“I’d like to speak to you both in the station, if that’s possible,” I said. “I know you’ve already answered questions, but, since I’m now the lead, I’d like to meet you both. When would be a good time for you to come down here?”
There was a brief silence. “My husband and I are taking a leave of absence,” Mrs Brown said. Her voice was thin, but determined, like a wire pulled tight with stress. “We can come immediately.”
“Oh good,” I said, surprised, but pleased. “I’ll expect you soon, then.”
She agreed, and I hung up. I wasn’t sure how long it would take them to drive over, but I had time to fetch myself a new cup of coffee. Stephen hadn’t managed to make it in today. He’d planned to be in for the morning, and to see the Browns with me, but his wife had had a crisis at work, and she’d had to go in. I didn’t think Stephen getting to spend more time with his daughter was in any way a bad thing, but I would miss him today.
The Browns turned up ten minutes later, and I got a buzz from reception to let me know that they were waiting for me. Hurrying down the stairs, I walked over to meet them.
They looked to be a little older than me, him with short, greasy brown hair and her with slightly flat curls. They regarded me with the same look I’d seen in the parents of missing children before, and it was just as painful to see this time as it always was.
“I’m DCI Mitchell, thank you for coming in today.”
I held out a hand for the Browns to shake and they did, Mr Brown’s grip limp compared to the firmness of his wife’s.
“I’m Rochelle,” she said.
“Oliver,” her husband said, giving me a nod.
“Have you got any new information?” Mrs Brown asked quickly, as if she might catch me by surprise with the question and prompt me to reveal some new nugget of information. But I didn’t have anything to give her, or not what she wanted to hear.
I held up a hand. “Let’s sit down in an interview room, and we can talk,” I said measuredly. “Do either of you want some tea or coffee?”
They shook their heads, and I showed them through to one of the interview rooms and got them settled, laying out my notebook and flicking on the recording. I introduced myself, and so did they, and then it was the case of both Lydia Brown’s parents looking expectantly at me, the dark circles under their eyes making their gaze even more intense.
I took a breath. “Can you tell me about when you realised your daughter was missing?” I asked. They’d run through this with another officer, but I wanted to hear it from them.
Rochelle Brown frowned, looking briefly frustrated, before she sighed. Her husband’s expression didn’t change from its tired flatness.
He surprised me by speaking first. “She didn’t come home from school, like usual,” he said, his voice gruff. “She usually has a five-minute walk back from school. Usually, we pick her up, or her au pair does,” He and Rochelle shared a look before he turned his gaze back to the table, “but this time, she walked on her own. And she didn’t turn up.”
I didn’t make notes on this, since it was nearly word for word what I’d already read.
“Why did she walk home alone that day?”
Rochelle looked up sharply, seeming immediately defensive. “She’s thirteen. She doesn’t want us babysitting her all the time.”
I nodded calmly at this. “And what happened after that?”
The Browns shared another look that I couldn’t quite read, but I could guess. “We… thought she was at her friend’s,” Rochelle said stiffly.
“So you didn’t report her missing?” I said, as evenly as I could. I knew that they hadn’t been the ones to report Lydia missing, and that was what had sparked my initial interest in this case. As far as I could see it, no parent would neglect to report their child’s absence unless they’d had something to do with the abduction, or the child was being held to ransom. Perhaps there were other, more complicated solutions too, but those seemed the most likely to me.
“No,” Rochelle said. Oliver Brown stayed quiet now, letting his wife talk. She was the one who headed their business, I remembered from what the team had found out about them, and he did their finances.
“Why was that?” I asked.
Rochelle narrowed her eyes, and Oliver’s shoulders stiffened, even as I’d tried to keep my tone as non-accusatory as possible. “What are you trying to say?” she snapped.
I patted the air with my hands, trying to de-escalate. “I’m on your side,” I tried to reassure her. “I want your daughter home safe, just like you do.” I leaned forwards. “But there’s something you’re both not telling me, and I’d like to know what it is.”
