by Tess Stimson
‘Channel 5 devoted the whole of their Morning Express segment to Sexy Lexi yesterday,’ I say.
‘Still with that dikshit?’ Jon says. ‘Fokkers.’
The red-top Daily Post in London was the first to come up with the humiliating nickname, the day after the Wilde broadcast aired. The tabloid made much of my ‘beach romp’ with a ‘hot tennis hunk’, and while the other newspapers weren’t quite as salacious, they all picked up the ridiculous tag.
No one cares that I’ve never been called Lexi in my life or that using the word ‘sexy’ in the context of a child’s abduction is sickening. I’m thankful that at least the media haven’t managed to track Ian Dutton down. He left Florida the morning after the first press conference, along with most of the other wedding guests, and seems to have gone to ground since then. Despite the insinuations of the Post, he’s the one person I know couldn’t have taken Lottie: he was with me when she disappeared.
Jon hands me a stack of opened mail. ‘I’ve logged the donations and binned the crazies. These are the ones I thought you’d want to see.’
‘Thanks. I appreciate that.’
‘Aweh,’ Jon says: a catch-all Afrikaans term of acknowledgement that can mean anything and everything.
On more than one occasion in the past few weeks, I’ve had reason to feel grateful for Jon’s protectiveness. Ten years ago, his wife and five-year-old son were murdered during a botched home invasion in Cape Town, when Jon was away covering the war in Iraq for CNN. He’s never forgiven himself, and helping people like me is his way of being able to sleep at night. Now that everyone else has returned home to their own lives, he’s the closest I have to a friend here.
It took some persuading to get Mum and Dad to leave. But Mum’s misplaced optimism was too much for me to bear. She insisted Lottie would never have gone with a strange man, so it must be a woman who’d taken her; a bereaved mother, perhaps, someone who’d lost her own baby and so took mine. But the grieving mothers of her imagination snatch infants, not small children. Mum repeated the idea that Lottie was being spoiled and showered with love, over and over, until I couldn’t stand it any longer and begged Dad to take her home.
Jon folds his meaty arms together as I sift through the mail, radiating disapproval.
‘Is there something else?’ I ask.
‘Simon Green called.’
Simon’s one of Marc’s hires, too, an ex-MI6 agent whose private investigative firm, Berkeley International, specialises in finding missing children. He has a number of former special forces investigators and surveillance experts on his payroll, and connections to the intelligence services on both sides of the Atlantic.
Jon is sceptical of bringing in paid outsiders, wary of scammers exploiting my desperation, and Simon’s firm doesn’t come cheap.
But in the three weeks since he was hired, he’s already identified several potential leads the police have missed, including a second witness who believes she saw the ‘thin man’, and provided an e-fit we handed over to Lieutenant Bates. We’ve had thousands of tips from the new Lottie Hotline that Simon set up, including several from convicted paedophiles saying they know where she is. While the thought makes me sick to my stomach, those tips are the first concrete leads we’ve had. Simon says it’s not if we find Lottie, but when.
‘What did he want?’ I ask now.
Jon grunts. ‘Money, I’m guessing.’
I call Simon back, but it goes straight to voicemail. I leave a message, crushing the tiny flicker of excitement that flares despite my best efforts to remain calm. Jon’s right. It’s probably just an admin question. Two months of dead ends and red herrings have taught me that hope is the enemy.
To distract myself, I read some of the post Jon has filtered for me. Letters of support from across the world: a child’s drawing inscribed ‘to lottys mommy’, prayers, poems, a card signed by the pupils of an entire primary school.
‘Mrs Martini?’
I glance up. A Black man in his mid-forties, conservatively dressed, stands near the main door, his path blocked by Jon’s protective bulk. He’s accompanied by a Latinx woman a few years younger. Not police, but not civilians either.
‘It’s OK,’ I tell Jon.
‘My name is Darius James,’ the man says, as Jon steps aside. ‘This is my colleague, Gina Torres. We’re with the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children in Lake Park, Florida. We’ve received a message from the British embassy in Washington—’
I’m already on my feet. ‘Have you found her?’
