The Stolen Children

by Oliver Davies

  He jerked a nod. “They kept me there,” he said shortly. “In the cupboard mostly. They brought food and stuff and wouldn’t talk to me even when I yelled at them. I- I kicked one of them once, but I didn’t try that again.” He stared blankly forwards for a moment, and I clenched my jaw and tried not to imagine what had happened.

  He shook his head as if to clear it. “Then they stopped coming. I don’t know how long I was there for in total. Weeks, months?” He didn’t wait for an answer this time. “I tried to keep track, but it was hard. I slept a lot.” He swallowed. “I thought I was going to die.” He said the last part in a whisper, and that broke my heart. Lawrence looked much younger than seventeen in the hospital bed, with his starved thinness and tight, upset expression.

  “I think that’s enough for today,” Alicia said quietly but firmly, coming to Lawrence’s side to put a hand on his shoulder. He shrugged it off, but didn’t argue with her, and I could see that he finished.

  I stood up, patting my pocket until I found my business cards and pulled one out. I put it down on the bedside table.

  “Thank you,” I told Lawrence, meeting his eyes briefly. “I promise that I’ll do everything I can to find your parents.”

  Lawrence’s eyes filled with tears, and he turned quickly away, hiding his face in his long hair.

  I gave a small nod like he’d spoken and saw myself out, leaving the family alone in the hospital room.

  Walking out of the hospital and breathing in fresh air that wasn’t tinted with the pall of cleaning chemicals, I missed Stephen’s company at my side and pulled out my phone to send off a brief text to him to see how he was doing. It wasn’t best practice to send case information over text, so I didn’t tell him where I was, though I’m sure he could guess.

  Driving back to the station, thoughts of Lawrence’s upset face troubled me too much to listen to the radio presenters’ amiable chatter. I drove in silence, my fingers tapping against the hard leather of the wheel.

  Back at the station, I wrote up my notes and observations of the visit whilst absently eating my way through a salad without tasting it. A strong mug of coffee was what I really wanted, but my stomach had been aching without something to line it, so I forced down the tasteless and slightly limp leaves.

  I was considering our next step when Keira appeared in front of my desk, and I straightened up like a pupil caught doing something against the rules. I wiped my mouth with a napkin, hoping I didn’t have spinach caught in my teeth.

  “Hi,” I said intelligently. “Have you got good news for me?”

  She grimaced slightly, and my heart sunk. “I have news, but I’m not sure it’s going to help much.”

  I cast my mind back to my last proper conversation with her and what I’d asked her to look into, exactly.

  “News about the house?”

  She came around to stand beside me, hovering close enough to my side that I was too aware of her proximity.

  “Yes.” She put a new set of print-outs onto my desk, and I pushed my salad and notebook aside to frown down at them. “It was registered to a man who died several months ago,” she said. “Seems that no-one chased up the house, and it slipped through the cracks in the system.”

  I made a frustrated noise in my throat. “So we don’t know who was living there.”

  She hummed. “Afraid not. I’m still looking into the deceased man, in case the occupants were his relatives, but I thought you would want to know this much.”

  I looked up at her and nodded. “I do, thank you. All information adds to the bigger picture.”

  Keira leaned her hip against my desk. “There’s another thing,” she said. “The yacht company looked dubious from the start, and I’ve been doing some more research, and it’s turned up before. It’s a known shell company for illegal activity, but we’ve been holding off on moving in on it. The evidence of a bigger operation is scant, and we’re monitoring it.”

  I raised my eyebrows and accepted the folder of paper she offered to me, flipping through it. There were numerous police reports in there, with the yacht company name highlighted on each.

  “This is really helpful,” I said absently. “Do you have any idea who’s behind it? Where they might be based?”

  She gave me a sympathetic look. “Not yet. I’ll continue to look into it.”

  “I appreciate it. People have been speaking highly of your work.” It was true. I’d heard nothing but positive things about her when I was making my coffees in the break room.

