Perfect People

by Peter James

  There was a tape barrier sealing off a wide area in front of the house where the shot man had lain, with two uniformed policemen in caps standing in front of it. As the van pulled up, yet another car appeared, a dark Volvo saloon, bristling with aerials, this one with four uniformed policemen inside it.

  ‘Where do you think they might be, your kids?’ the crime scene man asked.

  ‘I—’ She shook her head, opened the door and clambered quickly out. This wasn’t real, it couldn’t be. In a daze, she mumbled a thank-you and walked towards the taped-off front door. One of the uniformed policemen raised a hand and said in a kindly voice, ‘I’m sorry, madam, would you mind using the kitchen entrance.’

  She went round to the side of the house. The kitchen door was shut and locked. She rapped with her knuckles. A uniformed policewoman opened it. It might have been the same woman she had spoken to earlier, in the car, her face streaked with blue light, she wasn’t sure. Then John, still in his dressing gown, was walking towards her, hair matted to his head, face sheet-white. He put his arms around her.

  ‘Where have you been, darling?’

  ‘Have you found them?’ Naomi sobbed. ‘Have you found them?’

  ‘They’re around somewhere,’ John said. ‘They must be.’

  She sobbed back at him. ‘THEY’VE GONE! SOMEONE’S TAKEN THEM, OH GOD, SOMEONE’S TAKEN THEM!’

  John and the woman police officer traded glances.

  ‘Our children have gone, John – don’t you get it? Do you want me to spell it out to you? Do you want me to spell it out to you backwards with every fourth letter missing?’

  Two uniformed officers came into the kitchen. One looked about nineteen years old, tall and very thin, and rather green. Slightly odd, still wearing his cap inside, Naomi thought inconsequentially. The other was older, stocky, with designer stubble and a shaved head. He held his cap in his hand and had a kind smile. ‘We’ve searched every room, all the cupboards and roof spaces. We’ll go and check on the outbuildings. Garage and greenhouse, right? And the dustbin shed? Any other outbuildings that we haven’t seen, sir?’

  John, soaking wet and shivering with cold, said, ‘No.’ Then to Naomi he said, ‘Got to get you into some dry clothes. Go have a shower, I’ll deal with everything.’

  ‘We need to go back out,’ she said. ‘They might be down at that pond on the Gribbles’ farm – they might have fallen in.’

  ‘Get some proper clothes on and we’ll go out and look. We’ll find them, they’ll be somewhere around.’

  The stocky officer turned to the younger one. ‘I’ll check the outbuildings. You start a log of everyone who enters the house.’

  Just as Naomi left the kitchen to go up and shower, there was a rap on the door. John opened it to see a tall man of about forty, with dark, wavy hair, dressed in an unbuttoned, rain-spotted mackintosh over a grey suit, white shirt, sharp tie and shiny black lace-up shoes. His nose, squashed and kinked, looked like it had been broken more than once, giving him the thuggish look of a retired prize-fighter.

  ‘Dr Klaesson?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Detective Inspector Pelham. I’m the duty Senior Investigating Officer.’ His tone was courteous but brisk. Extending his hand, he gave John’s a brief, firm tug, as if more would have been eating into valuable time, his sharp, grey eyes assessing John as he spoke. Then, a tad more gently, added, ‘I’m sure you and Mrs Klaesson must be feeling a little shell-shocked.’

  ‘I think that’s an understatement.’

  ‘We’re going to do everything we can to help you. But I’m afraid we’re going to have to seal this house up inside and out, as a crime scene, and I’d like you and your wife to pack a bag with your essentials and enough clothes to last for a few days, and move out.’

  John stared at him in shock. ‘What?’

  ‘No one’s been in the house,’ Naomi said.

  ‘I’m sorry, it’s standard procedure for a major crime scene.’

  Two men suddenly came in from the garden without knocking. They were wearing white suits with hoods up, white overshoes and rubber gloves, and each carried a holdall.

  ‘Morning, Dave,’ one said nonchalantly.

