Other Mothers

By Caroline Lowrie

One hospital.

 

Two missing infants.

 

Three decades apart.

 

When a newborn is snatched from the Maternity Unit at St Catherine's Hospital, a desperate police hunt ensues. Only a small window of opportunity exists in which to identify a suspect and bring the baby back safely.

 

Detective Sergeant Meg Wiley, close to retirement and panicking about what she'll do with her empty days, reluctantly joins the search, but she's haunted by her memories. Feeling estranged from her partner Emma, she struggles to concentrate on the job. She soon discovers, however, that the past is a key. Her history will unlock the mystery that surrounds the disappearance of not one, but two babies.

 

★★★★★ - 'Beautifully written, a page-turner to the very end.' -- Bethan White, author of Fade

• Language: English
• Publisher: BLKDOG Publishing
• Release date: Dec 7, 2020
• ISBN: 9781393543091

Book preview

OTHER MOTHERS

Caroline Lowrie

Copyright © 2020 Caroline Lowrie.

ISBN 978-1-913762-74-2

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission of the publisher.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

All rights reserved including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form. The moral right of the author has been asserted.

www.blkdogpublishing.com

‘A pity beyond all telling is hid in the heart of love.’

William Butler Yeats

T

here it was, the tap, tap of a walking stick on the landing, familiar but not welcomed, not today. She pressed her back further against the mural, the field of daisies and pulled her knees up to her chest, hugged them tight and shut her eyes. How many times had she wished that the wall would crumble, that she might fall into the painted flowers and be covered up by them?

She had sneered at the mural when she had first arrived and at the wood chip paper that covered the other walls. She’d thrown a tantrum. She’d thrown some furniture, much to her shame. Now she didn’t mind it, was used to the yellow crocheted bedspread and the lampshade with its frilly lace trim.

The door swung open. ‘What a good girl, you’ve made your bed. Left it nice and neat for me. Didn’t fancy doing that today, not with my knees.’ The elderly woman chuckled, causing every inch of her generous frame to shake. She leant heavily on her stick and took a deep breath. It rattled around somewhere deep in her chest and came back out as a cough. ‘Be here soon, I reckon. Packed all your bits and bobs?’

The girl nodded towards two holdalls sat by the now-empty wardrobe. One was crammed full of a posh, ridiculous uniform, the other with books.

‘Come on then, let’s go, got to say goodbye to George yet.’

The girl got to her feet, shouldered the bags and looked around the room. She would try not to forget it, but there were so many things she’d already forgotten, and she was only thirteen.

‘Cheerio, kid, best of luck.’ There was a wave from behind a chair in the living room as she passed by the open door. He was watching the horses, a betting slip by his side. ‘Never any serious money,’ he had once told her with a chuck under her chin. ‘That’s a fool’s game, the odds are always stacked against you, but a pound here and there makes for a bit of entertainment on a rainy Saturday afternoon’.

She had sat with him once, cheering his bets on, ticking them off on the slip, but had quickly lost interest when she’d realised that he was right, about the odds. The cheerio she gave him in return was weak, most of it got stuck in her throat and she went into the kitchen to fall upon George.

The dog was in his basket. Big sad eyes and a droopy tongue. Dropping her bags, she crouched down onto the red tiles and buried her face in his short fur.

The doorbell rang and Deidre bustled in with a folder tucked under her arm. The girl saw her name on its spine; a folder full of all the things they thought they knew about her. Deidre had plastered a cheery smile on her face along with thick foundation and bright pink lipstick and she tried, but failed, to start some equally cheery chatter. No one was in the least bit happy, not even Deidre.

The girl mostly ignored her and went on stroking George. He whimpered and whined, licked her face to tell her he was sorry she was going.

‘Best be off, then,’ Deidre said after a few minutes. ‘Traffic’s awful.’

It was pointless to complain, to fight, or shout. They had a way of telling you what was going to happen even when they were asking what you wanted. So she picked up the bags again, one on each shoulder.

A tin foil package was pressed into her hands. ‘Doesn’t like much, this one, but she’s a big fan of my shortbread.’

Deidre laughed awkwardly in response, said ‘well’ a lot, and walked off down the tiny hallway.

‘Don’t you give up on that school. You earned it,’ the elderly woman said, suddenly fierce. She took her by the shoulders and shook her slightly. ‘It’ll be a couple of buses away now, not easy, but promise me you’ll stick at it.’

