Give Me the Child

by Mel McGrath

  I take an Uber across town, sitting low in the seat this time, afraid of being spotted, to the grand Victorian villa in Springfield Road where the Barrons’ family drama has unspooled. Hurrying up the black and white tiles to the porch, I find the front door slightly ajar. Leaving it as it is, I slip inside. A child’s footprints muddy the black and white hallway tiles but even as I’m calling Joshua’s name I know he’s not here. No one is here. The house is empty. There is no Joshua and no nanny.

  Gone.

  I make my way through to the kitchen where only yesterday I sat with Emma Barrons as she wept over her son. A carton of milk sits on its side beside the fridge, its contents pooled onto the tiles and already smelling sour. There are bowls on the table containing half-eaten mounds of cereals. Broken biscuits lie scattered across the floor. Nothing direct, nothing definite, only clues.

  The living room is as torn up as the kitchen. Several cushions are lying on the floor partly emptied and there are feathers everywhere. Beside the fireplace most of a box of matches lie scattered, burnt, but there’s no fuel in the grate, only the remnants of family photographs. A single photo sits on the mantelpiece, or rather half of one – the right side has been almost completely burnt away, leaving only the nanny’s shiny red shoes. The remnant shows Joshua, looking very pleased with himself. In his hand is a tarantula. A trip to the zoo.

  The basement access to the nanny’s quarters is unlocked. There are two main rooms, a living/dining area and a bedroom with a cupboard-sized bathroom leading from it. The impression is of a place left in a hurry. The soap in the bathroom sink is still damp and there is bread on the counter in the kitchenette. In the bedroom there is an old pack of cards, some cotton wool balls and a single blue-striped sock. Erika has left the building.

  In the seconds during which my mind is processing the scene, I am becoming aware of a strong acrid odour. The smell grows up the steps from the basement to the ground floor. From the hallway by the stairs it is clear that something strange is happening on the upper landing. The patterned stair carpet appears to be moving. My heart ticks. What the hell is that? A shadow?

  ‘Joshua?’

  The shriek of adrenaline coursing around my body. Otherwise, silence.

  Upstairs the carpet seethes. Contradictory thoughts criss-cross my brain, trains on tracks with broken signalling. Then, suddenly, something pricks at my left ankle, a small and random neural event or some tiny outpost of a rising panic. I shake my leg to bring it back into my body. Above me the carpet continues to crawl slowly closer. Something begins to fall. Rain? No, tiny black grains, like sand. The line of shadow has progressed almost to the edge of the stairs. Another nervous prickle. I am conscious of some signal flashing in my mind. Ideas shunting into sidings until only one remains.

  Those are not black grains. This is not sand. It is not raining. The movement is no trick of the light.

  The carpet is alive.

  A great tide is washing up against the walls, cresting and falling, the swell advancing inexorably towards the stairs, filling the house with the musty nose-burning stench of formic acid.

  Ants.

  Insect battalions, seething up the walls and dropping from the ceiling. Ants now in my hair and the insides of my ears.

  ‘What the hell is going on up there?’ My voice is loud and met only with the soft burr of the ant army on the march. Steeling myself, I climb the stairs and step onto the upstairs landing. Here the whole carpet is swaying and pulsing now and I am moving across it, leaving ragged prints of crushed ant bodies, shaking insects from my feet. No matter how fast I brush them off, more come on, a relentless, marauding wall of insect life. Bite. Bite. Bite.

  Please don’t let my daughter be here. Not Freya. Anyone, anything but not her. Not Freya. Not Freya. Not Freya.

  Three doors lead off the landing. The ants appear to be coming from the one most distant so that’s my target. I use my boot to push open the door. The smell inside is almost unbearable. I have to force myself to look around. A boy’s bedroom. There’s a bed pushed up against the left-hand wall, beside it a small table with a lamp. Three of the walls are covered in shelving, but where most boys might store footballs and model cars, computer games and skateboards, the shelves are stacked almost to the ceiling with rows of formicaria, busy ant farms, their lids removed, tossed to the floor and already half obscured under the carpet of insects. The bed, the curtains, the little nightstand are seething sculptures.

