Stolen

by Tess Stimson

  The waiter clears our plates away. ‘I don’t know how you’ve kept this out of the papers,’ I say. ‘Does the party know?’

  ‘Not even the chief whip. Apart from Amira, you’re the only one.’ He flashes me a broad smile, the clouds lifting as abruptly as they came. ‘With great power comes great responsibility. Use it wisely, Alexa-san.’

  Our server returns with two coffees and a small saucer of amaretti biscotti. I take one, unwrapping it and smoothing out the tissue-thin wrapper on the table.

  ‘Lottie used to love these,’ I say. ‘Luca would do that trick for her, you know, setting it on fire. He’d tell her to make a wish.’ My voice is suddenly thick. ‘She always wished for a puppy. I said it wasn’t fair, a puppy would be lonely stuck at home all day while she was at school—’

  Suddenly, there isn’t enough air in the room.

  Jack takes the wrapper from me and rolls it into a cylinder, and then touches one end of it to the guttering candle on the table between us. My vision is blurred as it catches fire and floats up to the ceiling. Why didn’t I just let her get the damned dog?

  ‘Bloody widows,’ Jack says. ‘Always trying to pull at your heartstrings with their kidnapped baby stories. There was no need to add the puppy.’

  I let out a sound that’s half-laugh, half-sob.

  His hand covers mine, and this time the gesture is honest and straightforward, the consolation of a friend. ‘Hang on in there, Alex,’ he says. ‘If we weren’t getting close, someone wouldn’t have broken into your study. I don’t know how the fuck our information leaked, but I’ll find out. Something’s going to break soon, I can feel it.’

  Me.

  I’m suddenly swamped by a tidal wave of pain so intense, it takes my breath away. Time does not heal. Nor does it stop: life goes on, however much of an insult that seems. Grief simply comes along for the ride. The wound is as raw now as the day Lottie was taken, a constant throb of heartache and misery.

  Lottie was – is – my greatest achievement. I’ve never done anything else that matters, nothing of real worth, not in comparison to being her mother. My tragedy is that I didn’t realise it until it was too late. I handed off my mothering to Luca, to her grandparents, to strangers at nursery, never knowing what I was giving up.

  I’m so angry, so jealous of every mother who still has her child safely beside her. I’m sad all the time. People think I’m OK, that I’m getting better, moving forward, and sometimes there are moments when I almost believe it myself.

  But these sobbing, agonised convulsions are not the lapses. They’re my new normal; this is me all the time now.

  The Alexa who copes, who works and smiles and talks and eats, is the front. I remember what normal used to feel like, so I do an impression of that and people buy into it. But I’m not OK.

  I’m never going to be OK.

  ‘Let’s get out of here,’ Jack says, flinging down a sheaf of twenties.

  Outside, he hails a black cab and gives the driver my address, climbing into the back seat after me. He says nothing as I howl like a child, snot-nosed and hiccoughing and ugly. He doesn’t try to soothe me or touch me. He simply sits vigil with me in my darkness.

  Finally, I stop crying, as much from exhaustion as anything else. I close my eyes and rest the side of my head against the cool glass, my body aching all over, as if I’ve run a marathon.

  ‘I had a son,’ Jack says. ‘He died.’

  I’m too drained to feel anything, even surprise. Instead, there’s simply a quiet sense of pieces slotting into place. Six words can tell the story of a man’s entire life. I had a son. He died. I don’t ask any questions because, in the end, what else do I need to know?

  ‘I’m not the person I was before Ramzi,’ Jack says. ‘I have to remind myself who I used to be, and act like that. And what I’ve learned, Alex?’ His voice is weary. ‘What I’ve learned is that it doesn’t matter. We’re all acting, all the time.’

  We travel in silence as the cab negotiates the short journey to my house, jolting over speed bumps in darkened residential streets. The cabbie double-parks outside and Jack gets out, then extends a hand to help me out. For a moment, I wonder if he’s expecting me to invite him in, but then he climbs back into the cab.

  ‘You still have hope, Alex,’ he says, reaching for the door strap. ‘Hold onto it. Trust me, it isn’t always better to know.’