Unable to speak, the girl nodded. There were no hugs, they understood each other. She turned away from the kitchen, where dinner was served without fail at five-thirty every night and walked along the thick plastic strip that had been put down to protect the hall carpet, back past the living room door where the telly was almost always on. She had sat at the back of the room for the first few weeks, perched on a cushion, trying to catch glimpses of Dallas and The A Team around the wings of his armchair. Gradually, she had snuck forwards, urged on by their lack of fuss, drawn in by the comfort of their routines, until she had spent her evenings at their feet, so close to the screen that she had been gently clucked at. ‘You’ll ruin your eyes,’ the woman would say.

Once they were in the car, her bags stowed on the back seat, Deidre turned to her. ‘Well! It’s never nice saying goodbye, but I bet you’re looking forward to seeing your mum.’

‘Can we have the radio on?’

‘Absolutely.’ Deidre looked relieved. It meant they wouldn’t have to talk too much. She pushed a button and crackly pop music filled the silence; Adam Ant began singing about how ridicule was nothing ‘to be scared of’.

They stopped for petrol after a mile or so and when Deidre went into the little shop on the forecourt to pay, she got out of the car too. She thought about running, then quickly decided against it. What was the point? There was nowhere to run to, no one to run towards.

She dropped the package of shortbread into a nearby bin before returning to the car. Why swallow the pain when you could throw it away instead?

CHAPTER ONE

H

er watch, a gift from the ghost of Christmas past, had a large round face adorned with bold black numbers. She glanced at it almost obsessively, though if she were asked the time by a passer-by, she would struggle to supply an answer. It was a new habit, and an odd one, because she rarely registered the placement of the hands on the dial.

The minutes and hours were irrelevant anyway. What she was marking off and counting down, were the shifts. Only ninety-two to go. All days, no nights. Eight till four. Civilised hours that she could while away under a blanket of reports and statistics in the uneventful comfort of the Borough Intelligence Unit.

Nearly thirty years of service in the Metropolitan Police; twelve different buildings, nineteen different offices, fourteen separate posts. Some of the moves had been at her request. Occasionally, she’d sought out new challenges, more excitement, a promotion, but the majority had been pressed upon her. She was a resource, a number on a workforce planning spreadsheet with the correct skills set. Bounced across London with annoying regularity just because she was tab A which neatly slotted into tab B.

She had been briefly offended when a senior officer had sat her down to tell her about this recent move. There had been a piece of paper in his hand, across which someone had scrawled ‘please sign off, extenuating personal circumstances’. It had made her bristle for a while but now she was glad they had made the decision. It was one she would have made for herself if she had been thinking clearly. The last year had eroded her concentration. Her mind frequently got up and left the room without her. Her body would remain uselessly still, waiting for instructions. Eventually her senses and thoughts would return to claim back her limbs, but there always remained a slight disconnect. And so, it was better to be in a job where she could do little harm.

The remaining ninety-two shifts would fly by. She’d soon be collecting her pension and commuting part of it into a much-needed lump sum. Dreams cheap in the making, plans made while snuggled under a duvet, were proving costly to fulfil. There would be enough money, just about, so long as nothing went wrong.

She glanced at her watch again, ran an idle finger across the soft brown strap. Over the years, it had moulded itself to the shape of her wrist. She smiled as she remembered the ungratefulness with which she had first received it, how she had tossed it back angrily across an unmade bed. Then she jolted slightly in her chair, realised she had missed a question. Someone had said her name.

There were about ten officers around the conference table, half of them in uniform and they were all looking in her direction.

At the head of the long table, the Borough Commander gave her a tight smile that suggested he knew she hadn’t been listening, and that his patience was wearing thin.

‘Could you give us some more details, DS Wiley?’ He asked. ‘Your report suggests the figures have gone up significantly.’

He tapped a bony finger on the document she had tossed in front of him just a few minutes before the meeting had started. It had been prepared by Digby, a PC in the Intelligence Unit who knew Meg’s job far better than she did, and voluntarily did most of it for her. Meg had only given the contents a tired, cursory glance before handing it over. Had there been anything worrying in them, anything significant? She had no idea.

The weekly Senior Leadership Team meeting was held every Friday afternoon in a grey slab of a room on the top floor of the nick. The Borough Commander, a superintendent by rank, was a thin man with pinched, closed features, tiny eyes. Unimposing. If not for the little silver and red crowns on his epaulettes, no one would pay him a moment’s notice. His last name was Smith.

