The Child Taker (2009)

by Conrad Jones

  “How long have you suspected this?” she asked softly.

  “I don’t know, I didn’t believe it first, well you wouldn’t would you?” He smiled a haunted smile. “I mean your own brother, would you believe it?”

  “Stranger things happen, Steve,” Sylvia replied.

  “Not to me, not to good old boring sensible Steve,” he lit a cigarette with a shaking hand, and breathed in deeply. “Maybe that’s why she’s looking elsewhere, because I’m boring?”

  “Have you spoken to Louise about it?”

  “Of course I have, do you think I’m stupid?” Steve was beginning to get annoyed.

  “And what did she say about it?” Sylvia sat down opposite him.

  “She said I’m being paranoid,” Steve slouched in his chair and pulled on the cigarette again, ash tumbled down his shirt. “Karl says that I’m being paranoid, but then what else would they say?”

  “Do you think you’re being paranoid?”

  “I think that you should fuck off and leave us alone, that’s what I think.”

  “This is serious, Steve, where is she?”

  “None of this would have happened if you lot hadn’t come sniffing around, blaming Karl for taking his own children.”

  “You’re hampering a police investigation, Steve,” she persisted.

  “Ooh, are you going to arrest me, Sherlock?” Steve muttered.

  “I might do, Steve, where is she?”

  “Dublin,” Steve mumbled.

  “Pardon?”

  “She’s working in Dublin, you know the capital of Ireland,” Steve sneered sarcastically.

  “Have you got her hotel details?”

  “What is your problem?”

  “I need to speak to her and Karl,” Sylvia pushed the point. Steve stood up and staggered over to the telephone. He pressed redial on the handset and a ringing tone sounded.

  “Here ask for Louise Kelly, room three, two, five,” Steve said very slowly labouring the issue.

  “Hello, Dublin Hilton, how can I help?” a woman with a Polish accent answered.

  “Could you put me through to room three, two five,” Sylvia asked. She picked up a dirty sock from the settee with the tips of her fingers, and twirled it in her free hand. Something wasn’t right.

  “Hello,” a voice answered.

  “Louise Kelly?”

  “Yes speaking,” Louise sounded surprised.

  “Louise, it’s Constable Sylvia Lees, here, I’m with your husband Steve, and I need to speak to Karl urgently,” Sylvia went out on a limb trying to provoke a response.

  “I suggest you call him on his mobile then, why are you calling me, have they found the twins?”

  “No, they haven’t, I’m sorry to bother you,” Sylvia hung up and stared at the sock and the overflowing ashtray. She figured that Louise had been gone a while, and Steve was in some kind of denial. There was a picture of Louise and Steve in happier times on pine bookcase next to Sylvia’s chair. Louise looked stunning, jet-black hair, deep brown eyes, and tanned skin. Her smile revealed perfect white teeth, which added to her model looks.

  “She’s a pretty woman, your wife,” Sylvia commented. Steve shook his head and closed his eyes. Tears formed and he rubbed at them angrily. “Where was this photo taken?”

  “At a restaurant in Chester,” Steve sniffled.

  “Oh, I thought it was abroad somewhere, as she looks really tanned,” Sylvia said.

  “She had just come back from a girlfriend’s hen do in Tenerife,” Steve answered, looking longingly at the picture of his beautiful wife. He stubbed his cigarette out and lit another one immediately. Sylvia noticed that his index finger was turning yellow, stained with nicotine, a sign that he was chain smoking.

  “How did Louise get to Dublin?”

  “Canoe,” Steve sneered. He sniffled and then wiped his nose on his sleeve.

  “Have you spoken to your brother since he left for his fishing trip?”

  “Karl is in the Lakes, where cell phone signals are like gold dust. I told you that my wife is in Dublin, and you have phoned my wife to see if she is actually in Dublin, and guess what, she is indeed in Dublin, just like I told you, now what more do you want, Sherlock!” Steve shouted sarcastically

  “I’d drink some coffee if I were you,” Sylvia said as she left the room. She opened the front door and paused before stepping out into the pouring rain.

