Out of Mind

by Catherine Sampson

  “Do you get any sense of optimism on the part of the police?”

  “Well, we can take it, I think, that the communication, whatever it is, does not dash hopes that Christopher is still alive. But I would have to say that I sense a great deal of anxiety as well. There is a sense of urgency here this morning, but I would also say that the police officers I’ve tried to speak to today are looking fairly grim. Christopher, after all, has now been missing for forty-eight hours, and I would say that this awful wait is entering a critical stage.”

  They moved on to other news, and I sat and watched Hannah and William, now both underneath the table, competing to see which of them could put their fingers farther up their nostrils. And I thought how fragile it all was.

  I couldn’t—or wouldn’t—ring Finney. Even if he had been able to drag himself away from Emma (my imagination was working overtime), he had never been keen to share information with me. So I rang Veronica’s mobile repeatedly, leaving messages each time that her voice mail invited me to do so. In the end, I annoyed her into phoning me back.

  “Come on, Veronica, you know I know the family. You know you can trust me, Christopher’s abduction isn’t even my story. You have to have a coffee break. Or lunch. You have to eat.”

  “I don’t, actually. But I am intrigued that you are begging me to talk to you when, as you say, you are not working on the story.”

  “You know what I think,” I told her. “You know I think Mike Darling is connected with the disappearance of Melanie Jacobs, so everything about him interests me. And you think that Christopher’s kidnap is an inside job. . . .”

  “Do not repeat that. Do not even say it, don’t think it. There is not a scrap of evidence. . . .”

  “At least let’s pool our thinking.”

  “I will be fired if I’m found conspiring with journalists.”

  “But you’ll be promoted if I’m right.”

  She agreed, eventually, to meet me by the sphinx in Crystal Palace Park.

  “Not a word to Finney.”

  “Okay,” I agreed at once. Not difficult, given the state of play.

  It was still raining an hour later when we met, Veronica hurrying toward me, picking her way around the puddles, the sky so dark that it felt like early evening. Her umbrella, like mine, was being tugged by the wind.

  “This thing is more trouble than it’s worth,” she grumbled by way of greeting.

  We seemed to be the only ones in the park. We walked below the shrubbery, along the terraces, our route punctuated by crumbling Victorian statuary. The park, and much of south London, stretched out below us, its plain face veiled by the sheet of rain. Veronica didn’t give it so much as a glance. She scarcely even gave me a glance.

  “You’ve had a ransom note,” I said.

  “Off the record.”

  “Sure.”

  “No, not just sure.” Irritated, she turned to look at me. “I mean it. Off the record. You’re to say nothing to anyone.”

  “I promise, I’ll keep it to myself,” I agreed.

  “It arrived this morning. Of course, there have been others, obvious hoaxes, but we are taking this one seriously because it came with one of Christopher Darling’s teeth.”

  “A tooth?” A finger, an ear, these were the things of horror movies. A tooth was as prosaic as a stubbed toe.

  “His tooth . . . his dentist has had a look at it. Jacqui says he had tried to climb onto a chair and fell off and knocked his tooth, and it was wobbling, so we don’t think it involved much force, if any, but it was there in the envelope, and we’re pretty sure it’s his. It’s certainly tiny enough.”

  “Tell me about the letter.”

  “Handwritten, in capitals, black Biro on WHSmith notepaper. Addressed to Mike Darling. Mailed from Victoria. Less than half an hour away on the train.”

  “What about DNA on the envelope?”

  “We’ll try, but unless we have DNA to compare, it does us no good.”

  “And the wording?”

  “We have Christopher. Safety assured with full compliance. Discretion above all. Instructions re cash to follow.”

  “We?”

  Veronica shrugged. “The ‘we’ may be there to mislead. Or maybe there’s more than one of them. We have no way of knowing.”

  “What do you think?”

  “About the note? I think it’s remarkably straightforward. It isn’t misspelled, it doesn’t adopt a fake accent. It reads efficiently—Mitford doesn’t like it. He says it’s too confident, too comfortable. The kidnapper seems to feel he has the upper hand. He doesn’t seem panicky, he’s not in a rush. ”

  “It doesn’t specify a sum of money.”

