by Louise Voss
Beside him, Carmella yawned.
He shot her a look. ‘Whatever you do, do not yawn in front of this family.’
‘Sorry, sir.’
A uniform opened the door, an expression of mixed recognition and relief passing across her tired features at the sight of Patrick and Carmella.
‘Evening, sir. PC Sarah Hayes, and this is PC Viv Mortimer …’ She looked as though she was about to say more, then stopped, embarrassed. For a moment, Patrick thought she was going to thank him for coming, as though she was hosting some sort of grim drinks party. PC Mortimer was lurking awkwardly in the hallway, and Patrick hoped that the pair had displayed more confidence than this in dealing with the Philipses. From the living room he could hear the low rumble of a man’s voice, the rising and falling tremolo of a woman’s.
‘I asked them to stay in there, sir,’ said PC Hayes. ‘Till we had a chance to brief you.’
He gestured for the uniforms to accompany him back through the front door, out of earshot of the family.
‘Brief away.’
PC Hayes had a notepad in her hand, but didn’t refer to it. ‘Sir, we have Sean and Helen Philips. They went out for the evening, leaving their daughter – actually, she’s Sean’s daughter and Helen’s stepdaughter – to babysit. The daughter is called Alice.’
‘How old?’
‘Fifteen, sixteen in August.’
‘And what about the other child, or children – who was she babysitting?’
‘Just one, sir, the abducted. Three years old; Frankie. She’s the daughter of both Sean and Helen. Like I said, they went out, for a meal at a restaurant called Retro.’
‘Very nice,’ said Carmella.
‘They got back here at 23:25 and found Alice asleep on the sofa. Mrs Philips says she went straight up to check on Frankie – and she wasn’t there. The first thing they did was wake Alice up, who had no knowledge of Frankie’s whereabouts. They searched the house, then Sean went out and looked in the gardens, front and back, and the immediate street, then called us. That was at 23:35.’
‘Any sign of a breakin?’
‘We haven’t touched anything in the house, sir, but the Philipses told us the back door was unlocked. Mrs Philips is sure the door was locked when they went out – and she says she told Alice to lock it again if she let the cat out. Alice swears that she didn’t see the cat all evening and hasn’t been near the back door.’
Patrick gestured to the front door. ‘This door was locked?’
‘That’s what they say.’
He groped in his inside jacket pocket and produced the electronic cigarette he always carried around with him. He’d been quitting and re-starting smoking for a decade, and this was his latest attempt at giving up. Unfortunately it was a bit like having sex with a blow-up doll – he imagined – or eating quorn bacon. Still, it delivered a hit of nicotine and he needed one now. He sucked on it, noticing that PC Hayes smirked slightly at the way the end lit up green.
He exhaled a cloud of water vapour and said, ‘OK, I want to talk to the family. Carmella.’
She followed him into the living room.
The three family members were occupying separate parts of the three-piece suite. On the left, farthest from the door, Sean Philips perched on the edge of a cream armchair, casting anxious glances at his wife, who sat on the far right, in another armchair. Between them, the teenage daughter was collapsed on the sofa, slumped back into the cushions, a stunned expression on her face.
Both Sean and Helen stood up as he entered the room, Helen moving closest to him, Sean just behind.
‘Good evening, Mr and Mrs Philips, Alice. My name is Detective Inspector Patrick Lennon and this is my colleague Detective Sergeant Carmella Masiello. You must be frantic with worry, so let’s not waste any time.’
The first thing Helen Philips said was, ‘Is it him? The man who took Izzy and Liam?’
She was shaking, her fists clenched tight by her sides, and she was giving him that look, the one he knew so well. The kind of look dying people give surgeons – desperate, hopeful. He couldn’t help but think that she was going to look great on TV, that the papers were going to love putting her picture on the front page. The beautiful, haughty mixed-race woman, huge brown eyes, sharp cheekbones, Cupid’s bow lips. And there, on an antique sideboard, were rows of framed photographs, among them a solo picture of a little girl, a photo that must have been taken in a studio by a pro. A gorgeous kid with her mum’s huge eyes and soft wispy dark brown curls. The papers were going to love putting her on the front page too.
