STOLEN BAIRNS: Scottish Fiction

by Anne Bone

  Beth hung the receiver back on the cradle and sat down at the kitchen table. She put her head in her hands and howled. She was not sure whether it was sheer relief or the angry tension from yesterday leaving her body. Maybe people out there did believe her after all.

  Chapter 27

  Queen Street Police Station was a hive of activity. Inspector Coull, Des’s immediate boss, had given them the space to follow up all the telephone calls which were coming in through the switchboard, in connection with the missing children. Des and Jane could not help now thinking that perhaps the publicity had helped. However, they were already finding that they had to sift through the calls to check which ones might be worth following up, as it was clear that on top as bringing out the good in people it also brought out the cranks and time wasters too.

  One of the calls was definitely interesting. This concerned a couple who were living down in the Brighton area. A Mrs Tubbs had called and left her telephone number saying she believed that the woman they were seeking was living in her block of flats. It was the first call Jane followed up at the start of her shift.

  Jane spoke to Mrs Tubbs who told her about her neighbour who was very similar to the photo, which had appeared in The Times. This woman also had two small children, a boy and a little girl and they were about the same ages as the two children in question. They were not called Stevie or Lucy though. These children were Christopher and Victoria. She also confirmed that there was a man who also seemed to fit the age and general description of the so-called Mike Walker.

  Jane had signalled to Des mouthing over the receiver that this sounded the best lead yet. Mrs Tubbs gave her details to Jane and was told to expect a call back very soon. Just before Jane hung up, she suddenly remembered to ask the most vital question. When did she last see the family? ‘Just yesterday, dear,’ came the reply. She had waved to them as they were driving off in their camper van.

  Jane immediately called the local police in Brighton and spoke to the duty officer. They agreed to send someone round to 51 Waterman Drive to see if they could contact the occupants.

  Jane and Des then sat back to wait. They had consumed what would be a gallon of coffee before the call they had been waiting for came in several hours later. The police officer in Brighton had news, although not the news they had been waiting for. How were they going to pass this information on to Beth?

  They decided that they would do this as soon as possible given that. Now the press were involved, they did not know how long it would be before someone would sniff out the story and it would be plastered all over the front of the paper. They needed to speak to Beth first. They just picked up their jackets and made their way slowly and wearily towards their car to make the short journey across Victoria Bridge to Torry.

  It was suppertime at Harbour View. Molly had made a large steak and onion pudding, which had lashings of gravy covering the potatoes and greens. They had almost finished eating the laden plates when the doorbell disturbed them. Marty left the table to see who was calling on this cold dreich winter’s night.

  His heart lost several beats when he opened the door to reveal Des and Jane. He tried to seek some reassurance from their faces, but got nothing back which would bring the glow he would have hoped for.

  ‘I can see from your faces that there is something to tell, but not good?’ he asked as he stepped to one side to provide space to let the guests in.

  ‘Now, it’s not all bad news.’ Des shook himself to allow some of the warmth in the house to penetrate his damp bones.

  The two detectives followed Marty down the brightly-lit passage, into the kitchen where they found Beth and Molly standing up from their seats. Clearly the unfinished supper was abandoned when the detectives entered the room.

  Beth quickly scanned their faces to find some hope. ‘Well?’ she asked. ‘It must be something serious or you would have phoned.’ She sat back down on her chair with a thud; clutching herself around the waist as she braced herself. ‘Come on, don’t keep us in suspense any longer. Spit it out.’

  Jane sat down in the chair next to Beth. She told her about the phone call from Mrs Tubbs, the call to the Brighton police to follow it up and what they discovered when they arrived at the address.

  Jane recounted the conversation she had had with the police officer. He had arrived at the address, which was a large terraced Victorian villa that had been made into flats many years ago. Mrs Tubbs lived on the ground floor and they had spoken to her before they climbed the two flights of stairs to the top floor where this family had been living. There had been no answer to their knocks and they had managed to track down the landlord. He had told them that this couple had been tenants of his for exactly six weeks and, as far as he was concerned, he did not ask any questions about where they had come from. The rent was paid until the end of next week. The name of the tenant was Bell. A Mr Paul Bell.

  The officers had then gone back to speak to Mrs Tubbs who had given them information which had caused them to contact the landlord again to enquire whether he held a master key to the property. Mrs Tubbs had recalled that the camper van had been a recent acquisition. The family had arrived in a small black saloon car, and they did not seem to have a lot of belongings. The camper van had only arrived outside the flat a few days ago and she had wondered whom it had belonged to. She had been somewhat surprised when she had realised that the man called Paul had been driving it. She had summed up that the couple had not long arrived in the flat and they kept themselves to themselves.

