He sits back. ‘You want to know what I think now? I think this case is a bloody minefield. Let’s just say I’m glad I’m not in your shoes.’
I make a face. ‘Join the club.’
That gets a smile. A desert-level dry one, but a smile.
‘Is there anything you’d do differently now, sir, with the benefit of hindsight?’
He considers. ‘Nope,’ he says eventually. ‘I think we did pretty much what any competent investigation would do. Then or now.’
‘You and your team put in a hell of a lot of hours tracking down baby boys of the right age, and yet you never found him.’
His eyes narrow. ‘My lads did a good job. You won’t find otherwise.’
‘And I’m not suggesting otherwise. But the baby must have been there, all the same.’
He sits back again. ‘There’ll be an explanation. No bloody clue what, mind you. But there’ll be one.’
He picks up his coffee.
‘What would you do now, sir, if you were running this inquiry?’
He gives me a dark look. ‘Leave the country? No, seriously, I assume you’re doing familial DNA on your vic?’
I nod. ‘Underway.’
He shrugs. ‘Then you’re doing what I’d be doing.’
‘Did you consider – at the time – whether Rowan might have had the baby adopted? Illegally, that time?’
‘She sold the kid, you mean? Yes, we did look at that.’
‘I don’t remember seeing much about it in the files.’
His eyes narrow. ‘That,’ he says quickly, ‘is because there was sod all to say.’
I wait. Count to twenty. I suspect he may be too.
‘As I’m sure you’re aware,’ he begins, in a voice heavy with irritated patience, ‘the illegal adoption trade only really took off after the internet. Back in ’97 it was mostly just friends of friends type of stuff – someone who knew someone who knew someone. You know as well as I do that it’s near nigh impossible to run that sort of thing down, especially five bloody years later, which is what we were facing. We did have a few leads – West Mids had some contacts and put us on to one or two – but none of ’em came up with diddly.’
‘I see.’
‘And if Rowan did sell that kid she didn’t get much for it – she certainly never came into any significant cash around then; we checked. The only thing she did spend any money on was that bloody tattoo – “Sweet freedom”. Now there’s an irony.’ He’s getting into his stride again. ‘And remember how narrow the time window was – she left Brum at three and was at home for the Christmas party by five. She had half an hour, max, to get rid of that kid, so if she handed it off to someone she must have made all the arrangements beforehand. And how would a girl like her even find an illegal adoption agency? I mean, they could hardly put ads in the bloody paper, now could they? And she lived in Shiphampton, not bloody Sparkhill.’
‘But she did give birth in Birmingham, and the psychiatrist who assessed her pre-trial said she almost certainly researched the hospital sometime beforehand. As she probably did with the first baby as well.’
‘So?’
‘So she could have met someone that way. If she’d been hanging about the hospital she could have met another mother – another girl in her position. They might have given her a contact.’
Kearney shifts in his seat. He’s frowning.
I sit forward a little. ‘Then after the birth she calls them from a hospital payphone and arranges to meet to hand the child over.’
He raises an eyebrow, sardonic. ‘Let me guess – at a lay-by on the A417?’
I shrug. ‘Why not? We both know the best way to get away with a lie is to invent as little as possible. What if everything she said about that day was true, apart from the one central, crucial thing? She did meet someone at that lay-by, she did hand over the child, but the person who took it wasn’t its father, it was a backstreet baby broker.’
I wait, again, and eventually he nods.
‘Yes, I suppose it’s possible.’
‘It would also explain why the people who took the baby never came forward. Either the broker or the people who adopted him. They all had too much to lose.’
‘But she didn’t, did she – Rowan? Why didn’t she come clean? Perhaps not straight away, but at least once she was facing a murder charge? An illegal adoption would’ve been chicken feed by comparison.’
There’s a silence. ‘I know. That part doesn’t make sense.’
He pulls a wry face. ‘Welcome to the warped world of Camilla Rowan. None of it makes any bloody sense – it never did. Apart from her killing it. That always made sense. Trouble is, that’s the one thing we now know for an absolute fact did not happen.’
* * *
Importance: High
Sent: Thurs 25/10/2018, 12.10
From: DCVickyRoom@GMP.police.uk
To: DCThomasHansen@ThamesValley.police.uk
Subject: Jamie Fox
Mr Fox just attended at GMP Fairfax Road. We were in luck – he brought a blood donor card with him. According to what you sent over earlier, your vic is Group A and the mother is Group O. Since Fox is also Group O he can be excluded from paternity. We’ve taken a blood sample for verification purposes, but I thought you’d like to know straight away.
I’ll let you know as soon as we have the results.
Best,
Vicky Room
* * *
Adam Fawley
25 October
12.15
Quinn is waiting for me in the car park, leaning against his car, scrolling on his tablet. He looks up as I approach.
‘Did you get much from Havers?’
‘Nah,’ he says. ‘Nothing more than was in the files. He’s so far up Kearney’s arse all you can see is his shoes.’
Figures.
He unlocks the car with a flashy remote-control thing (as if you couldn’t guess) and we get inside.
‘I asked Kearney about the illegal adoption theory,’ I say, pulling the door shut.
Quinn nods. ‘And?’
‘He got a bit defensive – said they’d done their best to look at that, but five years after the fact it was an impossible task.’
Quinn starts the engine. ‘Well, he’s not wrong there.’
I turn and look out of the window. A couple of PCs walk past the car and up the steps, chatting animatedly. They look scarcely out of training college; even I think the police are looking younger these days.
‘I asked him whether they’d spoken to any of the other single mothers who gave birth at the hospital around the same time, in case one of them could have been the link to a backstreet adoption outfit.’
‘What did he say?’
‘Huffed and puffed a bit. They obviously didn’t do it.’
Quinn puts the car in gear and swivels round so he can see to back out. ‘Well, that’s the only hole in the case we’ve found so far. But how the hell we’re supposed to track any of them down now –’
‘There was a social worker, wasn’t there – based at the hospital? Isn’t she on the witness log?’
‘Yeah, but she only saw Rowan once for, like, ten minutes, so it didn’t seem that important.’
‘Push her up the priority list – if there were other girls thinking of adoption she’d be the one who knew.’
Quinn nods. ‘I’ll get someone on it.’
He reverses, so fast I’m risking whiplash, and then we move off.
‘There was one other thing Kearney said.’
‘Oh yeah?’ says Quinn.
‘He was joking – he said if he was in my position he’d leave the country.’
Quinn laughs.
‘But it made me think – if the baby really was adopted illegally, perhaps they took him abroad?’
Quinn glances at me, then back at the road. ‘But it’d have to have a passport, wouldn’t it? The kid? Or be put on one of the parents’? You can’t just rock up at Heathrow with a stroller and they wave you through.’