‘Then you’ll be pleased to hear that I’ve managed to extract matchable fingerprints from the hair of this doll that we found in that box in the Reynolds’ loft.’
Marilyn sat forward. ‘Now you’re saying something that I’m interested in hearing.’ He maintained a neutral tone, didn’t want to jinx Burrows’ message with hope. ‘A woman’s prints?’ he continued, thinking of the blonde woman on the beach walking with the child who was likely to have been Jodie Trigg, thinking of Carolynn Reynolds. Trying not to let his thoughts transfigure the neutral expression on his face.
Burrows nodded. ‘Yes. The prints were from a woman.’
Marilyn knitted his hands together to stop himself from drumming his fingers impatiently on the desktop. Burrows liked to communicate his findings in a structured way, at his own steady pace. Frustrating, when all Marilyn wanted was the crux.
‘I would say that the fingerprints – one finger, one thumb – were left when the doll was lifted or held by the hair, in pincer fingers, to quote your friend Dr Flynn.’
Marilyn nodded, thinking of what Jessie had said. Perhaps someone sent them to her.
Why?
The killer, to taunt her.
‘And …’ He held up a finger, halting Marilyn’s impending interruption. ‘I’ve matched the prints to someone on the fingerprint database.’
‘Carolynn Reynolds?’
68
Rubbing his hands over his face, Reynolds sighed.
‘Zoe was never the child Carolynn wanted her to be,’ he said. ‘She never lived up to the image that Carolynn had of her child. She was lively, chirpy, I suppose would be a good way to describe her, but not academic and she could be naughty and difficult.’ His gaze rose without meeting Jessie’s and drifted around the narrow hallway, his mind seeming to follow it. ‘The poor little kid never measured up in the London mother-and-toddler groups. She never shone. Carolynn was embarrassed by her, embarrassed by her behaviour and by her …’ He paused, swallowed, as if the next word was sticking in his throat. ‘By her stupidity.’
‘How did you find her? Find Zoe?’
‘Carolynn was a senior social worker in children’s services, a director, in our local borough council. We’d registered through her department for adoption and she was in a position to oil the wheels from inside. The care and placement orders were arranged before Zoe was born.’
‘And the birth mother?’
‘We requested that she didn’t know our identity.’
‘And they complied with that request?’
‘She was a sixteen-year-old prostitute and druggie from Portsmouth, with a history of violence. So yes, they complied with that. The family courts are secretive. It wasn’t a big deal.’
‘What was her history of violence?’
‘We were told that she attacked a couple of clients.’
‘Clients?’ Jessie said. ‘Tricks, you mean? Men who were exploiting a teenage girl for sex? I’m not sure I’d hold that against her.’
Reynolds sighed and gave a slight, dismissive shrug of his shoulders. ‘Whatever. She was deemed to be violent, and she didn’t want to give her baby up.’
Jessie thought of the little thing growing inside her. The pregnancy test was still in her bag. She hadn’t known what to do with it, but throwing it away had felt wrong. How would she feel when her and Callan’s baby was born?
‘So Zoe’s natural mother wasn’t given a choice.’
‘The family court decided that the baby’s welfare would be best served by being removed from her mother and permanently adopted. The welfare of the child has to come first.’
‘Indeed. And so it should.’ Though Jessie wasn’t entirely sure that it had in Zoe’s case. The family court was secretive and had been caught up in controversy before, accused of taking perfectly happy, healthy babies and young children from marginalized parents with no right of appeal, those parents then gagged by the court’s absolute rule of secrecy, unable to publicize their plight, however unfairly they felt they had been treated.
‘When and where did you collect Zoe?’
‘Carolynn went to the hospital the day she was born and took her from her mother.’
Jessie frowned. ‘Surely that’s not policy?’
‘As I said before, she was a social worker. One of them had to do it. She went with a policeman.’
‘Did Zoe’s mother know who Carolynn was? That she was the one adopting?’
‘No, she was just a faceless social worker.’
Jessie wondered at the psychology of an adoptive parent who wanted to take a child away from her biological mother in person, from a mother who hadn’t wanted to give her baby up. It felt sadistic. Her thoughts must have telegraphed themselves straight to her face, because Reynolds’ jaw tightened.
‘Carolynn wanted to have her from birth. She said that it made the child more “hers”, if you get what I mean.’
Jessie didn’t get what he meant, but what she was learning was useful and she didn’t want to risk derailing their discussion. He was still loyal to Carolynn for some reason she couldn’t begin to guess at – time served perhaps, years invested – and there was nothing to be gained from sharing her newly formed views on his wife. Again, she thought of how completely Carolynn had duped her. Usually, she had a good sense about people. Why hadn’t she with Carolynn? The question niggled.
‘How did Zoe’s mother react when her baby was taken from her?’
His eyes hung closed for a moment. ‘Carolynn said that she struggled, fought.’
Fought for her child. Fought and lost. But of course she would have lost. What hope did a teenage prostitute ever have of fighting the system?
‘Why Portsmouth?’ she asked.
‘It’s where Carolynn comes from.’
‘So she had some misplaced commitment to helping a local child?’
A weak, apologetic half-smile was Reynolds’ only reply.
‘What kind of family did Carolynn come from?’
‘A disadvantaged one,’ Roger murmured. ‘Very disadvantaged. Single mum –