  The children were very quiet, well behaved and she never heard any noise from them at all. The whole family seemed quiet and reserved. She had scratched her head and then remembered something very important. The woman, she spoken to only once, when she had asked her where the local chemist was, just after she arrived. The woman spoke with a Scottish accent.

  The landlord had, by this time, wondered why his tenants were causing so much interest with the police. He often found his short-term tenants arrived suddenly and left just as quickly, but usually they did not provoke any police interest.

  He insisted that he would be the one to unlock the door to the top flat. He informed the police officer that he probably had more rights to do this than they had, given that he was the owner of the property.

  They had found the flat deserted. In fact, the landlord revealed that it was tidier than he remembered it when he showed it to Mr Bell just those few weeks ago. The fridge was cleaned and empty. The beds stripped and the blankets and sheets folded up and placed on the ends of the double bed. The small back room where the children would have slept was equally empty. The man had said that they had their own cot for their little girl, and there was certainly a space in the corner of the room which looked as though it had been made to contain such an item of furniture.

  The family had fled. However from the information they had received it did look as though it was the same children whom Grampian Police were seeking. They managed to gain a more up-to-date description of the missing children. They heard that the little boy had black hair, it was cut very short, it almost looked as though he had had some sort of nit problem as it might have been shaved at some time. There were no signs of his curls. The little girl, she was about two and was blonde although she always wore a woolly bonnet, but her blonde fringe hung straight at the front. She had very blue eyes, almost violet in colour, the same violet colour as the ones which now peered across the table in the kitchen of Harbour View.

  ‘Where have they gone now…? How long before someone else spotted them and came back with further information?’ Beth felt the gambit of emotions flow through her body again. The sense of frustration, that feeling of deep gut-wrenching loss, thoughts of holding her wee bairns close to her heart. The overwhelming sense of anger, despair and, finally, a sense of relief: they were alive and someone was feeding and caring for them.

  Des and Jane stayed with Beth and Marty for some time after they had imparted the latest news. They gratefully accepted the mu
gs of hot tea and munched their way through the sandwiches which Molly produced. While they ate, they participated in the game of speculation. Speculation as to where and what the couple planned next. It was beginning to become a game of cat and mouse. The two detectives again were struck by the grace and patience of this young couple.

  If anyone deserved to have some sort of peace and happiness then it was Beth. She had suffered so much by now and, also, most people would scream in fury and blame the police for incompetence. Yet this young girl sat across the table just calmly thinking about what else they could do. Jane could not help thinking that so far she and her colleagues had failed in their duty to find the children, and in her mind they were incompetent.

  Chapter 28

  The next two weeks brought absolutely no further significant progress. There continued to be some crank calls. One of the calls had produced some hope and had sent the South Welsh Police Force combing half of Swansea only to find that it was another hoax caller. Des by this point had been ready to jump in his car and drive to South Wales where he would have cheerfully e murdered this caller for wasting police time.

  Daphne James had kept in touch with both Des and Beth. She had continued to keep the story going by also making contact with some other parents who were trying to locate their children. This was mostly mother’s where their father had absconded with the children. Although there were differences it kept Beth and Marty’s story in the front of people’s minds. The other tabloids had ceased being interested in continuing to assist the couple. Once they had finished with the sensational side of the story, there was no other story which interested them.

  It was almost two weeks to the day since the Brighton incident when Daphne took a call from a gentleman called Wayne. He wanted to know whether her paper would pay money up front for information about two children who were missing.

  Daphne was interested and put her very silky voice on which lured the man into a false sense of security and giving her much more information than he would have anticipated. Daphne was intrigued about what this man was telling her. He informed her that he had information about a couple that were driving a white camper van and had with them two toddlers. He had entered into a conversation with them and he now had information, which he believed would be worth something.

  Daphne was used to thinking on her feet, and decided to play along with this man. Yes from what he was telling her there could be an exclusive. She was not able to confirm she told him whether her editor would be in a position to pay a sum of money for the story. His reply came swiftly. If her paper would not then he was sure one of the tabloids would.

  Daphne agreed that she was sure she would be able to persuade her editor to cough up a substantial amount. She arranged an appointment to meet the man in a pub just off Waterloo Station, at 6pm tomorrow he readily agreed.

  A second after she had replaced the receiver, Daphne picked it up again and dialled the Aberdeen number for Grampian Police Headquarters and asked to speak to Des or Jane.

