8

‘I feel really sorry for her,’ Ariadne said. ‘I can’t think of anything worse than a baby going missing like that, whatever the circumstances.’

Geraldine nodded in agreement. ‘Yes, not knowing what’s happened must be torture for Jessica. We have to find Daisy soon.’

‘The mother seems a tad bonkers,’ said the female constable who had first spoken to Jessica. ‘Hysterical doesn’t even come close.’

‘You’d be hysterical if you were going through what’s happening to her,’ Geraldine replied. ‘Show some compassion, for God’s sake! We don’t yet know what’s happened to her baby.’

A young constable called Naomi interrupted her. ‘We know the baby’s been stolen. Whatever happens, this can’t end well.’ She shook her head glumly.

Geraldine disagreed. ‘Hopefully she’ll be found very soon and it will turn out all right in the end. But what must be making it even worse for the family is that they have to be questioning whether they can trust each other.’

‘You’re right. We have no idea who’s responsible,’ Ariadne said.

‘It could only have been one of the family, because no one else had access to the house,’ Naomi pointed out.

‘As far as we know,’ Geraldine replied.

‘It’s feasible someone could have broken in,’ Naomi said, ‘but it seems pretty obvious the father’s run off with the baby.’

‘It may be obvious but that doesn’t mean it’s necessarily true,’ Geraldine replied.

‘The obvious explanation often is the right one,’ Ariadne pointed out.

‘But surely the father can’t have taken the baby away, knowing how vulnerable Jessica is?’ Geraldine said. ‘She’s already mentally fragile. This could tip her over the edge.’

‘Maybe that’s why he did it,’ Naomi replied.

‘If the marks on the sheet turn out to be bloodstains from the baby, that would suggest one of the parents injured her and they’re trying to avoid discovery,’ Ariadne said, tentatively.

‘Anything’s possible,’ Geraldine replied heavily. ‘It may not have been deliberate. The baby could have been accidentally killed, and the parents panicked and conspired together to cover it up, to protect one or both of them.’

Silence greeted this suggestion. Several officers shook their heads as though they were refusing to consider such a horrible suggestion, even though the idea must have occurred to all of them. No one could deny it was possible, and since the discovery of suspected blood spots in the cot, it was beginning to seem a likely explanation.

‘Let’s wait and see what the scene of crime officers come up with before jumping to any conclusions,’ Eileen said. ‘They’re going to be looking for evidence of anyone else having entered the nursery.’

‘And it might turn out not to be blood at all,’ Geraldine added.

After running over the case so far, and reiterating what needed to be done, Eileen dismissed the assembled team to their various tasks. Geraldine went back to Jessica’s parents’ house and Anne let her in. If her eyes had not been bloodshot and puffy, she would have given no indication that there was anything amiss. Glancing around, Geraldine noticed a pushchair folded in a corner of the hallway, and she caught a glimpse of a highchair in the dining room as they passed the open door.

‘Can I offer you some tea, Detective Sergeant?’ Anne asked.

Geraldine declined the offer, and Anne led her into an elegant living room, where Jessica was weeping hysterically. Once they were all seated, Geraldine explained what the police needed to know. It took a while, but at last she was able to gather a list of people who had visited Jessica’s house since Daisy was born. Jessica was an only child and she had few friends, so the list was short. To begin with, Jessica’s parents had been frequent visitors to the house during the first three months of Daisy’s life, after which Jessica had taken to going to visit them.

‘It was good for her to go out,’ Anne explained, as though Jessica was incapable of going anywhere other than her parents’ house.

Jason’s parents lived further north, in Harrogate, but they had been to see the baby when she was born. According to Jessica, they had not been back since, but she and Jason had taken Daisy to see them several times, on family birthdays and over the Christmas period. Jason had a brother who lived in Sheffield and he had met Daisy at his parents’ house but had never visited Jessica and Jason. Apart from that, Jessica had taken her baby in to her former workplace to show her off to her colleagues, none of whom had been to her house.

‘She’s not exactly friends with any of them,’ Anne explained, once again answering Geraldine’s questions as though Jessica was unable to speak for herself. ‘My daughter’s been very tired since the birth, and is often up at nights with such a young baby. She has little energy for socialising.’

Geraldine told them that all of the relations they had mentioned had been visited by local police officers and no one had any idea where the baby was. Only Jason had yet to be questioned.

‘When is he due home?’ Geraldine asked.

‘He’s supposed to be back tonight or tomorrow,’ Jessica replied. ‘He said he was going away for the weekend.’

The accusation hung in the air unspoken, that he had gone away for two or three days, leaving his unstable wife and six-month-old baby alone at home. Jessica was crying so much she could barely string two words together, but even so Geraldine had the impression that Anne was used to speaking for her daughter. Back in her car, Geraldine studied the list Jessica had given her. Since Daisy’s birth, the most frequent visitor to the house had been Jessica’s health visitor. Geraldine went to talk to her next, in the expectation that she would be an expert and independent observer of Jessica and her baby.