Rochelle stared at me, her eyes hard, while Oliver avoided my gaze entirely. “We’ve told you,” she said.
“So why did it take the school a week to report her missing?” I said, an edge to my voice now. “Where was your daughter for that week?”
“We already talked to one of your detectives about this,” Oliver said quietly.
I glanced over at him. “I’d like you to go through it with me.”
“Lydia… runs off sometimes,” Rochelle said. “We assumed she’d gone runabout, and she’d be back anytime.”
She wasn’t a right good liar, I thought. This was clearly a rehearsed answer, and she delivered it stiffly. A near-identical response had been recorded in a previous interview, and I didn’t believe a word of it, but I nodded as if I did.
“So,” I said, “if I were to have one of our tech team look into your bank account, Mrs Brown, I wouldn’t find that a substantial amount had been taken out?”
She frowned, looking directly at me as she said. “No, you wouldn’t.”
I resisted the urge to pull backwards, because there was a sincerity there that I believed. I swore silently, rethinking whether I’d been wrong. But there had been a deposit in the shell company account, and the timings seemed too much to be a coincidence.
Oliver Brown was fiddling with his watch, twisting it back and forth on his thin wrist. It hung a little loose, and I guessed that he’d lost some weight and not had the chance to have the watch tightened again. I couldn’t help but notice that the watch didn’t look as expensive as I might’ve expected from a couple as apparently wealthy as these two were.
They didn’t use money this time, I realised abruptly. Maybe the kidnappers had learned that banks get suspicious when people tried to pull large amounts from their account very quickly, or maybe the Browns hadn’t got enough cash to hand, with their wealth tied up in property and stocks.
“Alright,” I said, recalculating. “What about family heirlooms, then? Have any of those gone suddenly missing recently?”
Both of the Browns looked sharply up, visibly taken aback. Rochelle recovered first, running a frail hand over her hair. “We, we had a robbery,” she said. “What has this got to with Lydia?”
I tilted my head. “I didn’t notice that you’d reported a robbery,” I said, though I honestly hadn’t checked.
“You’re meant to be finding our-” Rochelle snapped, trying to bring the conversation back to more familiar grounds, but I cut her off.
“And I’m trying to do that,” I said. “But how can I when you’re lying to me?” I sat back, setting my jaw. “If you don’t tell me the truth, I will have you both arrested with the obstruction of justice, at best.”
Rochelle inhaled audibly, and I felt terrible seeing the anguish on her face. I was sure, though, that they were tied up with the same people who took Lawrence and, whilst they might think they were protecting Lydia by withholding information from us like they’d likely been told to, I needed to understand the problem before I could help.
Rochelle and Oliver turned to each other, clearly arguing silently between themselves. I waited, dearly hoping they’d come to the right decision.
Rochelle slumped abruptly. “You can’t spread it around,” she said, the steel that was previously in her voice weakening. “You can’t do some press con
ference, or go yakking-”
“I understand,” I said firmly. “I’ll be discreet.”
She nodded shakily, sending one last look at Oliver before she sighed. “They sent us an email, wanting a ransom.”
The thrill of being right made me twitch, and I was more glad than I could say to have confirmation that we were on the right track. I kept my face neutral, though, and listened as Rochelle spilt the story which fell out in a fast tumble of words which had been all pent up for over two weeks now.
“They wanted all this money,” she said, her hands pressed tightly together on top of the table. “And we paid it. We gave them my jewellery, Oliver’s watch, the new car.”
“But they wanted more,” I said quietly.
Rochelle’s breathing hitched, and she nodded. “They wouldn’t give her back,” she said, her voice cracking. “And we couldn’t say anything, ‘cus they still had her. Everyone thinks we’ve done something to her,” She looked sick as she said this, “because we didn’t report it, but what were we meant to do? They’ve got my little girl.”
