"Morning Lisa, how are you feeling this morning?" Mickey asked as he and Jack seated themselves across the table in the interview room ready to resume where they had been forced to abandon the previous night.
"For the benefit of the tape, Miss Carmichael shrugged her shoulders." Jack supplied. "Now Lisa, we've recovered the body of a baby from a patch of waste ground near to your house. We believe that this body belongs to your son and we'd like to take a sample of DNA for comparison. Will you consent to that?" Lisa looked to the duty solicitor by her side who nodded almost imperceptibly.
"Yes." The young woman spoke quietly, eyes downcast studying the table top.
"Is James the baby's father?" Mickey asked as Jack leant back in his seat.
Lisa shook her head before answering verbally, "no, I only got together with him a month ago when he got out of prison. I don't know who the father is." Jack indicated for Mickey to retrieve the DNA sample before questioning continued.
"Do you now or have you ever taken heroin?" The DCI asked as Mickey re-seated himself having handed over the swab to a uniformed officer with instructions to get it to the lab as a priority.
"No why? If you found anything in the house, ask James about it, that's more his style." Lisa answered averting her face, sounding slightly bitter about her boyfriend's past.
"There had to be a post-mortem on the body we found, we needed to establish cause of death. The blood tests threw up some surprising results. There were large amounts of heroin present in the baby's blood, a high enough dose to kill him. Residue was found in his stomach contents too. If it does turn out that this is your son, unless you knowingly and deliberately fed him the drugs, you couldn't have killed him." Jack outlined, knowing that it was harsh for a mother to hear such explicit details but hoping it might crack her resolve not to talk. "So should we be asking James about that too? How did he get on with your son? Did he take to the baby?" The detectives could see the young mother struggling to check her emotions.
"He hated him crying. He made up Wayne's bottle before he died, said maybe that would make him quiet. I thought he just meant that if we filled his stomach he might finally sleep. Did he kill my baby?" Lisa's gaze swung between Jack and Mickey, eyes wild and watery. "I can't believe I let him anywhere near my boy. He can be so sweet and caring and I know he wants to get off the gear but it's hard for him, all his friends are into the scene. He told me he'd fix it, after Wayne died, that he knew where we could get another baby. I wasn't thinking straight, I just wanted my boy back so badly." Tears streamed down Lisa's face as she recounted how she had become involved in Joey's abduction. "That young girl, the baby's mother, she didn't want him. I could tell by the way she was looking at him in the café. James said he'd create a distraction so I could take off with the baby and no one need ever know. Then the car exploded. I just froze, dived under the nearest table for cover like everyone else. I panicked when I saw everyone lying there, I wheeled the buggy out to the back of the café. Everyone was too shocked to pay me any attention and his mother wasn't in any fit state to protest. I left by the backdoor and went in the building next to it. James was waiting for me in there, he'd made sure the door was open so I could get in."
"And the other woman, the one who'd dropped the car off?" Mickey interjected as Lisa quietened down.
"What other woman? James drove the car to the bus stop – or at least that's what he told me." The young woman supplied, a frown creasing her brow as she suspected her partner hadn't been honest with her.
"We have several eye witnesses who say it was a woman driving the car. Tall, blonde, heavily made up, ring any bells?" The DC asked, hoping to capitalise on their suspect's newfound chattiness. Lisa shook her head in response her frown deepening.
"For the benefit of the tape, Miss Carmichael is shaking her head. How did James know where the baby would be?"
"He still has friends in Longmarsh. There was some guy in there apparently mouthing off about having raped the daughter of a local police officer and got her pregnant and that he'd actually got her to agree to bring the baby in to see him. For specific details, I'm afraid you'll have to ask James. He didn't tell me and I didn't ask. All I wanted was the baby and I was so scared you'd come knocking having found Wayne. I thought if I replaced him quickly, I could pretend this new baby was Wayne. I realise it must sound stupid but I was grieving… I still am. I thought I was responsible for killing my boy."
"I'm afraid Joanne has developed a chest infection from the water she inhaled. We've started her on a course of intravenous antibiotics and we're hopeful that she'll respond quickly to the treatment. She's asking to see you both but it really is imperative she gets plenty of rest if her body is to recover from this. The CT scan also showed a significant amount of bruising around her brain but no sign of any bleeding into the actual brain or blood clots which is a positive sign. Until the contusions heal, we really can't tell if the memory loss will be a permanent feature. Her temperature is slightly raised as a result of the infection but she is stable for the time being." The middle-aged doctor addressed Alice and George who had been nervously awaiting the results of their daughter's tests, having been banished from her bedside for over an hour whilst the brunette was scanned, x-rayed and poked with needles.
