by Jake Cross
‘Yes. Most of our friends will be in there. There’s a photo album in Josie’s room.’
‘Could we go to Josie’s room, please?’
All three made the journey, following the wet tracks. In the hallway, Adams stopped and tilted his head back.
‘Got a ladder for this?’ He was tall enough to reach overhead and try the sliding bolt on the attic door. It wouldn’t budge.
‘Why do you want to look up there? It’s empty. We have a garage at my father’s for our stuff.’
Lowth ushered Anna onwards. Adams followed, attic forgotten. Beside the door to the kitchen was the cubbyhole at the end of the hall, a curtained alcove with a desk and desktop computer and a box where they kept all their bills and other paperwork. Adams pulled the curtain for a glance inside.
‘I can get a photo of Nick,’ Anna said. She ducked into the cubbyhole and quickly returned with a passport, which Lowth took with a curious look as they moved into the kitchen.
Adams spotted the cellar door and opened it. He stabbed torchlight inside. As he shut the door, he glanced at the fridge and said, ‘That’s a mean stare-down face. He’s a big guy.’
On the fridge was a picture of Nick in just shorts. Heavily bearded, shaved head, muscled and tanned and growling at the camera, his hands clenched into raised fists. He looked like an animal. It was a picture Nick had had taken when he was cutting fat for a bodybuilding competition, and now used to put him off raiding the fridge for junk food.
Anna ignored the remark. She walked through the other door in the kitchen. ‘This is Josie’s room.’
As soon as Adams had had a look at the wet floor and shut window in there, he turned to head out of the room. Lowth handed him the address book and got in front of the doorway, as if to prevent Anna from following him. She asked for the photo album. It was on a little shelf above the bed. Anna handed it to the police officer. She heard a loud click and knew that Adams had returned to the trapdoor. She realised why.
‘He’s going into the attic. My god, do you think my husband and daughter are hiding? It locks from the outside. Why on earth—’
‘We have to check the whole house, Mrs Carter. I’m sorry. We have to do that. We’re not assuming anything.’ Her eyes cast around. ‘This is a very bare room.’
Despite the officer’s claim, Anna sensed a direct assumption. But she understood why. This was a tiny place that Anna had planned for a washing machine and tumble drier, since it was a kitchen annex, but Josie had wanted it as her bedroom. Hardly five feet wide, laminate wood floor, no hallway access, and bare but smooth plaster walls. Not a single toy or poster. The cheap four-foot bed was the only indication that a child slept here. A cold room, but, again, how Josie wanted it. Visitors had made the same remark, the same assumption, the officer just had, and Anna gave the police officer the same answer as always.
‘Josie has trouble sleeping when her mind races. She can’t sleep with toys and things around. She’s got a playroom. What she wants here is “Just a sleepy place”. It doesn’t mean we don’t care.’
Lowth nodded with a reassuring smile. ‘My boy’s the opposite. He needs a mountain of toys on his bed or he won’t sleep. Why don’t you show me the photos? And talk me through the events of this evening, leading up to when you discovered your husband and daughter missing.’
Anna wanted to sit on Josie’s bed but the officer told her she shouldn’t. They stood side-by-side and Anna allowed the other woman to flip the pages in the album. It immortalised Josie playing with toys, and riding her bike on the driveway, and donning school uniform, and so much more. Despite the emotional assault of recounting ‘events of the evening’, the heavy emptiness of the room faded from Anna’s heart as she watched Josie’s five years from baby to little lady pass in sixty seconds. The officer paused over the most recent picture of her. Ginger hair, long and wavy, in a photo from a month ago. In that, and others, she wore a colourful beaded necklace, a gift from her grandmother that she wore constantly, even asleep, even in the bath.
‘I’m going to take a thousand more when Josie comes home,’ Anna said, wiping away tears running down her cheeks. She slipped the photo out of its sleeve.
But the officer took it from her. ‘Do you mind if I take this? I’ll need one of your husband, too.’ It killed the moment, which brought it all crashing back upon Anna. ‘Is your neck okay?’
