The Child Catcher (A DI Erica Swift Thriller Book 4)

by M K Farrar

  The man jumped to his feet. “Did you find her? Did you find Ellie?”

  Erica raised a sympathetic smile. “Not yet, but we have numerous officers scouring the park and local area for her. I’m sure she’ll show up soon.”

  At the bad news, he crumpled into the seat and shoved his face back into his hands, his fingers clawed into his hair.

  “I don’t know what I’m supposed to do with myself,” he wailed. “Should I be here, waiting for my wife to get out of surgery, to hold her hand and even have to say goodbye if the surgery doesn’t go well? Or should I be out there,” he gestured helplessly, “trying to find Ellie? God, she must be so frightened. If she saw what happened and ran away and is lost somewhere—” His voice broke, and he covered his face with his hands again.

  “Mr Dempsey, is there anyone I can call for you? Someone who can come and sit with you?”

  He shook his head. “I’ve already called Mae’s parents, but they’ve agreed to stay at the flat in case Ellie shows up there.”

  “Good. We’ve got police officers all over the park, and at your home, and searching the streets between as well, looking for Ellie. We’re doing everything we can to find her.”

  “Thank you,” he said, his voice small.

  “There’s a quiet room right down the corridor.” Erica nodded in the direction of the room. “It would be better if we could go in there so I can ask you some questions in private.”

  He rose back to standing, but it seemed to take him a massive effort, as though his limbs weighed ten times more than normal.

  Erica took that as an agreement, and she led Mr Dempsey, together with Shawn, down to the quiet room. It was thankfully empty. The police officer who’d been sitting with Jack Dempsey waited outside the door, preventing anyone else from entering while the interview was taking place.

  Erica gestured for Mr Dempsey to take a seat and he sank into the nearest one. She and Shawn sat opposite.

  “I’m going to ask you some questions,” Erica continued, “and I’m going to record our conversation. It’ll be helpful for me to be able to check later.”

  He gave a half-shrug, and his hands flapped feebly from his lap.

  Erica clicked on her portable recorder. She spoke her name, together with the time, date, and location into the device. “Commencing interview with Jack Dempsey.” She looked to the father and asked her first question. “Has Ellie ever run away before?”

  He clasped his hand between his knees. “No, not at all.”

  “What about when she’s at home? Does she like to hide away when she’s upset, like in the wardrobe or under the bed.”

  Tears filled his eyes. “No, she’d come to me or her mum if she was upset.”

  Erica glanced over at Shawn to make sure he was taking notes. Shawn lifted his notebook and pen to show that he was, and she continued with the questions.

  “Does Ellie have a favourite part of the park she loves to go to?”

  “Only the playground and she was already there.”

  “Is there anywhere else you can think of that she might go if she was frightened? A family member’s house, or a school friend, maybe?”

  “She’s got school friends, but no one she would have known how to get to from the park. And anyway, it’s not like her just to run off. She’s a good girl. She wouldn’t go anywhere without asking first.”

  Erica softened her tone. “People—including children—are unpredictable when they’re faced with a trauma like that. She might behave in a way that she wouldn’t normally.”

  His face grew pink with frustration. “Why are you asking me to predict what she might do if you’re also telling me her actions might have been unpredictable?”

  His anger was directed at her, but it wasn’t really, and she understood that. He was just finding a vent to release the torrent of emotion inside him.

  She kept her voice level. “Just making sure we cover all bases, Mr Dempsey.”

  His shoulders slumped, and he rubbed his hand across his face. “Yeah, sorry.”

  “Does Ellie have any illnesses we need to be worried about?”

  “No, she’s perfectly healthy.”

  “And you said it’s not like her to run off? Is that right?”

  He wrung his hands. “Not at all. She’s never run away before.”

  Aware that there were two lines to this case, she switched victims. “What about your wife, can you think of any reason someone might have to hurt her?”

  He blinked up at her. “Mae? No, not at all. Everyone loves Mae. I don’t think she’d fallen out with anyone her entire life. Certainly not enough for someone to want to try to kill her.”

  “So, no problems you’re aware of? Debts, or drugs, or anything like that? Sometimes, a spouse can think they know everything about their partner when in fact a person can be very secretive when they need to be.”

  “We have debts, but no more than most people, I don’t think. We have an overdraft and a credit card, and we’re still paying off a new sofa we bought eighteen months ago when our old one fell apart, but I’m pretty sure the bank doesn’t send people to stab their customers in the park over unpaid debts these days.”

  The sarcasm was creeping back into his voice. A defence mechanism.

  “What about the relationship between the two of you?” she asked. “Some of the eyewitnesses from the park mentioned that your wife seemed upset about something right before the attack.”

  His eyes widened with surprise. “People noticed our conversation, but they didn’t manage to get a decent look at the person who stabbed my wife. How the fuck does that work?”

  “I really just need you to answer the question, Mr Dempsey.”

  He sighed again. “It was nothing. We were talking about money. We often end up talking about money. I lost my job recently, and things have been tight. Mae has been working every hour God sends, and I’ve been trying to find work.”

