She made her way towards the cafe, feeling the peace of the place, hearing the gentle sound of the river running through. She stopped briefly by the water, noticing a dark place under a big tree. There was something moving under there, flashing silver as it turned—three or four big fish, sheltering from the sun, trapped there by the low water level. She shivered, despite the heat.
Outside the cafe, she studied the far bank, where a person could easily be concealed in the thick bushes. She imagined the pitiful form of Natasha crouching there, watching Lauren laughing with her friends. Someone else had been watching Lauren too, but who? And where from? There were dozens of places to hide nearby; behind the cafe, among the people in the playground, in the woods.
She walked on, along the river path and up to the bench where the stroller was taken. GPS showed that Natasha had been walking along on the other side. What then? At some point, Jimmy Durrell had ridden past on his bike; Lauren had sat down on the bench, and fallen asleep; Natasha had gone back in the direction of her parked car. If only she’d not done that, and kept watching instead; she would have seen whoever did it.
Harper tried to put herself in the mind of the perpetrator. He or she was waiting nearby, somewhere within sight of the bench. Then, when Lauren fell asleep, they’d seized their opportunity, snatched the stroller, and made off. The path was narrow here, the roots snaking thickly across it. It wouldn’t have been easy to get the stroller away—the person must have been strong, determined, both.
When she reached the place where Natasha had been found with the babies she saw that it would just be possible to push a stroller across without it getting too wet, if you lifted it over the rocks. Natasha wasn’t strong enough to do that, from what Harper had seen; she’d got it stuck. But then, in the time between the taking and the returning, the sudden downpour had swelled the river, made it dangerous to cross.
On both banks, Harper could still see faint tyre tracks and footprints at the water’s edge. She pulled out her phone and studied the crime-scene photographs from the day of the abduction. In the images, on the far bank there were more than one set of tracks: one going in, one coming out. But, on the near side she could only identify tracks coming out, and those were probably made when Harper herself had hauled the stroller out of the water. In the photos from back at the bench, there were tyre tracks only on the bench bank, as if a stroller had been pushed in there, too. So, they knew that Natasha had pushed the stroller in from the opposite side, and Harper had pulled it out on the path side. The other tracks went in at the bench, and out at the river bend on the opposite bank. Harper considered it, and almost laughed. Swimming upstream with a stroller? Impossible. Perhaps it was impossible to know the truth. The rain and the swelling river had no doubt washed some tracks away before the photos were taken.
Harper used the rocks sticking out of the river as stepping-stones to get to the other side. She tried to form an image of the perpetrator but Natasha’s face kept popping into her head. Lauren had known it wasn’t Natasha, long before the evidence proved it. But the trouble was, you couldn’t put much trust in what Lauren said, because of her condition. For example, her insistence that being in the water had changed the babies: pure fantasy. And yet, it was understandable, because of how frightened she must have been, and probably how guilty that she didn’t do enough to protect them, even though it wasn’t her fault. Harper knew all too well how that kind of guilt worked; how it tapped you on the shoulder at night, telling you that you should have tried harder, known better, fought back. That you, rendered powerless in the moment, were also somehow to blame for that lack of power.
The path on the other side of the river was overgrown, but she could see where the stroller had been forced through. Branches were broken, nettles trodden underfoot. A large log lay across the path at one point. Harper stepped over it. Just beyond were the derelict remains of the mill wheel tower.
The mossy shell of the tower was no higher than a large garden shed, the stone from the upper floors long since fallen into the pit on one side that once housed the wooden water-wheel. There was the opening in the wall, where the stroller must have been pushed through, where Natasha went in to hide from the police and instead found the twins. Harper put her head inside. Spent needles and empty plastic bottles littered the floor of the space, which was partially open to the elements. Imprints of the stroller’s wheels showed in the dust between the flagstones.
So much of this felt wrong, but the meaning of the wrongness eluded her. Truth to Harper was like a blade sometimes, she could see it so clearly, the right and the wrong, the real and the false. This case had a murky cloud surrounding it, the shape of it, obscured. ABC, she thought, get back to the basics: assume nothing; believe no one; check everything. An itch of something at the back of her mind, then. What was it she’d forgotten to check?
Harper took out her phone, flicked open her email and searched her inbox for the mp3 file of the 999 call Lauren had made from the maternity unit just after she had the babies. She pressed the play icon and held it to her ear. As she listened, she started to walk back the way she had come.
The operator was a young man, calm and professional.
“Nine-nine-nine, which service do you require?”
“There’s a woman and she’s trying to take my babies. Help me.”
Lauren’s voice was almost unrecognisable. Shrill and panicked.
“What’s your name, please?”
“She’s trying to get in, I’ve locked the door but she’s trying to get in go away you bitch get away from us—”
“Madam? Can you confirm your location, please?”
“I’m in the hospital, the Infirmary, the maternity ward, please send someone to make her go away.”
“You’re in the maternity ward at the Royal Infirmary Hospital? Is that right?” The sound of the operator’s fingers on the keyboard, inputting information to the system.
