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<h2>13</h2>
<p>"What a lovely bunch of flowers." The voice on the phone bubbled
with laughter. "And completely unexpected."</p>
<p>"Come on, Ma," David protested. "You always get flowers. I even
used to pick them for you up in the glen. Remember the
bluebells?"</p>
<p>"And they wilted in ten minutes," his mother's voice came
chuckling down the line. "I remember. I also remember you were
covered from head to toe in mud where you fell into the marsh.
Anyway, I just wanted to say thanks for remembering. I called you
earlier, but there was no reply."</p>
<p>"I must have been in the shower. You can't hear the phone from
there," David said. Helen Lamont raised her coffee cup to him. She
was wearing her sheepskin-lined flying jacket against the cold of
the day. It looked too warm for indoors.</p>
<p>"Anyway, I always remember and it's always flowers. The only
thing I forget is your age." He held his hand up as if his mother
was standing right in front of him. "No, don't tell me. That's
<em>your</em> secret. You just look the same anyway. Always do. Not
like me, I've a face that's worn out two bodies. A face only a
mother could love, eh?" He laughed, bantering and bullshitting
fondly. "So how is he? Tell him I'll go fishing when the weather's
better. And tell him to stay out of the cold, you know how it gets
to him."</p>
<p>Helen sat at the table listening to him on the telephone. His
shirt was unbuttoned and only partially tucked into his trousers.
His hair was still wet from the shower and it gave him a fresh,
boyish look. He absently rubbed it with the towel, unaware of her
inspection. The muscles of his forearms bunched, released, and she
remembered the sudden protective strength when he'd hit the thin
man down Waterside Street and slammed him against the wall.</p>
<p>One of the good guys, she had called him that, and she meant it,
now more than ever. In the past week, in the past few days, her
perspective had strangely altered. She remembered the strength of
his body outside celia barker's nightmare house, solid as a rock
when she leaned against him. She could still feel the touch of his
fingers on the back of her head. Helen could have told herself she
was imagining a reaction, but she did not. For a reason she did not
quite comprehend, she was able to perceive at a deeper level. She
could sense something in him that he himself was probably unaware
of. She considered calling over to him to tell him his coffee was
getting cold, wondering what his reaction would be to the
inevitable question on the telephone, but she changed her mind. The
son's affection for his mother was evident in his tone and posture
and she let him banter with her for a while before she brought the
coffee over. He gave her a wink, just like the one he'd thrown her
the night before, just before she'd told him he could stay a while
longer. He smiled and took a slurp.</p>
<p>"Yes Ma. I'll make sure I get something to eat. No. I'm fine.
Yes. A sweater would be great. But not a Pringle. You know I never
wear anything with a name on it." He laughed out loud at something
she said. "Yes. I know you've seen my birthmark. No. Nobody else.
Honest. Think I'm a pervert?"</p>
<p>Finally, with more laughter he hung up.</p>
<p>"I must remember to look for the birthmark," Helen said, and he
laughed again, his face glowing from the heat of the shower and
from the warm enjoyment of the teasing with his mother.</p>
<p>"Her birthday?"</p>
<p>"Yeah. She'd kill me stone dead if I didn't send flowers. I
didn't manage two years ago when I was undercover on the Toby
Cannel job. I was out of touch for a week, down on Riverside close
to where we were the other day and I completely forgot about it.