  Creepy-crawlies, his mother said. Joshua likes to bury things.

  In a flash I am hurtling back down the stairs, pulling at my clothes and shoes, palming the insects from my skin, and out through the back door into the garden. Hard landscaping slopes up to flower beds, a summerhouse and a shed. The summerhouse is empty. The door to the shed is padlocked. I press my face against the window. A mower takes up much of the floor space. Neatly stacked garden tools emerge from the gloom. Wherever they are, they’re not here. I straighten up, pressing a thumb into the opposite palm to help me focus a moment, and in that pause the rich, soft, horrifying and unmistakable smell of putrescine. My eyes shoot around and alight on a compost heap behind the shed and, before I’m really aware of it, I’m scooping frantically at the pile of lawn clippings, leaves and food waste until my hand alights on some weighty object. A dead rat. I step back, shaken, stamping the compost from my trainers.

  Stay calm, Caitlin. Freya is alive. Somewhere in the city, Freya is alive.

  Back through the door into the kitchen, I am met by the sound of the front door swinging open. I step back into the pantry, hastily pull the door to and freeze. A child’s steps make their way up the tiled hallway and into the kitchen and Joshua Barrons appears, humming a tune I don’t recognise. I know that if I confront him, he’ll do everything in his power to divert and waylay me. Better to stay hidden and let him lead me to my daughter. The kettle whistles and clicks off. Through the gap in the door, I watch the steam rise as Joshua pours the boiling contents onto the stream of insects. A moment or two later, he disappears, then he’s back with a box of matches, singing still. There’s a thin fizzle as the tiny flames land on watered tiles, followed by a smell of cordite. The singing stops and is followed by the sound of footsteps leading out of the kitchen and into the hallway. There’s a pause then the front door opens and swings shut and, in an instant, I’m out of the cupboard and scooting through the kitchen and out into the hallway past the smouldering stair carpet and through a soup of dead and dying insects.

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  Along Springfield Road Joshua Barrons marches, hands deep in the pockets of his cargos, a boy on a mission. Whatever he’s up to, he’s probably been thinking about it for a while, playing it over in his mind, working out the finer points, waiting for the right moment. The street is already busy with commuters. Somewhere sirens are blaring. For a day or two after the riots people would look up in alarm, but no one bothers now. The pavement is sticky and the sky is the boiled, greasy white of restaurant steam. A week is a long time in the capital, two weeks is an eternity, and it’s the end of the working week and people are looking forward to getting home to their families. A twelve-year-old boy on his own who seems neither distressed nor lost is unlikely to attract attention. Passers-by look right through him.

  At the back entrance to the park Joshua hesitates long enough for a sudden sunburst to light up the crown of his head. A halo for a dark boy. If Joshua were any other child, I would catch up with him now and confront him, cajole, wheedle, threaten if I had to. But Joshua Barrons is not to be persuaded or pressured. The second the kid senses a crack opening up, a tiny tear in the fabric of my defences, he’ll dive in. At the clinic I was invulnerable to his manipulation, but things have changed. Now I’m afraid of what I might agree to for the promise of finding my daughter.

  While he bowls along the periphery of the park I hang back to avoid being seen. At the north corner of the park he stops again at a yellow crime board, a remnant of the riots, pulls out a single flowe
r from a memorial bunch, stuffs the bloom into his pocket and is off again, doglegging past The King’s Arms and into a side street. I am closing in on him, though still keeping back. If I called him now, he would turn but I’m afraid he’ll run and then I’ll lose him. I know Joshua Barrons, but I can only guess what is going on in his head. A woman sitting on the table outside the pub smoking looks up momentarily from her mobile phone and watches him pass, but he does not appear to notice her.

  The woman watches me narrow-eyed then looks away, embarrassed. My guess is she has seen something desperate in my expression and is wondering what I’m doing. I’ve had the same thought myself. What if I’m wrong and all of this is wasting precious time?

