by C J Parsons
Tara sipped from her cup (coffee, judging by the smell). ‘I’ve thought about you a lot since the park, wondering how you were coping.’ She shook her head slowly. ‘I can’t even imagine what you’ve been through, not knowing what was going on, or whether you’d ever see your child again . . . It’s every parent’s worst nightmare.’
Carrie didn’t know what the appropriate response was, so just said: ‘Yes.’
‘But it all turned out OK in the end, thank God.’
As Tara’s eyes returned to Sofia (now tossing coloured balls in the air), Carrie’s thoughts snagged on something.
‘How do you know what my daughter looks like?’
‘Are you kidding? Everyone knows what she looks like. She’s been all over the news.’
‘Oh. Yes. Of course.’
Sofia and her new companion waded out of the ball pit and disappeared briefly up a ladder before re-emerging on the red level. Carrie could see her daughter whispering something to the other child, hands cupped around her ear.
She had made a new friend, just like that.
Amazing.
‘Shall we sit?’ Tara gestured towards Carrie’s table, with its empty chairs and half-finished tea, the canvas bag of toys slouched on the floor.
‘Yes.’
Tara dragged one of the chairs around so that they were seated side by side, facing the play structure. She looked inside her cup, appearing to inspect the contents.
‘So what’s the latest on Sofia’s case? Do the police have any suspects?’
‘Not yet. They’re still investigating.’
‘Oh well. She’s home safe. That’s all that matters.’
No, Carrie thought. It’s not all that matters.
Tara finished her coffee, tilting the cup all the way up.
‘Are you here with your son?’ Carrie asked.
‘Of course. I don’t think anyone comes here to soak up the atmosphere.’
Her statement was factually correct, but Tara must have found it funny, because she laughed right after she said it. Carrie manufactured a smile. She didn’t get the joke, but she liked Tara and wanted to be liked back.
‘Where is he?’
‘Oh, he’s in there somewhere.’ She waved a hand in the direction of the play area without looking. ‘Stirring up trouble, no doubt.’
‘What’s his name?’
‘Peter.’
‘How old is he?’
‘He just turned seven.’ She pushed her hands up her cheeks, catching her chin in the base of the V they made.
‘Is he—’
‘Look, here comes Sofia.’
Carrie opened her arms as her daughter came barrelling towards them, skirting around a large table of women arguing energetically in Spanish.
‘Mummy, can we go now? I’m hot and my new friend Maisy went home and we’ve been here a long time already.’ Then she saw Tara and her face did one of those rapid switches that meant something had surprised her.
‘Hello!’
Tara smiled. ‘Hello to you too.’
‘You’re the balloon lady!’
Tara tipped her head to one side, forehead crinkling. ‘I’m sorry, the what?’
‘You saved my balloon.’
‘I think you have me mixed up with someone else. I would remember meeting someone with a beautiful face like yours.’
‘When you saw me before my face looked like a cat with whiskers and its tongue stuck out. It was Sally McPherson’s birthday party and there was face paint with different animals but they wouldn’t do a penguin. My balloon floated up and got stuck in a tree and you climbed up and got it.’
Sally McPherson’s party. Carrie hadn’t been happy about leaving Sofia there. But the hostess’s instructions had been very clear. It’s drop and go, she’d said with a mouth-only smile. So enjoy the peace and quiet and I’ll see you at three. Carrie had returned to Granger Park half an hour early. And felt a bruised throb when she saw the dozen or so school mums sitting on blankets, drinking prosecco from plastic wine glasses, the hostess bending towards them with a tray of cheese and crackers.
Tara laughed, slapping the table.
‘Oh wow, was that you? What a coincidence! I nearly fell out of that tree.’ She looked at Carrie, smiling. ‘I run a small catering company, specialising in food for children’s parties.’
‘I liked that balloon,’ Sofia said.
‘It was an excellent balloon, well worth the climb.’ She held out her hand. ‘My name is Tara.’
Sofia shook it with a sombre expression. Carrie smiled inwardly: a grown-up face for a grown-up ritual.
