Hope to Die

I glance up at Challow. He’s frowning, tapping his pen against the desk. I’ve known him a long time, and his standard operating procedure is email. He doesn’t call, and he certainly doesn’t invite you round – in fact, I’m not even sure I can remember the last time I was in here. Or the last time he didn’t greet me with a snippy remark.

‘I mean, I know it’s the DNA report, I just don’t know what it’s telling me.’

‘It’s telling you there’s a match in the system. A textbook parental match.’

‘Well, that’s a result, isn’t it? Means we know who he is.’

Challow’s frown deepens. ‘It’s not as simple as that. Not by a long way.’

I point to the reference number in the second column. ‘So this is the father? SampleA1667GHD?’

He takes a breath. ‘Keep reading. It’s not the father. It’s the mother. Your mystery victim is Camilla Rowan’s son.’

* * *

Channel:

Netflix

Programme:

Infamous, season 4

Number of episodes:

4

First shown:

09/03/2016

[THEME SONG – ’KARMA CHAMELEON’ [CULTURE CLUB]]

TITLE OVER:

INFAMOUS

FADE IN

THE CHAMELEON GIRL

MONTAGE: shots of Camilla Rowan at the Old Bailey trial, interspersed with newspaper headlines – ’Milly Liar: “I did not kill my baby”’, ‘What really happened to baby Rowan?’, ‘Child-killer to serve life’.

VOICEOVER – JOHN PENROSE

In the last episode, we looked at Camilla Rowan’s childhood. At her privileged upbringing, her attentive parents, her expensive school. We spoke to her friends, her teachers, people who knew her, all in a quest for clues as to how this golden girl with a fabulous life ahead of her ended up in the dock of the Old Bailey, her only future the four walls of a prison cell.

But there was nothing – nothing in her surroundings, her relationships or her experiences – that could possibly explain the mystery of the chameleon girl. But perhaps we were simply looking in the wrong place. Perhaps the answer lies much closer to home. In Camilla Rowan herself.

TITLE APPEARS OVER, TYPEWRITER STYLE:

Part two

“If I listened to your lies”

Shot of Birmingham and Solihull General Hospital, entrance to the maternity suite. Nurses going in and out, mothers carrying babies, etc.

VOICEOVER

As we discovered in the previous episode, this is where Camilla Rowan gave birth to a full-term baby boy on 23rd December 1997. A baby no one knew she was carrying, who would leave in her arms later that same day, never to be seen again.

RECONSTRUCTION of young woman with baby in hospital bed. Baby’s face not visible.

But this wasn’t the first time Camilla had visited a maternity unit. She’d already given birth in another Birmingham hospital not much more than a year before. She’d already had another child.

VOICEOVER – JOHN PENROSE

The Senior Investigating Officer on the Camilla Rowan case was DI Howard Lucas, who died in 2013. His second-in-command was Detective Sergeant Lawrence Kearney, now a DCI, who gave some of the most powerful testimony in the Old Bailey trial.

Cut to: close-up of LKsitting at desk with large sign behind saying ‘South Mercia Police: Protecting People Through Professional Policing’.

TITLE OVER:DCILawrence Kearney, investigator on the Camilla Rowan case, 2002-2003

LAWRENCE KEARNEY

On Saturday 9th November 1996 Camilla Rowan presented herself at the front desk of West Bromwich Women’s Hospital. She gave her address as 13 Warnock Road, Cambridge, and said she had unexpectedly gone into labour two weeks before her due date, while visiting friends in Dudley. However, nurses noted that she had none of those friends with her. A few hours later she gave birth to a healthy baby boy.

VOICEOVER

Adrian Morrison was overseeing the unit that night, and subsequently testified at Rowan’s trial.

Cut to: doctor’s office, desk, window behind.

TITLE OVER: Adrian Morrison, Senior Obstetric Registrar, West Bromwich Women’s Hospital, BirminghamNHSFoundation Trust, 1992–2015

ADRIAN MORRISON