SNATCHED BAIRN: Scottish Fiction

by Anne Bone

  ‘Nae problems at all Carol, you know fine I don’t mind one bit, I’ll get my coat on and be with you in a jiffy.’

  Carol was soon driving into the car park at Queen Street. She didn’t have to go up to her office as Neil was already there packing their equipment into the back of his Range Rover. He saw her and waved. ‘Over here, Carol, I’ve got everything, so we can get right off.’ He slammed the boot closed and got into the driver’s seat, while Carol made herself comfortable in the passenger’s side.

  They started off and as they got to the end of the road, they passed Dave Rogers and Jane Lewis just turning into the road that led to the back of the station, and the cells. Sitting in the back was a man, obviously the guy they had arrested.

  ********

  The two girls sat on the bed, not sure what was happening. They couldn’t hear anything, both had taken turns at putting their ears against the door, but couldn’t hear a thing. It had been a real surprise when the door opened and Mary was propelled into the room, a shock for them both.

  They had hugged each other, but then they realised they were also frightened. Nothing like this had ever happened before, and they couldn’t help but wonder whether he had discovered that the keys had gone missing and knew they had been out of the room.

  ‘He must have looked in the cupboard and saw the box was gone,’ Mary said, ‘so I guess he’s probably searching my room now.’

  ‘Where did you hide it?’

  ‘It’s under my bed, I pushed it right to the back, but then if he looks he’ll find it. Oh, just when I thought we had found a way to get out,’ she started to cry.

  Shona got hold of her hand and gave it a squeeze. ‘Well at least we are together now, and we can try and plan our escape. It will be better with both of us, and he can’t pretend there is only one of us any longer, can he?’

  ‘But how can we plan our escape, when we are both now locked up in here; and we know there is no way out at all?’

  ‘But what if we look around and see if there is something that we can find to clobber him over the head with. We could move the bed so that once the door opens, one of us could stand on it and bang him on the head, and they we could try and get passed him and make our escape. I thought of trying that once, but he would be too strong for me on my own, but with the two of us we would maybe have a chance.’

  ‘I dinna know. I suppose we could try, but then what if he got us first. We might never get out ever again. Gosh, I’m getting hungry, I didn’t get round to eating my sandwiches.’

  ‘I ate one of mine, but I’m not awful keen on cheese ones, so look there’s still one left, you have it, and some of my milk.’ Shona picked a rather dry sandwich that was curling up at the ends and offered it to Mary, ‘I wonder if he’s going to bring us in any tea, or do you think he is punishing us? Mary bit into the sandwich, not noticing that it was dry and didn’t taste very nice, but it was food and she was hungry.

  ********

  The journey into force headquarters was undertaken in a cold atmosphere of expectancy. Jane would have liked nothing better than to fire questions at the man sitting silently in the back of the car, but knew that it wouldn’t be admissible in a court, and there was one certainty, she wasn’t going to mess up and let him off on some sort of technicality. She had only uttered a few words to him as they had driven down the snowy village road towards the wider main road. She had turned and said, ‘I hope you realise the terrible pain and despair that you have caused to the parents of those two girls.’

  He hadn’t made any comment, but stared ahead into the blackness of the night. Once they had reached headquarters and handed him over to the custody sergeant, he had asked for a solicitor, and complied with the orders directed at him to remove his shoes and his belt, and to enter the small cell.

  Once the door had clanged shut and the lock turned, he had sat down on the hard bench that doubled as a bed, and put his hands in his head. He was scared, but whatever, he would not give in and tell them anything, he decided that until, and if, they found the girls they had very little. Oh, they saw the photographs. If he had had longer he would have pulled them off the wall and thrown them into the fire and burnt them, but there hadn’t been time.

  He looked around. He didn’t like the cell, it made him feel claustrophobic. He had requested a solicitor and the duty sergeant had said he would call in the duty solicitor. He hoped that whoever he was, he would be good. He looked at his hands and realised he was wringing them, a habit he used to have when he had been in trouble with his mother. He thought about her now and wondered what she would make of her only son, shut in a cell and hoping that he would somehow get out of it soon, and return home, where he could sort out the mess, because if they didn’t find the girls, then there would be most definitely a mess.

  Jane went up to her office once they had booked Donald Beam into the custody suite. She and Dave got a cup of coffee and waited. They needed to now wait until the duty solicitor arrived before they could start to question him. ‘I don’t think he is going to make it easy for us, he doesn’t seem to be, shall we say, very cooperative.’

  ‘I agree,’ replied Dave, spooning three sugars into his mug and stirring it rapidly, before sitting down on the other side of the desk. ‘I think the bastard is playing games, he knows exactly where those girls are, and he is playing for time. Let’s just hope we locate them soon. Are you informing the parents?’

  ‘I am going to hold off a while before we do. I don’t want to raise their hopes if we don’t find them – alive. That would be terrible.’ The phone on the desk rang and she listened, ‘Okay, thanks, bag them and bring them in.’

  Dave looked at her waiting, ‘What is it?’

