by Peter James
‘You’re not a suspect, Mrs Klaesson,’ Detective Sergeant Humbolt said.
‘We have a dead man on our doorstep, our children are abducted by strangers and instead of looking for them you’re treating me like a bloody suspect. You have John in another room, he’s been interrogated, too, and you are going to see if our stories tally. Let me tell you something: they are going to tally, OK?’
Neither detective said anything for some moments. Then Jo Newman said, ‘Mrs Klaesson, let me set your mind at rest. Everything possible that can be done to find your children is being done. Every available police officer is being called in to search the area around your home. The police helicopter is scouring the area.’
Naomi accepted what she said, but with considerable reluctance. What choice did she have?
More questions followed, a whole barrage of them, one after another. How was her relationship with her husband? With her children? With her neighbours? Friends? Their children’s friends?
She tried to answer each of them truthfully. But the two detectives didn’t seem to be capable of taking on board just how smart and advanced Luke and Phoebe were.
‘You say your mother saw this man on Tuesday? The one who was found outside your house?’
She shook her head. ‘No, I didn’t say that. I said that she was concerned about a stranger—’
Then she thought of something. ‘A crucifix! She said he was wearing a crucifix! I – I didn’t think to look this morning. Can someone check?’
Humbolt made a note on his pad. ‘I’ll find out.’
Looking a little awkward, DC Newman asked, ‘Do Luke and Phoebe have any birthmarks or scars?’
‘I – I – I don’t think so, no. No.’
‘And can you remember what they last had to eat?’
‘To eat?’ she echoed. ‘Why does—’
Then she remembered. A series on television she and John had been watching a while back, about a Home Office pathologist. In one of the episodes, a child had gone missing. The police asked the parents about birthmarks and about what the child had eaten.
That way, if they found the bodies, it would make it easier to identify them. Either from marks on their bodies – or from cutting open their bellies and seeing what was in their stomachs.
The door opened suddenly, and Detective Inspector Pelham came in, still in his raincoat. ‘Sorry to interrupt you,’ he said, fixing his eyes on Naomi. ‘But I thought you should know we have some developments.’
102
Before their interviews, John and Naomi had been introduced to a family liaison officer, Renate Harrison. In her early forties, with brown hair cut into a short, stylish bob, she was dressed in a businesslike way, in a grey Prince of Wales check suit over a lace-collared cream blouse, but she had a gentle demeanour.
She now led John and Naomi along a corridor to the Detective Inspector’s office, and sat them down at a small round conference table.
DI Pelham followed them in a few moments later. He closed the door and hung his mackintosh on a peg. In the three hours since Naomi had seen him, he was looking more ragged. His shirt was creased, the knot on his tie had slipped, and there was a patina of perspiration on his face.
‘Right,’ he said, sitting down. His eyes moved from Naomi to John and back, repeatedly. ‘To cut to the quick, we’ve found a car in the Caibourne village car park that we think belongs to the man on your doorstep. It’s been there overnight and was rented from the Avis office in Brighton three days ago, by a man fitting his description, using an American driving licence and credit card we found in his wallet. The name on them is Bruce Preston. Does that mean anything to you?’
Naomi and John shook their heads. ‘Never heard of him,’ John said.
Glancing at his watch, Pelham said, ‘It’s still night time in America – we won’t be able to find out if that’s his real name until after the start of business hours. There was a laptop in the boot of the car and the contents of that and a mobile phone found on his person are being analysed. Hopefully we’ll get something from them.’
Then, standing up and going over to his desk, he returned with a brown envelope, from which he removed a photograph.
‘This is an enlargement of a snapshot we found in Bruce Preston’s wallet. Have either of you ever seen her before?’
John and Naomi stared at a pretty girl, with Latin looks and long black hair, in a simple summer dress, standing on what looked like the deck of a house.
‘No,’ John said.
‘Never,’ Naomi said. ‘Definitely not.’
‘Does the name Lara mean anything?’
They both shook their heads.
‘Only that Lara is what he seemed to be murmuring when we found him,’ Naomi said.
‘Nothing else?’
‘No.’
‘That was all he said in the ambulance too, before he lost consciousness.’ He stared at both of them for some moments, then said, ‘This cult you mentioned – the Disciples of the Third Millennium? We won’t be able to follow that up until the US opens for business.’
‘Is this man going to survive?’ Naomi asked.
‘He has the two top neurosurgeons in the county working on him but he’s not in good shape.’ He shrugged again. ‘I don’t know.’
There was a brief pause. Pelham studied each of their faces in turn for a few seconds before speaking again. ‘OK, there’s more news for you – I’m telling you this in confidence. If anyone from the press gets to you, I’d appreciate it if you don’t mention this. Clear?’
‘Yes,’ John said.
‘The press are going to be crawling everywhere. You say nothing to them, not one word, nada, unless DS Harrison here sanctions it. Got that?’
John glanced at Naomi for confirmation. ‘Yes.’
‘Are you willing to go on television to appeal for the return of your children?’
‘We’ll do anything,’ Naomi said.
