The Stolen Children

by Oliver Davies

  “Jesus,” Stephen said, sagging backwards when Alex finally turned and walked away. “He remembered it all exactly.”

  “Yes,” I said faintly, feeling sick. “Lydia…”

  “That was her.”

  I swore again and dragged a hand through my hair, the curls already rumpled from how many times I’d done that today.

  “Can we see the van’s number plate?” Stephen asked, getting himself back into gear faster than me.

  But I leaned forwards at his question, and we both looked closely at the bottom of the van. The angle was difficult and, had it been a lower quality camera, I doubted we would’ve been able to make anything out.

  “Zoom in?”

  I did so, tilting my head in line with the number plate. “Got it,” I muttered. I grabbed a pad of sticky notes and copied down the van’s plate.

  “Finally, a solid lead.”

  I looked over at Stephen and grinned. “Yeah.” Tired but relieved, I sat back in my chair, staring at the van on the screen. “I’ll put this one on the system, too. Hopefully, something will come of it.”

  “And they didn’t swap the plates,” Stephen said, his mouth pulled down on one side.

  “Don’t jinx it. Let’s hope they were too confident about that.”

  Stephen’s phone buzzed in his pocket as I was putting it on the system, listing the van as suspicious.

  “Everything okay?” Stephen said into his phone, getting to his feet and wandering off into the corridor to take the call.

  I glanced after him, hoping he wouldn’t have bad news. I made a start on writing up what had happened today while I waited for him to come back.

  “That’s me off,” Stephen said when he came back in.

  I looked up. “Yeah? Your daughter-”

  He waved off my concern. “She’s okay, just asking for me. Got bored with her mum’s company, apparently.” He gave me a grin.

  I shook my head. “Off you go, then.”

  He came over to gather up his things. “You’ll head off too?”

  “I need to finish-”

  “Mate, you can do that Monday,” he said, leaning against his chair. “Go for a run. Have a beer with a friend. Relax a bit. You’ll burn yourself out otherwise.”

  I was tempted to tell him to stop nannying me, but it was true that I didn’t have any immediate plans for where to take the investigation next.

  “After seeing that video, I…” I said uneasily.

  Stephen sighed. “I know. But you can’t do anything for her right this second. She needs you awake, not dead on your feet. We’ve made good progress-”

  I held up my hands. “Okay, okay,” I relented, closing down my computer. “I’ll go.”

  Stephen smiled, slapped me on the back, and headed out. “See you Monday,” he called over his shoulder.

  “All right,” I said, shutting down my computer and gathering up my things. I made my way down to the locker rooms to get changed into my running gear. Might as well get in another run today, I thought, since I’d not brought my car into the station and I didn’t have anything else pressing to get done today.

  It was a pleasant day, warm and bright, which made the running easier, but I did have to dodge more people out on the pavements, especially with it being a Saturday. My usual route proved too busy, and I cut through a park, doing a couple of laps around the perimeter before I headed towards home.

  I spent the afternoon doing all the things I hadn’t managed during the busy week. I was just coming back from Aldi with bags piled full of fresh vegetables to fill my empty fridge with when my phone buzzed in my pocket. I put the shopping down on the counter to fish it out. I was half-expecting it to be bad news, but it wasn’t Gaskell, or Stephen, but Keira.

  I leaned against the counter as I opened up her message, and my lips split into a smile. As I started to put away the shopping one-handed, I called her.

  “Mitchell?”

  “The one and only,” I teased. “So you’re inviting me to dinner?”

  “Only if you’ll be good company,” she said, and I could hear her smile down the phone.

  I hesitated briefly at that, thinking of Lydia and the case. It was true that there wasn’t much of anything I could get started with tomorrow that couldn’t be done on Monday. The time pressure on this case hung over me, and the stakes were sickening high with a child’s life on the line, but we couldn’t follow up on leads that didn’t exist yet.

  “Darren?” Keira prompted gently.

  “Aye, sorry,” I said, running a hand through my hair. “I can’t promise to be my best self.” I gave a self-conscious laugh.

