Stolen

  ‘Yes, Mr Ramsden?’ she said starchily as she got to his bed.

  ‘My leg sure is throbbing,’ he bleated out.

  ‘I’ve told you several times already that this happens sometimes after a limb is amputated.’

  ‘But it’s agony.’

  ‘I hardly think it’s that,’ she said crisply. ‘And you are already on the highest dose allowed of painkilling drugs.’

  ‘How am I to bear it?’ he asked.

  ‘Maybe you should make your peace with your Maker,’ she said sharply. The moment the words came out she regretted it. She knew only too well it wasn’t right for a nurse to sit in judgment on a patient. She blamed Tony Bryan for that.

  ‘You are very hard on me, Sister,’ he whined.

  Miranda only heard the self-pity and looked down at him with contempt. Tony had telephoned her the previous evening and expressed his anxiety for Lotte now that he had no choice but to arrest and charge her.

  ‘You have done unspeakable things to a vulnerable young woman,’ she spat out. ‘I might find it possible to be kind to you if you’d just be man enough to admit what you’ve done. What difference can it make to you anyway? Your punishment is assured, whatever you do or say.’

  She walked away from his bed then, too angry to care what he made of that.

  Bryan, dressed in scrubs, stood well back from the pathologist and his assistant as they examined Fern Ramsden. He loathed autopsies, especially on those who’d been dead for some time. The smell was sickening and the sound of scalpels and other implements cutting through flesh sent a creeping feeling down the back of his legs.

  ‘You say your young lady only stabbed her once with a narrow-bladed kitchen knife?’ the pathologist asked.

  ‘That’s right,’ Bryan said. ‘We recovered a knife from the house which was shown to her today and she confirmed it was the one she used. Six inches long, no serration, the kind you might use for slicing vegetables.’

  ‘I see that wound,’ the man said. ‘But there is another one lower down – the knife that inflicted this was much larger. I’d say a French cook’s knife. That was the one which killed her; the first was well above the victim’s heart and didn’t go far enough in to damage anything vital.’

  Bryan overcame his squeamishness and stepped forward. It was difficult to believe that the woman on the slab, looking so grotesque and atrophied from immersion in salt water for so long, was the same glamorous, sexy redhead he’d seen photographs of.

  ‘But the cuts are at different angles,’ he said.

  ‘The blows came from different directions, and the larger one was from someone left-handed. They were not from the same person.’ The pathologist poked around the torso for a few moments. ‘I’d say the second, larger one was inflicted by a man, judging by the force required to get such depth of penetration, and the victim would have been lying down when he did it.’

  ‘Hallelujah,’ Bryan exclaimed and punched the air in delight. ‘So after all that sanctimonious bastard has said about how much he loved her, he killed her! Let him get out of that one!’

  ‘Anything else you need to know?’ The pathologist’s eyes were smiling above his mask at Bryan’s glee.

  ‘No, just fax the report through as soon as you’re done. I think I’ll do a spot of hospital visiting before I go back to the station.’

  Bryan felt as if he was walking on air as he made his way up to the high-dependency ward where Ramsden was being cared for. It would be good to see Miranda too, but absolutely superb to shatter that man’s supreme confidence by telling him his wife’s body had been found.

  Miranda was busy in the main ward. Bryan waved to her and indicated where he was going.

  Ramsden appeared even more haggard than he’d been on the last visit. He was propped up on pillows but he looked very sick.

  ‘Just come to tell you the good tidings,’ Bryan said jovially. ‘We found your wife’s body today!’

  ‘You did?’ Ramsden said, and Bryan could almost see the cogs in his brain whirling as he tried to decide how he should react to this news.

  He put his left hand up to his eyes and partially covered them, as if hiding his tears. ‘At least now I’ll be able to bury her and have closure,’ he said at length.

  Bryan poured the man a glass of water and held it out to him. The left hand came away from his dry eyes and took the glass.

  ‘Left-handed?’ Bryant asked. ‘The second fatal stab wound in your wife’s chest was struck by a left-handed man. It had to be you, there was no other man there.’

  Ramsden stared at him, his eyes wide like those of a rabbit caught in a car’s headlights.

  ‘You killed your wife,’ Bryan said quietly. ‘You killed the baby too and but for Lotte’s smartness you would’ve killed her and Dale. I can prove all this, but somehow I doubt you’ll still be with us for a trial. So I’m giving you the chance to redeem yourself and admit it all.’

  ‘I told you the truth the other day,’ the man said, his voice shaking.

  Bryan shook his head slowly. ‘You told me a heap of shit. I’m going away now to get another officer, a solicitor for you and a tape recorder. By the time I get back I want you ready to tell me about Fern and the baby. The true story this time.’

  Bryan wheeled round and walked towards the door, then stopping and turning back with his hand still on the door, looked hard at Ramsden. ‘Just so you’ll know the score, I don’t give a toss whether you get repatriated to stand trial in the States, whether you get tried here, or even if you die before any decision is made about you. All I care about is that lovely young girl you’ve so badly wronged.