‘Good. We’re lining up a live appeal with the BBC and Sky and some other programmes. Now, last night a villager in Caibourne out walking her dog saw a Mitsubishi sports car drive twice through the village, very slowly, as if the driver was lost or looking for something. She noticed it but unfortunately didn’t make a note of the registration. However, and here’s what’s interesting, at three o’clock this morning, a customs officer at the Channel Tunnel remembers a red Mitsubishi sports car going through, with a man and a woman in the front seats and two small children, a boy and a girl, in the back.’
‘Jesus,’ John said. He took Naomi’s hand and squeezed it hard.
Detective Inspector Pelham removed his jacket and slung it on the back of his chair. His shirt, damp with patches of perspiration, clung to his muscular torso. ‘Security cameras record every vehicle at the tunnel entry point and we’re having the tapes checked. It may be nothing, but it’s about a two-hour drive from your home to the Tunnel at that time of night, which fits. We’ve contacted Interpol and requested all European police check out every railway station and airport, including private ones, for any children matching Luke and Phoebe’s descriptions.’
‘You think they could be abroad?’ Naomi said. ‘They could be abroad already? Where are they going – being taken – I mean—’
Her voice dried up. Shaking her head from side to side, tears welling up in her eyes, she said, ‘No, oh no, no, no, no.’
John squeezed her hand even harder but there was absolutely no response. He wanted desperately to comfort her, as if in easing her mind in some way he might be able to ease his own. But he could find nothing to say. Just a maelstrom of thoughts. ‘Does this mean that you won’t be searching for them locally now?’ Naomi asked.
‘We have someone on the way to the Tunnel now with a photograph of Luke and Phoebe. If the customs officer is able to positively identify them, we will scale down our search for them locally and concentrate on trying to find clues, but until then we continue with the full search.’
‘When can we go back home?�
��
‘Technically, as soon as the crime scene lads have finished inside your house and in the immediate vicinity. I would think tomorrow, or the day after at worst. DC Harrison will help you find somewhere – and she or a colleague’ll be with you around the clock for the next few days, to shield you from the press and protect you.’
John nodded bleakly.
‘I don’t want to go to a hotel,’ Naomi said. ‘I want to go and look for my children.’
Pelham gave her an understanding look. ‘I’m sure you do, but I have drafted every spare officer I have to get out there, doing that now. The most helpful thing you can do for me at the moment is to carry on with your interviews with us. We need family trees from both of you, complete lists of all your friends, business associates, neighbours.’
John squeezed Naomi’s hand and she signalled, with a squeeze, back.
‘Of course,’ he said. ‘Anything.’
Pelham stood up. ‘Would you like us to arrange some counselling for you?’
‘Counselling?’ John said.
‘No,’ Naomi said vehemently. ‘I don’t want counselling. I don’t need some bloody – some – some bloody inadequate social worker telling me how to cope with this. Getting my children back is what I need to cope with this. Please get them back for us. I’ll do anything, anything in the whole world.’
Pelham nodded.
Channel Tunnel.
Red Mitsubishi sports car.
Children in the back seat, a boy and a girl.
Three o’clock in the morning.
She didn’t need any further proof. She knew, in her heart, it was them.
103
With fishing boats coming and going continually during this early part of the night, no one paid any attention to one more set of navigation lights sliding past the ancient Moorish watchtower, at the end of the stone quay, that marked the entrance to the port of Ouranoupoli.
Pilgrims and monks came and went continually, also. This little town on the northern Greek coast was the embarkation point for the twenty monasteries of the peninsula called the Holy Mount Athos, a short ferry ride across a strip of Aegean Sea.
It was also the closest harbour to another monastery on a small island twenty kilometres south of here.
The launch backed up to the bustling quay, just long enough for its one passenger to jump ashore, before heading back out to sea.
Lara Gherardi, her long black hair bunched up inside a baseball cap, and dressed in a baggy anorak, jeans and trainers, her travelling essentials in a small rucksack on her back, walked swiftly past a row of moored fishing smacks, then up the steep, metalled road, past several busy restaurants and cafés, into the main street of the town.
The sea was calmer over towards the mainland than the skipper had expected and they had arrived here a quarter of an hour early. She went into a crowded bar and ordered a water, then drank it out on the pavement, staring distastefully at a shop display of Holy Mount Athos souvenirs. The taxi pulled up.
Lara dumped her rucksack on the back seat, then climbed in beside it. Moments later the taxi was heading out of town, towards Thessaloniki airport, two and a half hours’ drive away. It was seven o’clock.
She caught an eleven o’clock flight to Athens, then slept, fitfully, on a bench in the airport departure lounge.
At eight o’clock in the morning, seven o’clock UK time, she boarded a flight to London Heathrow.
104
Naomi’s Diary
I’m just lying wide awake here on the fourth floor of the Thistle Hotel. Listening to the rumble of traffic down in the street below, and the sound of the sea just beyond the promenade wall. I can’t sleep a wink. Just waiting, waiting, waiting for the phone to ring. Got up twice already to check my mobile is switched on and that the hotel phone isn’t off the hook.
