BABY SNATCHERS (A Detective India Kane & AJ Colt Crime Thriller)

by Bo Brennan

  “If Johnson and Sarum conspired together to snatch her son and get her locked up in a mental institution, money has changed hands,” he said. “Find the money and you've got yourself a motive for Lisa Lewis's murder.”

  India slowly nodded and gave him her one sided smile as she pulled a new pencil from her pot. “Get off my desk I've got a motive to find,” she murmured.

  Haltingbury, London.

  Sasha looked out of her bedroom window as she pulled her school jumper over her head. The policeman was gone when she woke up this morning. So was her foster father. He always went to football practice with the son early on Tuesdays. She crept past Kim's bedroom door on her way to the stairs, and could hear her snoring as usual.

  Everything was back to normal again.

  Everything except Melissa.

  When Sasha crept up behind her in the kitchen, Melissa almost jumped out of her skin. Her eyes were red and puffy where she'd cried herself to sleep. “What's the matter?” Sasha whispered.

  Melissa's face crumpled and paled as she clutched her stomach in pain. “It hurts,” she whimpered.

  Sasha steered her to a chair and winced as she sat awkwardly, doubling over in agony. Her eyes widened as she hunched down in front of her and saw blood trickling down her bare legs from underneath her school skirt. “Mel, you're bleeding,” she gasped. “I'll get Kim.”

  Melissa grabbed her arm. “No!” she whispered fiercely. “Don't leave me.”

  “B, b, but I have to,” Sasha stammered. “You're hurt, Mel. You're bleeding.”

  “Please don't leave me,” Melissa pleaded as tears squeezed their way through the slits of her swollen eyes.

  Sasha jumped at the heavy knock on the front door, and Melissa yelped with pain. “I have to get that,” she said her eyes diverting to the dark mass on the other side of the obscured glass. “It might be dad. He might've forgotten his key. He'll help us.”

  “No,” Melissa cried gripping her arm tighter. “Don't let him in.”

  “Please, Mel. I have to,” she cried pulling away. “If they knock again, they'll wake Kim up.”

  Melissa reluctantly let her go; she didn't have the strength to hold on to her anymore. As Sasha ran towards the front door, the pain in Mel’s belly grew so intense she slid off the chair and the world turned black.

  Chapter 44

  As soon as the little girl with terrified eyes opened the door, she was gone again, running down the hallway leaving the rescue team in her wake. Colt gave chase while the others fanned out.

  He caught up with her in the kitchen. She was kneeling on the floor next to an unconscious teenager curled up in a growing pool of blood. In the background he heard the rest of his team opening doors and thundering up stairs. It would take several minutes before they cleared the house and the paramedics could enter, valuable minutes that this haemorrhaging child didn't have.

  “What's her name?” he said kneeling beside her, pressing his fingers to her throat for a pulse.

  “Melissa.”

  “Are you Sasha?” he asked pressing his fingers deeper into the soft tissue of the unconscious girl's neck.

  She nodded, and Colt felt instantly ashamed when a wave of relief washed over him. “We're going to get her some help,” he said sliding his arms underneath Melissa's body. “There are some police officers outside. I want you to run to them when we get out the door. They're going to help you. Don't look back, and don't be frightened. I need you to go in front of me but stay close. Will you do that?”

  Wide eyed, she nodded again.

  “Okay, Sasha. Let's go.” He scooped Melissa up in his arms and they hurried for the front door as screams rang out above them. Sasha Grant faltered at the bottom of the stairs, and Colt almost ploughed into her. “Keep going, don't be scared,” he urged and her feet started moving again.

  As they crossed the threshold and into the street, Sasha ran towards the police officers with outstretched arms and blankets, Colt ran for the ambulance and shook as he handed Melissa over to the waiting medics, convinced they'd lost another child. He held his breath and looked on expectantly as they hooked her inert body up to machines, silently praying they weren't too damned late again. When the blessed words, 'we've got a pulse’, rang out, Colt slumped forward with his hands on his knees and let out a ragged breath. He hadn't been able to find a pulse back there.