  She raised her eyebrows. “I have high standards,” she said. She tilted her head. Her blonde hair was done in a pretty and complicated-looking plaited arrangement today, curled strands framing her face. “You know, your accent makes me think you’re not from York itself.”

  Surprised at the change of topic, I leaned back slightly, my attention trained on her. “You’d be right. I grew up in the sticks. None of this city business.” I gave her a smile to show I didn’t mean any harm.

  “You wouldn’t guess, but I was a farmer’s daughter.”

  “Really?” I said, surprised both by the information and the fact that she’d shared it. She seemed like a woman who played her cards close to her chest.

  She gave an elegant little shrug. “Yes. But I was more interested in computers than sheep. And you had high aspirations, too, I suppose?”

  I ducked my head modestly. “Not especially. I’m a workaholic.”

  She leaned slightly closer. “Nobody waiting at home for you?”

  I faltered. “No,” I said, before clearing my throat and glancing away. “I’m not looking for a relationship right now.”

  She looked amused when I looked back at her and gave me a devilish smile. “Neither am I, darling.” She cocked her head. “Perhaps we could go out for drinks sometime?”

  I recovered from my surprise quickly enough to say, “I’d like that.”

  She straightened up and smoothed her hands down over her silken blouse. I noticed that she painted her nails a dark purple today. She reached across me to take my notebook off the desk, and I let her, watching with my eyebrows raised. Picking up a pen, she wrote down her number in swooping handwriting and slid the paper back towards me.

  Still leaning close, she quietly said, “Or we could skip the drinks. Let me know.” She gave me a parting smile before heading off. Once she left, I looked down at her number in my notebook before laughing quietly to myself. That woman definitely knows how to keep a man on his toes, I thought wryly.

  I input her number into my phone, fetched myself another coffee, and got back to work on the case of Lawrence’s missing parents. Thoughts of Keira’s offer would have to wait until I was done working, because I couldn’t afford the distraction right now, however nice it was.

  Nine

  “How is she?” I asked. It was Monday, and Stephen had settled in with a cup of tea at his desk, dark bags under his eyes.

  He sighed. “Back in hospital. The cough got worse. They think it’s pneumonia.”

  “Jesus,” I muttered. “Stephen, why’re you in today? Wouldn’t-?”

  He huffed a sigh. “My wife said my fretting was driving her nuts. She said to at least come in for the morning. Gaskell said he didn’t mind if I head off early.”

  I studied his tired face for a minute before nodding. “Alright, then.” I reached over to rub his shoulder. “I really am sorry, mate.” I hesitated, not sure if I should ask. “Do they know why she was sick in the autumn as well?”

  Stephen took a sip of tea. “They’re looking into whether it’s asthma making the coughs worse.” He rubbed his eye. “Apparently, it can be hard to diagnose. There are different types.”

  “Oh,” I said quietly. We were silent for a long moment.

  “Is this a bad time?” Keira’s voice surprised me, and I looked up. She looked between us, her eyebrows pulling together in the middle.

  “No,” I said, giving her a weak smile. “Have you got new information for us?”

&
nbsp; She nodded. Her hair hung loosely around her face today, and she’d painted her lips an attractive dark pink. “I took a look at the laptop belonging to your missing person, Mr Wooding.” I waited, curious as to what she’d found. “There was an encrypted message on Lawrence’s dad’s computer detailing where they needed to go to drop off the ransom money, and where to pick up the boy, Lawrence. The message is vague, but you can read between the lines if you know.”

  She offered me a print off of the message, and I scanned over it with a frown. She was right, it was too general to be incriminating, but the mention of ‘payment’ and ‘valuables’ could be fairly easily interpreted as the ransom and Lawrence, respectively.

  “I tried to track the sender, but it wasn’t possible,” she added.

  “This is great,” I said, handing the folder to Stephen to have a look. I glanced down at the clock on the computer screen and leaned forwards slightly. “Either you’ve been doing weekend work, or you were working early today, to have this for us already,” I said, curious. We’d spoken on Friday, and she hadn’t told me this then.

