by Linda Huber
‘I didn’t see any shops, and the street wasn’t as wide as this one,’ she said, stopping at a crossroads and looking right and left. They continued down to the next junction, where the intersecting street was narrower. Nina peered to the left and shrugged. This wasn’t anything like as poor a district as the one where she’d been held captive, but there was no great affluence here, either. She turned a full circle, looking as hard as she could for something, anything that could give her that one vital clue to lead them to Naomi. There was nothing.
‘Hell, Sam, this is no use. I wasn’t looking at the scenery; I was concentrating on Paul and how scary it all was.’
He frowned. ‘Did you notice any people about?’
Nina pictured the scene, her eyes closed. ‘I heard kids shouting in the distance when we were walking to the other car. Smaller kids than Naomi. But that’s all. There was no one nearby who’d have seen us.’
‘Little kids. I wonder if there’s a swing park or something nearby,’ said Sam, and called out to a passing teenager.
‘Hey, man! Any swings around here?’
The youth shook a finger at him. ‘You’re way too old for swings, Grandpa!’ he said, his face one big grin. ‘You try ‘em out right along there and see!’ He pointed down the side road.
‘Thanks man!’ Sam gave him a thumbs-up.
Nina started along the road, not allowing herself to hope. Crossing the first junction they came to she slowed down, gazing up the narrower street.
‘Wait! It was along there,’ she said, excitement stirring inside her. She strode along, Sam following. ‘Look, we drove down here and – yes, I remember now, I saw that house with the green curtains, we parked - ’ She ran further up the road, ‘ – right here! Quick, quick, I have to phone David, they should come straightaway – she might be close by!’
Nina’s teeth were chattering as she pulled out her mobile. She could be within a few yards of Naomi right now.
David’s voice was calm, but she could hear the urgency behind his words.
‘Nina, get right away from there. Immediately, and quietly. If Paul is nearby with Naomi and sees you and Sam searching around, the first thing he’s going to do is leave again. Go back to your car and wait. I’ll be in touch.’
Sam was listening in and he pulled her back along the road. ‘He’s right. Come on, Nina!’
She allowed herself to be propelled back along the road, but it didn’t stop her looking round frantically as they went. Naomi, baby, are you here? If she shouted with all that was in her, would Naomi hear?
An elderly woman was trudging along the road with a carrier bag. ‘Looking for something, dearie?’ Her voice was rough but kindly.
‘My cousin brought my daughter to stay somewhere on this road but I don’t know the number,’ said Nina, wondering if there was actually any point in lying about it. ‘Have you seen her? Ten, shoulder-length blonde hair, looks like me only – better.’
The woman gave a snort of amusement. ‘Wait till you hit my age, dearie. I did see a young chap with a girl this morning, I noticed because I’ve lived here all me life and I reckoned I knew everyone, but these two were new to me. We don’t get many casual visitors hereabouts. Why don’t you ring someone’s bell and ask, if you’re sure this is the right street?’
She waddled on up the road. Nina gave up. The police could search more effectively than they could, and the last thing she wanted was to frighten Paul – and Naomi – away from the area. If they were here in the first place. She passed on what the woman said to David and followed Sam back to the car, where they sat staring at each other. New hope was painful in Nina’s chest, and she had to make an effort to breathe normally. The police were coming. She could be within minutes of holding her daughter.
Or maybe not. She could be within minutes of sitting in an ambulance as it blue-lighted towards hospital, Naomi with God knows what injuries pale on the stretcher beside her. Or – the worst thought in the world – she could be within minutes of watching police cars scream up and park diagonally across the street, officers running to stretch tape across the entrance to one of these houses – the start of a murder investigation. When her mobile rang she could hardly control her fingers enough to answer it.
‘Naomi isn’t here,’ said David. ‘Go at once to the police station and I’ll meet you there, Nina. There’s more news.’
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Claire’s story – Edinburgh
‘Waah, Gran – did you really walk up these steps all the time when you were little?’
Claire laughed, feeling her breath catch in her throat as she and Naomi arrived at the top of Waverley Steps, coming up from the train station. The escalators were off, and a tired stream of early Christmas shoppers were pounding their way up and down the stairs, helped or hindered by the wind that was a permanent feature there.
‘I certainly did. You get used to it, you know. Let’s go and have some orange punch before we visit Santa.’ Claire breathed in, smelling the roast-chestnuts-mulled-wine-too-much-traffic smell that was so peculiarly Edinburgh at Christmas. She and Naomi were spending the weekend here, a belated treat for the little girl’s sixth birthday.
They wandered along bustling Princes Street, Claire’s hand gripping Naomi’s. She could hear children singing carols further along the street. Good King Wenceslas was followed by Jingle Bells. Sweet, high-pitched, slightly out-of-tune little voices, accompanied by a whiff of mince pies from the stand by the roadside – how lovely it was to be back. The ghost of Christmases past. And how odd to think that Nina was younger than Naomi was now when the two of them returned home to Mum and Dad in Edinburgh.
