by Adam Croft
‘Yes. Nick Connor. I don’t know what you’ve been told, but she was in the back seat of the car for a few seconds, if that. I went into the house to get something she’d forgotten and I came back and she was gone.’
‘Right. Which house is yours?’ he asks.
‘Down there,’ I say. ‘Number forty.’
He gestures to his younger counterpart with a flick of the head and they both follow me down the road towards the house.
‘Thank you for coming so quickly,’ I say, trying to act as normally as possible, a large part of me realising that they’d probably think I was completely overreacting. ‘I thought you usually left it a day or two before looking for people.’
‘Depends on the circumstances,’ the younger officer says. ‘With young children it’s a bit different. Especially if there’s a chance someone else might’ve taken them.’
The older officer darts a look at him, thinking I won’t notice.
‘You seem quite calm, Mr Connor,’ the younger officer says. ‘Does this sort of thing happen often?’
‘No, of course not,’ I reply. ‘I just didn’t want to seem like some panicking lunatic, that’s all. Inside I’m a wreck. Trust me.’
The older officer nods. ‘I’m PC Briers, by the way,’ he says. ‘This is PC Robinson.’
I nod. ‘That’s mine, there,’ I say as we get closer to the house. ‘She was in the back of the car.’
‘Was she strapped in? Was the door locked?’ PC Briers asks.
‘It wasn’t locked, no. I was only gone a few seconds. She was strapped in, though.’
‘Was it a safety catch at all? Could she have undone it herself?’
‘Well, yeah, she could. She has done before. She’s five, for Christ’s sake. She’s always fiddling with everything.’
Briers and Robinson look at each other. I can tell what they’re thinking.
‘But she’s not the sort of kid to just walk off or disappear. She knows about things like this. We talk about it all the time at home, keeping safe and things like that.’
‘You say she can’t have disappeared on her own, though?’ Briers asks. ‘Why’s that?’
‘I dunno,’ I say. ‘It just doesn’t seem possible. There’s no way she could’ve got to the end of the road on her own in the time I was inside.’
‘Do you know of anyone who might have wanted to take Ellie?’
I can see the way he’s looking at me. We walk up the driveway to the house.
‘No. My wife, Tasha, was at work. She’s on her way back but it’ll take a while as she works in London.’
‘That’s Ellie’s mum?’ he asks. The question strikes me as bizarre, but I guess it’s reasonable in the modern age.
‘Yeah, it is.’
‘Did you hear a car outside while you were in the house?’ PC Robinson asks, making himself useful for the first time as I let the officers inside.
‘I don’t think so. I don’t remember hearing anything,’ I say. ‘Anyway, should we not be outside, looking?’
‘That’ll all be taken care of,’ PC Briers says, smiling as he tries to reassure me. ‘There are certain procedures we have to follow. PC Robinson and I are here to speak to you and find out a little more about Ellie, perhaps try to ascertain where she might have gone and why.’
I nod silently. In my very British way, I do all I can do in times of tension and put the kettle on.
* * *
I feel helpless and useless as I sit quietly sipping my tea. What is the right thing to do? Should I be here giving as much information as I can to the officers in my living room, or should I be out pounding the streets doing all I can to look for Ellie? Both options seem futile, and PCs Briers and Robinson remind me that there are officers out looking for her. They tell me that my efforts are best put to use at home, providing information and waiting for some further news. There’s nothing much more we can do, they say, which just makes me feel useless.
I look at the empty photo frame on the side unit, the photo of Ellie that was in it now sitting on PC Robinson’s lap. This is what they’ll circulate with a description, they say.
‘Is there anything else we should know about Ellie?’ PC Briers asks.
I want to ask why the police have only sent two lowly PCs, but my guess is that they’re hardly likely to ship out the local equivalent of Sherlock Holmes or Columbo when, as far as they’re concerned, it’s probably just a case of a wandering child who’ll be back home in half an hour.