  “You said that it’s a common discussion in your house. Would you say it’s something of an issue between the two of you?”

  “Well, yes,” he threw both hands in the air, “but no more than it would be with any other couple in our situation. Certainly not enough for me to want to have my wife stabbed, if that’s what you’re implying. Jesus, you should be out trying to find who did it, and what’s happened to our daughter, not making out like it’s something I’m capable of. Mae and I love each other. We’d never do anything to hurt each other, and certainly not this.”

  She kept her tone calm, cool and level. “Like I said, we just have to cover all possibilities. I hope you understand.”

  He didn’t seem to be listening, shaking his head and muttering in disbelief at her apparent ineptitude.

  “We’d really like to speak to some of her friends and work colleagues as well,” she continued, “in case she told them anything.”

  He sighed and lifted his head again. “I’ll get you their names and numbers, but honestly, they won’t tell you anything different. Mae is a good woman. She works hard and she takes care of her family. She hardly ever goes out because most of the time we can’t afford it. I really don’t think she’s in any kind of trouble.”

  “Just the wrong place at the wrong time,” Shawn said from beside her.

  Jack Dempsey nodded miserably. “And I’m the one who put her there. I thought spending a bit of time outdoors as a family would help cheer her up, and now look at us. Mae’s fighting for her life, and Ellie is missing. God, why couldn’t they have stabbed me instead?”

  Shawn gave him a sympathetic smile. “If this is a random attack, they probably thought you’d have put up more of a fight.”

  Anger flashed across the man’s face. “You mean they picked on the smaller one. Mae probably only weighs nine stone. Fucking cowards.”

  He wasn’t wrong. Whoever did this was a coward.

  “Can you run through exactly what happened?” Erica asked. “Start at the beginning of the day.”

  If they’d been
out and about during the morning, there was the possibility whoever was responsible had already been following them, and so they’d have other places to gather CCTV footage from.

  “We didn’t do anything in the morning,” Jack said. “We stayed in the flat, caught up on housework, and watched cartoons with Ellie. That kind of thing. It was such a nice day that it seemed a shame to spend it indoors, so we left after lunch and had a walk. Then Ellie wanted to play in the playground, and Mae and I sat on the bench opposite to watch her.” He gave a sad smile. “She can make the swings work on her own now, so she doesn’t need us to push her anymore. She said she was a big girl and could do it herself.”

  It sounded so much like something Poppy would say, it hurt Erica’s heart.

  “Then what happened?”

  He shrugged. “Mae and I were talking, like I said. I remembered seeing a couple of teenagers in hoodies wandering around and I thought to myself that they must be hot, ’cause they were all hidden away, hoods right up, and hands in pockets. Then the next thing I knew, one of them had run up behind us, and then Mae was lying on the ground—” His voice broke, and he covered his mouth with his hand. “And she was screaming. It all happened so fast, I didn’t really know what was going on. By the time I realised, I didn’t even think to look for whoever had done it. I was trying to spot Ellie instead, not wanting her to see her mother like that, but she’d already vanished.”

  “Thank you, Mr Dempsey,” she said. “We’re hoping the CCTV footage from the park will give us more to go on. There are cameras everywhere, so they’re bound to have picked up on something.”

  “Honestly, Detective, right now I’m more concerned about you finding Ellie than I am finding who did this. I want the bastards to pay, but more than anything, I want you to find my daughter, and I want my wife to live.”

  “I understand that. We’re doing everything in our power to find them.”

  “What are you still doing talking to me then?”

  She got the hint and handed him one of her cards. “Call me if there are any changes with your wife, and also if you remember anything you haven’t told us. A description of the men, or anything that might come back to you. It might not seem important, but sometimes the tiniest things can make all the difference.”

  He turned her card between his fingers and nodded.

  “We will want to speak with you in more detail in the near future, and with your wife as well, the minute we’re able to.”

  There was both hope and fear in that statement—the hope that she would pull through and the fear that she wouldn’t.

  Erica and Shawn left Jack Dempsey still sitting in the quiet room. She stopped to speak to the police officer, still waiting outside of the door, who’d accompanied Mr and Mrs Dempsey in the ambulance.

  “Can we have a quick word?” she said. “I won’t keep you a minute. I just wanted to ask if either of them said anything in the ambulance?”

  He shook his head. “The victim was unconscious, so she wasn’t able to speak.”

  “What about the husband?”

  “Nothing that would be of use. He was crying and begging for his wife not to die, and saying things like ‘God, where are you, Ellie? Please be all right.’ He was pretty distraught.”

  “Thanks. If he does say or do anything that might be of interest, will you let me know, asap? Also, if the wife wakes up?” She gave him her card as well.

  “Will do.”

  She let him go back to Jack Dempsey and then turned to Shawn. “Let’s speak to one of the medical professionals while we’re here, see if we can get a better idea about what her injuries are like and how long it might be before she recovers enough to speak with us.”

  They made their way to the reception area and spoke to one of the nurses on the desk.

  “I’m sorry,” the nurse said, “but she’s still in surgery and probably will be for some time.”

