‘What? I don’t know. Of course, I should have done … But I was thinking of him, you see. Thinking of my son. I couldn’t bear to do that to him. He’d have had to … tell people … testify in court. Maybe it was a mistake …’
‘To run the man down? Yes, it was.’
After a slight hesitation, the woman went on: ‘Well … yes … but …’
Hulda waited, allowing a space to develop for the woman’s confession. Yet she wasn’t experiencing any of her usual sense of achievement at solving the crime. Usually, she focused on excelling at her job, and prided herself on the number of difficult cases she had solved over the years. The trouble now was that she wasn’t at all convinced the woman sitting in front of her was the real culprit in this case, despite her guilt. If anything, she was the victim.
Sobbing uncontrollably now, the woman said: ‘I … I watched …’ then broke off, too choked up to continue.
‘You watched him? You live in the same area, don’t you?’
‘Yes,’ the woman whispered, getting her voice under control, anger lending her a sudden strength. ‘I kept an eye on the bastard. I couldn’t bear the idea that he might carry on doing those things. I kept waking up with nightmares, dreaming that he’d chosen another victim. And … and … it was all my fault because I hadn’t reported him. You see?’
Hulda nodded. She saw, all right.
‘Then I spotted him, by the school. I’d just given my son a lift in. I parked the car and watched him – he was chatting to some boys, with that … that disgusting smirk on his face. He hung around the playground for a while and I got so angry. He hadn’t stopped – men like him, they never do.’ She wiped her cheeks, but the tears kept pouring down her face.
‘Quite.’
‘Then, out of the blue, I got my chance. When he left the school, I followed him. He crossed the road. There was no one else around, no one to see me, so I just put my foot down. I don’t know what I was thinking – I wasn’t really thinking at all.’ The woman broke into loud sobbing again and buried her face in her hands, before continuing, shakily: ‘I didn’t mean to kill him, or I don’t think I did. I was just frightened and angry. What’ll happen to me now? I can’t … I can’t go to prison. There’s only the two of us, my son and me. His father’s useless. There’s no way he’ll take him.’
Without a word, Hulda stood up and laid a hand on the woman’s shoulder.
II
The young mother stood by the glass and waited. As usual, she had dressed up for the visit. Her best coat was looking a little shabby, but money was tight so it would have to do. They always made her wait, as if to punish her, to remind her of her mistake and give her a chance to reflect on the error of her ways. To make matters worse, it had been raining outside and her coat was damp.
Several minutes passed in what felt like an eternity of silence before a nurse finally entered the room carrying the little girl. The mother’s heart turned over, as it always did when she saw her daughter through the glass. She felt overwhelmed by a wave of depression and despair but made a valiant effort to hide it. Though the child was only six months old – today, in fact – and unlikely to remember anything about the visit, her mother felt instinctively that it was vital any memories she did have were positive, that these visits should be happy occasions.
But the child looked far from happy and, what was worse, showed almost no reaction to the woman on the other side of the glass. She might have been looking at a stranger: an odd woman in a damp coat who she’d never laid eyes on before. Yet it wasn’t that long since she had been lying in her mother’s arms in the maternity ward.
The woman was permitted two visits a week. It wasn’t enough. Every time she came she sensed the distance between them widening: only two visits a week and a sheet of glass between them.
The mother tried to say something to her daughter; tried to speak through the glass. She knew the sound would carry, but what good would the words do? The little girl was too young to understand: what she needed was to be cradled in her mother’s arms.
Fighting back her tears, the woman smiled at her daughter, telling her in a low voice how much she loved her. ‘Make sure you eat enough,’ she said. ‘Be a good girl for the nurses.’ When really all she wanted was to smash the glass and snatch her baby from the nurse’s arms, to hold her tight and never let her go again.
Without realizing it, she had moved right up to the glass. She tapped it gently and the little girl’s mouth twitched in a slight smile that melted her mother’s heart. The first tear spilled over and trickled down her cheek. She tapped a little louder, but the child flinched and started to cry as well.
Unable to help herself, the mother started banging louder and louder on the glass, shouting: ‘Give her to me, I want my daughter!’
The nurse got up and hurriedly left the room with the baby, but even then the mother couldn’t stop her banging and shouting.
Suddenly, she felt a firm hand on her shoulder. She stopped beating at the glass and looked around at the older woman who was standing behind her. They had met before.
‘Now, you know this won’t do,’ the woman said gently. ‘We can’t let you visit if you make a fuss like this. You’ll frighten your little girl.’
The words echoed in the mother’s head. She’d heard