I keep hearing a phone that keeps ringing in another room. I’ve phoned down to the front desk, just to make sure the night staff know which room we’re in.
Several times today I’ve wanted to die. I felt like this when Halley was losing his fight. I just wanted to slip my moorings and drift off into death with him.
I just keep thinking about where L and P might be, what’s happened to them. I know I’ve been finding them difficult, but that’s all gone from my head now. I love them to death. I know in some ways they may be strong, but they are still infants, tiny, little people. What we’ve done, John and I, very stupidly, is to make them too smart for their own good (or Dettore did, or whatever). They’ve been made smart enough to communicate with the adult world, but not to understand its dangers. That’s how this has come about.
That image, that video footage of the children trotting into the arms of these strangers, that is what really gets to me. After three years of doing all we could for Luke and Phoebe, they’ve run off willingly with strangers. That’s the worst thing of all.
That they may have been groomed by paedophiles over the internet, is one of the police lines of enquiry, although they haven’t found any evidence of that on their computer, so far. They think it’s possible that the dead man was part of a rival paedophile group and they had a falling out.
Great.
My children are in the hands of some paedophile monsters who shot a man in the back of the head. And no one has any clue where they are.
105
At some point during the sleepless night they had made love. Maybe screwed would have been a better description, John thought, because that’s what it was. A coupling borne out of some primal need. They hadn’t even kissed, Naomi had just drawn him into her, and they had worked away until they had both come, then returned to their respective sides of the hotel room bed.
At seven o’clock he pulled on his tracksuit and trainers, slipped out of the room and down to the lobby of the hotel. Then, as he walked through the revolving doors and out into the dry, grey morning, a battery of flashlights strobed at him, and he immediately went back inside, in panic.
There was an entire army of reporters and news vehicles out there.
He ran across the foyer, following signs marked first to the ballroom, then to the conference centre, and moments later found himself in a large, empty, conference hall.
He made his way to the back of it and out of the rear exit, walked up a wheelchair ramp and came to double doors with a metal bar. He pushed them and to his relief found himself in a deserted side street.
He ran through the bitterly cold air, up a long hill, heading away from the reporters and the sea towards the town centre, and after a few minutes emerged into a wide, deserted shopping street. A police car went by, then a taxi, then a bus with just a couple of passengers. He ran along, past shop windows filled with mannequins, hi-fi, furniture, lights, computers, past a bank that had been converted into a bar, then halted at stop lights and looked at his watch.
Luke and Phoebe were in the hands of strangers. What was happening to them? Were they still alive? He closed his eyes, wishing he could do something more than just answer damned questions, wishing he had woken and looked out of the window and seen those bastards taking his children and torn them to pieces with his bare hands.
As he ran across the road, he saw a teenage boy on a bicycle pedalling away from a newsagent, and stopped as he reached the shop, then went inside.
It was a small, narrow space, lined on one side with magazines, several of them soft porn, and on the other with both British and international newspapers. The proprietor, a surly-looking man, watched him from behind the counter.
Every British paper had the story on its front page. Several international ones did, too. There was even a photograph of himself and Naomi beneath the splash of one newspaper printed in a language he didn’t recognize.
DESIGNER BABIES ABDUCTED!
TWINS KIDNAPPED!
DOUBLE KIDNAP TRAGEDY FOR DESIGNER BABY
COUPLE.
He picked out one paper at random and opened it. His and Naomi’s photographs stared out at him. Taken in fron
t of their house. The image was a little soft – it must have been taken with a long lens by one of the photographers in the fields yesterday morning.
He started reading the article.
Swedish scientist Dr John Klaesson and his wife, Naomi, are distraught after the kidnapping of their twins, Luke and Phoebe, early yesterday morning.
In an emotional appeal on television last night—
‘Hey.’
John looked up, startled, to realize the proprietor was addressing him.
‘Either buy it, mate, or clear off.’
John held up the page showing his photograph for the man to see. ‘They’re my children,’ he said lamely.
‘What’s that?’ The man wasn’t even looking at him, he was rummaging below the counter for something.
‘These twins, in the headlines, these are my children.’
He looked up at him and shrugged. ‘Suit yourself. Either buy it or clear off.’
John put the paper back on the rack and patted his pockets. He had no money on him, not a bean.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said, distraught. ‘I’ll come back.’
The man wasn’t interested; he wasn’t even looking at him any more.
John slunk out of the shop and ran, half-heartedly, back towards the hotel and in through the door he had exited and left open.
Naomi was in the shower when he came into the room. ‘Renate Harrison rang to see how we were. She’s going to be waiting outside the rear entrance just before nine,’ she said.
‘Has she any news?’
‘She said there have been some developments overnight, we’ll get details at the police station.’
‘But they haven’t found them?’
‘No.’
Naomi switched off the shower and stepped out. John passed her a towel. She looked so vulnerable, he thought, with her hair plastered to her head, and water running off her body. He wrapped the towel around her and stood silently, for some moments, hugging her.