The Ones You Trust

by Caroline Overington

  Emma was speechless.

  ‘Okay, let’s get past the awkwardness,’ said Maven. ‘Fix her hair, Edie. Let’s just get on with it. We’re all professionals.’

  Edie grimaced, but took Emma by the elbow and led her to the sofa. ‘Let me fix your hair up,’ she said, taking a brush from a tool belt slung low on her hips. She began lightly brushing Emma’s tangles.

  ‘Tick, tick,’ said Maven, tapping her Apple Watch.

  ‘And we have to get you miked up,’ said Panton, holding up a bud from Police Media supplies. ‘I probably don’t have to tell you how this works?’

  ‘No,’ said Emma.

  ‘Let’s just hurry,’ said Maven, as Edie used both hands to try to tame Emma’s lacquered hair. ‘We don’t want to miss 6 am.’

  ‘Are you okay?’ Edie said, her face full of concern for Emma.

  ‘She’s holding up very well,’ said Maven.

  ‘I want my daughter back,’ said Emma. ‘I feel like I’m going to be sick. I can’t stand it, Edie.’

  Edie’s face drained of colour. ‘They’ll find her,’ she said. ‘Of course they’ll find her. Look, why don’t we get you out of those clothes? Aren’t these yesterday’s pants? They’re all grubby.’

  ‘I slept in them. Not that I slept. I lay down with the boys.’

  ‘It’s okay. Lisa brought you some new things.’

  She stepped aside to allow Lisa to unzip a clothing bag and show off a snowy white suit – pants and a jacket – with a sky-blue blouse underneath.

  ‘I don’t think I can get changed,’ said Emma. ‘I can’t seem to do anything.’

  ‘I’ll help you,’ promised Edie.

  ‘Go with her,’ urged Maven. ‘I’m going to make sure we’re ready to go. Imagine if we got out there and there was no Stellar crew.’

  Maven stepped outside the front gate, and the media swarmed. She took her time extracting a navy-coloured cigarette from her packet. She lit it, puffing a few times to get the end burning.

  ‘Okay,’ she said, exhaling smoke over one shoulder as the pack stuck out their microphones and iPhone recorders. ‘We’re going to have a presser. Emma, her husband, Brandon, and Detective Paul Franklin. He’s in charge here. Six am. on the dot. Where’s my lot?’ She looked around for the team from Stellar.

  ‘Here.’

  A young blonde reporter shot her hand up. Maven met her eye, approvingly. She had a jaded old cameraman by her side.

  ‘So we are good to go,’ Maven said.

  ‘Will it be inside?’ the Stellar reporter said.

  ‘No. You’re all going to have to set up your gear on the opposite side of the street.’

  ‘Why, Maven?’ cried a young blogger, from the back of the pack. ‘Why can’t we go inside? Is the house a crime scene?’

  ‘Of course it’s not a fucking crime scene,’ said Maven. ‘What is wrong with you? The house is off limits because they’ve got little kids in there. Don’t be such a ghoul.’

  She glanced around. Besides the media, a crowd of bystanders had formed, many of them Cuppa fans, including one who had a sign saying, We Love You Emma.

  ‘And there’ll be no questions,’ she said, taking another puff of her navy cigarette.

  ‘No questions? Come off it, Maven!’

  Maven looked to see who was objecting. It was an older reporter, a bloke known as Strewth, from the Saturn Network. Maven’s face hardened. She took a last puff, dropped her cigarette and ground it into the footpath.

  ‘We’ve got a serious situation here.’ Pausing, she added, ‘I wouldn’t have thought I’d have to remind you, Strewth, that this isn’t a game. A little girl is missing. Maybe not treat it like your own whodunit?’

  She pressed the intercom on the gate. Panton answered.

  ‘We’ll be ready out here in five minutes,’ Maven said. Turning back to the pack, she said, ‘You heard. You’ve got five minutes.’

  The media pack hurried across the street to set up their cameras. The blonde TV reporters took up positions in the front, while the more seasoned male reporters, with their salt-and-pepper hair, took up positions in the back.

  Inside the house, Emma stood up in the outfit Lisa had chosen for the press conference.

  ‘Let me just . . .’ said Edie, reaching up to smooth Emma’s hair one final time, but Emma shook her head forcefully.

  ‘Let’s do this,’ she said. ‘Are you ready, Brandon?’

