‘No. But we can stop him doing this to another family.’
Morrison laughed again, the manic edge obvious. ‘You think I’ve got it in me to care about anybody else any more?’
‘Yeah, Mike. I think you do. You’re a decent man, you don’t want to put anybody else through this.’
Tears welled in his eyes and he dashed them away with the back of his hand. He took another drink and said, ‘Fuck you, officer. Ask your question, then.’
Here goes. Time to run for cover. ‘Did you and Jessica have fertility treatment when you had Daniel?’
He paused with his glass halfway to his mouth. ‘How the fuck did you know that?’
‘I didn’t know it. That’s why I’m asking you.’
He rubbed his stubbled chin. ‘Jess kept having miscarriages. She was desperate for a kid. Me, I wasn’t that bothered. But I could never say no to her.’ He stared at the screen. ‘They did tests.’ His mouth curled. ‘She was allergic to my sperm. Can you believe that? There was us, thinking we were perfectly suited, and all the time she couldn’t tolerate me.’ He swallowed more whisky. ‘I’d have left it at that, but she wouldn’t. So we went along to the fertility clinic at Bradfield Cross and got some other bugger’s sperm.’
‘That must have been hard for you.’
‘You have no bloody idea. I felt like some other man had been there. Inside my wife.’ He scratched his head. ‘I knew in my head it wasn’t like that, but in my heart it was a different story.’
‘What was it like after Daniel was born?’
A tender smile lit his ravaged face. ‘It was love at first sight. And I never wavered in that. But at the same time, I knew he was an alien. He wasn’t flesh of my flesh. I never really knew what was going on in his head. I loved him to bits, but I never knew him.’ He gestured at the TV. ‘That’s what I’m still trying to do. But I never will now, will I?’
There was nothing to say. Paula stood up and patted him on the shoulder. ‘We’ll be in touch.’ She couldn’t remember the last time she’d said anything emptier.
‘That was the beginning of the end of my marriage,’ Lara Quantick said bitterly. ‘I thought a baby would bring us together. But he was like a bloody silverback gorilla. He hated Niall because he was another man’s child in his eyes. Plus it was a constant reminder that he wasn’t a real man. I bet he’s not even sorry.’
Sam nodded, trying to look sympathetic. He’d got what he came for. Confirmation that Niall Quantick was a donor baby and that the sperm had come from Bradfield Cross Hospital. He couldn’t see what else Lara Quantick might have that would be any use to him. Now he just had to get out of here before he got sucked into a complete rerun of her fucked-up marriage. He almost felt sorry for her ex. He wouldn’t mind betting that every time they had a row, Lara threw his lack of manhood in his face. He stood up. He was a copper, not a counsellor, and while he was stuck in this crappy flat with her, the real action was elsewhere.
‘We’ll be in touch,’ he said, already halfway to somewhere else in his head.
Ambrose had felt ambivalent about the government’s anti-terrorist measures ever since they’d been introduced. The policeman applauded anything that gave them the powers to make the streets safer. But the black man was made uneasy by anything that made it easier to isolate and target minorities. This lot were supposed to be the left, but they were capable of some pretty repressive stuff. Who knew how the new rules might be applied under a regime that really didn’t care much for civil liberties. Look how much damage had been done to the US in the Bush years. And they had way more checks and balances than the UK.
But he had to admit there were some aspects of the legislation that made his job a lot easier. OK, sometimes you had to stretch a point and make somebody out to be a lot more dangerous than they were, but you could get all sorts of information these days that used to take a lot of time and more evidence than was often readily available. Take air passenger lists. It used to be a nightmare getting airlines to give you access to the names of the people who had flown on any individual plane. Warrants had to be obtained from magistrates who didn’t always agree that your need to know was stronger than the airline’s right to customer confidentiality. Then you had to hope the passenger list still existed.
But now, it was easy. You flew, you were in the security services computer system. And the likes of Ambrose could generally find a friendly officer who totally understood that catching killers was a lot more important than some notional idea of personal privacy. Especially if you were the kind of copper who made a point of making friends rather than enemies.
So it was that Monday morning that Ambrose received a text from an unidentified caller which simply said, Ur pal misd his plane. Didn’t make another flite.
Ambrose congratulated himself on his instincts. He’d covered a lot of ground the day before. There had been a couple of possibles on his list by the end of play. But he’d had a gut feeling about the computer security geek, especially when his girlfriend had shown them the extent of their equipment. If anyone could have performed the cyber stalking evident in this case, it was Warren Davy. And whatever his girlfriend believed, Warren Davy wasn’t in Malta. He was out there somewhere, a serial killer on a roll.
Wherever he was, Ambrose bet he was grooming his next victim.
After the frustration of the past few days, Carol felt almost exhilarated at the way information was coming at her. Connections were starting to emerge, and she felt the thrill of the hunter who is finally getting the scent of their prey. The DNA breakthrough had turned everything on its head, confirming Tony’s earlier conclusion that these were not sexual homicides.
Now they knew for certain that all four victims had been born as a result of artificial insemination. Three of the mothers had been treated at Bradfield Cross Hospital’s sub-fertility unit, the fourth at a private clinic in Birmingham. Her next stop should be the clinic here in Bradfield. She had no idea what they could tell her. Her knowledge of the law around donor sperm was scant, but she did know that back when these babies had been made, the donations had been anonymous.
She was about to call Paula to get her coat on and join her when the phone rang. ‘Stuart Patterson here,’ he said before she could even identify herself. ‘I think Alvin’s come up with a suspect.’
‘That’s your sergeant, right? The one that’s over in Manchester?’
‘That’s right. He was on the knocker yesterday, trying to make something out of the car registrations we got. He had a couple of possibles, but one of them, his girlfriend, who is also his business partner, she said he’s in Malta, but he’s not. And he’s perfect for it. They’ve got a company, DPS, that deals in computer security and data storage—’
‘Slow down, Stuart.’ Carol’s head was spinning as she tried to process his garbled sentences. ‘What’s Malta got to do with it?’
‘Sorry, sorry. I’m just . . . this feels like the first proper break, you know? Everything coming together - the profiling, the back-to-basics door-knocking coppering and the technology - and giving us what we need.’ She could hear him take a deep breath. ‘Right. One of the cars that came into Worcester the day Jennifer was killed was a Toyota Verso registered to a guy called Warren Davy. He’s a partner in a computer security company, DPS. When Alvin went to his place, it turned out he’s not been at home for over a week. According to his girlfriend, he flew out to Malta to set up a security system for a client. But when Alvin checked the passenger manifests, he found that Davy hadn’t flown on the flight he was ticketed for. And he didn’t take another flight instead. Davy went off the map after Jennifer was killed but before the three boys. He told his girlfriend the lie about Malta to buy himself freedom to commit the other murders.’