‘The ambassador has asked us to take you to the embassy,’ James says.
‘Is she there?’
‘I’m so sorry, Mrs Martini. It’s not quite that simple.’
chapter 31
alex
A wave of nausea hits me and I shout to the embassy driver to pull over. He picks up the urgency in my voice and immediately swerves to the side of the Washington motorway, ignoring the furious sound of horns from the vehicles around us as he cuts across three lanes of busy rush-hour traffic.
I leap out of the car and rush to the verge, my hands on my knees as I bend over and retch into the blackened, polluted grass.
Gina Torres touches my shoulder. ‘It might be good news,’ she says. ‘We don’t know yet.’
I jerk away. ‘So you’ve said.’
‘Alexa, I realise how hard this—’
‘Don’t tell me that,’ I say fiercely. ‘You turn up and tell me I have to get on a plane to Washington right now, but you can’t tell me why! You’ve got no idea what’s waiting for me when I get to the embassy. A video of my daughter in a basement? Pictures of her rotting corpse in the woods? How can you tell me you don’t know? What am I supposed to do with that?’
‘I understand how you feel,’ Torres says.
‘You can’t possibly—’
‘My son disappeared four years ago.’
I wipe my mouth with the back of my hand. My throat is raw with stomach acid. I feel nauseous still, but there is nothing left in me but bile.
‘He was competing in a swim meet in Jacksonville,’ Torres says, her voice steady. ‘He’s a really good swimmer, he’s been on the school swim team since third grade. Fourteen kids got on the school bus, but only thirteen kids came home. The coach didn’t do a head count before they left, so nobody realised he was missing. He was at his dad’s that week, and my ex assumed there’d been a screw-up and I’d collected Nicolás from the meet myself. No one raised the alarm till next morning.’
Four years. I can’t even imagine.
In four years, Lottie will be nearly eight. Old enough to read and write, go to Brownies, ride a bike. I can’t get my head around four years. The only way I manage to keep going is to focus on getting through the next hour without her. And then the hour after that. I can’t think about tomorrow, or next week. I don’t know how Torres is still standing.
‘How old was he?’ I ask.
‘Twelve. He’s sixteen now.’
I don’t say I’m sorry or tell her how awful this is. I give her the only thing I can: the present tense. ‘What is he like?’ I ask.
She smiles. ‘He has so much energy. I mean, he’s never still, not for a second. When he was little, we used to make him stand in the corner when he was naughty, and man, it used to chap his ass. He can be real hard on himself, too. He struggles with math and when he does his homework, he’ll snap pencils, the dining room ends up covered in broken pencils. He’ll say, what’s the point, Mom? Why do I got to learn about fractions? Whoever ate five-eighths of an orange?’
We’re members of a club no one ever wants to join. Everything looks different where we are: there’s a shadow that covers the world. Losing a child – in the most literal, unbearable sense – changes you in ways you’d never have believed possible.
We are living every parent’s worst fear. Their nightmare is our story.
The driver sits on his horn and leans out of the window. ‘Hey! You coming?’
&nb
sp; A lorry whooshes past, rocking our vehicle as we get back in. We cross the Potomac river and turn onto Massachusetts Avenue, where half-a-dozen national embassies are located. The car pulls up opposite an attractive red-brick building behind high railings.
Darius James gets out of the car and speaks to the security guard on the gate, and after a few minutes’ wait, we are all ushered inside.
I’m shaking so hard Torres has to sign my name for me in the visitors’ log. Lottie isn’t here; if there was a live child waiting for me, the faces around me wouldn’t look like this.
A secretary shows us into a small sitting room on the third floor and offers us coffee, which I decline. I feel like I’m going to be sick again. Gina Torres takes my hand as we sit together on the yellow sofa and this time I don’t pull away.
The door opens again. The man who enters looks even younger than me. ‘David Pitt,’ he says, shaking my hand. ‘I’m with the National Crime Agency in the UK. I’m so sorry to put you through this.’
‘Have you found her?’
