own. We tried.’ He sighed. ‘We tried for a long time. Then we had tests. It turned out I was firing blanks. So we went to a fertility clinic in Birmingham. Tania got pregnant the second time we inseminated.’
She turned a tear-stained face to Patterson. ‘Paul always treated her as if she was his own daughter.’
‘She was my own daughter,’ he insisted. ‘I never thought about it from one year’s end to the next.’
‘Did Jennifer know?’ Patterson asked.
Maidment looked away. ‘We never told her. When she was little, we planned to tell her the truth one day. But . . .’
‘I decided we wouldn’t tell her,’ Tania said. ‘There was no need. We matched the donor to Paul, so she looked a bit like him. Nobody knew but us, so it wasn’t like anybody else in the family could let something slip.’
Which answered Patterson’s next question. ‘Thanks for being so frank,’ he said.
‘Why are you asking this now?’ Maidment asked.
‘It might have some bearing on a line of inquiry we’re pursuing. ‘
‘Christ. Could you say anything more meaningless?’ Tania said. ‘Go away. Please.’
Maidment followed him down the hall. ‘Sorry,’ he said.
‘No need.’
‘She’s not doing well.’
‘I can see that. We are doing our best, you know.’
Maidment opened the door. ‘I know. What bothers her is that it might not be enough.’
Patterson nodded. ‘It bothers me too. But we’re not giving up, Mr Maidment. And we really are making progress.’ He walked back to the car, feeling the bereaved father’s eyes on him, knowing that, whatever the outcome, for Tania Maidment it would never be good enough. Patterson was sufficiently selfish to be grateful that he didn’t have to live with that particular hell.
Paula was about to give up on Mike Morrison when the door finally opened. He was wearing a T-shirt and boxers and reeked of alcohol. He peered blearily at her. ‘Oh, it’s you,’ he grunted, turning on his heel and walking back into the house.
Paula took that as an invitation and followed him into the wreckage of the living room. Empty whisky bottles were lined up along the side of one sofa. On the coffee table, seven malt whisky bottles stood in a row, the levels varying from almost full to almost empty. A smeared tumbler sat next to them. Morrison reached for the tumbler as he sat down heavily on the sofa. There was a duvet next to him and he wrapped it round his legs. The room was cold but still it smelled of stale booze and stale man. Paula tried to breathe discreetly through her mouth.
The TV screen caught her eye. In freeze-frame, Daniel and his mother were dressed in winter sports gear, mugging at the camera. In the background, snowy mountains. Morrison poured a slug of Scotch and noticed her eye-line. ‘The wonders of modern technology. Brings them right back to life,’ he slurred.
‘This isn’t a great idea, Mike,’ she said gently.
He gave a cracked laugh. ‘No? What else is there? I loved my wife. I loved my boy. There’s fuck all else in my life to love.’
It was hard to argue with that, Paula thought. She’d call his GP later. And she’d call his office. See if they knew who his friends were. This was pain she couldn’t ignore. ‘I need to ask you a question,’ she said.
‘What difference does it make? You can’t bring them back.’
‘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.’
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