  “Will she be all right?” a small voice said behind him.

  Colt turned and gave a weak smile. Thank god she was still in one piece. “I hope so,” he said softly, bending down to make eye contact with her. “This police officer is going to take you to the hospital with your friend to get checked out,” he said smiling up at Debbie from the Child Protection Unit as she wrapped a second blanket around Sasha Grant's trembling body.

  “Will my mum be there?” Sasha asked hopefully, her eyes lighting up.

  Colt swallowed hard. Nobody had even bothered to tell the child her mother was dead. “I'll come and see you at the hospital and we'll talk about your mum then, okay.”

  “What about Tracey? Is she at the hospital too?”

  Colt frowned. “Is Tracey another girl that lives here?”

  Sasha gave a small nod. “The social worker took her away to have a baby.”

  “We're ready to go, Boss,” Debbie said extending her hand to Sasha.

  Colt pulled the blankets tightly around her, picked her up and set her down in the back of the ambulance and Debbie's safe hands. “Do you know Tracey’s last name?”

  “Jolie. Like the film star. She says Brad and Angelina will come and get her one day.” Colt grimaced at the irony. “Will you bring the nice policewoman to the hospital too?” she asked as he was about to close the doors.

  “Yeah, of course.” Colt smiled. “Maggie goes everywhere I go.”

  Sasha Grant shook her head. “No, not Maggie Moo. The funny one who came to my school.”

  Colt raised his brows and smiled. “I'll do my best,” he said as the ambulance doors closed. And then turned back towards the house as Bob, and an unwanted Maggie Moo, wrestled what could only be described as a snarling cuffed walrus into the back of the meat wagon.

  Hampshire CID, Winchester.

  “Nothing stacks up, Guv,” India said handing him a wodge of documents with multi-coloured markers poking out the sides. “Sarum's got a posh postcode, but I can't find any mortgage payments ever going out.”

  “Maybe he was renting?” Firman said stroking his beard.

  “Nope, the green tag is the land registry document. He owns his house outright. Same with his motor. Blue tag,” she said nodding at Firman, prompting him to turn the pages. “That top of the range Toyota we found in the car park is owned outright. No finance or HP ever recorded on it.”

  Firman raised his brows. India knew he drove a similar car, but was willing to bet he couldn't say the same, and he was earning at least double George Sarum's salary.

  “Orange tag is incoming money,” she said. “Salary of twenty two grand a year.” Firman's brows rose higher and she hadn't even got to the good bit yet. “See that orange tag with the star on it? Bottom of the page you'll see his current savings account balance.”

  “Holy shit,” Firman said. “How the fuck does a social worker, earning twenty two a year, accumulate almost a hundred grand in savings?”

  “For the last three years he’s been making regular cash deposits,” India said.

  “Does the taxman know about it?” Firman grunted in annoyance as his office phone interrupted.

  India spread her hands. “I’m waiting for them to come back to me. I just wanted to let you know I found something.” She rose from her seat as he barked his name into the handset. And to say thank you for fighting my corner, she thought, but didn't utter.

  Firman raised his hand to stop her leaving. “You can tell her yourself, she's here. I'll put you on speaker phone.”

  “India, it’s Colt.” India twitched as his voice filled the office. “I thought you'd like
to know we've got Sasha Grant in protective custody.”

  India braced her hands on her Guv’nor's desk and stared at the phone. He was the paedo police. Her mouth went dry. “Why have you got her? I thought she was with specialist carers.”

  “It's a long story. The short version is that the foster parents were specialist child pornographers.”

  India's body went rigid.

  “She's all right. She's at the hospital getting checked over,” he soothed. “Are you still there?”

  “We're here,” Firman sighed.

  “Len, nobody's had the decency to tell her about her mother yet,” Colt said. “And she's asking for India.”