  Des took the call and she explained about the call from this, as she put it, low life. She also was convinced that he was not a crank and from her conversation with him it appeared that he knew more about the family than he could have gained just by reading the press coverage. She had had no intentions of speaking to her editor about payment for this information. As far as she was concerned no one should be making money out of these two children. Or, if she was being honest then, not any more than had already been made through the sales of the newspapers.

  Des agreed with the next action. He was not at this point going to ask his colleagues in the Met for help; no he decided, he was going to do this himself. He did not even contemplate asking his boss to agree to fund a flight to London, it would take far too long. He had leave owing him, and he would fund the journey himself. A couple of days sightseeing in London were just what he needed.

  He had taken Jane into his confidence. She agreed that Inspector Coull had become disenchanted about the amount of police time devoted to this case, and he would just tell them to pass the information on. And yes, she agreed, that she was sure their colleagues in the Met would do a good job, although they were not involved, and they would likely not view this as a priority. When they thought about how much they have become involved they had both silently thought and agreed they were most definitely emotionally involved. Not something that either officer would admit to anyone else, but it was true. They had become involved with Beth and Marty and needed to find these children and put an end to the misery the two young parents were in.

  Des caught the early flight to London the following morning. He had booked into a small hotel close to Waterloo Station and then met up with Daphne at a café for lunch. She impressed him with her sophisticated London ways. The confidence she had in knowing exactly what to order from this, in his view, rather overpriced and complicated menu. He had sat back and listened while she recounted the story the man had told her again.

  Des agreed to the part he would play. He would be her colleague and not ask questions unless he felt she was missing something vital. The man had contacted her and she would explain that her editor would only pay some money upfront once they had heard what he had to say. She would have an envelope filled with paper which she would pretend was going to be his payment.

  Des was impressed by this woman. Here she was dressed to the nines in clothes, which probably cost close to his years’ salary, but she was showing that she did really care about Beth and Marty and the children. He would only imagine how some of the other journalists might have behaved, they would just have handed some money over, took the story and ran all the way to the printing presses.

  At 6pm they entered the bar and made their way across the busy pub to the corner seat where they had agreed to meet the man. They found a rather scruffy man in his late twenties, sitting silently staring at a half empty glass of bitter. Daphne introduced herself and the man who gave his name as Wayne nodded that she had got the right person. She introduced Des; he nodded and then followed Daphne’s instructions to get another large pint for Wayne and a glass of dry white wine for her. She sat across the table from this man and used her most sugary tone to put him at his ease, reassuring him that her editor had been very helpful and waved the fat envelope in front of him, before returning it to her handbag. She had not failed to notice the glint of greediness, which had flashed across his face.

  Once Des returned with the drinks, Daphne got down to the interrogation. Des was impressed again. Even he was mesmerised by the way she did it. She would make a good detective he was thinking. It was almost like watching a snake, just when you thought you knew what was coming next, the tongue would lash out and give you a bite. Wow, what a woman.

  Wayne could not help himself. Before he had come into the pub he had had a plan where he would only give the briefest of bits of information, making sure the money was in his possession before giving all the details. However he had not planned for Daphne. So he ended up blurting out all of the information.

  His story began when he told how he had been on the ferry going from Dover to Calais. This was two weeks ago; he was going over to visit his brother who was in the Army stationed in Germany. He had got chatting to this bloke called Mike. He was telling him that he was going to Germany to visit his brother and the bloke had been interested as he had told him that he too had once been in the Army, he told him and he had been based up in Hanover. They had chatted for some time, and this Mike had said that he and his wife and kids were making their way down to Spain. They had a camper van and were going to take their time. They were heading for Andalucia and they had bought some place in a mountain village, somewhere in the middle of nowhere had been the description.

  Daphne had asked about the children. ‘Two little kids, a boy and girl’ she was told. ‘He called the boy Christopher and the little girl Vicky.’ Wayne told them that he had only seen the kids for a short while and they were sitting with the bloke’s wife. They looke
d fine he told Daphne. Come to think about it, they were kind of quiet, but then so was the woman. She just sat sort of hugging the kids keeping them close to her. She had looked sort of worried and anxious all of the time.

  The bloke Mike, he was very sure of himself. Cocky would be how he would describe him. Seemed to order his wife about, and she looked a bit uneasy when she tried to ask him a question. ‘I offered her a drink and she seemed to take a minute to think about it, just when I thought she would say yes, Mike interrupted and said she was fine and did not need anything. She seemed to shrink back into the seat somehow.’

  Anyway when I got over to Germany to see my brother, I was reading the Sunday paper, my brother he buys The Times, and I don’t usually read that sort of paper. Anyway that’s when I saw the story about trying to find these kids. It all seemed to come together.