by Jane Adams
‘I’ll keep trying Maria,’ John promised. ‘In fact, I’ll go over there. She’s off duty today at four or thereabouts.’
Mike thanked him. ‘I’m probably just being paranoid,’ he said.
‘No, you’re just being human,’ John told him. ‘And it’s human to worry about those we love.’
* * *
‘They wouldn’t let me see anything or tell me anything in the hospital,’ Charlie was complaining. ‘I understand why, but it didn’t make it any easier. Wouldn’t even let me watch the bloody news. Afraid it might upset me. Upset me! I’m still a bloody copper, aren’t I? He didn’t stop my mind working even if he did have a go at blowing my bloody face off.’
Macey grinned at him, sensing a kindred spirit. ‘Charlie, my friend,’ he said, ‘we have to work together.’
Charlie snorted. ‘Me? Work with a flaming journalist? Lowest of the frigging low?’ Then he smiled, half his mouth pulled crooked by the scars. ‘What do you have in mind?’
By the time Macey and Liz left, Macey had promised to provide Charlie with computer equipment and a modem. He had his own phone line in his room — ‘one of the perks of going private, though they’ll probably crib about the phone bill’ — so there would be no problem setting up the Internet access that Charlie would need.
Charlie Morrow might not be able to get out there looking for Jake Bowen on the streets, but Macey had given him another option. Macey had been scanning the news groups on the Net, looking for mention of Bowen and his exploits. There was plenty out there. The police already had people trawling the Internet, but Charlie felt he had a slight edge, something that might lead Bowen to make contact. He’d let Macey write his report, take photographs, give vent to much of Charlie’s resentment and pain, and both Charlie and Macey would have put money on Jake Bowen reading every word and responding. Anything, they felt at this stage, would be worth a try. It would give Charlie an in on the action and Macey would write the exclusive. Setting up an email address could be done quickly and it would give Jake Bowen yet another point of contact. Charlie hoped against hope that he would strike lucky and Jake Bowen would take the bait.
‘Can you manage a keyboard?’ Liz asked anxiously, looking at Charlie’s hands.
‘Don’t worry, love,’ he told her, his eyes alive with excitement now he was taking part. ‘I’ll manage, and I can still point and click a flaming mouse.’
* * *
It had taken Mike a couple of hours to get to Exeter, dropping off the photographs on the way and collecting a WPC to take with him to the Normans.
Julia’s parents lived in a quiet suburban road of 1930s houses: twinned, bay-fronted semis with neat gardens. Already an hour late for his original appointment, he had called them on the way to apologize. But as he had become lost in the tangle of side-streets that bore no resemblance to the A-Z, that time had almost doubled.
Frank Norman met him at the door but paid little attention to his apology.
‘We’d nowhere else to go, Inspector’ he said quietly. ‘I’ll show you her room.’
No one spoke as the grey-haired man led them up the stairs and along the short landing. Julia’s room was at the back of the house, overlooking the garden. He opened the door and then turned back along the corridor.
‘If you’ve anything to ask, we’ll be downstairs,’ he said. He didn’t even glance into his daughter’s room.
Mike and the WPC, Annie Poyser, stood just inside the door and looked around. He had intended for her to speak with the Normans while he checked Julia’s room, but that no longer seemed appropriate. Frank Norman was intent on calling the shots.
‘It’s pretty,’ Annie commented. ‘My mum and dad have a place like this but I was always stuck in the box room and you couldn’t swing a cat.’
Mike smiled at her. ‘The advantages of being an only child.’
‘Tidier than my place too, but I don’t suppose she was here that much.’
‘They said weekends, sometimes. And Sunday lunch, apparently. They didn’t like her missing that.’
Annie laughed. ‘Sunday lunch with a hangover,’ she said. ‘O joy.’ She frowned, moving across to the window and glancing out over the lawned garden. A child’s swing still took pride of place down at the far end. ‘Didn’t like her growing up,’ she commented. ‘And the room, too, it’s kind of childish, all pink and white like this.’