I shake my head silently. ‘She’s just a . . . normal girl. She likes all the normal things. Playing with her friends, watching TV, making things. None of it makes any sense.’ There’s a bizarre haze in front of my eyes as I speak, both mentally and physically. My eyes are clouded with tears and my mind with confusion.
8
Nick
The nature of my own unproductive working days really hits home when I see how much these guys manage to pack into a couple of hours. We’ve had officers searching the home, looking at nearby CCTV and knocking on doors in the area. We’ve had the car taken away on a low-loader – it’s a crime scene, apparently – and now we’ve got a detective inspector sitting in our living room, summoned to get to the bottom of what’s happened before it’s even really sunk in for me.
She introduced herself as Jane McKenna. I imagine she’s seen by her male counterparts as a bit of a ballbreaker. It seems ridiculous to say that, with all that’s going on, but it’s my writer’s instinct to want to guess what people’s personalities are the second I meet them.
‘Does Ellie have any brothers or sisters?’ she asks – just one in a long line of questions. DC Brennan is sitting in the armchair, a fairly nondescript guy who hasn’t said much at all.
‘No,’ I say. ‘She’s an only child.’ Just saying those words brings back both the painful memories and feelings of elation. The pain at finding out we couldn’t have kids and the joy at discovering Tasha was pregnant with Ellie. ‘We weren’t really even meant to have Ellie,’ I say.
McKenna’s ears prick up.
‘We were told we weren’t able to have children. Before Ellie was born, I mean. Tasha has severe endometriosis. The doctors said it had damaged her ovaries. We were told it meant we couldn’t have children. We tried IVF through the NHS but it didn’t work. It would have cost tens of thousands of pounds to go private, and we didn’t have that sort of money. We just kind of came to terms with the fact that that was how things were. Later, we found out that Tasha was pregnant with Ellie.’
‘That must have been quite a shock,’ McKenna says.
‘You can say that again. The doctors were more amazed than anyone. Actually, it made the papers,’ I say, walking over to the side unit and rifling through the middle drawer, pulling out a slim ring binder. ‘They called her “the miracle baby”.’
I hand the ring binder to McKenna and she leafs through the laminated pages within it, scanning the newspaper cuttings. Brennan peers over her shoulder.
‘“Defied the laws of nature”,’ she says, quoting from a headline.
‘Yeah. It was quite something. I must admit we weren’t massively keen on the publicity, but you know how these things are.’
I see that McKenna’s eyes have stopped moving, but she’s still staring at the newspaper cuttings.
‘You’re a writer, aren’t you?’ she says. ‘Urban horror stuff?’
‘Yeah, that’s me,’ I reply, for some reason feeling a little ashamed.
‘I’ve seen your books. Black Tide. That was one of yours, wasn’t it? Must be a couple of years ago now.’
‘Just over five.’
‘Not long after this article was written, then,’ she says, finally making eye contact with me. ‘Good timing, wasn’t it? Must have helped push the book a bit.’
I’m really not sure what she’s getting at. ‘I guess so,’ I say. ‘Come to think of it, it was Peter, my agent, who spoke to the papers about all this. Said it would be a human interest story or something.
’
She nods silently and looks back at the newspaper clippings. I can see Brennan looking up at me from underneath his brow.
‘If you’re thinking we got pregnant just to promote a bloody book, I wish it was that fucking easy,’ I say, feeling the fury rise to the surface. ‘We tried for years – years – to have a kid. If you think we could just pop one off on a whim, don’t you think we would’ve done?’
‘I didn’t suggest anything of the sort, Mr Connor,’ McKenna says, offering a disarming smile. She glances back at the newspaper clippings and nods.
A uniformed officer knocks on the already-open door to get our attention.
‘Sorry to bother you,’ he says, holding up a mobile phone in his gloved hand, ‘but this was on the side in the kitchen. Is it yours?’
‘Yeah,’ I say, standing and holding out my hand. ‘Thanks.’
