Chasing Innocence

by Potter, John

  Shatterproof was etched down one side of the perspex screen, although the ragged scratches and deep chips indicated many had tried disproving the statement. A white-shirted officer, with compassionate eyes and short grey hair, sat the other side. His pen was poised over a yellow form, a tray stacked full of them on the table beside him.

  ‘I think a child has been kidnapped.’ The only statement Adam could think to make.

  The officer’s gaze flicked up over Adam’s shoulder and then back down to the sheet of paper in front of him. Then he put down the pen and sighed.

  ‘You think a child has been kidnapped?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes, my wife is sure a child has been abducted.’

  ‘Why is your wife not reporting this?’

  ‘She…she followed the person she thought abducted the child, in her car.’

  ‘You said she was sure?’

  ‘I am. She is sure.’

  ‘So how can she be sure?’

  ‘She was sure a box loaded into a car had the girl inside. She is sure of this.’

  The officer looked at the yellow page, centred it with a finger. Looked back up at Adam. ‘Where is your wife now?’’

  ‘Watching the driver of the car. I haven’t heard from her since.’

  The officer opened his mouth then closed it. He told Adam to wait and disappeared through a door. He returned minutes later.

  ‘I will take a few details. Then my colleagues will take a statement.’ He picked up his pen.

  ‘Sure,’ Adam replied and they rattled through the everyday semantics of Sarah’s life. When they were done the officer directed him back to the seats. The soldier of fortune was now gone, so he sat in his place, which was still warm. Adam checked his phone again and watched the display in the ceiling flash through a succession of numbers. People walked to and from the booth. The acoustics meant little of the detail remained secret. He watched a tracksuited teenager head towards the booth as a heavy door swung open on his right. A female constable appeared, wearing a combat vest and a bulky belt.

  ‘Mr Sawacki?’ she called.

  Adam followed her through the heavy door into an office. The floors were covered in coarse grey carpet tile, the walls painted a cool blue. The only difference from a real office was in the wall art. Here modernist prints were swapped for posters with big knives, guns and innocent faces. The constable ushered him to a corner office, leaned in and flicked on the light. It had floor to ceiling glass on one side, closed blinds and beech-coloured wooden chairs around a matching table. An ordinary meeting room in another world. He pulled out a chair and sat down.

  ‘Detectives Boer and Ferreira will be with you soon.’

  The door swept closed, rattling the blinds and playing with the posters. We want your gun, not you. And behind him, Know your neighbour? Terrorists live among us.

  He tapped his fingers on the table and resisted the urge to check his phone.

  THIRTEEN

  Francis Boer dropped his keys and phone onto the coffee table, loosened his tie and stepped into the kitchen. He mentally braced himself for the clink of bottles and looked past his overbearing need. He opened the fridge door and pulled out a plastic bottle of water. He poured himself a glass then went back to the living room, flicking off the lights as he did.

  He was too tired to get undressed. He savoured two mouthfuls of the water then set it on the table, easing himself into his chair. He released the footrest and winced through the pain, reclining far enough to take the weight from his stomach but was still able to look through the patio doors. Not that he could see much at this time of night, just outlines and shadows, the bushes and treetops. It did not matter. He filled in the detail from memory. The sun shone and the garden bloomed, the yelps of children splashing in the pool, his wife in cutoff jeans with limbs brown from the sun. He could smell that paddling pool.

  Closing his eyes he let the images play. And slowly another memory sidled into the frame, of a popping cap and the glorious hiss, a bottle cold in his hand and then between his lips, the bitter taste into his mouth.

  Twenty years ago mortality had been a distant destination for Boer. Twenty years that passed with no thought for time. Now his mortality loomed, an ever-shifting shadow flowing through his blood and reaching out from within, carnivorous and uncaring. Just like that. One day worrying if that strain would ever heal, the next searching for flexibility in the meaning of terminal.

  He had not thought fifty-three any age to wave goodbye despite knowing better people that had died younger. He was not being singled out, this was just how it was. The six-month countdown had been two years ago. Now at fifty-five he was living on unexpected time. Time explained by the white-coated with talk of secondary and primary causes, the malign forces in his blood suffocating those spreading within. A body almost too ill to be ill.