Mike looked around with a fresh eye. Annie was right. The decor of the room, with its cake-icing colours and frilled flowery curtains, was almost babyish. It was unsophisticated and shamelessly pretty, only the blue of the bedcover jarring oddly with the rest of the scheme.
‘There’s nothing personal here,’ he commented. ‘I mean, even if she only stayed over at the weekends, you’d have expected, I don’t know, pictures, ornaments . . . something.’
Annie was opening the dressing-table drawers. A few items of underwear, a comb and a lipstick in one. Nothing in the other. The small chest of drawers was similarly empty, just two T-shirts, a hairbrush, a few cosmetics. The built-in wardrobe still had its hangers and a winter coat. There was an overnight bag on the floor.
Mike picked it up, set it on the bed and began to sort through the pockets. Annie was taking the lining papers from the drawers, turning the drawers themselves upside down in case something had been taped to the underside, running a hand around the empty spaces left in the dressing table.
Mike gave up on the bag. ‘Anything?’
‘Fraid not, sir.’
They checked the back of the dressing table and the mirrors, lifted the furniture to look beneath and stripped the covers from the bed and the mattress from the frame.
‘Not even the fluff monster,’ Annie commented. ‘I mean, it’s as if the whole place’s been thoroughly cleaned. There’s not a speck of dust even.’
Mike looked at her and realized that she was right. He led the way back down the stairs. The Normans were in the kitchen, sitting motionless on either side of the table, looking like awkward strangers in what had once been their home.
‘Did you find anything, Inspector?’ Frank Norman asked.
‘That isn’t likely, is it, Mr Norman?’
Frank looked across at his wife and reached for her hand. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I should have said something. I should have stopped her, but I was only gone a little while, just to the corner shop to get some milk and she’d . . .’
Tears filled his eyes and he pointed out towards the garden. ‘Near the swing,’ he said. ‘There’s a steel basket there I use for burning garden stuff.’
Mike gestured for Annie to go and look, then he drew another chair close to the table. ‘Why did you burn her things, Mrs Norman? What was it?’
‘She even took the bedclothes off the bed,’ Frank told him. ‘Burned the lot. It was the pictures. Julia like some cheap . . .’ He shook his head. ‘Not our Julie,’ he whispered. ‘Not our girl. Then, well, I knew you wanted to see her room. I knew you’d be coming and I thought—’ he looked at Mike. ‘I thought, it’s not my Julie they’re after. If I made it look like it was supposed to, odd bits she might have left behind, then you wouldn’t pry. There’s enough been done to her already, Inspector, we just wanted the rest left alone now.’
‘It’s still destruction of evidence, Mr Norman. It was still something that might have helped us find your daughter’s killer.’ He broke off. Anger was pointless now.
He walked down the garden to where Annie was sifting through the ashes, trying not to add to the ruin that had already taken place. It was starting to rain, fat droplets of water splashing onto the back of Mike’s neck.
‘Photos mostly,’ Annie told him, ‘but there’s quite a bit not burned right through.’ She glanced up at the darkening clouds. ‘We ought to get this covered up, sir. A rainstorm’ll just about finish what’s left.’
‘There are bags in the boot of the car,’ Mike said. He waited in the now heavy rain for Annie to come running back and help him pile the rema
ins of Mrs Norman’s bonfire into the black bags, their gloved hands soon slippery with wet soot and their clothes covered with ash, but even in their haste Mike could glimpse the images that had given Julia’s mother so much pain.
* * *
Essie’s grandmother May Richards, went to collect her from school. It was a small building, red-brick, slate-roofed, built in the 1920s. Mobile classrooms had been added as the population had grown and these stood to one side of the main building near the Abbot Street gate. Essie’s class was in one of them and May could see Essie through the window as she passed by, busy painting at an easel, daubing bright colours onto a large sheet of paper with the frowning concentration of a true artist.
