Little Darlings

by Melanie Golding

  She’d stared at the tip of the spire, at what she could now see was a rusted weathervane, for long minutes before pushing on to where she’d parked the car, driving back home and feeling the first trickle of her own water seeping down her leg as she bent to unlace her boots at the door.

  With the stroller it was different, but the ground felt the same beneath her feet. She had to go slowly, manoeuvring the three chunky wheels over the roots, awkwardly around narrow paths of packed mud she’d never noticed were narrow. The leafy canopy spread camouflage patterns onto the babies, flashing sunlight through the gaps so that she worried they might wake up. She stopped to drape a muslin square over the handle of each car seat, shading the sleeping boys, and then pushed on, filling her lungs again and again with delicious warm air. There was the slow return of a sense of freedom, for the first time in a month, her limbs loose and her head full of the wonderful natural perfume of water, rocks, soil. So familiar, so glorious, she was healed by it. The way summer trees smelled when they were heated by the sun.

  Half a mile up the river path was the scrubby box of a cafe, and seated on the picnic benches outside on the veranda, Cindy and Rosa. There was a compact black stroller next to Rosa, and Cindy was wearing her baby in a bright purple wrap over her belly. They hugged each other, and Lauren settled the twins’ stroller in a shady spot before sitting down.

  “How are you feeling?” said Cindy, directing a knowing look towards Lauren. “Less … stressed?”

  Lauren laughed. “Yeah, I’m fine, thanks. I think everyone was right—I just needed to get out of the house. I should have done it sooner. It’s lovely here, isn’t it?”

  “You look good,” said Rosa, “especially after having twins. What’s your secret?”

  “Never have time to eat?” She remembered the banana in her handbag. It was probably crushed now, inedible. She thought of the pastries inside the cafe and her mouth began to water.

  Rosa did the head-tilt in sympathy. “I know what it’s like with one, honey, you must be wrung out.”

  Lauren nodded, sighed, and glanced at Cindy who pretended not to see the meaning in it. The other two had obviously been talking about her, but she didn’t mind. It only meant they cared. She looked back at Rosa. “How was your birth, in the end?”

  “Oh,” said Rosa, throwing up her hands, “it was amazing. I feel for you ladies, I really do. The stories I’ve heard. I would totally recommend a C-section.”

  “What about the recovery, though?” said Cindy. “Is it all healing up OK?”

  Rosa grimaced, placed a hand tentatively on her belly. “It’s not too bad. I’ll get there.”

  “My birth was bloody awful,” said Cindy. “What was all that bollocks they told us about at antenatal? Breathe the baby out? Try to avoid drugs?”

  “I know,” said Lauren, beginning to enjoy herself.

  “Breathe it out, for fuck’s sake,” said Cindy, “as if it’s a little cloud of oxygen, or something. Well, might work for some people but not me, I had to push it out and it was bloody painful.”

  “Oh, so no interventions, or anything?” said Lauren.

  “No. They were going to transfer me to the hospital but at the last minute she decided to make an appearance. Didn’t you?” Cindy reached into the sling on her front and squeezed her baby’s chubby cheek between thumb and forefinger. The baby stayed asleep. Must be used to the cheek-pinching by now.

  “You were lucky,” said Lauren, “forceps are not much fun, I’m afraid.”

  Rosa sucked air through her teeth.

  “You know what, though?” said Cindy, “We’re all OK, aren’t we? We should be grateful. There are no bad births, when the result is a healthy mum and baby.”

  There was a moment, then, as Lauren thought about the endless alternative lives they could be living, having been through this, had the outcome been different. Rosa’s baby sighed in her sleep.

  “She’s so beautiful,” said Lauren. “It’s Stevie, isn’t it? Like the singer.”

  “Yes. She’s Stevie Matilda.”

  “Brilliant. Such a cool name. She looks like a bonny one—what was her birth weight?” The baby had three chins, and rippling rolls of fat on her arms. Fattest baby ever—one of those people who needed a crane to winch them to hospital for a gastric bypass, but in miniature. And cute.

  “Ten pounds two.”

  Lauren was impressed. “That’s a big baby. Mine were five-seven and five-nine.”