  Chapter Forty

  Major Stanley Timms

  Major Timms sat in the rear passenger seat of a Nissan Navarra. The dark pickup truck was travelling south on the M6 motorway at ninety miles an hour. The evening sun was fading away, and a half moon was arcing across the sky.

  “I don’t understand where all this has come from,” the Major said confused. He looked at the large satellite navigation screen that was built into the dashboard, and read that they were nearing Wolverhampton. They had rushed him into the vehicle promising to explain everything on the way. On the way to where, he didn’t know.

  “Sylvia Lees went to see Karl at his brother Steve’s house on a routine visit, as part of her family liaison duties,” Grace explained from the front passenger seat. She twisted her body on the grey leather seat, so that her shoulders were facing the Major. “When she got to his brother’s house, he was drunk and obviously upset about something. Sylvia said that from the condition of the house it looked as if Steve had been on a bender for a week or more.”

  “Louise was in Dublin, working away, and coincidently Karl was allegedly fishing in the Lakes on his own,” Tank indicated left and the Navarra moved over onto the slip road, which would take them off the motorway toward the city of Wolverhampton.

  “Okay so she was suspicious that the affair is in fact a reality?” the Major asked.

  “Right, but not only that, because she became even more convinced that Karl’s behaviour has been unusual to say the least,” Grace carried on. “So she went to see Hayley and got some details about Karl’s work, and social life recently.”

  “Sylvia found out where Karl usually stays when he’s fishing, and she checked all the hotels that he would normally use, and the campsites around them, and she came up with nothing,” Tank said.

  “So she thinks that he’s in Dublin?” the Major asked, still confused.

  “She did, but she couldn’t get access to the airport and ferry manifests without a warrant, and so she contacted us, because she knows that we can,” Grace added. “We ran all the checks and we’re convinced that there has been no Karl Kelly travelling to Ireland in the past few weeks, but guess what?”

  “Louise Kelly has been coming back into the country from Dublin?” the Major guessed.

  “No, but Louise Scolari has flown budget airline from Dublin to Wolverhampton twice in the last week,” Grace said.

  “Scolari is her maiden name?” the Major asked.

  “Correct,” Tank added. The Nissan navigated a huge roundabout and then Tank followed a brown sign that took them onto a narrow minor road. The brown sign had the picture of a boat on it.

  “With a name like Scolari, I’m guessing her parents were Italian?” the Major was racking his brains to understand where this was going.

  “Her father was Italian, her mother was Moroccan,” Tank filled in the details. “And she was born in Marrakesh.”

  “We know for an absolute fact that Jack Howarth, or Alfie Lesner took the twins, I just can’t see anything past that,” the Major argued. “Why are we going on a wild goose chase?”

  Tank looked at Grace and smiled, shaking his head. The Major was a stalwart, a doubting Thomas, and he never believed anything until he could see it for himself.

  “Sylvia saw a photograph of Louise and her husband, she was tanned and he wasn’t. Steve said that she had been on a girlfriend’s hen do in Tenerife, but when Sylvia checked up with the friend she told her that Louise hadn’t gone on the trip. She had fallen out with Louise over the fact that she pulled out at the last minute. Louise told Steve that the
y had fallen out on the Tenerife trip because the bride to be was being a little too frivolous with other men. They didn’t go to the wedding, and so there were no uncomfortable questions to answer about not going to Tenerife.”

  “What’s the significance of that?” the Major asked.

  “Louise Scolari bought a flight from Manchester airport to Marrakesh, and guess who else was on that flight?” Tank said. He caught the Major’s eyes in the rear view mirror, and he could see him processing the information.

  “Karl?”

  “Correct,” Grace said.

  “What did he tell my daughter?”

  “Golf trip to Marbella,” Tank replied.

  “I remember him going, and I remember him bringing presents back for Hayley and the twins,” the Major spoke quietly.

  “We think that they went to Marrakesh to arrange for the twins to be kidnapped, via relatives of Louise in Marrakesh,” Grace said. “We think that Jack Howarth was employed by the Moroccans to capture the twins. Karl was planning to leave Hayley, and he was terrified that she wouldn’t let him see the twins.”

  The Major nodded and turned to look out of the window. The industrial city of Wolverhampton was sprawled out behind them and the countryside was opening up in front of them.

