Stranger Child

by Rachel Abbott

  ‘Shit.’

  Without lifting the phone to her ear, Emma pressed a button to make a call, and another to put the phone on speaker.

  ‘Tom,’ she said. ‘Can you hear me?’

  ‘Yes I can. Loud and clear. Are you okay?’

  ‘No. There’s somebody behind me on the lanes. What should I do?’

  ‘It’s okay, Emma. He’s one of ours. At the next junction, he’ll turn off to the left when you go right, and another car will take over from there. You’re safe.’

  ‘Why didn’t you tell me?’

  ‘Sorry – I didn’t know they were going to make it on time. I didn’t want to promise something and not deliver. I just want to make sure you get back safely.’

  As Tom had said, the car behind her tailed off at the next junction, and a few moments later she picked up more lights in her mirror and prayed that this was another police car. She saw the gates to her home ahead and felt her muscles sag with relief.

  She pulled into the drive, glad to be home, but dreading the hours ahead. She leaned back against the headrest for a moment.

  The adrenaline of the last half hour had seeped from her body, and with it the last trickle of energy. She felt like an old woman as she got out of the car and quietly let herself into the house. The hall was dark. Nobody had bothered to switch on the lamps.

  The door to the sitting room was half open, and Emma could see David standing there, not hurrying towards her as she would have expected. He hadn’t seen her. He was staring at his daughter, a look of horror on his face.

  Emma was about to burst in and demand to know what had happened when she heard Tasha speak.

  ‘Tell me,’ she said. Emma could hear the throbbing note of misery in the girl’s voice.

  ‘I don’t know what you mean. Honestly.’

  ‘You’re a liar. Tell me what happened. Tell me about that night, six years ago.’

  Emma stepped back slightly. She didn’t know what was happening, but this was between the two of them.

  ‘I don’t know how many times I have to say how sorry I am that I didn’t come with you.’

  ‘Oh please,’ Natasha said, ‘don’t start all that again. You were never going to come with us, were you? It wouldn’t have worked then – would it?’

  From the shadows of the unlit hallway, Emma watched her husband. He swallowed and she saw his Adam’s apple move up and down.

  ‘What do you know, Natasha – or what do you think you know?’

  ‘Can you not just tell the truth – for once in your sorry life?’ she said, her voice harsh with disappointment. ‘What was the plan?’

  ‘Tasha, let’s stop this now. It was all six years ago, and you’re back with us. Let’s get Ollie back too and move forwards.’

  ‘That would be great, wouldn’t it? Forget the last six years. I will never forget the last six years, David. Just tell me. Why did we have to be kidnapped, me and Mum? Why was that the only way?’

  ‘It wasn’t like that, Tasha. Nothing was supposed to happen to you, I promise.’

  Emma smothered a gasp. What was he talking about?

  ‘So what was supposed to happen, then? Did Mum know?’

  David turned away, and somehow Emma knew that he didn’t want Tasha to see his face.

  ‘Of course your mum didn’t know. She would never have agreed to it, and she wasn’t much of an actress. It had to be real so the police would believe her afterwards. It was all supposed to be over really quickly. You and your mum were going to be taken somewhere safe. Just for an hour or two. I would never have put you in danger. You wouldn’t have come to any harm.’

  ‘What?’ There was a note of incredulity in Natasha’s voice.

  Oh David, what did you do? Emma didn’t want to hear any more, but she couldn’t drag herself away.

  ‘I couldn’t have known that your mum would crash the car. I don’t know why they took you – I didn’t expect that.’

  ‘What did you think they would do? I was six – not a baby. I could tell the police what had happened. I might have even recognised faces.’

  David was silent.

  ‘So they were telling me the truth, then,’ Natasha said quietly.

  ‘I’m so sorry, Tasha. It seemed like the best way out at the time. I owed some money. I owed it to some … brutal people.’

  ‘Yeah – funnily enough, I know them. I’ve lived with them for six years, remember.’

