The Stolen Children

by Oliver Davies

  “Great,” I muttered. I tried not to think of the poor guy waking up to hear that no-one knew where his parents were. “Has he said anything yet?”

  “They did let us know that he’s still under right now, not available for a statement, or visitors.”

  I sighed. “Alright. That’s a good start. Time to look deeper into the parents, I suppose.” I checked my notes. “Ellie and Aaron Wooding. See if we can turn much up on them?”

  “I put them through the system, just to see,” Stephen said. “Nothing. If there’s been something dodgy happening with the business or whatever, we haven’t got it on record.”

  I nodded. “We don’t know that they were mixed up in anything, but aye, let’s keep our options open.” I chewed on the end of my pen as I turned things over in my head. “I’ll see if the tech team can turn anything up for us, you can check social media?”

  Stephen rolled his eyes with a sigh. “Yeah, I’ll be the one to trawl through pictures of rich people showing off, sure. Sounds like fun.” He perked up. “Oh! I heard this morning that there’s a new tech transfer!”

  I looked at him, unimpressed. “And? You know their name?”

  “Nope. But you should say ‘hi’.” He grinned at me like an overly excitable golden retriever.

  I shook my head and headed off, ignoring his chuckling. He seemed determined to set me up with someone and was about as persistent at it as any cupid, even as I said I was perfectly happy being a singleton. It allowed me to go running as often as I wanted, and, honestly, work took up enough of my time and energy that I’d make for a pretty absent boyfriend.

  Still, I couldn’t help but be curious as I walked over to where the tech team lived, which was a bright, open space, usually warmer than the rest of the building thanks to the computers they kept running near constantly.

  I beelined towards the only one I recognised, a guy called Andrew who’d helped me out in the past, but he seemed occupied, and I waited for his attention.

  “Can I help you?” a woman’s voice said from behind me, and I turned around.

  I blinked. “You’re the newbie, then?” I said awkwardly. The woman standing in front me was petite but wearing heels tall enough to give her another couple inches, her blond hair shoulder-length and falling in easy curls. She looked a little older than me, but it was hard to tell with her expertly applied make-up.

  She gave me a polite smile. “Keira Adams, yes. News gets around the station fast.”

  I laughed quietly. “Sure does.” I cleared my throat and tried to pull my thoughts back to the case. “If you’ve got a moment, I need a hand with looking into a couple. They’re both missing.”

  She gave me a nod and led the way over to her desk, which was conspicuously tidy, and sat down. I hovered nearby.

  “Names?” she asked, reaching down to pull open one of her desk drawers and take out a notebook.

  “Ellie and Aaron Wooding,” I said, and she made a note. “They own a dieting company, called ‘Slim Health’, but that was about all I managed to get. Their son is missing, too.” I filled her in on the relevant dates and details of what we knew so far, and she dutifully wrote it down.

  She nodded and stood back up when I finished. “Okay. I’ll look into them for you, but it may take me a short while. They’re already keeping me busy here.”

  “Thanks, that’d be a big help,” I said, before impulsively extending my hand. “I’m sorry, I didn’t introduce myself, DCI Darren Mitchell.”

  She shook my hand firmly, looking up at me with a considering expression. “I hope we can dig something up to help you.”

  I smiled. “I’m sure you will. Nice to meet you.”

  “Likewise,” she said, before sitting back down at her desk, effectively dismissing me.

  I strode back down the hall and over to Stephen and I’s desk. He looked up as I came in and winked at me.

  “Did you say ‘hi’ to her?” he asked.

  I turned to him and gave him a stern look. “Stephen,” I said firmly. “Stop being inappropriate.”

  He looked a little abashed. “Alright, alright, sorry, boss.”

  I exhaled in exasperation and cuffed him over the head. “We’ll see what they can find,” I sighed. “Hopefully something useful.”

  “Yeah,” Stephen said, rubbing his chin. “Fingers crossed.” He checked his watch. “Nearly time to head off, mate. You staying late?”