  Francis Boer was not a man who believed in hope by divine fingers, but he did believe in hope itself. His life had been his career and his career had been crime, or at least tracking those who committed crime. Along the way it had cost him his marriage and contact with all but one of his three children. As an eager constable he had believed he could make a difference, a belief diminished through time and the endless cycle of human flaws and desires. Too many were the innocent faces that filled his thoughts. Boer’s hope was built on a need to claim redemption for one more. Not to suffer the frustration of a system that relied on bodies to find the guilty, but to save an innocent. Then he would be done. A life for a life. A sentimental hope, he knew, and selfish, a hope almost used up at that.

  He took another drink of the water, imagining that bitter taste, laying his head back on the leather and closing his eyes, revelling in the silence and his good memories. Holding the bad ones away. Somewhere between unconsciousness and the sound of playing children he heard the ringing. He eased himself slowly forward and reached across to the table, flicking open his phone. ‘Boer.’

  ‘Sorry to disturb you, sir, but everyone else is out, I wouldn’t have rung otherwise.’

  He swapped the phone between hands, pressing it against his good ear. ‘What’s the problem, Sergeant?’

  ‘Missing child, sir, report came in a couple hours ago from the father. Then we had a male walk into the station, believes his wife witnessed a child abduction.’

  Boer picked up his keys. ‘You’ve called Helen?’

  ‘Yes, sir, DS Ferreira is on her way.’

  ‘You still have the man there?’

  ‘He’s waiting for you in one of the offices, sir.’

  ‘Excellent, Sergeant, I’ll be there shortly.’

  Detective Inspector Boer closed the phone, pulled on his jacket and checked the time, ten past eight. He’d been home for less than an hour.

  FOURTEEN

  Sarah realised her phone was missing when she climbed into her car. She spent frantic seconds rummaging through her bag and in desperation emptied its contents on the seat. The two pickpockets had not left empty handed after all. Now her dilemma was what to do next?

  She considered running back into the services for a pay as you go phone, but her problem was time. Simon in his Rover could only go west but the next junction was not far. So she stayed in her car and scooped everything into her bag as the Rover rolled past. She followed behind, for just fifty yards.

  The Rover pulled into the petrol station and Sarah hastily diverted to the lorry park, parking behind a thin line of trees separating the two spaces. She dismissed the idea of refuelling for fear of coming face to face with Simon again, or the risk of being caught in a queue and losing him. Nor did she want to assume her phone stolen only to find it later under a seat. But despite looking in the unlikeliest places she could not find it. She tried to keep calm. She organised her bag and folded her coat on the back seat. She made herself comfortable and waited. There was nothing she could do about it now. She watched Simon through the trees as he walked back across the forecourt then followed him down onto the motorway.

  H
e pulled off at the next junction and turned north, her Toyota tracing the same path seconds later. Her heart beat fast and full of hope. Leaving the motorway might mean the end of the journey. It was a hope far from reality. They drove on through narrow country lanes, often in procession amid a weaving line of brake lights, passing through empty landscapes and prim village streets of grey-bricked buildings, brightly lit pubs with windows glowing.

  She started arguing with herself over the semantics of the box. The sound of her voice a soothing antidote as the two cars ploughed through the dark. Then the Rover’s brake lights suddenly flared and grew large. She realised with sudden panic that he was stopping. Simon immediately climbed out, but instead of waving her down and confronting her, he stepped onto the verge, aiming a thin glimmering arc into the ditch. Then he was lost to her rear view.

  She began searching for somewhere to pull over and wait, spending nervous seconds expecting lights to appear from behind. Seconds that seemed like minutes. The trees eventually gave way to angular silhouettes and a number of large outbuildings set back on a rise, a farm, she thought. She reversed up the rough track as far into the farm as she dared, stopping beside the first outbuilding and turning off the engine. The dark immediately encroached and Sarah realised a need of her own, quickly climbing out and around to the back. She pulled down her jeans and managed to balance with her fingertips on the dusty boot, alone with the creaking trees and the breeze rustling dry leaves. The cold busily foraged over her bare skin, up beneath her shirt and set goosebumps across her stomach. Her eyes never moved from the road. She hoisted her jeans when she was done and climbed back into the car.