‘My name is Sofia. I’m pleased to meet you.’
A surge of affection made Carrie pull her daughter onto her lap, wrapping her in a hug.
‘Tara is here with her son, Peter.’
‘Where is he?’ Sofia looked around. ‘Can he come to our house and play?’
‘Another time, maybe,’ Tara answered quickly, eyes doing another dash up the play frame. ‘I’m afraid we already have plans today.’
‘Oh.’ Sofia’s features collapsed under the weight of disappointment.
Tara placed a hand on top of the curly head. ‘But on Wednesday, guess what Peter and I are doing? Baking cupcakes in a giant kitchen that I use for work. If you’re free, maybe you could come and help us out? You could meet Max the cat. He’s always hanging around the back door, angling for scraps and strokes.’
‘Yes!’ Sofia clapped her hands. ‘I want to play with Max!’
Tara turned to Carrie with a smile.
‘What do you think? Are you free next Wednesday for lunch and a chat?’
Lunch and a chat. Carrie rolled the phrase around in her head. It felt warm.
‘Yes.’ She lifted her mouth into a smile-shape to show she was pleased by the invitation. ‘Please.’
‘My work kitchen is in central London, off Regent Street. Is that OK? Because if it’s too much of a slog, I’m happy to make it another day when I—’
‘No, that’s fine. My office is near Regent Street, so I’m used to the journey.’
‘Great! See you around three o’clock?’
‘Yes.’ Carrie could get up early on Wednesday, do a few hours’ work in her study, then visit Tara after lunch. It would be good for Sofia to have another child to play with.
Tara took out her mobile. Carrie watched her name being tapped in under ‘New Contact’. Tara handed the phone across.
‘Just give me your number and I’ll text you the address.’
Carrie carefully keyed in the digits, adding herself to the list of people Tara chose to communicate with. New contact. She felt shy as she handed it back.
But Tara ignored her outstretched hand. Her eyes were fixed on the top floor of the play area, forehead crinkling.
Sofia slipped down from Carrie’s lap. ‘Can we go home now?’ She tugged at her mother’s arm. ‘I’m boiling.’
‘Yes.’ Carrie placed the phone carefully on the table and picked up her canvas bag. Tara was still peering up at the wall of netting with a hand above her eyes, as though shielding herself from a glare.
‘Goodbye.’ Carrie said, standing and pulling the bag over her shoulder. ‘We’re leaving now.’
Tara’s head did a little jolt, as though she’d been startled by an unexpected noise. ‘What? Oh. Sorry.’ She got up from her chair, turning to face them. ‘I’m looking forward to seeing you both on Wednesday.’ She smiled down at Sofia. ‘There’s a park nearby where we can go afterwards. Maybe I’ll even climb a tree, for old time’s sake.’ Sofia giggled and Tara leaned over to give her a hug. Then she straightened and looked at Carrie. ‘I’m really glad we ran into each other.’
Carrie felt a lifting sense of wonder as she and Sofia walked hand in hand towards the bus stop.
Amazing.
‘That’s not right,’ Daniel said.
The three of them were crowded together in the tiny park keepers’ hut – a windowless, oven-hot space with sets of overalls hanging from one wall and shovels propped against the other. Rolled up canvas sacks were piled at the back, along with twine and a pair of hedge clippers.
A dozen or so keys dangled from small hooks screwed directly into the left-hand wall, each with a handwritten cardboard label thumbtacked beneath it (‘Main playground’, ‘Japanese garden’, ‘East gate’, ‘Tennis courts’). Only one hook was empty, labelled ‘North gate’. Daniel frowned at it.
‘The keys are supposed to be returned immediately, so they should all be here when the park’s open. And anyway, the north gate stays locked, so there’s no need for anyone to take it in the first place.’
Juliet considered the empty hook as a bead of sweat sneaked into one of her eyes, making it sting. The heat was like a physical presence, pressing itself against her.
‘How many people have access to this hut?’