  “That’s good, for twins, right?” said Cindy.

  And it went on. Weights, names, nappies per day. Who else in their group had given birth, when and how. Bottle feeding, breastfeeding, night-time routines. Where to find the best organic cotton baby clothes. Are you reading bedtime stories yet? Apparently, it’s good for them—we used to read to my bump. Us too, how strange. The talk went on, and Lauren found that she needed this. People with some of the same concerns that she had. Details that almost nobody else would have found interesting in the slightest, the mundane, tedious minutiae, given a new significance in their post-birth world, where each choice they made, however small, seemed life-alteringly crucial.

  They ate cake and drank coffee and laughed, until eventually it was time to go. Rosa left first, and Cindy soon after. Lauren checked the boys’ nappies (no need to change—a welcome blessing) and packed up her stuff, wheeled the stroller to the river path and found to her surprise that she didn’t want to go back just yet, to her safe place, her fortress. Now that she was out in the world she wanted to stay out a little longer. She turned upstream and began walking. I’ll just go a little way, she thought. It’s such a lovely day.

  There was a clearing a short distance upriver, where the path followed the water around the edge but the grass was crisscrossed with desire lines. Lauren followed the meandering path, and halfway around she was overcome with the need to sit down and rest. She felt weary, her legs heavy, the caffeine and sugar she’d consumed burning up and crashing, leaving her headachy and weak. Just into the woods on the other side of the clearing she knew there was a secluded bench and she headed for it, parking the twins to one side, sinking down gratefully, closing her eyes.

  * * *

  Her mouth was furred, tongue dry. A chill drew itself up her arms. Her eyes flew open. She was alone. The stroller was nowhere.

  Lauren stood and looked both ways. Nothing but trees, and the river. Where was the stroller? Where were her babies? Gone. They’d been taken. While she was asleep.

  She shouted out, a guttural mashing of vowels, sprinted one way, tripped on a root and fell, a crunching of bone or cartilage in her wrist as her hands shot out to break the fall. No matter; she couldn’t feel her body, only a terrible absence, the babies like limbs ripped from her, missing parts, a wrongness so intense she wanted to hurt herself, to tear at her hair and skin. She ran back the other way to the clearing and screamed her children’s names. Startled birds took off in a grey cloud of squawks and flapping wings from the giant silver pine that stood by the water.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  The car park at the Fresh Ground Cafe was crammed with haphazardly parked police vehicles, stopped where they’d screeched to a halt at odd angles. On the journey from the station, the dashboard readout told Harper it was thirty-one degrees in the sun. It was marginally cooler under the trees but when she stepped out of the car, the humidity made it feel like she was breathing through a hot wet sock. The trees formed a dense tunnel to a distant bend up ahead, and beyond. This road was one she knew well, that she had driven many times—it got narrower as it curled into the peaks, and went all the way to Manchester.

  The cafe stood in the full beating sun, with brown sandy grass all around. Its own shadow, a rhombus of black, lay like a carpet at its feet, and in the contrast of the glare Harper couldn’t see the interior. Behind it, a little playground, and on the path, two officers were taking statements from members of the public. There was a straggling of gawpers, attracted by the commotion and being turned back or
moved along quickly, asked politely by a pair of fresh-faced PCSOs to clear the area.

  Harper crossed the bridge and walked the short distance to the wooden cafe, which was little more than an upmarket shed, erected on a concrete platform above the path. She passed the separate breeze-block toilet building, watched by two huge spray-painted cartoon eyes. It felt good to be off desk duty. When the call came in, Thrupp had assigned the case to her immediately, so he can’t have lost all faith in her abilities. Mind you, it was true that he hadn’t had much choice: she’d been the only DS available.

  As she got close to the cafe one of the uniformed constables turned to her and was about to speak, ask her who she was, when she flashed her warrant card and introduced herself. The officer, a squat man with close-cropped hair and a nose warped by historical breakages, said his name was PC Atkinson.

  “Where’s Mrs Tranter?” she said.

  “Who?”

  “The mother.”

  For a moment the officer seemed surprised at the question, but then he moved aside. “This way, Sarge.”

