by Tess Stimson
But despite a massive search throughout the night involving police, divers and volunteers, there has been no sign of Lottie, who was wearing a pink bridesmaid’s dress and ballet-style shoes when she disappeared.
Thin man
Police have appealed for a ‘thin man’ who was spotted carrying a child near the hotel at the time of Lottie’s disappearance to come forward. Lieutenant Bamby Bates, of the Pinellas County Sheriff’s Office, said they ‘urgently’ needed to speak to the man to rule him out of the inquiry.
Last night, as police helicopters scoured the sea, beach and surrounding area, Lottie’s mother issued a statement. ‘This is a very difficult time for all the family and we are all devastated. At the moment, all we can think about is Lottie’s safe return, and we ask anyone who may know anything to contact the police.’
It’s the second tragedy to strike the family in just over a year. Last August, Mrs Martini’s Italian husband, Luca Martini, 38, was killed in the Genoa bridge collapse while visiting the city, where his wealthy family own an import export coffee business. The sister of the groom, Zealy Cardinal, 32, said: ‘Alex had only just started to recover from losing Luca. She’s a strong woman, but this would knock anybody for six. We’re just praying Lottie comes home soon.’
She said the tot was ‘smart and intelligent, very strong-willed and determined. She’ll be four soon and will start school in the New Year.’
Driven
Alexa Martini, who is considered a rising star at her London-based law firm, Muysken Ritter, had recently moved into a £650,000 townhouse in Balham, south London.
A friend of the family, who asked not to be named, said: ‘There has been some negative spin put on this, with people criticising Alex for leaving Lottie to make her way back from the beach on her own. Alex is very driven. She’s a career woman, and she works hard, so it’s only reasonable she lets down her hair a bit now and again. But it’s ridiculous, she was close by, and there were dozens of people about. Everyone was keeping an eye out for each other. No one was drunk.’
twenty-four hours missing
chapter 15
alex
The police haven’t decided yet if they believe I’m guilty. But they’re certainly keeping the possibility on the table.
‘If something happened to Lottie,’ Bates says. ‘If there was an accident, Alex, and you panicked. Now would be the time to tell us.’
‘When?’
‘When?’
‘When was this accident?’ I ask incredulously. ‘Twenty witnesses will tell you I went straight from the wedding to the reception by the pool. According to your own evidence, Lottie was alive and well at that point. Another dozen people can confirm I wasn’t on my own for a second at the reception. When could I have hurt her?’
‘Alex, no one is accusing you of anything,’ Bates says. ‘As I told you, we simply have to consider all the possibilities.’
‘There’s a significant period of time when you’re not in any of the photos,’ Lorenz says. ‘Over an hour, in fact.’
‘And I’ve told you what I was doing then, and with whom!’
‘Mrs Martini—’
I push back my chair. ‘I don’t think I should continue this conversation without a lawyer.’
I’m not foolish enough to think the innocent have no need of lawyers; that those with nothing to hide have nothing to fear.
Bates and Lorenz follow me back to the main conference room where Zealy is waiting for me. A group of college students is playing volleyball on the powdery white sand outside. A catamaran slices through the turquoise ocean in the distance. Already life is returning to normal. Stop all the clocks, I think. How can people sail and play ball while my daughter is missing?
I imagine plunging into the ocean, swimming as hard and fast as I can until I am so far out and so exhausted I can allow the water to just pull me under, and bring an end to all of this.
A young Black female officer approaches Bates, too focused on the urgency of what she has to say to pay attention to me. ‘Lieutenant, we got a witness thinks she saw something,’ she says. ‘A man carrying a kid around the time the girl disappeared. Says she thinks he looked off.’
‘What does that mean?’
‘I’m just telling you what she said.’
‘Who’s the witness?’
The officer belatedly notices me and hesitates. Bates gestures for her to continue.
‘One of the wedding party,’ the officer says. ‘The maid of honour, Catherine Lord.’
‘Why has she only just come forward with this?’ Bates asks.
