Bloodlines

Anna Legat
Works of: Fiction

Having left his previous law firm without severance pay, Ray Thorpe, a criminal defence lawyer, sets up on his own. Desperate for work, he takes on a child custody case.

He is acting for Tom and Candice Tait, the adoptive parents of three-year-old Noah – who has been abducted by his surrogate mother Sonya, a young Ukrainian woman working in the UK as an au pair.

The adoption agreement drafted by a shady surrogacy agency is unenforceable against Sonya. The court awards her Noah’s custody. Before the Taits can contest that verdict, Tom, Sonya and Noah all disappear.

The police refuse to investigate. Tom and Sonya, being Noah’s biological parents, were free to leave and take their child with them, and spousal abandonment isn’t a crime.

Questions remain unanswered. Thorpe and his researcher, Doug Walsh, are hired to find the missing family. Their inquiries take them to Ukraine and into the underworld trade in surrogacy.

Back in the UK, the informal missing persons inquiry becomes a double murder investigation. Noah’s whereabouts remain a mystery but after weeks of police inertia the trail has already gone cold.