In the Blood Read online

  IN THE BLOOD

  Ruth Mancini

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  About this Book

  About the Author

  Table of Contents

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  About In The Blood

  In southeast London, a young mother has been accused of an unthinkable crime: poisoning her own child – and then leaving him to die.

  The mother, Ellie, is secretive and challenging – she’s had a troubled upbringing – but does that mean she’s capable of murder?

  Balancing the case with raising her disabled five-year-old son, criminal defence lawyer Sarah Kellerman sets out in desperate pursuit of the truth. But when her own child becomes unwell, Sarah realises she’s been drawn into a dangerous game.

  Unsettling and compulsive, In the Blood is a chilling study of class, motherhood and power from a new star in crime fiction.

  Contents

  Welcome Page

  About In The Blood

  Dedication

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Acknowledgements

  About Ruth Mancini

  Also by Ruth Mancini

  An Invitation from the Publisher

  Copyright

  For Helen Bishop and Lisa Harris – and for all the staff who worked at the Roundabout Centre in Oxford in 2003–7. You rescued me when I was at rock bottom and I thank you with all my heart.

  Prologue

  A buzz and a click; the door opens and closes. The ward is quiet and the lights are low. The children are sleeping, the night shift now doing their rounds, checking observations, peering at charts. It’s warm and he’s wearing just his nappy, the rising and falling of his little chest a bit too laboured still. Her fingers brush the side of the cot, where the IV tube protrudes between the bars, a single red line carrying his blood into the machine he still needs to stay alive.

  She bends over the cot and watches him. His eyelids flutter as he dreams. His fingers curl and uncurl next to the blue bunny that he’s still too weak to grip. He’s a beautiful child; there’s no doubt about that. She leans forward and strokes back the shock of blond hair that’s damp against his forehead, then lifts him gently into her arms, careful not to dislodge the tube that’s taped to his chest. She holds him for a moment, feeling the weight of his head against her forearm, breathing in his sweet baby scent, before laying him gently back down.

  He hasn’t stirred. He won’t wake. His face is peaceful, his features relaxed. Her eyes flicker down to the clover-shaped sticking plaster that’s holding the tube in place just underneath his left armpit. Her fingers reach over and feel for its rough edges where they meet the softness of his baby skin. Her fingernail picks at the tape and peels it back a little, then a little more, until it comes away. She tugs at the end of the tube and places it on the sheet beside him. A small crimson stain soon appears.

  It’s time to leave him now, to let him sleep.

  She covers him with the blanket that’s folded neatly on top of the cabinet next to his cot and walks silently away.

  1

  It’s a Tuesday in mid-August when I get the call. Ben has kept me up half the night and I’ve come to the office with his lunchbag (pureed carrot and ricotta, Marmite soldiers, Peppa Pig yoghurt), while he’s at nursery with mine (tuna bean salad and fizzy water). It’s eleven thirty when the phone rings, and I’m playing the game I play where I divide the day into manageable quarters. I’ve already made it from breakfast to the mid-morning crime team diary meeting and, by lunchtime, I’ll be halfway there. There will only be another two quarters of the day – I can’t even begin to think of it as a fourteen-hour stretch; that’s way too long – until I can crawl back under the duvet and close my eyes, even if just for a while.

  I pick up the phone. Lucy, our receptionist, says, ‘Annalise Finch for you,’ and then she’s gone.

  ‘Sarah! How are you?’ Annalise speaks earnestly into the receiver, with an emphasis on the ‘you’. She waits for an answer (which not everybody does).

  ‘Yeah, good. Good,’ I tell her, and then I feel the bitter sting of tears. This is my latent, Pavlovian response to any gesture of kindness towards me, no matter how small. Annalise is an ex-work colleague, but I also think of her as a friend. Do I tell her that I haven’t had a decent night’s sleep in months? That my head is throbbing and my eye sockets ache? Do I warn her that I’m scared to open my mouth and talk, on days like today, for fear of jumbling up my sentences or dropping nouns?

