Hope to Die

‘So they started by looking at all baby boys whose births were registered in the six weeks after Camilla gave birth. She never registered the kid herself, so if it was still alive the father would have had to have done it. Only that came up with nothing, so the next thing they looked at was all boys born at Birmingham and Solihull General Hospital on or around the same date. There were thirteen other male babies delivered there that week, but they all checked out, so they widened the search out both by date and geography – to the rest of Brum and the West Midlands, and the two months before and after 23rd December.’ He flips to another file. ‘See?’

‘And they were physically checking out every single baby boy?’

He nods. ‘All the ones who fitted the profile, yeah.’ He flips through more and more files, each child tracked, traced and eliminated. ‘There were over a hundred uniforms on it at one point.’

‘Jeez. And there was no DNA?’

‘They had hers, obviously, but nothing else, because Rowan left before the hospital could do any blood tests on the baby. So yeah, they did do tests on some of the kids – certainly any of ’em where there was any sort of doubt. But they came up empty every time. And not having the kid’s DNA made identifying the father a non-starter.’

‘But we have it now, right?’

‘Right, and forensics are doing a full familial search.’

She looks thoughtful. ‘So what are you looking for?’ She gestures at the screen. ‘I mean, there’s so much of it.’

He pulls a face. ‘Tell me about it,’ he says heavily. ‘But yeah, it’s a good question. Sometimes you don’t know it till you see it. Could be something that pops now, with hindsight, but couldn’t have popped then. Or an obvious omission – like data that’s logged as being there but actually isn’t.’

‘Wouldn’t that have been spotted at the time?’

‘You’d think so, but by all accounts they were still pulling all this stuff together when the trial started. I gather the judge was none too pleased.’

He flips back to the page he was looking at when she arrived and sits back, reaching for the coffee.

She leans forward and reads the first entry: ‘Aaron William Dacre, DOB 6 January 1998, Cheltenham General Hospital, Father – Timothy Dacre, Mother – Phoebe Dacre, née Fenner.’

Baxter makes a face. ‘Tim Dacre, Tom Dacre, Tim Baker, Tom Baker, whatever his bloody name was. Though Tom Baker is pretty bloody apt because whoever he is, he must have fucking regenerated –’

She’s looking at him blankly, and he realizes he’s showing his age. ‘Dr Who,’ he says, a little lamely. ‘Tom Baker was Dr Who. When I was a kid.’

She’s smiling now and he shakes his head. ‘Yeah, yeah, don’t rub it in – you weren’t even born then, right?’

* * *

Hansen puts down his mobile and looks across to Ev. They’re on their way back to Oxford.

‘That was Peter Anderson. He said he’d go into his local police station this afternoon and give a DNA sample.’

‘Great. We’d better call Dumfries and Galloway – let them know he’s coming.’

He smiles. ‘Next on the list.’

His phone pings and he looks down to scan the message. ‘Ah, great – it’s an email from Marcus Crowther – he’s going to come into St Aldate’s tomorrow. Which just leaves us with Jamie Fox. He lives in Stockport, so we’ll have to ask Greater Manchester to pick up on that one. But it just so happens my ex works there so I’ll give him a call and see if he can get me a contact.’

There’s a tiny pause. ‘Great,’ says Ev. ‘Good stuff.’

He wonders if the hesitation was because she was waiting for the lights to change, or because she registered the ‘he’ and ‘him’ he slipped in there. He’s pretty sure she already knew, but it’s high time she did, either way. Though he doubts she’ll be fazed, any more than Fawley was. And then she glances across at him with a smile that leaves no room for doubt and he grins back and the smile is still there as she changes up a gear and puts her foot down.

* * *

Adam Fawley

25 October

11.05

Kearney pours me a coffee and sits back down. ‘So what do you want to know?’

‘What did you think happened? At the time?’

He raises his eyebrows. ‘To the kid? I thought she killed it. The lies, the evasions, the way she behaved – everything pointed to that. And the jury agreed with me.’

‘And now?’

He takes his time. ‘How did she react – when you told her?’

‘That he’d reappeared? Hard to be sure. Not as surprised as I would have expected.’

‘Did she ask about him – where he’d been, that sort of stuff?’

I shake my head. ‘No. Nothing.’

‘You got kids?’

The minefield question. I had two; I have one. And the present-tense answer is – now and always – the only possible reply.

‘A daughter.’

‘How old?’

‘Three months.’

That clearly surprises him, though he does his best to hide it. He probably thinks I’m one of those second-time-arounders with a shiny new wife half my age.

‘And if your daughter turned up out of the blue after being missing for twenty years, wouldn’t you want to know where she’d been?’

‘Of course. But I wouldn’t have given my child to a virtual stranger in the first place.’