  ‘I knew there were diamonds in one of the safe deposit boxes, and I knew which one. If they’d just broken in and stolen them, though, I would have been implicated. So the plan was that they would pretend to kidnap you – but it wouldn’t be real.’

  ‘It would have been real to me and Mum, though, wouldn’t it?’

  ‘Yes, but not for long. I was going to help them get into the vault so they could steal the diamonds. My debt would have been paid, and then you and your mum would have been set free. The police would know I’d only done it under duress. Nobody would have been hurt. That was the plan.’

  ‘So when it all went wrong, if you knew who had me, why didn’t you tell the police?’

  ‘I didn’t know. I never knew. I promise you. The guy I owed the money to disappeared, and I never knew his name. We used to meet – to play cards. I got in over my head – kept thinking my luck would change. He was the only link.’

  Emma heard a high-pitched laugh from Natasha – a cross between that and a sob.

  ‘You really are dumb, aren’t you? They would all have been in on it – all the men you were playing cards with. I bet they pretended not to know each other, didn’t they? They set you up from the start – another mug who doesn’t know how to hang on to his money. How did you pay the bloody debt then, when the robbery went wrong?’

  He closed his eyes and spoke in a voice so soft that Emma could barely hear him.

  ‘Your mum’s life insurance.’

  Emma heard a sharp intake of breath that turned to a sob. She’d had enough of this.

  She pushed the door fully open and walked over to Natasha, wrapping her arms around the girl, pulling her close. She felt Tasha relax against her for a moment.

  ‘Emma,’ David said, his eyes flicking backwards and forwards between her and Natasha, clearly wondering how much she had heard.

  All Emma could think of was her husband’s grief when she had met him; he had talked endlessly about how much he had loved his family, about how, if he had his time all over again, he would have done things differently. Maybe it was more than grief, though. Or maybe it was something else entirely.

  Guilt.

  49

  Becky was glad to be back in what, to her, felt like a normal world, with people she knew how to handle – such as the riffraff of Manchester. At least she could usually read them – know what they were thinking. The last few hours had been difficult to say the least. She felt David was stonewalling her, even though on the face of it he was trying to be helpful.

  Natasha was a different matter, of course. She was understandably very confused, but she had committed a serious offence. And she had been brought up to steal, cheat, ferry drugs – so was she a criminal or was she a victim? Becky could deal appropriately with either, but when both were rolled up into one person, it confused her. To her, it was a simple dichotomy. Actions were either right or they were wrong.

  Tom had always told her that few things were black and white, and that sometimes good people did bad things. For Becky, life was simpler when the good behaved themselves, and the bad were the rotten bastards she expected them to be.

  ‘You’re very quiet,’ Tom said as he drove through the dark, wet streets of the Manchester suburbs.

  ‘Sorry – I thought we’d covered everything.’

  ‘We have, but that doesn’t normally shut you up.’

  Becky turned her head slowly and raised her eyebrows. She saw a half smile on Tom’s face.

  ‘Come on, Becky – what’s bugging you?’

  She was quiet for a
moment longer.

  ‘You know when David was on the phone to whichever scumbag called – we don’t know who, because we couldn’t hear. Well – he could see me signalling him to put the phone on speaker. In fact I tried to lean over to do it for him, but he moved away. Why would he do that?’

  ‘Do you think he’s involved?’

  ‘I don’t know, Tom, but I hope and pray that he’s not.’

  Tom drew his car up next to Becky’s.

  ‘You and me both.’ He left the car running and turned to Becky. ‘Okay, we’ve got an armed response team in place close to the Joseph family, and another in Salford at Finn McGuinness’ home address. We’re assuming Julie will have taken the baby there rather than to her other house, which is no doubt full of inquisitive women and punters. Can you get over there and wait for the all clear so you can go in and get the baby? With any luck we’ll have Ollie Joseph safely home before anything else has a chance to happen.’