  To her left was a corrugated barn that blocked her view of the Rover’s approach, hiding her car by the same measure. She would not see the Rover until it disappeared into an alley of trees to her right. She slid down into the seat, listening to the tick of the cooling engine. Time slowed. Two cars passed. She realised as her fingers reached for the ignition that neither were the Rover. Five minutes turned to ten. The heat slowly seeped away into the night and the cold reached in. She deliberated the consequences of turning back to check what he was doing.

  From her right something hard crashed against the door, rocking the car and clawing at the window. Screaming, she jumped violently, almost fully into the passenger seat. Instinctively but fearfully she looked back and saw a golden face with large black eyes, hot breath steaming the window and a pink lolling tongue. The golden retriever was immediately joined by a twin face, pawing the glass together, then the wrinkled inquisitive gaze of a woman appeared.

  Sarah extracted herself from the handbrake, feeling dizzy from the rush, her heart thumping. She lowered the window by a fraction.

  ‘Are you all right in there dear? Sorry to startle you.’ The woman peered through the gap as the dogs tried to pull themselves through it. The woman pushed them away and clapped her hands, and they both raced back into the farmyard. Sarah lowered the window, the cold air welcome on her flushed cheeks. She stared wide-eyed at the woman. The low light was not doing the woman’s features any justice. She looked no more than sixty, with short blonde hair and a kind, creased face, wearing a long ribbed cardigan.

  ‘I’m really sorry, I felt tired and this looked like a safe place to park for a few minutes. I hope you don’t mind?’

  The woman’s eyes were piercing blue diamonds. ‘Mind! I wish just half the scallywags was a’pleasant, my love. Why don’t you come in for a cuppa? You look like you could do with a drink.’

  The invitation seemed unimaginably appealing. ‘That’s so considerate,’ Sarah answered, one eye on the road. ‘But I don’t have much time. I thought I would just stop here and close my eyes for a few seconds?’

  ‘Not a problem at all m’love. You hunker down there as long as you like. Where you headed?’

  Sarah had no idea. She had a vague notion they were driving north but she had long since lost sight of distance and direction. She offered Birmingham as a hopeful answer.

  This earned her a puzzled look. ‘Birmingham you say? You’re certainly taking the scenic route! Do you know where you are?’

  Sarah shook her head.

  ‘Well if you head left out of here, if I recall that’s where you came from, you go through Stratford. Right will take you to Warwick. Was you heading for the M40? There’s no junction near here, you know.’

  ‘I really am out of the way, aren’t I?’ She tried to sound flippant and think of a plausible explanation. ‘I have to admit I was a little lost. There don’t seem to be any signs here?’

  The woman laughed, a musical sound. ‘Well of course not, this is the country my dear. They all got ripped up when Hitler did his thing, s’pose nobody bothered putting them all back. You keep on this road and you’ll end up in Coventry though. My advice is keep eyes out for the M40. You’ll see signs when you get to Warwick, it’ll double you back but you’ll get there. Got some way to go though.’

  ‘That’s so kind, I appreciate that.’

  ‘Is no problem.’ She looked into the empty spaces of the car and then back to Sarah. ‘I’m surprised such a pretty thing doesn’t have some man in tow. Need them to do all the worrying you know.’

  ‘Well, I have, but he’s at home and I lost my phone.’

  ‘Oh you poor love, no wonder you look at your wits end.’ She delved into a pocket. ‘Why don’t you give that boy a ring. Arthur makes me take this when I walk the dogs.’ She held out her hand. Sarah had to blink several times. A mobile phone. She could not have been more surprised if large luminous wings had suddenly unfurled from the woman’s back.

  ‘You don’t know how much this means.’