  The cab idles in the road until I’ve safely reached my front door, its distinctive rumble echoing in the street. I watch Jack’s tail-lights disappear and almost trip on an Amazon delivery box as I open my door.

  I bend to pick it up. It’s the only reason I see the sudden movement from the shadows behind me.

  I swing around, my arm raised in self-defence. My forearm makes contact with flesh and bone, and there’s a sickening crunch.

  The motion sensor on the house next door suddenly trips, illuminating my scrubby patch of front garden.

  ‘Christ almighty,’ I say, as I see the face of my assailant for the first time.

  chapter 49

  alex

  ‘Jesus H. Christ!’ Quinn Wilde cries, staggering backwards. ‘What the fuck! You’ve broken my nose!’

  I have no sympathy. The woman jumped out at me from the shadows in the middle of south London at close to midnight. What did she think would happen?

  Coolly, I pick up the Amazon box from the steps. ‘Fuck off, Quinn,’ I say, pushing open my front door.

  ‘You’re just going to leave me here?’

  ‘Looks that way.’

  The woman tries to stem the bleeding with her good hand, but she’s struggling to keep her balance. ‘Would you just help me the fuck inside?’ she says.

  Even under the best of circumstances, I’m not kindly disposed towards journalists, especially the bitch who eviscerated me on live television. But blood is pouring from her nose and I can’t leave her exsanguinating on the street.

  I indicate curtly for her to come in. ‘Five minutes, then you’re gone.’

  She shoves past me. I fasten the security bolt, take off my coat and join her in the kitchen where she’s sitting at my tiny breakfast table like she owns the place, her head tilted back. ‘I need ice! Come on!’

  ‘For God’s sake,’ I mutter, but I get her an ice pack from the freezer.

  ‘What the fuck is wrong with you?’ she says, her single eye fixing me with a malign glare as she holds the ice to her face. ‘Do you try out your fucking ninja moves every time someone comes to the door?’

  ‘Give me a break. You shouldn’t have crept up on me.’

  I take a bottle of single malt from the kitchen cabinet and pour myself a thick finger without asking if she’d like one. I knock a third of it back in a single gulp. ‘Why are you here?’

  ‘First off, I don’t want to hear any shit from you,’ she says. ‘I’m not your favourite person, I get that. And trust me, I don’t like you either.’

  ‘Good to know.’

  She shifts in the kitchen chair, clearly in pain. I could ask her if she’d like to move to the sitting room, to more comfortable chairs, but I don’t.

  ‘I’ve been covering this story since the beginning,’ she says. ‘I don’t use official channels. There’s a kid who works for me, Danny. He’s a private investigator and brilliant at what he does. A lot better than the guy who’s been fleecing your Foundation for the past two years.’

  ‘Low bar,’ I say.

  ‘No shit, Alex.’

  I shrug, but take another slug of my drink and let her finish.

  ‘Danny tracked Ian Dutton down to Dubai, where he’s been living since he skipped town.’ Her blue gaze suddenly sharpens. ‘But you knew that, didn’t you? Someone got to him before we did and I’ll bet you know something about that, too.’

  ‘Where’s this going, Quinn?’

  ‘Catherine Lord. Well, Catherine Harding, these days, of course.’

  Now she has my attention.

  In and of itself, the fact that H
arriet’s childhood friend went to the same college as me and met the same football coach isn’t that remarkable. Six degrees of separation connect us all. It could just be coincidence that Cathy became friends with my best friend’s fiancée and ended up a bridesmaid at Marc’s wedding.

  But two weeks ago, I saw Lottie on a train with a woman who was wearing the logo of the holiday home where Cathy grew up. That feels like one coincidence too many to me.

  I take a second tumbler from the cupboard and pour Quinn a whisky. ‘OK. I’m listening,’ I say, holding it out to her.

  She hesitates for a moment, and then takes it. ‘Ever wondered why Paul Harding married Catherine?’ she asks.

  We all have. On paper, Paul and Zealy were a much better match. But Paul was a player, with a girl in every port; even Zealy, gorgeous, sexy, eligible Zealy, couldn’t seal the deal. And then, just three months after Marc and Sian’s wedding, he suddenly married Catherine, a girl he’d never even looked at twice.

