by Alex Lake
‘I can’t imagine,’ Gill said. ‘I don’t want to. But she’ll come back, Julia. You have to keep believing that.’
‘And it was my fault,’ Julia said. ‘If I hadn’t been late—’
‘It’s not your fault,’ Gill said. ‘It isn’t. It was a mistake. You couldn’t have known this would happen. We all make mistakes, Julia.’
‘I can’t stop thinking about it. I can’t stop thinking if only. If only I’d charged my phone. If only I’d left the meeting earlier. I could have stopped this. It’s hard to live with that knowledge.’
‘I bet it is,’ Gill said. ‘But that’s not the same as it being your fault. You aren’t responsible for the actions of whatever sick bastard took your daughter. There are always if onlys, Julia, always. But just remember: this is not your fault.’
Gill believed it, Julia could see. The problem was that she found it hard to agree.
‘And now,’ Gill continued, ‘you have a chance to do something to help fix it. Come on. Let’s get ready for this press conference.’
At the police station, Julia and Brian followed DI Wynne into an office. She motioned for them to sit down.
‘Let me give you an update,’ she said. ‘Although I’m afraid that there isn’t all that much to say.’ She sat forward, her arms folded, her elbows resting on her desk. It was spotless, any paperwork filed away. ‘We had officers out all night, as well as the dog teams. I have to say that they are pretty effective at picking up a scent, but there was nothing.’
‘What next?’ Brian asked.
‘We keep looking. Something might show up – some clothing, a shoe, a schoolbook. And … ’ she paused, and swallowed, ‘we deployed the dive teams this morning. They’re searching local waterways. Canals, ponds, rivers.’
Julia felt light-headed, the edges of her vision dissolving into stars. She blinked, trying to dismiss the image of a small, muddied corpse being dragged from a silted canal. She swayed, and gripped the edge of her chair for support.
‘Are you all right, Mrs Crowne?’ Wynne asked.
‘Yes,’ Julia said, although she knew she was far from all right. ‘I just need a moment.’
‘Would you like a drink? A cup of tea? Coffee?’
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Coffee. Sweet, please.’
DI Wynne got to her feet. ‘I’ll get it,’ she said. ‘And I’m sorry, Mr and Mrs Crowne, I really am. But we’re doing all we can.’
Julia didn’t doubt it. She just hoped it was enough.
DI Wynne led them down a brightly lit corridor towards a heavy door, at which she paused and turned to face them.
‘Are you ready?’ Her expression was composed and serious, her tone professional. When neither Julia nor Brian answered, she carried on. ‘Don’t worry. It’ll be fine.’
Then she opened the door and ushered them into the room.
It was quite a small room, but it was very full. There were four chairs behind a long table on which were four glasses of water and four microphones. The main body of the room was heaving with people. Julia felt sick at the thought that all these people were here for the same thing: news of Anna. All the plastic folding chairs were taken and people were standing at the back; the doors to the outside were open so that a few more could cram in. There was a murmur of chatter but as soon as they emerged, the room fell silent, but only for a moment: the silence was followed by an explosion of flashes and shutter clicks.
Once her nausea passed, Julia felt oddly detached, almost as though she was an actor, part of a story, and a good story at that: Julia remembered reading them herself, remembered the frisson of vicarious anguish – Oh, how awful, I can’t imagine what they are going through – tinged with a ghoulish interest and a smugness that it would never happen to her. She would never let it.
How quickly the world turned. How quickly you could find that you were the story, that things happened whether you let them or not, that life was not so easily tamed.
Detective Inspector Wynne pulled out a chair and Julia sat down. Brian sat on her left, his hands fidgeting in his lap. Wynne took a seat on her right. The fourth chair remained unoccupied. Julia wondered whether someone had failed to show up, or whether the room was always set up like this.
Her detachment came to an abrupt end when DI Wynne began to speak.
