The Family Lie

by Jake Cross

  The item she wanted was a 3-D glass image of Josie. It was here for safekeeping because her daughter had dropped it once and chipped a corner. The quality didn’t beat a high-res photograph, of course, but photographs didn’t have the same impact. This small cube was the only way she could see Josie in profile, and behind the ears, even though it was a computer guess. If she was lost from her, a photo wouldn’t do. This wouldn’t do, either, but at least she seemed to have flesh and blood, as if she’d posed for a mould. She wished she’d not been so cheap and bought the smallest version available; a giant Josie’s head, almost full-size, would have cost only £400. Nothing. That seemed like nothing now.

  But the box wasn’t on the shelf. She saw it on the floor of the wardrobe, all but a corner hidden by the hem of her red River Island dress. When she scooped the clothing aside, she saw that the lid was missing and the contents were scattered everywhere. The photo cube was damaged. Another giant piece had come free and there was a big chip in the front, right on Josie’s face. Her heart sank.

  The shelf was missing a bracket in a back corner and the wrong kind of pressure could topple it. That was what had happened. But she and Nick, and even Jane, knew that.

  She found DC Nabi in the kitchen, talking on his phone. She showed him the cube. ‘You broke this.’

  He held up a finger because he was in mid-call. She strode over and tried to snatch the phone, but he held it away.

  ‘Hey, what are you doing?’

  ‘You broke this. It’s irreplaceable.’

  ‘I didn’t touch it.’

  ‘You knocked my wardrobe shelf down and it broke, you idiot.’

  ‘I’m on the phone here. You want your kid back, or what?’

  ‘Don’t you speak to me like that. Stay out of my things, okay? All you people.’

  ‘Get out of my face, missus.’

  He got out of hers, though, by walking from the kitchen, phone to ear, a finger in the other to drown her out. She followed, demanding an apology. But he ignored her. He aimed for the front door and was quickly outside. He slammed it shut.

  She turned to see Miller standing in the living room doorway. ‘I’m so nosey, dear. It’s what this job does to you. What did I miss?’

  A polite way of asking what Anna and the DC had been arguing about. Anna was eager to tell her, because she wanted that horrible detective out of her house.

  After, Miller apologised. ‘Apologies. He’s young and brash. Even worse, I’m afraid DC Nabi is one of those.’ She even made floating speech marks with her fingers.

  Anna looked puzzled.

  ‘It’s the university graduates, dear. All those years of study, just to be slotted on to the bottom of the ladder. You should have seen the mess when young new blood started being given senior roles. Now it’s about fast-track opportunities. But CVs and interviews don’t highlight a person’s ego, I’m afraid. It’s when these gifted youngsters are firmly rooted in the job that you learn they think they know better than those with real policing experience. Believe me, Detective Constable Nabi is a bigger pain in my behind than yours.’

  Miller vanished again, just as quickly, and Anna found that her anger had gone. Had that been Miller’s plan? Make Anna the listener as someone else moaned in order to calm her?

  But she preferred the anger. She couldn’t fabricate rage, but she could supplant fear with pain. She squeezed the photo cube hard, digging the broken top corner into her palm, hard enough to pierce the skin. And she would have squeezed and squeezed and wrung free every drop of blood, but a line of red trickle slid down the 3D image and made her gasp in shock.

  Blood, all over Josie’s face.

  ‘Josie, no,’ she moaned, frantically rubbing at the photo cube. When the blood smeared, becoming an image a billion times worse, she shut her eyes and used her sleeve and didn’t look again until she was certain the glass glistened once more. Josie was back, and without blemish, all beautiful again.

  But with her anger gone, pain dissolved, the void deep inside rapidly filled once more with despair.

  * * *

  9.11 a.m.

  Nick walked into Josie’s room, where the crime scene investigator was re-fingerprinting the window sill. He’d heard DCI Miller order her people to give Anna some space, so the Family Liaison Officer was here, too. Since Anna had turned down her help, and he’d refused to talk, the lady had just been hanging around like a ghost, barely seen, barely heard. He’d heard DCI Miller order her people to be seen and heard as little as possible.

