The Stolen Children

by Oliver Davies

  “Thank you, detective,” Rebecca said, “I will.”

  She bid me goodbye, and I ended the call. Finally having some good news was a nice change of pace and I couldn’t help the small smile on my face as I returned to the sitting room.

  Alicia and Stephen were sitting in silence as I re-entered, and both looked up at me.

  “I have some good news,” I told Alicia. “Lawrence has turned up at his family home. The housekeeper, Rebecca, is caring for him.”

  Alicia’s face lit up. “Oh thank goodness,” she said, smiling. She put her mug down on the coffee table and stood up. “I’ll let Dan know, if you don’t mind? He’s been as worried as I have.”

  “Of course,” I said, and she headed out of the room to call her husband.

  I walked over to sit back down next to Stephen, who was smiling too. “Good news, isn’t it?” I said.

  “Finally,” he agreed, patting me on the shoulder. “One down, one to go, eh?”

  “Aye.”

  I finished up my coffee before Alicia returned to the room. She gave us a smile.

  “He was pleased,” she said. “I plan to go to Lawrence now, to see if he needs anything.”

  “Okay,” I said, taking that as our cue to leave. I stood up, and Stephen followed me up. “Thanks for talking to us.”

  “Of course,” she said.

  We saw ourselves out of the house as Alicia started to get ready to leave. Stephen drove us back to the station, the radio on low.

  “That was a lot,” Stephen said.

  I huffed a laugh. “It sure was. I’m surprised Alicia was willing to share so much.”

  “I guess she’s siding with Lawrence over her sister.”

  “Or siding with the law,” I said.

  Stephen gave me a humourless smile. “That little thing? Maybe so.”

  We reached the station a little after lunchtime and Stephen insisted on grabbing something to eat. I wasn’t especially hungry but tagged along with him, anyway.

  “Will you be running later?” he asked.

  I shrugged. “I ran in this morning, so probably, yes.”

  He pushed a sandwich and cereal bar into my hands. “Better keep your energy up, then, if you ever wanna be Mo Farah.”

  I couldn’t help but smile. “I’m hardly Mo Farah. I’ve never even done a marathon.”

  Stephen’s eyebrows rose. “That’s surprising,” he said.

  We paid at the checkout and headed back towards the blocky, grey station. It wasn’t the most attractive building, especially in a city as gorgeous and historic as York, but I looked at it with fondness.

  “I would’ve thought you’d love a marathon,” Stephen said.

  “I prefer more mud and less tarmac,” I said. “Give me a hill over an organised race any day.”

  “Okay, yeah, that makes sense, actually,” Stephen laughed. “You’re just a chronic overachiever, you know that? You’ll probably do an Iron Man or ultra-marathon when you’re ninety or something, right?”

  “I’m surprised you know what those are,” I told him with a teasing grin. “And nope. I wanna have my feet up when I’m ninety.”

  He slapped me on the back. “Finally something we agree on, Mitchell.”

  Back in the office, Stephen ate his lunch while I updated our records on the case. I thought briefly of Sedgwick. He must have felt when he dealt with this gang, trying to find a missing child just like we were. I wished he was here so that we could coordinate, but he was still out of the office for the moment, and I didn’t have a good enough reason to call him back as things stood.

  I’d just opened up my sandwich when my phone started ringing again.

  Stephen looked over. “You’re popular today.”

  “Jealous?” I said, before picking up the phone and putting it to my ear. “Rebecca? Everything okay?”

  “It’s Lawrence,” a young, male voice came through, and I startled.

  “Oh, Lawrence,” I said, taken aback. “We’d like to speak to you, actually.”

  “I know, I have to tell you some things too,” he interrupted.

  I scrambled for my notepad and gestured impatiently for Stephen to get up and follow me. “Aye? Are you available now?”

  “Yeah,” he said, and then quieter, “I want to get it over with.”

  I’d been heading towards an interview room, where we could have some privacy with Lawrence on the phone, but his soft words made me pause. “I understand. If you need a break, feel free to tell us at any point, okay?”