The meetings were apparently for information sharing and setting strategies, but Meg had only needed to attend one before she’d realised their true purpose. They were a buck-passing, blame-throwing game. If something had gone wrong, or things weren’t getting done, CID could blame uniform, or uniform could blame CID. All the smaller departments liked to blame a lack of resources. Every discussion invariably ended with a suggestion that something be emailed to someone else.

‘As you said, a worrying trend,’ Meg said at last, with a tilt of her head in the Borough Commander’s direction.

‘Yes.’ Superintendent Smith’s eyebrows rose. ‘Does your unit have any suggestions as to how we might reduce them, Detective Sergeant?’

‘Well, we could try and catch some criminals.’ She immediately regretted the flippancy. It would be idiotic to get his back up, to invite a disciplinary procedure against herself when she was so close to the end. Another three months and she could stick two fingers up to anyone she chose, but not now.

‘Catch criminals? That’s an outrageous idea, Meg, steady on. It’s Friday afternoon. Let’s not go nicking anyone unless we absolutely have to,’ Dave Harding said. Further down the table someone coughed as a stale Hobnob went down the wrong way. ‘Though, it’s a horrible crime, distraction burglary. We do need to get on top of it,’ he added.

Meg smiled her thanks at Harding. He winked back. She’d been Dave’s street duties instructor, had puppy-walked him around the Borough when he’d arrived fresh from Hendon. She’d also been his skipper when he’d first joined the CID, had trained the man up so well he was now a Detective Inspector, outranking her.

‘There’s no great mystery here.’ Meg turned slightly in her seat to face the Superintendent. Now she knew what his question had been, it was easy to answer. ‘Very few people are born with such low morals and the required amount of despicable bare-faced cheek required to get away with this sort of crime. We have four, maybe five such prom-noms on this borough with previous, and there’s a rhythm. There’s a huge spate, then they get sloppy and get collared. They go inside for a while, nowhere near long enough, but let’s not get into that, and unsurprisingly our figures go down. When they get out, our figures go up.’

The superintendent frowned. ‘In that case, perhaps we could have a look at recent prison releases, see if there’s a correlation. Do you think you could put together some sort of spreadsheet, DS Wiley?’

‘I’ll put it on an e-mail, sir.’

‘Thank you. Put the answers in the report next time, will you? My job is to present these figures further up the chain of command. What sort of response do you think I’d get from the Deputy Assistant Commissioner if I did nothing but shove a piece of paper in his face?’ He closed a leather document holder with a firm snap and got to his feet. ‘Now, bugger off everyone. I wish those of you who are rostered off a good weekend, and for those working, I know we don’t mention the Q word, but my fingers are crossed.’ There was a collective expulsion of breath when the door banged shut behind him. Chairs creaked as bodies slumped in relief.

‘Well, that’s put the kiss of death on it,’ Dave Harding said. ‘You don’t even say Q. Even Q brings seven kinds of shit to the door.’

A uniformed Inspector got up from the table with a groan. ‘Last time I was in a control room and someone said, it’s all gone quiet, two murders were called in and a riot kicked off, all in the space of five minutes.’

The conversation that followed flowed around Meg. She vaguely registered the goodbyes and the banter, the war stories, and the noise of people gradually dispersing. She remained in her seat, leaning over Digby’s report. She adjusted her glasses and read the numbers carefully, traced a finger down a column. Dave Harding also waited in his seat until everyone else had left.

Meg could feel him watching her.

‘Don’t worry about it, Meg, you’re off into the sunset soon. Then it’ll be someone else’s watch.’ He nodded in the direction of the Borough Commander’s office. ‘And don’t worry about him. He likes to pick on someone randomly every week, wants to remind us he’s in charge.’

‘He’s right though, there has been a spike. We should be worried.’

‘The only thing he’s worried about is where his next promotion is coming from.’

‘I hate distraction burglars though. Lying and tricking their way into some poor old biddy’s home, gaining their trust, pretending they’re from the water board, or electricity company, and then running off with the jewellery and cash when their back’s turned.’ She paused and looked down at the report again. ‘If I identify any suspects and plan a dedicated op, could you spare some bodies?’

Dave shook his head. ‘Every officer in the CID is carrying over twenty investigations each. Know how many the guidelines say they should have at any one time? Twelve. And they’re processing prisoners every day on top of that. They’ve barely got time to take a piss. Some of them are cracking up. I keep saying it, keep warning people. Nobody cares.’