  Inside the cafe there was a strong smell of ground coffee and sun-baked wood preserver. It took a second for her eyes to adjust to the light.

  Atkinson leaned in close. “How did you know?”

  “How did I know what?”

  “The name. She won’t tell us anything. She’s just been ranting.”

  “Dispatch had it,” said Harper, realising that in fact, they hadn’t. No one had told her the name of the mother. But she’d known it, none the less. From the moment the first communication came into the office, blaring out of the police radio she kept on her desk.

  All units, please assist, this is a code ten-ten.

  Code ten-ten, in their district, was the highest-priority incident. A call to arms, that only the most urgent incidents were assigned. Was it a murder? A terrorist attack? The whole building held its breath for the next part: Two infants, twins, four weeks of age, male, last seen by the mother in the Bishop Valley Park. Missing, suspected abducted. All units respond.

  How could it have been anyone else? Harper’s eyes rested on Lauren, who hadn’t noticed her enter the cafe. She wore dark brown shorts and a black vest, walking boots and a pair of sunglasses on her head that were half lost in the large pillow of barely tamed brown curls. Sweat patches, face drained of blood, and those haunted, terrified eyes.

  “Besides, she would have said her name when she called 999.”

  The constable gave a small frown and a shrug, apologetic, assuming he must have been wrong, or that he’d missed something.

  “Look, if you didn’t get it, maybe others have missed it, too. Radio through to HQ. The mother’s Lauren Tranter, husband is Patrick Tranter. And the babies are Morgan and Riley.”

  “We know the babies’ names. She’s said them a lot.”

  “Get them to run a background check on Mr and Mrs Tranter, would you? See if there’s any information on the system. Now, go.” This was something she’d been dying to do ever since she followed Patrick, but it was too risky. Every background search request was traceable. Thrupp would have found out for sure.

  In the back of the cafe Lauren was struggling, being made to sit at a table, a police community support officer encircling her shoulders with a restraining arm. There was another officer standing, palms forward, in a posture of Please stay where you are, madam.

  “Look,” Lauren was saying, “just let me go and help. I can’t stay here. I can’t.”

  “Please, madam, you need to leave it to us now. We’ll find the boys, don’t worry. It’s really better for everyone if you stay here and wait for news.”

  “How can I stay here?” She was shouting now. “When someone’s out there and they’ve taken my babies? Some mad bitch has gone off with my boys. Would you stay here if it was you? Could you?”

  She shook off the arm at her back, managed to stand up and started to push against the two officers, both of whom were taller and broader than she was, and well trained in passive restraint techniques. Harper approached cautiously, just as Lauren was starting to kick out with her legs against the other women, teeth bared.

  “Mrs Tranter? Lauren.”

  She stopped in her struggle to be free, stopped trying to run out of the door. She glared at Harper, her strained face settling into recognition before becoming hard, accusatory.

  “You,” she said, raising a finger, “I told you this would happen. I told your people, I told the doctors. That woman in the hospital threatened me, she followed me home. Everyone thought I was crazy. Now look.”

  “Not me,” said Harper, “I didn’t think you were crazy. I believed you.”

  Lauren’s face twitched with surprise. She searched Harper’s. “You did?”

  “It was the same person?” said Harper. “The one in the hospital, the one you saw outside the house? Are you sure?”

  She nodded. “Detective. Please, help me. Tell them to let me go. I need to … Morgan and Riley, they need me …”

  Without warning the fight went out of Lauren and she was limp, her head flopping to her chest. The PCSO pulled gently downwards on Lauren’s arm so that she sank, deflated, into the chair and started to sob.

  Harper knelt beside her. She could smell the sweat and the fear. The other officers waited to see what the DS would do, and she knew that, right now, she needed to play it strictly by the book.

  “Lauren. I have to ask you this. Where are Morgan and Riley?”

  The question shocked the sobs to a stop. She drew in an angry breath, wiped her wet nose with the back of a hand.

  “How can you …? I don’t know. If I knew that, I wouldn’t be here—why do you all keep asking me that?”

  She was telling the truth, Harper was completely sure of that.

