The Value of Life

by Andy Crowson

  Chapter 4: The Scene

  Josef and both Mr. and Mrs. Martin walked in total silence through the car park to Josef's Clio. It was a tight squeeze but the couple sat together in the back leaving the passenger front seat empty. Josef had chosen his own car ,even though it was small, for a number of reasons, this was just one. The silence lasted about half of the ten minute journey.

  "Do you really think Daniel's been kidnapped?" Mrs. Martin asked.

  "It's hard to say," Josef replied. "We'll have to wait."

  "Come on," Mr. Martin snapped. "You're the shrink, just be straight wiv' us." Josef wasn't sure exactly what Mr. Martin was getting at but he could see that they needed information right now if not support, and giving it might just get the co-operation he needed.

  "OK," he said, "This is exactly the way I see it. If the phone call is fake, he's run away, maybe with the help of an adult, maybe not. If it's genuine, he's been kidnapped or abducted by persons unknown and, with your co-operation, we will do everything we can to get him back." They sat silently again for several minutes.

  "What do you mean fake?" Mr. Martin said at last.

  "I mean fake like a tape recording or an MP3, or an adult helped."

  "So how the hell will we know?" Martin asked.

  "We'll wait," Josef said flatly. They finished the journey in silence and when they pulled into Eastbourne Road there was only one parking place half way down the packed street. They walked to the front door where Mrs. Martin let them in. Josef entered last and followed them into the kitchen.

  "Will you have a tea detective?" she asked, "Mike, you want one too?"

  "I'd love one thanks," Josef answered and sat at the table where the uneaten sandwich and cold tea were displayed like an exhibit. Mr. Martin sat down opposite Josef and looked at his wife's back as she fussed with the kettle and cups.

  "Me too thanks," he said flatly. Just then he looked extremely tired.

  Josef noted the open bread packet and margarine on the table,

  "Sorry about the mess," Mrs. Martin remarked, standing over him. He looked up.

  "Mike was just eating when we realized Daniel was missing, he went to look for him." She trailed off.

  "Listen," Josef said, his face flushing, "Can I look at the bag while you make tea?"

  "I'll get it," she said and made to move but Josef stopped her with a hand on her arm.

  "Please Mrs. Martin," he said softly. "The fewer people that touch the bag the better, and up till now only Daniel and your husband have done that." She nodded and pointed,

  "In the toilet."

  In the toilet Josef pulled a pair of latex gloves from his pocket and removed the bag from the sink. It was a normal type Nike backpack. It might have been waterproof once but it was old now, and it was open and soaked. He pulled open the top of the bag and made a mental inventory, pencil case, books, baseball cap, broken ruler, tennis ball and a lot of wrinkled folded up bits of paper. Just about what he remembered a school bag should have in it, except the pencil shavings. He didn't empty the bag but put it back in the sink and took off the gloves and put them in his pocket again. When he returned to the kitchen he was handed a cup of tea.

  "Thanks," he said and took a sip. "I'll need to take the bag just in case, we can put it in a bin liner if you have one, and I wonder if it might be possible to have a look around. Maybe in Daniel's room and in the garden before anything gets disturbed." Mrs. Martin looked at her husband, who nodded.

  "OK," he said, "looks like you're taking it seriously anyway." He looked down at his tea. "We were told that without the phone call it would have been days before he was considered missing." Mr. Martin said nothing for a minute, considering that possibility. "They made us feel like they thought we made it up to get attention. I'm sorry for being so angry before it just, well." He trailed off there and shrugged.

  Josef took another sip of tea and allowed the silence to fill the couple's minds with whatever thoughts it might. When nothing seemed to surface he said, "I'll take that look around then, in the mean time can you find me a picture of Daniel, a good face shot?"

  He left them silent in the kitchen. With his tea in hand he went first and stood with his back to the front door. There were a large number of coats bulging erratically from the hooks on the right, these would be behind the front door when it opened, but none had fallen and the mat inside the door was straight. There ware no signs of any struggle. A single pair of mud caked wellies that obviously belonged to Mr. Martin were behind the door and still upright. He looked up the stairs in front of him. They turned ninety degrees to the left. Josef headed towards them. First door on the left he knew was the toilet, the hall widened, second on the left the living room, it was open, and next to the stairs, facing him, the kitchen door.

  He entered the living room. It was fairly large for a house this size and was neat and tidy and nicely decorated with embossed wallpaper and grey leather sofa and two matching chairs. There were all the usual modern gadgets but nothing extremely expensive that spoke of wealth. The window to the street had net curtains so seeing in would be impossible even though the pavement was close. There was a cordless phone on the table and half a cup of tea, a paper that was two days old and a bowl with the remnants of cornflakes in. He wandered around the room looking at pictures, books, ornaments, games, music, just about everything. When he left the living room he took the phone into the kitchen,

  "Have you had any calls coming into the house after the call about Daniel?" he asked offering the phone to Mrs. Martin.

  "I tried last caller about ten minutes after he called, but there wasn't a number," she said. "I called the police and Mike and my Mum, I don't think anyone's called here."

  "Can you just try it?" Josef asked. "He might have called again or left a message."

  She checked but there was nothing, so Josef made his way upstairs. The first door on the landing was the upstairs bathroom, a brief look in here indicated nothing. The next door was Daniel's room. In here he spent quite a long time checking the shelves and the books and the toys. There was nothing in here that indicated anything suspicious. Although his search was not thorough he was interested in several things in particular, none of which were apparent here. He made a quick glance into the last room, the parents' room. It was in here he found one of the things he was looking for. On one side of the bedroom was a cramped desk with a newish looking computer, a printer and bunch of other office mess crowding it. He went back downstairs.