‘The Italian police have received a call,’ Pitt says, mercifully dispensing with any more preamble. ‘From a Serbian mobile phone. A man identifying himself only as Radomir says he has information on Lottie, but he insists he’ll only speak to you. I have to warn you, it could well be a hoax. But we’ve conferred with the Italian and Serbian police and, for reasons I’m not going to go into now, both forces have concluded this could be genuine.’
The room swims. They must be fairly confident or they wouldn’t have brought me all the way to Washington. This could be … oh, God, this could be the break we’ve been waiting for.
Even the police have admitted the only way Lottie will be found now is through a tip-off from someone either involved in her abduction or close to those who are. She’s too young to be able to escape on her own, unlike some kidnap victims who’ve hit the headlines. Natascha Kampusch, the Austrian girl who was snatched when she was ten, had to wait eight years before she got the chance to flee. In eight years, if Lottie is still alive, she won’t even remember me.
‘Did you trace the call?’ I ask. ‘Do you know where this Radomir is?’
‘It was a burner phone,’ Pitt says. ‘But he’s now called twice. The Italian police have given him the number of a mobile we’re going to give you. Radomir said he’d call at seven p.m., our time, so that’s’ – he checks his own phone – ‘three hours and ten minutes from now.’
Don’t hope. This is just another crank call. Even if it turns out to be genuine, there’s no guarantee it’ll lead to Lottie.
I lick dry lips. ‘What do you want me to do?’
‘We’re going to be right here with you,’ Pitt says, and suddenly he doesn’t seem like a college kid any more. ‘We’re working with the Italian and Serbian police, which is why we brought you here, to the embassy. We’re going to be right beside you, Alex. This Radomir could be a whistle-blower or he could have a ransom demand. Or it could be nothing. All you need to do at this stage is establish contact. We’ll take it from there.’
Pitt talks me through what will happen next, but there’s a buzzing in my ears, and I’m finding it hard to concentrate. If I get this wrong, Radomir could disappear and with him any chance of finding my daughter.
I can’t stop shaking. Gina tries to get me to eat the sandwiches the embassy staff have provided, but my stomach turns at the thought of food. I can barely keep down water. This is probably a false alarm. Another attention-seeking troll, getting kicks from my misery.
And yet.
Thirty minutes before Radomir is due to call, we’re joined by two Italian specialist kidnap officers, who confer with Pitt, Torres and James. The whole team radiates professionalism and experience, which sustains me as the final minutes slowly tick past. I can’t imagine how hard this must be for Gina, holding out this hope to me, however slim, while she waits, waits for her own miracle.
6.58 p.m.
6.59 p.m.
My hands are too clammy to hold the phone they’ve given me, so I set it on the coffee table in front of me, and wipe my palms on my skirt.
7.00 p.m.
7.01 p.m.
‘Are you sure you didn’t get the time wrong?’ I ask. ‘He said seven, you’re sure?’
‘Give him time,’ Gina says.
Five minutes turn into ten. Ten into fifteen. The phone screen stays resolutely dark.
Pitt murmurs something to one of the Italian officers, who nods and leaves the room. I suddenly wish Luca was here. We may have been lousy at marriage, but the one thing that united us was our love for Lottie. No matter how supportive my parents and Marc have been, there’s no one to share my agony in the bleakest hours when I awake in the middle of the night, flayed by guilt. I’m unmoored, clinging to near strangers for comfort.
‘You allowed for the time difference?’ I say. ‘Radomir didn’t mean—’
‘Vincenzo is checking that now,’ Pitt says.
The Italian returns a few minutes later. ‘Seven US Eastern time,’ he confirms, in accented English. ‘There is no doubt.’
Another ten minutes pass. I realise now how bright the hope inside me had burned, despite my best efforts. The heavy, dragging feeling in my chest intensifies. No one is going to call. There is no miracle. The descent back into hell is even worse this time.
And then, at 7.52, the phone buzzes.
chapter 32
alex
The phone buzzes again.
A text. The identity of the sender is withheld.
‘It’s a video,’ I say, showing Pitt. ‘There’s no message. Should I open it?’