‘Mr and Mrs Crowne will be reading a statement,’ she said. ‘They will not be taking questions. Thank you for respecting that at a difficult time.’ She looked at Julia. ‘Ok,’ she said, ‘whenever you’re ready.’
There was a piece of paper on the table in front of her with the statement on it. The words were printed in larger than usual type. She stared at them. The black letters did not make any sense.
‘Mrs Crowne?’ DI Wynne said.
Julia looked back at the piece of paper. She focused on the first word, then started to speak.
‘Yesterday, our daughter, Anna, went missing. She may have strayed from the school gates or she may have been taken. Anna is five—’ her voice broke, and she looked up at the ceiling, struggling to stop the tears that were forming. ‘Anna is five, and is the light of our lives. If you have seen her or seen anything that might give the police a lead as to her whereabouts, then please come forwards, however small or trivial it may seem.’
She lowered the paper. The words felt impersonal, meaningless. Besides, they didn’t address the one person she needed to reach.
‘If you have her,’ she said, ‘if you’re watching this, and you are the person who took her, then please bring her back. Bring her back to her home. Just bring her back and this will all be over. I won’t do anything to you. You can go free. I promise you that. I won’t let anyone do anything to you. I don’t care about justice or anything like that. I just want my daughter back.’
‘Please,’ Brian said next to her, his voice barely audible. ‘Please.’
There was silence in the room, then a flash went off.
‘Mr and Mrs Crowne,’ a woman shouted, from the back of the room. ‘Is there any suggestion of negligence on the part of the school?’
Not on the part of the school, Julia thought, but certainly on the part of the mother. That would be their next question. She felt a flush spread on her neck. It always happened when she felt under pressure, or caught out, or embarrassed. She hated it. It meant that she could never hide her feelings. If she said something stupid in a meeting or didn’t know the answer to a question she should have done then she could never brazen it out. Instead a hot, red bloom would cover her neck and chest and give her away.
She opened her mouth to speak – feeling as though she had to come up with some kind of answer was the other thing that she did when she was uncomfortable – but DI Wynne gestured to her to sit back, and leaned towards the microphone.
‘No questions,’ she said. ‘Thank you for your time.’ She stood up and put her hand on Julia’s arm. She spoke in a low voice.
‘We can go now,’ she said. ‘Well done.’
Julia, Brian, and the detective sat in an office in the police station. There were three styrofoam cups of coffee on the table in front of them. DI Wynne added some sugar and powdered milk to hers and stirred it with a plastic stirrer.
‘We reviewed the CCTV footage,’ she said. ‘I’m afraid there isn’t a lot to go on.’
‘Is Anna on it?’ Julia asked. ‘Do you see her?’
‘Yes, she is.’
‘Can I see it? ‘I’d like to watch it myself, if possible.’
Wynne nodded. ‘Of course. Give me a minute.’ She stood up and leaned into the corridor and called out to someone. They had a brief conversation, then she turned back to Julia and Brian. ‘Come with me.’
viii.
The footage was good. Black and white, but high resolution. Julia had been expecting some grainy, indistinct images, but these were clear. The camera was trained on the cast iron gate. Julia guessed it was mounted above the school door. She watched the parents standing around, chatting or checking their phones.<
br />
I should be there, she thought. If I was part of this film then none of this would be happening.
She pictured herself appearing in the image from the left, smiling at one of the other parents, exchanging greetings and some innocuous pleasantries, then facing the school, as she had done so many times, and waiting for the door to open, for the scrum of children to appear, accompanied by their teachers, and make their way to the gates where their parents waited.
It was still a thrill, that moment. Still a joy to see her daughter’s face after a day apart, and then to kiss her and walk to the car holding her warm hand, and take her home and feed her and bathe her and read to her and love her.
Julia did not appear on the screen. Instead, the door opened and the pupils spilled out, some of them running towards the gates, others walking. Right in the middle was Anna.
She was next to Amelia, her new best friend, but she wasn’t talking to her. She was looking at the assembled parents. Looking, Julia realized, for her mum.