  I hadn’t noticed the time, but the day had left me feeling both wrung out and energised at the same time.

  I shrugged and started packing up. “No real point until we’ve got something back from the tech team. It’s too late to go and talk to the neighbours today.”

  Stephen nodded in approval. “I take it you’re running home? Or do you fancy a lift?”

  I picked up my coat and stuffed my phone and keys into my pocket. “Nah, I’ll be alright. Bit of exercise will do me good.”

  Stephen made an unconvinced noise. “Make sure you get a good tea after, you missed lunch.”

  “Christ, Stephen, you’re not my mum,” I said, with more bite than I probably should have. I knew he just cared, but it was wearing to be treated like a child. “Didn’t know I was signing up for nannying when I moved here.”

  “Noted.” Stephen turned and walked off without a goodbye, and I sighed, letting him go. We’d both had a difficult day, and I’d try to fix it tomorrow. Setting out on my run home, I tried to push everything from my mind but the ground beneath my trainers and the ache in my legs.

  Four

  I glanced sideways at Stephen when I took a seat at my desk the next morning, pushing a mug of tea towards him. I’d used the biggest mug in the station and made it how he liked it.

  “This for me?”

  I couldn’t help but send him a mocking look. “I don’t drink weak tea, do I now?”

  He cracked a smile. “No, you’ve got your poisonous black coffee. Enough acid to eat through a table, naturally.”

  “Exactly.”

  We shared a smile, and we put the disagreement of last night behind us.

  “Any news from tech?” I asked.

  “I’ve only been here a couple of minutes before you showed up, but no. I haven’t heard anything yet.”

  I rubbed a hand over my curly hair, which was particularly wild from this morning’s high winds. There wasn’t much else to do until Keira got back to us on the Wooding family, so Stephen and I headed out to drive over to the house where the boy, Lawrence, had been discovered.

  There was a sour feeling in my stomach as we pulled up nearby, but I attributed it to too much coffee and got out of the car.

  “Split up and meet you back here?” Stephen asked.

  “Might as well,” I agreed. It’d get the job done quicker, and we didn’t exactly need two officers to interview the neighbours. “Do you know which one it was who called us in?”

  Stephen grimaced. “Not sure, but I can call in and ask?”

  I shook my head. “We should find them by elimination anyway,” I said. “If it’s one of the houses where no-one answers, we’ll have to come back.”

  We got to it, knocking on doors and introducing ourselves. We started either side of the now-empty house and worked outwards, crossing over the road to do the other side after an hour or more. Several houses didn’t respond to my knocking, but it was early enough that most people were still in.

  “Well, we saw people going in and out, didn’t we?” one older lady told me. A white-haired man stood a little way behind her and was presumably her husband. “Several young men.”

  I had my notebook out and nodded encouragingly. I’d heard from a couple of other locals about these men, but they hadn’t been able to give me much in the way of information on their appearances. People’s memories faded quickly, and I wasn’t surprised that the descriptions were vague and sometimes conflicting, but I had to ask.

  “Well,” she said again as she thought about it. “I saw two different dark-haired ones, one
short and one taller. Then there was a blonde one, older, forties perhaps? And one with a tattoo on his neck, ugly thing.” She gestured to the side of her own neck and grimaced.

  I asked a few more follow-up questions but didn’t receive any groundbreaking information. It all helped, but it was slow going.

  “And did you ever see the boy?” I asked.

  Her eyes widened. “Oh no,” she said. “Never. They took in shopping bags sometimes, so I assumed they were all living together; some kind of student house, perhaps. It was all a bit strange,” She turned to her husband, “I said so, didn’t I? I said it was an odd bunch. Going about at strange times and using their van to block the road.”

  “A van? Can you describe that for me?”

  “Oh dear,” she said, looking apologetic. “It was just white and large.”

  I held back a sigh and nodded. “Was there anything else strange you heard? Ever hear their conversations?” I tried hopefully, but she shook her head.

