by Louise Voss
It made her feel a tiny, tiny bit better. As soon as Lennon had gone, she was going to reply.
Lennon began to say something else when the drill of the doorbell sounded, long and loud, and they all jumped.
‘What fresh hell is this?’ Sean grumbled. ‘If it’s another fucking journalist, I’ll—’
‘I’ll go,’ Lennon said, pushing back his chair, and Helen felt grateful to him. The family liaison officer had made herself scarce for a couple of hours, presumably taking some time off while the DI was on the premises instead. It was so intrusive, having non-family members in the house, but Helen supposed that it did have a few advantages – like having an on-site bouncer.
‘Oh my God,’ said Alice, ‘could they, like, ease off the doorbell?’ But the bell went on and on, one continuous sharp sound like an alarm, right up to the point that Lennon opened the door.
‘Who the ’ell are you, and where’s my son?’ came a querulous female voice with a thick Essex accent, almost as high-pitched with fury as the doorbell had been.
The three of them still at the kitchen table put their heads in their hands as one. ‘Oh no – not bloody Eileen,’ said Helen and Sean in tandem. Helen couldn’t help herself and started to cry.
Alice spoke in a flat monotone. ‘Just when we thought things couldn’t get any worse …’ They all listened with dread to the footsteps approaching down the hall. Seconds later Sean’s mother, puce with sorrow and fury, burst into the room.
‘How could you let this happen and why did you not think to let me know? I had to see it on the bloody telly! Do you have ANY idea how traumatic that was for me?’
‘Hi, Granny.’ Alice got up and left the room, going around the other side of the table to her grandmother so as to avoid embracing her. ‘Haven’t seen you for, like two years. That’s probably why Dad didn’t tell you.’ She turned back to Helen and Sean. ‘I’ve changed my mind. I’m going into Kingston to meet Georgia. See you later.’
Eileen took her coat off and started to sob. ‘Frankie, my poor little mite. Oh darling, where is she?’ She grabbed Sean around the neck and kissed his head, but he moved away. ‘As if you care, Mum,’ he said, and slid his hand into Helen’s.
Perhaps it wouldn’t be so bad after all that Eileen had turned up, thought Helen, blowing her nose on a piece of kitchen roll.
Lennon opened his notebook at a new page. ‘Mrs Philips, I take it?’
‘Last time I looked, yes,’ said Eileen, ‘Sean love, make your old mum a cuppa while I talk to this nice detective. It’s alright, we’ve already been introduced.’ Sean rolled his eyes at Helen but got up and refilled the kettle. Helen wiped her eyes and slipped out of the kitchen – Lennon would be busy with Eileen for the foreseeable future, and there was something she felt she had to do.
Noticing with despair the large suitcase sitting by the bottom of the stairs – that woman is staying here over my dead body – Helen went upstairs to the bedroom and opened the laptop she’d left on her bedside table.
She read the message again: I know where the lost children are. Can we meet? 2pm on Thursday in Teddington M&S café. I’m being watched. Can’t tell you over the Internet. DELETE THIS AND TELL NO-ONE.
‘Janet Friars’ profile gave away little information. As they weren’t friends on there, Helen couldn’t access her wall, but her profile picture was of a dog – a white Scottie – and there was no personal information to give Helen any clue about who this woman was.
She quickly typed a reply:
If you know something, you should go to the police. She sat and waited for a reply, but none came.
Chapter 14
Patrick – Day 3
Fiona and Max Hartley opened their front door together, arm in arm. But it was less a demonstration of solidarity and support than a necessity, Patrick thought. They were literally holding one another up while everything about them sagged with grief – shoulders, eyes, mouths. Fiona Hartley could barely drag her hollow red-rimmed eyes up to meet Patrick’s. She looked even worse than when Patrick had last seen her, when Isabel had still been missing. He was glad he hadn’t been the one to break the news that Isabel’s body had been discovered.
‘Come in,’ Max Hartley said flatly when Patrick told them he was there to try and piece together Isabel’s movements over what had ended up being the final few weeks of her life. When he mentioned her daughter’s name, Fiona twitched briefly and clutched more tightly on to her husband.
