“We’ve got officers on the river path, haven’t we?”
“Yes, boss. Several, in both directions.”
Harper’s eyes were drawn to the water. On the other side of the river, the high brambles would have been impossible to breach. There were areas further up where a person could get through. Perhaps they needed to search the other bank, too.
Behind her, Atkinson approached and lowered his voice. “Sarge. The mother, she’s very distressed.”
“Well, yes. She would be.”
Harper returned her attention to the water, the large rocks and shadowed areas to her left and right.
“I mean, health and safety, and all that. I think she’s a risk.”
“To who?”
“Herself. Us. Just a risk. You saw what she was like in there. I think we might need help with her.”
“Help how?”
“I mean medical help. Just in case. I mean, if the last call she made was dealt with by Mental Health …”
Harper remembered the hospital, how Lauren had had to be sedated after what happened to her there. Atkinson was right—they couldn’t predict what she might do. She nodded.
“You do what you think, Constable. Get an ambulance on standby if it’s appropriate.”
“Yes, boss.”
The constable turned and began walking back towards the cafe, lifting his radio to summon the medics. Harper was about to follow him, when she spotted something at the water’s edge. She called the officer back.
“Give me an evidence bag. Quickly.”
There, leading into the shallows, in the mud that had been exposed by the lowered water level, were the imprints from three wheels—two large ones with a smaller one in the middle. Three tyres, possibly a three-wheeled stroller, exactly like the one they were searching for. There was a scrap of dirty black fabric caught in one of the tyre tracks. She took out her phone and snapped several pictures of its position, then bent towards it, poked the scrap out with a pen and bagged it. Then, she searched the surrounding area for matching tracks. There were none. The stroller had gone into the water. But Harper couldn’t see any immediate evidence of where, or if, it had come out again.
“Constable, we need to search the river. I mean, in it, not just the path.”
“But boss, it’s so shallow, we’d have seen it.”
“Just get a diver down here, now. It’s not all shallow. Look.”
He followed her gaze up the river, to where a bend formed a dark pool under the trees. In that small section, you couldn’t see the bottom. The water could have been two metres deep. It could have hidden a stroller, easily. There would be pools like this all the way up and down the twisting Bishop. And of course, the river joined the deep and murky millpond further down, where whole cars had sunk without trace. Harper banished a vision of the sinking stroller, the helpless babies strapped in, sucking water into their little lungs. It hadn’t happened, it couldn’t have. Somewhere in her mind she just knew that it hadn’t, but she couldn’t trust it. The knowledge was mixed with both hope and uncertainty.
“You go and look at the millpond, see if there’s anything to be found there, tracks or footprints,” said Harper. “I’ll go that way.”
The constable set off immediately in the downstream direction, while Harper went the other way, intending to note where the deeper parts of the river were, all the possible places where a person might submerge a baby’s pushchair. She wanted some useful information to direct the divers when they arrived to start searching in the water. Trying to remain detached, she pushed away the queasy feeling that came in waves when she thought of the babies under the water, or the fact that she might be too late to save them.
She walked swiftly upstream along the path, hopping over tree roots and rocks, searching left and right. She swept the thickets with her eyes, alert for any trace of the lime-green car seat covers clipped to the stroller. In the woods, there seemed to be flashes of lime-green everywhere, so that her eyes kept alighting on patches of new leaves, bright bushes, thinking, there it is, and realising a second later that she was mistaken. Even an old plastic bag caught her attention, before she thought, if it were that easy, they’d have been found already—after all, she was going over old ground, places that had already been searched before she arrived. Every so often she stopped dead, listened for the cries of babies, but heard only birdsong, and her own slightly quickened breathing.
The light dimmed rapidly under the canopy as the clouds knitted together above it. She pressed on, nodding at three uniformed officers waist-deep in undergrowth, all of them scouring the ground for evidence of the abduction, for anything that might help the search.
She passed a wide, deep section of river where the path was low, only just above the level of the water. The edge here curved around, creating a little shore. It would have been easy to push a stroller in at this point, but there were dozens of places up and down the river that were similar. She had a quick search for tyre tracks, saw none. Up ahead, the tunnel created by the river and the woods turned a corner that she couldn’t see around. Just a bit further, she thought, then I’ll go back the other way and get a good look at the millpond myself.
She heard the rain before she felt it. Loud and heavy as stones falling on the leaves above. I’ll just go as far as the corner, she thought, but then drops of water big enough to hurt began to land on her arms and head, soaking her in moments. She jogged to the bend in the river; she’d come this far after all.
And there they were.
A female dressed in dark clothing was knee-deep in water, struggling with the double stroller, which was at an angle, tipping into the sluggish murk. The lower seat was almost underwater. Any further in and it would fill up.
Harper sprinted towards the scene, the woman, the water all around them full of tiny explosions of raindrops battering down, the noise of it almost but not quite drowning out Harper’s cry of “Stop, police,” but the figure turned, saw her, shouted out and let go of the stroller. She turned her back on the pushchair, the lightning flashed, and she pulled her sodden form onto the bank. She tried to run, but even before the thunder could answer, she flew straight into a uniformed officer who’d come from further upriver.