‘Pretty much everyone who works in the park. We’re all given a key to it. Plus there’s a spare hidden under the edge of the roof.’
‘So whoever took Sofia must have had one – or known about the spare.’ Juliet looked around at the contents of the hut, trying to see them through the eyes of a would-be abductor. ‘They came in and took the gate key, and possibly one of the canvas sacks to carry her in. It would explain how she was transported to the north end of the park without anyone noticing. Let’s get this area cordoned off, ready for Forensics.’
Alistair was already on the phone to the station as the three of them stepped out into the blessed shade of the children’s woods. A breeze flowed past and Juliet lifted her face to it gratefully before checking her watch.
‘Nearly one o’clock. May as well head to the park office. Nick Laude should be arriving any minute.’
‘Should,’ Daniel said sourly. He mopped his forehead with a handkerchief and she wondered whether it was the same one he’d used to blow his nose. ‘Don’t hold your breath.’
It was 1.32 when Nick Laude came hustling into the park office, looking sweaty, scruffy and harassed. He blinked in surprise as Juliet and Alistair stood up and showed him their warrant cards.
‘What’s this about?’ He tried to back away from them, but given the size of the space, there wasn’t much scope for it. The room was small enough to feel crammed with furniture, despite containing only a desk with a wooden chair behind it and two metal ones in front, a two-drawer filing cabinet and a coat tree trailing a forgotten winter scarf. Nick’s eyes went to the bulletin board on the wall opposite the door – his destination, presumably. The staff sign-in sheet was pinned there, orbited by flyers promoting various park events (‘Nature’s Arts and Crafts’, ‘Opera Under the Stars’, ‘Become a Granger Ranger!’).
Juliet and Alistair stood in the narrow gap between the metal chairs and the wall, blocking his path to the board. Juliet noticed the way his gaze skipped over them as it flitted around the room, eventually alighting on the empty wooden chair. ‘Where’s Steve?’
‘We asked him to give us some privacy so we could ask you a few questions.’ Juliet gestured towards the seat. ‘Please. Sit down.’
But he remained frozen just inside the doorway. She watched his face closely, saw something flash in his eyes: alarm, intertwined with guilt.
He knows something, she thought. Or at least, there’s something he doesn’t want us to know.
Nick had a skinny neck with a prominent Adam’s apple. It bobbed as he swallowed.
‘Sorry, I’m afraid I can’t really talk right now. I’m already late for work.’
‘That’s fine,’ Alistair said pleasantly, perching on the front of the desk. ‘If you don’t have time now, we can move this conversation to the police station as soon as your shift’s over.’
Nick’s gaze flicked left and right a few times, as though watching an invisible tennis match. Then he closed his eyes and sighed, shoulders sagging with defeat.
‘Fine.’ He dropped himself onto the chair and crossed his arms, scowling like a surly teenager. ‘Go ahead and ask. But I don’t know nothing.’
Juliet and Alistair sat down on the metal chairs, facing him across the desk.
‘Last Sunday, you signed out electric cart number five,’ Juliet said.
The park keeper shrugged. ‘If you say so.’ His tongue flicked across his lips.
She reached into her satchel and took out the clipboard Steve had provided, pushing it across the desk.
‘I don’t.’ She tapped the top sheet. ‘Your signature does.’ Silence. ‘Can you please explain why that cart was abandoned, and has only now been discovered in a disused corner of the park?’
Nick Laude’s eyes widened in a convincing display of surprise. Now that he’d recovered from the shock of being ambushed, his acting skills were starting to kick in.
‘No.’ He shook his head emphatically. ‘I can’t explain that. Because I didn’t leave it there.’
‘I see. So where exactly did you leave it?’
Juliet watched his eyes, waiting to see whether they would move memory-searching right or quick-thinking left. But Nick chose that moment to drag his fingers across his lids.
‘In the children’s woods. Beside the hut where we keep our overalls and stuff. I had to, um . . .’ The fingers migrated to his pale, greasy hair. And now Juliet had her answer. Up-left. She had just enough time to think: his next words will be a lie, before the park keeper said: ‘I had to get some equipment I needed. Then I went and did some work not far away. And when I came back the cart was gone.’