  Brandon, waiting impatiently in the kitchen with his hands splayed on the bench top, lifted his head. ‘Thank Christ,’ he said. ‘Let’s get this done, already. Let’s find her.’

  Franklin led the way, with a rolled sheet of notes in his hand. He pulled the front gate open and stepped out, with Emma right behind him, and Brandon behind her, into the blaze of flashes. Emma immediately recognised Stellar’s own crew, and most of the paps, and by force of habit, she politely acknowledged them.

  ‘Ladies and gentlemen, thank you all for coming,’ said Franklin. ‘I’m Detective Paul Franklin, and I’m going to briefly describe the situation we’ve got on our hands here, an urgent situation, really, and then we’ll hear from Emma, and her husband, Brandon. So if you’re all good to go?’

  The reporters in the front row nodded. The cameramen kept their eyes to their view finders.

  Franklin unrolled his notes, cleared his throat and began to read.

  ‘As most of you will know, NSW Police last night launched an Amber Alert, urgently seeking information about the whereabouts of a seventeen-month-old girl, Fox-Piper Cardwell-Cole, who is the daughter of Emma Cardwell and her husband, Brandon Cole,’ he said, turning briefly towards both of them. ‘Yesterday Fox-Piper attended daycare at the Crayon and Clay childcare centre in the Gallery Main Street shopping complex. She was due to be collected by her father at around 5 pm, but in fact, we believe that she was taken much earlier than that, around 1 pm. You should all have the description of the person who is believed to have taken Fox from the daycare centre. That description has been given to us by a woman who works at the centre. We have been checking CCTV cameras from Gallery Main Street, and while we haven’t yet managed to find any relevant footage, we are confident there will be some soon. In the meantime, we can say that police have grave concerns for the safety of Fox-Piper . . .’

  Emma gasped.

  Franklin, thinking that Emma must be reacting to his clumsy turn of phrase, went to speed things up. ‘It’s obviously been an extremely tough night for everyone here. We are desperate – I don’t mind saying that – we are desperate for information, and we are urging anyone with information to please come forward . . .’

  He had more to say but Emma gasped again, louder and more urgently this time. Franklin turned to look at her. Emma’s mouth was hanging open. Her hand was on her throat. Franklin followed her gaze. Reporters in the front row, seeing Emma’s eyes bugging, did the same.

  ‘What is it, Emma?’ said Franklin.

  She couldn’t speak. She gasped yet again. Finally she got the words out. ‘It’s him.’

  ‘It’s who?’ urged Franklin.

  ‘It’s him,’ said Emma, lunging furiously in the direction of a man with broken yellow teeth standing alongside the media.

  ‘Fuck,’ said Maven, alarmed. ‘It’s Lindt Ball Man!’

  Tuesday 13 October

  6:15 am

  ‘One thing we do know is that celebrities – people who live their lives in the public eye – they attract a number of what we might call stalkers . . . fans can get quite obsessive . . .’

  ‘Get back in the house.’

  Franklin reached for Emma, dragging her back as she lunged in the direction of Lindt Ball Man. Confused reporters began shouting questions: ‘What’s going on? Who did you see, Emma?’

  ‘Everyone get back,’ said Maven, thrusting herself forward. ‘Give Emma some space.’

  Most of the reporters backed off. Only Strewth from Brew stood his ground, directing his cameraman to keep filming as mayhem unfolded on the
footpath around him.

  ‘I’m not sure you saw that, Cassie? Did everyone see that? We’ve just had some dramatic scenes here at the home of Emma Cardwell . . .’

  Maven made a disgusted face, while Franklin and Panton hustled Brandon and Emma back through her own front door.

  ‘What the fuck was he doing here?’ said Brandon.

  Franklin, his suit jacket awry from the jostling, turned to Panton, saying, ‘Did we grab him?’

  Panton nodded. ‘We got him. He’s in a squad car,’ she said. ‘He’s cuffed. He’s saying he just wanted to see Emma. He’s got a bag of chocolate.’

  ‘If he’s got my daughter, I’m going to kill him,’ said Brandon.

  ‘Calm down,’ said Franklin. ‘Emma, that is the bloke you were telling me about?’

  ‘Yes! He’s the weirdo. He’s the reason why we got Liam! Where is Liam?’ said Emma.