  “Well,” she said, “just come round and be company for me, hm? I’ll cook something tasty.”

  “I don’t doubt it,” I said, relieved that she didn’t seem to mind if I was somewhat distracted.

  “I’ll see you at seven?” she said, coy again. “Bring some decent wine with you.”

  “I’ll dig some out,” I promised.

  “Good,” she said warmly. “I’ll be looking forward to it.”

  “Me too.” There was a brief silence, where I could hear her quiet breathing, before she ended the call and I set the phone down. I put a hand to my chest and laughed quietly when I found my heart beating quickly under my palm.

  “That’s my evening sorted, then,” I thought aloud. I looked around at the shopping, and set to getting everything sorted out so that I could have a relaxing evening at Keira’s. God knows, I needed it after the week we’d had.

  Sixteen

  My phone started ringing as I was carrying two full mugs over towards Stephen and I’s desks and I hastily put them down.

  “Mitchell speaking,” I said.

  “We need you to come over here right away, please.” I hadn’t had the chance to check the caller ID before I picked up and I couldn’t immediately place the frantic, female voice coming over the phone.

  “Slow down,” I said, cutting them off. “Who is this, please?” Stephen was sitting at his desk, watching me curiously.

  “Oh, I’m sorry, it’s Alicia Kelley. My husband is here. Lawrence is missing. You’ve got to find him.”

  My stomach sunk. “Lawrence is missing,” I repeated, partly to make sure I’d heard right, and to let Stephen know what was going on. “Let me put you on speaker. My partner DI Huxley is here with me.”

  I put the phone down on the desk and Stephen scooted closer, his brow furrowed with obvious concern.

  “Alicia, when did you last see him?”

  “Last night. He wasn’t here when I turned up this morning!” Alicia said, and I could hear from her voice how panicked she was. “The nurses didn’t see him leave, and the doctor didn’t check him out. He’s meant to stay in for another couple of days, doing his physio.”

  “I see,” I said, glancing over at Stephen. “And you’ve tried calling him?”

  “Of course!” she said sharply. “The call doesn’t go through at all. He must have it turned off, or it’s broken somehow.”

  “Alright,” I said, keeping my voice calm. “We’ll be over there as soon as we can. Please stay at the hospital.”

  “We will,” Alicia said, before hanging up.

  “Never boring around here,” I muttered, snatching up my things. I tipped my coffee into a travel cup in my desk drawer, snapping the lid on before we headed out of the building.

  “You can say that again,” Stephen agreed.

  We got into the car, Stephen in the driving seat and me sipping my scalding coffee. Stephen looked over enviously.

  “I should get one of those.” He’d had to leave his tea mostly undrunk.

  “You should.”

  I fiddled with the radio as we drove over, but my thoughts were on Lawrence and why he might’ve run off. But we wouldn’t know any more until we arrived at the hospital and started looking around and asking questions, so instead, I said, “How’s your daughter?”

  “Better,” Stephen said, taking us around
a sharp corner. I was almost used to his driving by now, and his liking for screeching to a stop right before the red traffic lights didn’t alarm me quite as much. “Her temperature’s down, and she’s set to leave the hospital tomorrow if all goes well.”

  I cracked a grin. “That’s great news.”

  He nodded, looking relieved. “Yeah. She’s still on some heavy antibiotics, and she’s coughing, but she’s a lot better. Now we know it’s asthma, we’re hoping we can keep it more controlled in the future.”

  I reached over to pat his arm. “I’m sure you will. Knowing what the problem is half the battle, right?”

  He laughed quietly. “God, I hope so.”

  We were getting close to the private hospital, and he pulled into the car park. We headed in to meet Lawrence’s aunt and uncle, who were seated in the front waiting room.

  They bounced up as we came inside and Alicia looked relieved to see us. “Do you know where he is?” she asked immediately.

  I blinked. “Not yet,” I said, and didn’t say that she probably knew more than we did at this point. “Have the staff said anything?”