  ‘I’ll tell you now, before I get back with witnesses, that if you give me a full and frank confession tonight, I’ll see you get treated fairly. If you don’t, you might find me leaning on that stump of yours, getting your pain relief delayed, and a dozen other nasty little tricks I know.’

  He walked away then, whistling ‘Dixie’.

  Chapter Twenty

  ‘But I must see her, please!’ David begged the desk sergeant at Brighton police station.

  ‘I’m sorry, sir, but it’s not allowed,’ the man repeated. He had the look of a bloodhound with saggy jowls and bags under his eyes. ‘If you want to write her a note I’ll make sure she gets it. If you want to leave her cigarettes or chocolate, I’ll pass then on to her. But you can’t see her.’

  ‘Can I speak to DI Bryan then?’

  ‘He’s out on a case,’ the sergeant said. ‘I don’t think he’ll be back here this evening.’

  It was just after seven in the evening. David had been working out of the office all day and he didn’t get Simon’s message about Lotte being arrested until he got home at five-thirty and checked his voice mail. He jumped in the car immediately and drove over to Brighton, and now it seemed he’d just been wasting his time.

  ‘David!’ A familiar voice made him turn round to see that Simon had just come in.

  ‘Am I glad to see you – they won’t let me see her,’ David explained.

  ‘Nor me neither,’ Simon said. ‘I just brought her some smarter clothes for court tomorrow morning and her makeup and stuff. I can’t believe they are doing this to her.’

  Simon put the small suitcase on to the counter and the desk sergeant said he would send it down to Lotte. David quickly wrote her a note explaining why he couldn’t see her and that he’d be at the court in the morning. He ended it with a dozen kisses saying they were all ‘good-luck-and-just-until-we-get-the-chance-for-real’ ones. He hoped that might make her smile.

  ‘How is she?’ David asked as he handed over the note. ‘She must be terrified.’

  ‘The officer down in the cells is a good sort, we don’t whack prisoners with truncheons like on the films,’ the sergeant said dryly. ‘I haven’t seen her personally but I know there is a great deal of sympathy for her, so stop worrying.’

  As the two men left the police station Simon suggested David came back with him and stayed the nigh
t in Lotte’s room rather than drive back to Chichester and return in the morning. ‘We could get a pizza or something and have a few drinks. We all need something to calm us down.’

  David was glad of the offer; he didn’t fancy being alone.

  Down in the cells, Lotte sat on the bunk looking through a magazine one of the policewomen had sent down for her. She was looking at it, but not taking it in, for she knew that by this time tomorrow night she would be in Holloway Prison. Just the very name of the place sent cold shudders down her spine. She remembered watching the TV series Bad Girls, which was set in the prison, and thinking how scary it would be to be in there. While she knew the writers of the programme would exaggerate how awful it was, it was still the prison where some of the most dangerous and wicked women served their sentences, so it wasn’t going to be like a boarding school.

  She opened the note from David and read it once again. She guessed he’d written it hurriedly in front of the desk sergeant, and couldn’t say much for that reason. His note, and the clothes and makeup so carefully picked out and packed by Simon, meant so much. It was comforting to know they were out there thinking and worrying about her. She had been disappointed that DI Bryan hadn’t come to see her before going off duty, but she supposed she was after all just another case to him.

  She had never, ever imagined herself being in a police cell, and now she was here, with the sound of a drunk shouting out abuse down the corridor, she felt the full weight of everything that had happened to her in the last year or so.

  It was strange that she hadn’t felt it before today. But as the memories had come back to her it was almost as if she was looking down watching someone else’s life. It hadn’t seemed like it had all really happened to her.

  The rape in Ushuaia had been an appalling and terrifying incident, yet now it didn’t seem as hideous as being in that bed with Howard and Fern. She wondered how she managed to cope with Howard’s baby growing in her belly. Yet she didn’t remember ever hating the baby, only him.

  How could they have left her locked in the basement for such long periods? Surely they must have known how frightened and lonely she was, especially when she went into labour? There were times during the birth when she thought she was going to die, the pain was so intense. She’d never known pain like that. Didn’t they realize how terrifying it was for her knowing there was no doctor on call and no operating theatre should that be needed?

  It really was unbelievable that anyone could be so casual about human life as Fern and Howard were. She wondered if they had treated all the mothers whose babies they sold as callously.

  And she recalled all those hours after the birth when she had stood poised on the stairs with that knife in her hand waiting for Fern or Howard to come down. She must have been half out of her mind! Would she really have been able to kill them if the opportunity had arisen? She doubted it somehow. It was only once she knew the baby was dead and they were going to kill her too that she got desperate enough to find that extra toughness.

  When she thought back on all she had endured, be that pain, loneliness, shame, hunger or fear, the worst thing of all was not getting to hold her baby. How could they snatch her away as if she was nothing to her?

  Even now, nearly four months later, she still felt the raw pain of separation. She thought she could’ve borne it better had she held her, fed and changed her, and studied every detail about her. At least then she would have her little face imprinted on her very soul, and her smell in her nostrils and the touch of her skin would be for ever there in her mind. But she’d had all that stolen from her.