  “What about the doctors who took care of her when she was first brought in? Are any of them available?”

  “I think they’re all tied up.”

  Erica wanted to make sure they were preserving any evidence that might be found on the knife, or even on the victim’s skin, though since Mae Dempsey never had the chance to fight off her attacker, it was unlikely. Unlikely didn’t mean impossible, however. But it was more important that the doctors and surgeons saved her life than it was preserve any evidence.

  She slid her card onto the counter. “The moment any of them get out, can you get one of them to call me.”

  “I’ll phone right away.”

  Erica hoped when—or if—Mae Dempsey came out of surgery, she wasn’t also going to have to break the news to her that her daughter was missing.

  Chapter Four

  She and Shawn headed back into the office, keen to get a look at the CCTV footage from the park. The majority of it should have come through by now, though with two hundred acres of park and eight entrances—and she wasn’t even sure exactly how many cameras—it would take some time before they had it all.

  “What do you think?” Shawn asked as he drove. “Any possibility the husband might be involved?”

  “It’s always a possibility. He might have conspired with someone to have his wife killed and the daughter abducted. It’s a pretty good alibi to be sitting right next to the victim while it happens. He did seem genuine, though, if a bit defensive.”

  Shawn shrugged. “You can hardly blame him for that. It can’t be nice to hear that the police might think you’d hurt your wife and daughter, especially when the wife is fighting for her life and the daughter is missing.”

  She exhaled a breath. “You’re right. Do you think the daughter’s been abducted rather than just run away?”

  He signalled and took a left, then answered her without taking his eyes off the road. “The CCTV footage will hopefully give us the answer to that.”

  “Losing the girl might have been an accident,” she suggested. “If he wanted the wife killed, he might not have considered the child would have run off.”

  “Murdering a mother in front of her own child is a horrific thing to do.”

  “You don’t need me to tell you that people do horrific things every day.”

  He threw her a rueful smile. “‘Ain’t that the truth.”

  They parked the car and hurried through the office, but DCI Gibbs caught them before they reached their desks.

  “Swift, Turner? How did it go?”

  Erica paused to update her boss. “We’ve been to the crime scene, sir, and then the hospital. We’ve spoken to the husband, but he wasn’t able to give us much. We figured the best thing we can do now is check out that CCTV footage.”

  “The child is still missing?” Gibbs asked.

  “Yes, as far as we’re aware. Hopefully, the footage will give us some answers,” Shawn said.

  “We have a lot of witnesses as well,” Erica said. “It’s going to take some time to get through them all.”

  “If there are plenty of witnesses, one of them should give us something to go on. I’ll get Rudd and Howard onto questioning them. Let me know if you need any extra resources and I’ll see if I can pull some more detectives in.”

  Erica nodded her thanks. “Will do.”

  “I’ll call a briefing later, but let me know asap if there is anything of importance on the CCTV footage.”

  Someone called out, “sir” from across the office, and he turned away from them and went to where he was needed.

  Erica exchanged a glance with Shawn. “Let’s do this, then.”

  Shawn followed her to her desk and dragged a spare chair beside hers. He didn’t sit down just yet, though.

  “Coffee?” he offered.

  She pulled a face, knowing he was talking about the vending machine horror that passed as coffee. “Go on then.”

  It still contained caffeine and would keep her focused. Erica shrugged off her jacket and dropped her bag down beside her desk. By the time Shawn returned with the tw
o flimsy plastic coffee cups, she’d booted up her PC and opened the CCTV files.

  “Thanks.”

  Shawn shuffled the spare chair closer. “Let’s check the park first, try and figure out what happened to the daughter.”

  It had been a couple of hours since the attack, and five-year-old Ellie Dempsey still hadn’t been located. If they found her, they might also find the person responsible for the stabbing.

  Erica downloaded the photograph of the girl that her father had emailed over. She was a pretty thing, with shiny black hair and a wide smile. Erica guessed she looked more like her mother than her father and wondered if Mae Dempsey was out of surgery yet. Her gaze flicked to her phone, but there were no missed calls.

  “Right, so let’s try and spot the girl first,” she said, printing out the photograph and positioning it so they could both see it.

  Several hundred CCTV cameras covered the park. They started with the ones closest to the incident. Frustratingly, the cameras didn’t point directly at the bench where the victim had been sitting, but they skirted the edge, and there were other cameras that caught the surrounding periphery.

  Erica hit ‘play’ on the screen.

  The footage they were checking came before the stabbing had occurred. They wanted to pinpoint the child first so they could see how she reacted when her mother was attacked, or even if she’d been taken or had run away before the stabbing happened. There were a couple of cameras that pointed across the children’s playground. Many of the areas of the park were partially hidden by the play equipment, and she hoped the girl wasn’t behind any of them. The park had been busy. Children of all ages from toddler to tweens ran around in groups or on their own, climbing up huge webs of nets—spiderlike—or swinging on swings, or hanging off monkey bars. Blonde hair in plaits, black, tight curls, short brown hair cropped closed to the head. Tall, short, chubby, skinny. It seemed almost impossible to pick one girl out of all these children, but they continued to watch.