“Arrest her,” Harper managed to shout while wading as fast as possible towards the slowly sinking stroller. Mud pulled at her ankles, slowing her, slowing time itself.
There was no crying. Her heart dropped—what if the stroller was empty, what if she had found evidence that the babies were no more? She rushed to look inside the top seat and the baby in yellow looked steadily at her, and she said, “Oh thank fuck,” but the fear remained. One baby safe, what about the other? She looked into the bottom seat, the water gathering at its lip and there was the baby in green, with a matching watchful gaze. She seized the handle of the stroller and pulled it towards the shallows, the wheels sticking just as her feet had done but she was strong, and soon they were safely ashore.
The rain-wet male officer, a tall young rugby fan called Wright, held the upper arm of the handcuffed woman who’d been in the river with the babies. The woman was young, with smooth skin and long dark hair, mascara running down her face and dripping off her chin. Harper knew her. She’d been in the car park with Patrick, on the day she’d followed him—the day she’d been complained about, and benched as a result. The rain kept falling in curtains on their heads, so that they hunched up their shoulders and wiped at the water running down their faces.
“What’s your name?” said Harper.
“This is not what you think,” said the woman. “I was bringing them back.”
Harper shook her head, “Sorry madam, that doesn’t make it any better, I’m afraid. Abduction is a serious offence.”
“No, you don’t understand. I found them. I didn’t take them.”
“State your name, please.”
The woman said nothing.
Harper addressed PC Wright. “Get her to the station, get her processed. I can easily
find out who she is. She knows the father.”
Mention of Patrick seemed to cause the woman physical pain. She made a small moaning sound and tried to crumple but her thin frame was held up by the officer.
Wright said, “The babies OK?”
“They’re here. They’re alive. We did good.” The two officers grinned at each other.
“You want me to call it in?” asked Wright. “Or do you want the pleasure?”
“What do you think?” she said, still grinning.
Wright pulled the woman in the other direction, back the way he’d come. He must have parked his patrol car further up the road, not at the cafe with the others. Harper set off with the boys towards the cafe. They still weren’t crying. She stopped and checked them again. The babies stared back, each with an identical unwavering gaze.
As she hurried along in the rain she reached for her radio and depressed the button, shouting, “This is DS Harper, I’ve got them, copy, both boys safe,” but the radio was dead. Water must have got into it somehow, though the devices were supposed to be impervious to weather of all types. Maybe the battery was flat. Too late now to call Wright back, he wouldn’t hear her over the sound of the rain anyway. Quicker to keep going. The most important thing was to get these two baby boys back to their mother.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Lauren scanned the river, the woods, the road. The babies were nowhere. That’s what it felt like. Her heart drummed painfully in her chest, someone punching her in the thorax over and over. Each time the police radio crackled a message, she searched the officer’s faces for signs that they had been found. Nothing, nothing, nothing.
When the first dark cloud rolled over the valley, Lauren thought there was something dirtying the ground. A large dark pool of something. Then another, larger cloud passed in front of the sun and it occurred to her that she hadn’t seen a proper cloud for weeks, and that the strange dark shape covering the playground was simply a shadow, not an ominous sign of something unexplainable. The patchy shadows fused together and became an immense low roof of dense grey. Electricity charged the air. Lauren’s skin was prickling as she stood outside the cafe, tensed, waiting.
The police officer had let her get up after she’d promised repeatedly that she would not run away. Patrick was coming, he’d be here soon. He’d sounded devastated on the phone. Was it the worst thing imaginable, to tell your husband that you had made a mistake and allowed someone to take his children, that you had no idea where they were, who with, and why? Not the worst thing, not even close. But it was bad. During their short conversation, they’d both failed to say anything even remotely comforting to each other.
She felt weak, and fierce, and angry and guilty. Ready to fight, light on her heels, yet holding such a heavy weight in her chest that she could have been crushed by it, had she let it pull her down. Powerless, and at the same time full of potential for something. With a jolt, she realised that it was violence. Lauren was ready to beat someone pulpy if they’d harmed her precious ones. She was looking forward to it, in a sick sort of way. Fists bunched, in readiness. Come on, then.
The gathering storm pressing down from above made her eyes hurt. Beside her in the doorway, the officer assigned to “look after” Lauren kept gripping at her own temples as if she were in pain, puffing out sighs. The air pressure was a boot on everyone’s head, adding to the atmosphere, the feeling, unbearable, that something had to happen soon or the consequences would be terrible. Out of all the police officers only Jo Harper seemed to have come dressed for the heat. Come to think of it, where the hell was Harper? Lauren hadn’t had a chance to speak to her properly before she’d disappeared again. Harper would understand, not like these uniformed monkeys. She’d let her join the search for her own children, for pity’s sake.