  I set the phone down on the table, turning the speakerphone on. “It’s just me and my partner, DI Huxley here,” I told Lawrence. Settled into a seat with Stephen sat opposite me, I put my notepad down in front of me. Stephen gave me a nod. “Alright, Lawrence, what can you tell us?”

  Lawrence took an audible breath on the other end of the line, and we waited for him to speak again.

  “I left the hospital to find my mum,” he said finally.

  My eyebrows rose, before I made a note on my pad. I’d started to think that Lawrence might have left for another reason, so to have our initial idea confirmed surprised me.

  “Go on,” Stephen said gently, when Lawrence seemed to be waiting for a response.

  “Right,” Lawrence said, clearing his throat. “I was thinking all about my dad and what my mum had said, in the hospital, you know? My aunt is great, but she’s not, uh, my parent. I don’t know her that well.”

  I made a noise in my throat, not wanting to interrupt but letting Lawrence know that we were listening.

  “So I tried to talk to her,” Lawrence continued, his voice slightly stronger. “But I didn’t have my phone, right? I borrowed my aunt’s,” he said, before adding hurriedly, “I put it back okay? I didn’t steal it.”

  “I believe you,” I said.

  “And it took a lot of tries, but she finally answered me,” Lawrence said. He sighed. “She said she wanted to meet up with me too.” His voice cracked on the last word, and I shared a look with Stephen.

  Lawrence fell silent. “What happened then, Lawrence?” I prompted carefully.

  “So I left,” he said quietly. “It was pretty easy. I went where she told me to, the nearest park to the hospital.” He stopped for a long second. “But she didn’t show up. I was hiding. I don’t know why, okay? She sounded a bit… off on the phone, right?”

  My stomach tightened as I listened, and I could see from Stephen’s pinched brows that he felt the same.

  “A car pulled up, and I thought it was her, but these big guys got out instead.” He swallowed. “They were looking everywhere, and I don’t know- I don’t know how they didn’t see me.” His breath hiccupped with emotion, and I frowned, wishing that we could have spared him this pain. “But they went away, eventually.”

  He fell silent. Stephen and I were quiet, seeing if he would say anything else, and letting him have some time to gather himself.

  “And after that?” I asked, after a minute had passed.

  “I went to my school friends’,” he said, his voice firmer again. “I didn’t want to go back to the hospital. She might’ve come for me there.”

  “I’m glad you’re alright, we both are,” I told him. “And we appreciate you talking-”

  “I just want her caught,” Lawrence said, hard and cold. Ironically, his tone at that moment reminded me of his mother. “Those guys were after me, I know it. She sent them. She had to.”

  “How… do you know they were looking for you?” I asked hesitantly. I didn’t want to seem like I didn’t believe him, because I did, but I needed to know if he had any other details he could share.

  He made a sound of annoyance. “I know, okay? They were in this fancy Mercedes, but they all looked like bouncers. They stuck out like a sore thumb. And they were looking for somebody, or something. Only my mum knew I was there. It was her.”

  “Okay,” I said. “Did your mum say anything else on the phone?”

  He hesitated. “Not really.
Just that she missed me.” He fell silent after that and I winced.

  “And then you went back to your home?” I asked, trying to steer the conversation back to safer grounds.

  He made a noise of agreement. “I wanted to see Rebecca and Nick,” he said, his tone noticeably warmer when he said their names than when he’d spoken about his mother. “I trust them.”

  “That’s good,” I said. “Alright, was there anything else you can tell us?”

  After a short pause, he said, “I don’t think so.”

  “Call us straight away if you do think of anything,” Stephen said, stepping into the conversation for the first time. He’d been staying quiet, I thought, so that Lawrence wouldn’t feel so much like he was being interrogated by two police officers, just having a conversation with one. Or that was how I’d tried to play it, anyway. Lawrence wasn’t a kid who responded very well to authority; it seemed to make him clam up more than anything, so doing the interview over the phone was probably a good thing. He’d also taken the initiative to reach out to us, which boded well.

