The Child Read online

  She went back to March 1970, when Alice had been taken, and stared at the photographs of Angela and Nick Irving leaving the hospital in Basingstoke, their arms empty. Kate studied the grainy black-and-white images of the young couple. The mother looked devastated, her arms wrapped round herself as if cradling her grief. Instead of her baby, Kate thought and carefully unfolded the next story.

  Bill had been spot-on. The initial coverage of the disappearance of Alice was swiftly followed by articles hinting in a heavy-handed way at the mother’s possible involvement. These seemed to stem from a police search of the Irvings’ house, three weeks after Alice disappeared.

  “Routine police work,” was the official comment, but the papers printed pictures of officers carrying items from the house. And Angela Irving being led to a police car. Those arms wrapped tightly around her stomach again.

  Was it guilt she was holding in? Kate wondered and wrote down the name of the officer in the case. She’d see if he was still around.

  Kate raced ahead, scanning headlines for the outcome of the questioning, but it wasn’t mentioned again. Mrs. Irving hadn’t been charged with anything as far as she could see, and the stories about Alice got smaller as 1970 came to an end. The last few cuttings were anniversary stories—“Whatever Happened to Baby Alice?,” etc.—or she featured as a name in roundups of missing children written as backgrounders to new abduction cases.

  Kate noted that Angela wasn’t quoted in the later anniversary stories. The reports said she and her husband had moved abroad. She, too, had disappeared, then.

  The online electoral register had more than a dozen current listings for Angela and Nicholas Irvings. They were scattered all over the country, but there were none in Basingstoke.

  Kate was looking at her notes when Joe announced he’d established that Angela Alice Irving was not dead and found her marriage to Nick and the births of their two other children, Patrick and Louise. One married and both living in Hampshire.

  Kate smiled. They were on the trail of where Angela was now. And she had an Angela Alice and Nicholas Irving listed in Winchester.

  She rang Bob Sparkes immediately.

  “Hi, think I’m going to be heading down your way on the Building Site Baby case. The baby Alice you mentioned is called Alice Irving and her mum, Angela, is living in Winchester.”

  “Is she now?” Sparkes said.

  He sounded pleased. Not a man to go overboard, but he added: “Good work, Kate. Will be interesting to hear what she says. What about the other cases? The girl in the car and the one in the pram?”

  “Found them, but I think they are too old. Definitely not newborns.”

  “Right, well. Is there anything more from the Met about their investigation?”

  “No, nothing. There’s a big anti-terror operation going on at the moment. I’m keeping out of their hair. I’m also looking for the officer who led the original hunt for Alice—DI Len Rigby. You don’t happen to know if he’s still alive, do you?”

  “I’ll have a look and call you back if I find him. He’ll be long retired by now.”

  “Yes, bit of a long shot.”

  “Well, let me know when you’re coming down,” he said.

  She grinned to herself. “Sure. I’m going to give Mrs. Irving a call now.”

  TWENTY

  Angela

  MONDAY, APRIL 2, 2012

  She’d had a feeling that morning that something would happen. A buzz in her head. Nick was quiet, checking an order for the plumbing wholesaler while he ate his cornflakes, but she felt surrounded by noise. She hardly heard him say good-bye when he left.

  She’d sat with the number for Kate Waters in front of her while she finished her coffee and promised herself she’d make the call at lunchtime.

  But the phone rang just before midday.

  “Hello, I’m sorry to bother you but I’m trying to contact Angela Irving,” a woman said. Nice voice, she thought. Polite. Warm.

  “That’s me,” she said. “How can I help?”

  “Oh, I’m so glad to have found you, Mrs. Irving. I’m Kate Waters from the Daily Post. I wondered if I could talk to you about a story I’ve been working on . . .”

  Angela said: “I hoped you’d call.”

  There was a sliver of silence as Kate Waters found herself second-guessed.

  “Oh?” she said quickly. “Did you see the story I wrote last week, then, Mrs. Irving?”

  “Yes,” Angela said. “Do you think the baby is Alice?”

  “Do you?” the reporter said.

  “I don’t know. I hope . . .” And Angela burst into tears.

  Kate Waters waited for her to gather herself, murmuring down the phone that she hadn’t meant to upset her, that she understood how emotional this must be, even after all these years.

  When Angela finally spoke again, she just said, “You’d better come round, then. Have you got my address?”

  Kate Waters said she’d be there in a couple of hours and the two women said good-bye.

  Angela sat in the same place until she heard the knock on the door. Her head was full of Alice. Of the day she went. Of the days that followed.

  She hadn’t been able to go back to nursing afterwards. Couldn’t be in a hospital. The smell of the wards, the starched aprons, the laced-up shoes, took her straight back to her loss. Instead she fought the overwhelming grief at home, privately. They both did. Their son, Patrick, had gone to stay with his grandma and the house echoed with his absence.

  She and Nick would be sitting, watching television, or reading a paper, or listening to the radio, and something would come on. A silly song she’d liked when she was pregnant, the mention of the name Alice, or the word “baby,” or “pregnancy,” or “hospital”—or anything, really, and she’d cry. Nick would hold her hand and talk her through it. Tell her it wasn’t her fault. She’d been in a hospital. She should have been safe.

