The Forgotten Child. D. E. White

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      Whoever the other boy was, she had still been looking at her phone moments before the crash, and driving at the same time. The guilt and anger at her own stupidity in allowing herself to be distracted by her phone made her breath short now. She was always so careful! The vicious texts danced through her brain. They had only started a couple of weeks ago, and at first she had refused to believe that Tom would be so vindictive. But now, each time they arrived, she tried to make herself pick up the phone and confront him, and each time, so far, she had funked it. She could hardly tell the police her own ex-husband was bullying her by text. It sounded so stupid, and she didn’t trust the police anyway. Well, with her upbringing, why would she?

      She woke to footsteps and the curtains around Milo’s bed being drawn apart. Holly blinked hard, pushing herself upright in the chair, trying to drag herself back to consciousness.

      ‘Mrs Kendal, I’m DI Harper, and this is DC Marriot. If you feel up to it, we just need to ask you a few questions.’ His voice was low, rumbling, and deceptively gentle.

      She got a sick feeling deep in her gut at the sound of his name, at the sight of his long face, with its sharp cheekbones and prominent beak of a nose. This couldn’t be happening. How was he still on the scene? Surely he should have retired, leaving everyone in peace by now? The long, thin nose had a dent and was twisted out of shape.

       ‘And you fuck off, you bloody nosy copper! My wife has been murdered and all you can do is accuse me. Go and find out who did it, because if I get there first, I’ll string them up from that tower block …’

       ‘We are trying, Donnie, we just need to ask a few more questions. Perhaps you should come back down to the station with us?’

      The sickening crunch as her dad broke the police officer’s nose had almost been drowned by his exclamation of pain. It was fair enough, Holly had thought at the time. Bloody Harper had been sniffing around for years, chipping away at her dad’s business interests. Luckily it was only the Nicholls’ dealers that got banged up, and they deserved it.

      Holly studied the familiar police officer now, this tall, gaunt man, with white tufted hair and hollows under his eyes. Fuck. Of all the people to turn up. Detective Inspector Harper. He’d clearly landed a promotion since they last met. He stood a little apart from a serious-looking blonde woman, whose thin lips were currently pursed with apparent disapproval as she glanced down at her phone.

      Feeling Holly’s gaze, she looked up and smiled. It was a cool, professional smile and it didn’t reach her glacial blue eyes. The DI was talking again. ‘We understand your son is doing well? A broken leg and some concussion, I think the doctor said.’

      Holly pulled the regulation blue and white hospital gown tighter around her body, and blinked sleep from her eyes, wishing Lydia would hurry up and get here with her clothes. Her aunt had come straight to the hospital last night when Holly called, but went home around eleven when she had been reassured that her niece and Milo were not in any life-threatening condition.

      ‘He’s still unconscious, but the doctors say he’s going to be fine. I guess he’ll be furious about having his leg in a cast though …’ Why was she babbling like she was guilty of something? Best get it out in the open. She had told the uniformed PC last night, but she needed to explain, to make them understand that it was wasn’t her fault. ‘There was a car behind that was far too close, and then another car came the other way and nearly hit us. I had to go on the verge and …’

      ‘It’s okay, Mrs Kendal, we’ve read your statement,’ DC Marriot told her, cutting her off mid-sentence. ‘We can talk about that later. For now, we just have a few more questions.’

      Holly nodded, uneasily, her eyes still on the man. They didn’t care. They wanted to know about the other boy. Well, that was okay, because so did she.

      DI Harper nodded. He stood next to the window, arms folded. Did he recognise her as she did him? Of course, she was Holly Kendal now instead of Holly Hughes, but surely he must know. And wasn’t it odd that a DI would come for a chat with a car crash victim? But it was a car crash with a twist, and she figured he knew all right, and he was as curious as hell.

      His grey eyes were faded now, sunk deeper under bushy grey brows, but he still had that aura of energy, alertness, and that distinctive voice. Her mum had always said he was clever for a copper. She had instructed both her children to keep away from the police who came snooping around their family home. But that was in the past, and with a dad like Holly’s it was no wonder her mum had been cautious. She could never have known that this ‘clever’ copper would be the one who investigated her own death. Investigated, but never bloody found out who did it. Holly switched her thoughts quickly back to the present. It was like being dragged through a mud bath, the past swilling over her, sticking in patches, reminding her she might have walked away but she could never completely escape.

      ‘Did you find out anything about the other boy?’ Holly asked tentatively now. She passed her tongue nervously over sore lips.

      It was the woman who answered. Her voice was sharp and what Holly’s Aunt Lydia would certainly call a bit posh. ‘No. As I’m sure you’ve been told he is still in a critical condition.’

      Holly was still struggling to get her head around the accident, let alone the fact she had, somewhere between leaving the road and waking up in the woods, acquired another child. Someone had given her a child. Now this man, with his cool grey eyes and air of officialdom, was back in her life, and suddenly, as other memories stirred it was all she could do to prevent herself from bursting into tears. The DI still hadn’t met her eyes. ‘What about the driver who was behind me, or the idiot in the van who drove right at us?’ she asked quickly.

      DI Harper exchanged a quick look with his colleague. ‘Obviously there are no cameras after the Mill Road turn-off, and several vehicles followed you off at Junction 10, but we have no way of telling if any of them took the first exit, as you did. There is also the possibility that the driver behind you joined Mill Road later on, from either Hill Lane or Silver Lane. I do appreciate it must have been hard, but the vague description you gave us of both vehicles doesn’t give us much to go on.’

      ‘It was dark, and pouring with rain, and I was afraid I was about to be carjacked. You try memorising details in that situation,’ she shot back at him, a flare of confidence returning. The other police officer raised her eyebrows at this show of anger, but said nothing.

      ‘I’m not trying to insult your intelligence, I’m just telling you we are examining every possibility,’ he said. There was a flash of something that might have been amusement in his grey eyes, before his expression returned its usual sombre mask.

      He was still fucking annoying, Holly thought, remembering suddenly that he inserted the word ‘possibility’ into just about every sentence. Nothing was ever ‘confirmed’, or ‘definite’, with him.

      ‘Moving on, you already mentioned when you were interviewed last night that you have no idea how this other boy came to be in your car. We have checked he doesn’t match the description of any missing children in the local area, but we are circulating his details further afield. Obviously a missing child generates an extensive search operation and we are working in close contact with our neighbouring forces.’ DC Marriot was scrolling through her iPad. ‘We did receive another call to the ambulance service at 17.22. It was a male caller who said he had just driven past a crashed car. He gave your location, but said he didn’t know how many people were involved. He then rang off. The phone number was untraceable.’

      ‘You think that was the driver behind me?’ Holly said, confusion СКАЧАТЬ