Child Taken: A chilling page-turner you will be unable to put down

by Darren Young

  As long as they were fairly cheap.

  With the help of his redundancy cheque and a local bank loan to get the finances in order, he set about increasing sales, and had managed to exceed targets and expected sales year on year ever since. Early on, he had leaned heavily on his ‘local boy made good’ image, but eventually the paper was able to stand on its own: a local, trusted institution that could be relied upon for factual local stories, interesting well-composed articles, and interviews that readers actually wanted to read.

  Within five years he’d convinced most of the people in the town to buy a copy every week. But Laura knew that it hadn’t come without sacrifice. It was a well-worn story, but not without foundation, that his first wife had left him sixteen years ago and he hadn’t noticed for nearly two weeks. He also struggled to adapt to rapid change, and the rise in prominence of the internet and social media had been a constant challenge. In fact, he had told Laura that it was partly down to her age, and ability to use technology, that he had agreed to hire her, bringing the average age in the office down at a stroke. He might not have liked it, but he accepted that the growth of the digital side of publishing wasn’t going to go away, and he had actually managed to increase hard copy sales while the paper’s online readership continued growing.

  What was less known about was his younger life as a journalist, but Sue had told Laura he had once been the impetuous young reporter in search of the big story, and it was only time, and experience, that had worn him down and made him favour factual reporting over more thought-provoking and challenging pieces. But, as Sue often reminded them all when they whinged about it, it was his newspaper, and he’d earned the right to decide what went in it and what didn’t.

  Laura watched him through the glass as he sat drinking his afternoon cup of tea – a ritual he never missed – and read back copies, his own brand of quality-checking to ensure that the tone of the paper remained consistent. Then, as if knowing she was watching, he quickly turned to his side and looked directly over at her. Laura jumped, trying to look busy, and pressed the Send button on the email containing her freshly edited article.

  David beckoned her over, and she hesitantly stood, feeling the eyes of her colleagues on her. She walked slowly to the editor’s office.

  ‘That rewrite should be in your inbox.’

  ‘Good. I’ll have a look in a minute.’

  ‘It won’t take that long. It’s only ten lines,’ she said, trying to hide the sarcasm.

  ‘That’s all it needs. Thank you.’

  Laura eyed him with a certain suspicion because he rarely thanked her for anything, and for a moment she had a horrible feeling that he wanted her to cover for Sue again, as she had been complaining of still feeling unwell from the moment she’d walked in.

  ‘Anyway, I have another story for you,’ he said over his glasses.

  Laura raised her eyebrows. The editor opened his desk drawer, took out a brown manila folder and put some papers from his desk into it. He wrote LAURA on it in a thick black marker pen and handed it to her, although his hand held on to it a little longer than was necessary and she had to yank it from his grip.

  ‘It’s a bit bigger than you’re used to,’ he said.

  ‘I can handle it.’

  ‘Hiring you was a risk, Laura. I don’t have money to waste. I need you to step up.’ He looked over the top of his glasses.

  ‘I understand.’

  Laura opened the folder and glanced at the A4 sheet inside. Her eyes widened and she looked at the editor in a way that suggested he might have handed her the wrong folder.

  ‘Well, go on. Time is money and all that.’

  ‘I’m glad you think I’m ready for this.’

  ‘I didn’t say you were,’ he said, ‘but I’ve had two more people go home sick since lunchtime and we are down to the bare bones. So you’re all I have.’

  It hurt a little, but Laura realised she didn’t care; nothing was going to dampen her enthusiasm, not even a vote of little confidence.

  ‘I won’t let you down, David,’ she said, and put the sheet of paper back in the folder.

  ‘I hope not,’ he said, already on to his next email.

  Laura walked across the office to her desk, clutching the folder tightly. Her back was straight and her chest out this time as the rest of the staff watched her intently.

  They didn’t know it yet, but Laura had just taken a step up the career ladder.

  15 | Danni

  Danni thought they were over the worst of it.

  Another week had passed and her father had finally begun to use other parts of the house rather than confining himself to the study. They were also talking more – only sporadically, but it was better than nothing at all, she thought, and her father had never been the most talkative of men, even before the accident. He worked a lot, most evenings, and she’d always had her mother to confide in and they’d spent hours drinking coffee and gossiping, and that was a part of her life she was missing the most. She didn’t have that kind of relationship with anyone else other than Sam, and she was wary of taking up too much of her friend’s time.

  Danni valued friends as much as she did family, so she didn’t enter into friendships lightly, but over the years, as people had moved away from the town to work, if they had begun to drift away she had let them, until she had lost touch with everyone but Sam. She knew she’d never let that friendship go the same way as the others.

  But although she could talk about anything to Sam, it wasn’t the same as with her mother. For one thing, Sam liked to get straight to the point, whereas her mother could talk for hours on almost any subject and had had a habit of asking the right questions. It was something she knew she wasn’t going to find with her father.

  But she had developed a way of filling part of that gap in her life.