  ‘Morning, Chief!’ said the other breezily, as if they were just a pair of interior decorators turning up to paint a hallway.

  The young uniformed police officer took their names and noted them down in his log.

  ‘Where – where do we move out to?’ John asked the DI.

  ‘Do you have any relatives you could stay with nearby? Otherwise a hotel or a boarding house.’

  ‘Relatives, yes, but not close. Look, we don’t want to leave here, not without our children.’

  Detective Inspector Pelham nodded in understanding, but not sympathy. ‘I’m afraid you are both going to be required to come to the station and make statements. Someone will drive you. We’re already looking for your children, and the helicopter will be overhead in a few minutes. I suggest you get dressed, and you and I and Mrs Klaesson have a cup of tea here in the kitchen and run through a number of things I need to ask you.’

  ‘I want to go out and look for them.’

  ‘I have officers out there looking in the immediate vicinity already. Your children are three years old?’

  ‘Yes, but—’ John checked himself.

  The detective inspector raised his eyebrows, quizzically. As if in response John added, ‘They are quite grown-up for their age.’

  ‘All children are these days, Dr Klaesson.’ The policeman’s inscrutable expression eased fleetingly into a thin, wintry smile. ‘Have they ever done this before?’

  ‘Wandered off? No,’ Naomi sobbed.

  ‘We can’t make any assumptions at the moment,’ DI Pelham said. ‘But I think at three years old, we should work on the likelihood that they are not far away – although in view of what’s happened we’ve put out an alert to all airports, seaports and the Channel Tunnel as a precaution. It would be helpful if you could let me have a recent photograph of them. But don’t worry, we’ll find them.’ He looked at each of them in turn. ‘You’ve never seen this man – outside your front door – before? You have no idea who he might be?’

  The Detective Inspector noticed the strange glance John and Naomi Klaesson gave each other.

  100

  Even after a hot shower and dressed in warm clothes, back in the kitchen Naomi could not stop shaking. It took all her concentration to fill the electric kettle and push the plug in. Moments later, as it began to hiss and rumble, she heard a much louder roar, like thunder, outside.

  She stared out of the window and saw a helicopter clatter by overhead, barely higher than the trees. John came down in jeans, a roll-neck sweater and his fleece jacket, clutching two holdalls into which they had hurriedly packed washing kit and changes of clothing. Moments later, Detective Inspector Pelham came in from the garden.

  ‘I do not want to leave, Detective Inspector,’ she said. ‘I want to stay here, this is my home. I want to stay until my children come back.’

  ‘I’m sorry, Mrs Klaesson, we’ll be as quick as we can.’

  ‘How quick?’

  ‘A couple of days, I would hope.’ Then he said, ‘I see you have a security camera, hidden up beneath the guttering. Does it record?’

  ‘Jesus!’ John said, slapping his forehead. ‘Of course! It was only installed on Wednesday!’ He looked at Naomi and her eyes brightened a fraction.

  ‘Yes!’ she said. ‘Why the hell didn’t we think of it?’

  John led the way along the hall to his den, and opened the cupboard where the recorder was concealed. ‘I – I haven’t tried – let me check.’

  Shakily, he thumbed through the instruction manual.

  ‘Don’t wipe the tape, darling,’ Naomi said. ‘For God’s sake, don’t wipe it.’

  He pressed the stop button on the machine. Then the rewind. ‘It’s activated by movement,’ he said. ‘And it has night vision.’

  The digital display c
ounted back to 00.29, then jumped back further to 19.10.

  He pressed play.

  All three of them stared at the black-and-white image on the small monitor beside the machine. It showed a glare of headlights. Then, moments later in fish-eye wide angle, John’s Saab pulling up next to Naomi’s Subaru. John got out and walked up to the porch and out of sight.

  Then.

  A flash, indicating a time jump.

  John held his breath.

  Sweet Jesus.

  Total stunned silence in the room.

  A figure clambering over the fence from the field. Wearing a dark cap, an anorak, wellington boots, gloves. He put one cautious foot forward on the gravel, as if he were testing water. Then another.