Patrick crossed to the sideboard, fingers hovering over the picture. ‘May I?’
Helen looked away from the photo as if it burned her eyes, but Sean nodded.
Patrick held up the picture. ‘This is Frankie?’
‘Yes.’
Sean’s voice was flat and low. There was a trace of Estuary in his voice, Essex or north Kent. He was a few years older than Patrick, late thirties, and he looked like he kept himself fit – slim with a firm jaw. He seemed to be trying very hard to keep it together right now, as if even being in this room was killing him. He wanted to be out there, searching for his little girl.
Tears rolled down Helen’s cheeks and Sean tried to put his arm around her but she shrugged him off.
‘You didn’t answer my question,’ Helen said. ‘Is it him?’
Patrick replied in a voice that was firm but with a velvety nap of softness. ‘We have no way of knowing that yet, Mrs Philips. Right now, we’re keeping all options open. It’s only just over an hour since you discovered that Frankie wasn’t in her bed. We need to keep an open mind.’
‘No!’ Helen shook her head vehemently. ‘She hasn’t just wandered off. She’s been taken.’
Sean joined in. ‘Shouldn’t you have roadblocks up, helicopters out there, search teams? I should be out there searching. Not standing around here chatting.’
He took a step towards the door. Carmella moved into the centre of the doorway, blocking the exit. Sean made an exasperated sound in his throat.
Patrick said, ‘Mr and Mrs Philips, the first thing we need to do is talk to you, establish exactly what happened.’
‘We got home, our daughter was gone. That’s what happened,’ Sean said.
Helen was chewing her index finger, staring at the floor. She looked up at Patrick. ‘At least she’s got Red Ted with her.’
Patrick waited for her to continue.
‘She’s had it since she was born,’ she said. ‘She never sleeps without it. Ever. I searched her room and it’s not there.’ The last few words were stifled by a sob.
Patrick gave her a few moments, during which she allowed her husband to put his arm around her. A thought of Bonnie and her grubby Peppa Pig flashed into his mind. Peppa was his daughter’s Red Ted equivalent. ‘Mr and Mrs Philips, I need you to come to the station.’
‘No way,’ Sean interjected. ‘What if someone brings her back? We need to be here.’
‘We’ll have officers here. But we need to examine the house, look for evidence.’
‘Forensics?’ Sean said.
‘Among other things. We can’t do that with you in the house, I’m afraid. And I would appreciate it if we could talk to you tonight. While it’s all fresh in your heads.’ They stared at him, unblinking. ‘I promise you – we are going to do everything we can to find Frankie.’
They acquiesced. As Carmella prepared to lead them from the room, Patrick turned his attention to the girl who had thus far remained silent. She had stood up and slipped her hand into her dad’s. She kept her head down, and her hair fell around her face so he couldn’t see her properly. But while he’d been talking to Sean and Helen he’d sneaked glances in Alice’s direction. She’d been watching him too, wide-eyed, staring at the tattoos visible on his forearms, although he couldn’t tell if it was with approval or disgust. Above all, she looked worried and scared. But her body language, the way she hugged herself and flinched whenever her father
and stepmother spoke? That told him that of the three of them, she almost certainly had the most useful story to tell.
Once Carmella had left to escort the Philipses to the station, Patrick checked that the SOCOs were on their way, along with the other members of the team. There would be a lot of disgruntled spouses left sleeping alone tonight. That was one of the good things about being single – to all intents and purposes at least. No one to make him feel guilty.
He trod through the silent house, going into the kitchen first, thinking about how the media were going to go crazy when they heard about this one, about the panic that would ensue. And the pressure on his team, which was intense already – it didn’t seem possible that it could get worse, but he knew it was about to. It was like going from 2-0 to 3-0 down in the first half of a match you couldn’t afford to lose.