“Okay,” I said softly. I made a brief note of the salient points and trusted that I could play the recording if I needed any details. “Did you see them?”
Oliver shook his head. “It was nighttime,” he said. “In a field. We passed it over and- and- they didn’t give her back.” He swallowed audibly, his throat clicking.
I nodded. “Thank you for telling me. I’ll need the location you were told to go to, and any other information on them at all. Anything you’ve got could help, alright?”
Rochelle lifted her head to meet my gaze. “You won’t let Lydia get hurt,” she said, the words a statement but her pleading tone turning it into a question. “They said they’d k-kill her if we went to the police.”
“I understand,” I said solemnly. “I’ll do everything in my power to protect your daughter, and to find her.” I looked between them. “Did they let you talk to her?”
Rochelle shook her head. “No. I begged them.”
“And when do you need to make the next payment by?”
“Monday,” Oliver said heavily.
It was a Friday today. “Can you pay it?” I asked. It wasn’t exactly ideal, or policy to go paying kidnappers, but it would give us more time if the Browns could put them off.
They looked at each other. “Yes,” Oliver said finally. “It’ll press us. The business hasn’t been doing so well. But we can find the money.”
“Cash this time, was it?”
“Yes, they gave us a week and a half to turn it up.”
Generous of them, I thought bitterly. I sighed. “Alright, thank you.”
We spent the rest of the interview going through the details that didn’t mean much on their own but could add up to a lot. The Browns didn’t know a lot, though, and I left the interview feeling frustrated and frazzled. They didn’t look much better, but Rochelle summoned a weak smile as they were leaving.
She held out her hand, and I shook it in surprise. “I hope you can help us, Inspector Mitchell.”
“I hope I can, too,” I told her. Oliver gave me a nod, his lips pressed together, and they saw themselves out.
I released a heavy breath, running a hand through my unruly hair, and wondered what the heck I should do now. I wanted Stephen to confide in, since I knew I could trust him implicitly. He wasn’t here, though, and I was divided about telling Gaskell.
For the meantime, I headed upstairs and went over to see the officers that Gaskell had assigned to me as a team to help with the investigation. The problem was that I didn’t really know any of them and, as loathe as I was to suspect officers in my own station, things did get leaked, accidentally or otherwise, and the Browns couldn’t afford that risk.
So I told each of them that we’d hit a dead end. Their work had been good, but we were ruling out the three kids we’d pulled up so far. A couple of the officers frowned at the news and protested, but I shut them down firmly.
That done, I headed back to my desk and rubbed my face. Pulling out my notebook, I looked up the location the Browns had given me for where they’d been told to drop off their treasures. It was another remote spot, even deeper in the dales, and I sighed. Absolutely no chance of cameras there, I thought.
I fetched myself another coffee, using some of the expensive stuff that Stephen had brought in, and came back to my desk to find my desk phone ringing. I picked it up, taking a sip of too-hot coffee.
“DCI Mitchell?” a male voice said. I didn’t recognise it.
“Speaking.”
“I’m calling about some security footage you requested.”
It turned out that he was calling from the hospital Lawrence was staying at and wanted to know exactly what CCTV I needed.
“Preferably, I want to know the number plate of this woman, Ellie Wooding,” I explained. “So the car park CCTV would be great. But if you have any close-ups of her from inside the hospital, that would be helpful too.”
We talked further, and I emailed him over a picture of Mrs Wooding, to confirm that he had the right person.
“I got it,” he said. “I’ll get that over to you by the end of the day.”
“That’d be helpful,” I said. “Thank you.”
I hung up. As I drank my now lukewarm coffee, I let my mind drift as I tried to figure out the best way to come at this with what I knew now. What we needed was some solid lead to where the kidnappers were based, and where Lydia might be being held. Keira had been trying to find out more information about the house where Lawrence was kept, but she would have contacted me if she’d found something, I knew, so I’d have to find another way in.