  “Afraid not, Inspector. Did you hear anything, dear?” she asked her husband.

  “Nothing,” he said in a gravelly voice.

  I fished out a business card, thinking that I needed to print out some more, with the rate I was going through them at the moment. “Thank you both for your time. If you think of anything else, please don’t hesitate to contact me.”

  They took the card and politely bid me goodbye. I was almost finished with the nearby houses, and the last couple didn’t add anything new, both belonging to homeowners who had never noticed the house up the street until police officers and tape flooded it.

  Stephen was already standing beside the car, waiting for me, and I strode over as I tucked my notebook away.

  “Anything useful?” I asked as we got into the car, out of the cool air.

  He pulled a face. “Not especially. A few descriptions but nothing that jumped out at me.”

  I sighed. “Same here. I reckon those men were lackeys, anyway. Tracking them down might help but-”

  “But it wouldn’t get to the root of the thing,” Stephen finished for me. “So you think it’s a bigger operation? Not a one-off vendetta, type thing?”

  “I’d guess not. There were several men described as coming and going; that sounds like part of a larger group to me, not a private thing.”

  Stephen nodded thoughtfully, an expression passing over his face that I couldn’t read.

  “What’re you thinking?”

  He looked over at me and attempted a smile before it faded. “Nothing, really. Just that,” He paused, “the missing parents, I think they must be dead.”

  I raised my eyebrows. “Why’s that then?” The thought had occurred to me, but it was always useful to hear Stephen’s opinion too.

  He shook his head. “I can’t imagine any parent having their child being kept away from them and not trying to do something about it, you know? What kind of a parent wouldn’t kick up a fuss to help their kid?”

  My stomach turned over, and I looked away, out of the window. “Not all parents care, Stephen,” I said tightly.

  The car was silent for a long moment, and Stephen sighed. “I know.”

  I made a noise in my throat and reached for the seat belt to strap myself in. It was nearing lunchtime, and we were done here. Putting the car in gear, we set off, and Stephen turned the radio on in the background.

  I was still turning over the question of tracking down the people who’d orchestrated the atrocity of kidnapping a teenager and keeping him confined for a month. “I wonder who the house is registered to,” I mused aloud.

  Stephen grunted. “Good thought. We can ask the tech team, when they come back to us on the parents.”

  I nodded. “Hopefully sooner rather than later,” I said. I knew the tech team had plenty of work on their hands, but I couldn’t help but itch to get my teeth into this mess and try to shake some sense out of it. I wanted justice for Lawrence, more than anything, and I wanted to know why something so terrible had happened to him. No doubt, the reason would be something like revenge, or greed, or some kind of cruelty, but I wanted to know, nevertheless.

  We got back to the station and grabbed lunch, which I ate distractedly as I wrote up what the neighbours had told me and read over Stephen’s notes too, to see what matched up with the accounts I’d heard.

  It was mid-afternoon by the time my desk phone rang and made me jump so badly that I spilt coffee over my keyboard.

  I cursed loudly enough to turn a few heads, and Stephen looked over in sympathy.

  “Can you get the phone?” I asked him as I snatched at the packet of tissues on my desk and tried to save my keyboard.

  Stephen reached over to pick it up. “This is Mitchell’s phone, Huxley speaking,” he said. Despite my annoyance at my clumsiness, I couldn’t help but smile at the sound of Stephen's polite and uncharacteristically formal phone voice.

  He nodded to himself as the person on the other end talked and put the phone down. I’d gotten about as much coffee out from between the keys as I could manage with a few soggy tissues and went to chuck them in the bin before returning to Stephen.

  “Well?”

  “Keira from tech has got some info for us,” he said cheerfully. “She said to come over there as soon as we were free and she’d walk us through it.”

  I grinned. “Good, that’s good.”

  We headed across the department immediately, my half-full coffee mug in hand.

  Keira looked up when we arrived and gestured for us to sit down at a table off to the side. I took a sip of coffee as she brought over a folder of paperwork and took a seat.