Their wide hallway had sheets of plastic taped to the wooden floorboards and an old avocado-coloured toilet and basin leaning against the wall near the front door, alongside unopened boxes of new bathroom accessories and old broken tiles. Patrick had to step over the same length of copper pipe that he had negotiated last time he had been in the house. He remembered Max saying that his brother and he were doing the renovations themselves.
‘I don’t suppose you’ve done any more on your bathroom.’
As soon as he said it, he winced internally. Of course they hadn’t – why would they be doing DIY at a time like this?
The couple paused and glanced at one another. Max spoke in a low voice. ‘I doubt we will now. It’s our guest bathroom. We were refitting it for the Spanish au-pair who was meant to be moving in at the start of next month. I had to email her last night and tell her that we wouldn’t be needing her now after all …’
His eyes filled with tears and he sobbed, a single loud harsh sob. For a moment, and to his abject horror, Patrick felt tears rise in his own eyes. He blinked, and had to take a deep breath before he could speak.
‘Oh God. What a terrible email to have to write.’
He was going to add ‘I can’t imagine’ – but the truth was, he could. He could absolutely imagine it. Get a grip, he yelled at himself.
They walked into the kitchen, where Fiona immediately slumped at the huge farmhouse table and lit a cigarette.
‘No need not to smoke in the house any more either,’ she muttered, offering the pack to Patrick. He almost reached his hand out to accept – the muscle memory of a reaction to stress – then shook his head. ‘I smoke the fake ones now,’ he said, showing her his e-cig and having to clench his teeth to resist taking a drag on it before shoving it back in his pocket.
‘Coffee?’ Max asked, and Patrick nodded.
‘Thanks. White, no sugar.’
The coffee, when it came, was bitter and the milk had small oily lumps floating in it. The kitchen bin was overflowing and the cat litter tray by the back door badly needed a clean-out.
‘Don’t you have your Family Liaison Officer with you anymore?’ Patrick asked abruptly. Not that the FLO’s remit would be to clean out the cat’s litter tray, but here was a couple that clearly needed a bit more help. The FLO could organize that. Fiona made a face.
‘We told her to go. We don’t want someone we don’t know hanging around looking sympathetic. It’s hard enough as it is.’
Patrick noticed that all Isabel’s paintings had been ripped off the fridge. He hoped for Max and Fiona’s sake that they had saved them in a folder somewhere and not torn them up and thrown them away in a storm of grief.
He took out his notebook and started to prompt the couple to come up with a list of the places they had been with Izzy. For a few minutes, as with the Philipses, they seemed glad of the distraction, and came up with a fairly comprehensive list – Patrick had to write fast to keep up with them. But then their voices petered out into silence, as if they had only just realized the significance of why they were doing this.
Fiona stood up abruptly, stubbing out her cigarette into an overflowing ashtray on the table. She looked as though she was sleepwalking as she drifted over to a fruit bowl next to the fridge. Opening a cupboard above the counter, she took out a small flowery pink plastic bowl, ripped a banana from the bunch in the fruit bowl, peeled it, then took a dessert spoon from a cutlery drawer. Her husband gasped and half-rose in his chair. ‘Fi—’ he said hopelessly, watching her use the edge o
f the spoon to slice the banana into the plastic bowl. Tears rolled down his cheeks as he and Patrick then watched her take out a pot of Hundreds and Thousands and shake the colourful sprinkles all over the banana segments.
Fiona shook more and more, until the banana was totally buried and the sugar sprinkles dusted the kitchen counter. There was something hypnotic, almost ritualistic about the way she did it. It made Patrick think of someone dropping earth on top of a coffin in a grave. A small white coffin …
For a moment they were all silent, until another audible sob from Max cut through the silence. Patrick jumped up and gently removed the now-empty cake decoration container from Fiona’s trembling hands. He took her by the shoulders and led her back to the table, helping her back into the chair.
‘Was that Isabel’s favourite snack?’ he whispered, forcing himself to look into her blank eyes.
She nodded and looked away.
‘Right, let’s see what we’ve got.’