  “Okay,” Lawrence agreed.

  “One last thing,” I said, before Lawrence could end the call. “Can we have the number you used to contact your mother?”

  Lawrence paused, before reciting the number from memory. “She used to pick me up from school sometimes,” he said, almost defensively. “She was late all the time, and I had to call her.”

  “I’m glad you have such a good memory,” I assured him. “Take care of yourself, Lawrence.”

  “I will,” he said, before he hung up.

  I rubbed a hand over my face, the beginnings of stubble on my chin scratching against the skin of my palm.

  “He’s a smart kid,” Stephen said, which hadn’t been what I’d expected him to say. “He’s got good instincts.”

  “Yeah,” I said, “and the confidence in himself to follow them.”

  Stephen hummed. “Except when he went walking at night and got snatched in the first place.”

  I shot Stephen a look. “He’s still a teenager. They were professionals who’d been waiting for a chance to grab it. Not exactly the same thing.”

  “No,” Stephen agreed.

  I stood up, putting my notebook and phone away. “It’s about time we gave Gaskell an update on all this,” I decided, as Stephen got to his feet. “Plenty had happened since he was last filled in.”

  Stephen gave me an approving nod. “Lead the way, Mitchell.”

  Twenty-Two

  “What’s your next move?” Gaskell asked after Stephen and I gave him the rundown of everything that had happened.

  I had an idea in mind, but I didn’t know whether Gaskell would dismiss it as a longshot.

  “Go on, Mitchell,” he prompted after I’d been quiet for a moment too long. “Whatever it is, spit it out.”

  “Lawrence, the Woodings’ son,” I started, “was able to get in contact with his mother. I thought that we could attempt to contact her through him. She seems to have some fondness for him, at least.”

  Gaskell considered it. “No harm in trying, is there?” I nodded, and he looked between us. “No other leads on the little girl?”

  I grimaced. “I’m afraid not. We need to get the gang before we can find her.”

  “Alright,” Gaskell. “Go on, then. No time to waste.”

  Stephen and I got up and left the office as Gaskell returned to his computer, and I released a breath of relief or tiredness.

  “Did you come up with that on the fly?” Stephen asked as we walked back to our desks.

  I chuckled. “No, actually.”

  “You think it’ll work?”

  “No idea. We can try texting first, and then, if we have to, bring Lawrence in to call her.”

  Stephen winced. “I’m less keen on that idea, I have to say.”

  “Aye, I know,” I said. “Let’s hope we don’t have to ask him. He’s been through enough already, without that on his shoulders too.”

  “Though he did say he wanted her caught,” Stephen said.

  “He thinks that now,” I said quietly. “But she’s still his mum. However bad a child’s relationship with their parents, they’re always your parents. It’s not easy to shake that off.”

  Stephen was quiet for long enough to tell me that he was thinking. “Sounds like you know something of that,” he said.

  I cleared my throat and opted to ignore that, because it was nothing I wanted to talk about. “How does a teenager usually text?” I asked instead, pulling out my phone and inputting the number Lawrence had given me into it from where I’d copied it down in my notebook.

  Stephen didn’t respond, and I thought he was going to push for a real answer from me, but in the end, he let it go. “I have no idea,” he said. “Emojis and that, isn’t it?”

  I groaned. “I have no clue.”

  Despite being uncertain about Lawrence’s style of texting, we were both reluctant to text him, and so fumbled our way through the message ourselves.

  “There, that’ll do.”

  I looked over the text again and nodded. We’d opted for simple and as short as possible, and the text said little more than that Lawrence wanted to meet.

  “I hope she responds,” I muttered, after a half-hour of silence.

  “We can hope,” Stephen said.

  I forced myself to leave my phone alone for a while and went to make myself another coffee.

  “You don’t look like you’re enjoying that?” Stephen noted, after I’d taken a sip of coffee and pulled a face like I’d bitten a lemon. We’d run out of the nice stuff Stephen had brought in the other day and were back to the supermarket’s own brand.

  “After the ambrosia Alicia gave me, this tastes like bitter soil.”