Meg waited, counted to three in her head and steadily met his gaze.

He threw up his hands when she refused to back down. ‘Alright, but only a couple of officers; you’ll have to persuade uniform to supply anyone else you need. And it’ll only be for three or four days at the most.’

‘Thank you.’

‘I have a soft spot for you, Meg Wiley, and you take advantage of it.’

Meg’s phone vibrated and she felt around for it in her pocket, mumbled a goodbye to the DI as she fished it out, left him and walked into the corridor. She read the incoming text message while juggling a pen, her daybook and a stack of papers under her arm. ‘BABY HAS ARRIVED! 7LB 10OZ. A BOY. NO NAME YET. EVERYONE OK.’

She stopped walking and forced herself to reply, quickly tapped out ‘CONGRATULATIONS’ with shaky fingers and hit send. It was a coward’s response, she should have called or at least composed a longer message. She leant against the rail at the top of the stairwell and tried to refill her lungs with air.

The buzz of the police station reached her again after a few moments. Life drifted up the stairs. Three floors below her was a custody suite with twenty cells, a front office, writing rooms and locker rooms, each with their own rhythms, smells and sounds. The nick only ever seemed to go quiet in the two or three hours before dawn, and even then, it was never completely still.

She didn’t want to return to her office. A sudden craving for a glass of wine came over her; wine so cold that condensation would run down the stem of the glass to pool on the thick wooden table-top it rested on. She needed new people to look at and a big bowl of chunky chips to smother in vinegar. Pocketing her phone again, she started down the stairs.

‘Alright, Sarge.’ Digby didn’t turn around to greet her. His gaze remained focused on the three computer screens that were lined up in front of him, side-by-side. He and all his gadgets took up two desks. She went over to her own smaller work area and sat down, propped her feet up on a stack of dusty files that her predecessor had left behind. She had brought her chair with her to her new office, a squeaky-wheeled threadbare wreck that was held together with parcel tape and a couple of elastic bands. Her initials, M.W., were painted across the back of it in Tipp-Ex. She had wedged it into a job car and driven it across South East London. It was only when she had wheeled it into the BIU that she wondered when she had developed a sentimental streak. She had never been one for hanging onto things. Another new trait perhaps, to add to the clock-watching. She checked her watch again.

‘Digby, you don’t have to call me Sarge.’

‘Yeah, I know, you said.’

‘Meg is fine,’ she reminded him.

‘Yeah, I know.’

‘So, apparently,’ she said with a sigh, ‘we have a distraction burglary problem on the Borough.’

‘Yeah, I know,’ Digby said. ‘O’Leary was given early release.’

Meg vaguely recognised the name. ‘O’Leary, why don’t you tell me these things?’

‘You didn’t ask, Sarge.’

‘We need to put something more detailed together for the Borough Commander, he’s giving me grief.’

‘Thought as much, already did. It’s in your inbox. You just need to have a look and put your name on the end of it.’

‘Right, thanks.’ Meg glanced at her own computer but couldn’t find the energy to turn it on. She doubted there was anything that couldn’t wait till Monday. ‘The night-duty briefing needs to be uploaded by five.’

‘Yeah, I know. All done.’

Digby had been attached to the BIU since uniform services had begun struggling to find kit big enough to accommodate his ever-growing frame. He was, by his own admission, a fat bastard, and had no intention of ever not trying to be a fat bastard. A few years ago, the Met had brought in compulsory fitness tests that he’d have no hope of passing, but he’d managed to dodge them all. He’d been a terrible response team officer, but he was a brilliant intelligence analyst and so a blind eye had been turned.

‘You on till nine, Digby?’ Meg asked.

‘Yeah.’ Digby’s eyes still hadn’t left the computer screens. His skin glowed green in their reflection.

Meg glanced around the messy room. At the yellowing notices on the walls containing out-of-date information that nobody could be bothered to take down or replace, and at the square ceiling light that had begun to flicker a few days ago. She had called central facilities to fix it, but nobody had come out yet. There was a dead fly trapped in the shade. The body of the fly annoyed her more than the flickering. ‘I’m pretty redundant here, aren’t I?’ she said.

Digby scratched his beard. ‘You could put the kettle on.’

‘Would love to, but strangely, I just remembered another meeting I need to attend.’

Digby understood her immediately. ‘Want me to book you off later?’

‘If that’s okay, don’t want to get you in trouble.’