  She shook her head. “I asked to see the CCTV,” she told me, “but they wanted to wait until you arrived.”

  “Alright,” I said, “let’s go and see that now.”

  It didn’t take too long to track down a security guard to show us the footage, and he seemed to have been expecting the request as it took him only a moment to pull it up on his computer.

  “According to this,” he said, “he left early this morning, seven am.”

  We were all quiet as we watched Lawrence walk slowly down the hall with his crutches to help him. He was still shaky on his feet after so long spent in a cramped space, and with his malnourishment, though even on the grainy CCTV, I could see how much better he was looking.

  “He’s not well enough,” Alicia said, her hand to her mouth. “You’ve got to find him. He’ll get ill. He’s fragile as he is at-”

  I patted the air with my hands, trying to calm her. “We’ll do everything we can, I promise,” I said. Privately, I thought that the cameras gave every indication that Lawrence had left of his own will. This didn’t look like a kidnapping. It looked like Lawrence deciding he was done with the hospital.

  I shared a glance with Stephen over the top of Alicia’s head that told me he was thinking along similar lines.

  “Thank you for showing us,” I told the security guard, pulling out a business card to hand him. “Can you send that over to this email address? That’d be really helpful.”

  “Sure, I’ll get on that.”

  We left him to it and sat back down in the waiting room.

  “Have you talked to the person in charge here?” I asked Alicia and Dan.

  “Yes,” she said, pressing her lips together. “He wasn’t helpful.”

  “We might have to talk to him,” I thought aloud, though I doubted he’d be able to do much, or be willing to, going by Alicia’s frowning expression. “Is there any reason Lawrence might have chosen to leave?” I asked her. “Did he seem restless?”

  She tucked her hair behind her ear. “Not especially,” she said, almost defensively. “He wanted to be up and about, like any teenager. But he never said anything about wanting to- to run off!”

  “No,” I agreed, “he kept his reasons to himself, then.”

  “Could he really have gotten far?” Stephen asked, looking at me. “He can’t walk well. Does he have money with him?”

  I looked back to Alicia and her husband, who looked unsure. “I brought him a rucksack of things from his home,” Dan said, speaking up for the first time. “I don’t know whether his wallet was in it.”

  “Could he have stolen some from you two?”

  Alicia looked offended by the suggestion, pulling back slightly, but Dan pulled out his wallet to check. After a minute, Alicia grudgingly followed suit.

  “I’m not missing any, I don’t think.”

  Alicia put her purse back. “Neither am I.” She looked defiantly at me, as if I’d disagree with her.

  “Alright,” I said. “So perhaps we’ll find him at the nearest bus-stop, or park.” I shared a look with Stephen, who nodded to show his willingness to follow my lead. “We’ll split up then,” I said to the Kelleys. “We’ll take the search on the side closer to the centre, and you can do the opposite side, how does that sound?”

  Alicia pulled her handbag closer on her lap. “And what about other officers? Other cars?” she wanted to know. “He’s a vulnerable young man. The kidnappers are still out there, for christ’s sake-”

  “Mrs Kelley,” Stephen cut in firmly. Whilst he usually kept a friendly look on his face, he hardened it now into a teacherly sternness. “We’ve no reason to believe that the kidnappers will be looking for your nephew anymore, nor that they want to harm him. Whilst we know he needs to return to the hospital, he’s not a child and can look after himself. The sooner we start looking, the sooner he’ll turn up.”

  He gave them an expectant look and Alicia nodded, seeming resigned. Without any more ado, they headed off towards their swanky-looking car and Stephen and I returned to ours.

  “Theories?” Stephen asked as we started to crawl our way through the nearby streets, searching for any teenagers with crutches.

  I sighed. “Not yet,” I admitted. “It doesn’t make much sense.”

  Stephen turned the radio on after a while, and we settled into the search, scanning the area closely.

  A thought came to me suddenly, pieces slotting into place as I looked out of the window onto the grey city.