  Her father was out, so she lay on her bed and closed her eyes, as she had started to do often since the accident. It was a form of meditation she’d invented, and if she freed her mind enough she could imagine her mother was with her. It didn’t always work, but, if she was able to clear the tangled thoughts inside her head, she could feel her mother’s presence with her in the room.

  After a few minutes of lying completely still, she felt a familiar warmth beside her – not actual body heat but a sense of wellbeing that she’d have found it hard to describe to someone else, even Sam. She turned slightly as if to face her.

  ‘Are there things I don’t know about you, Mum?’

  She lay still and waited; she knew her mother couldn’t reply, but it didn’t matter, because Danni could sense what she would say and exactly how she would say it. They had talked for so long, about so much, when she was alive, that it was easy, as long as she was prepared to speak for both of them. But she still became impatient.

  ‘Well?’

  ‘Your father said there wasn’t, didn’t he?’

  Danni smiled to herself. She might have said the words, but it could have been her mother. It was an uncanny impression.

  ‘It wasn’t what he said. It was how.’

  ‘How did he say it?’

  ‘Like he was hiding something.’

  ‘That’s what you read into it. You don’t know,’ said Danni in her mother’s exact tone, a voice of reason. As she’d always been in their conversations.

  ‘I know when someone is holding something back, Mum.’

  ‘So what do you think it is?’

  ‘I don’t know. But there’s something.’

  ‘You know your father. He’s not the most open of men at the best of times.’

  ‘Do you think I should just ask him?’

  ‘Didn’t you do that already?’

  ‘Push him for a proper answer, I mean,’ Danni asked.

  ‘Do you WANT a proper answer?‘ Danni’s impression of her mother replied immediately, and she had to think about what she wanted.

  ‘I know I don’t want to keep wondering.’

  ‘So that’s your answer,
then.’

  ‘But I’ve only just got him talking.’

  ‘It’s up to you, Danielle. If there is more, you have to decide if you want to hear it.’

  ‘Do you think I’ll regret it if I do?’

  ‘How will you know until you do?’

  Danni was so engrossed, she hadn’t heard the car pull on to the drive. Her father had hardly left the house since the funeral, but that morning Danni had persuaded him to take a trip to the library, a place he could go and be out, without having to interact too much.

  ‘Is it to do with the conversation I overheard?’

  There was no response. Patricia smiled, or at least the crystal-clear vision of her in Danni’s head did.

  ‘Danni?’

  Danni opened her eyes. ‘Mum?’

  ‘Danni?’

  It was her father, outside her bedroom door. She got to her feet and opened the door to find him still in his coat, flakes of melting snow in his hair and on his collar.

  ‘Who were you talking to?’ he asked.

  ‘No one; I must have nodded off. How was the library?’

  ‘You know – full of books.’

  ‘Did you see anyone you knew?’

  ‘I kept my head down, to be honest.’

  Danni nodded. Since the accident, if she saw someone she knew, or her mother knew, she found it hard to know what to say to them, especially as the other person would tilt their head in pity and start asking questions she didn’t want to answer, so it had become easier to avoid them; she’d become adept at pretending not to see people.

  ‘It’s a first step,’ she said.

  ‘And I feel better for it.’

  Danni got up from her chair and gave her father a hug and a kiss on the cheek. It felt nice, and she didn’t want to ruin it by asking any difficult questions.

  If she was going to have that conversation, it was going to have to be another time.

  16 | Danni

  No one could have slept through the storm that night.

  The rain, horizontal and heavy, hammered against the doors and windows and at times felt as though it was strong enough to break through them; and it seemed to go on for ever. Danni had lain awake listening to the bombardment for an hour, but when it showed no signs of abating she went downstairs to make herself a hot chocolate. In the kitchen, she found her mother doing exactly the same thing.

  ‘Can’t sleep?’ she asked.

  Danni shook her head and her mother got out an extra cup. Her father had gone to London on a two-day research trip.

  ‘Your dad said it was the same where he is. Baileys?’

  Danni nodded and they sat on the kitchen stools drinking and watching the rain run down the kitchen window. Normally they would have talked non-stop, a rat-tat-tat-tat of comments about anything and everything, but Danni found her mother unusually quiet.

  ‘Everything OK?’

  ‘Just tired,’ she said, and boiled the kettle again to make a second drink.

  Danni sipped it, not really wanting another mug but using it as an excuse to stay with her mother and find out what, if anything, was wrong.

  They sat in silence for several minutes. Then Patricia spoke.

  ‘Danni.’

  ‘Uh-huh.’

  ‘You know I love you, don’t you?’

  ‘Of course! What’s brought this on?’

  Danni was about to laugh but quickly sensed her mother’s seriousness. She looked as if she was about to cry, and, as she went to speak, Danni saw her stop herself.

  ‘What?’

  Her mother smiled and shook her head. ‘I just don’t tell you enough.’

  ‘Of course you do.’

  Danni had a horrible sensation – that her mother was about to tell her she was seriously ill or even dying – but instead she put her hand on her shoulder and laughed. ‘Sorry, it’s just one of those moods I get in when your dad’s away … ’

  Danni opened her eyes. There was no rain, no wind, not even a gentle breeze outside. She switched on her bedside light and sat up. It had felt so real, but it was the first time she had dreamed of her mother like that since the accident.