  Becky looked at Tom’s strained face. She knew how difficult he was finding all of this and felt like leaning over and giving him a kiss on the cheek. She paused for a second then turned her head away.

  ‘I’m on it, boss,’ she said, pushing open the door and racing through the rain to the sanctuary of her own car.

  *

  Tom watched Becky’s car pull away. He wanted to feel confident that by the time she got to Salford, little Ollie would have been found, but he knew he mustn’t be too optimistic. The minute that Ollie was safe, Tom would want to call a halt to the job, whatever it was – but he wasn’t sure where that would leave the Titan team. For them, it would be best if the gang’s plan continued, so Titan could catch them red-handed – finally, after all their years of effort.

  Tom hadn’t had time to process the information that had been flying at him from all quarters in the last few hours, and he wished he could find the time to think about Jack – the letters, the bank account and his brother’s habit of hacking into people’s computers to leave them messages. Jack’s life was becoming clearer, and it was a picture Tom wasn’t enjoying. But his death was more confused than ever. Accident, suicide or murder?

  Would he ever know?

  He needed to stop thinking about Jack, but at every turn in this investigation he seemed to rear up unexpectedly, and, more than anything, he was concerned about Jack’s call to Caroline. How the hell had he known what was going to happen?

  Tom had suspected for some time that Natasha Joseph’s abduction six years ago had been no accident. He couldn’t believe that Caroline’s death was planned, though – nobody could plan a road traffic accident so precisely that death was a certainty – so was the plan that Caroline was taken, or Natasha, or both of them? Was that a tiger kidnap too?

  And had Jack known about it? It certainly looked that way – but how?

  Becky was right about one thing. David Joseph’s behaviour on the phone suggested that he was hiding something. Tom felt certain that David was the key to it all. He wanted to shake the truth out of the man, but at this moment David Joseph was off limits.

  Tom slammed his car into gear. There was little he could do now but watch – and wait.

  50

  The Josephs’ sitting room was silent. Since Emma had appeared in the room, nobody had spoken, and it was almost as if none of them dared, because when they did the floodgates would open. David was staring anxiously at his wife and she looked back, her expression blank.

  Natasha was glad that Emma had come home. She couldn’t help feeling a quick rush of pleasure that Emma had heard at least part of David’s confession, but she hadn’t finished with her father yet.

  She freed herself from Emma’s arms but stayed close to her. David was still gazing only at Emma, no doubt trying to work out what she was thinking.

  ‘I’ve got one more question for you, Dad,’ Natasha said – putting as much disgust into that word as she could. ‘Why didn’t you get me back when you had the chance?’

  David’s body seemed to freeze. His eyes didn’t move, his hands hung at his side. He was like a statue. The only sound was the soft ticking of the huge wall clock in the hall outside. Natasha waited, half expecting Emma to interrupt and tell her she was being ridiculous. But she didn’t.

  Finally David spoke.

  ‘I never had a chance of getting you back. Why would you think that?’

  Natasha felt her anger force its way to the surface again. He really was pathetic. ‘They played me the tape, David. You know – the one where they said you could have me back if you would do something for them? Remember? And you said, “No.”’

  She would never forget the moment when Rory had played the tape to her. He had been mad because David had refused to go along with their plans. ‘He doesn’t want you,’ Rory had whispered, prowling the room, circling her body, playing the tape over and over – as if it were her fault. ‘You’ll disrupt his happy little home – so he says we can keep you.’ Then Rory had hit her on the back of her head. ‘Useless, you are. Fucking useless,’ he’d said.

  ‘For God’s sake, Natasha – it wasn’t like that.’ David was pleading with her, but she felt sick. How could he think this would ever be all right?

  ‘What was it like, then,’ she asked, ‘to be offered your child back after four years? How did it feel to say, “No thank you”?’

  Emma reached for her hand again and Natasha grasped it, trying not to remember what had happened next.