He takes the phone from me. ‘We’ll be back in a few minutes.’
I get up and pace the sitting room, too agitated to sit down. I understand why they’ve taken the phone but, whatever the video shows, it can’t possibly be worse than what I’m imagining.
‘There are some things no mother should see,’ Gina says, quietly. ‘I know you think you’ve prepared yourself, Alex, but you can’t. No one can. If they think you need to see whatever Radomir has sent you, they’ll show it to you.’
It seems to take a lifetime, but Pitt returns in less than ten minutes. ‘We’ve hooked up the phone to a larger screen,’ he says. ‘We’d like you to come and view the video.’
‘What is it? Is it Lottie?’
‘We’re not sure,’ he says. ‘But it’s not bad news. Whoever it is, they’re alive.’
Please, God, let it be Lottie. Please, God, let us find her.
We go downstairs to a room that seems to be used for security monitoring, judging by the array of screens along one wall. A video is paused on one of them. It’s hard to make out what it shows: it’s been shot at night, and the picture is grainy and grey.
‘It doesn’t last long,’ Pitt says. ‘Maybe twenty seconds. We’ll play it in real time, and then we can slow it down and take it frame by frame.’
Pitt’s colleague plays the clip. A man carries a young child from a terraced house to a nearby parked car, the pair partially illuminated by a streetlamp a couple of metres away. A second figure, a woman, is a few paces ahead of them. The footage has been shot covertly: the angle is odd, framed by the edge of a brick wall, and the video ends abruptly, with the camera swinging wildly towards the ground.
‘Play it again,’ I say.
I step closer to the screen, focusing intently on the child. She – or he – is wearing a woolly cap, so it’s impossible to see the colour of the hair, and their face is buried in the man’s shoulder. The child looks to be about three or four, but the footage is such poor quality I can’t be sure.
‘Again.’
Pitt’s colleague taps a few keys. I strain my eyes trying to see something that isn’t there, but I still can’t tell if it’s my daughter. I don’t recognise the man or woman, either. Both are wearing baseball caps and androgynous jeans and trainers, and they have their backs to the camera. They could be anyone. There are no street or traffic signs visibl
e; the number plate of the vehicle is obscured by the angle from which the video’s been shot. We can’t tell what country this is or if the car is left- or right-hand drive. This could have been taken anywhere.
‘Wait,’ Pitt says, as the camera swings towards the ground for the third time. ‘There. Go back.’
This time, I see it, too. As the footage tilts wildly, for a brief moment a bus shelter is visible in the far left of the frame.
Pitt reaches past his colleague and pauses the footage on the image of the bus shelter. The advert on the end of it is clear, even in the darkness.
‘Marmite,’ I say.
‘It’s in the UK,’ Pitt says. ‘Nowhere else would have an advert for Marmite.’
‘How could Lottie be in England?’
‘We still don’t know it’s Lottie,’ Gina reminds me.
Pitt leans forward on the desk, staring intently at the screen. ‘Let’s take another look at the child, frame by frame,’ he says. ‘See if there’s anything you recognise.’
How can I not know my own daughter? But there’s nothing to distinguish this toddler from any other. Maybe if the child was walking by itself, there might be something familiar that chimed with me: a way of moving, perhaps, or a certain gesture. But held in the man’s arms like this, the face turned away, there’s nothing for me to go on.
‘Our analysts will go over this,’ Pitt says, finally. ‘They’ll look for reflections, fragments, things we might have missed. If there’s anything there, we’ll find it.’
His tone is upbeat, but I feel as if I’ve failed yet again.
‘What’s that?’ Gina says abruptly, pointing to the screen, which is frozen once again at the beginning of the clip. ‘Is that a tattoo? There, on the inside of his wrist?’
‘Zoom in,’ Pitt says.
His colleague tightens the shot, focusing on the man’s wrist. An inch or so of skin is visible below the edge of his jacket, revealing part of a tattoo. Enlarged, the image is even more blurry. Pitt leans over and taps a few keys. The picture goes in and out of focus, and then suddenly it clarifies and is recognisable as a compass rose.
