Hope to Die

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.’

I’m surprised Quinn even knows what those things are called; perhaps Maisie’s softening him up for daddydom. Though the idea of him changing a nappy – well, think The Scream. On acid.

He’s right, though: no exit without a passport, and no passport without a birth certificate. And South Mercia already checked birth records. Of course, there is such a thing as forgery, and it was a lot easier to get away with back then when passports weren’t so high-tech, but it would still have entailed a hell of a lot of time and expense when there were easy and legitimate ways to achieve exactly the same end. Unless there was a reason why you couldn’t go the easy and legitimate way. It’s not a happy thought.

‘You want me to ask Baxter to check the airports? If you’re thinking our dead man might have come from overseas?’

I’m about to say yes, but then I start thinking about how many people churn through Heathrow alone on a daily basis and remind myself that all we have is a blurred face and a hunch.

‘No, I can’t justify the cost. Not without much better grounds. Or a name.’

Quinn nods. ‘Yeah, I think you’re right.’

‘Though it might be an idea to have a word with the Swanns’ postie. We know they didn’t get any calls from overseas, but maybe our vic wrote to them. I mean, he couldn’t exactly track them down on Facebook, now could he.’

Quinn smiles. ‘Yeah, good idea. I’ll get someone on that too.’

He signals, then pulls out, tyres screeching, on to the main road.

* * *

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 harm my baby”’, ‘What really happened to baby Rowan?’, ‘Lawyer says Camilla Rowan “receiving death threats”’, ‘Child-killer to serve life’.

VOICEOVER – JOHN PENROSE