"Thank you doctor, we'll do our best not to disturb her too much." George thanked the woman before guiding his wife back into the cubicle where their only living child lay still seriously ill.
"Now then young lady, you're not to talk so I don't want to hear a peep out of you. Your dad and I aren't planning on going anywhere so there's plenty of time to chat and catch up on news once you're better. For now, you sleep." Alice kissed her daughter's forehead as she lay propped up against pillows, partially raised in an effort to prevent the chest infection from developing into pneumonia. She pulled up a chair and settled herself in for a long wait, George mirroring her actions on the opposite side of the bed.
"See here, this person matches the eye witnesses' descriptions of the driver of the car. But, look closely at the face." Mickey rested against the desk watching his governor study the image frozen on the screen in front of him.
"Is that James King in drag?" Jack's voice was incredulous.
"Well at least he wasn't lying to Lisa, for once!" Mickey quipped.
"Good work Mickey. Anything of him leaving?" Jack turned to face Mickey, impressed with the DC's effort given how exhausted he must be having stayed so late the night before.
"Not yet Guv but we know from Lisa an approximate time he left so it shouldn't take too long to find. Has this building been searched yet?" Mickey tapped the doorway on screen into which James disappeared.
"Yes but it didn't turn anything up. As soon as Abi Nixon mentioned that's where the driver had gone, Jo arranged for uniform to go in there and turn the place inside out. Let me know when you find footage of him leaving. We need to know if he changed clothes, if he had a bag with him, which way he was headed. See if anyone else arrives at the flat too."
"I had another look at the footage from the back of the café too. Neither of the doors are shown on it, just the exit to the courtyard which both open onto. Lisa could have come from either of the buildings and it would have looked the same on the tape." Mickey toyed with the remote in his hand, feeling as though they were missing something. "Do you really think this is someone's way of getting at Hugh?"
"I don't know, maybe he was getting too big for his boots and someone wanted to take him down a peg or two. He doesn't really strike me as the sort of man who would brag about raping the daughter of an officer though. And he certainly had some influential friends with him last night. Why, what are you thinking?"
"That maybe Hugh set the whole thing up. Maybe he really is behind this. Lisa might not necessarily know the truth of how James came to know of Joey's existence."
"But what would his motive be? He's about to appeal his sentence, why would he jeopardise that by organising to have his own son abducted?" Jack queried.
"I don't know Guv, maybe he knows his appeal will get him nothing. Maybe Sam's right, maybe he just likes winding her up." Mickey suggested.
"If that's the case then he's scored a hat-trick; injuring Abi, having Joey kidnapped and almost getting Jo killed into the bargain."
"Maybe we could use that to our advantage. He doesn't know about Jo, about how much that is upsetting Sam. If he found out about their relationship, and the fact that she's in hospital after trying to save his baby, he might try to organise something else, to make sure Sam's really suffering. I mean, it'd be a bit of a blow to know that she's batting for the other team now wouldn't it? Might make him lash out at her in the way he knows hurts her most– by getting at those she loves."
Sam slammed the newspaper down in front of Jack having breezed into his office without knocking. "Were you planning on telling me about this? Who wrote this? They're basically accusing me of killing that prison officer."
"I've been interviewing Lisa Carmichael this morning but I would have preferred to talk to you about the situation at Longmarsh before you read this, yes. Take no notice of what this rag says, you know they're always looking to blame us for anything that goes wrong." Jack attempted to placate the enraged DI.
"But they do have a point don't they, Jack? If I'd stayed and kept my promise to Hugh, that man would still be alive and his kids wouldn't be facing burying him." Sam strode over to the window, gazing through the slatted blind without seeing the outside world. "Maybe it's for the best that Jo can't remember our relationship if it means I jeopardise other people's lives because of my feelings for her."
"You don't mean that Sam. Give yourself time to come to terms with what's happened. There's still every chance that Jo will recover fully, including getting her memory back. Do you really want to throw away a chance of happiness because of what one reporter has written?" Jack rounded his desk but stopped short of reaching out to Sam, never having had that kind of relationship with her.
"It's not just that. I always promised myself that I'd never bring my personal life to work with me. Working with Jo, I can't keep the two separate. It kills me every time she goes out on a shout in case she doesn't come back. I was kidding myself to think we could work together." A tear trickled down Sam's cheek as she addressed the real reason she had stormed into the DCI's office. "If Jo comes back to work, when she comes back, I think it will be better if I'm not here. I want to put in for a transfer Guv."