  ‘Your mother sent him home,’ said Maven. ‘But who thought this guy would turn up?’

  ‘Isn’t this what guilty people do?’ asked Emma. ‘Turn up at the scene of the crime?’

  Franklin thought, yes, that is exactly what guilty people do. They turn up at the scene of the crime. They revisit their own hit-and-runs. They plead for information about their missing wives, when they themselves are the killer.

  But did they turn up at a kidnapping when they still had the child? Emma had described her Lindt Ball stalker as a menace. A pest. A nuisance. Franklin had caught a glimpse of the man in question, as he popped out of the media pack. Skinny legs, old knees, stomach like he’d swallowed a basketball. Was he capable of a stunt like this? Coordinating the whole thing? Finding somebody to get Fox and hide her? Maven had described the bloke as a loser camped out in his mum’s basement at the age of fifty-five. A lonely guy who hadn’t updated his suit since the eighties. It didn’t feel like a match for a sophisticated kidnapping, so if he was responsible, who was helping him? And where was Fox now? And why would Lindt Ball Man turn up at the kidnapping? If he was completely crazy, maybe he might turn up and confess. He might say, ‘I took her and I’m never going to tell you where she is.’ But he wasn’t saying that. According to a duty officer, radioing in from outside, he was saying he wanted to give Emma his bag of bloody chocolate.

  ‘We’ll get him taken to the station,’ Franklin said. ‘I’ll go and interview him. Panton, I’ll need you to hold the fort here.’

  He was about to say more when Sullivan approached from left field.

  ‘Detective Franklin?’ she said, urgently. ‘We have a sighting.’

  They rushed as a group to Brandon’s office, where they found one of the sergeants, Cheryl Palmer, standing near his desk. She had unplugged the police laptop and was holding it aloft.

  ‘Have a look at this,’ she said, handing it to Franklin.

  ‘No, let me,’ said Emma, urgently trying to snatch the laptop from him.

  ‘Emma, no,’ said Franklin, using his height to surf the laptop out of Emma’s reach. ‘Let’s get out of this little space and go to the kitchen.’

  They surged out to the bench in time to see Margaret hurrying the bug-eyed boys out the glass doors.

  ‘Where is it from?’ asked Franklin.

  ‘It’s from Gallery Main Street,’ said Sergeant Palmer. ‘We’ve been looking long enough. We found nothing on the Parents With Prams cameras. The camera in the ATM directly outside Crayon and Clay was busted—’

  ‘Busted? Deliberately?’

  ‘No. Busted for a week. But then this morning a security guard rings his boss and says he saw Fox yesterday.’

  ‘Yesterday where? When yesterday?’ Emma demanded.

  ‘The time’s right. It’s around one o’clock. The guard said she was alone . . .’

  ‘Alone?’ said Emma, her expression panic-stricken. ‘What do you mean, she was alone?’

  Panton put a hand on her shoulder. ‘It’s okay, Emma.’

  ‘But how could she be alone?’ said Emma. Her eyes were wild and her tone distraught. ‘Why take her out of childcare and dump her?’

  ‘Nobody would do that,’ said Brandon.

  Franklin placed the laptop on the kitchen bench. He could feel Emma pressing into him as he tried to get the image up.

  ‘Everyone be quiet,’ he said. ‘Let’s look.’

  The images were grainy and there was no volume, but Sergeant Palmer was right: it could absolutely be Fox in her gumboots, alone, near the bottom of an escalator.

  ‘Where exactly is this?’ Franklin said.

  ‘It’s one floor down from Crayon and Clay,’ said Palmer. ‘We’re trying to figure out how she got there. We’re checking all the lifts, all the shops, but keep watching.’

  ‘What am I looking for?’ said Franklin, leaning in further.

  ‘Watch,’ Palmer repeated. ‘She’s not alone for long.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ said Emma, but they could all see exactly what she meant: Fox was for a moment alone and crying near the base of the escalator, and then the security guard approached and got down as if to speak to her, and then, just seconds later, a bosomy woman in a loose pair of pants came rushing up. She was aged about sixty, out of breath, and carrying a backpack by the straps.

  ‘Who is she?’ asked Franklin.

  ‘I have absolutely no idea!’ cried Emma, peering in. ‘That is Fox’s bag. Brandon?’

  ‘I don’t know either,’ said Brandon, his face ashen. ‘Jesus, what is this?’