  She asked him how he was doing, but he only nodded in response. He lifted the cover of Josie’s bed and found his daughter’s special camouflage-print teddy, Blaze, which slept by Josie’s feet to keep them warm. The teddy had been waiting for her when she was born, and she’d never slept without it. Ever.

  But she wouldn’t have it tonight.

  ‘You know, last year had the highest number of child kidnappings this century, and it’s on the rise.’

  ‘Mr Carter, statistics like that don’t—’ She stopped as Nick pulled out a butter knife and drove it into Blaze’s neck, hard and deep.

  ‘Wow, what the hell?’ the CSI yelled. The FLO jumped back and spilled her tea all over the carpet. ‘Put the damn knife down. In here, quick! Knife!’

  By the time both present and another officer who appeared had grabbed Nick, he’d already cut the teddy’s head off. He dropped both pieces as the knife was wrestled from his hands.

  Anna appeared in the doorway, alerted by the noise. ‘What’s going on? Nick?’

  She gasped when she saw the headless toy. ‘Nick, what have you done?’

  ‘This can’t end perfectly for me,’ he said. He shook the detectives off, and they let him go once the CSI had secured the knife. Nick picked up Blaze’s head and body. ‘Josie will hate me for ever for doing this. And I’m already scared about it. I’ll have to face her. That’s why I know now she’ll come back. Sod’s Law says sod the statistics.’

  * * *

  9.18 a.m.

  Miller took Anna out to her car and showed her its new features. A Rewire Security magnetic tracker, for one. Three microphones and three cameras, one for each front seat and one covering the back. But Anna was more interested in watching the twitching curtains along the street, and a guy who came out to pop his bonnet for unnecessary work, and a woman who felt her wheelie bin needed dragging a couple of inches back, and another guy who forwent a sham and just planted his feet on his garden path and stared. Now that it was morning proper, the street was beginning to feel the buzz of something big happening at number 44. She felt better for being wrapped in glass and metal.

  ‘Don’t worry about them,’ Miller said. ‘I wanted them to see you. See you’re looking okay. Apologies for the trick. I’m buying the car, if anyone asks.’

  ‘I don’t want cameras,’ Anna said, shivering.

  ‘Dear, it’s just a precaution. When you get where you’re going, there’s a chance the kidnapper might want to get in the car.’

  She forgot the neighbours. ‘Why would he do that?’

  Miller touched Anna’s hand, which lay limp on her thigh. ‘It’s just in case. You may be told to drive somewhere. Apologies. We just don’t know, but we need to cover such things.’

  ‘No cameras.’

  ‘I’m afraid we have to insist. Also, you’ll wear a body mic and camera.’

  Anna was shocked. ‘You think they’ll want to take me somewhere?’

  ‘Again, apologies, but it’s possible. But we’ll be protecting you. We’ll have people within range.’

  She didn’t care about that. She just couldn’t shake the feeling that something would go wrong. She’d been hoping Josie would be back with her very soon. The thought of trickery, or even just a delay, was unbearable.

  ‘And we’ll be in contact with you throughout—’

  ‘No. No talking. Not unless it’s absolutely vital. I’ll need to concentrate if I’m driving. I mean it. No damn chatter.’

&n
bsp; Miller gave her a long stare, clearly trying to examine this outburst. Anna saw slightly bloodshot eyes. The lady was starting to look like a zombie from lack of sleep, even though Anna had had less over the last twenty-four hours.

  ‘Let’s head on back in, dear. Give your neighbours a wave, would you. Keep them calm.’

  She wasn’t sure she could do this. She took deep breaths as she exited the car. Up the street, wheelie-bin woman waved. Anna knew her neighbour was hoping for a gossip breakfast. She waved back, just to keep up the pretence of nothing going on here.

  * * *

  9.21 a.m.