Three children in one small area of London within a week. A living room, a car and now a bedroom. The person the press were calling the Child Catcher was getting braver, daring to go upstairs now, like the urban fox that had caused almost as much hysteria when it crept into someone’s house and tried to drag their baby out. Of course, he shouldn’t assume that it was the same person in all three cases. But unless it was a copycat – and Patrick had never actually come across a copycat criminal in over a decade of police work – or some kind of insane social phenomenon, this had to be the work of the same person. A person whose need to commit these crimes was escalating rapidly.
He slipped on a pair of disposable gloves and examined the back door, peering through into the darkness of the garden.
Something thumped against the glass and he jumped. It was a cat, a ginger specimen, jumping up at the door, trying to get in.
‘Better catch yourself a mouse tonight, mate,’ he said.
The keys were in the lock. He made a note in his pad and looked around the kitchen. A lone wine glass stood on the draining board. A takeaway pizza box poked out of the bin. There was a very faint smell of cigarette smoke. Was that what had happened? Alice had opened the back door to have a crafty fag while her parents were out? And she was too frightened to admit it? Patrick could understand that if it was the case. He still didn’t smoke in front of his parents – not even his fake fag.
He left the kitchen and, after a brief look round downstairs, went up to the first floor. Frankie’s room was the second door on the left, immediately identifiable from the picture of a cartoon fairy on the door. Pushing it open gently, he went inside and looked down at the bed. Unmade, a small dent in the pillow, a pair of teddies at the foot of the quilt, presumably neither of them the treasured Red Ted. Forensics would need to do a thorough examination of this room – assuming Frankie didn’t turn up in the next few hours – so he didn’t want to disturb anything, but his eyes were drawn to a little desk beneath the window, with an equally miniature chair. An art desk, piled high with crayons and felt-tips and a big pile of colouring books.
There were a few sheets of paper in the centre of the desk, pens left next to them with their lids off. With everything else in the room so neat and tidy, Patrick wondered if Frankie had done these drawings since her mum and dad went out.
He picked up the top picture, holding it between gloved forefinger and thumb. A picture of what he thought was supposed to be a cat, drawn in orange. The very cat that was miaowing outside the back door now.
The picture beneath this one, though, was more intriguing. He crouched down to look at it better. A large square, with a cross through it – the universal child’s rendition of a window. In one corner of the window, an imperfect circle. A circle with two more circles inside it, a line and a curve.
Eyes, a nose and a mouth.
It was, Patrick realised, a picture of a face looking through a window.
But looking out – or in?
Chapter 5
Helen – Day 1
‘What was your name again?’
Helen squinted at the detective as though she’d never seen him before, even though he had been in her house not half an hour earlier. She had automatically asked his name – cooperative, polite, the well–brought up girl who knew her manners … as if good manners would make any difference! Fuck it, she would have shattered every pane of glass in the building with her screaming, if screaming was the way to return her daughter to her.
What was she doing here, at 1 A.M., in this weird lemon-painted room, when she should have been sated and snug in bed with Sean, in the deep sleep of the wine-tipsy post-orgasm? She longed to be able to rewind time to that moment before she’d stepped into Frankie’s room, back when everything had been alright. Further than that, to the moment when she and Sean had gone out. She would rewrite the script, change the future. But this was real life, and time could not be rewound, reality could not be altered. At that second, she felt in every cell of her body that if any harm had come to her baby girl, she would kill herself. Continuing to live just wouldn’t be an option.
‘DI Lennon,’ he said, lighting up one of those water-vapour fake cigarettes.
‘Can I call you Helen? Sorry for the inhospitable time of night.’
‘Helen’s fine,’ she muttered, watching the end of the plastic fag glow green as DI Lennon sucked hard on it. She had to sit on her hands to try and stop them from shaking, and she could feel the imprint of the diamond from her engagement ring digging into the underside of her left thigh.
She pressed harder, welcoming the pain.
‘I’m sure you appreciate that the sooner we can build a complete picture of what we’re dealing with here, the greater the chances are of finding Frankie quickly.’
The sound of her daughter’s name spoken by this man sent a current through her body. He had a nice voice, deep and kind, with a softening trace of a West Country accent in there somewhere. Patrick seemed to notice the tiny little involuntary jerk she gave, and she saw the sympathy in his face.