  “He wasn’t wearing a hospital gown, was he?” I asked Stephen, though I already knew the answer. Lawrence had been wearing casual clothes.

  Stephen frowned and then shook his head. “No. So who brought him those? His aunt and uncle?”

  “They said he wasn’t due out for another few days,” I said, “so was he walking around in those anyway because he was well enough?”

  “No idea,” Stephen said. “Call them?”

  I already had my phone out and gave Alicia a call. “It’s Mitchell-”

  “Have you found him?” she asked, all in a rush, and I winced.

  “Not yet, I’m afraid,” I said. “I had a question.”

  I waited for her to respond. “Go on,” she said, after a moment’s pause, sounding tired again.

  “Did you bring Lawrence some clothes from home? The jeans and t-shirt he was wearing on the CCTV?”

  There was silence. “I don’t know,” she said. “I’ll ask my husband, just a moment, please.”

  The phone went quiet, and I waited for her to return.

  “Hello?” she said a minute later.

  “I’m here.”

  “Dan, my husband, says he brought Lawrence a jumper and an extra blanket, but not the clothes he was wearing.” She sounded baffled. “Where could he have got them from?”

  “I’m not sure yet,” I said, which wasn’t entirely true. I had some ideas. “Thank you for telling me. Call us if you find him.”

  She agreed, and I hung up before she could press me any more.

  “Well?” Stephen asked.

  “It wasn’t them. So someone brought him them. His mother, I reckon.”

  Stephen’s eyebrows rose. He brought the car to a stop as we hit traffic and I turned to look out of the windows, searching for Lawrence, but though there were numerous people I thought briefly could be him, their faces were never his when they turned around.

  “His mum gave him the clothes and told him to leave?” Stephen said, sounding dubious.

  I shrugged. “Who else could it have been? Nobody else has visited him.” I paused. “It could’ve been his friends, I suppose. That would be the next possibility.”

  “Why would his mum leave him alone again?” Stephen asked. “It doesn’t make sense to me.”

  I hummed. “Yeah, you’re right. Perhaps it was his friends. We’ll have to ask him when we find him.”

>   “If we find him.”

  I looked over at him, surprised. “Not like you to be negative. What’s wrong?”

  Stephen just sighed. “Nothing. I hope we do find him. But,” He paused, “I think if a teenager wants to stay missing, we won’t find him easily. He’s not stupid.”

  I nodded, acknowledging his point. “You’re right. He’s not a child.”

  “Unlike Lydia,” Stephen said grimly.

  “Aye.”

  Alicia called us twice more within the next hour, asking us whether we’d found him.

  “Alicia, I will call you straight away if we find him,” I told her. “But I can’t focus on looking for him while talking to you. Please trust me to get in touch with you if we see him.”

  “Okay,” she sighed.

  Stephen looked over as I hung up and put my phone away. “She’s just worried,” he said.

  “I know. So am I.”

  I’d only been off the phone for a minute before it rang again and my eyebrows rose when I saw who was calling. I hesitated, wondering whether this was a work phone call or… not.

  “You going to pick that up?” Stephen said. The slight smile on his lips made me think he knew exactly who was calling.

  “Oh shut up,” I said, and he grinned.

  I picked up the call. “Hi.”

  “Hi Mitchell,” Keira said. Her tone of voice told me immediately that she’d called me in a professional capacity and I shouldn’t have doubted her. She knew that I was on work time and she wouldn’t be so unprofessional as to disrupt that.

  “What’ve you got for me?” I asked her.

  “That number plate you put into the system on Saturday?”

  I straightened up in my seat. I was still looking out of the window for Lawrence as we talked, but most of my focus was on her voice. “Yeah?”

  “I looked into it, and it’s registered to a garage,” she said. “Nearby, too. It’s an old van. I’ll send you the details.”

  Thrilled by the prospect of a proper lead, my heart was beating quickly. “No, could you text it to me?” I asked. “You’ve got a location for it, right?”

  “Yes,” she said. “You’re out of the office? I thought you’d just popped out for lunch.”