  “Exactly,” dryly. “So, yeah, what was the point?”

  “Who opened the letter?”

  “Sheryl. . . . Mitford’s pissed off. We had a whole system in place, anything was supposed to go straight to us. But somehow it broke down, and Sheryl got hold of the letter. Then, instead of handing it to us she gave it to Anita, who gave it to Mike, who was forced to give it to us.”

  “Forced?”

  “Sheryl seemed to be insisting, and for once in his life Mike Darling didn’t know what to do. The letter did demand confidentiality, but he knows we’re the ones with experience in this kind of thing. He must have been terrified.” She drew a breath. “Okay. It’s your turn. Tell me your theory. How does the kidnap of Christopher fit with the disappearance of Melanie?”

  I felt sheepish. “It’s not so much a theory as . . .”

  She turned and took a look at my face, then rolled her eyes without amusement. “Lord preserve us, it’s a hunch,” she said, her voice heavy with sarcasm. “That’s great, very valuable information, Robin, this is time well spent. Thanks a bunch. I’m heading back. What a waste of my lunch hour.”

  We turned and headed back the way we’d come, not speaking, and Veronica pulled a cereal bar from her pocket, ripped open the packaging, and took a bite. I must have looked hungry, because she relented.

  “You want one?” she asked. “I carry these things around by the dozen.”

  I shook my head.

  “Are you sick?” she asked, glancing at me.

  “I have no appetite.”

  “You’re lovesick,” she said in between bites.

  “Maybe I am.”

  She gave me a sharp look. “And you’re not doing anything about it?” She shook her head. “He’s worth fighting for, my girl. Go chase that blond ex-wife of his out of town.”

  I shook my head. “It’s up to Finney.”

  Veronica gave me a cool look. “All right,” she said, “I’m not going to waste my time.” She was already moving away from me when her mobile rang. I turned and walked along with her out of sheer nosiness. She apologized—she wasn’t where she should be—then listened for a long time without saying a word, then gave an assurance that she would be “there” in a matter of minutes.

  “Bugger,” she muttered as she flipped her phone shut and dropped it back into her pocket. “What am I doing in the middle of a park? This is your fault, Robin.”

  “Can I give you a lift?”

  “Get lost.” She swiveled on her heel and was gone. But there was only one place she would be going, only one place that she could be “there in a matter of minutes.” At least I hoped there was only one place, or I was on a wild goose chase.

  I parked around the corner from the Darling house and only then saw that whatever was happening, it was happening not at Darling’s house, but at the house I had seen Sheryl vanish into two nights before, the home of Ronald Evans. The police had cordoned it off, and press who had been gathered previously outside the Darling household had simply moved twenty yards farther down the road and were setting up camp outside. I went to join them.

  “What’s going on?” I asked a photographer.

  He shrugged. “They’re not saying. Looks like they think the baby’s in there.”

  “Dead or alive,” a woman next to him a
dded. “Anyone know who lives here?”

  I stayed silent.

  “I’ve seen an old guy go in and out,” someone else offered, “crazy-looking, he had holes in his trousers.”

  Just then Ronald Evans appeared at the front door, flanked by Veronica Mann on one side and a uniformed officer. He seemed diminished already. I had thought him a tall and distinguished—if somewhat threadbare—gentleman. Now, flanked by police, he looked old and frail and humiliated. A police car had pulled up on the gravel outside the house, and Ronald Evans got in. Once he was gone, ducking in shame as he was driven past the cameras, Veronica turned and vanished once more inside the building, ignoring shouted questions from the press. As a young black female police officer, she was achieving a level of public recognition that might or might not be helpful to her. Finney had explained to me how vulnerable she was and that there were vultures circling, waiting for her to become carrion.

  When Veronica reemerged, I was astounded to see Sheryl following behind her. Sheryl, in turn, was helped into a police car and driven off, her shocked face shining palely in the window, a gift to the photographers.

