. It's useless."

"Hey." I touched her arm. "You must never give up. I made a solemn oath to get our child back. It's my fault Alice has left" – careful, Hugo – "and I'm going to do everything in my power to get her to come back."

Mole smiled bravely and ran her fingers through my hair. "You're a good man, Hugo Cox." She leaned forward and kissed me, and I thought, no I'm not, I'm an adulterous, lying son of a bitch. I never wanted to hurt you, Mole, and I swear to God, I'm going to make it up to you.

Bad dreams. Hospital corridors and running towards Alice, who was forever receding into the distance. Flickering strip-light. Give me my child back, I called, knowing in my heart the terrible truth. Puddles underfoot. Children linking hands and singing ring-a-ring-a-roses. Our baby's head lying on a pillow – only when you came closer could you see the blood.

I woke up wracked with sobs, and my chest felt tight, so tight. Thank God it had been only a dream. "Are you okay, darling?" Emily asked drowsily. The alarm clock said it was half past six already. The insurance market would be open in a couple of hours. I nodded, grateful that it had been just a nightmare, forced myself up and got out of bed to make some tea.

Mole came up and put her arms around me as I waited for the kettle to boil. You had a bad night, she said, talking in your sleep. It was nothing, I told her, too much cheese before bedtime.

Sitting there at the breakfast table, I was stirring milk into my muesli when Mole said: "I've had an idea. Why don't we try contacting her through her Facebook page?"

"She hasn't replied to text messages or emails. What makes you think she'll respond?"

"At least it would feel as if we're doing
something.
"

She got up and reached for her iPad. After a bit of fiddling about, she said: "I've found her. We'll have to send a friend request." There was the whoosh of an email being sent. "Now all we can do is wait."

We sat there eating breakfast in silence. It was still dark outside. Suddenly the iPad pealed with an incoming message. We both leapt from the table, but Mole got to her tablet first.

"She's accepted the request. At least we know she's still alive." Pause. "Oh my God."

"What is it?"

"These photographs. I had no idea."

They were all there, the ones she had stolen from our wedding album: Mole and me sitting outside the Florence café, and Mole walking past a street market near the Duomo and standing on the steps of Chelsea Register Office. Except that Alice had grafted her head onto Mole’s.

"I want to write to her," Mole said. "Beg for our baby back."

I shrugged and waited while Mole tapped out a message. This was a waste of time as far as I was concerned. I asked Mole to read me what she'd written before pressing send.

"Dear Alice, please get in touch with us," Mole began. "We know that you're angry, but Hugo is truly sorry."

"Now wait a minute," I interrupted. Mole waved away my objection and continued reading. "You have no idea what it's like. Every part of me keens for our baby. Whatever we have done, however badly we have behaved, we are truly sorry. Your friend, Emily."

"I don't want to accept all the blame here. Alice is the one who's behaved badly," I said somewhat pompously.

"We need to tell her how sorry we are. You forget, the hand that rocks the cradle rules the world. And Alice's hand is firmly on our cradle."

With that, she fired off the message. All we can do now is wait, she said, starting to pace the kitchen. She reminded me of a wild animal penned in a cage, twisting around itself as it stalked backward and forwards. She needed to be distracted. "Mole, the private detective I told you about, I'm seeing him later today," I said, reaching for her iPad. I typed his name into the search engine and showed her his website: Martin Wynn private investigator, with an address in Oxford Street. It all looked very official and above board. "And he's sure that he can find her?" she asked. All I could do was shrug.

My morning consisted of going through Excel spreadsheets, and it wasn't until the afternoon that reception rang me, telling me my visitor was downstairs. I walked through our op-art greeting area, stopping to tell our receptionist that I would be out for the rest of the afternoon; after lunch I was going to see the chairman at his house in the country, I told her.

The lift opened onto the ground-floor lobby, which was full of office workers coming in or going out. A gang of girls came in through the revolving door like a cloud of butterflies.

Martin Wynn was a small, solidly built man running to fat. His hair was a downy crew-cut, and he had startlingly blue eyes. He could not have been more removed from my mental image of a raincoat-wearing wise guy with a cigarette dangling from his mouth. To be honest, he was kind of cuddly looking. There used to be an advert on TV about a beer-drinking bear, and that's who Martin Wynn reminded me of. Now I wondered whether the alacrity with which he'd phoned me back meant he didn't have much work on.