  But she hadn’t been.

  TWENTY-ONE

  Kate

  MONDAY, APRIL 2, 2012

  The drive down to Winchester had been easier than she’d expected, with little traffic on the normally busy M3, but Joe’s excitement about “actually” going on a story—he used the word “actually” at least a hundred times a day, she noticed—had started to get on her nerves. She almost expected him to ask, “Are we nearly there yet?”

  “What are we going to ask her?” he’d said as soon as his bottom touched the car seat.

  “Will she cry?” as he did up the seat belt.

  “Do you think it’s her baby?” as she turned the key in the ignition.

  “Did she kill her baby?” had made Kate forget what gear she was in for a moment.

  “For God’s sake, Joe, shut up,” she said, moving from second to third and back to second.

  “If you barge in asking questions like that, she’ll throw us out immediately. We are going to let Angela Irving talk. An interrogation-style grilling doesn’t work in this sort of situation. She’s not a politician. She’s a mother whose baby was stolen. Can you imagine what that feels like?”

  Joe cleared his throat. “Actually, I wouldn’t have asked that question,” he said.

  Kate smiled to herself.

  “Okay, when you arrive at a doorstep, what is the first thing you do?” she asked.

  “Knock?” he ventured nervously.

  “After that, you noodle.”

  He looked as if he was flicking back through college notes in his head. Deep concentration.

  “Tell her who we are? That we’re reporters . . .”

  “Okay. And then?”

  “Ask our first question.”

  “At the door? Not if you’re hoping to be asked in. You need to build some trust, make a human connection.”

  Joe fished his notebook out of his bag and started wri
ting. Kate glanced at the page at the traffic lights. He’d spelled “connection” wrong. She sighed and turned up the radio.

  The news was talking about a demonstration in Bangkok about something or other—she hadn’t really been listening—but the word “Thailand” stopped her random thoughts.

  All she could think about was Jake and his wasted opportunities. Thailand is for losers, she told herself and felt tears pricking her eyes. Stop it, you’re at work. She tensed her shoulders and then let them relax. She would have done some deep breathing, but Joe was in the car. Mustn’t show out to the junior.

  Joe showed no sign of noticing her distress. He chattered on about the Olympics, his favorite football team, and who would be playing at the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee concert in a stream of consciousness that washed over her.

  “Have you been to Thailand, Joe?” she asked when he drew breath.

  “Yeah, it was brilliant,” he said. “Great parties.”

  “Right,” she said. “My son’s thinking of going.”

  “Is he? On holiday?”

  She hesitated. “No, not really. He wants to find himself, apparently . . . Jake’s a clever boy. He just can’t seem to get started,” she added.

  Joe’s “Oh” spoke volumes.

  When they finally got out of the London traffic, she put her foot down and made it to the turnoff for Winchester in illegal time.

  “I wonder how many speed cameras we triggered,” Joe said cheerfully. “Actually, it might be a record for the M3.”

  Kate ignored his remarks and put the address into the satnav. “Turn left,” the commanding voice instructed. And she did.

  • • •

  The house in Bishop Street was the neatest one in the road: semidetached, a square of grass at the front, pots of daffodils and winter pansies dotting the paving slab path to the door. Kate opened the gate and led the way, smile already in place.

  “Tuck your shirt in, Joe,” she hissed at him as they got to the door. “We’re here as reporters, not for a party.”

  He blushed, hastily shoved his shirt tail into his trousers, and pushed his fringe out of his eyes.

  “Sorry,” he said.

  Angela Irving opened the door almost immediately, as if she’d been standing behind it, ready.

  She looked pale and serious, smoothing her shoulder-length gray hair back and taking her glasses off. She seemed to sway on her feet as she greeted them. She didn’t wait for Kate to speak.

  “You must be Kate,” she said.

  “Yes, that’s right. Hello, Mrs. Irving,” Kate said. “Thank you so much for seeing me. I know it must be a difficult time for you, but I hope we can help each other.”

  “So do I,” Angela said and opened the door wide to let her visitors in.

  “Go through,” she called from behind them. Kate could hear Joe breathing through his mouth behind her and cursed the fact that she’d brought him with her.

  In the kitchen, Kate’s article had been laid out center stage on the table. Around it were piles of neatly folded cuttings, letters, and an official-looking file.

  “Please sit down,” Angela said, stiff and formal as she moved around the room, adding a third cup to a prepared tray of coffee and biscuits.

  “I got some of my stuff out to show you. In case you were interested in seeing the history . . .”

  Kate immediately picked up an article to show she was willing, but she didn’t read it. It was one she’d already scanned through at the office, and she needed time to think.

  TWENTY-TWO

  Kate

  MONDAY, APRIL 2, 2012

  When Angela Irving had cried on the phone, Kate thought it was going to be an easy job. She thought she would be leading the conversation, but Angela’s tears had dried and Kate felt she was on the back foot. What she had misjudged was the fact that Mrs. Irving was an old hand with reporters. There had been a number of interviews in the years after the disappearance—and that could play two ways. It could move things along if the interviewee knew what was expected and they could come quickly to the point.