“Yes, yes, I’m locked in the bathroom, but she’s trying to get in.”
“Is there someone there with you?”
“My twins, my babies, they’re safe in here with me but she’s trying to unlock the door from the outside, she’s trying to take my babies don’t you understand? Help me.”
“Try to stay calm. I’ve already let the hospital know and someone will be there very shortly. I’m going to stay on the phone until someone is there with you. Can you tell me your name please?”
“Lauren Tranter.”
“Lauren, don’t worry, I’ve alerted the hospital security, and help will be with you soon. Very soon, OK?”
“Make them hurry up, I can’t hold it for long, she’s too strong. She’s turning the lock from the outside, it’s turning—”
“Are you hurt in any way, Lauren?”
“My arm, she …”
There was a sound then, a hissing sound, and Harper couldn’t make any sense of it. She played the section several times. It sounded like someone was putting on a funny voice and saying something, but it was impossible to make it out. Then Lauren shouted, “No, no—” and the call was cut off.
Harper crossed the river, and made her way back towards the cafe. She replayed the hissing section once more, and this time she heard a few words among the jumble of incomprehensible sounds. The voice seemed to say, “What’s fair? You had everything …” She had to play it again, and even then she wasn’t sure she’d heard correctly. The sound was too fuzzy, a radio between two stations. Immediately she clicked to forward the message to Forensics, who could have it cleaned up and analysed within a couple of days, sooner if she pushed for it, before remembering Thrupp’s warning: she had to go through him now, for every bit of Forensics budget, no matter for what or how small a job. That meant waiting until she was back at the office, going begging to Thrupp, standing there while he scrutinised the evidence and decided if it was worth their while. Cursing, she pocketed the phone and jogged past the cafe, towards the car.
* * *
In Thrupp’s
office, Harper stood in front of the desk. She hated having to ask. But she had to try. She had to check everything.
“There’s a recording that I’d like to have analysed. I need you to authorise it for Forensics.”
“Is this for the Tranter twins abduction case?”
“Yes. It’s from the 999 call Lauren Tranter made from the hospital. Despite the doctors’ reports asserting that there was no intruder, the tape suggests that there was one.”
Thrupp rolled his eyes. “Oh, that. Haven’t we wasted enough time on that? The doors were locked, the nurse said there was no one there. Is the tape conclusive evidence? Good enough to contradict the statements of a senior midwife and a consultant psychiatrist?”
She couldn’t lie, not directly into his face. “Not exactly. But if we have it analysed—”
“OK. Do you have a suspect in mind?”
No, she did not. But she couldn’t say that. “Maybe it was Natasha Dowling.”
“Aha. Didn’t we just eliminate Natasha Dowling?”
“Yes, but I think there’s more to it. Perhaps she had an accomplice, we’ve not considered that. I came across this article, which may be of interest.” She handed over the photocopy from the Mail.
When Thrupp had read it, he snorted and handed it back. “Where did you get this from?”
“A journalist, if you must know.”
“Well,” said Thrupp, “let’s not start letting the hacks do our jobs for us, shall we? It never turns out well. That’s a coincidence. Nothing more. It was more than forty years ago.”
“Yes,” said Harper, folding the piece of paper and putting it back in her bag, “I thought that, too, at first. But perhaps it’s linked somehow. Perhaps the perp from that case is pulling the strings, getting Natasha to do her dirty work.” It sounded ridiculous, even to Harper.
“Seriously?”
“Well, it’s a theory.”
“It’s a stretch, is what it is.”
Harper tried again. “If it is Dowling on the tape then we can still charge her, with harassment. She followed Mrs Tranter, after all, we can prove that much. She’s been stalking Patrick for weeks. And, even if it’s not her voice, then we’ll have something on file to compare when we do find the perpetrator. The point is, it’s worth having it analysed, don’t you think?”
Thrupp gave her a long look. “What does the voice say, exactly?”
“It’s not entirely clear, but the voice makes threats of some kind. It needs cleaning up and investigating, firstly to see what the words actually are, then to see if the vocal patterns match.”
Thrupp made a sceptical face. “This case is about to be dropped, Jo, so the evidence trail needs to be truly rock solid. I mean, like, granite. If it’s just a fuzzy recording of nothing, and there’s no suspect in the frame, then I can’t justify it.”
“The case is being dropped? Why?”
Thrupp started counting on his fingers. “One. The babies are, in fact, no longer missing.”
“Yes, but they were still abducted. There’s still a crime to investigate.”
Thrupp ignored her. “Two. The timeline is vague. Three. The witnesses are unreliable. Four. There’s no evidence to charge anyone with intention to harm. Five. GPS has just proved that Dowling’s phone was nowhere near the babies at the time of the abduction. If we carry on, we’re chucking money after nothing.”
“But, sir—”
“I think we need to consider the mother herself for it. Have you looked into that?”
Harper closed her eyes briefly. Stay calm, she thought, make your case.
“I understand all of your points, sir, but you haven’t heard this recording. I think if we have it analysed, then we’ll at least have all the facts to work with.”
