69236538256563

‘Is the child all right?’ Mrs May asked. ‘The boy?’ She didn’t seem able to say his name. ‘We’ve
been watching the news.’
‘It’s a little early to tell,’ I said, ‘but as far as I know his condition’s stable for now.’
She nodded, swallowed, and made a small sign of the cross.
‘I believe,’ I said, ‘that you provided your daughter with an alibi for last Sunday. Is that right?’
‘We did, yes,’ said Mrs May. ‘Your colleague rang us to talk about it, a very nice young lady
called, what was she called, dear?’
‘DC Zhang,’ said Mr May.
‘Can I ask you about that?’
‘Well,’ said Mr May. ‘Yes, well, Joanna came to have lunch with us on that day, and we weren’t
really sure exactly what time she went home, but she reminded us it was about four thirty so that’s
what we told your colleague.’
‘Joanna reminded you?’
‘Yes. We asked her because we weren’t sure. We didn’t think to question it, because it could have
been four thirty, couldn’t it, Mary?’
Mrs May nodded. ‘We never really checked,’ she said. ‘And we started lunch quite late. But I
suppose it could have been earlier too. Now that I think about it. We never actually checked the time
ourselves.’
‘So you weren’t absolutely sure?’
‘Not certain, no, but your colleague said that was normal.’
‘Would you mind making a statement to that effect?’
‘We never thought our daughter would be capable of such a thing,’ said Mr May. ‘If we’d ever
dreamed… oh dear God… would they have been able to find the boy earlier?’
‘It’s not your fault,’ I said, but he lowered his eyes and I could see that it was a question that they
would be asking themselves for a very long time.
‘Can I ask, do you have any idea why Joanna might have done this?’ I said.
They exchanged a glance then, and Mrs May gave a small shrug of her shoulders.
Mr May said, ‘Joanna’s infertile. That’s the only sense I can make of it. She only discovered her
infertility last spring after she tried to get pregnant using artificial insemination. We didn’t approve.
We thought she should be in a stable relationship before she had a baby, but she was insistent, as
usual, and so we gave her the money anyway, for the inseminations, and then for the fertility tests,
because you try to help your children. You feel responsible for their happiness. I don’t think she
would have told us if she hadn’t needed us to pay for it. She doesn’t confide in us. In fact she only
contacts us if she wants something. Anyway, it upset her a great deal, the infertility. She wasn’t used
to not getting what she wanted. My guess is that she took this boy because she wanted a child. But let
me tell you this: don’t expect her to explain why she did it. She never admitted to anything as a child,
and I doubt she will now.’
He stood up again, painfully, and made his way to the mantelpiece. He took down a photograph of
Joanna May and gazed at it for a moment before showing it to his wife. In the photograph Joanna May
was on a beach. She couldn’t have been more than ten or eleven years old. In her swimsuit she sat
beside a body-shaped mound of sand from which the head of a smaller child protruded. She wielded
a spade triumphantly and the child was smiling too.
‘I’ll move this I think, Mary,’ said Mr May.
‘Yes, dear.’ Her eyes slid to her lap as he left the room, fingers picking at the fabric of her skirt.
Together, we waited silently for him return, but before he did, the sound of breaking glass made