  ‘It’s him,’ Naomi said, in a strangled, tremolo voice.

  The figure froze. Took another step, then another, coming towards the porch.

  And then.

  Coming over the fence behind him were two more figures, advancing stealthily. Both wearing dark bobble hats, jackets zipped, collars turned up, their faces almost totally obscured by goggles.

  The figure in front stopped in his tracks. Then moved on towards the porch. He stopped again, pulled something out of his pocket, something long and slender, some kind of a tool.

  He disappeared from view into the porch. Then, moments later, he came back into view and now he was holding a gun – the gun! – in his hand.

  And in the same moment, one of the two figures behind him ran forward, also holding a handgun, raised it at the base of his head and there was a burst of light from the muzzle.

  The head of the figure in the cap snapped sharply upwards, then he collapsed back onto the gravel, arms outstretched, gun falling from his fingers and coming to rest a few feet away.

  As they had found him, Naomi realized.

  And then.

  No.

  This could not be happening. This really had to be a dream. Luke and Phoebe in their raincoats, in their wellington boots, trotted into view and threw their arms around each of the two figures in goggles in turn.

  There were several moments of warm embracing. Then the four of them hurried across the gravel drive. The adult figures, still wearing their goggles, helped Luke and Phoebe over the fence into the field beyond.

  Then a flash, indicating a time jump. John came into view, in his dressing gown, holding his shotgun, walking towards the motionless figure of the man in the bobble hat.

  ‘No!’ Naomi said. ‘NO! PLAY IT BACK, JOHN, PLAY IT BACK! OH GOD, PLAY IT BACK!’

  John rewound it a short distance. But the repeat was the same. Luke and Phoebe clambering eagerly over the fence. Then himself coming out of the house with his shotgun.

  He pressed the stop button.

  For some moments none of them spoke. Then John turned to the Detective Inspector and said, without malice, without anything, just drained, bewildered, not even desperate, just utterly helpless, ‘Do you still want to work on the likelihood that they are not far away?’

  101

  Naomi sat on her own in front of two police officers. Although no one had said as much, it was clear that whilst she and John were being treated with kindness and courtesy, they were not themselves beyond suspicion. Which was why they were being required to make separate statements.

  A tiny red light blinked on a video camera that was bolted high up on one wall and pointing at her. The room was small, anodyne and windowless. Bare cream walls that looked recently painted. A carpet that smelled new and comfortable bright red chairs with just a coffee table in front of them.

  Two detectives faced her. One, in his early forties, was a bruiser of a man, in a fawn suit, with a precise, rather wooden air. The other, a woman about ten years younger, with short ginger hair, had a podgy face with small, suspicious eyes. She was dressed in a blue blazer sporting a club emblem on the breast pocket, over a thin roll-neck, and slacks.

  Naomi could scarcely believe the speed at which the media had arrived at their home. The police had cordoned off the driveway down at the entrance, but within not much more than an hour of their first arriving there had been photographers snapping the scene with long lenses from the surrounding fields, and down in the lane there must have been a dozen different news vehicles, including a cameraman, high up above everyone else on a Sky TV hydraulic crane.

  The male detective switched on the tape recorder in front of him. ‘This is Detective Sergeant Tom Humbolt and Detective Constable Jo Newman interviewing Mrs Naomi Klaesson, Friday, January sixteenth at—’ He paused to check his watch. ‘Ten twelve a.m.’

  His tone was bend-over-backwards polite. ‘I’d like you to start, Mrs Klaesson, if you wouldn’t mind, with your taking us through the events that led to you calling the police this morning.’

  With her shattered nerves made even edgier by the formal tone of the interview, she gave them, in a faltering voice, as detailed an account as she could.

  ‘Why exactly did you get up so early today, Naomi?’ the woman detective asked. ‘You said you don’t normally get up until seven on weekdays.’

  Naomi gulped down a mouthful of hot, sweet tea and asked, ‘Do you have children?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘So you’ll know what I mean about a mother’s instincts?’