  She gave me a sharp look. “Wrong on both counts,” she said. “I’m efficient, Mitchell, and work started an hour ago.” She quirked a slight smile before leaving us to it.

  Stephen hummed to my side, and I looked over to it. He grinned lopsidedly. “She’ll give you a run for your money, Mitchell,” he teased.

  I rolled my eyes. “Whatever, Huxley,” I said, but I was smiling.

  I grew serious as I thought about what Keira had told us, rubbing my stubbly jaw as I thought through our next steps.

  “We should bring in forensics for this location Keira has given us,” I noted.

  Stephen looked up from where he’d been reading the message again. “Sounds good. You don’t think they’ll be watching the area, do you?”

  “After a month?” I said. “Although, Lawrence being found has been on the news recently, so I suppose it’s possible.”

  Chewing my lip, I opened up the coordinates in Google Maps online, and Stephen leaned over to see the terrain. It was up in the dales again, an area of land off the main road winding through the hills, with a small river twisting its way across the moorland.

  “There’s a small rise here,” I said, pointing it out. “But otherwise it looks like open country, well out of town, too. Nowhere for them to hide to spy on us.”

  After a minute of study, Stephen nodded his agreement. “Looks that way,” he agreed.

  Stephen got on the phone to the forensics team while I went to let Gaskell know what was going on and where Stephen and I were headed, if forensics were available today.

  He gave me a firm nod. “A promising lead.”

  “Yes, sir. Ms Andrews on the tech team dug up out of Mr Wooding’s laptop.”

  Gaskell’s eyebrows rose. “It seems like she’s already making herself indispensable.”

  I smiled slightly. “Absolutely, sir. Right efficient.”

  Stephen was just hanging up as I stepped back over to my desk. “Well?”

  He nodded. “They’re busy this afternoon, but can fit us in this morning if we immediately.”

  I grinned. “Good. We can have an outing. I hope you haven’t drunk too much tea this time.”

  “It’s you who’s the coffee addict,” he returned.

  I grinned. “Says the guy with a mug bigger than most soup bowls.”

  We teased lightly back and forth as we got ready to head off. I’d sent the coordinates over to the forensics team, who were en route from the other side of York and would probably take a little longer than us to get there. But that wasn’t necessarily a bad thing, if it meant I got to look the place over without too many distractions beforehand. Forensics had warned us to be careful not to disturb anything, though. I hoped we’d find something important, and that this wouldn’t turn out to be a waste of time and resources, but we wouldn’t know until we tried.

  Stephen decided he couldn’t set off on the trip until he’d bought a sausage roll and pack of McCoys from Sainsbury’s so I waited while he strolled across the road, coming back with a shopping bag in hand that looked suspiciously full.

  “You bought your week’s shopping?” I asked as we set off. He reached in and pulled out a pack of crisps and a Cadbury’s bar and dumped them on my lap. “I’m not that hungry,” I protested.

  “Don’t be ungrateful,” he said good-naturedly, and, at the next pair of traffic lights, I opened up the bar and munched on it.

  “Thanks,” I said grudgingly.

  He chuckled. “You’re welcome.”

  I glanced over at the still full bag. “What else have you got in there? Stuff for your tea?”

  His face fell slightly. “No. The hospital food isn’t great, so I got some things for my wife and kid.”

  “Ah.”

  We lapsed into quiet and Stephen turned the radio on for a while, resting back in his seat with his eyes closed. Ten minutes or so later, I turned the music down since Stephen had clearly fallen asleep, and he badly needed the nap.

  It was relaxing to drive through the countryside again and, though the drive wasn’t as far as it had been to the Wooding’s house, it was long enough to leave me feeling refreshed by the quiet and the views.