  ‘Sid has found a quantity of sleeping tablets and sedatives. All appear to be prescribed to Beam, but on top of that he says there were two bottles of chloroform, so more evidence that he probably drugged the girls. The absolute bastard, I wonder what else he has done. Those poor kids.’ Jane felt her anger rising. After all this time, he has had them; she couldn’t imagine what they had gone through.

  *********

  There was very little snow until they reached Aboyne, and then the road was covered. Neil drove the Range Rover with skill, covering the road speedily and swiftly. Carol was not keen on driving in bad weather, and was pleased that he was the other duty forensic officer. She sat back watching the snowflakes hit the windscreen, almost mesmerising them. ‘It’s horrible isn’t it?’ she commented, ‘I hate driving in the dark, and when it’s snowing, it’s almost as bad as driving in thick fog. Horrible.’

  ‘So, did you work on the case before?’ he asked her. He had only been working in Aberdeen for the past few weeks, so knew very little of the missing children cases, other than what was spoken about in the canteen. It wasn’t spoken about loudly, but more often in soft-pitched tones, as though nobody wanted to raise it. These were cases where the force didn’t feel they had achieved the best outcome, having not found either girl.

  ‘Yes, I worked on the Mary Dinnet case last year. We thought we had found the culprit; I was involved in the forensics for Robert Laird’s caravan and car. It was a difficult one as we got very little, apart from circumstantial, together of course with the obscene material of children that he had in the caravan. But everyone was of the opinion he was responsible for Mary, but we never found her body.’ She peered out, pointing to the signpost signalling Inverdarroch. ‘Christ, the snow is getting thicker. If he had taken them anywhere it’s going to be a bugger to find them in this lot.’

  As they made their way through the small hamlet of Inverdarroch, there were signs that the locals had realised that something big was happening: a couple were standing outside of the bar, while the village shop was lit up like a Christmas tree. There was a police car outside of the village hall and beside it a Land Rover that had Mountain Rescue painted on the side. ‘Looks like they’ve called for reinforcements,’ she said.

  It didn’t take long to drive th
e final narrow road up to Torres Croft, and they knew they had arrived by the police car that sat at the end of the track. When they drove up, an officer leapt out to check who they were, before permitting them to drive up the trail that was now completely covered by snow. It was falling so fast that it was covering up the previous tracks at a brisk rate.

  When they reached the house, they could not get as close to the building as they would have liked, as there were a number of police vehicles in the yard. They jumped out and went into the back of the car to get their bags, and tramped their way up to the doorway. Carol knew DC Sid Richie, and nodded to him as he moved to let her into the house. She looked around as always when she first reached the crime scene, getting a feel of the place. She looked at his hands, he was thankfully wearing gloves, as it could be a nightmare on a case like this where there has been so many people wandering around. ‘What have you got?’ she asked him.

  ‘You might want to start in the bedroom down there,’ he pointed towards another door. ‘There’s his, Beam’s, and then across the passage from his, is what looks like one of the children’s.’

  She turned to Neil, ‘Right then if you start on his, I’ll make a start on the other one. Bag all the bedding and any clothes.’ ‘Is there a dirty wash basket or something like it?’ she asked Sid, who by this time was starting to get hungry, having missed his tea.

  He would have liked to have made himself a sandwich, but knew better than to tamper with anything in a house search. He just hoped that the local Bobbies would organise something with the village soon. ‘Oh, there is a basket thing in the bathroom, maybe that’s got clothes in it. He went to show her, but she stopped him in his tracks.’

  ‘Leave it for me, thanks.’ Carol made her way to the bathroom and found the wicker basket. She opened the lid and there lying in a heap were just what she was hoping for, there were dirty clothes, and amongst them children’s pyjamas. Well now. she thought to herself, obviously there have been children in this house. She looked around and opened the bathroom cabinet, where amongst the shaving brushes and razors was also a cup that held four toothbrushes. A lot of brushes for one person. She placed them all into evidence bags and sealed them. She then moved into the bedroom and turned on the big light, but there was no bulb, the only light was the bedside lamp that was dull and made it hard to really see anything clearly. She would need more lighting to take a close look of what is in here. She pulled back the sheet and duvet from the bed, and used her torch to examine the sheets. Nothing. But she would remove them so that she could test them when she got back to the office. She bagged the bedding and sealed the bag. She used her torch to look at the corners of the room, searching to see whether there was anything that would provide her with any more clues. She went across to the other bedroom where Neil was dusting for prints. She stood and looked at the wall of photographs; she used her camera to take a number of photographs of the wall. These would be used as evidence, and would need careful removal.

  They continued in their careful examination of the rooms. She also moved into the so-called photographic studio. The walk-in cupboard in the corner of the room was his dark room, and she photographed several lines of negatives that were pegged on a wire, waiting to be collected. There appeared to be photographs of a child who was sleeping.

  What a place, she thought. She went back through to the kitchen and watched as the detectives were still searching through books in the corner of the room. ‘So, how’s the search going outside?’ she asked them. ‘There seems to be a number of outbuildings. I take it there isn’t anything in there of interest. ‘

  ‘No, nothing, we’ve not found anything. We’re going to in-pound his car, but that’s probably going to have to wait until tomorrow, but on a cursory look, nothing. Do you want to look? It’s pretty dark out there. We’ve called in the mountain rescue and they are starting scouting about down along the road just in case the girls got out and started walking, although to be honest, I don’t think they would have got out of here, not by walking, if you know what I mean.’