We'd been undercover so long I didn't even know what day of the
week it was. That was when big Toby got shot. Took six shots and
had holes the size of dinner plates out the other side. That scared
the hell out of me, watching him keep on running, like he was a
machine. Like the Terminator."</p>
<p>"You've done it again, side-tracked yourself," Helen stalled
him. "Can't you stick to a subject?"</p>
<p>"Right. Anyway, she'd left a million messages for me and when I
didn't come back she called Donal Bulloch. She had to go though
five offices until she got him, for he was the only one who knew
where I was, except for big Jock Lewis who was with me the whole
time and did nothing but eat beans, which I swear was pure murder
after the first day." He caught Helen's look again. "The boss told
her I was out on a very important job and that I was fine and what
was more, he even sent her a bunch of flowers himself. But when the
papers carried the pictures of Toby Cannel lying on the cobbles, my
mother knew what the big important job was. She's not stupid. She
wanted me to quit then and there."</p>
<p>"You ever hear that old Dean Martin song? A man who loves his
mother?"</p>
<p>"In the film? Robin and the Seven Hoods?"</p>
<p>"That's the one," Helen confirmed. "A man who loves his mother
is man enough for me. It's nothing to be embarrassed about. It's
natural."</p>
<p>There were two other messages on the answering machine. David
hit the play-back button. June was first. The sound was muted and
from the distance Helen couldn't hear any more than a murmur, but
she could tell from the way he turned away and she stayed where she
was. He didn't say very much and a pang of pity stole through her.
It passed very quickly. June was going to lose him. She knew that
for certain. And she knew why.</p>
<p>Without looking round, David changed his posture and she knew he
had passed to a different message. He listened, head cocked to the
side and clicked the button again before beginning to re-dial. As
he was hitting the keys, he turned round again, and asked Helen to
bring the folder with the photocopies. She slid it across the
coffee table and he stretched to get it. He selected the picture of
the crushed pram.</p>
<p>"It's John Barclay down at the mall. He's been trying to get me
for a couple of days." He held up a hand, indicating someone else
was on the line. He spoke for a moment, said he'd be down within
the hour and hung up.</p>
<p>He picked up the print which showed the tangle of buckled wheels
and crumpled metal. "John's found a pram down at the Waterside
Mall. One of his boys stuck it out for garbage collection after
locking up on the night Heather McDougall died. That's just an
aside. I thought he was desperate to get his video tapes back into
the machines, but he say's he's had a look at them and he's found
something else."</p>
<p>"What is it?"</p>
<p>"We'd best both have a look. Something strange." He seemed glad
to have a practical matter to think about. She felt a smile start
inside.</p>
<hr />
<p><em>He had woken hungry.</em></p>
<p>It was a different hunger now. The mother had moved in her
sleep, automatically and instinctively protecting him from her
weight, huddling him close. She trembled deep within herself and he
withdrew slowly, unwilling to break the contact, fully awake now.
He would have to wait until she was ready before he drank again.
Already his limbs were strong enough, the bones quickly grown and
articulated. He could move now. He had woken in the twist of hunger
pangs.</p>
<p>He had felt the surge of fear when the nest had been invaded in
the night, for he had recognised the human, a female one. A
potential <em>mother</em>. He had read her scent and her movement
and had recognised her from the other time. He had sensed danger
and invasion and the need to flee because he was not strong enough,
not yet. There was something about the other one too. She had
reeled back and he had reached to touch her, putting his mark on
her. He had felt her vibration and felt her deep strength.
Something inside of him had stirred there and then, even in the
height of the emergency, in the need to flee and be gone. Now her
scent and her vibration was imprinted inside him.</p>
<p>Out there in the dark something crept quietly and the heat of
appetite flared reflexively. He remembered the other one that had
come close in the warm place, how he had reached and struck, moving
faster than he had ever done in his long and placid life. He had
not planned it, not thought about it. The thing had come close,
mewling in some alarm, entrapped by the scent, and unable to free
itself. There had been no thought, just action. He had reached,
quicker than a blink, reacting in an explosion of speed and it had
died. The blaze of its mind had flicked out almost in an instant
after he had reached and hit. The blow had shuddered up from the
end of his arm to the strangely articulated socket, but there had
been no pain. The pain of touch was foreign to him. Until now there
had been only two pains that he could comprehend, the hurt of
bright light and the bite of hunger.</p>
<p>The new pangs twisted inside him at him. They had had jolted him
from sleep. Out in the dark he had felt the movement, heard the
almost soundless twitch. His eyes blinked open and his other sense
<em>reached.</em></p>
<p>Over there, a point of warmth moved, blazing fiercely against
the rolling grey of the background sparked by the tiny, unfocussed
lights that showed the ants and other insects in their thousands
under the protective lining of the wood.</p>
<p>He moved then, again instinctively, ferret smooth, cat slow, yet
with the steadiness of a spider. All of his senses were focused
forward. For that moment he forgot the mother. She was lying curled
up in the nest. He turned his mind away from her and concentrated
on the warmth ahead. The hunger gnawed within him. Unused muscles
in new limbs flexed and tensed, He shivered in tension, as if all
of his energy was singing along the length of his slender spine.
