leave them somewhere safe.”
Samira looks up from the page. She’s departing from the script. “I forgive you for this but I do not forgive you for Zala. For this I hope you will suffer eternal agony for every second of every day for the rest of your life.”
Forbes cups his hand over the microphone, trying to stop her. Samira stands to leave. Questions are yelled from the floor.
“Who is Zala?”
“Did you know Brendan Pearl?”
“Why did he take your babies?”
The story has more holes than a Florida ballot card. The reporters sense a bigger story. Decorum breaks down.
“Has there been a ransom demand?”
“How did Pearl get off the ferry with the twins?”
“Do you believe they’re still alive?”
Samira flinches. She’s almost at the door.
“What about names?”
She turns to the questioner, blinking into the flashguns. “A maiden can leave things nameless; a mother must name her children.”
The answer silences the room. People look at one another, wondering what she means. Mothers. Maidens. What does that have to do with anything?
Forbes’s shoulders are knotted with rage.
“That was a fucking disaster,” he mutters as I chase him down the corridor.
“It wasn’t so bad.”
“God knows what they’re going to write tomorrow.”
“They’re going to write about the twins. That’s what we want. We’re going to find them.”
He suddenly stops and turns. “That’s only the beginning.”
“What do you mean?”
“I want you to meet someone.”
“When?”
“Now.”
“The funerals are today.”
“It won’t take long.” He glances ahead of us. Samira is waiting near the lift. “I’ll make sure she gets home.”
Twenty minutes later we pull up outside a Victorian mansion block in Battersea, overlooking the park. Twisting branches of Wisteria, naked and gray, frame the downstairs windows. The main door is open. An empty pram is poised, ready for an excursion. I can hear the mother coming down the stairs. She is attractive, in her early forties. A baby—too old to be one of the twins—rests on her hip.
“Excuse me, Mrs. Piper.”
“Yes?”
“I’m Detective Inspector Forbes. This is DC Barba.”
The woman’s smile fades. Almost imperceptibly she tightens her hold on the child. A boy.
“How old is he?” I ask.
“Eight months.”
“Aren’t you beautiful.” I lean forward. The mother leans away.
“What’s his name?”
“Jack.”
“He looks like you.”
“He’s more like his father.”
Forbes interrupts. “We were hoping to have a brief word.”
“I’m just going out. I have to meet someone.”
“It won’t take long.”
Her gaze flicks from his face to mine. “I think I should call my husband.” Pointedly she adds, “He works for the Home Office.”
“Where did you have your baby?” Forbes asks.
She stutters nervously. “It was a home birth. I’m going upstairs to ring my husband.”
“Why?” asks Forbes. “We haven’t even told you why we’re here, yet you’re anxious about something. Why do you need your husband’s permission to talk to us?”
There is a flaw in the moment, a ripple of disquiet.
Forbes continues: “Have you ever been to Amsterdam, Mrs. Piper? Did you visit a fertility clinic there?”
Backing away toward the stairs, she shakes her head, less in denial than in the vain hope that he’ll stop asking her questions. She is on the stairs. Forbes moves toward her. He’s holding a business card. She won’t take it from him. Instead he leaves it in the pram.
“Please ask you husband to phone me.”
I can hear myself apologizing for bothering her. At the same time I want to know if she paid for a baby. Who did she pay? Who arranged it? Forbes has hold of my arm, leading me down the steps. I imagine Mrs. Piper upstairs on the phone, the tears and the turmoil.
“Their names came up among the files Spijker sent me,” Forbes explains. “They used a surrogate. A girl from Bosnia.”
“Then it’s
“How do we prove that? You saw the kid. Paternity tests, DNA tests, blood samples—every one of them will show that young Jack belongs to the Pipers. And there isn’t a judge in this country who would give us permission to take samples in the first place.”
“We can prove they visited an IVF clinic in the Netherlands. We can prove their embryos were implanted in a surrogate. We can prove that it resulted in a pregnancy and a successful birth. Surely that’s enough.”
“It doesn’t prove that money changed hands. We need one of these couples to give evidence.”
He hands me a list of names and addresses:
Robert Helena PiperAlan Jessica CaseTrevor Toni JuryAnaan Lola SinghNicholas Karin Pederson
“I have interviewed the other four couples. In each case they have called a lawyer and stuck to their story. None of them are going to cooperate—not if it means losing their child.”
“They broke the law!”
“Maybe you’re right, but how many juries are going to convict? If that was your friend back there, holding her baby, would
2
The funerals are at two o’clock. I am dressed in a black vest, black jacket, black trousers and black shoes. The only splash of color is my lipstick.
Samira uses the bathroom after me. It’s hard to believe that she’s just given birth. There are stretch marks across her belly but elsewhere her skin is flawless. Occasionally, I notice a tic or twitch of pain when she moves, but nothing else betrays her discomfort.
She is laying out her clothes on the bed, taking care not to crease her blouse.
“You don’t have to come,” I tell her, but she has already decided. She met Cate only twice. They spoke through Yanus in stilted sentences rather than having a proper conversation. Yet they shared a bond like no other. Unborn twins.
We sit side by side in the cab. She is tense, restless, as if at any moment she might unfurl a set of hidden wings and take flight. In the distance a chimney belches a column of white smoke like a steam train going