Who wasn’t there. Who wasn’t there to greet her as she stepped over the threshold of the school and into the outside world, into the dangerous, unsafe adult world that had swallowed her up.
The children were accompanied by two teachers, Miss Sanderson and Miss Gregory. Miss Sanderson, a tall, athletic woman in her late thirties was at the front; Miss Gregory, who was in her twenties, and was possibly Anna’s favourite person in the world, was at the back.
As she walked through the gates, Miss Gregory looked up and to her right, at one of the mums, who held out a book to her, and said something, perhaps here’s that book I promised you or I heard you like Downton. Here’s the annual or you’d enjoy this, it’s a modern classic.
Miss Gregory leaned over the heads of the children and took the book. She said something to Miss Sanderson, who turned and smiled. Anna was in the corner of the shot, just to the left of the gates, and she looked up at the teacher. Julia’s heart lurched at the sight of her daughter’s face. She looked puzzled, about to ask the teacher for something, and Julia knew what it was.
It would have saved her.
She’s going to ask her where’s my mummy? Julia thought. And if she did, Miss Gregory would have kept her back.
But Miss Gregory was busy. And a second later, Anna looked to her left, and walked out of the camera’s range and out of the world.
So that was how it had happened. The teachers were distracted for a moment, and a moment was all it took.
Julia put her head in her hands. In her mind’s eye all she could see was Anna, on the verge of asking where her mummy was, but not doing so. And why not? Was she too polite to interrupt? Did something attract her attention? Is that why she walked away?
‘It’s not a lot of help,’ Wynne said. ‘And unfortunately there is no CCTV covering the outside of the school.’
‘So this is the school’s fault?’ Brian said.
‘I couldn’t say.’ Wynne sipped her coffee. ‘They could have a better security system, but then that’s always true. No system is perfect. We like to think that it is, but there’s always a risk. That’s why we need them in the first place.’
‘Yes,’ Brian agreed, ‘but they should have had more cameras, surely! And more teachers accompanying the kids!’
‘I understand your frustration, but that’s a matter for you and the school, Mr Crowne,’ Wynne said. ‘The problem I have is that Anna vanishes from the CCTV footage and at that point we lose track of her.’
‘Why?’ Julia asked. ‘Why would she walk off like that?’
‘I don’t know,’ Wynne replied. ‘There are many explanations. Perhaps she thought you – or someone – might be parked up the road. Or maybe she saw a dog and went to stroke it, or maybe she just felt like it. The problem is that it only takes a few seconds, and – well, anything can happen.’
‘Have you interviewed the other parents?’ Julia asked. She felt unnaturally calm. Perhaps it was the exhaustion, perhaps the shock of seeing Anna on CCTV.
‘Yes. A couple of them think they saw Anna leaving the school, but they can’t be sure.’ Wynne said.
‘So she was seen?’ Julia persisted. ‘Who saw her?’
‘Two of the mums said they thought they had seen her, standing there, but they just assumed that someone was there to meet her.’
‘They didn’t check on her?’ Brian asked, his voice rising. ‘They saw that she was alone and they didn’t bother to check?’
DI Wynne sipped her coffee. ‘We mentioned that to them. They said that they were focused on getting their children in the car and buckled up and, when they’d done that, Anna was gone. They didn’t give it too much thought. They just assumed she’d been picked up as normal.’
Picked up as normal.
The words hung in the room like an accusation. DI Wynne shifted uncomfortably in her chair, evidently aware how it had sounded; Brian looked out of the window.
Julia pushed her coffee away. It was cold, undrunk since DI Wynne had brought it for her. Since Anna’s disappearance, the smell of food and drink had made her nauseous. Even though she’d seen the CCTV, she had her own image of what had happened: Anna walking out of the gates, looking around for her mum, or dad, or grandma, some of the other parents glancing at her, then settling on their own kids, bending down to kiss them and ask them how the day had gone while Anna moved to the edge of the crowd, still searching for her parents.