  Franklin plucked his suit jacket off the back of a chair and made for Emma’s front door.

  ‘I’m going straight there,’ he said, wriggling one arm into a baggy sleeve. ‘I want to talk to that security guard.’

  ‘I’ll come with you,’ said Emma, eyes darting around the kitchen bench, as if searching for her keys.

  ‘No,’ said Franklin, firmly. ‘Absolutely not, Emma. I need you to stay here. What if the ransom demand comes in?’

  She hesitated.

  ‘I’ll stay with you,’ said Panton, her expression reassuring.

  ‘No. You have to come with me,’ said Franklin.

  Panton glanced at Emma. She appeared distraught, but she nodded. ‘I’ll be okay,’ she said.

  ‘Don’t answer a single question,’ Franklin said as he headed out through the front door with Panton rushing out behind him. She’d been up all night, and yet she looked fresh, with her hair still tightly gathered into a bun at the nape of her neck. ‘They’re going to go for us like jackals.’

  He opened the gate. Media swarmed. Franklin refused to say so much as ‘no comment’, while Panton hurried along behind, saying, ‘Excuse me, if you could make way, excuse me,’ as she made her way through the forest of bobbing microphones.

  ‘Jesus. Where did they park my car?’ said Franklin.

  Panton looked around perplexed, then pointed. ‘There.’ To a fellow cop, she said, ‘I’m going to need a witch’s hat. Stand here in this vacant space, and don’t let anyone park here. Anyone tries, they get towed.’

  ‘Well done,’ said Franklin. He clicked the locks of his car open, yanked on the door, got behind the wheel and pushed the seat well back from the dashboard.

  Panton used her two-way to get instructions from police at Gallery Main Street. ‘They’re saying that when we get there, we should go down to the basement car park,’ she said. ‘Centre management have their offices downstairs.’

  Franklin battled the early morning traffic using a combination of lights and sirens. A couple of media cars – paps, probably – were in pursuit, and he was keen to lose as many of them as he could. He zoomed up to the boom gate at Gallery Main Street, yanked out a ticket, and drove down the ramp into the underground car park.

  Panton pointed to a middle-aged man in a blue suit, standing and waving at them from an open doorway. ‘That must be centre management,’ she said.

  Franklin parked his car as close as he could, and they both got out.

  ‘Detective Paul Franklin,’ he said, approaching.


  ‘Bryce Pascoe,’ said the centre manager. ‘I’ve got your colleagues inside. We’ve been here a few hours. What a nightmare for Emma! And I just love her. My security guard is here too.’

  They walked single file down a short corridor, to a room where two rows of duty officers and detectives were sitting around a bank of TV screens. Most had spent the night trying to isolate shots of Fox on the hours and hours of footage from hundreds of cameras. They glanced in Franklin’s direction, but kept on with their task.

  ‘Where’s the security guard?’ asked Franklin.

  ‘This way,’ said Pascoe.

  They crossed the hallway, and went into Pascoe’s office. The guard had not been rostered on, according to Pascoe, but he had come into work in his uniform – a thin pair of black trousers, and a crisp white shirt, with black epaulets – and he was sitting in Pascoe’s chair, but rose when Franklin entered and offered the detective the pink palm of an otherwise jet black hand.

  ‘What’s your name?’ said Franklin.

  ‘Mehmet Ahmed.’

  ‘And you work here?’

  ‘Since last year.’

  ‘Tell me what you saw.’

  ‘I saw the kid first,’ Mehmet said. ‘She was standing at the bottom of the escalator. You’ve seen the footage, right? She was standing there, and she looked lost. I walk up to her. Then this lady comes running over. Not running. She was pretty fat.’

  ‘Did you speak to her? Did she say anything?’

  ‘I said, is she yours? I already spoke to the kid. I said, are you lost? But she doesn’t answer me. I ask this lady, is she with you? I’m about to call centre management – we can do call-outs for kids, we’ve got a lost kids room – and this lady says, “Oh, you found her” and “Thank you, thank you.”’

  ‘Any idea of her age?’

  ‘I don’t know mate. Sixty? She’s puffing, saying she ran off. And like: don’t run off like that again.’

  ‘And the little girl, did she seem to know her?’

  ‘She was crying when I first saw her,’ said Mehmet. ‘She kind of stopped when the lady came up. And she knew her name.’