by Lee Weeks
‘Yes, of course. It’s only two thirty. We won’t be long.’
‘All right, baby, if you’re sure. Take the dog.’
‘I can’t. He’ll be a nuisance and he won’t be allowed into work. I’ll take him out when I get back.’
Lauren knelt before Samuel and pulled up the zipper on his all-in-one suit. Samuel stared down at his front as he pressed one of the appliquéd snow-flakes on the front of the suit.
‘Grandma give it to me.’
‘Yes. You lucky boy.’ She kissed him.
‘And Grandma give me this . . .’ He frowned and tugged at his snowflake mittens threaded on a string through the arms of his suit. ‘From A-merr-icka.’
‘Yes. That’s right.’ She pulled on his hat and then his mittens. ‘Be a good boy for Daddy.’
He nodded enthusiastically.
Lauren attacked her work with full concentration for an hour. Then she became distracted. The wind got up outside and the day turned stormy and prematurely dark. She reached for her phone. She’d just give Toby a call and see that Samuel wasn’t too cold out there. There was no answer.
She stood and went to the window. The view of the Thames was lost in the downpour. She glanced down at the street below.
She looked at the phone in her hand. He must have gone inside, she reassured herself. Samuel would be warm in the Observatory. Maybe Toby was right – she babied him too much. But, after all, there would never be a brother or sister for Samuel.
Her eyes looked back down to the road below. A woman had stopped and was staring up at her – her face was partly covered with a black scarf. She had a hood pulled up over her head and was standing with her hands in the pockets of her long dark coat. She looked immovable against the gusts of wind. One of the plants on the balcony blew over and crashed against the windowpane and Lauren jumped. When she looked back the woman had gone.
Lauren went back to her desk, but deep in her stomach she had the feeling of anxiousness, and it was growing. It was Samuel’s dinnertime now and after that she would run his bath. He’d have so many toys in there that there would be barely room for him. He’d play for ages filling up cups with water, making the waterwheels turn. Then she’d get him into his pyjamas, give him some warm milk and she’d read him stories and lie down beside him and drift off with him. That was her guilty pleasure, falling asleep next to him just for ten minutes or so, and then she’d creep out and Toby would have made her some dinner, poured her glass of wine and their adult time would begin.
The phone rang.
‘Toby? Where are you? It’s a quarter past five.’
‘Sorry we’re late. I’m coming up the street right now. It’s been hell trying to get through the crowds. There’s something wrong with the buggy’s steering.’
She laughed, relieved. ‘You’ll get used to it. I’ll meet you downstairs at the door.’
‘No need. I can manage.’
‘I want to.’
Lauren came out of their flat and took the lift down to the foyer. She nodded hello to the security guard and saw Toby, using his weight to pull the pram inside backwards. He managed to pull it so easily, she thought. It was always a struggle for her.
Lauren wanted to run over to Samuel. She wanted to take hold of him in her arms and kiss and cuddle him. She hated being apart from him but she knew she should be happy that Toby took him out on his own. She should be glad that he was showing an interest in his son at long last. She didn’t run, she walked across the foyer, past the pebbles and fountain and the reception desk. Toby was inside now. He turned the buggy forwards to push it towards her and he kept his eyes on hers. His shoulders were stiff. His gait awkward. She looked at his face and wanted to ask, ‘What’s the matter?’ Her eyes travelled down to his hands, down to the buggy and the loose strap on the seat. She felt her knees begin to give way. She felt her breath stop and her heart try to hammer blood round but it didn’t move. All time stopped. A heartbeat freeze-framed.
‘Where’s Samuel?’