  “I’m sorry. It’s procedure. We’re trained to start at the beginning, with you, the last person to see them.”

  “You’re just wasting time. You should be searching, not asking me stupid questions.”

  “Tell me where they were, when you last saw them.”

  “I fell asleep. I didn’t mean to. So stupid, it’s my fault.” Lauren pounded on her head with the heel of one hand. Harper gently prevented her, holding each of Lauren’s hands in her own.

  “So, you didn’t see the person who took them away?”

  “No, but who else could it have been? She warned me, she said she would take them, if I ever left them alone. I left them alone, I didn’t mean to but I did. I sat down on that bench, shut my eyes, and that was it. My brain just shut off. I don’t even know for how long I was out. When I woke up, they’d gone. My babies.” Lauren hid her face in her hands.

  The babies were gone. Harper felt as if a void had opened up within her chest, that too much air was trapped in her lungs and she couldn’t push it out. They had to be found. The alternative was unthinkable.

  Light-headed, Harper stood up and went outside to find Atkinson. Once they were out of earshot, she said, “Did you check the parents’ names against the records?”

  “Yes, there was nothing apart from a filed 999 call, marked as—”

  “Picked up by MHS, I know about that one. I thought maybe the husband, Mr Tranter, anything on him?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Where is he now?”

  “He’s on his way. He was at work, in an office in the centre of town.”

  She’d been sure Patrick was involved somehow. Perhaps she’d allowed her feelings about him to cloud her judgement. Careful, Harper, she told herself. Keep it professional. For the sake of those babies.

  “Where are the search teams?”

  “Everywhere, Sarge, but no one’s coordinating things strategically yet so it’s a scratch search, everywhere in the vicinity, everyone we can find. Major Crimes are on the way but it might be up to an hour before the search advisor is able to assist.”

  “And, what have you found?”

  “Nothing yet. We’ve got eighteen officers on the ground but there’
s no sign of the missing infants. More uniform personnel are on the way; dispatch is directing resources from all over.”

  Several sirens wheeled in the air, some close and some from further along the valley. Blue lights flashed in the road.

  “What about cars?” said Harper. “Are you looking for suspicious vehicles?”

  Atkinson nodded.

  “We’ve got witnesses with descriptions of cars seen in the area at the time. We’ve started calling up data from road traffic cameras—”

  “There aren’t any cameras for miles on this road,” said Harper.

  “I know that,” said the constable, slightly tetchily, “but we can check which cars turned off the main road, because there’s CCTV that covers that junction. We’ll get the information soon and start to run background on them.”

  That would take too much time. Each minute that passed meant that the chance of finding the twins alive diminished further.

  “How long has it been, since they were taken?” said Harper.

  Atkinson checked his watch, and his PDA. “Twenty-seven minutes from the 999 call.”

  And, thought Harper, Lauren doesn’t even know how long she was asleep for, which added an unknown number of minutes to that total. “Shit. Could be absolutely miles away by now, if they’re in a car.”

  The bench was a short walk upstream. Atkinson led the way. The area had been checked over already; nothing had been found but some scraps of litter.

  “She was sitting here?” said Harper.

  Atkinson nodded.

  “Let’s get it cordoned off. It’s a crime scene.”

  It was impossible to tell in which direction the stroller might have been taken, but from here there were three possible routes—upstream into the peaks, downstream towards the cafe or away from the water along an overgrown footpath leading to the road, and from there, with a vehicle, the possibilities started to spool in all directions.

  She walked down to the edge of the river, careful not to step on any visible prints, taking photos of the ground as she went. Here the river was wide and shallow, running over large stones, sparkling in the bright sun. A popular paddling spot, partly shaded as the river ran deeper under the trees a little further down. Beyond that, it passed the cafe and continued on to the disused millpond before entering the city’s vast network of channels. Upriver, it wound its way through a good stretch of dense woodland. You could follow the path alongside the river, all the way through the woods, passing deeper through the valley as the peaks rose higher and wilder, right to the New Riverby reservoir, probably five or six miles out. That immense stretch of lake hadn’t always been there. The New Riverby was built before the first war, but before that, for centuries, the valley had been home to a thriving community, the drowned village of Selverton.