Scared to Live

wouldn’t have risked it. Not if they wanted to get her back so badly.’

‘Yes, I agree.’

‘And I’m not even sure what they hoped to achieve by starting the fire. Did they mean for the Mullens to be killed?’

‘Maybe they just made a mistake. If they acted recklessly and failed to make sure that Luanne Mullen wasn’t in the house — ’

‘They’d be in big trouble, wouldn’t they?’

‘But now it’s Luanne who’s at risk again, isn’t it? These people will stop at nothing. So forget the fire — the living are most important. We have to save that child.’

‘If Brian Mullen is thinking straight, he ought to realize the risk,’ said Cooper.

Fry shook her head. ‘This case has been the same all the way round. No one has behaved in a rational way. Everyone involved seems to have gone headlong towards their fate with blinkers on. You’d think they were a lot of lemmings throwing themselves off a cliff.’

‘Emotions,’ said Cooper. ‘Emotions always interfere with rational behaviour.’

Fry began to put together her notes to update the DI and Mr Kessen.

‘Do you want someone to check on the Heights of Abraham later, Diane?’ asked Cooper. ‘The Lowthers said that’s where John is likely to go.’

‘Yes, thanks.’

As she was on her way out of the room, Cooper remembered one more thing. ‘By the way, I’ve asked Dr Sinclair to listen to the interview we did with John Lowther. He’ll be coming in any time now.’

‘Good idea. It’ll be interesting to hear what he has to say.’

‘Would you be worried if you had hallucinations, Diane?’

Fry frowned. ‘I suppose so.’

‘Apparently a lot of people aren’t troubled by them and don’t seek psychiatric help.’

‘Really?’

‘Yes. It’s strange, isn’t it?’

Cooper felt he was putting it mildly. Of course, he only had his experience with his mother to go by. She’d certainly been troubled by the hallucinations caused by her schizophrenia, and so had everyone else around her. But his experience might be a narrow one.

‘What sort of hallucinations are we talking about, though?’ said Fry.

‘According to Dr Sinclair, the misattribution of internal events to an external source.’

Fry laughed. ‘Oh, those sort.’

After she’d been interrogated for twenty minutes by Hitchens and Kessen, Fry felt exhausted. Her eyes were dry and her skin felt grimy. She nipped down the corridor to the ladies’, where she splashed cold water on her face and practised controlled breathing for a while until she felt calmer.

Then she looked at herself in the mirror over the washbasin. Some days, it wasn’t a good idea to do that too often. If she wasn’t careful, she could suddenly get a glimpse of a person she’d almost forgotten — the girl who’d lived in those foster homes back in the Black Country. Sometimes it seemed like a million years ago. But at other times, she knew it was really just yesterday.

Fry had once seen a newspaper article that began: ‘Kate Adie, Marilyn Monroe, Jim Bowen, Larry Grayson, Edgar Allan Poe, Bill Clinton and Steve Jobs … What do they all have in common?’

The journalist’s answer, of course, was that they were all adopted or fostered. It made Fry want to rip the newspaper into shreds and stuff it up the feature writer’s backside. As if she might aspire to make it on to a list that included Larry Grayson and Bill Clinton. It didn’t fill her with positive emotions to know that she shared something in common with Jim Bowen. And Edgar Allan Poe? Wasn’t he stark, raving bonkers?

Fry dried her face, combed her hair, and brushed her jacket. There was no reason for her to look as untidy as Ben Cooper.

Of course, there were a lot of bad reasons for adopting children. Adoption was often a selfish act, but some of the reasons were selfish in particular ways. Some couples thought it would save their marriage, others wanted to replace an infant who’d died, or provide a companion for an only child. They might do it because all their friends had babies, or because they saw a child as a fashion accessory, or a political statement. They thought adoption would provide company in their old age, or a pension plan, a successor in the family business, or just someone to carry on the name. All of those reasons were essentially exploitative. None of them focused on the child for its own sake. So what had Lindsay Mullen’s reason been? Could she believe what Henry Lowther said?

Adoption was always tough. But it seemed evident that the Mullens loved Luanne. If her natural father succeeded in getting her back, there was no knowing what her fate might be.

Fry stared at her reflection and shook her head. She was starting to feel better. She was thinking again, instead of just reacting. She needed expert advice really, but it was difficult to know where to go for expertise in baby trafficking. Not every agency was forthcoming with information.

She remembered that there was a South Yorkshire Police unit called Operation Reflex, set up to combat human trafficking. An officer from the Immigration Service worked with the team to provide information on individuals who might be involved in immigration crime.

But Reflex were interested in women being trafficked for the sex trade. They’d scored a success in Sheffield a little while ago, with the case of a fifteen-year-old Lithuanian girl sold into prostitution. The girl had arrived at Heathrow Terminal Three to take up a job selling ice cream, and had herself been sold for the price of a second- hand car. Before she arrived in South Yorkshire, the girl had been passed around from hand to hand, gradually losing her value when she was no longer a virgin and had suffered damage from regular beatings. It was probably what the car trade called depreciation.

Fry watched her face change in the mirror. That was better. Now she looked more like someone who was in control.

‘Fear is a very interesting emotion,’ said Dr Sinclair. ‘You can’t be afraid retrospectively. You can only fear something that hasn’t happened yet.’

Setting up the tape for him, Cooper paused before pressing the ‘play’ button. Damn right, he thought. That was why there were so many things to be afraid of.

‘Scared to live,’ he said. ‘That’s the way you described Mr Lowther’s current state of mind.’

‘That’s correct.’ Sinclair looked up. ‘If you don’t understand that concept, then you haven’t learned to glimpse what goes on in other people’s minds. Some individuals find life unbearable, every day a torment. They become convinced that continuing to live will be such an ordeal that dying is the only possible escape.’

Cooper couldn’t think of an answer to that. He started the tape, and they listened to John Lowther’s interview in silence for a few minutes.

‘Yes, some people go abroad, hunting for whores.No — for babies.’

‘Sorry?’

‘I’m not sure what you’re asking me. Is it time?’

‘He’s conflating two subjects in his mind here, I think,’ said Sinclair. ‘The whores and babies thing, I mean.’

‘I wondered if John Lowther could be a paedophile. What do you think, Doctor?’

Sinclair shook his head vigorously. ‘No, there’s no indication of that.’

‘Are you sure? I’m no psychiatrist, but babies and whores sounds a very dubious association of ideas to me. I understand that Mr Lowther doesn’t quite know what he’s saying, but isn’t that sort of thing called a Freudian slip?’

‘Freud has nothing to do with it. You don’t understand how this works. What we’re dealing with here is not an association of thoughts, but a disassociation. Mr Lowther’s brain is skipping so quickly to an unrelated subject that there appears to be no distinction or separation between them, as far as the listener is concerned. That’s not the way it is in the patient’s mind — his brain just isn’t making normal connections, the way ours would. Mr Lowther is probably saying words that sound like the ones he’s thinking.’

‘OK. Anything else?’

Cooper pressed the ‘play’ button again, and they listened to the rest of the interview. Sinclair jotted a few notes.