  In the kitchen Mr. and Mrs. Martin were still sitting in silence. Josef sat down and removed his notebook from his jacket and started writing. After several minutes he said,

  "Mrs. Martin, did Daniel use the computer in your bedroom?"

  "Yeah he did, but he didn't do chat rooms or anything like that, he just played games on it, he didn't even do his homework on it." She looked worried.

  "Do you have the internet?" he asked. She nodded. "I'll need to take the computer then and get it checked professionally; lots of pedophiles use the Internet to attract victims. I'm sorry," he added seeing her distress, "but we can't rule anything out."

  Mr. Martin stretched out a hand to his wife but she didn't notice. The doorbell rang and everyone almost jumped in the silence. Josef stood.

  "I'll get it," he said, "it's probably just the surveillance team." When Josef opened the door there were two policemen and one policewoman standing outside. They introduced themselves and Josef brought them in. In the kitchen he introduced them to the Martins.

  "I would be really grateful if you would let these officers stay here until we know what's happening," he said. "They know what they're doing and they can help you. PC Whitlock here is also a crisis councilor," he indicated the female PC. "They're the best we have." It was true that Bentworth had picked well, and as such was taking the situation seriously.

  "All three," Mr. Martin said, "We don't have enough room."

  "I know it'll be crowded," Josef soothed, "but, I've checked pretty much
everywhere obvious except outside, and Daniel's key isn't in the house. I'm starting to think he never made it past the gate and that means the key is with Daniel." Mr. Martin stood. He wasn't a small man and for the first time this evening Josef felt the weight of his presence.

  "What you mean is whoever has Daniel has the key, well I'd just fuckin' love 'im to come wanderin' in here 'cause I'd break his fuckin' neck and I these two won't stop me," he fumed, gesturing at the two, quite large, PCs.

  "If he wanders in here Mr. Martin I'm sure these two will gladly hold him while you hit him until your hands get tired then they'll want a turn," Josef said, the bigger of the two PCs smiled.

  "Too right," he muttered.

  "They're not here just because of the key. There might be newspapers and neighbors and God knows who else and believe me, nothing makes people vanish like an angry copper and besides, ten eyes are better than four." At this Martin sat down and looked again at the officers.

  "Well it'll be the sofa and the floor. We got some pillows and blankets but it 'aint gonna be comfortable."

  Josef spent the next half hour making sure the officers knew exactly what he wanted them to do and when he finally stepped outside it was half past one. He walked to the Clio, opened the boot, put the computer in and removed a torch. He walked back up to the garden and fished Mr. Martin's keys from his pocket.

  He had lifted them from the kitchen counter top and decided he'd just say he wanted to see how long it took to open the front door if he was caught. The van was parked directly in front of the house and Josef opened the driver's door, got in and shut it quietly. He turned the ignition on and waited. He made a note of the mileage and checked the glove compartment. Inside was a small book with an elastic band round it, a fuel record with, mileage, liters, date and time. He made a note of the last five entries, checked the fuel gauge and turned the ignition off.

  Josef exited the van quietly and looked round it. It was a plain white escort van with DS Security sign written on the side. There was nothing else about it that was unusual at all. He quietly opened the rear doors and checked thoroughly through the entire load space with the torch. It was full of dog hairs, dark, short and coarse, maybe Rottweiler or Doberman, but nothing else.

  Josef locked the van again and walked both behind the van to the gate and in front of it, from the angle to the gate as he rounded the front of the van he could see how Mr. Martin might have seen the bag a walker would miss. Josef used the torch and inspected the ground as thoroughly as he could. There was nothing to suggest anything untoward had happened here.

  Josef inspected the inside of the hedge. If someone had been hiding there waiting for the boy he might have left a remnant in the hedge, a hair or something, but Josef found nothing. The whole inspection of the garden, the hedge and the van had given him nothing. The boy had the key, the garden was undisturbed and the bag was here, just inside the gate, which means, probably, the boy made it to the gate but no further. Daniel didn't have time to get his keys out, he was either distracted or abducted right there in front of the house.

  Josef walked up to the front door and looked at the locks. It wasn't a particularly new front door and it had two locks, one yale one mortice. He took Mr. Martins keys but there was no mortice key on the ring. Josef opened the front door quietly on the second attempt and looked at the mortice lock, it was old and probably didn't work. Josef knocked gently on the toilet door and PC Whitlock emerged. He handed her the keys and left as quietly as he'd come in.

  Back in the street Josef walked left to the corner of Brighton road and then to a gap in the fence where the boys cut through the recreation ground every day. He looked around, up and down the street at houses and windows, and then started to walk back towards the Martin's. He crossed the road and imagined Daniel Martin and his friends shouting things at each other across the street before going their separate ways home. He looked down Eastbourne Road, it was barely 100 meters before the Martin's house, no side streets, no alleys, nothing. Josef walked past the Martin's one more time then back to his car. He drove round the surrounding streets for twenty minutes just thinking and looking, then once more past the Martin's just to check. As he drove past he saw the curtains in the upstairs bathroom twitch just the tiniest bit. Josef smiled as he turned the heat up a notch in the Clio and went home. By the time he was in his bed it was after three am but he was sure he could manage for one night on a few hours and after pushing all the events and thoughts of this evening from his mind he was able to relax enough to fall asleep.