‘Says she didn’t realise what she’d seen till now.’
‘Fuck’s sake. Where is she?’
‘Interview two.’
Bates turns to me, but I forestall her. ‘She told me she hadn’t seen Lottie all night,’ I say. ‘I want to hear this.’
‘If it’s important, you’ll be the first to know.’
‘Let her do her job,’ Zealy says. ‘You need to eat something. At least come and have a coffee. You’re not going to do Lottie any good if you don’t look after yourself.’
Bates and Lorenz are already heading towards the interview suite. I allow Zealy to lead me to a couple of bilious-green armchairs printed with pink flamingos in the hotel lobby. She orders us a couple of toasted club sandwiches, but after the first couple of bites I can’t eat any more and put the plate down. There’s a hard lump in my throat, making it difficult to swallow. Even with the benefit of two cups of coffee in my bloodstream, I feel light-headed and oddly detached from my surroundings.
I’m haunted by the truth of the lieutenant’s observation: Lottie knew her abductor. Someone she trusted took her. Someone here, at this wedding.
Someone who, even now, is pretending to be my friend.
chapter 16
alex
Bates returns within the hour to brief us.
‘The description Catherine Lord gave is of a white male, mid-forties, thin, average height, with dark receding hair,’ she says. ‘Sound like anyone you know?’
It sounds exactly like the man I saw talking to Lottie on the beach, and I say as much. Lorenz can’t quite look me in the eye, and suddenly they’re treating me with kid gloves again. But any vindication I might feel is swept away by a tsunami of guilt. I should have reported the incident when it happened. I should have kept Lottie close to me, knowing she might be at risk.
Should have. Could have.
If only.
Louder than the drumbeat of blame is the thud of terror in my heart. Before, the monster of my nightmares was blessedly vague: a dark, hazy shadow. Now, he has a face. As agonising as it is not knowing what’s happened to Lottie, the idea of her in this man’s hands is worse. A man who may be doing indescribable, unthinkable things to her as we stand here.
‘What else did Catherine say?’ I ask.
‘Alex, we don’t know for sure this is—’
‘Just tell me!’
The lieutenant looks me in the eye. ‘Ms Lord saw a man carrying a child between the side of the hotel and the staff apartments about twenty minutes after the wedding ceremony finished. She’d gone to the restroom to freshen up, and saw them through the window.’
‘Why didn’t she say anything before?’ Zealy demands.
‘The kid was wrapped in a beach towel,’ Bates says. ‘She didn’t connect it with Lottie because she didn’t see a pink dress. And the kid she saw had bare feet. Catherine remembers that, because the kid’s feet were dirty, like it’d been walking barefoot on the sidewalk. Lottie was wearing ballet slippers when she disappeared.’
‘She hates shoes,’ I say. ‘She’s always taking them off.’
Bates glances at Lorenz, who nods as if scribing a mental note.
Much as I want to know what’s happened to my little girl, I can’t bear for it to be this. ‘There must have been a lot of fathers carrying their kids back from the beach yesterday,’ I say desperately. ‘Why does she think this was Lotti
e?’
‘She says he didn’t look like a tourist,’ Bates says. ‘She thinks the kid was asleep – she can’t be sure if it was a boy or a girl. But she says he didn’t look comfortable carrying the child, like he wasn’t used to it. He had her scooped flat in his arms, instead of up against his shoulder, you know, like you do with older kids. Catherine said they just looked off.’
‘Jesus,’ Zealy says. ‘And she didn’t think it might’ve been useful to know this earlier?’
I don’t have the energy to spare for anger. ‘You really think this was Lottie?’
‘It’s too early to say. Either way, we need him to come forward.’
‘We have a sketch artist in with Ms Lord now,’ Lorenz adds.
‘A sketch artist? What about security cameras?’