May laughed and risked a wave, but Essie didn’t see. She then crossed the playground to the other gate at the Long Street end. The school had outgrown its original capacity and home time was always chaos. To minimize the problem, the smaller children came out of the Long Street gate, where the road was quieter and there was more space for those with pushchairs and smaller siblings to stand.
May was well known. She’d lived all her life in the area, gone to this school and often came with her daughter Jo to collect Essie. She stood chatting with the waiting parents, glancing across the playground now and then, waiting for her grandchild to appear.
Essie was never among the first out. She was a popular child and always slow at getting her coat on and her shoes fastened, because she was too busy playing, so it was only when the crowds of children had thinned and May had already seen several of Essie’s friends go by that she began to worry.
Concerned that if she left the gate, Essie might miss her, she hung on, staring intently at each child that passed, asking ones she knew if they had seen Essie, until finally the playground emptied and May hurried across to the mobile.
The teacher looked up in surprise as May burst through the door, ‘Mrs Richards? Is something wrong?’
They searched everywhere — the toilets, the grounds, the main school. Staff went out into the street to call after the late leavers straggling their way home.
Then they called the police. There was no doubt of it: Essie had gone.
* * *
A message had been left on Mike’s voice-mail about an hour before. Mike had been with the Normans, talking about another missing child, and his messages had been ignored.
This one said, ‘She’s a pretty little thing, Mike. Very photogenic, don’t you think?’
Chapter Nine
It was late evening by the time Mike reached Norwich and drove straight to May Richards’s house.
He had managed to speak to Maria about an hour after Essie had first disappeared. At that point no one at the Norwich end knew about Jake’s message and the hope was still that she might just have wandered away. As out of character as that was, it was the most comforting thought, though from the outset Maria had insisted she tell the investigating officers about Mike and the possible involvement of Jake Bowen. The anxiety and fear were palpable as Mike spoke to the young officer at the front door.
Maria heard his voice and came through into the hall.
‘I don’t think you should be here,’ she said. ‘Wait for me at John’s and I’ll talk to you later.’
‘I’ve driven here to be with you,’ he objected.
‘And I have to be with my family, Mike, and I’m afraid you’re not someone they want to see right now.’
‘They blame me,’ Mike said flatly.
‘I’m sorry. It’s not your fault.’ But he could hear the doubt in her voice. ‘Look, I blame myself. If I hadn’t brought Essie with me at the weekend, she might still be here.’
‘You think Jake Bowen doesn’t know about you? About your family? Do you think it would have made any difference? Maria, he’s got the inside track on everyone who’s come even close to him.’
‘Then no one’s safe, anywhere,’ Maria said.
She then turned away from him and went back down the hall, leaving him utterly bereft.
‘She’s just really upset, sir,’ the officer by the door said to him, trying to offer comfort. ‘Her sister, the little girl’s mum, she’s discharged herself from hospital. She just can’t stop crying.’
Mike nodded and slipped quietly out through the front door. He’d expected blame. Anticipated the raw anger that the situation was bound to generate, but had never thought he would be excluded like this. It was worse than anything he had prepared himself for.
Getting into his car, he thought of Stevie, his son; of the drunk driver who’d taken his child from him and never even stopped to help. It was something he could not recover from and he knew that a little part of him had died along with his son.
But this. For someone to deliberately take a child, to deprive the parents and to let them suffer, not knowing if their baby was already dead or still alive and frightened or in pain.
He thought of Julia Norman and his hands shook as he turned the key in the ignition, barely able to cope any more with the thoughts running through his head.
Mike phoned Peterson from John Tynan’s. His daughter and grandchildren had left, he said, gone north to stay with relatives. He wasn’t certain it would help, but that was the best they could do. ‘I’ve been promised police protection for them, but it’s hard to know what to do for the best. Any news your end?’
‘Nothing. There’s nothing yet. I feel like I’m in limbo here. I can’t get involved in the investigation and I can’t help Essie’s family. They don’t want me around.’
‘Then come back here, where you can at least be some use. I’m sorry, Mike, but even if you applied for compassionate leave I’d have to veto it. I can’t spare you.’
