The Light Between Oceans(76)

‘Well?’ Tom asked.

‘Well, they’ll never get up on that. Luckily for you, most of the time, babies don’t leave their mothers unless someone takes them away. And they don’t usually find their way to barely inhabited islands. You see? They can’t make out the necessary elements of the offence. You didn’t “detain” the baby: legally speaking, she could have left any time she wanted. You certainly didn’t “entice her away”. And they can never prove “intention to deprive” because we’ll say you honestly believed the parents were dead. So I reckon I can get you off that one. And you’re a war hero, a Military Cross and Bar. Most courts will still go easy on a bloke who risked his life for his country and never had a whiff of trouble.’

Tom’s face relaxed, but the lawyer’s expression changed, as he continued, ‘But what they don’t like, Mr Sherbourne, is a liar. In fact, they dislike it so much that the penalty for perjury is seven years’ hard labour. And if that liar stops the real culprit getting what’s coming to them, then that’s perverting the course of justice, and that’s another seven years. Do you get my drift?’

Tom gave him a look.

‘The law likes to make sure that the right people are getting punished. Judges are a bit particular about that sort of thing.’ He stood up, and wandered to the window, gazing up through the bars into the trees beyond. ‘Now, if I walked into a court, and told a story of a poor woman, beside herself with grief over the loss of her stillborn baby – a woman who wasn’t right in the head for a bit, couldn’t tell right from wrong – and if I told the story of how her husband, who was a decent bloke, who’d always done his duty, but who, just this once, trying to make things better for his wife, let his heart get the better of his common sense, and went along with her idea … Well, I could sell that to a judge. I could sell it to a jury. The Court’s got what we call “the prerogative of mercy” – the right to impose a lesser sentence, for the wife too.

‘But at the moment, I’ve got a man who by his own admission is not only a liar, but a bully. A man who, presumably worried that people will think he’s got no lead in his pencil, decides to keep a tiny baby, and forces his wife to lie about it.’

Tom straightened his back. ‘I’ve said what I’ve said.’

Fitzgerald continued, ‘Now, if you’re the sort of man who really would do something like that, then, for all the police know, you’re the sort of person who might go even a step further to get what you want. If you’re the sort of man who takes what he wants because he can, and who’s prepared to make his wife act under duress, then perhaps you’re the sort of man who’s prepared to kill to get what he wants. We all know you did enough of that during the war.’ He paused. ‘That’s what they might say.’

‘They haven’t charged me with that.’

‘So far. But from what I hear, that copper from Albany’s dying to get his hands on you. I’ve come across him before, and I can tell you, he’s a right bastard.’

Tom took a deep breath, and shook his head.

‘And he’s very excited that your wife won’t corroborate your story about Roennfeldt being dead when you found him.’ He twirled the crimson tape from the brief around his finger. ‘She must really hate your guts.’ As he unwound it, he said slowly, ‘Now, she could hate your guts because you made her lie about keeping a baby. Or even because you killed a man. But I reckon it’s more likely she hates your guts because you gave the game away.’

Tom made no response.

‘It’s up to the Crown to prove how he died. With a bloke who’s been underground for nearly four years, that’s no easy task. Not that much left of him. No broken bones. No fractures. Documented history of heart trouble. Normally, that would probably lead to an open verdict by the Coroner. If you came clean and told the whole truth.’

‘If I plead guilty to all the charges – say I made Isabel go along with me, and there’s no other evidence – no one can touch her: is that right?’

‘Yes, but—’

‘Then I’ll take what’s coming to me.’

‘Trouble is, there might be a lot more coming to you than you’ve bargained for,’ Fitzgerald said as he put the papers back in his briefcase. ‘We’ve got no idea what your wife’s going to say you did or didn’t do, if she ever decides to talk. If I were in your shoes, I’d be doing some damned hard thinking.’



If people used to stare at Hannah before she got Grace back, they stared a lot harder afterwards. They had expected some sort of miraculous transformation, like a chemical reaction, as mother and daughter met. But they were disappointed on that score: the child looked distressed and the mother distraught. Far from getting a bloom back in her cheeks, Hannah grew more gaunt, as every one of Grace’s screams made her wonder whether she had done the right thing in reclaiming her.

Old logbooks from Janus had been requisitioned by the police as they examined the handwriting on the letters to Hannah: there was no mistaking the sure, steady penmanship in both. Nor was there any question as to the rattle Bluey had identified. It was the baby herself who had altered beyond recognition. Hannah had handed Frank a tiny, dark-haired infant weighing twelve pounds, and Fate had handed back to her a frightened, wilful blonde changeling who could stand on her own two feet, walk, and scream until her face was scarlet and her chin wet with tears and dribble. The confidence Hannah had gained in handling her baby in the first weeks of her life was swiftly eroded. The rhythms of intimacy, the unspoken understandings, which she had assumed she could just pick up again, were lost to her: the child no longer responded in a way she could predict. They were like two dancers whose steps were foreign to one another.