The slight flicker from the fluorescent tubes added an otherworldliness to the already tense scenario playing out before me. The woman on the right seemed folded in on herself like some form of human origami. Opposite her DI Johns glowered, fists balled, plonked on the table in front of him. Seated next to him was Detective Malcolm Smith, arms folded across his chest. Whoever thought that it was appropriate to have two high-powered and physically imposing men interviewing this poor woman needed to be shot, or at least marched off to undertake some cultural and social-responsiveness training. The power imbalance was ridiculous and was manifest by the woman’s cowering body language. I could not understand for the life of me why they didn’t have Sonia Richardson in there instead. Well, actually, I did, and unfortunately it had nothing to do with her abilities, and more to do with the fact she didn’t possess a rod and tackle. I could feel the woman’s discomfort through the screen as I watched the recording of the interview from the relative discomfort of my desk in the CIB office. Why hadn’t she had an advocate of some kind with her? Because at that point she hadn’t been under arrest.
I leaned in closer to the computer to hear better, but then laughed – I was wearing headphones. A couple of taps on the keyboard fixed the issue.
Lena Cameron had been invited in for a ‘conversation’ after an anonymous call to the public help line. According to the tip-off there had been a new arrival in the house in recent days, and the caller had their suspicions. The reason Lena had attracted so much attention was because, unfortunately for her, she was a name we were familiar with. My earlier research into previous baby-snatching had flagged the case of a twenty-two-year-old woman who had been found guilty of brazenly walking into the maternity unit at Timaru and walking out with five-hour-old Imogen Wells, lifted out of her cot while her mother slept, exhausted after the rigours of giving birth. The baby had been quickly tracked down, and was completely unharmed, but the family was already traumatised. Needless to say, Timaru Hospital had drastically increased their security since the incident. Three years later Lena was looking a little the worse for wear but was still recognisable as the young woman who had stood in the dock, charged with kidnapping, and been made to undergo psychiatric assessment.
‘Where did you get the baby from, Lena?’
‘Isobella is my baby. She’s mine.’
‘We’ve looked into the hospital records, and there’s no record of you having given birth. Yet here you are, with a baby, and we all know that’s happened before.’ The Boss’s tone was accusatory to say the least. ‘Did you try it again, Lena? Did it become too much and you had to take another baby?’
‘No, that was a long time ago, and I was very sick at the time. I was sick in the head, I know that. It was an awful thing to do, and I understand what I put her family through, but I’m better now and I would never do that to anyone ever again. Isobella is my daughter. You’ve got to believe me.’
‘Then how do you explain the fact that there’s no record of her birth?’
‘I had her at home. I didn’t even go to the hospital. She was a home birth. You can ask—’
‘Is that so?’
He didn’t even give her a chance to finish her sentence, and the way he said it, with such enmity, made me wonder if he just plain hated women. Actually, I was pretty confident of the answer to that thought.
‘And who can verify that you gave birth at home? Was your husband there? Family?’
In the absence of any such witnesses, I was pretty damn sure any doctor worth their salt could verify if a woman had just given birth. But clearly in Dick Head Johns’ rush to get her down to the station and try and nail a quick result, a basic consultation with the police doctor hadn’t happened. He was out to appease the public and the media. At the expense of the woman in front of him. It would appear that The Boss had not even entertained the idea that she might be telling the truth. I wished Smithy would take the initiative and steer the questions in a more considered and less confrontational direction, but he just sat there expressionless, like an oversized baked potato.
‘I don’t have a husband,’ she whispered.
‘Then where is your supposed child’s father?’ Again the spat-out question was weighted with accusation.
‘Isobella’s father isn’t here right now.’ Her eyes were downcast and she picked at the side of her thumbnail.
‘Well, that’s convenient, don’t you think? And where would he be, then?’
I didn’t think it was possible for someone to shrink into themselves more.
‘I don’t know.’ Barely audible.
‘What do you mean you don’t know? Has he stepped out to the pub, off with his friends to celebrate?’
‘I haven’t seen him for months. He skipped out when he found out I was pregnant. He buggered off, refused to believe the baby was his, didn’t want it.’
Oh, that poor woman. I couldn’t even imagine how it would feel to be in that position, feel that vulnerable, that rejected.
There was slightly too long a silence, which verged into the awkward.
‘And was it his?’
Jesus, I couldn’t believe he actually asked that question. Insensitive bastard. I started to seriously consider going down to his office and offering a little advice on how to conduct an interview with a vulnerable person – make him think twice before opening his mouth with that kind of bullshit in the future. To hell with the consequences.
‘Of course she’s his. He was the only man I’d been with in years. And he left me.’ The tears were rolling down her face now. Smithy finally did something other than sit like a spud and passed her a box of tissues.
‘But you had the baby anyway?’
And I’d thought he had scraped the bottom of the inappropriate-questions barrel. Whether or not she chose to have the baby was her decision and none of his fucking business.
Lena looked up at this point, clearly aghast at the question.
‘Of course I had her, why wouldn’t I have this precious gift from God? She is everything I have ever wanted.’
‘Wanted enough to steal from somebody else? To kill for?’
‘No, hell, no. I’m not some monster. How many times do I have to tell you, Isobella is my baby. You can ask my mother, you can ask my friends, you can ask…’
At this point I could hear what sounded like raised voices in the background, getting closer to their interview room. The Boss and Smithy’s heads swung around in the direction of the door just in time to see it fly open and a red-haired and what looked like matching-tempered woman storm into the room, very closely followed by a flustered constable.
The Boss leapt to his feet, chair tipping backward in the scramble, Smithy somewhat slower to stand.
‘Lena,’ the woman said, and strode over to her, placing her arm around Lena’s shoulders, giving her a squeeze.
‘Miriam,’ Lena cried, and twisted around, burying her head into the woman’s waist.
‘Who the hell are you, and what are you doing in here?’ The Boss roared. ‘Constable, what is this?’
‘Sorry, sir, I couldn’t stop her,’ the young man said. He looked all of eighteen, and I didn’t recognise him, so he had to be very new to the job. He looked mortified and frankly scared by The Boss’s reaction. But he also looked like someone who had enough sense not to get between a riled-up woman and her mission.
‘I am Miriam Hardcastle, and I am Lena’s midwife. And I want to know why the fuck you have this woman in here for questioning when she has just given birth two fucking days ago. Of course she didn’t do that awful thing to that woman and kidnap the baby, you fuckwits, and if you’d just bothered to check you would have known that. But no, you drag her down here and take her baby off her, and put her through all this trauma, making ridiculous accusations.’
The men in the room had frozen, The Boss’s mouth half open.
‘Get up Lena, we’re getting out of here.’
Lena stumbled up to her feet, still latched on to her rescuer. Miriam Hardcastle pointed her finger dead at The Boss and delivered a waggle that left no question as to how disgusted she was.
‘And I can personally vouch that, yes, Isobella came out of Lena’s fucking vagina, you muppets, and if she is not returned to us in the next five fucking minutes, I am going to be reporting you to the Human Rights Commission and the fucking prime minister, if necessary, and ringing every newspaper known to man. You will pay for this, you understand me?’
And with that she steered Lena in the direction of the door and left a room of gobsmacked men in her wake.
I found myself rising to my feet and actually applauding.
She was fucking magnificent.