Patrick and Carmella sat down together in the incident room back at the station, the pictures of the three children staring down at them from the wall, silently urging them on. Patrick still felt shaken from the meeting with the Hartleys, but at the same time was even more fired up, a cocktail of anger and sorrow making him utterly determined to catch the bastard who had done this. The prospect of seeing Frankie and Liam’s parents going through what the Hartleys were now suffering added a layer of desperation to his determination.
DS Mike Staunton entered the room carrying a cardboard tray of coffees from the Costa down the road. Mike was the very definition of a decent, solid cop. Recently married to the beautiful Aurelie, Mike talked about his wife more than any man Patrick had ever met. It was sweet. He hoped the long hours and occasional horrors of the job didn’t wreck the futures of the happy couple.
Mike handed Patrick his. ‘Vanilla latte, double shot. Carmella, extra flat and wet.’
She grinned up at him. ‘Let me guess, regular filter coffee for DS Staunton.’
‘You know me so well.’
Patrick and Carmella spread out their lists on the table. Mike looked over their shoulders. ‘Why don’t you put them all into the computer and sort them alphabetically?’
‘This is quicker,’ Patrick said, his eyes scanning the three lists. He felt shaken from his visit to both families, but particularly the Hartleys. He thought he was never, ever going to forget the image of Fiona Hartley slicing banana and sprinkles for a little girl who was never coming back. All the way through the interview, Patrick had kept thinking It was so nearly me. He dreamed about that afternoon, when he had come home and found Gill sitting on the stairs, every week, but in his dreams Bonnie didn’t come back to life, and he always woke up trembling and cold, relief sending him rushing into his daughter’s room to confirm that yes, she was still alive. Still here. Unlike poor Izzy.
He read through the list out loud. ‘Different nurseries … The Hartleys go to church but the other two families don’t … No common holiday or day trip destinations … Two of them have been to The Playbarn, that soft play place in Teddington but the McConnells haven’t … Two go to this thing called the Eleven O’Clock Club in Bushy Park … Only the McConnells shop regularly at Sainsbury’s …’
The door opened again and DCI Laughland came in. As always, when she walked into the room, Patrick’s blood stirred; everything else in the room grew a little dimmer compared to Suzanne.
She came over to the table. ‘Any progress?’
The strain of the case, the pressure from the media, and those higher up, showed on her face. As well as wanting to find the abductor for the children and their parents, Patrick wanted to do it for Suzanne too. Not just to repay her faith in him but because, at the most basic human level, he wanted to make her happy.
He told her what they were doing and she pursed her lips. ‘Can I have a word?’
Patrick followed her to her office. ‘What’s up?’ he said, as she shut the door behind them.
‘How close are we to making an arrest?’
‘An arrest? You know we haven’t got any real suspects yet.’
All the warmth that was normally in her voice when she talked to him was absent. ‘What about this traveller? Wesley Hewson?’
‘He’s not the murderer. I’m sure of it.’
‘But he failed to report the body. He fucking concealed it.’
Patrick was surprised to hear her swear.
‘Why are you so sure it’s not him?’
Patrick tensed. She was the SIO but he was the lead detective on this case. ‘There’s no motive, and his explanation for why he did it makes perfect sense. Suzanne—’ She raised her eyebrows. ‘Sorry. Ma’am.’ He knew she hated being called that but he was pissed off now. ‘We could pursue Hewson but I’m convinced it would be waste of time and effort.’
She prowled round the back of her desk. ‘I don’t think you realise how much pressure I’m under to show that we’re getting somewhere with this. I want you to arrest him for perverting the course of justice.’
‘Why? He didn’t intend to obstruct the case.’
Her face was pink. His probably was too, he realised. ‘Why are you sticking up for this cretin?’
‘Because it’s a waste of time and energy. We need to concentrate on—’
‘You can multitask, can’t you?’ she snapped. ‘Obviously you need to concentrate on finding out what the kids’ lives and routines have in common, and all the other … stuff … you’re doing.’ She waved her arm as she said this, as though ‘stuff’ was a pointless exercise in futility. ‘But I’m ordering you to arrest Hewson too.’