And maybe someone taking notice who shouldn’t have and asking her if she was ok, then taking her hand and walking away with her before anyone could notice.
And it was her fault. Never mind the school. Maybe they could have done more, but at root it was her fault. If she had been there, then it wouldn’t have happened. She knew Brian would try to blame them, try and sue them, but what was the point? It wouldn’t bring Anna back.
She began to cry, then looked away, embarrassed at her grief. She had no right to it because she had only herself to blame.
‘Mrs Crowne,’ DI Wynne said. ‘We can stop if you need to, but there are a couple of other things I wanted to mention.’
‘I’m fine,’ Julia said. ‘Keep going.’
Wynne looked at Brian. ‘I was wondering whether you have any more information on your father’s whereabouts? We haven’t been able to trace him.’
‘No,’ Brian said. ‘I asked Mum. She doesn’t have an address for him.’
Wynne nodded slowly. ‘I see. We would really like to interview your father.’
‘Are you saying my father is a suspect?’ Brian said. ‘That’s ridiculous!’
‘No,’ Wynne replied. ‘I’m not suggesting that. But we would like to talk to him. Anything – irregular – is of interest to us. So if you do you have any information that might be of use, we would appreciate it.’
Julia looked at Brian. He stared at the floor. If he was not going to say anything she was. If it helped get Anna back she had no choice.
‘He may have run away with someone,’ she said. ‘A teacher at the school. She went at the same time. I don’t know her name.’
‘That’s fine,’ Wynne said. ‘That should give us enough to go on. We’ll be able to find out who she was.’
Brian gave Julia a hard, unforgiving look, then turned to DI Wynne. ‘Anything else?’ he said.
‘One other thing,’ Wynne responded. ‘We may get crank callers. People who claim to have seen Anna or even to have her in their custody. Obviously we will follow every lead, but we need something we can use to identify who might be a legitimate caller.’
‘What do you mean?’ asked Brian. ‘You expect people to give you false information?’
The detective nodded. ‘It often happens,’ she said. ‘People leave anonymous tip-offs claiming to have seen a missing person, or sometimes they claim to be the perpetrator.’
‘Why?’ Brian asked. ‘Why would they do that?’
‘I don’t know,’ Wynne said. ‘Some people have nothing better to do. So we tend to hold back a piece of infor
mation.’
‘Like what?’ Julia said.
‘Something they would only know if they were with Anna.’
Julia nodded. ‘She has a birthmark,’ she said. ‘It’s a rough circle, about the size of a ten pence piece. On her right hip.’
She could picture it clearly. When Anna was first born she had disliked it as a sign of imperfection. She’d gone so far as to ask a doctor whether it could be removed, and the doctor had said it could, but she might want to think about it before doing anything, especially, as it was in a place that was normally hidden. He told her that in some cultures birthmarks were seen as signs of divinity, as though the bearer had been touched by God and marked out for special things. Julia had gone home and thought it over and decided to leave it. Whatever it was it was part of her daughter and she decided not to interfere with it. Over the years she had grown to almost like it; many times when Anna was in nappies she had kissed it before covering it up. It was their secret, known only to them.
And now the birthmark, that private thing in a place normally hidden, was now an identifying mark. This one fact represented everything that was wrong. It made everything hard and real and irrevocable and Julia could no longer hold herself back.
She started to cry, and she did not know how she would ever stop.
4
The Second Day
i.
You found it a bit pathetic, as well as, frankly, stupid: You can go free. I promise you that. I won’t let anyone do anything to you. I don’t care about justice or anything like that. I just want my daughter back.
You would never have done that, never have appeared so weak. How did she think that a person who could plan and then implement what you have done – to take a child in broad daylight – would be impressed by such a display of weakness? The girl’s mother should have appeared strong, threatening, powerful; that might have worried you, made you fear her. Respect her, even. But that snivelling display? Why would you care about someone like that? And the father? Even worse.
It actually had the opposite effect. It just proved that you were right, that what you had done was for the best. Was a necessary evil.