‘They don’t got any alongside the hotel. The liquor store across the way has a couple cameras, but this guy, whoever he is, he’s been smart about dodging them.’ Lorenz shrugs. ‘Nothing from the parking lot, either. But we’re eliminating the vehicles there, matching them to hotel guests. No one saw the guy carrying a kid across the bridge, so he must have had a car parked somewhere. We’ll find him.’
Every time someone says that, it rings less true.
‘I understand how hard this is, Alex,’ Bates says. ‘But we got a great team working on this. We’ve had a lot of calls from the Amber alert. It’s just a question of time—’
Behind me, someone calls my name.
Even though I’m supposed to be the strong one, the moment I see Mum standing in the hotel lobby I run towards her and fling myself into her arms like a child.
Dad encircles us both and we cling together, drawing strength from our shared grief.
We’ve always been like this, a trio so close it can be hard to see the seams.
When Dad finally releases us, Marc and Sian are standing awkwardly a few feet away, clearly not wanting to interrupt.
Mum hugs them both in turn. ‘I’m so sorry this happened to you,’ she says.
Sian looks surprised and gratified. It hasn’t even occurred to me to spare a thought for a bride whose wedding day was hijacked in the most terrible way. Grief makes you selfish. But Sian and Marc will never be able to celebrate their anniversary without remembering this. Only Mum would think to acknowledge their loss in the midst of our own.
‘We wanted to be with you for the press conference,’ Marc says to me. ‘Some of the others are coming downstairs for it, too. Moral support.’
‘We should be getting you a lawyer,’ Dad says. ‘No matter what the police say now, they’ll start to look at you, if they haven’t already. And you’ll need someone to handle the media, too. After this appeal goes out, the story will get a life of its own. We need someone to keep the press off your back so you can focus on doing what you need to do.’
‘I’ll do it,’ Marc says. ‘I’ve got a few media contacts here and at home.’
‘Fine,’ I say.
Mum is watching Lorenz and Bates as they confer with their colleagues by the door to the conference room. Beneath the sheen of maternal competence I’ve known all my life, she looks scared and suddenly old. She’s not yet sixty, but she’s had two brushes with cancer, and her beloved grandchild is missing. Her skin is yellow and waxy, and there are grey pouches beneath her eyes. I’ll be glad when my sister arrives to take care of the person I need to take care of me.
‘What time does Harriet’s flight get in?’ I ask Dad.
‘The Shetlands are a long way away, love,’ he says. ‘Lottie will be home long before Harriet could get here.’
It takes a moment to register that my sister isn’t coming.
Our relationship has always been complex. We’re sisters, after all. Friends and rivals in equal measure. I always envied Harriet’s ability to take advantage of the battles I fought as the firstborn with our parents over curfews and boys and school; she was resentful she never got to do anything first. As a child, it never occurred to me she might feel excluded from the self-nourishing triumvirate my parents and I had established before she was born two years later. Only recently have I wondered if her retreat to the Shetlands was a tactical withdrawal, precipitated by an instinct for self-preservation.
I’m aware, too, of the cruelty of fortune: that the sister who prioritised work over family was given a child she hadn’t asked for, whereas Harriet, who only ever wanted a baby, will never have one of her own. But we love each other dearly. I’ve never questioned that.
And she worships the ground Lottie walks on; I’ve never doubted that, either. Harriet was the first to visit me in hospital after Lottie was born and, unlike me, she was a natural with the baby. Lottie suffered from colic and, within days of taking her home, Luca and I were on our knees with exhaustion. Nothing we did settled her: we rubbed her back, put a warm hot water bottle on her tummy, gave her gripe water; I even changed my diet and cut out anything spicy, in case something in my milk was upsetting her. But no matter what we tried, she screamed unrelentingly, for hours at a time. Sometimes I didn’t know if it was Lottie crying or me.
When she was about a week old, I called Harriet, who was staying with Mum and Dad, and begged her to come and take Lottie out for an hour, just so we could get some sleep.
The second Lottie was in my sister’s arms, she stopped crying.
