What else is there?
I cry out.
No thought for anything but my little boy.
Moments pass, seconds, maybe minutes. William twitches two, three times more and then seems to slow and relax and is eventually still. I lay him out carefully on the bedroom floor, leaning forward, my ear close to his nose and mouth. He is breathing, no doubt about that. He is alive. He is well. He has just had some sort of sudden fit. But he’s okay. I just need to leave him be, let him sleep now, recover his strength.
The man?
From next door?
At the hatch?
I tense. With me distracted by William, he would have carefully opened the hatch, moved the cover to one side and dropped quietly onto the landing below. He is there now, I can sense it, almost feel his presence, on the other side of the bedroom door. He’s heard William writhing about, my cry of fear and knows exactly where we are. I could not help myself. It was instinctive. The man is listening and waiting, ready, after a few moments’ silence, to storm in.
So be it.
I get to my feet.
And wrench open the door.
3.22pm SUNDAY 1 NOVEMBER
The policeman, a new one to the young couple, said a few words to the family liaison officers who opened the door and invited him in. He sat down with a heavy sigh, as if he had been on his feet too long and it was close to the end of his shift.
The young man and the young woman exchanged glances.
The old man, sitting alongside the old woman, spoke first. “Aren’t you PC O’Keefe? We haven’t seen you for a while.”
“I’ve been off sick. But they’ve brought everyone in today as back-up. I’ve been asked to give you an update.” He opened his notebook. “We also need to get you . . .”
“Where’s the plain-clothes officer, the older woman, the one in charge? Where’s everyone gone?” said the young woman.
The policeman shook his head. “They’re all following leads, it’s still our priority and will be until you get your boy back. The Met are now involved too. Your ex-husband and your son have been seen . . .”
“He’s not my ex-husband,” answered the young woman angrily. “He was married to . . . and he killed . . . he killed . . . my sister. This isn’t some sort of domestic squabble. The man has taken our son and he’s a murderer . . . and our son – Rick and mine – is not well.”
The policeman paused and continued. “A man and a young boy answering the descriptions given have been seen in various locations in and around Suffolk, mainly Ipswich. I’ve been asked if you – Mr and Mrs Veitch – would come with me so you can see the footage from a CCTV camera by the railway station and make a positive identification. We think they may be heading to London.”
The young couple got to their feet, with the young man looking towards the older couple, “Will you be . . .”
“We’ll be fine,” answered the old man as the younger woman, pulling on her coat, moved to the front door. She turned.
“Hurry, Rick, we need to see if Will’s on the train for London. Won’t we lose him again, officer, if they get that far?”
“If we can get a positive identification from you and we know where they’re going . . . to London . . . we can pick them up on CCTV as they move through the Tube network. The Met are pretty good at this sort of thing. Once we’ve tracked them, we can pick them up.”
“Go, Richard, and good luck.”
“Will you be alright, Dad? Safe?” The young man looked first towards the family liaison officers and then at the policeman for reassurance.
“They’ll be safe, sir. Your man has long since gone. Your parents have nothing to worry about at all. And we still have police officers out and about just in case.”
The old woman spoke up, “It might be better if you let him go, officer. If you catch him, he’ll kill the boy on the spot . . . if he hasn’t done so already.”
3.30pm SUNDAY 1 NOVEMBER
Funny thing, you know – imagination.
When your nerves are shredded like mine.
I can’t hear that creaking any more.
Just my mind playing tricks. Hard to believe, but there was no neighbour with a kitchen knife crouched on the landing, waiting to go for me.
Old houses, see? That’s the thing. They’re almost alive, creaking and clanking away in the cold weather. Wood stretches and shrinks. Pipes knock against each other. That’s all it was. Just the house going about its business. I stood there on the landing shaking for a while, I can tell you. Can you blame me? Stood there listening for an age, as a matter of fact.
Just in case.
You never know.
Best to be careful.
Me and my sleepy-headed little boy are back in bed now, though, snuggled up this time and just waiting for the hours to pass oh-so-slowly.
The house is still playing its little mind games with me, though.
Tap . . . tap . . . tap. There it goes again.
I ignore it now. I know it for what it is. Old pipes. My imagination. I just blot it out. All we need to do is sit here and wait for the next three or four hours or so and then we go – off to the Mini and away. I reckon by then all the police will have left, other than a few beat bobbies to placate the locals. Yes, it’s going to be easy, the next stage. Easier anyway. A drive to Thurrock, coach, France and off we go.
Tap.
Long pause.
Tap.
Long pause.
Tap.
I just ignore it, really I do. I cuddle my little William instead. He seems to be calm now, settled in himself and alright with me at last, his ever-loving dad. I don’t know if somehow his fit – if that is what it was – has quietened him down. It seems to have knocked the stuffing out of him. He’s breathing steadily, not really moving and not focusing on anything. I gently move his head so it is facing me and smile at him, trying to make eye contact. He seems to look right through me.
Worried?
No, not at all.