Something shifted in the air, loosening. A few fat spheres of rain smashed into the hot concrete of the path, throwing up dust from the gritted car park like angry gobfuls of phlegm, banging down on the tops of the police vehicles and the flat felted roof of the cafe. More fell, hard and sparse, but then the pressure escaped and the clouds burst and the rain poured out of the sky. Lauren felt the sharp missiles of water hitting her bare arms and the top of her head, painful, stinging. She did not move, even as a surge of people rushed past her into the shelter of the building.
Hair plastered to her face by the force of it, Lauren watched as the storm disrupted the surface of the Bishop, which turned brown and started to swell.
“Mrs Tranter, come inside, you’ll get cold,” said someone from behind her, one of the police. She ignored the suggestion. She liked being cold, it made a change. And she wanted to hurt, even in this small way. Physical pain was a distraction from the crushing dread and the rising panic.
On the other side of the river, Patrick’s car was pulling into the car park, windscreen wipers madly slashing, just as the first flash of lightning made her jump. The thunder followed, quick and loud as an explosion.
Thunder, lightning, rain smashing down. A crowd of eyes behind her, looking past her, widened, the thrill of the storm. Then she hears Jo Harper’s voice, and sees a scream of lime-green, fluorescent under the trees. The stroller. Harper has the stroller, she’s running towards her with it and Lauren sets off sprinting. Jo is shouting, but the storm is louder, and Lauren’s steel-toed walking boots on the path crack out an urgent staccato that drowns out her own words, “Are they there? Do you have them?” until they meet on the bridge, Patrick too, and they are there, her babies, they’re alive and she reaches inside the top car seat and unclips one baby and Patrick unclips the other and holds him but she wants them both so she pulls Patrick close with the two babies between them and the rain is pounding down upon them and they’re all drenched but the babies, the babies are alive and they’re here in her arms, her precious boys. Lauren is saying their names, over and over, “Riley, Morgan, are you OK? Did she hurt you?”
Then Lauren straightens up and looks at Harper, who is watching her in a strange way, and she looks at Patrick, who is crying and shaking, then turning his face up to the sky in anger as if someone up there were responsible, his white shirt translucent on his skin, tie hanging wet and limp so that suddenly he is vulnerable, pitiable, the sight of him tearing at her. She kisses him then, the smell and the taste of him tugging at something low in her belly, a memory of a time, the base chemistry that all this came out of.
“Thank God,” Patrick said, and though he kept glowering at the sky as if he really meant, fuck you God, when he spoke to the babies his voice was tender. “We thought we’d lost you, little buddies. Where did you get to?”
Lauren and Patrick turned towards Harper, the question in the air and in their faces.
“They were with a woman,” said Harper, “in the river. Don’t worry, we got her, she’s in custody.”
“Who was it?” The question roared out of him, and he stepped towards the police officer, the baby in his arms protected, but his hands curled into fists. Lauren shifted the baby she held so she could put a hand on Patrick’s shoulder, feeling the taut sinew and coiled muscle beneath the thin cotton. It’s not Harper you want, Patrick. Save it for the woman, the child thief, the witch.
“I don’t have that information yet. She didn’t identify herself. She’s being taken to the station as we speak; we’ll know very soon.”
Lauren turned her face skywards, feeling spatters of raindrops in her eyes. She drew the baby closer. Thank all the gods, she thought, that horrible woman has been caught. She won’t be after me anymore.
“Did she have the basket with her?” said Lauren.
“The what?” said Harper.
Patrick turned sharply in Lauren’s direction. She was about to explain about the creepy woman’s babies, but something in his expression stopped her. Instead she said, “So she was alone? There was no one else with her?”
“That’s right,” said Harper.
Lauren wondered what the woman had done with her own babies, if she didn’t ha
ve them with her. She wouldn’t have been surprised if they’d been taken into care, the filthy state they were in when she saw them in the hospital. She pressed her cheek to the top of her baby’s head. The feeling of the downy skin was exquisite, more so now that she’d feared she might never feel it again. Looking at the baby Patrick held, she felt greedy for him, too, upset that she didn’t have him in her arms. She wanted them both, and she wanted everyone else to go away.
“Where exactly were they found?” asked Patrick.
“Not far away. Only half a mile or so. That way.” Harper pointed upstream.
“So how come no one found them sooner?” said Lauren, wondering with growing horror what might have happened to the boys in the time they were gone.
“I don’t know, Lauren,” said Harper. The DS was starting to shiver, her jaw clenched against the chattering. “They must have been hidden. We’ll know more very soon. But the important thing is, they’re safe. They’re here. We found them.”
“Come on,” said Patrick, “let’s get inside. I’m freezing. The boys must be, too. We have to put them back in the seats, they’re getting soaked. Lauren? We need to get them warm and dry. Come on.”
He put the baby he held back in the top seat and prised the other one as gently as he could from Lauren’s arms. He put the blankets over them. The hoods of the seats stopped the worst of the rain.
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