  Firman gave a small yelp of surprise. “India?” he probed wistfully. “Are you up for it?”

  India set her jaw and backed away from the phone. “I'm no good with kids. I can't tell her her mum's dead. He's got a whole department of specially trained officers for this sort of shit. Why does he need me?”

  “She's asking for you,” Colt said reminding her that he was still on the end of the line.

  “No pressure then,” India snapped.

  “You've championed this kid from day one,” Firman said. “It's your call.”

  Chapter 45

  London.

  “Can you bloody believe that?” Maggie said spinning the wheels as she screeched away from Haltingbury Social Services.

  Colt sighed and gazed out the window. After everything he'd heard lately about the system he cherished, nothing seemed beyond belief anymore.

  “That snooty bitch doesn't know her arse from her elbow!” Maggie said continuing her tirade against Haltingbury SS boss, Sandra Cavendish. “How can they dump kids with private agency carers they know absolutely nothing about? How many of these kids are missing like Tracey Jolie?”

  “Sasha Grant said her social worker took her away to have the baby.”

  Maggie frowned. “Her name wasn't on their missing list.”

  Colt ran a hand across his jaw and down his throat. Regretted not taking the time to shave when he went back to the station to get showered and changed, while Bob - and a couple of the others still wearing clean shirts - went to pick up the football coach foster father and son. “No, she wasn't,” he murmured. “I wonder why.”

  “Did you manage to get the registered keeper info for that Merc in Ireland?” Maggie asked. “If it belongs to Alan Roberts, we've got him.”

  At fourteen Tracey Jolie was too young to be one of Flick's Crowley Trust girls. From what Colt had been able to ascertain, she hadn't broken any laws by helping them leave the country. The women weren't criminals absconding charges. He wasn't about to drop Felicity Firman into the investigation needlessly. “It’s not his,” he murmured. “He drives a crappy Fiat Panda. Alan Roberts claims he's never met Sasha Grant. Says he's not even her social worker.”

  “That's not what her Hampshire SS file says.”

  “We can’t trust the files, Mags. From what Roberts said, it sounds like standard practice to forge visit entries just to keep up with the workload.”

  “Bloody hell,” Maggie spluttered as she pulled up outside the private fostering agency that occupied a colossal corner plot of prime Knightsbridge real estate. “They want to start employing more social workers then. There's money in kids.”

  “Ain’t there just.” Colt craned his neck to read aloud the colourful words emblazoned in stained glass above the entrance doors. “New Lives Foundation. Where dreams become reality.”

  The office manager studied Colt’s credentials. “To what do we owe the pleasure, Detective Chief Inspector?”

  “We're trying to locate Tracey Jolie.”

  He rolled his eyes and shook his head. “What's our original wild child done now?”

  “Just tell me where she is please,” Colt said staring at him.

  The manager frowned. “If she's not in one of your cells for her usual nonsense, she'll be at home with her foster family.”

  “Are you sure about that?” Colt said. “You haven't checked your computer or anything and I'm assuming a place like this has plenty of kids on its books.”

  The manager moved into smug mode. “Eleven thousand and twenty six to be precise. We're the largest agency in the UK.”

  “Impressive.” Colt feigned approval and glanced at Maggie, staring slack jawed.

  “It's a hell of a place you have here,” Colt said. “Do most of those children live on site?”

  “Oh my, no. Things have moved on a lot from the days when we operated orphanages,” the manager chuckled. “We place the children with individual families nowadays. The New Lives Foundation only occupies the front of the building. The remainder is a private concern. I've been here since the start of the new operation mind. Virtually grew this place single handed. Tracey was one of the first children on our books. She's been settled with her foster family a year now. That's a record for her. They've been the making of that girl. We're lucky to have them.”

  “Is that so?” Colt said.

  “They have a way with the wild ones. Hundreds have passed through their hands since 2007.”

  Colt and Maggie looked at each other and sighed.

