by Louise Voss
Mike said, ‘If it’s anything like the other two, no one will have seen a bloody thing.’
‘We might get lucky,’ piped up DI Adrian Winkler. Six-foot-two, with shoulder-length black hair, longer and thicker than Patrick’s own, and good-looking enough to complete the set of what most women were supposed to be interested in, Winkler was one of the other DIs on the team. His nickname was, inevitably, Fonzie, although it was more a sarcastic reference to the fact he thought he was the coolest man on earth than because he shared a surname with the actor who played the Fonz. ‘There might be a curtain-twitcher living next door. Nice shower, by the way?’
‘Better than nothing, thanks, Adrian,’ Patrick said flatly. ‘I want you coordinating the search teams, along with Preet.’
Winkler shot him daggers. ‘Oh come on, Pat, not the fucking search teams. All those do-gooders tramping through the park looking for clues when you know most of them would rather be forming a lynch mob. DC Gupta and I have a lot better things to do with our time, you know.’
Patrick almost smiled, until Winkler added, ‘When a lynch mob would actually be a much better idea. Help clear out some known sex offenders, get the nonces off our patch.’
‘No problem, sir,’ said DC Preet Gupta, stepping in before things got too heated. ‘Come on, Adrian, they’re just jealous we’ll be out in the fresh air.’
But even the prospect of spending time with Preet, easily the prettiest of the detectives in the room, couldn’t appease Winkler. Patrick had heard whispers over the last few days that Adrian was unhappy with how he, Patrick, was conducting the investigation. They’d had run-ins before, usually over Patrick’s methodical way of doing things. Winkler was the kind of cop who preferred to drop bombs then sift through the fall-out. Patrick knew he was going to have to watch him.
Patrick continued dishing out responsibilities. CCTV for DC Sarah Trentner, DC Martin Hale checking social networks and phone records. The third DI on the team, Leanne Cornish, had the job of continuing to eliminate known offenders, not just in Richmond but all surrounding areas, including the parts of Surrey that came outside the Met’s jurisdiction. None of it was a surprise. On day one of the investigation, after Isabel had vanished, the energy in the room was fizzing, like a team of hounds straining at their leashes. Now, though, everyone was tired, concussed through banging their heads against the brick wall of this case. The truth was, they had no leads. No idea at all what had happened to these children.
‘Right, listen up,’ Patrick said, forcing himself to make the speech. ‘We’ve now got three sets of parents relying on us. Three desperate sets of parents. We need to keep our focus. We will find these kids. We will find the person who’s taken them. We just need one stroke of luck, one little crack to appear in the case and then we can …’ He wasn’t quite sure where he was going with this. ‘Put our fingers into the crack—’
Winkler smirked. Patrick could see ten pairs of raised eyebrows.
‘—and prise it open. Um, prise that crack wide open until we see daylight.’ He paused, gathered himself, ignoring the staring faces. ‘So let’s get out there. Team.’
He turned to the whiteboard and rubbed his eyes. Suzanne, standing by the door, gave him a curious look. He felt a little stab of resentment. She should be the one doing the motivational speeches. But then she gave him a little reassuring smile and he forgave her.
As the team dispersed, he walked over to her, gesturing for Carmella to join them. Before he could reach her, Winkler stepped in to his path.
‘Do I really have to look after the fucking search team?’
‘Yes. You do.’
Winkler opened his mouth to protest again, then some gears appeared to grind in his head and he changed tack.
‘Alright, sir. Thanks for the speech by the way. We’ll prise that crack open for you. You don’t have to worry about my motivation.’ He looked into Patrick’s eyes. ‘I mean, you know how I feel about people – men or women – who hurt their kids.’
He exited, leaving Patrick clenching his fists and counting to ten.
Winkler was one of those people who specialized in finding weak spots and poking them. Well, he had just got himself assigned to search party duty for the rest of this investigation. An image of Winkler crawling across Bushy Park on his hands and knees, dodging used condoms and dog shit, made him feel a lot brighter.