  ‘I had no way at all of knowing that they really had you. There was no time for them to prove it.’

  ‘They sent you a fucking photo – what more did you want?’

  And after the photo Natasha had once again become a liability. What if David had taken it to the police? Behaved like any normal father? The photo could have been shown around – she could have been spotted out on the street, or by one of the social workers who came to the house – more often than Rory liked. So she’d had to stay hidden – and Rory had thrown her in The Pit just because he could – because the plan had failed and he had nobody else to take it out on.

  David was still trying to make excuses. His voice sounded weak, whining. He would have had that knocked out of him as well, if he’d been brought up like she had.

  ‘It could have been a child that just looked a bit like you. I didn’t know. If I’d known it was you, it would have been different.’

  ‘They asked you to make one phone call. That was all. One pissy little phone call when some guy who had been boasting to the world about his stash of money in your vault was about to clear it all out. Was I not worth the risk?’

  She really didn’t want to listen to his lies any more. To think she had wondered, even for a short time, if everything she had been told was a lie – if Rory and Finn had faked the tape, if perhaps she could be happy here. What a choice, even if she had one. Live here, with David, or go back and take her punishment.

  Natasha’s eyes stung. What a choice.

  *

  Emma’s eyes were drawn to Natasha. How terrible for the girl to hear this, to know that her own father was prepared to let her suffer – even if only for a couple of hours – to solve his own problems. She would die before she would do something like that to Ollie. She had no words.

  David seemed more concerned about Emma’s reaction than his daughter’s.

  ‘It was a mistake, Emma.’

  Explain that to your daughter – the thought pulsed in her head. Tell Tasha – not me. But she knew he wouldn’t. He wanted Emma to be on his side, to support him, to understand just as she always had.

  ‘Why didn’t you try harder to contact these men – do whatever they wanted so you could get Tasha back? Or tell the police the whole sorry tale?’

  She knew the answer, of course. He didn’t have the guts. He was more concerned about what would happen to him if he went to the police than he was about what was happening to his daughter. He would have hoped that, somehow, it would all come right without him having to do anything at all.

&
nbsp; Memories of the hours they had spent together talking about the loss of Caroline and Natasha painted vivid pictures in her head, and she realised that David had found Caroline’s death easy to deal with. It was always part of the conversation, but it was the loss of Tasha that had troubled him the most. Was it because of grief, guilt, or could it actually have been fear? Fear that at some moment in the future – at a time he couldn’t control – it would all come back to bite him? Tasha and everything that had happened to her was the one problem that would never go away, however much he ignored it, because it was always lurking at the edge of his consciousness. And then two years ago, it really did come back – and he did nothing.

  David was running his fingers through his hair again, and an action she had once found endearing suddenly irritated her beyond measure.

  ‘I had never been able to contact them,’ he said. ‘They always contacted me. I tried everything. I thought when things had calmed down after the accident and the police had finished crawling all over me, all over our friends, family, it would be back on and I would get Tasha back, but three weeks later the customer took his diamonds out. He had a buyer.’

  ‘And you did nothing?’ Emma could hear the disgust in her own voice.

  ‘What could I have done?’ David asked, looking genuinely bewildered.

  ‘You could have told the police.’

  ‘What, tell them what I’d done?’

  Emma couldn’t believe the look of horror on David’s face, as if this was a totally ridiculous suggestion.

  ‘Yes – of course you should. And what reason could you possibly have for not telling the police when you had the chance to get Tasha back two years ago?’

  ‘You make it all sound so black and white, and it wasn’t. Anybody could have made up a story to say they had Tasha. And I would have gone to the police, but they said they would hurt you if I did, Em. You were pregnant with Ollie. I couldn’t lose a second family.’

  ‘So you sold out your first to protect your second, did you?’ Natasha asked, making it sound like a reasonable decision.

  ‘If I’d gone to the police I’d have had to explain what had happened six years ago. They would have locked me up – surely you can understand?’