So instead he had smiled, and nodded, and said sorry.
By the time he had finished apologising and shaken off the Morlock in the high-vis jacket, she was nowhere in sight. Leon hurried to the exit, his thin legs propelling him forward through the crowds of people. He checked left and right, then saw the taxi rank, a small queue of people waiting for black cabs. An old white-haired guy, tweed jacket and tie, was helping her into a taxi. Leon had glimpsed the first half of the number plate but the taxi was already pulling away, a bus coming up behind and blocking his view. Her cab turned right onto Great Central Street and was lost among the afternoon traffic. He had stared after it, still feeling the tingle of excitement.
She was gone, for now.
But it didn’t matter. He’d got what he needed.
14
The interview room is a small airless box, a table bolted to the wall and four uncomfortable plastic chairs. I thought there might be one of those two-way mirrors like they have on TV police shows, but there’s nothing like that. Just a thin window threaded with wire mesh, four tired grey walls and dirt baked into every surface. It’s gone midnight and the police station is quiet around me.
I’m shaking and can’t stop, the spike of adrenaline long gone, a crash that’s sent my energy levels plunging. My hands shake like an old woman’s when I try to pick up the Styrofoam cup of sweet tea. A jittery shake in my shoulders, my thighs, my tapping feet, one of them freshly bandaged by a softly-spoken paramedic. I sit at the small table in a faded blue sweatshirt I was given by the duty sergeant at the front desk. It’s rough blue cotton, slightly too big for me – a man’s size, probably – frayed at the neck, with slack cuffs and the ghost of a logo that tells me it has probably been washed a thousand times.
I can smell Mia on my skin, my hands, on the collar of my shirt. That sweet, clean, infant scent, a perfume of innocence. My arms feel empty and my skin itches with thoughts of Mia, of where she is, who’s looking after – have they fed her again, have they found Kathryn? They offered me a sandwich an hour ago but I couldn’t eat, couldn’t even force a mouthful down.
I can’t stop thinking about the scrawled note Kathryn left for me.
Please protect Mia.
I’ve done that, haven’t I? I’ve protected her from harm, removed her from a dangerous situation and delivered her to safety. When we arrived at Harrow police station a few hours ago, an injured woman with a baby in her arms and paramedics in tow, the desk sergeant initially took me for a battered wife fleeing domestic violence. He had smiled kindly and arranged for one of the PCs to bring me the faded blue sweatshirt, flip-flops for my feet and a sweet, milky tea. When I was asked to put all of my possessions in a clear plastic bag – phone, watch, keys, purse, change – before being interviewed, I simply shook my head and indicated the pistol that was already in an evidence bag on the other side of the desk.
‘He took everything,’ I said. ‘Apart from that.’
Mia’s gone too now, whisked away by a small, birdlike woman from social services. One minute swaddled in my arms, sleeping in a soft grey blanket provided by the paramedics, the next roused and crying and manhandled into a car seat. I listened with my jaw clenched, fingernails digging into my palms, as Mia was carried away from me through the police station and her crying grew fainter and fainter until it faded to nothing.
That was it, was it? The last time I’ll ever see her. I’ll never hold her again, the bond built up over the last six hours blown away like gossamer on the wind. I pat my pockets for my phone, to look at the picture I took in the café, before remembering it was taken from me hours before. There was no time to grab it during our escape so I don’t even have a single picture to remind me.
Nothing.
The ache builds in my chest, like a bruise spreading outwards, a feeling of loss so overwhelming that for a moment I think I might collapse to the floor, curl into a ball and just cry. Wait for sleep, for oblivion, for a time when I can’t feel anything anymore.
But who are you crying for? For Mia, or for yourself?
I know the answer to that one.
Instead I put my palms flat on the cold metal surface of the table, straighten my back and blink the tears away. Six deep breaths in, six out. I focus on what I can feel – the dull throb of pain in the sole of my foot, the rigid band of a headache behind my eyes, the rough cotton of the sweatshirt – and wait for the feeling to pass.
The spherical glass eye of a camera looks down on me from the far corner of the room.
Don’t trust the police.
But this was the right thing, the only thing to do. Wasn’t it? What other option was there? Abandon her to a violent kidnapper? Take her home? I know this is the right thing to do.
Despite that, I still can’t shake the nagging feeling that I’ve let Kathryn down somehow. I’d like to see her again, to explain what happened with Mia, to check they’re both OK.
I waved away medical help to begin with, insisting they check Mia over first in case she had any kind of injury. But apart from tucking into another bottle of milk she seemed remarkably unaffected by the last few hours, giggling and smiling up at the green-jumpsuited paramedic as she was examined. Once Mia was checked, the paramedic had disinfected the wounds in my foot – two lacerations from the broken glass – and bound it in a bandage. It’s still tender, and pain lances through the sole with every move I make. He also cleaned the cut above my eye and put a plaster over it.
The duty solicitor arrives, an amiable man in his thirties with kind eyes, who introduces himself as Chris Betteridge. He tells me that anything between the two of us is confidential, before asking that I be honest with him. He explains the police caution to me and tells me he’s only there to advise, not tell me what to do, but ultimately I have three options: answer the questions; say ‘no comment’; or read a prepared statement. I tell him I’m happy to answer any questions they have. Lastly, he tells me my legal rights are ongoing so I can stop the interview as many times as I like if I want further advice, although I get the impression that he’d rather get it done and dusted as soon as possible, given that we’re heading into the small hours of the morning. His pep talk complete, he sits next to me filling out a pro forma with various details, while a uniformed PC comes in and takes a saliva sample for DNA, the cotton wool bud soft and strange as it’s rolled up and down the inside of my cheek. Then we wait another hour for a pair of detectives to arrive, while I sip a second Styrofoam cup of lukewarm tea.
Don’t trust anyone.
My mind scrolls back again over the ten words scrawled on that scrap of paper. Examining each line. The first one a request, the next two instructions. Warnings, distinct and clear.
But I know all too well that fixating too long on one thing is a sure way to get blindsided. I was fixated for so long on starting a family that I hadn’t seen the cracks growing in my marriage until it was too late. I was so focused on getting pregnant that I failed to notice the distance growing between me and my husband.
Perhaps I’m looking at this whole situation the wrong way as well.
Perhaps it’s not what was written in the note, but what was missing from it. It didn’t say don’t trust him, or don’t trust Dominic; it didn’t refer to him at all – at least not directly. Does that mean something? It said I shouldn’t trust anyone, but what’s that about? The only specific element related to the police.