The baby-whisperer, we called her. Lottie only had to hear Harriet’s voice and she became calmer. To her shattered parents, it was like dark magic. Harriet saw us through the first six weeks, and I’m sure I wasn’t the only one who thought Lottie had been born to the wrong sister.
After Luca died, Harriet came down again to rescue us. For all our differences, I don’t think I’d have coped without her. Neither Lottie nor I were ready for me to be a full-time single parent, and Harriet saved us both.
Which is why I can’t believe she’s let me down now.
As Mum and Dad go upstairs to change after their long flight, the wedding party gathers in the hotel lobby in an unconscious parody of yesterday’s formal photographs: Marc and Sian in the centre, with Sian’s parents behind her, and Marc’s dad, Eric, at his son’s shoulder. Flanking them are Catherine and Zealy on one side, and Paul and Ian on the other. It’s the first time I’ve seen Ian since our encounter on the beach and, when he catches my eye, he flushes and looks away.
Only the little bridesmaids are missing from the tableau, a truth that lands like a blow to my solar plexus.
The lieutenant touches my arm. ‘Before you talk to the media,’ she says, ‘there’s something you need to know.’
She hands me a small, clear plastic evidence bag. It takes me a few moments to understand what I’m holding.
My daughter’s hair.
chapter 17
quinn
The mother doesn’t come across well. She delivers her prepared statement as if reading from a shopping list, and she looks almost bored to be here.
The police may have told her not to show any emotion, of course. They’ll have explained that in cases like this, the perps often watch media coverage and get off on the family’s pain.
But the public expects a desperate mother to react in a certain way. Quid pro quo: give me your tears, your grief, your trauma, and we’ll give you our sympathy and understanding. Until something else catches our attention, anyway.
Show us something, Quinn thinks. Throw us a bone.
Sure, everyone reacts to trauma in different ways. She’s seen one woman bury five children killed by the same bomb in Syria without shedding a tear, and another sob her heart out over a torn dress. But as Quinn glances around the press pack, she notices it’s not playing as sympathetically as it should. The story is still largely local; most of the journos present are touchy-feely Americans. Alexa’s cool British reserve isn’t doing her any favours.
Quinn signals for her cameraman, Phil, to take some wide-angled shots that include the grandparents of the missing girl who’re sitting quietly at the side of the room. Both of them are
in tears, she notes, the grandmother clinging to her husband’s arm. So this stiff-upper-lip thing isn’t a family trait, then.
She hates human interest stories like this; they’re voyeuristic and intrusive, turning personal tragedy into a saleable commodity. She became a journalist to cover events that change the course of the world, and the disappearance of one kid, however tragic for the family, doesn’t matter in the wider scheme of things.
But she can sense something dark at work here that piques her interest. Something sinister and ugly; something that’s brought this family’s world crashing down upon them.
She jams a plastic Evian bottle in the crook of her withered right arm and untwists the cap with her left hand. It contains neat vodka; not her beverage of choice, but she can hardly rock up to a press conference swigging bourbon from her hip flask.
This might not be Quinn’s kind of story, but it’s the perfect springboard back to prime time. She’s aware she only got it because the rest of INN’s Washington team was scattered across the country following Democratic presidential candidates, leaving Quinn the assignment editor’s bottom-of-the-barrel option at seven on a Sunday morning. But this is going to be big. INN is a UK-based news network and Florida a popular destination for British families.
If Lottie Martini isn’t found safe and well soon, this’ll get a lot of play back home. Front-page stuff. A little English girl from a nice, middle-class family, disappearing from a wedding, and not in some dodgy third-world country like Thailand or Mexico but in America, just a hop and a skip from Disney World. The tabloids are going to eat it up.
She watches Alexa Martini as the vodka warms its way down her gullet. Is this a nice, middle-class family? The missing girl’s father is dead, killed in the Genoa bridge collapse last year, so that should elicit some sympathy. Everyone loves a pretty young widow. It’s a shame the kid isn’t more photogenic, though. No one’s going to want to plaster that face on a ‘Have you seen this child?’ T-shirt.