Mike sighed, guiltily relieved to have had the decision of what to do next taken out of his hands.
‘Essie’s just a child,’ he said. ‘She’s five years old.’
‘And we’ve no record of Bowen ever attacking children. We have to hope this is just some kind of stunt to get our attention.’
‘What about the photographs your daughter received?’
‘Photo images, expertly tampered with. Damn it, Mike, we even know what software he probably used. It doesn’t mean . . .’
‘But the threat is there. Inherent.’
‘Yes,’ Peterson allowed, the threat was there. ‘But for Christ’s sake, Mike, if we let ourselves think along those lines . . . We’ve got to function. If I thought that little girl . . . If I thought about my grandchildren . . .’ He broke off.
Mike could think of nothing more to say. Gently, silently, he put the receiver down.
Chapter Ten
24 June
It was early on Tuesday morning when Mike called Maria and told her that he would be going back to Honiton.
‘If you want me to stay, then I’ll stay,’ he told her. ‘If you want me to, then I will.’
‘Go back, Mike. There’s nothing you can do here and it’s important you keep working on this. It’s the best thing you can do for Essie.’
Mike’s heart sank. Even though she was right and he remembered Peterson’s words of the night before, he had still hoped that she would want him with her.
‘There’s no more news?’ he asked.
‘Nothing. That’s what’s so hard to take. We’re just waiting. The doctor’s given Jo a sedative and she’s sleeping a lot, then she wakes up feeling guilty about going to sleep. And Momma and I, we can’t do anything. It’s so hard, Mike, we sit around doing nothing and feeling like death, but if one of us puts the TV on or tries to read, we feel as though we’re being frivolous or thoughtless, when what we should be doing is giving 100 per cent of our thoughts to Essie and Jo. I thought I’d cope better than this. I spend my entire life teaching other people to cope.’
‘But this time it’s you and yours,’ Mike put in gently. ‘It’s not the same.’ He paused, then asked, ‘Can I at least see you before I go?’
She hesitated for a moment, then said reluctantly, ‘I can’t leave j
ust now and you can’t come here. It would be more than Jo could bear. You must realize that.’
Mike arrived back at the incident room in Honiton after a long, hot drive. He drove badly, far too fast on narrow, winding roads, the miles passing with little conscious thought or recognition on his part.
He reached Honiton mid-afternoon, tired and angry. His shirt was sticking to his back and he was suddenly aware that it had been at least two days since he had last shaved.
Peterson wanted to see him, he was told, as soon as he came in. Mike found him in one of the interview rooms, sitting at the table with a man Mike did not recognize. They were leafing through the copies of Harriman’s cuttings books, the stranger poring over them intently while Peterson sat back in his chair as though to distance himself from the other man. He had an air about him of scarcely concealed anger and looked up sharply as Mike entered the room.
‘Mike. Good. I want to introduce you to someone.’ The other man stood up and turned towards Mike, his hand already extended. As he made the introductions, Peterson’s anger began to bubble over; giving a harsh edge to his words.
‘This,’ he said, ‘is Mr Alastair Bowen. Father to the famous Jake. Perhaps you’d like to explain to Inspector Croft just why it took you so long to come forward, Mr Bowen.’
Alastair Bowen’s expression was one of total calm. ‘As I told you, Mr Peterson,’ he said, ‘it was because of my wife. My wife, you see, was dying. I had to stay with her and I could not bear that she should know about Jake. Not after all he’d put her through before.’ He sighed. ‘But she’s dead now, after two long years of suffering, God rest her soul, and I can speak. Tell you about my son.’
‘We’re glad to hear that, Mr Bowen,’ Peterson said, ‘as, I’m sure, will be the parents and families of those your son has killed these last months, while you were waiting for the right moment.’
Alastair Bowen continued to regard Peterson with the same calm gaze, his grey eyes gentle and unmoved by the outburst.
‘I don’t expect you to understand,’ he said, ‘and I have no intention of making excuses that no one wants to hear. But I am here now, Superintendent, and that, believe me, is all that really counts.’