  I saw Jacqui at the edge of the crowd, agitatedly straining to look over the heads of the press, her face pale and anxious. I caught up with her as she turned away, a picture of angry frustration.

  “Where’s Christopher? Why haven’t they brought him out?” she demanded. She was in tears, angry and frightened.

  “Why should he be in there?”

  “Oh, for Christ’s sake, where else would he be?”

  She turned and walked away from me, moving quickly.

  I waited. This wasn’t my story. It wasn’t my child. But there was still a sense that we might, at any minute, witness the end of this. I looked at my watch, then rang Carol on my mobile and told her I would be late.

  “Take your time,” she said sarcastically. “Hannah just called me Mummy, so we’re just dandy here.”

  I told her I got the message—the sarcasm alarmed me far more than Hannah’s slip of the tongue—and that I would be back as soon as I could.

  I waited another fifteen minutes, and what had been an air of anticipation was turning to impatience as the dark day headed for dusk, and the sky began to drizzle. “Jesus, how long can it take to find one bloody baby?” I heard a voice behind me.

  “Depends how many walls they have to unbrick,” someone else said.

  It was time to go. If they had not found Christopher by now, then he was not here, not alive, anyway, and I had no desire to be around if he was dead. Turning, I saw Kes standing at the entrance to his home. I walked over to him. I was surprised that there were no police in evidence, but I supposed they had all been moved down the street to take part in the search of Ronald’s house. With his eyes on the crowd in the street, Kes didn’t even notice me until I was under his nose.

  “They’ve detained Sheryl,” I said. I did not know how much he had seen.

  “They’ll have to let her go,” he said, turning away from me, “she’s got nothing to do with it.”

  “Shouldn’t you be trying to find out what’s going on?” I found myself tagging along behind him as he walked back toward the house. If I was stating the obvious, it didn’t seem to be obvious to him. “Your wife has just been driven off in a police car.”

  He came to a halt in the doorway, turned, and said, “If you think I’m going to give you a sound bite for the evening news, you’re wrong.”

  I was starting to protest when Mike appeared from inside the house, looking haggard. He caught sight of me, and anger overwhelmed the anxiety on his face.

  “Get away from here, get away from my house!”

  He advanced toward me, but Kes blocked his friend’s way, standing face-to-face with him, their bodies just inches apart.

  “They’ve detained Sheryl,” he told Mike in a low voice.

  “Sheryl?” Mike muttered. He hesitated, looking uncertainly from me to Kes and back.

  “Come on, let’s go inside.” Kes jerked his head, and after a moment Mike turned and walked back into the house.

  Kes turned to me. “You too,” he said. “You make allegations about a good man, you can defend them to his face, can’t you?”

  He didn’t touch me. I could have walked away. This was two to one, and Mike was out of his head with anxiety about his son. But Kes was right. I had pursued Mike. This was the first chance I’d had to speak to him in person since I’d hunted him down in Cambodia.

  I nodded. Then, without speaking, I followed Kes into the home he shared with Mike.

  Mike Darling didn’t even notice me come into the room. I had never seen Mike in his home. He was pacing around next to the bed, which was his bed, too, of course, although I thought of it as Anita’s. I had never seen Mike here. He had set up what seemed to be an operations center. He’d made a table out of a pile of bricks, and there were papers piled on top of it. He picked up a sheet of paper and waved it at Kes.

  “Kes, what do I do when they send the next demand? I haven’t got any spare cash. We’ve sunk it all into this dump.”

  I hung back.

  “Don’t be an idiot, man. You’re not going to pay a ransom. You don’t play their game, you play yours. Take control.”

  Behind me, Anita came into the room. She too looked right through me. But when I looked at her face, I wasn’t sure how much of anything she was able to take in. There were dark rings around her eyes, and her lips and hands were shaking. She was dressed in the same clothes that she had worn at the press conference, a white T-shirt and dark jeans, but now there was an air of devastation about her that was, to my eyes, more natural. Mike glanced up at her. She collapsed onto the bed and lay behind him, paying no one any heed, her back to us all. Mike shook his head in disbelief then strode over to the bed.