He steely-eyed her. “What I think is, that if we have it analysed, we’ll be wasting money and time.”
“Not at all. If we can identify the voice on the tape we’ll at least have ticked all the boxes. We wouldn’t want to drop a case without making sure we’d done all we can, right sir?”
“There’s no reason whatsoever for us to analyse that recording. It is absolutely clear to me that Lauren Tranter saw no one that night but the ghosts in her own head. She was hallucinating. And, if I didn’t know better, I’d say you are, too.”
“But, sir.”
Thrupp drew a long breath. “Mrs Tranter is the only one in the frame for this now. We have to admit that it’s not a criminal investigation. What we’re dealing with is a mental-health event.”
* * *
Later, Harper slouched in her office chair, staring glumly at the blinking cursor on a staff-development review, telling herself to let the case go. But she couldn’t do it, not with all the evidence she had; she knew her mind would keep working on it until she’d got some kind of answer—or at least investigated every possibility. From her bag she took out the Mail article from 1976 and read it again. Maybe there was something in it—maybe it was the same perpetrator. It wasn’t unheard of for criminals to have big gaps in their offending history. Forty years was a long time, sure, but maybe whoever it was had been in prison for something else, got out recently and decided to try abducting babies one last time. Harper spent an hour searching the archives for the police report that corresponded to the newspaper report. Frustratingly, there didn’t seem to be anything at all recorded in relation to the incident in question. Perhaps it had been filed incorrectly; the digitization of the archive had been done on the cheap, of course. There might still be a paper copy somewhere that had been overlooked, but if that was the case, it could take weeks to lay hands on what was probably a single thin sheet of A4, tucked behind a box file, somewhere among the towering shelves and stacks of crates in the vast basement storage facility. She gave up looking for the report and spent a while searching for similar incidences of twin-abduction cases with female perpetrators, but also found nothing.
Research was not one of Harper’s best skills; if only Amy were there to help. She checked her phone for messages, but there was still no reply to Harper’s lame apology she’d sent first thing about the way she’d behaved the night before. Then all at once, she knew exactly what to say to get a response.
I need your help on this case. Totally OFF THE RECORD. Are you in?
Within two minutes, the screen lit up with Amy’s reply:
YES. Where shall we meet!?
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
Harper pulled up to the kerb outside the Mail offices so that Amy could jump in.
“I found them,” she said, pushing a piece of paper into Harper’s hands. It contained the contact details for the victims from the 1976 case.
“You’re a bloody genius,” said Harper.
“I wasn’t going to be the first to say it,” said Amy, “but I suppose you’re right.”
The mother’s name was Victoria Rose Settle, and the twin boys were Robert and Vincent, born at 0141 and 0147 respectively on 2nd July 1976. Amy found the family easily—a search of Sheffield’s public birth records from that year showed only two sets of identical twins born at the right time, and the other set were female. But, when Harper tried the current listed phone number for Mrs Settle while Amy listened, a man told her that his mother no longer lived there.
“Perhaps you’d be able to pass on a message,” said Harper. “I’d really like to talk to her if possible.”
“Why on earth would the police want to talk to her?”
“She may have some information that could help us in a current case.”
“I doubt that, Sergeant.”
“If you don’t mind, I’d like to ask her anyway.”
“You say this is a current case?”
“That’s right.”
“Then I don’t see how she could help you. She hasn’t even been outside on her own for nearly nine years.”
“This relates to a crime recently committed, but the questions I have are to do with something that happened to your mother during July of 1976. There appea
r to be some similarities to our case that we’d like to investigate.”
“Nothing happened to my mother in July 1976. Unless you mean having me and Vinny. I expect that kept her pretty busy. But nothing involving any crime, as far as I know. Surely I would know if that was the case?”
Harper felt she wasn’t getting anywhere. Perhaps she should try a different tack.
“Mr Settle. Robert?”
“That’s right.”
“Is it possible she might not have told you about it? That maybe she might not have wanted you to know?”
“Oh,” said Robert, drawing out the sound as he considered. “Well. I suppose. If she … did she commit a crime? She’d probably have kept that to herself.”
Harper left a small pause, enough to cast doubt, but not sufficient to confirm or deny.
“I would rather talk to her about this, if you don’t mind. I can call her directly, if you’ll just give me the number.”
“I’m afraid you won’t be able to. She’s got dementia. Early onset Alzheimer’s. She barely knows who I am anymore.” A small sob escaped from Robert Settle then.
Harper hesitated. She felt bad for him. She could imagine that dementia was a particularly cruel way to lose a loved one. “I’m sorry to hear that. It must be very difficult for you. I’m so sorry to have called out of the blue like this.”
There was a silence. Then Robert said, “Mind you, if it’s something from forty-odd years ago, then I don’t know. Maybe you’ll get something out of her.”
“Really?”
“She can’t remember what she had for breakfast. She doesn’t recognise her own children most of the time, but sometimes things come back to her, from when she was younger. Actually she was telling me about the birth only the other day—a bit too much information, to be honest. Maybe it’s the weather, triggering something in her mind. She thought it was still the seventies.”
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