The glands pumped up, subsided, the pores closed.</p>
<p>He struck in a blur and the warm thing squeaked as it felt his
rush. It ran for the door, doubled back, almost as fast as he was.
It turned, faced him defiantly, its weasel mouth opening to show
deadly little spikes of canine teeth. Without hesitation he
snatched it. It twisted in his grasp, tried to bite him, a hunting
weasel now caught. He leaned forward, impaled it with his eyes and
it died with a feeble screech.</p>
<p>He bent his head, licked at the morsel, savouring the heat and
the mustelid scent it had sprayed in defiance and defence, so like
his own spray. His mouth stretched over the head and his juice ran
into its eyes, making them steam and run. He sucked then and
swallowed quickly pressing his own tiny teeth to pierce the thin
skull and let his own poison drain inside, dissolving the brain and
the nervous tissue. He squeezed and emptied the thing into himself.
Instantly his whole body glowed with the heat of new nourishment.
He made a little gulping sound in the dark, savouring the taste as
it slipped down inside him. He bent again to the tiny, shrivelling
husk. He froze.</p>
<p>Sudden alarm shivered through him. The mother was awake and he
had let her go. He turned, eyes wide in the darkness. He could feel
her fear and pain, feel her urgent need, the way he could sense the
other things in the night. Underneath it, even more, her bubbling
desperate anger came to him. He saw her pale hand reach slowly for
the fork. His own senses were wound up to a jittery speed, that
made everything seem sluggish. She reached for the thing on the
wall. He saw the four curved points. It came swinging down. He
moved to the left, new limbs thrusting against the ragged
floorboards in a powerful shove. A clanging noise rolled out,
deepened now in his hot-speed, sounding like an old gong. The
vibration shivered the air.</p>
<p>He flicked forward, eyes wide. She never had a chance to move
again. He launched himself at her, scuttling up her dark shape,
glands swelling again.</p>
<p>She made a sound, a whimpering noise that sounded like a low
grunt to him. He fastened to her. His tail went around her neck,
coiling and tightening. She grunted this time and the fork dropped
away to land with a quivering thud on an old grow-bag of compost,
impaling it to the floor. He sprayed instinctively and the fight
went out of her. She fell back as if her ligaments and nerves had
been severed. He waited in the dark until he knew she was subdued,
under his control. He loosened the coil from her neck very lowly,
listening to the pulse of her heartbeat slow, feeling it through
his own skin.</p>
<p>His new hunger was sated, but there were other needs and other
hungers. He sat in the dark, his wide, night-vision eyes fixed on
hr, slowly loosening his grip and nuzzling down in against her
heat. There was no fight in her now, but he would have to be wary.
This was the first, the only one who had ever fought, the first who
tried to break away, who even <em>could</em> break away. There was
a danger in that.</p>
<p>He waited for a while until he sensed the impending arrival of
grey dawn, and he woke her, urging her to move. He heard the creak
in her bones as she made the effort, but he did not know what
caused that. He had no words and no real knowledge outside his own
self and the mothers.</p>
<p>But he was learning quickly.</p>
<hr />
<p>Down in the security ofice in Waterside Mall John Barclay
offered them coffee but David and Helen were more interested in
what he had to show them. All of the screens in his office were on,
a bank of flickering grey and white squares showing all the views.