"Mr Wynn?" I said, extending a hand.

"Mr Cox?" he said, rising from the leather seat.

"I thought we'd get something to eat. If you're hungry, that is."

The private detective shrugged as if to say, sure. I had booked a table at Sweetings, an old-fashioned restaurant that was a Lloyd's favourite. Hearty public-school-type food. The place was packed at lunchtime, full of braying pinstripe-suited stockbrokers. The waitress handed us old-fashioned plastic menu cards.

"Take a look round," I said. "This is one of the last old-fashioned City restaurants. Been here for years. Soon it'll be a Starbucks, like everywhere else."

Wynn studied his menu card and wrinkled his nose. "So," he said, finally having chosen. "What can I do for you? Mostly I do matrimonial work. Following people. Getting evidence for divorce cases, that kind of thing."

"It's nothing like that. I'm trying to find somebody."

"What, like probate work? Are you a lawyer? I do a lot of that."

"No, it's more complicated. I am trying to find somebody who has kidnapped my baby."

Wynn's eyes widened. I told him the whole story except for my shameful part in it. Wynn took out a notebook and asked if he could take notes. "The more information you can give me, the faster I'll be able to find her," he said. I gave him everything we knew, gleaned from Alice’s surrogacy clinic records and what Wallace-Jones had told me. There wasn't much. A girl from somewhere up north comes down to London to make some easy money as a surrogate mother. Sleeps with dad. Disappears with child.

"What's the young woman’s name?"

"Alice. Alice Adams. Although we now know that was made up."

"Do you have an address? A photograph? Anything?"

I took out the one-sheet we’d got from the clinic containing Alice's personal details. Surrogate 37. Wynn studied it while I continued talking. "I went back to the clinic and convinced them to give me Alice's CRB check. It took some doing. Yesterday I drove to Cornwall to see the woman Alice had given as her referee. Here's the thing. The referee was a senile old woman living in a nursing home. She had no idea who Alice Adams was. Then I met the real Alice Adams, who turned out to be the old woman’s daughter. The woman who runs the place thinks my Alice worked there last summer before she was fired for theft and stole the daughter's identity. She'd also been stealing from the patients. Look, Mr Wynn, I don't care what trouble Alice has got into in the past, we just want our baby."

"Do you have the CRB check on you?"

I dug into my briefcase again and handed him the form. Wynn stroked his chin. "It looks genuine enough. And yet she invents some cock-and-bull story about her referee. I don't get it."

Alice was receding into the distance, and we weren't getting any closer.

"Why would anybody want to do that? I don't understand. There's got to be easier ways of making a living than being a surrogate mother."

"Something in her past she didn't want you to know about? Her dismissal from the nursing home, perhaps? Either way, Mr Cox, don't you worry. We'll find your Alice Adams." The private detective smiled.

"What makes you so sure? All I've got is a bunch of dead ends. She tricked us right from the start."

Wynn tapped his nose. "I used to be on the Force. Still got a lot of favours to call in. Mobile phone calls, bank transactions ... nobody just disappears; nothing is ever forgotten."

"How will you start?"

"The first thing we can do is trace her through oscint – open-source intelligence. You said she had a Facebook page. Trace her friends through that, people who know her. Friends of friends. Somebody knows where she is."

"Google her, you mean." I said, trying not to sound disappointed.

"It's a bit more sophisticated than that. Like I said, we all leave digital traces."

"What if she deletes her Facebook page?"

"Nothing is ever deleted. It may look like it's gone, but it's all still there. If you know where to find it, that is."

I pictured plunging through miles of telephone cabling, millions of voices all gabbling away as we searched for Alice Adams. What if she was now calling herself something different online, another made-up identity? It was like searching for a needle in a haystack. No, it was worse than that; each social network was a different haystack, and we were searching for just one person among millions of names and false identities. I imagined a line of Alices, stretching and receding to nothing, like when you hold a mirror up to yourself in front of another mirror.

"All right. How much do you charge?"

"Five hundred pounds a day. Plus expenses."

That took me aback. It was much more than I had been expecting. "That's a lot of money. This could go on for weeks."

"Do you want to find your baby or not?"

Of course. How much is a child worth? What price do you put on the value of your child?

"When can you start?"

Martin Wynn grinned. "The meter's already ticking," he said.