  She nodded. Naomi glanced at Humbolt, who signalled with his eyes that he understood, also.

  ‘I just sensed something was wrong, I can’t put it any clearer than that – and I needed a pee.’ There was a brief silence. Naomi toyed with her cup. ‘Someone will call, won’t they? If they find them while I’m in here?’

  ‘The moment there is any news, we’ll be told,’ Detective Newman replied.

  ‘Thank you.’

  Then tears welled up inside Naomi, and she began crying, deep, choking, sobs. Murmuring an apology, trying to compose herself, she pulled a handkerchief out of her handbag and pressed it to her eyes.

  ‘Interview suspended at ten twenty-one a.m.,’ she heard the DS say.

  *

  Half an hour later, feeling a little bit calmer, Naomi sat back down in the interview room, and the tapes were restarted. In her mind, a constant loop of the videotape of Luke and Phoebe was running, over and over. She saw them trotting across the driveway towards those strangers in their baseball caps and goggles, hugging them, embracing them, kissing them. Greeting them in a loving way they had never – ever – done with herself or John.

  Greeting them like they were their parents.

  And suddenly the deep, numbing cold that was in every cell of her body froze her rigid.

  What if?

  What if?

  What if those people were their parents?

  No. Unthinkable. Besides, Luke and Phoebe had so many of her and John’s features, everyone said that, and it was plain, absolutely plain to see sometimes when she looked at Luke how much of his father was in him.

  And now she had another, even worse, thought. This was the first thing that had gone through her mind when she’d seen the body on the gravel and her children’s missing coats and boots. She stared down at the table, listening to the hiss of the air conditioning. This was the thought she had pushed away, tried desperately to push back into a chamber of her mind as she had stumbled down the drive, as she had staggered through the sodden fields.

  The thought that she did not, absolutely did not—

  ‘Mrs Klaesson?’

  The voice of Detective Sergeant Humbolt cut through her thoughts. Calm, but insistent.

  She lifted her eyes up to his face.

  ‘Would you like a little more time before we start?’

  ‘Would you like to see a doctor to give you something to help calm you?’ Jo Newman asked.

  Naomi closed her eyes and shook her head. ‘Please, tell me something. These paedophiles – they target chatrooms, don’t they? You get these sick perverts chatting to young children, they become friends, then they lure them to meetings. This happens, doesn’t it?’

  The two dete
ctives glanced at each other, then Humbolt said, ‘For older children it is a real danger, but I don’t think at three years old that’s likely. They’d be too young.’

  ‘I don’t imagine at three, your children are old enough to be going on internet chatrooms, are they?’ Jo Newman said.

  ‘Their mental age is much older,’ Naomi said. ‘They are far more advanced than you could imagine.’

  The woman detective gave her a look, as if both being mothers they shared a secret between them. It was a look that said, All mothers think their children are special!

  ‘Your children had full access to the internet?’ Humbolt asked.

  ‘We gave them a computer last Sunday, for their birthday. I’ve been very surprised at some of the stuff they’ve been looking at – most of it scientific.’

  Humbolt raised his eyebrows. ‘At three?’

  ‘I mean it when I say they’re advanced. They are very advanced. They’re like – child prodigies.’

  Jo Newman said, ‘Mrs Klaesson, all the computers in your home will be taken away for analysis. If they have been on any chatrooms, everything will be traceable.’

  ‘Look – I – I know these questions are important. But we’re sitting here and my children have been abducted – I just want to get back and find them. I don’t want to be here, answering questions, this isn’t right, we’re just wasting time; can’t we do this later?’

  ‘You have information that may be very important for us to find the children,’ the woman detective said, with a sympathetic smile.

  Naomi had read recently that out of ninety-eight children who had been murdered in England in the past year, only three had been killed by people who weren’t either immediate family or friends. ‘Is that the real reason I’m here?’ she said. ‘Or is it because I’m a suspect? Is that it?’

  She could see the sudden discomfort in their faces.

  ‘What’s the matter with you people? You have the videotape, you can see that strangers have taken my children – why am I here? Tell me?’