Chapter 2
Detective Inspector Dan Carter watched and waited for the group of officers to form a circle around him. It was seven thirty p.m. and the sky was black. The open doors of the police van offered a partial windbreak from the deep cold that skimmed icy breaths across the River Thames and gusted around the police officers searching the park. Carter was standing in the glare of the Maritime Museum at the base of Greenwich Park, waiting to address the newest search team. He looked across to where his partner, Detective Constable Ebony Willis, was standing, wearing her trademark black quilted jacket, but today she also had a black beanie hat pulled down over her ears. Her ponytail ballooned from beneath it, lifting in the gusts of wind and floating around her shoulders like a black shawl. She stood with a map in her hands. He knew she was working out the logistics of the search parties. He saw her taking in the layout of the park that rose above them in the darkness, covering nearly two hundred acres. The Royal Observatory was on the brow of the hill, above them. He wondered if she’d ever been up to the Observatory. He knew he hadn’t. It was on his list but one of those things tourists did rather than Londoners. He watched the torchlight of officers as they fanned out along the paths that crisscrossed the park. The noise from the busy streets nearby rolled constant in the background. Access to the park was closed to the public. In daylight they would start a fingertip search, for now they were just looking for a two-year-old boy who had managed to give his father the slip.
Carter stood tapping his right foot, without realizing, as the feeling of anxiety, the pressing need to act, made every second he was waiting feel like an hour wasted.
He pressed his hands deep into the pockets of his dark-grey overcoat as he focused on each one of the officers. Willis came across to join him, laying the map out on the floor of the van.
‘The last sighting of Samuel was in his buggy at ten minutes past four when he was seen leaving the Royal Observatory with his father Toby.’ Carter addressed the hundred officers who stood around him.
Willis picked up the photo pack prepared for the officers and handed it out among them. ‘It is crucial that we find him fast,’ Carter said as he waited until all the officers had the pack. ‘You now have a photo of Samuel. He was wearing a navy all-in-one suit, which has two large snowflakes appliquéd on the front. This is distinctive and unusual; the maker’s label is Ski-Doo from the States. There are matching mittens, label just inside the cuff. He’s also wearing a cream-coloured knitted bobble hat and red snow boots from GAP. He has blond hair, blue eyes.’ Carter looked around and made sure each officer made eye contact. ‘We know how fast a kid’s hair can be dyed, how much a change of clothes and buggy can throw us off, but check every small child you see. Be polite but be insistent. Samuel’s only differentiating feature is a small raised birthmark the size of a five pence piece beside his left eyebrow. Make-up would have to be quite thick to cover it. We need to find this little boy. If he’s been dumped he won’t last the night in these temperatures.’
Carter pointed to the map layout on the floor in the back of the van.
‘We have divided the route into sections. You will be searching the section just west of the Cutty Sark DLR station – the officer in charge of your unit will divide you into teams and I’ll hand you over to them in a minute to explain in more detail. But before I do I just want to make sure each one of you understands – no stone left unturned. No bin unchecked, every space where a child could be hidden has to be examined. Remember, Samuel is smaller than your average two-year-old. He could have been squeezed into a very small space. I want you climbing walls and getting under cars. I want every inch checked. Any problems getting access to an area of interest, alert your commander straight away and we’ll get officers there to assist you. Good luck . . .’
Carter picked up his case and he and Willis walked across to his car, the black BMW parked on the approach to the park. Carter started the engine and reversed at speed.
‘We need to throw ever
ything at this, Eb.’ She nodded. She was deep in thought. Carter was used to being the one who chatted. ‘The father’s story is too vague,’ he continued. ‘Sensitive type, isn’t he? Doesn’t say a lot. He’s really vague when it comes to pinpointing his movements; there’s a missing period of almost forty minutes after he leaves the Observatory. Have you ever been there?’
‘Once.’
‘I’m impressed. Was it with that boyfriend who liked train sets?’
She didn’t rise to it; she’d heard it before. Instead, she reached into her backpack and pulled out her phone. Carter continued, ‘First he attends his famous dad’s funeral, then his son gets abducted. Been one hell of a day.’ In his head Carter was running through the checklist: ports, trains, motorway cameras. Service station, lorry drivers . . . ‘Robbo’s checking for any history on the father,’ said Carter, as he looked about him for a way out of the traffic jam they were in and decided to take a different route. Being the son of a London cabbie, and spending a lot of his spare time sitting next to his dad, meant that Carter’s knowledge of the streets of London was extensive. He also knew where to stop for the best bacon sarnies.