‘I’ll call a press conference for later this morning,’ Suzanne said. ‘The media are already going bonkers. We’ve got Sky News running a ticker about the case – they’re camped outside here and the Philipses’ house. Same with the BBC, ITV, all the papers.’
‘Don’t tell me, Perez Hilton is flying over to cover it too.’
Suzanne ignored him. ‘Let’s get a statement from the parents, read it out.’
‘I can handle that,’ said Carmella. She looked fresh this morning, Patrick thought enviously. She had probably had a nice long leisurely bath with lots of scented bubbles and a cup of tea brought to her by her wife.
‘OK, good.’ Suzanne nodded at Patrick. ‘You were right. We will find them.’
Before he could respond, Mike poked his head around the door.
‘Sir, your witness is here.’
Before going in to talk to Alice Philips, Patrick went to the Gents to splash some cold water on his already clean face, try to stop the tiredness pulling him into its murky depths. The shower hadn’t done the trick. As he dried his cheeks on a scratchy paper towel, one of the cubicles opened and DI Winkler emerged.
‘Keeping you up, are we?’ he said, standing at the basin next to Patrick.
As Patrick moved towards the door, Winkler stepped into his path.
‘Why’d you have to give me the search teams? Total waste of my skills. You know that.’
‘Stop moaning, Winkler.’
The other man narrowed his eyes and drew himself up to his full height so Patrick was forced to look up at him.
‘Must be handy having a wife in the loony bin,’ Winkler said.
‘What?’
‘Yeah. Loads of opportunity to invite Suzanne—’ he said her name like a ten-year-old teasing a classmate over a girl ‘—round to discuss tactics.’
‘What the fuck are you insinuating?’ Patrick tried to stay calm, his pulse accelerating.
‘Oh nothing. Just a little word of warning. It must be very nice being the DCI’s pet. But fuck this case up and you’ll be in the doghouse.’
Patrick shook his head. ‘Was that really the best you could come up with?’
He pushed past Winkler, their shoulders rubbing together. Before he left, he heard Winkler say, ‘Poor kids.’
He span round. ‘What did you say?’
Winkler held his hands up. ‘Oh nothing. Just feel sorry for these kids, that’s all.’
Patrick exited the Gents before he did something he regretted. Winkler had managed to press three of his buttons in one brief exchange. He looked down and realized his fists were clenched, his nails digging into his palms, leaving a row of little crescents.
Alice Philips was dressed all in black, with dark eyeliner, shiny boots and her naturally raven hair tied back with a scrunchie. She sat with her arms folded across her black T-shirt, obscuring the name of a band that Patrick was sure he wouldn’t have heard of anyway. He had to face it: he was out of touch. Most of the CDs he bought these days were deluxe reissues of albums he’d loved twenty years ago. God, even buying CDs marked him out as a dinosaur. But he liked to think that he and this teenage Goth – or was she an emo? – had something in common, even though she would no doubt cringe if he told her that he used to dress like her, had long hair that he’d backcombed and dyed to make it look like hers.
Beside Alice sat her appropriate adult – the neighbour, Sally Jameson, a woman in her late fifties who reminded Patrick of Camilla Parker-Bowles, vaguely aristocratic, who kept shifting in her seat like she couldn’t believe she was here, in a room in a police station that smelled like farts, when she
should be eating strawberries and cream at Wimbledon. Sean and Helen had asked her to accompany Alice, understandably unwilling to spend any more time in an interview room.
Patrick opened his notepad while Carmella set up the video camera.
‘How are you feeling, Alice?’ he asked in a soothing voice.
She shrugged, then said, ‘Sick.’
‘You’re not well?’
‘No. Sick with worry about Frankie.’
The whites of her eyes were bloodshot, from tiredness or crying, perhaps both. Her body language was defensive, her arms wrapped tightly around her torso like she was freezing cold, despite the sticky warmth in the room. She would barely make eye contact, though that was normal for teenagers talking to cops. Beneath the desk, she jerked her legs up and down in a way that reminded Patrick of himself. Even today, his mum was always complaining about his restless leg syndrome.