  Up ahead Joshua turns into Terrance Grove, a quiet residential street of nondescript Victorian terraces that leads at the far end to the Ravenscourt Estate. At the end of the Grove he dives into the narrow walkway leading through to the blocks of flats. What business could a boy like Joshua Barrons possibly have in the Ravenscourt?

  I curl around the edge of Wellesley House and from that vantage follow the boy’s path as he heads north towards Taylor House. Here the path makes a crossroads, the north and east leading deeper into the estate, while the western track snakes towards the periphery at Holland Hill. The boy stops and looks about, then he’s off again, bowling along the western path around Enderby House which gives out through a car park onto Holland Hill. At the entrance to the estate he stops and checks up and down as if he knows someone might be out looking for him, then, satisfied that no one is, crosses the road onto the eastern side of Holland Hill.

  It’s mid-afternoon now and the pavement is busy with commuters flowing up from Brixton Tube; the weekend exodus. Joshua crosses the road at the zebra then shoulders his way into the flow of people and starts off down the hill. Moments later, he doubles back past the bus stop and Jamal’s shop, past the makeshift memorial to LeShaun Toley, stopping momentarily to eye a ghost bike chained to the lamp post. A lump of dread materialises in my belly. I have a feeling I know where this boy is going. And whom he is hoping to see.

  Outside number forty-two Dunster Road, Joshua stops, brushes himself down and draws a smoothing hand over his head before reaching for the front gate and stepping down the path. He’s out of sight for a moment before reappearing and darting out of the gate as though anxious not to be seen. I watch him slink around to the Fricks’ house and dive behind the hedge. Moments later, Shelly Frick appears at the gate, scopes about and, with a shrug, retreats back inside. For what seems like an age nothing happens. Then the gate at number forty-two opens and Ruby Winter creeps out onto the pavement. In an instant, Joshua has darted out from the hedge and the two children are hurrying in silence, as if on urgent business. At the top of the road, they turn right towards Holland Hill. I follow on, keeping my head down to avoid the police and staying far enough back that if one of them were to turn, my face would be only one among dozens. Down the hill they go, hand in hand, weaving in and out of the flow of commuters, oddly silent, their shoulders set determinedly forward, two kids engaged in a terrible folie à deux. I stay back, keeping their heads in view, determined not to lose them, pulse racing, heart a fist jammed in my throat.

  At the junction with Brixton town hall, the duo stop at the traffic lights as if weighing up their options, then, when the lights change, they cross the road and at the corner stop a second before diving into McDonald’s. On the other side of the road, two policemen stand watching the crowd, their fingers tucked inside their stab vests. I could go over and explain that the two children in McDonald’s have abducted my daughter but they would radio in and know immediately that the police are actively searching for a woman who looks very much like me. They’d be informed that I’m mentally unstable and, having lost a domestic violence case in which my daughter’s custody was at stake, I have followed my husband and his children to the park and abducted Freya. They might well go into McDonald’s and question Joshua and Ruby and most likely return them to their homes. The only way to deal with me would be at the police station. Even if I were able to convince them about Joshua and Ruby, precious moments, maybe hours would be lost. Caitlin Lupo, probably mentally ill, certainly in breach of her DVPO, currently a person of interest in the possible abduction of her daughter. Can you step this way, please, madam?

  Who knows where Freya is and what kind of danger she might be in? Even – paralysing thought – whether she is still alive? Waiting is the worst kind of torture but there’s no choice except to hang back at the corner of Acre Lane and hope that no one sees me.

  It’s not long, though it feels like an eternity, before Ruby and Joshua reappear, each sucking on a domed slush. They seem distracted now – their initial energy has dissipated – but with purpose in mind. Checking for traffic, they dart in between a refrigerated lorry and a bus. The bus heaves forward a few feet. I look on, waiting for them to emerge from the line of vehicles into the central reservation. A minute passes, then another. Commuters sashay between the vehicles. On the other side of the street the two coppers are quizzing a tramp. At the Tube station a busker starts up. The lights change to green and the traffic begins to heave clear of the lights. There’s a sudden blast of diesel fumes as the driver of the lorry hits the accelerator and the line of vehicles fans out as it crosses over the lights and up the hill. A gap opens up. The bus dives into the opening then swings over to the side of the road to pick up passengers. I rush across. Up ahead, Joshua’s head becomes visible for an instant before he disappears into the early rush-hour crowd sweeping inexorably towards the station.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  Question: in a city of eight million souls, where do you find a single hidden child?

