it a try. You've got the best motivation in the world there in your arms."
He couldn't deny it. He'd been awash with emotion since Davina's birth, perpetually astonished at the depth of his feelings. "I'm a greetings card manufacturer, Lynn, not a detective," he protested weakly.
Lynn glared at him. "And how often have miscarriages of justice been overturned because some punter wouldn't stop digging?"
"I haven't got a clue where to start."
"Do you remember that series about forensic science on the telly a couple of years back?"
Alex groaned. His wife's fascination with thrillers on TV and film had never infected him. His usual response to a two-hour special featuring Frost, Morse or Wexford was to pick up a pad and start working on ideas for greetings cards.
"Vaguely," he said.
"I remember one of the forensic scientists saying how they often leave stuff out of their reports. Trace evidence that can't be analyzed, that sort of thing. If it's not going to be of any use to the detectives, they don't bother including it. Apparently, the defense might use it to create confusion in the minds of the jury."
"I don't see where that gets us. Even if we could get our hands on the original reports, we wouldn't know what was left out, would we?"
"No. But maybe if we tracked down the scientist who put it together in the first place, he might remember something that meant nothing at the time but might mean something now. He might even have kept his own notes." Her anger had been swallowed by her enthusiasm now. "What do you think?"
"I think your hormones have addled your brain," Alex said. "You think if I ring up Lawson and ask him who did the forensic report, he's going to tell me?"
"Of course he's not." Her lip curled in distaste. "But he'd tell a journalist, wouldn't he?"
"The only journalists I know are the ones who write lifestyle features for the Sunday supplements," Alex protested.
"Well, ring round and ask them to find one of their colleagues who can help." Lynn spoke with an air of finality. When she was in this kind of mood, there was no point in trying to argue with her, he knew. But as he resigned himself to creeping round his contacts, the glimmer of an idea came into his mind. It might, he thought, kill two birds with one stone. Of course, it might also rebound painfully. There was only one way to find out.
Hospital car parks were good places for surveillance, Macfadyen thought. Plenty of comings and goings, always people sitting in their cars waiting. Good lighting, so you were sure of seeing your quarry arriving and leaving. No one gave you a second look; you could hang around for hours without anybody thinking you were dodgy. Not like your average suburban street where everybody wanted to know your business.
He wondered when Gilbey would get to take his daughter home. He'd tried ringing the hospital for information, but they'd been cagey, refusing to say much other than that the baby was doing well. Everybody with responsibility for kids was so security-conscious these days.
The resentment he felt toward Gilbey's child was overwhelming. Nobody was going to turn their back on this child. Nobody was going to hand it over and let it take its chances with strangers. Strangers who would bring up a child in a state of permanent anxiety that he'd do something that would bring arbitrary wrath down on his head. His parents hadn't abused him, not in the sense of beating him. But they'd made him feel constantly wanting, constantly at fault. And they hadn't hesitated to lay the blame for his inadequacies at the door of his bad blood. But he'd missed out on so much more than tenderness and love. The family stories that had been fed to him as a child were other people's stories, not his. He was a stranger to his own history.
He would never be able to look in the mirror and see an echo of his mother's features. He would never be aware of those strange congruences that happen in families, when a child's reactions replicate those of their parents. He was adrift in a world without connections. The only real family he had still didn't want him.
And now this child of Gilbey would have everything that had been denied him, even though its father was one of those responsible for what he'd lost. It rankled with Macfadyen, biting deep to the core of his