‘We just want to ask you about last night.’
‘I don’t know anything,’ Alice blurted, hugging herself even more tightly.
Carmella said, ‘Alice, there might be something that you don’t know is important. So we need to go through everything. Is that okay?’
She said, ‘Yeah,’ looking straight into the camera.
‘Alright,’ Patrick said. ‘Tell us what happened last night. From the point your mum and dad went out.’
‘She’s not my mum.’
‘Sorry, your stepmum.’ He made a mental note of the way she’d spat those words out.
‘Helen,’ she said, putting the emphasis on the first syllable.
‘Go on, Alice,’ Sally prompted. The girl nodded, like she was having a conversation inside her head, then said, ‘So … Dad and Helen went out at about seven. I read Frankie some stories – she’s obsessed with dinosaurs so pretty much all her books are about T-Rexes and velociraptors and stuff – either that or fairies – and then put her to bed. She’s a good girl for me – she went down without making any fuss.’
‘Was her bedroom window shut?’
‘Yeah. Well, to be honest I didn’t really look. I closed the curtains and I don’t remember it being open. Oh my days, was it open … after?’
Patrick shook his head. ‘No, I was just checking.’
‘What, you think someone might have got in earlier and been, like, hiding in there? Someone could have been in her wardrobe or something while we were reading?’
‘Alice, don’t panic. We have no reason to think that.’
Sally reached over and tried to squeeze Alice’s hand but she snatched it away.
‘It’s not my fault,’ she said. ‘She’s my little sister. I love her to bits. Do you think I would do anything to put her in danger?’
Patrick could feel this interview wriggling fish-like from his grasp. But maybe it was good to give this girl space – because if she did know something, at this point it seemed pretty likely that she was going to blurt it out. He didn’t reply, confident that Alice would feel the need to fill the silence.
She sat and twirled the silver skull ring on her finger.
‘OK,’ Patrick said at last. ‘What happened after you put her to bed?’
‘Nothing. I had dinner, watched telly.’
‘No revision?’ asked Carmella.
‘I’ve finished all my exams, except one.’ A hint of a smile. ‘I’m almost free.’
Patrick checked his notes. Alice was an August baby, meaning she would have just taken her exams at the age of fifteen, one of the youngest in her year.
‘Did you watch TV in your room or the living room?’
‘Why?’
Patrick couldn’t help but smile to himself. One day Bonnie would be like this.
Carmella replied. ‘Alice, we need to know your movements within the house so we can work out what time the intruder might have got in, and their entry point.’
‘Alright. Well, I had dinner straight after Frankie went to bed. So that was around eight. I ate it in the living room in front of the TV. Then I went up to my room for a bit to, like, listen to music and stuff. Then there was a film on that I wanted to watch so I went back downstairs. It started at ten.’ She swallowed. ‘But I fell asleep while it was on and the next thing I knew Helen was chucking water in my face.’
Patrick asked, ‘Did you have the music on loud?’
‘Eh? Oh, in my room. Not really.’
‘Was it too loud for you to be able to hear if someone came in and went up the stairs?’
‘Hmm. Yeah, I guess so.’
‘What about if Frankie had made a noise – started crying or called out?’
‘I would have heard that. I always hear her, even if I have my headphones on.’
Patrick understood that. There was something about the human brain that was designed to pick up children’s cries, although he had always thought it was only one’s own children you could hear.
‘Did you leave your room at all between eight and ten?’
‘No.’
‘Not even to use the toilet?’
She looked at him as if the idea of this middle-aged man asking her about her visits to the loo was the most gross thing she’d ever heard. ‘I’ve got my own bathroom.’
En-suite. Very nice. Patrick scribbled another note. ‘When you left your room at ten and went downstairs to watch TV, did you check in on Frankie?’