The Browns had told me that they didn’t know where exactly Lydia had been grabbed from, on her way home from school. Before they’d left, I’d had them outline the short route Lydia had taken on a map on a tablet. So, I pulled it up now, studying it.
I couldn’t help but think that the kidnappers wouldn’t be stupid enough to kidnap the girl in full view of CCTV cameras, and that the officers who’d initially taken the case would’ve already checked for that, if they weren’t complete idiots. I still double-checked their report, just to be certain, and sure enough, they’d reported that there was only one camera on Lydia’s route and she’d never reached it.
That narrowed it down, but only slightly. I sighed, chewing on my lip as I turned it over. Someone must have seen something, I thought, frustrated. This wasn’t like Lawrence being taken; it happened in daylight and at peak school pickup time. Presumably, the gang had been forced to move then because it was the only time Lydia was ever unguarded, but it surely left them exposed to being overlooked by a witness.
And yet no-one had come forward to say that they’d seen a kid getting grabbed. So, either, the kidnappers had gotten lucky, and no-one had seen them, or a witness hadn’t realised what they were seeing. Perhaps they drugged her. Or scared her into seeming compliant. Or maybe, I thought absently, no adult had seen her being taken, but a fellow child on their way home had seen her being taken and hadn’t understood it.
It was a reach, I knew, but the streets had to be full of kids at that time. I was reluctant to accept that no-one at all had seen her being taken, because that would leave me looking at a dead end.
You’re grasping at straws, I imagined Stephen saying and rolled my eyes. It might have a grain of truth in it, but it was at least worth a try. Leave no stone unturned, I told myself.
I got on the phone to the Browns, aware that I wanted their compliance with this. They would hopefully have an idea of which kids might’ve taken the same route as Lydia that day, or who I could ask. In other circumstances, I would’ve gone to speak to the school, and put out a call for parents to ask their kids if they’d seen something. But I couldn’t take the risk that something wouldn’t leak, this time. I’d had cases in the past where a nosy parent at a school had sold what they knew to the press, who would then try to pry where they weren’t wanted. An incident like
that could have terrible consequences for Lydia, but, on the other hand, we had to take measured risks. The longer the gang had her, the lower the likelihood of getting her back again.
As I expected, the Browns were extremely reluctant to involve anyone else. I tried to be patient, knowing how scared they were for their child, whilst still arguing how this might help.
“Even if no child did see her taken,” I said reasonably, “they might know something else. Perhaps Lydia had befriended someone, someone she trusted who took her.”
“No,” Rochelle said quickly. I was on speakerphone to them, but Oliver had yet to say anything. “No, she wouldn’t. She’s very shy. She doesn’t like strangers at all.”
“Okay,” I said, placating. “I still think it would be a good idea to reach out to some parents, people you know, to help us.” I found myself struggling to sit still as I tried to persuade them and switched position again in my chair. “Even if they do hear about this, Mrs Brown, they surely know that the school reported her missing, not you. It’s only natural that the police look into it. It won’t tell them that you’ve said anything.”
“Who says they’ll be that rational?” Rochelle said coldly. “You don’t know that, you can’t promise her safety.”
I sighed. “I know I can’t. But the longer she’s with-”
“I know that!” she snapped, loud enough to hurt my ear. “You think I don’t know that?” I waited while she took a strangled breath and calmed herself. “If you’re set on this, this information-seeking exercise,” she said, her tone making it clear how much she hated it, “then we control it, you understand? We say who you contact. We reach out, not you.”
I nodded, even though she couldn’t see it. “Yes, that’s what I intended. Any child who might’ve taken the route-”
“We understand,” she said tightly, cutting me off. “We’ll be in touch.”
She hung up, and I set the phone down, my head throbbing with the beginnings of a headache. And no surprise, really, considering I hadn’t eaten anything today but a packet of crisps I found in my desk. It was close enough to the end of the day that I couldn’t raise myself to bob over to the shops, but I did grab a couple of biscuits from the break room.
The Stolen Children Page 12