  She tried to remember what she had said, but it was already becoming fuzzy.

  But she knew it wasn’t just a dream; it was a recollection of a real conversation they’d had, on that stormy night a few months ago, and at the time had seemed a little strange but not that significant, and Danni had gone to bed and all but forgotten it afterwards.

  But it felt significant now. Whatever it was that was bothering her mother, it wasn’t a mood, and she was usually fine when her husband was away.

  The more Danni remembered it, the more convinced she became.

  There was definitely something her mother had wanted to tell her.

  17 | Laura

  ‘Keys, pencils, pens, pad, spare pad.’

  Laura mentally ticked off the items that she knew were in her bag as she ran to the car park, the manila folder tightly clutched to her chest. When she reached her car, she laid the folder on the passenger seat and opened it again, just to check it still had the paper in it that she’d read in David’s office.

  There was a sheet of crisp white A4 paper. On it, at the top was the typed address of the shopping centre in the next town with a woman’s name, also typed, and Sue’s scribbled note next to it that simply said (MOTHER) in brackets. Underneath were handwritten notes by David’s PA.

  Child missing, female, Seasons Shopping Centre, approx. 2.15pm. Police arrived – treating as possible abduction – DS Knowles is at customer service desk. No further information.

  Laura still wasn’t sure she should have it. She wondered if David had given her a file he had intended for Kelly Heath by mistake. Or maybe was it a huge, elaborate prank that the whole office was in on? Because, if it was real, it was a big leap for her. This was a proper story, the kind that Kelly and the other established journalists were given and she only read about later. She knew David’s hands had been tied by the illness sweeping through the ranks at the Gazette, but at that moment she didn’t care if she was the editor’s second, third or even twentieth choice.

  It was her story.

  The Seasons Shopping Centre was in the next town, four miles down the coast, and was a sad-looking late-sixties-built building whose best years were definitely behind it. How it had survived the recent recessions no one was quite sure, but, even though many shops had closed or changed hands, the one main department store had decided to stay, and continued to attract just enough custom to make it worthwhile keeping the whole place open.

  The drive only took ten minutes in the middle of an afternoon, and Laura was soon parked in the multi-storey car park next door to the centre. She ran down the stairs two at a time, eager to get started. The entrance via the car park was an unwelcoming set of double doors with flaking paint and a faded sign. Laura had only been there a handful of times because, unless you specifically wanted to go to the department store, there was little else there for someone her age. She made her way to the customer service desk at the far end of the ground floor, with every shop along the way – those that were still trading anyway – displaying huge SALE signs in their windows.

  The desk stood on its own in the middle of the concourse, with HMV on one side and a boarded-up unit on the other and a poster that said NEW STORE OPENING JUNE – so the opening was either very delayed or they were giving people plenty of notice. As she approached, even at quite a distance it was obvious who the missing child’s mother was. A twenty-something woman in a padded blue coat was anxiously looking around through bloodshot eyes, while a female police officer tried to talk to her. A uniformed member of staff with a The Seasons polo shirt and name badge stood at the desk making a phone call, but she ended it as Laura approached.

  ‘Can I help you?’

  ‘Laura Grainger. The Gazette,’ Laura said confidently, holding up her staff pass the way she’d seen reporters do on television. The woman at the desk looked at it with
indifference, and the police officer checked it and nodded. The child’s mother stared at Laura.

  ‘I understand there is a child missing,’ she said quietly to the police officer, who shot a glance towards the desk. The woman standing at it gave her an it-wasn’t-me shrug.

  The police officer stepped to one side to remain out of earshot of the woman in the blue coat. ‘We aren’t certain the child is missing at the moment.’

  ‘So you know where they are?’

  The police officer glared at the trainee reporter, and Laura had to work hard to hold her nerve and not apologise. The officer put her radio to her mouth and spoke to someone, and Laura heard her name mentioned and a minute later a woman walked out of the HMV store.

  ‘Detective Sergeant Knowles,’ she said, and shook Laura’s hand as she addressed the police officer. ‘There are two assistants in there who I might want to talk to again – can you get their contact details in case I do, please?’

  The officer looked at Laura and walked over to the store. Knowles smiled at Laura as she took her notepad out of her bag. ‘We think the father might be involved.’

  ‘Think?’

  ‘We’re trying to contact him.’

  ‘Is she in any danger?’

  DS Knowles seemed mildly irritated by the question and ignored it.

  ‘Can I speak with the girl’s mother?’

  ‘I don’t think tha—’

  The woman in the blue coat stepped in and looked at the detective. ‘The more people who know, the better, right?’

  She looked at Laura, expecting an answer, but Laura just opened her notepad as Detective Sergeant Knowles stepped aside to allow the woman to stand next to her. Laura took the sharpest pencil from her bag and got some basic details from the woman, including her name and that of her daughter, Rebecca, or Becky as she said everyone called her, who was four years old. She asked her what had happened.