  Nick’s second phone call was worse than the first. His hand was shaking as he waited for the phone to be picked up. He fought off images of whiskey in his hand. When the call was answered, and he’d said, Hello, it’s Nick, he got:

  ‘Nicolas? My Lord, where are you? What is going on?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Where are you? What’s happened? Your mobile number didn’t work, have you changed it? We haven’t got a home phone for you. Your brother is worried to death…’

  Two minutes later, visibly shaking, Nick stormed into the dining room, where the DS sat with Miller, working at a single laptop. Both looked round when he roared:

  ‘I just called my mum to tell her, and she already bloody knows. You sent the police in London to her house. They knocked her up at God knows what hour and told her I’d vanished. She was worried sick. They made it sound like I’d been killed. Why the hell did you do that?’

  Miller stood up, but the DS wore the sheepish face, so Nick glared at him.

  His boss said, ‘You did vanish, Nick, and I’m sorry about this, truly, but that’s a hard and fast rule: we talk to the family. But I thought the London lads had been told that you’d been found.’

  Now they were both looking at the sergeant, who offered: ‘I forgot to update them. I apologise. But they shouldn’t have said anything about Josie being missing.’

  Nick shook his head in frustration. ‘They didn’t, small mercies. And I didn’t tell them yet. Because she’s coming back today, so they need never know, do they? But that’s pissed me right off, guys. What other cock-ups have you done? Maybe write me a list of them?’

  He stormed off without awaiting an answer.

  * * *

  9.30 a.m.

  Off-duty volunteer regular officers were getting a taste of detective work by sitting in cars in plain clothes, dotted around the estate, their job to report all moving vehicles. It wasn’t outlandish to think the kidnappers might have a scout floating around, watching. Anything intriguing was noted, reported, checked, and anything considered remotely relevant was added to the bloating action list. But nobody was stopped or questioned. One of the vehicles logged was reported to Miller as belonging to a fifty-two-year-old male with a conviction for assault back in the 1990s.

  ‘That’s my bank manager,’ Middleton said.

  Bank managers love their wealthy clients and this one had agreed to personally deliver Middleton £50,000. That amount, in tightly wrapped £20 notes, neatly fitted into an old shoebox of Nick’s, but it was brought to the house in a large briefcase and Middleton met his old friend on the street to take it. The neighbours would see a businessman collecting his forgotten bag; a scout amongst them, or somehow watching from afar, would know the Carters were planning to pay the ransom.

  Middleton sat on the settee and started to transfer the cash into the shoebox. Slowly, somewhat reluctantly, as if tossing money on to a fire. Most were entranced by the show, but not the Carters. Nick wasn’t there and Anna felt only frustration in with all that despair and sadness.

  ‘How many people have died across the world, even just today, for this stuff?’

  ‘Just remember it does some good in the world, too,’ Bennet said.

  ‘If we’d had this earlier, they wouldn’t have needed to take Josie,’ she said, and turned, and left the room. What she’d said made no sense, she knew, because the truth was if they’d had money aplenty, Josie might have been taken earlier, and the threat of repeat would hang over them indelibly.

  Middleton watched his daughter leave, and while his eyes were still on the doorway Nick appeared.

  ‘The magic potion, eh?’

  Someone actually stepped into both men’s line of sight, perhaps aware of what was coming. But he couldn’t block sound.

  ‘Fifty thousand is a lot, Nick,’ Middleton said. ‘With that you could rent a decent place of your own.’

  ‘You’re an idiot. I’ll be around for ever.’

  ‘Calm it down, guys,’ the detective between them said.

  ‘Fifty thousand, Nick. If you could keep it and give up Josie, which would it be?’ Middleton said. His tone was sweet, like that of a guy just curious, if a little out of line. Enough so that the detectives in the room missed the underlying message.

  But not Nick. He got Middleton’s message loud and clear.

  His response was hawked over his shoulder as he turned to leave.