It’s just been a shock to his system, all of this. That’s the thing. He looks a good colour and is breathing properly. Those are the main things, aren’t they?
Quiet now.
No tapping.
Just a trick that’s all, like the creaking.
I’ve worked it through carefully. In my head. How we are going to get out when it’s getting dark. I have to bluff big-time. I can’t afford to sneak about or look shifty or hesitate in any way. I need William to be quiet and docile, just like he is now. I’m going to wrap some curtain fabric from the spare room around him. Just enough to make it look like a bundle of fabrics rather than a little boy. I’ll open the front door, lift him up, walk confidently down the path, open the car door and lay William across the back seats. In the car, start up, drive away.
There it is again.
The tapping.
Tap . . . tap . . . tap.
I don’t know if the noise is in my head – whether I am imagining it – or if it is a real noise. The water pipes maybe? The tank in the loft? Perhaps that’s what I heard before when I thought it was creaking; it was the tapping from the pipes going into the water tank. It’s funny, though. It seems to come and go. Different taps. A definite rhythm to it. I’m sure of it. Would drive you mad if you lived here, that’s for certain.
Shit, I’ve been asleep again.
How long this time? An hour?
Not sure, it’s growing dark now, though.
William is asleep too. I’m not sure if I should wake him, check he’s okay. I move my hand up to his nose and mouth. He is breathing and it still seems to be steady enough, not laboured or anything. He looks peaceful, as though he doesn’t have a care in the world. I’ll leave him as he is for now. If in an hour or so’s time, I can lift him as he is, half-asleep, to the car that will be easier.
I’m so exhausted, I couldn’t help myself nodding off.
No sign of the man’s partner.
Reckon I’d have woken up automatically if the fron
t door had opened.
Has it, though? Is that what just woke me? Something must have done. Is the man’s partner now in the house? Did he call out as he came in the front door, just like I said he would? Is that what woke me up?
I slip my arm out from under little William, pins and needles in it, move out from the bed and go over to the door, opening it gently so I can hear all over the house.
Quiet as I can, I stand there, crouched and listening. I can’t hear anything. Nothing at all. It’s quiet now, except for that one thing starting up again.
Tap tap tap.
Rapid now, in quick succession.
Stronger, more insistent this time.
I stand and listen, trying to work out where it’s coming from. Not from the loft? No. Surely not from downstairs? It’s hard to tell. There’s a pause for a moment and then another three taps, spaced out more evenly this time. Still strong and definite, though.
This is odd.
Another pause, and I am waiting for the next three, which, if I’m correct and this is real and not my imagination, will be three taps in rapid succession again. Long pause. Tap tap tap. There it goes again. What makes a noise like that?
Tap tap tap.
Tap. Pause. Tap. Pause. Tap.
What the hell is that? And then it dawns on me. It’s not tap . . . tap . . . tap, followed by tap, pause, tap, pause, tap.
It’s actually tap tap tap.
Tap. Pause. Tap. Pause. Tap.
Tap tap tap.
Put another way, it’s meant to be dot dot dot, dash dash dash, dot dot dot. Or the other way round. I don’t know. I do know it’s Morse code, though. For SOS. That man’s not fucking dead at all. He’s very much alive and in the spare room tapping SOS on the wall to the neighbours. And it’s taken me fuck knows how long to realise it.
Right on cue.
There’s a knocking on the front door.
And, seconds later, the man calls out feebly from the spare room, “Help.”
4.24pm SUNDAY 1 NOVEMBER
God help me, what do I do now?
Think quickly, have to think fast.
Who’s at the front door?
Man from next door who’s heard the tapping? Maybe; but would he have called the police first? Probably. Is it the police? No, they’d storm the place. They’d not send one copper round to knock politely on the front door. That man’s partner? Most likely, but wouldn’t he have a key?
I hear a movement at the letterbox.
“Gerry, are you there? Can you let me in, please?”
The man’s partner.
But he can’t get in. The man – Gerald – must have had the only front-door key. He came ahead. His partner followed. What now? He’ll know Gerald is here; the Mini is outside – somewhere anyway, I’m not sure where exactly. Directly outside or – given the police and TV crews that were here – has he parked someway down the street or round a corner?
“Help,” I hear Gerald call out again. It’s weak and it’s oh-so-faint but will his partner downstairs, the letterbox flap pushed open, hear it?
An agonising moment. Is this how it all ends?
I wait to hear “Gerry, is that you?” followed by the crunch of the door as the man breaks it in, believing Gerald is lying there, a heart attack victim.
A pause, lengthening – as if we are all waiting for each other to do something. I hold my breath for what seems a minute or two more, my nerves stretched taut, not sure what to do, until I hear the sudden, blessed relief of the flap of the letterbox clanging shut and the man walking away.
We have to get out of here now. The man will think Gerald’s popped out and has forgotten to leave a key. That doesn’t matter because the man knows there’s that spare key in the garden by the side of the shed. At least there was. It’s now in my pocket, remember? So what does he do when he realises that Gerald’s arrived but is not answering the door, the back-door key has disappeared and there is, according to the television, a madman on the loose? He goes straight to the police, that’s what.