Under normal circumstances, she thought, he would make her feel flustered. A woman in uniform walked in and handed her a coffee that she didn’t recall asking for, and as she sipped it, she worried irrationally that he looked more like the bass player in a rock band than a detective: hard-bodied, if slightly slope-shouldered. She focused on his face instead and saw that, under the handsomeness, it was still boyish, and kind – the sort of man you can visualize in a school portrait, aged about five, looking exactly the same but with more hair, softer skin and smaller teeth.
‘Do you have kids?’ she blurted, leaning forwards, willing him to reply in the affirmative. He paused before nodding his head, and her aching eyes filled with fresh tears.
‘But even if I didn’t, I would still do everything possible to get Frankie back for you, Helen,’ he said, and the kindness and urgency in his voice made her tears spill in two straight lines down her cheeks and drip off her chin. ‘Let’s make a start, shall we?’ He clicked on a voice recording machine.
‘Could you run through your movements again for me this evening, Helen? I know we talked about it at the house, but we need to get it down on record. Have a particular think about whether anything unusual happened – if you’ve spotted anyone hanging around, or coming to the house …’
Helen wiped her face and took a deep breath. She recounted the events of the evening, although had to stop several times to compose herself. The thought of her and Sean enjoying wine, celebrating, kissing and laughing, while Frankie was … Frankie was …
Nobody knew where Frankie was.
‘What did Alice say when you got in?’ Patrick asked her casually, and she felt irritated.
‘As I told you already, she was fast asleep. We had to chuck water at her to wake her up, she was so out of it.’ Seeing DI Lennon’s eyebrows ascend, she began to gabble. ‘But she’s very tired at the moment, she’s just finishing her GCSEs and she had a dance class today too, so she was bound to be tired. Plus, we were about an hour later than we’d said we’d be.’ Helen looked away.
‘Oh? How come?’
Helen’s li
p trembled. ‘We were celebrating. Sean said he was ready for us to have another baby, and I was so happy – it’s what I’ve wanted for ages.’
DI Lennon smiled, but with his lips pressed together so it looked more like a grimace than a congratulatory expression.
‘How long have you been married?’
Helen sat harder on her diamond, remembering Sean sliding it onto her fourth finger on that white hot beach in the Seychelles, a strange, tender, fierce look in his dark green eyes. ‘Four and a half years. I was three months pregnant with Frankie. But we always wanted to get married anyway. We’d been together for two years before that. You know I’m not Alice’s mother? Sean was married before.’
‘I didn’t know. She looks like you. So, Alice was how old … ?’
‘Ten, when we married. She was a flower girl at our wedding. Eight, when we met.’
‘Awkward age for a girl to accept her dad wanting to marry someone other than her mother,’ Lennon said casually. ‘Is she close to her own mother, Sean’s first wife – assuming they were married?’
Helen wanted to scream at him: ‘How is this relevant? Just FIND FRANKIE!’ She bit her lip. ‘Sean’s first wife died in a car crash when Alice was three.’
Lennon wrote something in his notebook. ‘Did Sean date other women before you met him?’
Helen shrugged. Tears sprang into her eyes again – with every question he asked, Frankie could be quarter of a mile further away from her. ‘I know you need to ask these questions, DI Lennon, but can’t they wait till tomorrow? Surely the most important thing for now is to be out on the streets trying to find Frankie?’
Lennon patted her hand, but without condescension. ‘I can see how you think that, Helen, but please know that we have a lot of bodies out doing just that, plus more officers scouring CCTV footage from around your house. My job is to build up a picture of your lives together, and I assure you that it’s just as important.’
He handed her a tissue and she blew her nose.
‘Sean had a couple of girlfriends, I think. He did a bit of internet dating. But when Alice was about six she started to object to him going out and leaving her with babysitters. So he didn’t see anyone for a couple of years, then he met me. We met at Alice’s school summer fair. I was there with my friend Samantha whose daughter Celia is my god-daughter. They’d roped me into helping her on the face-painting stall. Sean and Alice came along and we got chatting when I was painting Alice as a tiger. He checked that I wasn’t married, then asked me out for a drink.’