  “We'd better have their file as well then,” Colt said trying his luck in the absence of a warrant. “Along with the file of every child that's ever been entrusted to them. Starting with Tracey Jolie who appears to be missing.”

  The agency manager frowned and jerked his head. “Her foster parents haven't phoned me to say she's run away again.”

  Colt smiled. “I expect they used their custody phone call to contact their brief. Files please.”

  The agency manager cleared his throat. “Some of them will be in the archives,” he said.

  “That's okay,” Colt said. “We're happy to wait here while you retrieve them. All of them.”

  The manager made a call and ordered an out of sight minion to pull files from the archive, before scurrying over to the bank of filing cabinets lining the back wall.

  Maggie propped herself against the counter, watching every move the manager made, while Colt wandered the plush reception area, barely able to hide his disbelief that they were fetching files at all. He came to rest in front of the agency's dedicated brag wall. Framed accolades and newspaper articles screamed of their achievements. Photographs of tuxedoed tossers grinned broadly as they accepted award after award. Colt's eyes narrowed when they fell on a photograph of the Prime Minister and South African Ambassador, sharing a jovial three way handshake with-

  “Professor Barrington,” Colt said pointing the photograph out to Maggie.

  “Our Chairman's a wonderful man,” the manager cooed. “An absolute pioneer in the child protection field. He’s completely changed the landscape.”

  Colt resisted the urge to say the field seemed full of cow pats lately, and the landscape blighted by ivory towers built by this man and his ilk.

  “He's also Ryan Reynolds’ headline in The Daily Herald today,” Maggie said.

  “Is he?” Colt said raising his brows.

  The manager tutted and shot Mags a death stare.

  “You really should start reading the papers again,” Maggie mused.

  “If I did I wouldn't be reading that comic.”

  “Hear, hear, Detective Chief Inspector,” the manager said. “Glad to hear it. The man's a menace. Can't your lot do something about him?”

  Colt smiled. “Our lot are busy catching criminals.”

  “Surely libel is criminal.”

  “Civil,” Maggie said. “If it's not true you're free to sue. How are you doing with those files?”

  “Almost done with the last twelve months,” he said adding another flimsy wisp of brown cardboard to the growing stack on top of the cabinet. “A clerk is retrieving the rest.”

  “Out of interest,” Maggie said. “How much do the local authorities pay you for placing a kid?”

  The manager smiled as he dumped the children's files in Maggie's arms. “That's confident
ial.”

  She peered at Colt and inclined her head. “You don't want to make copies of these non-confidential files then?” she said.

  He brushed her off with a blasé hand, didn't even look at her when he responded. “No need. We have them on computer.”

  Maggie huffed and shook her head. “I'll see you in the car, Boss.”

  Chapter 46

  London.

  “Look how that stupid idiot has parked,” Maggie snapped scowling at the battered Grand Vitara abandoned across two ambulance bays.

  Colt smiled. “That stupid idiot is India.”

  Maggie rolled her eyes. “Figures.”

  Colt puffed a breath up his face. They had more work than they could handle and it was taking its toll. The stuff they’d turned up in the Haltingbury case had just submerged his twelve person unit, and Dwight Sanders was slipping further from their grasp with every turn they took. “You don't have to come in, Mags. It's been a long day. Go home and see your kids.”

  She sighed and looked at her watch. “They'll be going to bed shortly. Might just make it in time for a story, though.” Maggie patted his leg. “You look like you could do with some rest yourself.”

  Colt gave a weary smile. The more he learned the more jaded he felt. He loved his job. It was dirty, depressing, and it made his skin crawl, but the rewards of saving a child and putting their abuser behind bars far outweighed the scars it left behind. The Haltingbury case seemed to sully that. Right now he was beginning to feel like a victim of the system himself. Paid a wage to feed a money making machine.

  “I might need to take a look at your press clippings tomorrow,” he murmured.

  “Guv, you do a great job,” Maggie said feeling the weight of his despair. “You swat arseholes like flies. This lot aren’t any different.”