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

by M K Farrar

  Erica sighed and sat back in her chair. “That could be anyone.”

  “They’re wearing a hoodie,” Shawn pointed out.

  “Everyone under the age of thirty seems to live in hoodies these days. We couldn’t see that they put the receipt into their pocket, and even if they did, we’ve got nothing to prove it’s the same person who attacked Mae Dempsey. Dropping a receipt isn’t a chargeable offence.”

  “Littering?” Shawn joked.

  She raised her eyebrows at him, unimpressed. “We don’t even know for sure that SOCO bagged whatever it was that fell from the attacker’s pocket.”

  He let out a breath. “Yeah, you’re right, but I think you’re giving up on this too soon. Just because we can’t see the man’s face in this footage doesn’t mean we won’t be able to find out who he is.”

  “Sorry, I didn’t mean to be defeatist.” Erica sat up straighter. “And who said anything about giving up? Let’s take another look at the CCTV from the park.”

  She brought up the CCTV footage from right before the attack and watched the scrap of paper fall from the attacker’s pocket. Then she compared it to the screen of the CCTV footage from the shop.

  Could that be the same person?

  “It could be the same person,” Shawn said, speaking her thoughts out loud. “The build is the same, and so is the height.”

  “Yes, I think you’re right, but we still can’t identify them from this footage. If only the CCTV from behind the counter had been working. We’d easily have caught a face.”

  “We can get footage from the surrounding streets from the same time,” Shawn suggested. “He came into the shop, and then left again, so the street cameras could have got a better shot.”

  “Good thinking. Let’s get the licence plate numbers from all the cars parked on the road at that time, too. There’s a chance he drove to the shop and was parked nearby.”

  Shawn nodded. “On it.”

  “We can show this to the girl serving as well. She might be able to tell us something. She might even know the person she served.”

  Erica printed out some shots from the footage that she could take back to the shop. The girl who’d been serving could be much more than sixteen, so most likely she wouldn’t be working during school hours, but they could get a name from whoever was working there today and track her down.

  Right now, it felt like this shop was their only lead.

  THIRTY MINUTES LATER, they pulled up outside the shop. The musty, yet somehow familiar aroma of the shop hit Erica the moment she stepped inside. An Asian man in his late forties to early fifties was serving behind the counter.

  Erica took a guess. “Mr Khadem?”

  The man’s head shot up. “Yes?”

  His expression was defensive, his eyes narrowed, but then his gaze flicked between her and Shawn, and it softened. “How may I help you?”

  “Mr Farhad Khadem?” she double-checked. “You’re the owner of the shop?”

  “That’s right. I assume you’re the detective I emailed this morning.”

  “Yes, I’m DI Swift. This is DS Turner. Thank you for sending over the CCTV footage. It’s been very helpful, though it’s a shame we couldn’t get the footage from behind the counter so we could have seen the suspect’s face.”

  “Ah, yes, I’m sorry about that, too. I hope you got everything you needed from what I sent you, though.”

  “Not quite,” she admitted, “which is why we’re here. We wondered if we might be able to get the name of the young lady who was working here on Saturday. We’d like to ask her some questions.”

  His expression hardened again. “Why do you need to talk to her?”

  “She might be able to help us identify the person in the footage.” Erica gestured at the camera in the corner of the shop behind him. “If that camera had of been working, we’d have been able to use that instead.”

  His lips pressed together. “Oh, well, I can’t help that. Had I known, I would have got it fixed sooner.”

  “How long has it been broken?” Shawn asked.

  He flapped a hand. “Longer than I can remember. I always think that just having it there will be enough of a deterrent for shoplifters. Money is tight, with rents being raised all the time, so I have to prioritise what gets done.” He frowned. “Are you sure the person who came in my shop is the same one you’re searching for?”

  Erica nodded. “We believe so, yes. The clothes match the ones from the footage from the park, as does the suspect’s height and build, and it appears as though the attacker dropped the receipt from your shop from their pocket.”

  “Terrible business. I’m sorry to hear that. Of course, I’ll do everything I can to help you find this person.”

  Erica offered him a smile. “You could start with the name and address of the girl who was working here.”

  “It’s Amma Babou. She lives around the corner, though I doubt she’ll be home now. I believe she goes to college during the week. I don’t know her address off the top of my head though.”

  “I assume you have it in your files?”

  “One moment.” He went out the back of the shop and after a few minutes, returned with a slip of paper with the girl’s address written on it.

  He handed it over.

  Erica glanced at the address and pocketed the slip of paper. “Thank you. We’ll be in touch if we have any more questions.”

  They left the shop and stepped out onto the street.

  “The girl lives a couple of streets from here. I know Mr Khadem said she’ll probably be at college, but since we’re already so close...”

  “We might as well check it out,” Shawn finished for her.

  “Exactly.”

  It wasn’t even worth driving the distance and trying to find another parking spot. Instead, they walked the few streets until they reached a row of terraced houses. They stopped outside the address the shop owner had given them, and Shawn rang the bell.

  Music was playing inside, though not at the volume of Gut-so-Gav’s place, and a girlish voice called out to them, “One minute!”