  Stephen cracked up at the disgusted expression on my face. “Mate, that’s what cheap black coffee tastes like for every normal person. It’s why us ordinary folk put milk and sugar in it.”

  “So it can be milky, sweetened soil?” I said, pulling a face. I took another sip and wrinkled my nose. “I’ll just have to get used to it again,” I grumbled.

  “Now who’s getting spoilt by the fancy stuff.”

  “Yeah yeah, haven’t you got work to do, Huxley?”

  “Sir, yes, sir,” he chuckled.

  I’d just gotten stuck into writing up our talk with Lawrence when Stephen elbowed me in the side.

  “What?” I snapped.

  “Woah, don’t take my head off,” he said, holding up his hands.

  “Sorry,” I sighed. “What’s up?”

  He pointed to my phone. “Your phone buzzed, didn’t you hear it?”

  I shook my head, picking it up and hoping it was what we were both hoping for. I had a new text message and hurriedly clicked on it.

  Who is this? Ellie Wooding had typed, or someone on her phone had, anyway.

  I showed it to Stephen, and he shrugged. “Guess she wants to check. That, or she changed her phone number.”

  I typed out Lawrence’s name and sent it, staring at my phone hopefully. It took several minutes, but my phone finally buzzed again.

  “Yes!” I punched the air and shared a grin with Stephen, who looked as pleased as I was when he saw the message.

  “An address to meet her at,” he said, “hell yeah, now we’re getting somewhere.”

  “It’ll be a set-up, obviously,” I said, thinking aloud, “but hopefully they won’t be expecting us to kick back this time.”

  I quickly typed the address into Google Maps and brought it up. “This is a street on the outskirts of York,” I said.

  “Still pretty central,” Stephen said, leaning over to look. “Not like the botched ransom hand-over, or the trap at the farmhouse. So maybe she does think it’s Lawrence.”

  I crossed my fingers. “God, I hope so.”

  We took the news to Gaskell, who looked pleasantly surprised. “We’ll get you a team to go with you-”

  “I think less would be more, in this case, s
ir,” I said. “We need to be subtle. They could bolt if anything seems off.”

  Gaskell looked at me. “You think we need to bring the kid in as bait?”

  I pulled back, startled. “No,” I said, perhaps more harshly than I ought to have, but the idea was abhorrent. “No, they could have guns, and we’re not putting a civilian teenager in the middle of that. Sir,” I added belatedly.

  Gaskell gave me a serious nod. “Alright, then. So we keep the team out of sight till the last minute.”

  “That sounds sensible, sir. We’ll have to scope out the area, but it’s fairly built up, so there should be plenty of places we can keep out of sight until they show up.”

  “Good,” Gaskell said. “Nice job, the pair of you. Get together a full plan, and I’ll get the people together. When is the date set for?”

  “Tonight,” I said apologetically. “Six o’clock.”

  Gaskell pressed his lips together and cursed under his breath. “Not ideal,” he said, “But we’ll make it work.”

  He waved us out of his office, already picking up the phone, and we left him to it. Stephen slung an arm over my shoulders as we walked back to our computers, giving me a rough sideways hug before he released me, grinning like a Cheshire cat.

  “We haven’t got her yet,” I warned him. His optimism was infectious, but this felt like counting your eggs before they hatched and I didn’t want to have to ride the emotional toll of another big let-down.

  He rolled his eyes. “I know that, Mitch. But this is a good step, right?”

  “Yes, it’s a good step,” I said, “but it’s just that; a step. Not the-”

  He gave me a light shove. “Shut up with your negativity. It’ll work out. I have a feeling.”

  I snorted a laugh. “Oh if you have a feeling,” I taunted, “I’ll stop worrying then, aye?”

  He gave me a fond grin as he sat down at his desk, and I followed suit. “Oh, ye of little faith. You know what will actually stop your incessant worrying?”

  “No?” I said, my eyebrow lifted.

  “Working,” he said. “I swear, the only thing that calms you down is running through every possible scenario like some kind of calculator.”