  She took the phone and the woman smiled wide and knowing. ‘Oh I think I do, don’t you worry. Talk as long as you like, I get all kinds of free minutes. I need it back mind, just leave it on that gate there.’ Sarah followed the woman’s gaze to a gatepost across the track. ‘I’m away now to run a little heat from those dogs.’

  With that she whistled and the two dogs came hurtling past. ‘You take care now.’ She followed the dogs down towards the road.

  Sarah held the phone in her hand as if it were a bar of gold. It was similar to one she had owned several years ago, weighty and thick, the sort that only did texts and calls. She pressed keys and the screen blinked on, throwing a glow across her face. She watched the dogs dart across the road and disappear through a gap in the trees, the woman following behind. And then Sarah let out a groan of despair – she could not remember Adam’s number. She was so used to her phone’s address book, only half his numbers appeared jumbled in her mind’s eye. Her fingers hovered over the keys. Their home number she recalled with instant clarity. As much as she desperately tried, Adam’s number would not come.

  With this lifeline, not being able to hear Adam’s voice felt like a gift snatched away. Feeling heavy with frustration she reluctantly called home, hoping he might be there. The line connected and the answering service clicked on. She tripped over where to start and then began to talk.

  FIFTEEN

  Adam peeked through the blinds at a constable busy alternating glances between a keyboard and screen. It had been thirty minutes and there was still no sign of anyone. And still nothing from Sarah. He moved back to the table, trying not to imagine the worst.

  Outside he heard a male voice, then seconds later the door swung open, the blinds and posters waving in unison. A dark-suited man leaned in, resting his hand on the door handle.

  ‘Mr Sawacki?’

  ‘Yes?’

  The man nodded and stepped in, pulling out a chair. As he did a woman followed, closing the door and placing a notepad on the table. She sat next to the man, their movements separate but synchronised. Adam lifted his chair back a pace and the man rested his forearms on the table, the buttons on his jacket sleeves clicking against the veneered surface.

  ‘Some introductions.’ His open hand gestured towards the woman. ‘Detective Sergeant Helen Ferreira will be leadi
ng this interview.’ Warm brown eyes looked up on cue, her mouth widening to a friendly smile.

  ‘And I am Detective Inspector Francis Boer. I will ask questions if need be, probably more at the end.’

  Adam nodded and they both waited as Detective Ferreira organised papers. Then she looked across the table at him.

  ‘You believe your wife witnessed a child being abducted. Is that correct?’

  ‘Well, not exactly witnessed. She is sure a child was kidnapped.’

  Ferreira’s pen tapped her notepad, then her attention back at him. ‘Ideally we would like to speak with your wife. When was the last time you spoke with her?’

  ‘We talked while she was at Delamere. She was meant to ring when she got back to her car.’

  ‘Your wife was at Delamere?’

  ‘She followed the Rover there.’

  Detective Boer gave his partner a sideways glance. She took the prompt. ‘Why don’t you rewind to the beginning?’

  Adam was in the process of thinking where the beginning was when it dawned on him. ‘I could play you the messages Sarah left me, her voicemails, if you wanted?’

  Ferreira nodded and watched him lay the phone on the table, listening to his messaging service and then a brief silence. Then Sarah’s voice and the waterfall effect filled the room. A voice from a life that felt increasingly distant to Adam. Ferreira asked him to play the messages four times in total, her pen skipping across the page. Adam’s attention shifted from the table to his interviewers.

  Detective Boer’s eyes were dark and sharp, set in a deeply lined face. He looked to be in his early sixties. A moustache stretched the entire width of his mouth, curving down each side. Like his hair it was thickly dark with a mix of grey. He was wearing a once-smart suit, now creased as if it had not seen a hanger in days.

  In contrast Detective Ferreira looked mid-twenties, stylish but understated in a dark blouse and olive suit, her tiredness evident around her eyes, darker and at odds with the latte colour of her skin. Her dark hair was centre-parted and tied back in a thick ponytail. The phone fell silent. He reached over and disconnected the call, seeing something of Sarah’s dilemma reflected in both their faces.