  Pulling up at the side of the road when the sat-nav indicated we’d arrived, I looked around, putting together the Google Maps images with the view of the land before me. It was as relatively flat as I’d anticipated. The river was small, but it lay on the flat bottom of a valley, and the land was open and exposed before sloping gently upwards on the right. There was a stubby, tumbledown stone wall off to my right that hadn’t been on the map and a scattering of leaning fence posts, but that and the road were the only obvious marks that man had left on the landscape. It was beautiful out here, even with the heather not yet flowering there was still the myriad different shades of green from the grass and shrubbery and their rippling movements as the wind swept through.

  Forensics wasn’t here yet, and other than the occasional car speeding down the road, the area was deserted. I expected that, at night, there’d be no-one within miles of this place.

  Since Stephen had stayed asleep even through the slightly bumpy manoeuvre of me parking up, I left him to his nap for the time being and climbed out of the car, shutting the door behind me quietly.

  The wind buffeted me as I stepped down from the road surface and picked my way down a short bank onto the ragged, uneven moorland. It was soggy from recent rainfall but otherwise looked undisturbed, and I despaired at the thought of finding anything in all this long grass.

  It was tempting to venture further towards the river bank and properly pick the place over, but I held off until forensics arrived. While I waited, I made my way through the bag of crisps Stephen had got me and admired the view. Staring up at the hills, I couldn’t help but itch to run up them. There was a certain thrill to picking my way up and a narrow and rocky path, scrambling in places, with the weather throwing rain and wind at me all the while. The struggle made standing at the summit so much more satisfying than any city running, in my view.

  “Should I expect to be shafted off into the pub again?” Stephen asked from behind me, and his sudden appearance made me jump.

  “What?” I stuffed my crisp packet in my pocket and sucked the salt off my fingers.

  “That thing we do,” he prompted, “where I sit in a cosy pub while you try not to break your leg up a mountain?”

  “Oh that,” I said and sent him a grin. He looked groggy from his nap, still, but his eyes were brighter, and I hoped the sleep had helped. “No, I didn’t bring my trainers this time.” I glanced at my watch. “If forensics will hurry up and arrive, I was hoping to get this wrapped up fast.”

  Stephen nodded. “I wouldn’t mind that.”

  I stuck my chilly hands under my armpits and shivered. “Though a little run to warm me up is starting to seem tempting.”

  Stephen, of course, didn’t look remotely bothered
by the chilly wind and stood as solid as a rock in the sea. “Go sit your skinny butt in the car, then.”

  “I’m waiting for forensics to show- oh, is that them?”

  As if on cue, a police van approached us on the road. On Stephen’s prompting, I went to fetch a second coat from the boot of the car, so that I wouldn’t be shaking like a jelly when forensics was trying to talk to me.

  They pulled up behind our car as I was doing up the zip and I headed over to introduce myself, Stephen falling in at my side.

  “DCI Mitchell,” a tall, black woman greeted me before I could say anything and held out her hand.

  “That’s me,” I said with a smile and shook her warm hand. “This is DI Huxley.” Stephen gave her a wave.

  “I’m Dr King. I’ll get my team over, and we’ll get started.”

  She headed off, her stride purposeful, and I gave a nod of approval. “She doesn’t hang about.”

  “Nope,” Stephen agreed. “I’ve seen her around, I think.”

  In no time, forensics was booted and suited in all their gear and heading over to the area the coordinates had indicated, which was unfortunately wide.

  “There weren't any more specific instructions?” Dr King asked me as her team were spreading out to start combing over the land.

  I shook my head apologetically. “‘Fraid not.” I looked over the land before us again, this time trying to think like the kidnappers might have. “I think we can rule out the area on the other side of the river; they’d have no reason that I can think of to cross it.”

  I turned in a slow circle and looked back at where Dr King’s van and our car had parked up. “That’s the most natural parking spot, too,” I said. “The road drops off sharply in most other places, so we should probably focus on this area,” I gestured in front of us, towards the small river, “since it’s closest to the road.”

  Dr King nodded thoughtfully. “That sounds logical. They likely would’ve moved some distance from the road, though, in case of passing traffic.”

  I clicked my fingers. “Good point. So nearer the river, then.”