they were out of the van, the dogs scampered towards the patio, eagerly pressing their noses to the newly exposed earth. They concentrated their attention over practically the same spot as before, yelping excitedly, wagging their tails and waiting for their reward. The SOCO team looked at one another.
They had a hit.
The M6 was its usual nightmare and WPC Delia Shaw worried that she would arrive late for her appointment with the Isaacs, but in the event, with the luck of a sudden clearing of the traffic and the aid of her Satnav she pulled up outside their house only a few minutes after eleven, having left a message at the station to let them know where she was going.
Mrs Isaac’s son lived in a similar house to the one his mother had inhabited, a large detached Victorian property near the centre of Moseley Village, a stylish suburb two miles south of Birmingham’s city centre. It was an area with its own character, a village green, shops and cafes, both bohemian and cosmopolitan, reminiscent of Greenwich Village, New York.
Two saloon cars stood in the driveway and the door was opened to her as soon as she knocked. The Isaacs were ready for her. They welcomed her warmly into a large, cosy kitchen, bright with cream bespoke units and amply warmed by an Aga. PC Shaw thanked them for seeing her and reassured them that no suspicion fell on either them or the late Mrs Isaac. They sat companionably around a kitchen table, a cafetiere of coffee supplying the dual purpose of scenting the room and providing refreshment. Paul Isaac was a tall, dark-haired man in his fifties. Rebecca Isaac was quite a lot younger than her husband, maybe in her thirties, Delia noted. She was also heavily pregnant.
Paul Isaac spoke first. ‘I really can’t see how we can help you.’
PC Shaw gave them both a disarming smile. ‘It’s a very puzzling case and we feel we would like to get to the bottom of it,’ she said. ‘We haven’t really got any substantial leads so we’re clutching at straws.’ Another of her wide smiles. ‘Hence the trip down the M6 to see you. So anything – absolutely anything that you can think of – even if it appears irrelevant to the case, might just be the tip we need.’ Her smile was returned by both of them.
Paul Isaac spoke first. ‘It’s difficult for us to think of anything that can possibly have any bearing on your case,’ he said. ‘It was about eight years ago now that we brought mother to live with us. She was getting a little forgetful, a bit frail and we thought it safer to keep her under our eye. The house in Shrewsbury is a big place. Far too big for her. She couldn’t really manage it, even with help.’
‘What help?’ WPC Shaw asked sharply.
‘She had a lady come in in the mornings for a couple of hours,’ Rebecca said.
Delia Shaw drew out her notebook. ‘Her name and address?’
‘Maisie somebody,’ Rebecca said vaguely. ‘I can’t remember her surname. She lived somewhere on Castlefields. I probably threw away her contact details years ago – after mother died.’ She glanced quickly at her husband. ‘But she can’t have had anything to do with a baby. She was well into her fifties.’ Her hands brushed her swollen stomach.
‘How did your mother-in-law find her?’
Again it was Rebecca Isaac who answered. ‘Through an advert in the
‘Very generous,’ Delia commented.
‘Well – we thought a lot of her. She was a lovely woman and she made Mother’s life so much easier.’ Paul Isaac seemed to think something more was expected and added to his wife’s comments. ‘She was pleasant too. Always friendly. When we visited she cooked us meals and generally made us welcome. To be honest, we couldn’t have wanted anyone better.’
‘What about her family?’
They looked at one another. ‘I don’t remember her mentioning a husband,’ Paul Isaac said dubiously. ‘And I haven’t a clue whether she wore a wedding ring or not. She might have had a son or a daughter but I don’t recall anything about them. She didn’t talk about anything to do with her personal life. We certainly never met any relations of hers. It was all about Mother.’
‘Do you know if a son or a daughter ever visited her at your mother’s house?’
‘Not that we know of.’ They answered in unison without any consultation, Paul Isaac adding unnecessarily, ‘If they visited when we weren’t there we wouldn’t have known anything about it, would we?’
‘Quite. And the garden?’
Paul Isaac answered again. ‘A firm of gardeners came round. Greenfingers they were called.’ He chuckled. ‘A very memorable name. They came round one morning a week, once a fortnight through the winter to tidy up. They did the lawns, the hedges, maintenance. They weren’t cheap but they kept the grounds immaculate. Mother wasn’t short of money and she would have been upset to have seen the place fall into neglect, so it was money well spent.’
Delia copied it all down religiously without a clue whether any of it would prove relevant. ‘So you brought your mother to live with you in…?’ She looked up enquiringly.
‘October 2002.’
‘Why then?’
‘She was getting older. Into her eighties. Oh, I don’t know,’ Rebecca Isaac said. ‘The world suddenly seemed to have become a more dangerous place, people a little more vulnerable, families a little more precious. I lost a brother in the Twin Towers attack. He was my only brother. I have no sisters. My parents are both dead. We felt. We both felt,’ she corrected, ‘that we wanted what family we had near. Paul is an only child. The winter was coming. Travel can be tricky. The motorways… well.’ Rebecca Isaac gave her a sudden smile. ‘We don’t need to tell you, Constable Shaw. You’ve come down it this morning. It’s a nightmare. If there had been a sudden crisis we couldn’t have been certain of arriving even using the M54. We didn’t want her to go into a home even if Mother would have accepted that arrangement.’ She waved her hands around vaguely. ‘This is a big enough place. Plenty big enough. We wouldn’t be on top of one another. Paul’s children had both left school to go to university. We’d had some alterations done for her so she had her privacy and dignity, her own bed-sitting room and bathroom. I was more than happy to cook for her and make sure she ate properly.’ She looked up. ‘It seemed the obvious thing to do. We were all happy with the arrangement.’ Paul Isaac glanced at his wife and they smiled at one other. The arrangement, it seemed, had worked for both of them.
Delia noted the term of affection Rebecca had used for her mother-in-law. She called her ‘Mother’. This gave her a picture of the deceased Mrs Isaac, of a warm, independent person, dignified, loved and elderly. She could have had nothing to do with the concealment of a baby’s body, surely? They belonged in different worlds.
She tried to retrieve something from the interview. ‘I know this is a long shot but can you think of any circumstance that a child could have been secreted in the loft while your mother lived at number 41?’
Both of them shook their heads.
‘No one ever went there with a baby,’ Paul said, ‘not that we remember. Or pregnant. Our friends and acquaintances would have gone to antenatal clinics and pre-birth exercises, parent classes. That’s the sort of world we belong to, Constable Shaw – not concealing a pregnancy and then a child’s body, being ashamed of it like that. It isn’t our way. It’s not civilized. Even if someone we knew was pregnant and didn’t want to be they’d simply go and have a legal and safe termination on the National Health Service or privately in a clinic. None of our friends or acquaintances would go through the trauma of having a baby away from trained midwives, doctors, pain relief, a hospital, a paediatrician. It’s too risky. But if by a long long stretch of imagination they had found themselves in this awful and frightening situation and the baby died they wouldn’t just hide the body. They would want it buried, have a funeral, mourn. It’s our culture, Constable Shaw. It wouldn’t make any sense. It’s just not the way we do things.’
WPC Shaw could see the absolute, unarguable logic behind his words. ‘Excuse me asking,’ she said, not even knowing why she was asking this, ‘but how long have you been married?’