Anna realised she’d been scratching at her neck. She stopped. At that moment Adams appeared in the doorway and said, ‘Mrs Carter, Chief Inspector Miller would like a word, please.’
That was when she became aware of other voices in the house. More police, who she hadn’t heard arrive. And a Chief, which meant she’d been taken seriously.
Detective Chief Inspector Lucy Miller, Homicide and Major Enquiry, was a trim forty-something with a creased beige skirt suit as functional as her short blonde hair and negligible make-up, and she was in Josie’s playroom, standing amid the carpet of toys. She nodded a greeting and introduced herself and her colleague, Detective Sergeant Liam Bennet, an older man, very tall with an acne-scarred face, who was taking photos of the room on a tablet computer that seemed like a regular mobile in his big spade of a hand. Miller didn’t move but Bennet stepped up to shake her hand, which seemed to swallow hers. His movement was ungainly, as if he was unused to being so tall.
‘Have you been out searching?’ Anna asked, slotting away the cordless after another failure to find Nick. She no longer expected to reach him on his mobile, but each time the call went straight to voicemail was a stab in the heart.
Miller gave her a smile, soft, slight, enough just to offer a sense of comfort. ‘Ah, we’re going to do what we can to bring your daughter back to you. Josie, she’s called?’ Her voice was scratchy, as if she had a cold or a dry throat, and the accent mild, but certainly not Yorkshire.
Anna looked at Josie’s painting table. It reminded her that the last time she’d seen her laughing had been right there, just moments before she sent the little lady to bed. Josie had gone with a long face because Anna had yelled at her for drawing on a wall. Anna couldn’t get that sorrowful look out of her mind. Dabbing at what seemed like an endless flow of fluid from her eyes, she said, ‘Yes. My husband is Nick. Have you got people out looking?’
‘Well, we have to take this slowly and gather more information, but we’re taking your claim very seriously. Local policing teams across Yorkshire have been informed of a possible abduction, but we need more information before we do anything like issue public alerts. And I am trained in hostage crisis negotiation. So, please, accept we’re not downplaying anything here. I know you’ve told this before, dear, but I need you to run through for me exactly why you think they’ve been kidnapped.’
She didn’t like the sense of doubt she got from the woman’s body language. The uniformed police officers had expressed the same emotion once they’d been in the house a minute or so. She knew kidnapping was a rare offence, but surely it wasn’t alien to these people, even in urban Sheffield. ‘Don’t you believe me?’
Miller didn’t directly answer that. ‘I can list Josie as missing on the Police National Computer. And the Missing Persons Unit, they can build a profile based on data from previous cases. Those are important first steps, dear.’
‘Can? You mean you haven’t done that yet? Why not?’
‘Apologies. This is very confusing for you, I completely understand. I’ll explain, dear, I will. A couple of things first, though.’ She waved Nick’s passport, which Adams must have handed to her. ‘Your man, does he have friends or family abroad?’
‘No. Why?’
‘Just a moment, dear. Let me ask a few things first. Number two, and I apologise in advance for this, but I do have to ask it – does he ever hurt Josie?’
‘What? Of course not. What makes you think that?’
‘I’m sorry. I don’t think that at all, dear, but it’s a question that’s got to be asked. Lastly, he drives a Vauxhall Combo van, doesn’t he? Usually p
arked out the back, I hear? Can you show me it?’
She couldn’t now avoid suspecting that the police weren’t taking her claims seriously, and she was starting to get impatient and angry. ‘Is any of this relevant? I’d like to know what steps you’re taking to find my daughter. My husband.’
‘It’s relevant, I promise. Please? Show me his van?’
‘The van is out back, yes. Why do you need to see it?’
‘I’ll explain shortly. Before we go, my DS Bennet here needs the password to your computer. You can’t find your phone, I understand?’
‘I thought I picked it up. Maybe it’s still in the bedroom. Please tell me, why do you want to see Nick’s van?’
‘I just want to see it, dear. Part of the process. We’ll find the phone for you, no worries. Oh, and which school does your daughter attend?’