Willis had several things on her lap at once. The police radio was the best for receiving a signal no matter where but it wasn’t good at downloading data quickly. The smartphone was best at that. But for a bigger screen she needed her iPad and then she always had her notebook.
Carter glanced across at her lap. ‘Sort yourself out, Willis, for Christ’s sake.’
They’d worked together for the last four years. They knew one another’s strengths and weaknesses. Carter knew that Willis would have recorded all the facts in her analytical brain. But if he asked her what it was like to lose a child, she would look at him blankly and she’d struggle to put herself in those shoes. Whereas Carter came from a big part-Italian family. Family was everything to them. Willis had grown up with a mother whose cold heart and deranged mind led her to murder easily. Luckily, Ebony had been taken into care for a good part of her childhood.
‘He had a famous father but I doubt if anyone’s heard of Toby Forbes-Wright until today,’ said Willis.
‘Have we got Family Liaison in place? asked Carter. Willis made a grab for her lap as Carter did a U-turn and headed back the way they’d come, then scooted up a back street.
‘Yes, Jeanie Vincent has gone over already.’
‘Great, she’s the best. Any similar incidences, any attempted abductions in this area?’ asked Carter.
‘No, not so far as we know. We may get someone come forward after the public appeal; it’s just gone out on the radio,’ said Willis.
‘We’re going to need the public on this one,’ Carter said. ‘If the father left the belt undone on the buggy, and Samuel wandered off, he could have fallen into a gap somewhere. Jesus . . .’ Carter banged his hand on the steering wheel. ‘My Archie’s just a year older. He wouldn’t last two minutes in this cold. We have to find him fast.’
‘Would Archie ever have got out of his own buggy and run off?’
‘You’re kidding me? First chance he got! You have to have eyes in the back of your head with kids. Tell Robbo we’ll be back in twenty. I’m not waiting in this traffic any more.’ Carter put on his emergency lights and swerved into the bus lane.
The Murder Squad was part of the Major Investigation Team in London. They were based in three locations around the capital and served different areas. From its Archway location, tucked behind the tube station and connected to the local police station, Fletcher House housed three MIT teams and served north London.
It was an inconspicuous concrete box of a building joined by a door linking the buildings at the first floor. The officers in Archway police station said the door marked the entrance to the Dark Side. Carter and Willis worked on the third floor of the Dark Side in MIT 17.
When they got back, they went straight into the Major Incident Room to see if there had been any calls from the public. It was where all the information came in first before being filtered and then farmed out to the other departments. Inside the MIR there were four civilians working behind the desks, manning the phones, and two detectives sifting the information as it came in. A category-A incident – a missing child – drew a full team of both civilian staff and police officers. All leave was cancelled.
Carter approached a desk straight ahead.
‘Anything?’ he asked as he waited for the operator to come off the phone. Willis was checking the screens to see what information had been fed into HOLMES, the central program designed to coordinate major investigations. She gave Carter a sign that she was heading out. He nodded he understood.
‘One sighting of a kid with a snowflake on his jacket, sir,’ the operator answered. ‘But turned out to be a picture the child was holding on his lap. Several new sightings of Toby Forbes-Wright – all confirm the first half of his route.’ The officer from the desk on the left looked through the pages of notes beside him and said, ‘A woman in a café saw him. A man walking his dog on the park. All of them confirm seeing Toby pushing a buggy but no one looked inside it or noticed Samuel after four fifteen.’
‘No one saw him on the walk back from the Observatory to his home?’
‘Not so far.’