‘Ah, no, sorry,’ he replies, dropping it into a polythene bag. ‘We’ll have to take it, I’m afraid.’
I look at McKenna for some help.
‘Does Ellie have her own mobile phone?’ she asks.
‘No, of course she doesn’t,’ I reply. ‘She’s five years old.’
‘Then he’s right,’ she says. ‘It’ll need to be checked. There’s a possibility she might have tried initiating contact with someone using it. Are there any laptops or computers in the house – anything that Ellie might have used?’
‘Well, yeah, of course. I’ve got a MacBook in my office. Tasha’s got a work laptop and tablet but she’s got them with her. She’s gone to a conference. She’s on her way back, but she’s taken a train so I don’t know how long she’ll be. Ellie doesn’t really use them, though. She’s only five.’ I sit for a moment before McKenna’s last comment sinks in. ‘What do you mean by “initiating contact”?’
McKenna glances sideways at the uniformed officer, who swiftly leaves the room. ‘In a surprisingly large majority of cases concerning missing or kidnapped children, we find that the child had a prior relationship with the person who took them. Now, of course we don’t know that Ellie has been taken, but we need to ensure we have all the evidence to hand and consider every possibility, especially considering her age.’
It still doesn’t quite make sense. ‘But why do you need my laptop and mobile phone?’
DI McKenna exhales heavily. ‘We’ll need to just check she hasn’t had any online contact with anyone. It’s routine.’
The thought hadn’t even crossed my mind. ‘Jesus Christ, she’s five years old!’
‘You’d be surprised,’ she replies, keeping her voice much calmer than mine.
I know I need to keep my frustrations to a minimum and keep calm to maximise the chances of finding Ellie quickly.
‘Which school does Ellie go to?’ McKenna asks. ‘Have you called them to check she hasn’t gone in by herself?’
The first thought that hits my mind is that I’ve got officers trawling through my belongings, confiscating my car and mobile phone, and they’ve not even bothered to check whether Ellie’s just at school. ‘They called me,’ I say. ‘To ask why she wasn’t in.’
I can see the way McKenna’s looking at me and I can tell what she’s thinking. She’s thinking it’s odd that I didn’t call the school earlier and that I had to wait for them to phone me. She’s right. It is odd.
‘Which school does she go to?’ she repeats.
‘Hillgrove,’ I reply.
McKenna’s eyes narrow. ‘That’s quite a way away,’ she says. ‘You can’t be in the catchment area for that one, surely.’
‘We aren’t,’ I reply. ‘She was at Parkview for a while but Tasha had a falling out with the head over some behavioural thing of Ellie’s. And she won’t send her to St Hilda’s because it’s a faith school.’
McKenna nods. Again, I can tell what she’s thinking. The fussy, interfering mother.
‘Just easier sometimes to go along with these things, isn’t it?’ I offer.
McKenna just smiles.
9
Nick
I breathe a huge sigh of relief once they’ve gone back to the station to circulate the photo of Ellie on their system. On more than one occasion while McKenna and Brennan were here I felt like a suspect in my own home, as if what had already happened that morning wasn’t bad enough.
I keep running through that moment in my head. All sense of time has been warped by the adrenaline and sheer panic, but I can only have been in the house a minute at the most. She can’t have got to the end of the road on her own in that time, which means someone must have taken her. It’s the only logical explanation.
In that time, the person who took her must have been nearby. I rack my brains, trying to think what I saw when I put Ellie in the car. Was anyone walking past? Were there any cars parked up? Try as I might, I can’t visualise anything. All I can see is the empty car seat.
I look out the living room window and try to jog my memory, but it’s no use. My eyes scan past the end of the drive, across the road and up at the front window of number 39 across the road. I see the silhouette of the man who lives there, standing as still as a statue in his front room, his shape outlined by the sun that streams through from the back of his house. A few moments later, he walks away and his figure recedes.