It was still early, before nine, but already the place was filling
up with early morning shoppers, hurried people, not casual
browsers, picking up what they wanted on the way to work. As David
and Helen watched the screen, Carrie McFall came walking quickly
past on the main floor close to the escalators.</p>
<p>"This is is," John said. "I've been through them all and I
thought you'd want to see this." He thumbed the cassette into the
slot, hit replay and they watched the blurred figures race
backwards, their steps odd and jerky and vaguely silly. Finally he
slowed it and the whine ground to a whisper. "Here. This is from
camera four on the side foyer. Watch."</p>
<p>"What are we looking for?"</p>
<p>"Your woman. The collapser? We've got her coming in." John
raised a hand and pointed. "There she is. The one behind the fat
man? That's her."</p>
<p>"Are you sure?"</p>
<p>"Couldn't be surer. I spent a whole afternoon going through the
tapes after you left, mostly because I wanted them back, but after
I saw this, I thought you should have a look too. Didn't you get my
messages?"</p>
<p>David shook his head. John gave him a disbelieving look. They
turned back to the screen where a portly man in a heavy coat and a
hat too small for his round head came bulling through the door.
Behind him, a tall, spare woman, came walking forward, head
bowed.</p>
<p>She was pushing a dark coloured pram.</p>
<p>"That's the same one our boys found round the back. One of the
men stuck it there after the place was closed. He thought somebody
had just dumped it, for it's pretty old and one wheel's got a
squeak that sends shivers down your backbone." John stopped the
video. Heather McDougall, if it really was the woman, flickered
unsteadily on screen, her head half-turned into the shadow. "It was
only after I saw this that I asked and somebody remembered finding
the thing. What we've got here's a real puzzle."</p>
<p>He thumbed the switch again. The spare woman came in through the
automatic doors, into the light. She raised her head, moving
slowly, almost painfully, to the left. Even in the wavering image
on the television screen, she looked gaunt and dishevelled. The
pram looked black and its hood was raised. They watched in silence
as she moved further to the left and then began to head out of the
picture.</p>
<p>"That's it?" David said, though his brain was already trying to
work things out. There had indeed been a baby, assuming there had
been one in the pram. Either that, or she'd been a bag-lady, just
using the old pram as a trolley. He was about to say something else
when the woman, right at the far edge of the screen, leaned
forward, bending right over the push-handle and stooped over the
pram. The definition was not clear enough to see her lips move, but
her head did sway from left to right. It was clear she was talking
to something inside the pram. She was talking to a baby the way
mothers do. It was clear in the sway, in the timing. Seconds later,
she moved beyond the scope of the camera. John Barclay stopped the
machine.</p>
<p>"You can have that one. Now look at the tape from Number Three,
next to the escalator." It slid in, switched on, the picture came
to life. "I should have made a compilation to save time," the
security man told them, "But I don't have editing facilities
here."</p>
<p>Heather McDougall came towards the camera, still pushing the
pram. Two girls crossed her path, passed her by, then both stopped.
They looked at each other and one of them shook her head violently.
Her friend put a hand up to cover her nose and mouth. They hurried
away. The woman walked to the wall where two other buggies were
parked. She stooped forward again, reached into the pram and made
some small movements, as if she was tucking a baby in tight. When
she leaned back she raised the cover and snapped it firmly in
place. Slowly, painfully, she turned and walked off towards the
Mothercare shop, slowing momentarily as if catching her breath. The
motion of the camera, timed to swing left to right and back again
in the space of a minute, followed her progress as if directed by
human hand. Helen recognised the handbag as the one they had found
in the bushes where Carrie McFall had thrown it. David recognised
the creaking falter of a woman with only minutes left to live.</p>
<p>"You've seen the next bit," John Barclay said. "You've still got
the tape. I thought you should see what happened."</p>
<p>"I appreciate it, Jab," David told him. "The medics were right.