Carter followed Willis down to the Enquiry Team office. Long desks housed detectives working diagonally across from one another, their monitors back-to-back. He negotiated his way across the busy office. The commotion of a full team working flat out made the room squawk and yell like a stock market on a ‘boom or bust’ day. All officers who had been working on other cases were now focused on Samuel Forbes-Wright’s disappearance. Everything else could wait. Carter stopped at the second of six desks from the left and looked over Willis’s shoulder at her screen. She was looking at CCTV footage from the camera outside the Cutty Sark.
‘Anything?’
‘It was very busy, that’s one thing.’ She tapped her pen on the list of names next to her: ‘Looking at the sex offenders’ register.’ Each name was accompanied by a duo of mug shots and a brief resumé. ‘All the addresses were around the Greenwich area. Number four on the list looks interesting – Malcolm Camber. He’s only just come out of prison and he went inside for child abduction – he kidnapped and assaulted a four-year-old boy, released him after four hours.’
‘Where did he let him go?’
‘Parkland near his home.’
‘Does he work alone?’ asked Carter.
‘He did then. We have no idea what friends he might have made in prison.’
‘Have you been in touch with his parole office?’
‘Yes, his parole officer said he called in sick the last few days.’
‘Did she go round to see him?’
‘She went round this afternoon but he wasn’t there.’
‘Put a warrant out – pick him up urgently. Anyone else?’
Ebony pulled out three files.
‘There are seven more living in the same area who are high priority.’
‘Get someone round to their houses with a search warrant now. I’ll head down to talk to Robbo.’
‘Yes, guv.’
Across from Willis was an empty chair, that of Jeanie Vincent, the Family Liaison Officer.
‘Jeanie been in touch yet?’
‘Not with me, maybe with Robbo?’ answered Willis.
Robbo looked up from his desk as Carter walked in. Robbo had worked in the force for over twenty years and sat next to his ‘work-wife’ Pam. He’d had a lifelong affair with Haribo sweets and great coffee but he was really addicted to work and had to be reminded that the purpose of work was to enjoy a better life and not the other way round.
‘How’s the father’s background looking?’ Carter asked Pam.
Pam looked over her leopard-print reading glasses as she answered: ‘Private education, the best. He went on to study Physics and Astronomy at Oxford. He’s been working in the Observatory, full time, sourcing and making the interactive exhibits fo
r the last seven years. He’s extremely bright. The Observatory job is almost a volunteer post. He gets paid less than twenty thousand a year.’
‘It’s a hobby then,’ said Carter.
‘He’s capable of a lot, on paper.’ Pam scrolled down her screen and made notes as she went. ‘I mean, I’m not being funny, but if my kid had gone to Eton I would have wanted him to aim a bit higher, at least earn a good salary. That’s a hell of a lot of investment.’ She glanced up and over her glasses. ‘Not keen on living in the real world, maybe?’
‘And what about her?’ asked Carter.
‘Lauren Forbes-Wright works for an American drugs company with a research department over here in east London,’ answered Pam. ‘We are guessing that’s how they can afford to live in the middle of Greenwich; it’s the usual thing for Glastons to pick up the tab on their overseas workers. Toby and her married in 2011 and they produced Samuel bang-on nine months later.’
‘There’s a twelve-year age difference,’ added Robbo.
‘So she could have been looking at a ticking baby clock when she married him. And what about him? What was he looking for, do we think?’ Carter asked.
‘The mum he never had, maybe?’ answered Robbo. ‘She ran away to live in Argentina with a boyfriend when Toby was seven. His dad packed him off to boarding school soon after. Seems like Jeremy Forbes-Wright concentrated on his career, for all the good it did him.’
‘That’s the trouble when you set yourself up as Mr Traditional Values and spotless,’ said Pam, ‘and then caught with an underage escort.’
‘That was denied, and a long time ago,’ said Carter.
‘Maybe he just couldn’t pay his way out this time,’ said Robbo. ‘But is that enough to kill yourself over? Politicians have survived worse.’