It was the weekend, and Geraldine found Mary Spinner at home. Mary was in her fifties, thin and single, with no children of own. With a kindly gentle manner, she resembled a middle-aged aunt rather than a health visitor. As soon as she understood who was calling, and why, she invited Geraldine in.

‘This is a shocking business,’ she said, gazing at Geraldine with a mournful expression. ‘Shocking. Do you have any idea what has happened to poor Baby?’

She referred to Daisy as though Baby was her name, a habit she had perhaps acquired through having too many babies’ names to commit to memory. While she was speaking, she ushered Geraldine into a small front room, neatly furnished with chintz armchairs and a low wooden table.

‘We’re building a picture of the family, and the circumstances of the baby’s disappearance,’ Geraldine replied, saying nothing about the stains on Daisy’s sheet.

The officers associated with the case were under instructions to say nothing about what had been found inside the cot. The sheet and mattress had been sent away for forensic examination, and until they heard otherwise, they were all hoping the marks had been made by wine or food of some kind. It was the kind of detail that would be of interest to the media, and Eileen judged it best to keep the case out of the public eye until they had some idea what they were dealing with. So far the baby had been missing for at least twenty-eight hours.

‘Baby was healthy,’ the health visitor assured Geraldine, as though that was the most important information. ‘She was gaining weight nicely, and sat up unaided at three months. Mother weaned her from the breast at four months which is perhaps a little earlier than we recommend these days, but longer than many mothers manage. I hesitate to say it’s probably just as well, given what’s happened,’ she added solemnly. ‘Baby was sleeping well, not unduly bothered by her teeth, and really everything was progressing nicely.’

Geraldine recalled Anne saying Jessica had not been getting much sleep.

‘Was Daisy sleeping through the night?’ she asked.

Mary nodded. ‘According to Mother, little Daisy was a good sleeper. She had the occasional bad night, of course, when her teeth bothered her or she had a cold, but that’s only to be expected.’

‘But generally she slept well?’

‘Well, of course I wasn’t there to see,’ the health visitor replied sharply, as though she felt her assertion was being questioned. ‘But Mother reported she slept well as a rule. In fact, she assured me Daisy was no trouble at all.’ She smiled as though the baby’s satisfactory progress was a testament to the efficacy of her own supervision.

‘Did you notice anything unusual in the household? Any cause for concern?’

‘No, as I said, Baby was healthy.’

‘I meant,’ Geraldine went on, choosing her words with care, ‘did you notice anything about the behaviour of the parents that might possibly have given you any cause for concern? Anything at all? Were there any signs that Jessica was suffering from post natal depression, for example?’

The health visitor’s greying eyebrows rose. ‘No, certainly not,’ she replied.

She sounded slightly indignant at the question as though she were somehow responsible for Daisy’s parents. Perhaps she was concerned that she might be accused of negligence if something was amiss that she had failed to notice.

‘We need to know everything we can about the family to help us find the missing infant as quickly as possible,’ Geraldine explained.

She wondered if Jessica had been entirely honest with the health visitor. Although she held back from saying so, Mary was clearly sharper than Geraldine had suspected, and seemed to pick up on what she was thinking.

‘Jessica was perfectly comfortable with me,’ she said frostily, ‘and I’ve no doubt she would have confided any worries she had to me. If I had been alarmed in any way, I would have acted on my concerns at once.’

‘Yes, I don’t doubt that,’ Geraldine reassured her. ‘Now, is there anything else you can think of?’

Seeming to take Geraldine’s questioning as an attack on her professional competence, the health visitor merely sniffed.

‘Mary,’ Geraldine said gently, ‘you are clearly a very shrewd observer, and very perceptive when it comes to the parents of very young children.’ Hoping she was not overdoing the flattery, she was pleased to see Mary’s expression soften visibly.

‘What do you think happened to Daisy?’

Mary assumed that Jason had taken the baby, and once Geraldine gained her trust, she was vociferous in her censure of a father who would take such a young infant away from home without the mother’s permission. Geraldine thanked her, and hoped she was right, but Mary had not really offered any deep insights into what had happened.

Meanwhile, Ian had organised a team which was going from door to door questioning neighbours.

‘As far as we have been able to gather so far,’ he reported, ‘no one but the immediate family went to the house, and Jason was out at work all day and Jessica was rarely seen.’

Geraldine nodded. Anne had said something similar to her. Apart from the fact that the health visitor seemed to think the baby was sleeping through the night, all accounts of the family appeared to agree.

‘Do you believe Jessica was lying to the health visitor?’ Eileen asked.

‘I don’t know. We know Jessica is volatile and there does seem to be an element of duplicity in her dealings with the health visitor, but I think it’s understandable an insecure new mother might want to convince anyone in authority that there was no call for them to intervene.’

‘She’s a new mother,’ a female constable pointed out. ‘I’d say that’s par for the course.’

Eileen nodded. ‘There’s nothing to suggest Jessica is unreliable. Unless she was confused, which is possible, we have to conclude Jason lied to her about going to a stag do.’ She sighed. ‘We need to find that young man, and quickly. And when we do, hopefully we’ll find the missing baby.’