‘You left the keys in the ignition?’
His mouth twitched. ‘Well, yeah, everybody does. It’s not like a Mercedes or nothing. Who would want to nick one? They’re not allowed on normal roads – too slow. So when I came back and it was gone, I thought one of the others must have spotted it there and seeing as I’d’ – he coughed behind a balled hand – ‘stepped out of sight, they brought it back to HQ.’
‘HQ?’
An unconvincing chuckle.
‘That’s what we call this place. Makes it sound more important than a one-room office with a bog and a row of electric carts parked behind.’
Juliet stared at him for a long moment. She could almost feel the effort it was taking him to maintain eye contact.
‘What equipment?’
‘’Scuse me?’
‘You said you went into the hut to get some equipment. What kind of equipment?’
‘Oh. That was . . . Let’s see now.’ His eyes slipped up-left again as he scratched his jaw, the stubble rasping in the silence. ‘Clippers, I think it was. There was some brambles leaning out on one of the trails. They needed to be cut back so people wouldn’t get scratched. Little ’uns especially.’ He gave her a grin which was probably supposed to be winning, but instead made him appear wolfish. ‘They got sensitive skin an’ that. So we don’t want ’em getting hurt.’
‘No. We don’t.’ She turned to Alistair and mouthed the word ‘map’. He nodded, removing the park map from his jacket pocket, unfolding it against the desk. Juliet handed Nick Laude a pen. ‘Can you please mark the exact location where you cut back the brambles last Sunday at the time when the cart was being stolen?’
She watched a flare of alarm ignite in his eyes. His gaze jumped around the page. ‘Um, well now . . . It’s hard to be exactly sure where . . .’
‘Really?’ Alistair said, tenting his fingers. ‘Why’s that? Surely you must know this park like the back of your hand after having worked here for . . .’ He took out his notebook and made a show of flipping through the pages. ‘Four years?’
‘Yes, it’s just, you know, I do a lot of things every day,
and it’s hard not to get things jumbled up in my memory. I wouldn’t want to say something to you unless I was sure –’ He was nodding along with his words, the bobbing motion reminding Juliet of dashboard dogs. ‘– one hundred per cent sure that I’m not getting one bunch of brambles mixed up with another bunch, because, well, you know how it is.’ He stretched out a smile that neither of them returned.
‘No,’ Alistair said. ‘How is it?’
‘Just . . . busy. And hard to remember.’
‘But you do remember that you left your cart by the hut? And that it disappeared? That part you are crystal clear on?’
That dashboard bob again. ‘Yep, on account of I was a bit, you know, surprised someone did that.’
‘Surprised,’ Juliet repeated, tilting her head. ‘But you never bothered to check that the cart you were responsible for had been safely returned?’
‘Well, I would of, but then all hell broke loose with everyone running around looking for that little girl. So . . .’ He scratched a patch of skin between his elbow and the edge of his T-shirt sleeve. ‘It just didn’t seem like a big deal, compared to that. I mean, how important is a misplaced cart when a sprog has gone missing?’
‘That’s exactly what we are trying to establish,’ Alistair said.
Nick’s hand moved back and forth against his arm. Scratch-scratch-scratch.
‘Well, she’s back home now, that girl. I seen it on the telly. The mum sure got emotional when she opened the door and saw that bloke standing there holding her.’ Juliet watched the fingers absently raking up and down, leaving angry red trails. And within them: a swarm of raised white spots. ‘I don’t mind telling you: it brought tears to my eyes, watching that.’ Another wolfish smile. ‘So I guess all’s well that end’s well, right?’
‘No,’ Alistair said. ‘Because it hasn’t ended.’
Nick Laude’s forehead scrunched. ‘Huh?’
Alistair sighed. ‘It hasn’t ended until we’ve caught whoever was behind the abduction. It hasn’t ended until that person has been locked up for a very long time.’