  I know Annalise well enough to know that she’s not the sort of person that judges you, and besides, she’s a woman who has had small children, so she’s halfway to knowing what this is like. Although her children are ordinary, regular children, of course. Her children are normal. I wonder, fleetingly, whether I will ever be able to think about another woman’s ordinary, regular children without feeling overwhelmed with grief and pain.

  ‘Sarah?’ she asks. ‘Are you still there?’

  ‘Sorry. Yes,’ I tell her. ‘How are you? It’s nice to hear from you.’

  It is. I had forgotten how much I liked Annalise, or Anna as I’ve always known her at work. She’s a family lawyer. She gets called a divorce lawyer but that’s not really what she does. She deals with child custody, mostly, specifically public law cases, the ones where there are child protection issues and the local authority want to take the child away. We used to see each other at the local magistrates’ court sometimes when we both worked at Cartwright & Taylor, and when we were both there late, as we often were, we would stop off for a drink on the way home.

  Of course, that was before Ben. I don’t get to do things like that very much these days, but I’m happy to hear a friendly voice on the phone, the voice of someone with whom – on a day like today, when I’m feeling at my very most mortal – I don’t have to pretend to be the sort of professional superwoman that I’m always reading about in the Law Society Gazette.

  ‘I’d love to chat,’ Anna says, ‘but, listen, I’ve got a case for you.’ Her voice echoes a little down the receiver. I’m guessing I’m on speakerphone. ‘It’s serious. It’s an attempted murder. Of a child.’

  And then she’s off, talking rapidly, and I’m missing what she’s said. I reach for a pen, grabbing the notebook that’s on the desk in front of me and finding a fresh page. As I do so I nudge my coffee cup and a stream of light brown liquid leaps over the rim and across the desk. I’m instantly overwhelmed with the urge to either punch somebody or throw myself out of the window, the small puddle of coffee in front of me magnified by lack of sleep into Atlantic proportions. Instead I tuck the phone under my chin, pull a pack of baby wipes out of my handbag, take out a handful and drop them, one by one, onto the desk.

  ‘You’re really the best person I can think of for this,’ Anna is saying.

  ‘I’m really sorry, Anna,’ I interrupt her. ‘I didn’t catch all of that. Would you mind starting again?’

  ‘Oh. No. Of course not.’ She picks up the phone, and her voice comes into focus. ‘It’s one of my clients. She’s accused of trying to kill her eleven-month-old baby. Her name’s Ellie. She’s a young mum – twenty years old. Cut a long story short, she’s poisoned him. Then, while he’s in hospital recovering, she�
��s gone onto the ward and tried to kill him again.’

  ‘Jesus. How?’

  ‘He was on dialysis after his kidneys failed. She pulled out the tube – the line, they call it – that took the blood out of his body and into the machine, and of course the machine just kept pumping the blood out of him. She covered him with a blanket to hide it. He nearly bled to death.’

  ‘Jesus,’ I say again. ‘What’s the evidence that it was her?’

  ‘Well, no one saw it happen. But she was there when they found him. She was asleep on a camp bed beside him – or pretending to be; that’s what the police are saying. A nurse spotted a pool of blood under the cot. He’d lost around a quarter of it, gone into heart failure. They managed to resuscitate him, but he’s still in a critical condition.’

  ‘Which hospital is it?’

  ‘Southwark St Martin’s.’

  I feel a sharp jolt of pain. St Martin’s. The same hospital. I throw the bundle of soggy wipes into the bin under my desk and sit back in my chair. I can see the ward; I can feel the heat of it, smell the antiseptic air. I can see the cot and the blanket – white, crocheted with a blue and white Southwark St Martin’s trim. I can see the baby, pale and still. I can picture it all, as if I’m there.

  ‘Also, he was with her when he was poisoned,’ adds Anna.

  I pull a fresh notepad from my drawer. ‘How was he poisoned?’

  ‘Salt.’

  ‘Salt?’

  ‘Yep. It causes a potentially fatal electrolyte imbalance. It’s called hypernatraemia.’