I’m trapped in here with William. Game over.
Unless I’m fast, really fast. I’ve got a minute, little more.
Got to get out of this house straightaway.
I sweep back into the bedroom, dragging William up and out of the bed by his arms. He lolls for a moment, opens his eyes and falls forward into my shoulder, trying to get back to sleep, thumb moving instinctively into his mouth.
Back onto the landing, I move towards the spare room to fetch something to disguise William as best I can. “Help me,” I hear a barely audible whisper and turn back round immediately – I don’t want William to see that man, who can only just be alive, with barely enough strength to tap on the walls and call out in little more than a whisper.
At the top of the stairs, I loosen my grip on William to double-check the key for the Mini is there in the jumble in my pocket. It is. As I come down the stairs, I have two choices. Out the front door and straight to the car, assuming it’s outside. Or I wait a moment or two longer for the partner to come back round to the front and we then slip out of the back and into the side streets and alleyways that take us to the car I left in the car park down by the Veitch cottage.
I stand, William in my arms, at the bottom of the stairs now. I know I have to take two, three, four steps to the front door, open it as if it’s the most normal thing in the world, and step confidently onto the path down to the gate and to the car. But I can’t do it. I just can’t bring myself to move forward. My nerve, which has held for so long and so far, fails me now.
I don’t know what’s out the front.
Daren’t look. I cannot take the chance of being seen by anyone at all.
Fact is, I’m scared, I don’t mind telling you.
I turn at the bottom of the stairs – quickly, as I could be seen through the glass – and move to the back of the hall by the kitchen door. Someone would have to press up close against the front door to see me there. I know, or at least I’m pretty sure, that the man is going round the back of the house to get the key by the shed.
Not there? What next? Would he assume the worst and break in or go for the police? Or he might just think that Gerald had lost his key, taken the back-door one and had then gone out to the shops to get milk and bread? How likely is that? Not very, but it’s what I’m going to go with. It’s all I’ve got.
I stand and listen for the back garden gate for what seems an age.
Not sure what to do. God’s sake, now William is becoming restless in my arms, close to waking.
I have to do something, and fast, rather than just standing here with the minutes passing, waiting to be discovered.
At last, so suddenly that I jump as if I was not expecting it, I hear one, two heavy footsteps on the patio. A long pause (as the man looks into the kitchen)? The rattle of the handle (thank God I locked the back door). Pause again. Then the voice once more.
“Gerry, Gerry? Are you there?”
He’s puzzled, perhaps a little anxious, but there’s no sound of panic rising in his voice. He sees this as an inconvenience, a nuisance, not as anything untoward or sinister.
I hear him standing by the back door, scuffling his feet and coughing now, clearing his throat. What’s he doing, calling Gerald on a mobile phone? Stands to reason, doesn’t it? Wants to know where he is. Out to get supplies? But Gerald didn’t have a mobile phone on him. Did he? No, I checked each pocket in turn. Did he leave it in his car? If he had a phone on him and I had missed it, he’d not have been tapping SOS on the wall, would have reached for the phone, no matter how much pain he was in, and pressed 9 . . . 9 . . . 9. That’s for certain.
I strain, listening to hear sounds from upstairs.
An ever-fainter “Help” or, God help us, the beeping of a phone.
Nothing, thank goodness.
A moment or two of silence; I suddenly realise I am holding my breath again. The man at the back door swears to himself – just annoyed now, not anxious at all –
and I hear his footsteps, moving away. Now’s my chance. I have to time this just so. In my head, I count his footsteps to the back gate: six, seven, eight? The gate’s pulled open. Was that a click or am I imagining it?
Wait: two, three, four seconds. Not sure.
The gate is slammed shut. No mistaking that. As he goes back round to the front of the house, I have to slip out the back and disappear into the alleyways.
I listen, straining for any sound at the back of the house.
It’s over for us here; it’s time to leave. I nudge William and his eyes open wearily and he coughs and splutters, almost retching.
“We’re on our way, little William, come on – we’re on our way to a new life in the south of France!”
Part 3:
THE DEPARTURE
4.56pm SUNDAY 1 NOVEMBER
It’s dusk and a sea mist is rolling in, giving us cover to get away.
We’re in the back alleys, heads down and hurrying along.
Going back to the car park at the far end of the seafront.
With the man gone looking for Gerald, I reckon it will take 30 minutes, maybe more, before his anger turns to worry. He’ll walk to the shops, check out the nearest pub and call on any neighbours he knows first. Then someone will tell him what they’ve seen on the news, repeating what’s been put out about me.
Lies mostly, if not all of it.
But I’ve told you that before, haven’t I?
Remember?
Eventually, the man, troubled now, would stop a policeman and explain Gerald’s car was parked outside but the house was locked and dark, the back-door key was missing and Gerald was nowhere to be seen.
Him and the copper would knock on the front door.
They’d check the back door, each pulling at the handle.
Sweet William Page 20