  The volume of the music decreased, and then the door swung open to reveal the girl they were after, a blue micro-fibre towel wrapped around her head.

  She blinked in surprise. “Can I help you?”

  “Amma Babou?” Erica checked.

  “Yeah, that’s right. Who are you?”

  Erica introduced her and Shawn. “We’re working on a case where a mother was stabbed and a girl was kidnapped.”

  Her dark eyes widened. “Oh, yeah, I heard about that.”

  “We wondered if we’d be able to have a quick word.”

  “Yeah, I suppose so. Come in.” She backed out of the doorway, allowing them through. “I don’t know what use I’m going to be, though. I really don’t know anything about it.”

  Erica and Shawn followed her through into a small kitchen, where the girl perched up on a stool. She really was beautiful, with big dark eyes, and full lips, and delicate bone structure. Even the gold ring through the middle of her nose and the towel wrapped around her head couldn’t distract from her beauty.

  “You were working last Saturday afternoon, is that correct?” Erica asked.

  She nodded, glancing between Erica and Shawn. “Yes, that’s right.”

  “Do you normally work those hours?”

  “I work every Saturday.”

  “How long have you been working there for?”

  She shrugged. “About six months, I think.”

  “On Saturday afternoon, at almost three p.m., you served someone we want to speak to in regard to the incident that happened in the park. I want you to take a look at this image and tell me if you remember anything about the man you served.”

  She pressed her lips together and wrinkled her nose. “I mean, it’s hard to tell anything from the back of their head.”

  “We know that. We thought you might remember some detail about them. They bought a couple of chocolate bars and p
aid in cash.”

  “I’m sorry, I don’t remember. I serve a lot of people during the day, and most of the time I’m not even really paying attention to what I’m doing. Friday night tends to be a heavy one, you know, so when I’m working, I’m only there in body.”

  Erica held the image towards her again. “If you could just look a little longer, I’d really appreciate it. Try to think back to all the people, before and after you served this man. Try to create a series of events in your mind.”

  “Honestly, my mind is blank. I can’t be expected to remember everyone I serve. There must be a hundred of them.”

  Shawn gestured to the printout. “From the CCTV footage, it appears as though you exchanged a few words with this person. You smiled and laughed, and said something to him.”

  “Hey, I smile and laugh with everyone. That’s just my sparkling personality.” She threw Shawn one of her grins, as though to prove her point.

  Erica changed tactics. “Can I ask you about the CCTV cameras in the shop?”

  Her smooth forehead crumpled. “Yeah, but I don’t know much about them—just that Mr Khadem uses them to keep an eye on shoplifters. That’s what he says, anyway, but I do kind of hate how he can see if I’m messing around on my phone when I should be working. He always says that if there aren’t any customers to serve, there’s always something to clean.” She rolled her eyes.

  Something occurred to Erica. “How can he see if you’re using your phone from that angle?”

  She pointed at the printout again.

  Amma blinked. “Oh, no. Not from that camera. From the one behind the counter.”

  The information jolted through Erica. “You know that for sure?”

  “Well, yeah, he’s shown me footage as proof so he could give me a bollocking.”

  Erica turned to Shawn. “Footage from the camera that is apparently broken.”

  She refocused on Amma. “Thank you, you’ve been very helpful. If you do happen to remember anything about the person you served, contact me right away. It really is important.”

  “Yeah, sure thing.”

  Erica and Shawn left the house and returned to the car.

  “What are you thinking?” Shawn reached for the door handle.

  Erica paused on the passenger side, looking at Shawn over the top of the car roof. “What reasons does Khadem have for lying, unless he’s protecting the person we’re after?”

  “We know at least two people were involved in the stabbing. Is it possible he’s one of them?”

  “There’s no way we can prove that, yet, but I think with his attempt to deceive us, together with the receipt and the CCTV footage to show the suspect was on the premises, we should be able to get a warrant to obtain the rest of the CCTV footage. I doubt we’d be able to help checking if he’s harbouring the suspect at the same time.”

  “What about Ellie Dempsey? If he’s involved, what are the chances she’ll be there as well?”

  “I’m not sure,” Erica said, sliding into the passenger seat, “but I intend to find out.”

  Chapter Twenty-One

  “The police are back,” Farhad said, pacing the living room of the flat above the shop, “and they’re asking questions. This isn’t good. I told you not to give them any security footage. You made a big mistake, Hashem. You could have undone all our hard work.”

  Hashem shook his head. “You’re overreacting. They were always going to ask more questions, even if we didn’t give them what they wanted. They would always want to speak to the girl, with or without the footage.”

  “She’s going to say it was Yousef she served,”” Javad said.

  All eyes turned to Yousef, who was standing in the doorway.

  Yousef shook his head. “She won’t say it was me. She’s my friend. She wouldn’t drop me in it with the police.”

  Hashem frowned. “None of these people are your friends, Yousef. When are you going to learn?”

  Farhad spun to face Yousef and pointed in the boy’s face. “All of this is your fault. You dropped a receipt at the park, and that’s what has brought the police to our door. How could you do such a stupid thing?”