There have been stories and rumours about this guy. Derek, his name is. He must be well into his late eighties by now. He was easily in his sixties when I was at school, when we lived about three-quarters of a mile away from here.
We used to have to walk down Rushmere Road each day to get to school, and Derek would often be seen standing at his front window, just staring out. On the rare occasions that he’d ventured outside, there had been all sorts of stories about what he’d said or done to kids at the school. I’d always assumed they were just silly schoolboy rumours made up about a lonely old guy who lived on his own. I never thought anything more of it.
When we came to look at this house before buying it, the rumours about Derek did cross my mind but only fleetingly. After all, the guy was overwhelmingly likely to be completely harmless, if a little odd, and for all we knew he didn’t live there any more anyway. Of course, since then we had come to realise that he did still live there.
Being Derek’s neighbour gave us a completely different insight. He was no longer the weird recluse, but the man who always knew everything that was going on in Rushmere Road. He’d been here since the houses were built and this was his domain. Whenever we had a party, we’d invariably get a visit from the local police at some point, saying there’d been a complaint from a neighbour.
We spoke to the neighbours on both sides about this, and both denied complaining and said they’d had the same issues in the past and had suspected Derek. Of course, nothing had ever been done about it by the police as the noise would’ve been barely audible from the road, let alone Derek’s house. He just didn’t want to see other people having fun. As far as I’m concerned, living on your own and as you want to is absolutely fine, but don’t try to stop other people having fun.
I don’t think any of our neighbours have ever had a conversation with Derek. I know I certainly haven’t, and I’ve never seen him talking to anyone else. The only time anyone ever sees him is if they happen to be looking out of their window at eight o’clock in the evening when, regular as clockwork, Derek takes a black bin bag out of the house and puts it in his wheelie bin.
In a roundabout way, he got what he wanted anyway. We haven’t had a party in years, and I don’t recall any of our neighbours even having had the TV up loud.
A thought occurs to me. With the amount of time Derek spends standing at his front window, he’s more likely than anyone to have seen something. His house is right opposite ours, and he can see our whole driveway. Any sign of something going on across the road and he’d be straight at the window with his binoculars out.
Before I’ve even thought about what I’m going to say, I’ve slipped my shoes on and I’m out of the door, jogging down the driveway and
across the road to number 39. I knock on the door and wait, catching my breath. There’s no answer.
I knock again, knowing damn well Derek’s in as I’ve just seen him. I think maybe he’s a bit deaf, so I knock louder. He’d better not be deaf, especially not after complaining about the noise so much. After a few moments I sigh and walk back down his drive. As I reach the end, I spin on my heels and catch sight of him disappearing behind a curtain as my eyes meet the window.
I march back up his drive and knock on the window.
‘Derek, I just want to speak to you. Please. I’ve got a problem and I want to know if you saw anything. I need your help.’
Silence. Well, that went well. There’s no way I can force this guy to open his door. The best I can do is mention him to the police as a potential witness and hope they don’t think I’m losing the plot. They may have spoken to him at some point anyway if they’ve been going door to door.
As I get back to the end of his driveway and start to look down the road to see if it’s safe to cross, I hear the sound of Derek’s front door unlatching. I slow and turn around just as it opens. I walk back up the driveway carefully, trying not to seem too anxious or keen. Derek just looks at me, his eyes narrowed, looking both concerned and suspicious at the same time.
‘Thank you,’ I say, unable to think of anything else. I stand a good fifteen feet away from him, not wanting to get any closer. I consider this an achievement as it is. ‘I just need your help. I’ve lost my daughter. My little girl, Ellie. She disappeared this morning. She was in the car, then I went inside to get something and I came back and she was gone. I wondered if you saw anything. Maybe a strange car, people acting suspiciously. Anything.’
Derek looks at me for a few moments longer, then lowers his eyes to the floor. ‘I didn’t see anything,’ he says, as he takes a step back and closes the door.