  “Why here, why in Wolverhampton?”

  “The police found the body of Alfie Lesner at an industrial unit near Crewe, and it is situated on the Shropshire Union canal. We checked credit card transactions with all marinas in the area, and we found an eight berth narrow boat that has been paid for by......”

  “Louise Scolari,” the Major interrupted; his voice was acidic. Karl’s bank transactions had all been checked thoroughly as a routine part of the investigation. It had to be Louise that had paid for it, and she had to have used her maiden name to avoid any obvious connections being made. “The canal network is the ideal place to keep the twins out of the public’s gaze.”

  “It is, and all the hire boats are chipped for GPS tracking, to stop vessels being stolen. We know exactly where the boat is, fingers crossed that we’re right, Major,” Tank said.

  They travelled in nervous silence for the next twenty minutes; the road ran parallel to the canal. Brightly painted longboats were dotted along the banks, some covered and empty and others were lit up like Christmas, and had smoke coming from their chimneys.

  “We’re here,” Tank pulled the Nissan into a gravel car park, and the white stones crunched beneath the wheels. The sun was nearly gone and electric lights, paraffin lamps and candles illuminated the occupied narrow boats in the marina. There was an array of different hues and colours coming from inside the vessels. They climbed out of the Navarra and Tank locked the pickup with his remote. A small curved footbridge took them over the canal to the opposite bank and they scanned the moored boats for the vessel that they were looking for.

  “The Lady Ruth,” Grace said pointing to a boat, which was moored about a hundred yards further up the canal. “Look.”

  A lamp attached to the bulkhead illuminated the front of the boat. A pair of glass-pained doors had been left open revealing a cosy living space within. The interior was lit by amber light and the occupants were seated around a small kitchenette table eating a meal. Sat on a padded bench next to each other giggling, were the twins. Karl and Louise sat opposite them, and they clinked long stemmed wine glasses and smiled lovingly at each other as they watched the twins eat.

  “We’d better call the police,” Grace said.

  “I don’t want the twins upset, by being taken into care while this mess is sorted out,” the Major said. A tear ran from the corner of his eye and he wiped it with his sleeve. “We take the twins back to Hayley, Grace, and John can stay with them until the police get here.”

  “Fine by me,” Tank agreed. “Take them to their mother, Major, where they belong.”

  “Don’t shoot him, John,” the Major patted him on the back as they walked up the towpath.

  “I wouldn’t dream of it, Major,” Tank smiled.

  Chapter Forty One

  The Child Taker

  The hearse stopped at the gates of the church, and the crowd fell silent as the funeral directors removed the coffin. A reef of white roses, crafted into the word ‘DAD’ was taken from the hearse and placed on top of the walnut coffin. Eight police officers in full dress uniform moved to the coffin, four each side, and they lifted the casket onto their shoulders. The winding path to the church was lined with police officers, as is the tradition when they have to bury one of their own, and the cortege prepared to carry their fallen colleague into the red sandstone brick church.

  Jack looked up at the steeple, and he couldn’t help but be impressed by its scale. A series of wooden ladders were tied to the pointed spire, allowing a steeplejack access to maintain the weather vane and the lightning conductors. The throbbing in his hand was becoming a dull ache now. A doctor friend of his, who shared the same sexual interests as he did had stitched up his hand and given him antibiotics to ward off any infections. It had been incredibly painful when he left the hospital, and as the local anaesthetics from his operation had worn off, the pain in his groin had become intolerable. It had taken him two days to get help from his doctor friend, but the pain had been the price he had to pay for his liberty, and it was worth every second of agony that he had suffered.

  The sad procession at the front of the church began to move and Jack smiled as the dead police officer’s family filed in behind his coffin. His widow was nearly as fat as he had been, and his son was a younger look-alike of him. The daughter however was a different matter. She was prepubescent, just the age that he liked them, and although she was plump, he would enjoy making her do the things that he liked. He had promised Constable Davis as he died that he would visit his children, and he intended to keep that promise. Jack knew that he would be taking children for profit soon enough, but this one would be purely for his own pleasure. There is a ‘Child Taker’ in every community, look after your little ones