  She turned around, looking; something wasn’t right about this room. One of her aptitudes was that she had an excellent sense of spatial awareness, and there was something not right. She went back out to the passage, and into the child’s bedroom, looking up and down, and then she returned to the kitchen. She walked around it looking.

  Sid watched her; she was visibly sniffing something out. She was now knocking on one of the walls, and he wasn’t quite sure why.

  ‘There is something not right about the proportion of this room,’ she told him, still looking up and down, ‘I think that there should be more space between the two rooms, there’s no cupboards here, are there?’ She looked again, and then she tried to look behind the large floor to ceiling bookcase. She couldn’t get her hand behind it, so grabbed her torch and shone it into the tiny gap at the back of it. She saw something; it was just a glimmer of a doorway. ‘Here!’ she shouted, ‘there’s something.’ She felt up to the top of the bookcase and located a latch which she released, with that she and Sid pushed the bookcase and realised it slid along, revealing a small door with a key still in its lock.

  ‘Wow, Neil, come quickly,’ she shouted. Sid turned the lock and the door opened, only to reveal another door also with a key in the lock. He turned that as well and the door opened. They looked at each other, bracing themselves for what they might find in the small room. ‘I’ll go first,’ she told him, ‘to preserve any forensic evidence.’ Although she wasn’t tall by any means she still needed to duck to enter the room. There was a dull light and she went in. They heard her utter a huge sigh as she looked at the bed and saw the two girls curled up together like two little puppies fast asleep. ‘They’re here!’ she shouted. She bent down to check that they were, indeed, just sleeping and Mary opened her eyes.

  Mary shook Shona, ‘Wake up! They’ve come for us, were safe!’ She smiled at Carol, who reached her arms out for the child.

  The news reverberated around the house. The shout went out that the search party could stand down and the searchers, some of whom were locals from the village, made their way up the track to stand outside of the house. They were feeling ecstatic that the children had been found safe and apparently well.

  Carol had taken both children through to the kitchen. They were slightly dazed, and she asked Sid to ensure that only he and Neil remained in the house, so not to overwhelm the girls. An ambulance had been on standby down at the village, and Sid shouted and asked that the vehicles be moved from the yard so that it could get through. Meanwhile, Carol found some juice and gave the girls something to drink. Mary told her that she was hungry, so Neil searched and found some packets of biscuits; he opened them and handed them to the girls.

  As they waited for the ambulance to arrive, Sid radioed through to force headquarters to inform the boss. She was, he was told, in an interview with Beam, but they would most definitely inform her immediately.

  Jane and Dave were indeed in the interview room, sitting across the table from Donald Beam and the duty solicitor. The latter was looking a little bewildered at being called in to provide legal advice to someone who was being interviewed on such serious charges.

  Donald Beam was not being very helpful, denying anything in connection with Mary or Shona, and just kept saying no comment. Jane had looked him directly in the eye and said, ‘Look, Mr Beam, we know both girls were in your home, so just make it better on yourself, tell us where they are now.’

  He shook his head, ‘I don’t know what you mean.’ He was trying hard to remain calm, but inside he was melting, but he wouldn’t let them know that.

  There was a knock on the door and a face appeared, asking if he could speak to her as a matter of urgency. Jane got up and went outside the door, where the sergeant’s face broke into a grin. ‘They’ve found them and they are both safe and well. He had a concealed room and they were both in there. They’re being taken to the Sick Kids for a check-up and Carol Mathieson is with t
hem. It was apparently down to her that they found them.’

  ‘Oh, fantastic news,’ she replied, ‘absolutely bloody fantastic! Can we get someone out to inform the parents? No wait, I am going to finish here for the moment, I’ll suspend the interview, and he can go back down in the cells, let him ruminate on his position for a while.’

  She went back into the interview room; she made sure that her face did not show the delight she was feeling, she ensured that it was stern and serious, as if she had just heard bad news, instead of the best news in the world. ‘Right, Mr Beam, I am suspending this interview as I have some very serious new evidence to consider, and so I will arrange for you to be escorted back to the custody cell.’ Dave looked at her with some concern, she didn’t meet his eye. She opened the door and requested an officer escort Beam back to the cell; he was looking confused and more than a little anxious.

  Once he was out of the room, she told Dave, who grabbed hold of her and danced around the room. Not very professional, but it was better than they could have ever hoped for. ‘Now,’ she told him, ‘I am going to make a call to Elgin, and then I am going to personally go and tell Jenni Dinnet.’

  She ran up the stairs to her office, and went in and immediately picked up the phone and dialled Tim’s number. He answered and listened, although he could hardly understand what she was saying she was speaking so quickly.

  ‘Did you just say that you have found both of them?’ he asked, ‘Mary as well?’

  ‘Yes, they are being taken to the Sick Children’s hospital in Aberdeen, so could you please arrange for someone, or better still you, if you can, to go and tell the Camerons. They’ll need to come down to Aberdeen.’