And the woman from Rolling Stock. she told them she'd a baby."</p>
<p>"But whose?" Helen asked. "And what happened to it?</p>
<p>John's face creased into a wide smile. "I wondered when you'd
ask that. That's exactly what I asked when I saw her walk off
towards Mothercare. We saw her coming back again and throw a wobbly
in the middle of the mezzanine, so after I found her coming in,
pushing the pram, I had to look through the rest of them. Lucky
they're all timed. It's a fiddly job, but you can work out a
sequence."</p>
<p>On screen, Heather McDougall, spare and gaunt, a scarecrow of a
woman with an oddly protruding chest, limping a little, walking as
if she was struggling uphill at the end of a long day, merged with
the early evening crowd at the door of the shop and then
disappeared from view.</p>
<p>John lifted the next tape from the pile and exchanged it. David
and Helen stood facing the screen expectantly.</p>
<p>"I hope I can get to use the rest of the tapes after this," John
said. "And I reckon the force could stand me a few drinks."</p>
<p>"May the force always be with you John. We appreciate this."</p>
<p>The ex-policeman hit the button again. Once more, the figures
danced and jiggled backwards. The camera panned from right to left,
taking in the crowd of people comically staggering up the escalator
in fast reverse. The lens swung beyond them. Right at the edge of
the picture, they could see a part of the crowd that had gathered
round the fallen shape slumped on the tiles.</p>
<p>The small woman in a grey coat bent forward at the side of the
pillar, just inside the frame, turned and disappeared back into the
crowd with the dropped shopping bag. Just within view, Carrie
McFall came walking quickly, heading for the spot where the handbag
had fallen. Both of them disappeared from the shot. For a second,
the only people visible were the two girls who had passed by
Heather McDougall and reacted strangely. They were turned towards
each other, obviously comparing purchases.</p>
<p>A figure walked past them, moving quickly, with an almost jaunty
step. She was slim and fair-haired, almost athletic in her
movements. Her hair was pleated and pinned up, as far as they could
tell, under a neat beret. Her long coat was open and flapped in
time to her step. The picture was not pin sharp, and the screen was
grey and grainy, but even then, the girl looked as if she might be
smiling.</p>
<p>"Good heavens," Helen whispered. John Barclay held up a
forestalling hand.</p>
<p>"Watch this," he said. It was only then that the camera reached
the end of its travel and began to swing to the right again. The
girl was coming more into the field of view. The camera swung just
enough to pick up where the second one had left off. The small row
of prams and two baby buggies stood against the wall.</p>
<p>The girl came sauntering past. Her head turned slightly to the
right, and although they couldn't see anything else in the frame,
they knew she must have been glancing at the commotion in the
centre of the walkway. She slowed, peered, obviously curious, then
started walking again. From her gait, it seemed she couldn't make
out what the disturbance was and quickly lost interest. A hand went
into her pocket, and a small movement brought that side of the coat
flapping round in a wrapping curl. David could see the health and
confidence in that simple movement. The camera tracked her as it
had followed Heather McDougall. The girl came abreast of the small
queue of baby carriages. Very briskly, obviously intent on getting
where she was going, she strode past them.</p>
<p>"Here," John Barclay said, quite unnecessarily.</p>
<p>The girl walked three steps, slowed at a fourth, almost stopped
on the fifth. Her head went up, showing her face for the first
time. She was pretty and regular featured.</p>
<p>"Bloody hell," Helen said. "That's her."</p>
<p>"Hold on," Barclay forestalled again. "This is the bit."</p>
<p>The old black pram was right in view. The new arrival was
standing just beyond it, maybe three paces past the upraised hood.
Her head came up and turned just a fraction to the right. On the
grainy screen, it looked as if she was sniffing the air.</p>
<p>Something cold trickled down David Harper's back. A strange and
curdling sense of prescience rippled along with it. He knew what
was going to happen.</p>
<p>The girl stopped dead. She sniffed again, though they could see
nothing but little twitches of her head, blurred on screen. She
half turned away from the pram, as if determined to walk away. One
foot took a step, The other seemed to be stuck to the floor. The
handbag swung with the momentum and came back to strike against her
hip, dangling from the strap. The hand came out of the pocket and
reached forward, away from the direction of the pram, as if the
girl was trying to push through an invisible barrier, maybe even
trying to haul herself away.</p>
<p>She stopped again. Her mouth opened. The three of them could see
the black circle. No teeth showed. The girl could have been punched
in the belly from the suddenness of the expression, like all the
air was whooshing out of her. The mouth opened further, in a
strange and tortured gape.</p>
<p>"She's going to be sick," Helen said.</p>
<p>"No." John Barclay didn't elaborate. He didn't have to. They
were strangely fascinated, unable to draw their eyes away. David
could feel the prescience building. For some reason he could not
explain, completely unnatural, or preternatural, he wanted the girl
to keep walking. The sense of chilling menace reached from the
black maw of the pram where the hood showed a square of inky
darkness. It travelled through time, through the four days since
Heather McDougall had died. Travelled through the air, fast as
light into the camera, through the wires, onto the tape and back
into the screen and he could still feel it. Helen was sitting close
enough to feel him shiver and wondered what the hell was happening
to him.</p>
<p>"Move," he heard his inner voice urge. "Walk on, love."</p>
<p>The girl turned, moving very slowly, for all the world as if the
camera had slowed down. John Barclay's hand was nowhere near the
controls. There was no sound of course, but David had the
impression that if there was, it would be dopplered down to deep
clunks and groans like a tape that had slowed almost to a stop. He
did not know why that thought came to him, but it came with an
inexplicable sense of foreboding.</p>
<p>She swivelled towards the pram and even then, they could see the
pull of her body trying to move away. Her feet were almost hen-toed
in the obvious internal struggle. She leaned forwards, pulled back.