Certain that her naïvety didn’t mean the police didn’t know their business, Anna gave the school’s name and the computer password and then followed Miller into the living room. They exited into the slowing rain and followed the slab path that skirted around the edge of the garden and led to the gate in the high back hedge. Anna had to step carefully because she was barefoot.
Just before they exited the garden, Anna became aware that she was dirty and still in a dressing gown that showed a lot of thigh. ‘Can I ask why I wasn’t allowed to change?’
Miller said, ‘I’m sorry about that, dear. It’s a forensic thing. But we don’t need your clothing now, although do you mind waiting to change until we head back inside? Just be careful of your feet out here.’
‘Forensic? What do you mean?’
Miller waved a hand. ‘Technical, dear. Explain later. Show me which van belongs to your husband, please.’
They were on a cul-de-sac between the rear gardens of Anna’s street and those of the neighbouring one, hedges and bungalows this side, panel fencing and two-storey semis across the way. All the semis were dark except for the light she had seen flick on, seemingly so long ago now.
Anna wanted the darkness of the street to be playing a trick, but she knew that wasn’t the case.
‘I don’t get it. I know he drove home. I always ask if his journey was okay. He would have said if he didn’t have the van.’
In the turning circle at the end, thirty metres away, she could clearly see an empty space where Nick always left his van overnight.
Miller didn’t seem half as confused: ‘Ah, well, we think he drove off in the van. I hate to say this, but—’
‘But what? Has it been stolen by the people who took my family?’
‘Not what we think, I’m afraid. People with abduction in mind, they have their own vehicles, dear. Well, of course, we’re going to get whatever CCTV covers this street, to make sure. But the evidence, which, yes, I’ll run through with you, well, it tells a different story.’
‘What story? What are you saying?’
Backlit by weak streetlight, the detective’s face was in shadow. Nonetheless, Anna was sure she could see dismay at what the older woman was about to impart. Upright seriousness had suddenly replaced her casual demeanour and genuine smile, which Anna had begun to consider an act designed to give this interrogation a coat of calm.
‘We think your husband took your daughter.’
She was drowning, but there was suddenly a chance to surface for air. It was a desperate attempt, and she’d realise it as such in a few moments. But until then she grabbed and held tightly to what had popped into her head, just to keep afloat.
It explained everything. Unable to find the keys to her car, Nick had taken Josie out the back, to his van, but he’d forgotten his keys and had had to re-enter the house. And he’d left the patio door open because shutting it would have involved putting Josie down on a bad ankle. How could she have not realised earlier? Josie would return soon with her foot in a cast covered in I’ve-been-a-brave-girl stickers, Nick with surprise and massive guilt.
‘The hospital. That’s why you didn’t want to say. Is that where they are?’
They were sitting on a two-seater wooden bench that faced the house from against the back hedge, which was the last fragment of the garden to lose the setting sun. This close to Miller, she could smell a strange mix of body odour and the deodorant used to try to cover it. Side-by-side, Anna had the angle to see a portion of a breast tattoo – head and shoulders of a man wearing a medieval battle helmet – poking out of the detective’s bra as the woman sat up sharply.
‘Anna, no, there’s no evidence of that. We really shouldn’t assume anything while there’s no evidence. You should stop scratching your neck.’
Anna’s finger dropped from her throat. ‘But… the blood… on the step.’
She touched Anna’s arm. ‘Mud. I’m sorry, dear, we only saw mud. Probably scraped off his feet before he re-entered the house. I’m sorry if I gave you the wrong impression.’
Anna raised the hand that she had caught her fall with. In the moonlight, no red tint to the stain on her palm. Just the brown of soil. Just a basic dirty hand. Had she imagined the blood? She had a rising dread that the detective believed in something far worse than anything Anna had considered. And then it came to her, and she found nothing but straws to clutch at.
‘You think Nick abducted my daughter for some reason? That’s what you mean, isn’t it?’