  But Kate preferred virgin territory to sloppy seconds. New subjects didn’t speak in clichés or repeat well-worn quotes. And with a newbie, Kate could control the interview. She liked to listen and coax, leaning forwards and maintaining eye contact when things threatened to get difficult. But Angela Irving sounded as though she had already prepared what she wanted to say.

  Kate pretended to read the cutting while she watched the woman bustling around behind the breakfast bar. It all looked very businesslike, but she noted the tremble in her hand that betrayed the nervous energy crackling just below the surface. She’d manage.

  “Mrs. Irving . . .” she started.

  “Please call me Angela. ‘Mrs. Irving’ sounds like you are talking to my mother-in-law,” Angela said with a ghost of a smile.

  “Now,” she added as she poured the coffee, “what do you want to know?”

  Kate smiled at her apologetically and tried to match her matter-of-fact tone.

  “Everything, Angela. If that’s all right.”

  “Of course,” the older woman said quietly and sat down. When she didn’t speak, Kate leaned forwards and asked: “Are you okay, Angela?”

  She shook her head.

  “Sorry, I thought you would ask me a question and I’d answer it, like the other reporters did,” she said. “I thought I’d be fine. But, it’s just that ‘everything’ sounds so overwhelming. I’m not sure where to begin now.”

  Her eyes filled with tears and Kate reached out to touch her arm in sympathy and relief.

  “I’m sorry, Angela. I didn’t mean to overwhelm you. Let’s just take it a bit at a time. Why don’t you tell me about your nursing? My mum was a nurse. Where did you train? In Hampshire?”

  It was not information that Kate really needed, but she wanted to get Angela talking and relaxed before they broached the minefield of the abduction. The early stages of an interview were crucial. Get it wrong and you risked being shown the door with a notebook full of nothing.

  Angela smiled properly for the first time, perhaps thinking she was being let off the hook.

  “It was all I ever wanted to be, a nurse. Used to run doll hospitals for my friends’ toys. I trained not far from here, in Basingstoke. Where I had my babies . . .”

  She faltered, then squared her shoulders. “Well, two of my babies. Louise was nearly born in Germany, where we were stationed in the seventies. Nick was in the army—but you knew that. But we came home for her birth.”

  Kate nodded, urging her on.

  “Where were you in Germany, Angela? Was that after Alice disappeared?”

  The name hung in the air between them.

  “Yes. We went after the police stopped asking their questions,” Angela said. “Nick said we needed a new start and there was a posting offered by his regiment. Compassionate grounds.”

  Kate took a sip of her coffee to allow Angela a moment to collect herself.

  “That must have been incredibly difficult, leaving your home and families at a time like that,” Kate said gently.

  “It was,” the older woman said. The anguish of those weeks had clearly never dimmed. Kate could see the pain on her face. She was ready to talk.

  “Tell me about that day, Angela. Tell me about the day that Alice was taken.”

  TWENTY-THREE

  Angela

  MONDAY, APRIL 2, 2012

  She’d been waiting for this moment. Dreading it but wanting to tell her story again. The pain of experiencing that moment of loss made Alice seem more real to her.

  She told Kate Waters how quiet the evening had been, how Alice had been brought into her private room by a nurse to have a feed and then Nick had taken Patrick home, when their toddler son got tired and started whining.

  �
�We’ll leave you girls to it,” Nick had said, kissing them both and hoisting Paddy onto his shoulders.

  The kiss and her brother’s wails had made Alice stir, and Angela had picked her up and brought her back to bed. She’d tried to feed her, but the baby had refused to latch on to her breast, fussing and snuffling before going back to sleep.

  Angela hadn’t worried too much—Alice was her second baby and there were none of the first-timer fears to deal with. She knew that the drugs she’d had for the delivery were probably still making her baby drowsy and that she’d feed later, when she was ready.

  She re-swaddled her new daughter in the soft white hospital sheet to keep her warm and secure, put her back in the cot by her bed, and gathered her soap bag and towel. She’d padded down to the showers, walking slowly and deliberately.

  “Nick said I looked like John Wayne when I’d got out of bed earlier,” she told Kate. She’d giggled, she remembered, because he looked happier than she’d seen him for ages. Maybe having Alice would help them rebuild their relationship, like Nick said. Perhaps they were turning a corner, she remembered thinking as she struggled down the corridor.

  The reporter was looking at her.

  “Sorry,” Angela said. “It just hurts so much to remember.”

  Kate stroked her arm. “Take your time, Angela,” she said. “I know it must be very hard for you.”

  “The thing is, I can’t remember if I looked at my baby again before I left her in the room,” Angela said, and her voice faltered.

  Kate Waters looked up from her notebook and met her eyes.

  “Did you see anyone in the corridor, Angela?” she said gently.

  “I think there were a couple of visitors—people on their way out of the ward—but I didn’t take much notice. I wanted a quick shower before Alice woke for her feed.”

  She’d stood under the hot water for what felt like two minutes, but the police said was more like ten minutes. Time did strange things in hospitals. Sometimes it stretched minutes into hours and sometimes it vanished altogether.