  The fist came out of nowhere, striking the exact same spot where he’d been hit the previous day. Yousef dropped to his knees and clutched his ear. It throbbed in time with his pulse, like a beacon, and the heat of it burned up through his palm. His uncle’s words were hard to decipher over the steady buzzing that now muffled his hearing. The floor seemed to shift beneath him, swirling in a slow, steady circle, and a rush of nausea filled his mouth with saliva. He swallowed, hard, and sucked in air through his nostrils, trying to steady himself. It wouldn’t make his uncle think any better of him if he threw up now, as well as everything else.

  “I’m sorry. It was an accident.”

  Farhad shook his head in disgust. “We were foolish to trust you. You aren’t ready.”

  Yousef forced himself to his knees and tried to ignore the rolling of the room and the buzzing in his ear. “I am, Uncle. I promise. I’ve learned from all of this. I’ll be more careful.”

  “Your mistakes could get the rest of us caught,” Farhad growled. “Is that what you want?”

  “No, never!”

  “Enough,” Hashem snapped. “All the police would need to do is get a warrant for this place and it would all be over.”

  Farhad cupped his own chin with his thumb and forefinger. “Maybe we should think about moving the assets out of here to a safer location. We run the risk of them being discovered because of your carelessness.”

  “We shouldn’t move them with the police still focused on the shop,” Javad said. “They might not have anything substantial to go on right now, but if someone sees us and reports us as acting suspiciously, they might decide that is a reason to search the place.”

  Farhad frowned. “But if we’ve moved everything, they won’t find what they’re looking for.”

  Javad shook his head. “It’s a bad idea. They might apprehend us while we’re trying to move.”

  Hashem lifted both hands and got to his feet. “Right now, they’re not suspicious of the shop or of us. They simply want the person who bought something here. They have no reason to believe we are connected with this person in any way. We have cooperated by handing over the CCTV footage, and they have interviewed our staff. Now, they will hopefully go away and leave us in peace.”

  “And if they don’t” Javad argued. “If they come back with a search warrant? What will we do then?”

  “It’s not so easy for the police to get a search warrant if they have no real reason,” Hashem said. “Like I said, they have no connection with this person who bought something here. But I think we need to move more quickly. Even delaying for days now is dangerous. We should act soon.”

  Farhad narrowed his eyes. “When are you thinking, Hashem?”

  “We should do it tomorrow.”

  Farhad’s bushy black eyebrows shot up. “Tomorrow? That is too soon.”

  “Thanks to Yousef’s carelessness,” Hashem said, “we may have no other choice.”

  The magnitude of his words weighed heavily on Yousef’s shoulders. Tomorrow? Could they really do it then? Of course they could. It had been planned for some time now, and they had everything they needed. He should be filled with righteous excitement, but instead a darkness swirled in his stomach.

  “Okay, we move everything forward.” Farhad looked to Yousef. “Have you fed them today?”

  “No, I haven’t.”

  “Go and do it then.”

  Yousef wanted to tell him he should do it himself. It wasn’t right, keeping them locked up in the dark like that. Just the thought of them down there made his skin crawl. But what could he do? Telling his uncle his true thoughts would mean questioning Hashem, and Hashem didn’t like to be questioned, no matter what the subject. It would also only give his uncle another reason to doubt him, and Yousef was already aware he was treading a thin line.

  A steadying hand touc
hed his shoulder, and he looked up to see Farhad. The older man helped him to his feet.

  How could the hand that had struck him so viciously not long before now touch him with such reassuring strength? It made him wonder which hand he should trust. Which was the real version—the one that caused harm, or the one that instilled love?

  No, he shook the thought from his head. Both hands were dealt out from a position of love. Even the one that caused him pain struck him to guide him in the right direction.

  “It’s okay to be nervous, Yousef. Even when you know you’re doing the right thing, and for the right reasons, it’s okay to feel anxious about it. Tomorrow will bring a great change for our people, and we need to remember that.”

  He nodded. “I will.”

  “God is great, Yousef. He will protect us.”

  “God is great,” he muttered back.

  The memory of the photograph of the little girl jumped into his head. The police knew she was missing, and he could do something to help. But if he tried to help the child, he would be putting everything they’d been working towards for as long as he could remember at risk. His uncles would never forgive him. He shouldn’t care for these people. They were the enemy. Even this girl would grow up with these Western ideals.

  Unwillingly, his thoughts went to Amma, and how she was also one of those people he was supposed to hate. He thought to the midriff-revealing tops she favoured, and the way she drank alcohol with older boys in the park. There were plenty of things he should hate about her, but somehow, he couldn’t muster the emotion from anywhere. Instead, he thought of all the times she’d smiled at him, and tried to invite him to places, and continued to invite him, even though he always said no. Her face filled his head when he tried to sleep at night, and he hung around, always hoping to accidentally bump into her. On the days he didn’t see her, it felt as though the whole day was wasted. What would she think of him once all this was over? Would she hate him? Of course she would. She’d curse his name, just like everyone else.