  ‘Just spit it out, Quinn,’ I say.

  She cradles her glass against her chest, but doesn’t drink it. ‘I don’t think the thin man ever existed,’ she says. ‘I think Catherine made him up, to protect Paul, and he married her to keep her quiet.’

  ‘Wait. What?’

  ‘I think Catherine knows what kind of man Paul is,’ Quinn says. ‘I think she’s always known, but she doesn’t care. She listened at doors and peeped through keyholes at that wedding, waiting for her chance. And when Lottie disappeared, she invented the whole spiel about the thin man to throw everyone off the scent.’

  ‘What kind of man Paul is?’ I repeat.

  ‘Do you really need me to spell it out?’

  My first instinct is to defend him. Paul Harding has been one of the Foundation’s most loyal supporters from the beginning. There’s never been any suggestion he likes little girls. He likes women. If Quinn had told me he was screwing around on Catherine, I’d believe it. But children? He’s just not that kind of man.

  If the last two years have taught me anything, it’s that there’s no such thing as not that kind of man.

  Paul and Catherine.

  Lottie would have trusted them both.

  chapter 50

  alex

  ‘You’re basing all of this on what, Quinn?’ I demand. ‘A hunch, or do you have hard evidence?’

  ‘My investigator, Danny, he’s pretty good at the tech stuff,’ Quinn says. ‘He knows his way around the dark web. He used to work for the National Crime Agency’s online task force, infiltrating paedophile and human trafficking rings. He’s got the kind of contacts money can’t buy.’

  I’ve become all too familiar with the sort of websites she means. I wish I didn’t know there are dark places where you can browse a catalogue for obscene images of children, as if shopping for shoes. You can even filter by age or hair colour. Only two percent of dark websites are paedophile sites, but they account for more than eighty percent of dark web traffic.

  How many men are out there, online right now, right this second, searching for a little girl with red plaits, or a four-year-old boy with blue eyes? How can we live in a world where we let this happen?

  If four-fifths of dark web traffic was terrorists, not paedophiles, we’d be throwing billions of pounds at the problem. We’d be collaborating globally in the way we do when national security is at stake. Instead, all we have are a few tech geeks trying to reel them in, one at a time, from their back bedrooms.

  ‘This IT guy you use,’ I say. ‘Danny. He’s in contact with these people?’

  ‘Yes. He’s been doing this for years.’ She grimaces. ‘I don’t know how he has the stomach for it. He has to build a relationship with them and gain their trust. It’s the only way to get access to their websites.’

  ‘How?’

  She rolls the whisky around her glass. ‘He has to provide images of children nobody’s ever seen before.’

  My stomach churns. ‘Where does he get them?’

  ‘He keeps back some of the material he finds in other investigations, to use as currency in new ones,’ Quinn says. ‘Fuck. The stuff he’s seen, I don’t know how he sleeps at night.’

  My mouth is dry. I’m terrified of the answer, but I have to ask the question.

  ‘Has he … has he seen—?’

  ‘For the last nine months, he’s been asking about Lottie,’ Quinn says. ‘Have they got pictures, have they heard of any videos. So far, the answer has always been no.’

  ‘No?’

  ‘I don’t think she’s out there,’ Quinn says. ‘Not in that world.’

  The band around my chest eases, just a little. Ever since I saw Lottie on the Tube, and realised she was still alive, I’ve been tormented by the idea she’s being passed around one of these horrific sex rings, trafficked between monsters like so much human cargo.

  ‘If she was with these people, Danny would have heard something by now,’ Quinn says, with surprising kindness. ‘Lottie is a high-profile prize. I don’t know what’s happened to your daughter, Alex. I’m not saying she’s alive. But I don’t think she’s being trafficked.’

  ‘So you think Paul has her?’

  ‘I don’t know if he took Lottie. But he is part of a paedophile ring Danny infiltrated.’ She puts her glass down, untouched. ‘Harding’s good at covering his digital tracks, but not good enough. Danny’s given the police enough evidence on him, and twenty-two more of these bastards, for them to make arrests. They may even be able to find some of these kids and rescue them.’