  “We’ve dug up some things that may be of interest to you,” she said. She pushed the folder of paperwork towards Stephen and me, and I frowned down at it. “That’s Mr Wooding’s bank statement.”

  “This huge payment,” I said, pointing out an exorbitant outgoing. “What’s this for?”

  Keira raised an eyebrow at me. “I was getting to that, Mitchell.”

  I flushed, flustered. “Sorry, please go on.” I could sense Stephen trying to hold back a smile at my side and ignored him.

  Keira sent me a half-smile before she nodded to herself. “This money was transferred to a company that apparently sells yachts. Considering the date,” She reached over to tap the paper with her baby pink nail, and I obediently looked down where she indicated, “I think it’s fairly unlikely that the Woodings were interested in buying yachts at that time.”

  I blinked down at the date for a minute, before releasing that it was the date of the Tuesday after Lawrence went missing.

  “Crikey,” I muttered. “So it was a ransom, most likely.”

  Keira gave me a sharp nod. “We’re looking into the company further but without much luck as yet.”

  “Ta, that would be great.”

  Stephen’s phone rang, and he patted his pockets and pulled it now. He frowned slightly at the name on the screen and shot Keira and me an apologetic look. “Sorry, got to take this,” he said, before heading off.

  I looked back towards Keira, feeling slightly edgy at being left alone with her.

  “We appreciate the help,” I said. “I did have another query, I’m sorry.”

  Her lips quirked upwards. They were painted a pretty coral pink today, and I looked quickly away.

  “It’s my job,” she said, sounding slightly amused. “What’s the query?”

  I rubbed my cheek. “Okay, so, the case we’re looking into, there’s a house that was where a kidnapping victim was found.” I was vague but probably unnecessary. It wasn’t as if York was a hub of kidnappings. If Keira searched the news for ‘local kidnapping’, the case would immediately turn up. But I doubted they’d released Lawrence’s name yet, since he was still legally a minor, and so I kept to non-specifics, as I was supposed to.

  “If we could find anything out about who owned the house who paid the bills, the taxes, anything like that, that would be a big help.”

  “Sounds doable. Ha
ve you got an address?”

  I hummed. “I’ll email it over to you?” I could remember most of it but not the postcode.

  Keira nodded. “I’ll keep an eye out for that.”

  I’d run out of things to say now that were related to the case and looked briefly away from her attractive, heart-shaped face. Normally I was much better at being professional at work, but I couldn’t help how my heart sped up when I saw her.

  I could control how I acted though, and worked to keep my voice even as I said, “Where did you transfer from?” I gathered up the folder on the table and avoided meeting her eyes for a moment.

  “You wouldn’t have heard of it,” she said, her light tone taking the edge off her words.

  I smiled slightly. “Try me.”

  “Helmswright.”

  I laughed quietly. “Aye, no, I haven’t heard of there, you’re right.”

  “I usually am,” she said, and I thought there was something in her gaze, a spark of interest.

  “I’m not surprised,” I said, looking back at her. She didn’t look away, and I was the one to drop my eyes first. “I know what it’s like to move to a city position-”

  “So I should come to you if I get stuck?” she said, eyebrows raised in challenge.

  “Er, no,” I managed, “I was going to sympathise. It’s a bit of an adjustment.”

  Keira hummed. “I haven’t found it too tricky yet.” Her mouth lifted up at the side.

  I couldn’t help but smile at her easy confidence. “That’s good. Stephen took the mickey out of me over it,” I nodded over to my partner, who was still on the phone, “but you’d probably handle that better than me.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  I couldn’t read her face and hoped I hadn’t offended her. “You seem like you’ve no trouble standing up for yourself,” I said carefully.

  “And does that bother you?” she said, definitely confrontational now.

  I blinked. “Not in the slightest,” I said honestly.

  Stephen approached us, and I realised that we had ended up standing close together. I took a step back. She was still looking at me, looking like she was assessing me.