  A policewoman told her earlier that she mustn’t worry too much about going to Holloway, because when it got about that she’d stabbed someone in self-defence, she would be admired. Did that mean she’d have to pretend to be a hard case? Somehow she didn’t think she could fool anyone for very long.

  ‘I’d like to go over that part just one more time to clarify it,’ DI Bryan said to Ramsden.

  He had come back to the hospital, as he said he would, with another officer and a tape recorder. Waiting for them was Mike Branning, the duty solicitor on call that evening, to make certain Ramsden had legal representation.

  It was of course very unusual to have such an interview in a hospital, but because of the special circumstances – the possibility Ramsden might die, or be repatriated to the States if he survived, and because Lotte Wainwright had been charged with killing his wife, while it now appeared that it was he who did the killing – the top brass had given the go-ahead.

  Bryan hadn’t expected for one moment that Ramsden would cooperate and tell the truth. He thought the man was such a practised liar and confidence trickster that he probably wouldn’t know the truth if it stared him in the face. All Bryan was really hoping for was that the overall tone of the statement would reveal the man’s character, that he would be at a loss to explain certain things, and that would be enough to get Lotte off the hook.

  But maybe the prospect of meeting his Maker shortly had clarified Howard’s mind, for right from the start of the interview he abandoned the structure of lies he’d told earlier.

  He said it was pure chance that they had come upon Lotte being raped in Ushuaia and that taking her back to their suite on the cruise ship was nothing more than common kindness. But he went on to say that Fern quickly became very attached to her, as if she was a daughter. That was why Fern asked her to join them at the Dorchester and then offered her a job as their housekeeper/PA.

  Bryan didn’t think that was absolutely true – he was fairly certain the couple had earmarked her for something more lucrative for them almost as soon as they rescued her in Ushuaia – but he let it pass.

  Howard said he thought Fern’s initial idea for Lotte to have a baby for her was to create a kind of idealistic perfect family unit where all three adults would live in harmony and bring up the baby together.

  ‘So you would in fact have had two wives?’ Bryan remarked.

  ‘Fern didn’t see it that way,’ Ramsden said indignantly.

  Bryan was fairly certain that to Ramsden this was the sole attraction for as they got further into the interview it was patently clear he had never wanted a child of his own.

  It was equally clear that the couple were breathtakingly arrogant, for they believed that they were offering Lotte the opportunity of a lifetime. Just the incredulous way Ramsden spoke of her refusal showed how egotistical they were and how used to getting their own way.

  He said they offered her a compromise in that if she wanted out after the baby was born, they would give her a lump sum of money and keep the baby themselves.

  Up to this point it didn’t sound as if they were actually imprisoning Lotte, only using a kind of moral blackmail on her to have a baby for them. But it was apparent that Lotte lost the chance and even the will to escape when they began drugging her. Howard claimed it was only a mild sedative which removed anxiety. Fern stepped up the dose several days before the night they were to try for a baby. She said this was to make Lotte ‘more receptive’.

  Howard skirted around the events of the first night they tried for a baby. All he said was that Lotte seemed quite amenable. But she obviously wasn’t, as Howard admitted she tried to escape the same night, and he and Fern were so scared she might succeed next time and try to make trouble for them that they kept her locked in after that.

  While Fern was overjoyed when Lotte became pregnant, Howard said he was already regretting the whole idea. He didn’t actually admit to the tape that he was disappointed he wasn’t going to get a pretty young woman in his bed on a regular basis after all, or that he didn’t fancy having a squalling baby around either. But that was probably the size of it because he said that when Fern saw he was drawing back on the whole thing, she became angry and moody.

  He did admit that as Lotte’s pregnancy progressed both he and Fern became aware they’d got themselves into an impossible situation. He mentioned taking her out for walks in remote places but
they were always nervous that she would appeal to someone for help. They also knew that however much money they offered the girl, they still couldn’t trust her not to go to the police. They couldn’t arrange a private adoption in England, and they didn’t have any contacts here for getting a false passport for the baby. He blamed Fern, she blamed him, and all the while they knew Lotte was constantly vigilant for a chance to escape which put them under even greater strain.

  Finally the little girl was born. Howard said absolutely nothing about the birth. Perhaps, like so many men, he believed that childbirth was as natural as breathing and involved no pain or risks.

  But he said plenty about Fern being like a child with a new dolly. He said she refused even to discuss their future because she was ‘bonding’ with their baby.

  So while Lotte was crying down in the basement, Howard was left to try to plan some way out of the mess. He had made inquiries about registering the baby’s birth, and that appeared quite simple, with no proof needed that he and Fern were the parents. But to get a passport for the baby would be much more difficult, for they would have to submit their own passports, and it would soon be discovered that they were forged ones.

  Their original plan, made some time before the baby was born, had been to get Lotte to register the birth and apply for the passport. She was to travel with them to America, and then she would go along with the adoption there. But it became clear that whatever inducements they offered her, she was never going to agree to their plans.

  By the time the baby was born they knew she would snatch any opportunity to seek help and get them arrested. No bribe, however large, was going to ensure she got quietly on a flight back to the States with them and the baby. That was when Howard decided both she and the baby had to be killed.