‘What happened to Kathryn Clifton?’ Holt asks, changing tack.
‘I thought that was what you were trying to find out.’
‘Where is she?’
‘I’ve no idea.’ I frown. ‘She got off the train at Seer Green, like I told you.’
‘Because she hasn’t come forward, which is obviously a serious concern for us. No word from her at all in the last twelve hours, no phone calls, no sightings, no contact with family or friends as far as we can establish. And in the meantime you turn up at the front desk with a child you say she gave to you.’
‘You’re not seriously suggesting that I somehow took Mia from her, against her will? That’s crazy.’
‘What I’m suggesting is that you saw your chance on the train and decided to take this baby, to make her yours. Call it a . . .’ He shrugs, ‘a moment of madness. You saw an opportunity and you took it. This sort of thing does happen from time to time. And it felt so good to have that cute little baby in your arms, a baby you could call your own, so you just took her and walked out of the station.’
‘No.’ I can feel myself flushing, hating that my body is betraying me.
‘That’s why you didn’t alert a train guard, or go to a member of staff, why you didn’t approach uniformed officers on the concourse, you didn’t make a call right there at Marylebone. You just walked out with her. But at some point later you panicked, when you realised what you’d done and what might happen to you. Maybe when you saw yourself on the evening news.’
‘That’s wrong,’ I say, arms crossed tightly against my chest. ‘That’s not how it was at all.’
Gilbourne holds up his hands again, like a referee pausing a boxing match.
‘I’m sure you can understand, Ellen, that we have to explore all the possibilities until we can rule each of them out.’
‘I didn’t do anything to Kathryn, so you can rule that one out right now,’ I say, shaking my head. ‘Look, I’m exhausted, I’ve hardly slept, I’ve told you everything I know and I just want to go home. I don’t know what your agenda is, what’s going on here. Mia’s OK, and that’s the main thing, isn’t it?’
Gilbourne gives a sympathetic smile. ‘Just a few more questions then we’ll be done.’
‘This Dominic individual,’ Holt resumes. ‘What’s his surname?’
I rub at my eyes, gritty and sore under the harsh strip lighting of the interview room. It feels like I’ve been in here for a dozen hours already.
‘I don’t know,’ I say. ‘I told you that already.’
‘Any other identifying information at all? Did he ever actually say hewasthe baby’s father? Did he ever say it himself, refer to her as his daughter?’
I think back to the snatches of conversation we had shared.
‘I don’t remember for sure.’
‘It’s very important, Ellen.’
I’ve been replaying Dominic’s actions in my mind. Being in the car with him, in the room with him, I felt so sure about his motives. There was clearly violence in him, but had any of it been directed towards Mia? The unloaded gun, the empty threats, opportunities to hurt us both – to kill us, even – not taken? And both he and Kathryn had made the same paranoid assertion, in their own ways: that the police were not to be trusted. Any police? Someone in particular?
‘So you’re basically the original good Samaritan,’ Holt says, clicking his pen again. ‘Travelling around and doing good deeds?’
‘I was just in the right place at the right time, that’s all.’
‘Tell me more about the gun,’ Gilbourne asks, his voice soft. ‘You’re familiar with firearms, correct?’
‘I wouldn’t say familiar, no.’
‘What would you say?’
‘I know the basics. Not much more than that.’
‘But you’ve handled them before, been trained with them.’ He picks up a sheet of paper from his folder. ‘Ellen Anne Devlin,’ he pauses, glancing at me over the top of his glasses, ‘County Tyrone is that? Devlin?’
‘My grandfather.’