‘Yeah, no bother.’ He reached for a packet of digestive biscuits that he kept beside his crumb-laden keyboard. ‘As soon as you leave, I can fart freely and watch porn.’

‘Okay, well whatever gets you through a Friday late shift.’ Meg grabbed her old canvas rucksack from the top drawer of a filing cabinet, put her loose possessions into it and slung it over her shoulder. ‘If anyone with a bit of old shiny stuff on their shoulders comes looking for me, tell them I’m in the ladies.’

‘Yeah, I know.’

‘Thanks, Digby.’

She walked quietly out, took the back staircase down to the rear yard of the nick, slunk out guiltily. It was twenty past two, she should have stayed in the office for another hour at least, though she doubted anyone would notice her early-off. Even if they did, all it would most probably earn her by way of reprimand was a stern word. It would be worth it.

She would shower and put something clean on, get to the pub early, snag their favourite table, order their usual wine, maybe sneak in a pre-dinner bag of crisps. There had been so many occasions, over the years, when she had arrived late, straight from a job, smelling of a crime scene. Sometimes she’d not turned up at all. Unable to leave a victim or a witness, or an ongoing incident, she’d had to make a call home. It was always grudgingly met with understanding, but theatre tickets had been wasted, trains missed, food had gone cold.

There was a queue of vans outside the custody suite as she passed by. A banging from inside the last one made her jump, stopped her in her tracks. It was a warm day and the back doors had been left open to let in some air. She peered into the darkness of the cage and at the prisoner it held

‘You can’t keep me locked up in here,’ he yelled at her. ‘This is against my human rights.’ A pair of bulging, wild eyes met Meg’s. Spit frothed in the corners of his mouth. ‘Are you in charge?’

‘Me? No. I’m just the cleaner.’

The driver of the van who’d been lounging against the bonnet looked up, adjusted his kit belt and laughed. ‘Burrows is custody skipper today,’ he told her. ‘Such an old woman, always a queue.’ He nodded towards the entrance to the cells. ‘Takes over two hours to process a shoplifter.’

Meg gave the officer a sympathetic smile. ‘At least it’s not raining. Have a good one.’

‘You too, Sarge.’ He raised his hand in goodbye.

As she turned to walk off, the prisoner began to kick the cage again. A stream of abuse and expletives followed. ‘You’re all scum. I pay your wages, you’re all mugs, and I’ve been stuck here over an hour.’

‘An hour?’ Meg said over her shoulder. ‘That’s nothing, think yourself lucky. They’ve kept me here for twenty-nine years.’

The heavy yard gate clanged shut behind her. The neighbouring estate of concrete high-rise flats cast long shadows across the pavement, made the summer air chilly. Other parts of the borough had become gentrified, artisan bakeries and craft shops had sprung up and house prices had rocketed. Here, though, in this small corner, everything was still dirty and tired. Nothing had changed much in the fifty years since the estate had been built, except maybe its occupants. The Irish, the labourers and postmen, the painters and decorators had mostly moved on, further out to the new towns and cheaper suburbs. Their places had been taken by the very poorest; people of all creeds and colours, a dozen different religions and a hundred different dialects, all crammed into an area of less than three hundred square feet. There was trouble, of course, but not as much as you might expect, given their supposed differences.

A marked car pulled out of the yard and sped past her, sirens wailing and lights flashing. It squealed around the corner on its way to an I-call and was closely followed by another. The sight of them made Meg’s throat constrict, her stomach rolled. Something was happening. The course of a life was being altered. Someone had been robbed, assaulted, injured or even killed, and the officers, adrenalin pumping through their bodies, fear and excitement battling for dominance, would have little idea of what they were hurtling towards, or what would be expected of them when they arrived. She was almost jealous, and curious, but not curious enough to turn around. The pub beckoned.

Before she walked on, Meg looked up at the tower blocks again and found the flat, their flat, by counting the windows. Seventh floor, third from the right, that had been their living room, and next to it, the bedroom. At some point, like the rest of the Borough, she had become gentrified, her rough edges had been smoothed off. Her tastes had changed, but she’d go back there, she realised, in a heartbeat.

T

he man on the door studied the student ID carefully. She held her breath while he turned it over in his hands and then held it up next to her face, to compare the photograph to her features.

There were girls at school who constantly boasted about pubs they’d blagged their way into, cigarettes they’d purchased, boys they’d snogged – boys with cars and Saturday jobs – but those girls all looked older and