  I think about this for a moment. I think about Ben. ‘How do you force salt into a one-year-old?’

  ‘I don’t know. But somebody did. And he was with her. Ellie. She’d had him overnight, unsupervised, for the first time in months. He was in care at the time. He’d already been taken away from her.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘They found injuries. Bruises – and burns – when he was around eight months old. That’s how I got her case. Although we managed to fight it that time. Our expert report was favourable; it said that no one could be certain that the injuries were non-accidental. She was well on the way to getting him back again, but then he’s admitted to hospital with what they think is a virus, which turns out to be sodium poisoning.’

  ‘And they left her alone with him, in hospital?’

  ‘They knew he was seriously ill, but they didn’t know he’d been poisoned at that stage, not until the tests came back.’

  Anna pauses. My pen hovers above the page while I take this in.

  ‘I’ve got to admit, it doesn’t look great for her,’ Anna says. ‘The prosecution case is that the three separate incidences of harm combine to build an overall picture of deliberate abuse. They each support each other. It all kind of stacks up. And Ellie... well, unfortunately, she doesn’t come across well.’

  ‘Why? What does she say?’

  ‘Oh, she denies it – all of it. Says she’d never hurt her baby. But she wasn’t great in interview. She can’t explain how it happened, any of it, other than to say it wasn’t her. She doesn’t... well, volunteer information. She just gets angry and then clams up. I know she’s scared. She’s a “looked after” kid herself – she grew up in a care home in Stockwell – and she’s like many of our young people: naturally reticent and suspicious of the authorities. She has no faith that anyone is going to believe her side of things. But it comes across the wrong way. She appears... overly defensive. And secretive, as if she’s hiding something.’

  ‘What’s her previous?’

  ‘Thefts, cars and stuff as a youth. Peer pressure probably. Nothing like this, and nothing for a while.’

  ‘So, when’s the first hearing?’ I look up as the door opens and Matt, my colleague, walks in. He takes off his coat and sits down at the desk next to me. I flash him a smile. He purses his lips and switches on his computer.

  ‘That’s the thing,’ Anna says. ‘It’s been and gone. The case has been sent to Inner London Crown Court. She’s been remanded to Bronzefield. There’s a bail hearing tomorrow.’

  ‘Tomorrow?!’

  ‘I’m sorry, I know it’s short notice. But I was on holiday when they arrested and charged her. We went to Sri Lanka, Tim and I and the girls, for a fortnight. I didn’t find out until I got back into the office this morning.’

  ‘Sri Lanka. Wow. Sounds wonderful.’ I can’t help feeling a stab of envy; I can’t take those sorts of holidays any more.

  ‘Look, are you OK with this?’ Anna asks me. ‘I mean, I did think about it, that it might drag stuff up for you. But that’s why I also think you’d be the best person to take this on. You spent a lot of time in hospitals when Ben was small. You know what it’s like to have a sick child.’

  ‘Yes, I... it’s fine. Really,’ I say. ‘I want to do it.’

  ‘Oh, good,’ Anna says, pleased. ‘Ellie asked for the duty solicitor at the police station and again when the case was allocated to the Crown Court, but she wants to instruct you, on my recommendation. I know you’ll need her at court, so I’ve asked for her to be produced. She’ll sign an authority to transfer tomorrow, and she’s happy for us to talk to each other about her case. I’ve some papers I can give you. I’m going to have to go now, I’ve got a client waiting, but we can meet for lunch, if you like?’

  We arrange to meet at a quiet pub off the beaten track in Gray’s Inn Gardens. I don’t normally take a proper lunch break; I don’t normally have time. But this is about work, and it’s good to have an excuse to see Anna. Besides, I don’t have much appetite for whizzed up carrot and ricotta.

  Oh my God. I grab my mobile. Ben’s lunch. I still haven’t called the nursery to explain the mix-up and to ask them very nicely to find Ben something from the kitchen, just for today. I meant to do it an hour ago. But I also have to book Counsel for tomorrow; it’s short notice as it is and people are away on holidays. I force my brain into action. Which to do first?