  ‘What about Lottie?’

  ‘I’m sorry, Alex. I don’t know. I wish I could tell you. The Hardings are the only ones who might know that.’

  The whisky curdles in my gut. I trusted that man. I welcomed him into my house. I shared meals with him, I let him hug me and literally cried on his shoulder. How could I not have known?

  And what about Catherine? If she knew – if she even suspected – he’d taken Lottie, how could she say nothing? How could she protect him?

  If she’d spoken up, maybe we’d have found my little girl in time. Maybe the nightmare would’ve ended before it’d even begun.

  I make it upstairs to the bathroom just in time. When I have vomited until I’m bringing up nothing but bile, I rock back on my heels and wipe the snot and tears from my face.

  Until now, I haven’t wasted time hating the monster who took my child, not wanting to give him space in my head. I had to concentrate on finding Lottie. Revenge could come later, once my girl was safe in my arms.

  But the bastard didn’t have a face before.

  two years and eighteen days missing

  chapter 51

  alex

  I sleep better than I have in weeks. I’ve made my decision and even though I know there’ll be no going back, it’s oddly liberating to realise you’ve got nothing to lose.

  At 6.30 a.m, I wake just as dawn is breaking. Flinging back the covers with new energy, I strip off yesterday’s crumpled clothes and step into the shower, turning the setting all the way to cold. The freezing water takes my breath away, but I need to be sharp and focused.

  I’m not waiting for the wheels of justice to grind slowly, if they grind at all. The police have had two years to find my daughter. I’m not going to risk letting them fuck this up, charging in in their size elevens. It’s up to me now.

  Pulling on a pair of jeans and a sweatshirt, I sit down on the bed to lace my trainers and braid my wet hair into a French plait to get it out of my face. I send a quick text to cancel the Zoom call I had scheduled with my client, and another to my colleague, James, asking him to take over the case for me.

  When I go downstairs, I’m taken aback to find Quinn Wilde sitting on the floor of my living room, her back against the wall, legs outstretched.

  ‘What the hell?’ I exclaim. ‘Have you been here all night?’

  She doesn’t look up. ‘Obviously.’

  She’s staring with unnerving intensity at the untouched tumbler of whis
ky I poured for her last night, which she’s placed on the floor between her feet. I have no idea what she’s doing and I care even less.

  ‘Why are you still here?’

  ‘Because if I’d left, I’d have gone straight to the off-licence and bought myself a bottle of Jack Daniel’s, and I’d be at the bottom of it right now.’ She finally looks up. ‘Trust me, once I know what happened to your daughter, I’ll fall into that bottle and not climb out for a month. But I’ve been sober two hundred and three days and until I get this story, I’m off the sauce.’

  She’s not my responsibility. She’s an adult, capable of making her own choices, and I didn’t ask her to turn up at my house in the middle of the night. I didn’t tell her to quit drinking or obsess over this story.

  ‘Go home,’ I say.

  ‘Help me up.’

  Awkwardly, I extend a hand and she stumbles to her feet. ‘You need to take me to a meeting,’ she says.

  ‘What?’

  ‘An AA meeting,’ she says, impatiently. ‘There’s one in thirty minutes at the primary school down the road. I looked it up.’

  ‘I’m not taking—’

  ‘You owe me,’ Quinn says.

  ‘The fuck I do!’

  ‘Then I’m sure you won’t feel bad when I end up dead in a ditch.’

  ‘Fine,’ I say. ‘If it’ll get rid of you. Get in the car.’

  ‘I could use a coffee first—’

  ‘Don’t fucking push it.’

  She follows me out to my car. I don’t offer to help when she struggles with the seatbelt and I don’t try to make conversation. I don’t want anything I say now to be used against me later, when everything comes out.

  ‘Where are you going?’ Quinn asks as we turn onto Tooting Bec Road.

  ‘I’m taking you to your bloody meeting.’

  ‘And after?’

  ‘None of your business.’

  ‘Stay away from him,’ she says.

  I don’t insult us both by pretending I don’t know who she means.