  ‘I’d burn that up and you with it if it would get my little girl back right now.’

  Anna found him in the cellar, where there was a pull-up bar, and he was working himself hard, as he sometimes did when upset or stressed. The old hanging bulb was off, probably so he couldn’t be distracted. In the light from the kitchen, he wasn’t much more than a silhouette. She was still a little angry with him for the debacle with the child molester because it had injected hope now eroded, and she wanted to make him promise not to take any sort of wild action again.

  He didn’t notice her descend the steps. She was about to call his name when she spotted Josie’s phone on the floor by a small stool. Focussed on burning his muscles, he still hadn’t fathomed her presence, so she picked up the mobile, now consumed by an urge to find out exactly why he had targeted the abuser. She got something far more shocking.

  There was a Wikipedia page of famous child murders. She found a page about police protocol in kidnapping cases. Child murder statistics. Reasons children were abducted. And then worse in a drop-down search history.

  ‘UK child organ harvesting.’

  ‘UK buying a daughter on black market.’

  ‘UK child trafficking.’

  She pulled her eyes away in disgust, and fear, and tossed the phone aside. It clacked on the concrete floor, but Nick didn’t seem to hear it.

  The anger that had brought her down into this cold room was history. Now all she knew was pity, and shame because she should have been by Nick’s side throughout all of this, to prevent his still-addled mind from running amok. She reached out and put her hands around him from behind and her head on his back, and felt ashamed that she’d been trying to cope with her own stress while all along Nick had been most in need of help.

  ‘We’ll get her back,’ she moaned against his slick skin.

  He hoisted himself up one more time, dragging his weight through her tight hug, and paused until his muscles began to tremble. Then he dropped to his feet. But he didn’t turn. She still had that clamp on his torso. The muscles remained tight, still hard even though he’d let himself gain some body fat over the last few months that their relationship had faltered.

  ‘Maybe they should give her cow’s milk,’ he said, barely audible.

  ‘What do you mean? She’s allergic.’

  ‘If she gets ill… if she goes into anaphylactic shock… they’ll have to take her to a hospital.’

  She released him and stepped back. ‘Don’t say that.’ She didn’t want to hear such a thing, because she’d thought about it herself. But in her visions, the kidnappers didn’t leave Josie outside a hospital. They ignored her illness, until it was too late, and they fled from her cooling, unmoving body.

  Her breathing got rapid and he turned to her, regret just visible on his face in the gloom. This time he took her into his arms.

  He said, ‘I’m sorry. I just…’

  ‘It’s okay,’ she told him. ‘This is impossible
for us both. But these people, they just want money. They won’t hurt her. They won’t. Please believe that.’

  He said nothing, which said everything, and she squeezed harder. For a few seconds they remained locked together, motionless and silent, until what little light oozed in from the kitchen was cut down further. Their eyes ran up the stairs. Bennet was in the doorway, head slightly bent so he could fit.

  ‘Take a look at this guy.’

  Nick dragged himself from her grip before she could let go and ran up. She was half a second behind. Bennet showed them a picture on his phone. High-angle grainy black-and-white shot, suggesting CCTV, of a young man in a blue tracksuit, hair in a ponytail but shaved at the sides. The environment looked like a small reception. Nick snatched the phone for a closer look.

  ‘Who’s this guy? Another Passat owner? Is he a suspect? Where is he?’

  The DS took his phone back. He reminded them about paint traces found on the doorframe of the lock-up garage where Nick had been found. ‘When tracing a car through paint—’

  ‘Yes, infrared spectrometry, or whatever it’s called. Move on. Who’s this guy?’

  ‘Infrared spectroscopy. And how did you know that?’

  ‘The cops came to look at Anna’s car years back. They were tracing 05 plate blue Fiat Puntos in a hit-and-run. Paint transfer. Forget that. Tell me about this guy. Where was this photo taken? Do you think this guy has Josie?’

  The DS stepped out into the kitchen and indicated the table. No one sat. Nick urged him.