‘The evidence is telling me your man left the house with young Josie. But not why. We’ll find the why. I’m sorry, I must ask again – could Nick have hurt Josie?’
‘Nick wouldn’t run away with Josie, and he wouldn’t ever hurt her. Don’t say that again. How can you possibly think that Nick just… just left like that? Don’t you have a family? A child? Or a husband?’ Her voice sounded convincing, but inside she was sinking fast.
Miller rubbed a thumb hard across a crease on her skirt, but her eyes held Anna’s. ‘This is terrible for you, I know. I’m so sorry. Evidence, though, it’s always about evidence. God, I hate the awkward dollops of the job. Really. But here we go again: is it true that your relationship with your husband is failing?’
‘What? What makes you say that?’
‘Well, a neighbour called the police, made that call right around the same time you did. Old lass seems like the neighbourhood snoop. She said she thought there had been an argument, because she heard you in the garden. A scream. She told one of my chaps that there’s rumour of divorce. She was the one who told us your man’s van was missing. Her tuppence worth, well, that he might have left you.’
Anna remembered the window light she’d seen flick on. ‘A neighbour? A neighbour heard a noise, and now you think Nick would run away? Steal my daughter from me? That’s stupid.’
‘Apologies, dear. But I’ve worked a number of father-child snatches and—’
Anna was shaking her head vigorously, mumbling no, no, no.
‘Sometimes, you know, with a relationship breakdown, people blame each other for everything. Which can mean one thinking the other is a bad influence on the child. It can be about forcing a child to feel more dependent on the abducting parent. Visitation fears. Forced reconciliation. Revenge. I’ve come across them all, I hate to say.’
No, no, no. ‘This is because of the sleeping bag, isn’t it? Because you think we’re splitting up? I admit we’re still in a bad patch. It’s a slow process. I… you’re wrong. For the last week he’s been climbing back into bed while I’m asleep. I don’t mind. We both want to work things out. For Josie’s sake. And we’ve been trying hard to. So no way would Nick just run off with her. Please stop talking like that. You should be out looking for them instead of… this.’
‘I apologise, dear, I so really do. But it’s what the evidence is saying. No forced entry, Anna. The missing van. It seems Nick might have been dressed. And the sound of rain woke you up, so I’d say there was no fight or commotion in the house…’
The detective outlined it all, and it sounded compelling, sure. As an outsider, she would have made the same assumption. And
part of her prayed it was the truth, because a scenario in which Nick absconded with Josie beat the alternative horror of strangers kidnapping both. It just wouldn’t set, though.
But the why and how didn’t matter in the end. ‘My daughter and my husband are missing. Does all this why and how really matter? I want you to get them back for me.’
Miller gave a long pause that Anna didn’t like. ‘I’m sorry, dear, but here we have a snag, and I hate this part of the job most of all. The police don’t really get involved in family law. Your Nick would only actually be breaking the law if he took Josie out of the country. All I could really do is issue an “All-Ports Warning”, if there was a chance of that. But there isn’t. He didn’t take his passport. He’s got no contacts overseas. The APW wouldn’t be sanctioned. I’m sorry.’
It hit her like a blast of Arctic air. ‘Sorry? What are you saying? You’re not going to do anything?’
Miller looked genuinely sorry. ‘I can put you in touch with a friend I have, a solicitor. He can help you apply to the courts. They can force your man to tell you where Josie is. A Prohibited Steps Order can stop him trying to leave the country with Josie at some point in the future, but it might be easier to ask the Passport Office to refuse to reissue a new passport. Look, I’m sorry, I know these aren’t things you want to hear.’
Anna’s head was starting to throb with a sense of helplessness and abandonment. ‘This isn’t right. I wish I could prove that Nick wouldn’t ever run away. Not with my daughter. You have to search. Search for them.’ She grabbed the woman’s hands in both of hers. ‘Please. You can’t do this. You can’t just say my husband ran away with my daughter and then leave. You can’t.’
The older woman looked at their clasped flesh, and then met Anna’s eyes again. ‘I must ask you one last time, dear. Has Nick ever hurt Josie?’