  “For fuck’s sake,” Mike roared at her, leaning over her, his hands curled into fists, “can you even hear us? Do you know what’s going on?”

  I thought for a moment that he would strike her. And Kes must have had the same thought, because he moved quickly to Mike’s side and seized his friend’s wrists in his own hands. They stood still, Mike’s face red with fury, Kes gripping him tightly.

  “This is what you do,” Kes told him quietly. “You do what you’ve been trained to do. You play the game. They’ve said there will be more. So you wait. You get overexcited, you act stupid, something bad will happen. Do yourself a favor, Mike, take control. Remember the note. Christopher’s safe. Just comply. Be discreet.”

  Slowly, as he listened, Mike’s head lifted so that he was looking Kes in the eye. His face was filled with longing and with fear. For several moments he gazed at his friend, and it was as though Kes’s words were soaking in, seeping slowly, into a brain already so saturated with terror for his son that it could not absorb anything more. Mike ran his tongue over his lips. He repeated what Kes had said.

  “I’ve just got to take control,” he muttered.

  “I’m with you, Mike, we take control. We don’t let anything bad happen.” Kes turned to me. “Okay, let’s get this crap you’re spreading cleared up.”

  Mike wasn’t even listening. He was still staring at his friend’s face.

  “I don’t think this is the time,” I said. “I’ll be happy to talk to Mike about Melanie when Christopher’s back. Aren’t you going to make a phone call about Sheryl?”

  Kes spoke in a low voice, full of contempt, “You accuse a man of murder and you’re not going to say it to his face?”

  “I haven’t accused anyone of murder.”

  Mike was looking at me now, his brow furrowed as though he was trying to focus on what was being said. Kes spoke to him again.

  “You have to hear it, right? You can’t let her go around spreading lies. You’ve got to defend yourself, or she’ll just keep on bad-mouthing you.”

  I shook my head, but I didn’t trust myself to say anything. This man had just lost his son. Was this why Kes had brought me in—to challenge me to
either back off or kick Mike while he was down?

  “Yeah, I want to hear what she’s got to say,” Mike said slowly, frowning, “What gives you the right?”

  “I haven’t accused anyone of anything,” I repeated.

  “Why did you go sniffing around Alice Jackson?” Kes demanded, growing passionate in his defense of his friend. “Why did you go running to the police? Just tell us, and we can clear it up. We’re not unreasonable. Mike’s done nothing wrong. But you’ve got to give him the chance to defend himself. What did Alice say to get you going?”

  “Alice didn’t tell me anything,” I insisted. I saw that Mike was watching me now like a hawk, his eyes heavy-lidded, dark slits in his pale face. “She just told me how her husband died in the ambush. Look”—I went on the offensive—“like I said, this isn’t the time. All I’ve done is tell the police what I found out, which is that you’d met Melanie before. That’s all. No accusation, nothing. And as for Alice, she didn’t tell me anything that warranted the police. They can ask her themselves if they want to.”

  Kes was shaking his head. “No one even knows if the woman’s alive or dead,” he said, “but you’ve got Mike lined up as a murderer because he didn’t get verbal diarrhea when he talked to the police? You make me sick.”

  Kes spoke to Mike softly. “You see, all this crap, it’s over. She doesn’t know what she’s talking about.”

  Mike gazed at Kes. “It’s over,” he said uncertainly, then with more confidence, “It’s over, isn’t it? Now I have to get Christopher back.”

  His face contorted. He pushed past Kes and made for the back door, slamming it behind him.

  Kes sat on the bed, as if all the energy had drained from him, and I slipped away. I felt sickened that I had let myself be lured back into this household, and I felt drained by Mike’s despair. I found myself outside the back door, leaning against the pile of bricks, gasping in the damp air, my eyes closed tight, relief that I was out of the house washing over me. Mike had left the house through the same door. But there was no sign of him. There was a garden shed, and a light shone at the small window, but I couldn’t think why anyone would be there in the night.