Her foot moved again, took a step in the direction. She turned
again, her face twisting back towards the light. Her shoulders
twitched and the long, elegant coat twitched with it. Off to the
left of the screen Carrie McFall the shoplifter came briefly into
view and disappeared, unaware of the drama happening not twenty
yards away, interested only in her new find.</p>
<p>The girl in the coat walked forward, legs moving awkwardly, like
a zombie in a B-movie. It would have been comical under any other
circumstances, but none of them felt the humour. Her steps were
ungainly, forced, somehow obscene.</p>
<p>"Oh Jesus," Helen said, feelingly. It was a strange,
cliff-hanger of a moment for them. Even John Barclay, who had seen
the sequence before, seemed to be holding his breath.</p>
<p>On screen the girl reached the pram and leaned forward, body
still twisting, all the elegance gone. She seemed to have no
control at all now, no volition. It was all in the posture and the
motion. A mime artist couldn't have conveyed it better.</p>
<p>She stood stock still, trembling, both hands visibly fluttering.
Then she leaned further, stooping low. The black square under the
hood darkened further with her shadow. She reached inside. They
could see her shoulders working as she manipulated something with
her hands. She stood up clutching a baby tight against her, huddled
inside her coat.</p>
<p>"Good God," Helen breathed. "It <em>is</em> her."</p>
<p>"I could hardly believe it myself," John Barclay said. He
stopped the video, leaving the girl standing there, half turned
towards the camera, with the little bundle wrapped in a shawl
clutched in against her chest. Her eyes were wide and her face
completely devoid of expression as if all the muscles had sagged.
The smile was long gone.</p>
<p>"That's Ginny Marsden," Helen told David. "I'm sure of it. Her
parents said she was coming here anyway. I should have thought of
going through these tapes, but it never stuck me. Honestly, David,
it really is her."</p>
<p>He was standing, eyes glued to the screen, seemingly unaware
that she had spoken. He turned to Barclay. "Turn it back on John.
Let's see what happens next."</p>
<p>The camera was moving, once again, tracking the motion. David
could have believed there was some conscious power guiding the
lenses. The girl turned away from them, heading for the far door
beyond the melee where the paramedics were just in the picture now,
racing for the door.</p>
<p>"You'll have to watch this closely. I can rewind it if you want,
but look at the top end of the screen."</p>
<p>David found it hard to take his eyes from the girl. There was
something awful, something un-natural and dreadfully fearful about
her posture. She had changed utterly, in the space of a few
seconds, from the confident striding young woman who had come
swinging down the main walkway of the mall for last minute
Christmas presents. She had crumpled and contorted, in those few
seconds, into a strange, flaccid , somehow pathetic figure. David
had seen the attitude before, on the shell-shocked victims of
Dresden as they stumbled through their smoking streets, shadowy and
indistinct in the old newsreels. He'd seen it in the posture and
expression of the people in the cattle-trucks on their way to
Auschwitz and Birkenau. It was the knowledge of certain
catastrophe. It was the presentiment of doom. A trickle of sweat
ran down the side of his ribs.</p>
<p>John pointed a finger. The trolley was moving towards the door.