  I glance at the luminous white digits on my phone before scrolling through my favourites and finding the number for the nursery. It’s eleven forty-five. They’ll be OK about this. They’re bound to have a spare yoghurt. What else? I rack my brain. Fruit. They always have fruit. He can eat soft fruit. Melon and banana and stuff. Oh, God – they won’t try to give him my tuna bean salad, will they? But they know. They know, Sarah, I tell myself. Stop worrying. They won’t let him choke.

  The day manager, Lisa, answers. I love Lisa. Really. I actually love her. She’s my hero and my saviour and the only person, apart from Helen, his keyworker, who has spent enough time with Ben to know him the way that I do. She reassures me with calm efficiency that they won’t let Ben choke or starve, and that he’s had a really good morning, most of which has been spent spinning the wheels of an upended dolls’ pram.

  I thank her profusely, tell her I’ll see her at six, and then locate the number for 5 Temple Square Chambers. Kevin, the clerk, tells me that Dan Bradstock – who would have been perfect for this case – is booked out on a five-day trial at the Bailey but that Will Gaskin – do I know Will Gaskin? – is at ILCC tomorrow with other cases, if I want to give him the brief?

  ‘Yes, I know Will,’ I say, pleased. ‘Thank you. I’ll email you the papers this afternoon.’

  When I put the phone down it immediately rings again. It’s just one long ring, which means it’s an internal call. It’s my boss, Gareth. ‘Can you pop in?’ he asks.

  ‘Sure.’

  I walk down the corridor to his room and tap on the door. He stands up to greet me and pushes the door closed. I know immediately, instinctively, that something is wrong.

  He waves me into a chair. ‘Sit down, Sarah.’

  I do as I’m told.

  ‘I’m not going to beat about the bush,’ says Gareth. He crosses and then uncrosses his legs, and then swings round in his chair to face me. He leans forward. ‘The thing is, there have been complaints about you.’

  My heart leaps. ‘Complaints? From who?’
<
br />   Gareth sits and looks at me for a moment. He takes his lower lip between his teeth and sucks it.

  ‘Was it Robin Crowthorn?’ I ask. ‘You know he has schizophrenia? I spent ages trying to calm him down yesterday, but he’s not well. He wants me to take a civil action against the police. He thinks they’ve got him under surveillance via a microchip in his brain.’

  ‘It’s not a client.’

  ‘It’s not?’ I’m genuinely baffled now.

  ‘Look, the fact is that your billing is twenty per cent lower than the others in your team. They feel they’re carrying you, that you’re not pulling your weight.’

  ‘What?’ I’m genuinely astonished to hear this. ‘Matt?’ I ask. ‘Matt’s complained about me?’

  ‘Not just Matt.’

  ‘Well, who?’

  Gareth sighs and licks his lips. ‘I’m told you’re on the phone to your... your son’s nursery a lot. And that you took a long personal call this morning.’

  Lucy. I take a deep breath, in and out, before I answer. ‘That was about work. It was Annalise Finch. She’s just given me a new Crown Court case. It’s an attempted murder. Of a baby.’

  Gareth looks up at me. ‘Really?’

  ‘Yes. There’s a bail hearing tomorrow. I need to be there. Sorry, but someone else will need to cover the magistrates’ court.’

  I watch his face as his eyes first express interest and then narrow slightly. ‘Are you sure you’re the best person to take on another Crown Court case?’ he asks. ‘I mean... well, it might be better if we sent Matt along instead.’

  I feel my jaw drop. I look up at him. ‘What? Why?’

  ‘Because the case will be time-consuming and...’ Gareth looks uncomfortable. ‘And it’s clear that you have other priorities.’

  To my horror, I can feel myself starting to cry. I know that it’s lack of sleep that’s to blame, that I’d be more robust if I hadn’t been up half the night. I turn my face towards the window and blink hard. I say, ‘They bill twenty per cent more than me because they go to the police station at night. I can’t do that.’