She stared at the table. Next to her, Sally scrutinized her carefully. Alice’s tone, when she replied, was defensive. ‘No. I was sure she was asleep. I didn’t fucking expect some fucker to waltz into our house and snatch her, did I? Otherwise I would have camped outside her room with a knife.’
‘Alice, calm down,’ said Sally, who had flinched at Alice’s f-word double whammy.
Patrick adopted his most soothing voice again. ‘We’re not judging you. Alright?’ Although he couldn’t help thinking that this sort of bad language was pretty unusual, from a well-brought-up fifteen-year-old from an upper middle-class family in Teddington.
She nodded, refusing to meet his eye.
‘OK. So, did you see or hear anything unusual at all?’
‘No. Nothing.’
‘Have you seen anybody or anything out of the ordinary near your house recently?’
‘Like what?’
‘Like, for example, people hanging around. Watching the house. Men you don’t recognize.’
She wrapped her arms even more tightly around herself. ‘Oh god, that’s too creepy. No, I haven’t.’
‘Did you have anybody over last night?’
A second’s hesitation, and her eyes flickered briefly up and to the right. ‘No.’
Patrick, who had been acting as casually as he could when he asked her that question, looked up from his notepad and said, ‘Are you sure?’
‘Yeah, of course I’m sure. I’m not senile.’
‘You didn’t have your boyfriend round?’ asked Carmella. ‘Larry?’
‘No! Who told you that?’
Carmella raised her palms. ‘No one. I was just checking. I mean—’ she leaned forward conspiratorially, ‘—I was a teenage girl once. I’d always have friends round if my parents went out.’
Alice sniffed. ‘Well, I didn’t. And I don’t see how any of this could help find Frankie anyway.’
‘We just want to know if there were any other potential witnesses,’ said Patrick. ‘Did you speak to anyone?’
‘I might have talked to Larry on the phone briefly. Yeah, I did. And I Snapchatted Georgia. That’s my best mate.’
Patrick had a vague idea this meant sending a photo that almost instantly deleted itself.
‘And did you drink anything? Alcohol, I mean.’
She lifted her chin defiantly. ‘I had a little glass of wine. Dad lets me have wine at home. He says most British teenagers turn into binge drinkers because they see alcohol as something forbidden. I’m not like that.’
‘What about drugs?’
‘Does my dad let me take drugs? Of course not.’
�
�I meant, did you take anything, smoke anything, last night?’
‘For fuck’s sake – sorry – no, I didn’t.’
‘What about cigarettes? You didn’t pop out for a fag at any point?’
‘I don’t smoke.’
‘Did you know the back door was open when your dad and Helen got home? Did you open it?’
‘No.’ Her eyes were wide.
‘Are you absolutely sure? I’m sure your parents – I mean your dad and stepmum – aren’t going to care right now if you went out the back and had a crafty cigarette.’
‘I didn’t. I swear.’
‘You definitely didn’t open the door?’
She looked sick. ‘No. Listen, do you really think I would hide anything? All I want is for my little sister to come back. I want you to find her. I’m not going to tell you lies. I didn’t …’
She started to cry and Sally gave Patrick a withering look, pulling Alice into a hug.
‘End of interview,’ Patrick said. Carmella switched off the video recorder.
‘She’s lying about the boyfriend,’ Carmella said, as soon as Alice and Sally had gone.
‘I know. But why lie about him coming round? That little speech she gave at the end sounded pretty convincing.’
‘I expect she thinks that he didn’t see or hear anything either, and she doesn’t want to get into trouble. Her dad isn’t going to be impressed if Frankie was taken while Alice was in her room shagging her boyfriend. But let’s talk to him, see what his story is.’
‘He won’t want to talk to us. According to the info Helen gave us, he’s seventeen and Alice is under age. He’s going to think we’ll do him for statutory rape.’
Patrick rolled his eyes. ‘We’ll have to convince him we don’t give a shit about that. Unless we can use it in some way. Right, you get his address and, in the meantime, let’s sort out this press conference.’
As they left the interview room, DS Staunton hurried around the corner towards them.
‘Sir, there you are.’