A number of people were coming through and despite the silence,
they reacted to the obvious shout from Phil Coulter. One woman
stopped in her tracks. Her husband pulled her to the side by her
arm. The trolley stopped rolling. One of the medics had a hand out
towards the door.</p>
<p>"Here," Barclay said.</p>
<p>The dying woman on the gurney sat up, face contorted as badly,
as painfully, as the girl's had been. Her mouth opened and closed
as through she was gasping for air. Phil Coulter reached a hand out
towards her. She twisted, rolled off the trolley and hit the
ground. Without any hesitation she was crawling, like a flapping
black insect, towards the with the baby. On the silent screen, she
was a strange and grotesque apparition, moving jerkily on the
patterned floor. A small dog tethered nearby strained against its
leash, mouth scissoring angrily, possibly fearfully. The woman
scuttled past it, a round, pale breast dragging close to the floor
like a monstrous tumour. A girl came walking out of a shop, laden
with parcels, unaware of the scene right in front of her. She
almost fell over the crawling woman and the parcels went up into
the air. The old woman scrabbled past, made it half-way along the
walkway. Just on the very edge of the screen, the flapping coat of
the girl could be seen. She stopped, turned quickly and came back
towards the camera. The old woman stopped, flopped forward with the
momentum so that her forehead smacked the floor. Even in the
silence it looked like a heavy blow. She rolled over twitched and
then was still.</p>
<p>"What do you think?" John asked. "Is this weird or what?"</p>
<p>David stood open-mouthed, next to Helen whose expression
mirrored his exactly. The girl walked quickly, but still jerkily as
if her muscles were responding to mixed up commands. She clutched
the baby in against her coat. The closer she came, the more her
face expanded on the screen.</p>
<p>"It is her. That's Ginny Marsden," Helen said. "I'm sure of
it."</p>
<p>"Who's she?" John Barclay asked.</p>
<p>"She's a girl I've been tying to find. She went missing a couple
of days ago."</p>
<p>"Well now you know why. She's a bloody baby-snatcher."</p>
<p>"Look at her face," David said.</p>
<p>Ginny Marsden's mouth was contorted in a dreadful grimace. She
now looked is if she was struggling with all her strength, pushing
forward as if pushing through a crowd, or against an invisible
barrier. Her mouth was drawn back into a rictus that showed almost
all of her lower teeth. The tendons on her neck stuck out like
wires.</p>
<p>"She looks as if she's throwing a fit," John observed.</p>
<p>The girl walked quickly past, heading out of the camera's range.
She got to the corner, turned, and as she did so, the baby's face
was just visible, turned in against her coat, clamped to her
shoulder and half hidden by the wide lapel. It was just a blur, but
David felt something turn over in the pit of his belly.</p>
<p>"Is that a baby or a stuffed toy?" John wanted to know. "It's an
ugly little bugger."</p>
<p>It was just a glimpse, an indistinct, undefined shape on the
screen, fuzzed by the distance and motion. But even then, the small
and flickering television image was peculiar enough to make them
look twice. David asked John to replay it again. They watched it
three times, but the image was still blurred and out of focus,
though the details of Ginny Marsden's features were still clear,
etched with panic and shock. David knew he'd have to take it to the
lab for scanning to see if they could get some enhancement that
would sharpen the picture.</p>
<p>"I couldn't figure any of this out," John Barclay said. "The
paramedics were right when they said she'd gone crawling off. I
heard the same thing happened when they got her to the hospital.
But I can't figure out how come she turns up here with a baby and
then it gets picked up by somebody else. I was wondering if maybe
they were working as a team? Maybe even using the pram for
shoplifting?"</p>
<p>He looked at David and Helen. "That was the first thing I
thought of, but then I had another look. I don't think they even
knew each other. The way that girl came in through the door, she
looked as if she didn't have a care in the world. By the time she
went away with the baby, she'd put on ten years. I tell you, that's
the weirdest thing I ever saw."</p>
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