  Answer: you look in the heart of the person who hid her.

  What would you like to be, Joshua?

  A Tube driver.

  And why’s that?’

  Because when people jump in front of the train their heads explode and it’s cool.

  The station is a human cascade. For weeks an escalator has been out and there has been chaos at both ends of the working day. I hover on the periphery, checking out the cameras and waiting for the police to turn their backs, then I’m inside, pressing against the flow towards the station concourse. In the background, mostly drowned out in the roar of human traffic, a Beethoven piano sonata is playing. A consultant’s version of traffic calming. No sign of Ruby or Joshua but I’m convinced, now, that they have Freya trapped somewhere here in the Tube. Psychiatrists have another term for a folie à deux. We call it Shared Psychotic Disorder. Not as pretty, but more accurate. In the plan Joshua has concocted with Ruby he is the Tube driver. What that makes Freya doesn’t bear thinking about.

  Approaching the guard at the ticket barrier, a young man, his mouth cracking, distracted by the crowds, I shout over, ‘Hey, you see two kids, a boy and a girl? The girl with red hair?’

  The youth cups a hand around his ear. ‘Sorry?’

  Through the ordered chaos of people pressing towards the barriers, an idea springs to mind. Ask the guards to check the CCTV. Jostling my way through the crowd, I reach the control room. Two men are sitting inside on high stools. Both of them ignore the first knock. Only at the second more frantic follow-up does one – a spry-looking man in his late fifties with a reliable face – approach the window.

  ‘Can I help?’

  ‘I’ve lost my kids.’

  ‘Have you reported it to the police?’ The guard chins over the crowd on the concourse towards the entrance where the two officers are now standing.

  ‘We only just got separated, so I’m sure they’ll be here somewhere. Could I come in and check the CCTV?’

  The guard looks unsure. ‘Our usual procedure is to put out a call on the PA system.’

  ‘It’s so noisy out there, I’m not sure they’ll hear. If I could just have a look at the security screens?’

  The door peels open. The reliable-looking guard waves me inside. His companion, who is fl
ipping through some kind of technical manual, gets up from his chair, motions me to a seat before a bank of blinking monitors, then returns to his reading.

  ‘Not easy to spot a couple of kids in this crowd. What age did you say they were?’ the reliable man remarks, peering at the screens.

  ‘Eleven and twelve. The girl is smallish, just under five foot, skinny with a lot of red hair; the boy’s bigger, black hair, a bit chubbier.’

  ‘White?’ He raises his eyebrows at me.

  ‘My stepdaughter.’

  ‘Ah.’

  In the public areas the cameras catch heads, arms; body parts sail by on their way to and from the platforms. The images from the service areas are eerie, displaying empty tunnels and looped cables. One or two are a mist of static.

  What would you like to be, Joshua?

  A Tube driver.

  My eyes scan the public area screens. For an instant I think I see them, but it turns out to be another child with his mother.

  ‘The blank screens?’

  ‘Vandals,’ the guard says. ‘Taggers, you know, people coming in to see if they can nick some copper wire, whatever. But they’re in the service areas.’

  ‘Are there ways into those areas?’

  ‘Not without a code. We do get a few nuisance homeless living in the tunnels. They get through the access routes. We’re always trying to plug the gaps because they leave a mess and they’re a security risk, but they still find a way in.’

  ‘Can you get access to the tracks from there?’

  ‘From some of them. Other day, driver on the first Tube of the morning ran over a body deep inside the line between here and Stockwell. Geezer was dead already. Drink, I dunno.’ He points to the row of public area monitors. ‘Your lot are much more likely have got themselves lost somewhere between the platforms, I should think.’