Patrick didn’t speak. His heartbeat thumped in his ears, the blood feeling thick and hot in his veins. It should be up to him whether Hewson was arrested. It was his investigation. Suzanne was completely disregarding his opinion. Eventually he said reluctantly, ‘If you think that’s for the best, boss. Why don’t you send Winkler to do it? He’d enjoy it.’
‘Very well. I will.’
Patrick hated this. He wanted to say something to make things good between them. But he was angry and couldn’t think of a single thing to say except, ‘Are we done?’
Back in the incident room, he found Carmella and Mike poring over the lists. Patrick sipped at his coffee and winced. Stone cold. Ruined. An apt drink for the way he was feeling right now.
‘There’s nothing,’ Carmella said. ‘Not a single place where their lives intersect. How can that be? I thought I had it for a moment, that Frankie went to a playgroup that’s attached to the Hartleys’ church – but it’s a different one. And there doesn’t seem to be anything else.’
Patrick sat down and scrutinized the lists again. Something popped out at him. ‘What’s this? Dads’ Club. Carmella, didn’t you say that Mr McConnell took Liam there occasionally. What is it?’
‘I don’t think he told me.’ Carmella said.
‘Don’t think? Well, fucking call him and find out.’
She stared at him with wide eyes. She and Mike exchanged a look and he knew exactly what they were thinking – that he’d just had a bollocking from the SIO.
He would apologise later, but for now he watched Carmella call the McConnells, turning into the corner of the room to speak to the father of missing Liam again. After a couple of minutes she hung up and came back over, picking up the Hartleys’ and Philipses’ lists.
‘The Dads’ Club is a place where dads can take pre-school children on a Saturday morning. It takes place at the Eleven O’Clock Club in the park.’
There it was. Like three gold bells falling into line on a fruit machine.
‘Jackpot,’ Patrick said.
Another park, more happy children’s voices floating across from the playground, little yelps of excitement from the swings and slides and sandpit. Bonnie came to this park most days with her nan, or Patrick sometimes brought her on his days off. He and Gill used to come to this park too, way back when, before she got pregnant and had Bonnie. Back be
fore everything changed. Patrick remembered long, baked summer’s days spent lounging on the grass with a newspaper and a picnic. Slow kisses on hot afternoons. He remembered one day early in their relationship when, concealed by trees, he had slipped his hand beneath her skirt and brought her to a silent, gasping orgasm.
It seemed like a lifetime had passed since then. That happy couple didn’t exist any more. But there was one good thing remaining: Bonnie.
‘I broke my leg falling off a swing when I was a wee girl,’ Carmella said.
‘You were a daredevil, I bet.’ He had apologised for his outburst, and she assured him the incident was forgotten already.
‘A little minx, according to my dad.’
Patrick smiled. ‘I was always scared of things like that when I was little. Heights, danger, anything that might make me fall over and hurt myself. I’ve got a lot better now but Bonnie takes after me, unfortunately.’
‘I’d say she’s pretty fortunate to take after her dad.’
Rather than her mum. The words hung unspoken and Patrick said, ‘Right, let’s go check out this place.’
The Eleven O’Clock Club was based in a squat prefabricated building next to the playground in the south-west corner of the park. It closed its doors at one but Patrick had called ahead and someone had agreed to meet them and talk to them. He could see her now, an attractive black woman in linen trousers and a white T-shirt, waiting by the door, staring at her phone.
‘Jemima Walters?’ Patrick asked, shaking her warm hand. ‘DI Lennon, DS Masiello. Thanks for agreeing to meet us.’
She nodded. ‘Are you investigating the child abductions? Oh those poor—’
‘Can we go inside, where it’s private?’
‘Sure, sure.’
The interior of the building looked like the inside of any nursery or playgroup. A couple of small slides and a miniature climbing frame in the shape of a train in the centre, toy cupboards all around the edges, posters of Teletubbies and Peppa Pig stuck up around the walls. To the right was a counter where, Patrick imagined, the staff served cups of coffee to exhausted parents and orange segments and triangles of toast to energy-burning pre-schoolers.