Claire pulled out her purse when they reached the stand, and bought a paper cup of mulled wine for herself and one of orange punch for Naomi. This was perfect, a visit to her home town with her granddaughter – how blessed she was. The tension that had ruled her life for so many years was all but gone – she had made it. Nina was grown up and the two of them and Beth were successfully running the B&B; whether or not Robert was alive and well she had no idea, and while she couldn’t quite say she didn’t care, it wasn’t such a huge obstacle to her peace of mind. Being a Grandma had helped her get things into proportion. She had a wonderful family, a beautiful home… she even went on the odd date now. Life was good. Who cared what Robert may or may not do? In any case she had every intention of living to be a hundred and fifty, so Robert would never have the chance to contact Nina. Miserable git that he was.
Most importantly, she had come to realise that the very fact that in all these years Robert had never taken the trouble to contact his daughter would prevent Nina forging any real relationship with her father. Robert had rejected Nina. And maybe someday the opportunity would arise for her to sit down with her girl and have a frank talk. Explain things. And if it didn’t – no matter.
‘Can we visit Santa now?’ Naomi was jumping up and down, blonde hair escaping from the Swedish woolly hat one of their foreign visitors had sent her. Happiness surged through Claire. It was almost Christmas and Santa was real; the magic was still intact.
Count your blessings, Claire, she thought. You’re the luckier grandparent. You have a daughter who loves you and a granddaughter who thinks you’re wonderful. Nothing’s worth more than that.
‘‘Course we can,’ she said.
Chapter Thirty
As soon as he walked into the room she saw it, and it was all she could do not to scream.
‘Don’t touch,’ said David Mallony. He placed the evidence bag on the interview room table.
Nina stared through clear plastic. Naomi’s blue and white striped sweatshirt lay there, unfolded, looking for all the world as if the girl had pulled it off and flung it down on the table.
‘Where did you find it?’ Did this calm voice really belong to her?
‘It was on a sofa in number ten, near to where you remembered leaving Wright’s car,’ said David steadily. ‘This proves Naomi was in that house at some p
oint. There’s no sign of either of them now, though, so it may simply have been a stopping-off place. According to the neighbours, the people who rent it are on holiday. And we’ve found the car registered to Paul Wright, so he must be using the other one, the one you transferred to beside this house. It possibly belongs to the people who live in that house so we’re investigating that too.’
Nina sat still, her eyes devouring the sweatshirt. All she wanted to do was rip the bag open and bury her face in soft cotton, blue and white to match the blue sweat pants Naomi wore to play badminton back on Arran. She’d folded it and put it into Naomi’s bag on – yes, on Monday. She hadn’t seen her daughter for four days.
‘It feels as if we’re running along three steps behind him all the time,’ she said, the pain back in her chest. Oh God – perhaps her heart was broken. ‘This doesn’t bring us any further forward at all.’
‘It still might. We know Wright has access to that house and we’ll keep it under observation in case he comes back,’ said David, lifting the bag again. ‘Nina - ’
‘I know,’ she said dully. ‘Go home and rest.’ And how impossible was that?
Back in Sam’s car, Nina called The Elms, only to be told that Emily was asleep and the warden didn’t want her disturbed. Nina sagged in her seat. They had run out of things to do.
‘Let’s go home, like he said,’ said Sam. ‘Have something to eat, and you can phone Bethany and Alan. And you know, maybe they’ll find something quite quickly now they have his car and that flat to investigate too.’
Back home, he made them BLTs, and insisted Nina finished hers and drank a full glass of orange juice. She didn’t have the energy to argue with him. She felt dead inside; the pain in her chest was gone and the agony she’d felt on looking at Naomi’s photos that morning seemed very far away. Would there never be any positive news? And talking of news, she should watch the appeal on television. It would be on after the bulletin at the top of the hour. Apprehensively, she stared as TV adverts for this and that danced across the screen. Perfect families, those soap powder people. All clean and smiling and Mum and Dad and the kids. Shit. They said you couldn’t miss what you’d never had, but you could, you could. How very much she missed being part of a family like that.
The sight of Naomi’s face filling the screen jolted Nina more than she could ever have imagined. First the smiling photo was shown, while a male voice read the text. Towards the end the jigsaw photo was substituted in, and Nina sobbed aloud. How sweet and serious Naomi was with her jigsaw, and right this minute no one could tell them if she was alive or not. No one except Paul. Impossible to imagine what she would do if she lost her child. The thought, the dreadful hope that Naomi might soon be found was all that was keeping her upright today.
Sam hugged her as the appeal gave way to the weather forecast. ‘Come on,’ he said briskly. ‘Millions of people are on the look-out for Naomi now.’
Nina swallowed. ‘I want to go back to the police station. If anything comes in I want to be there.’
‘Well – let’s call by, anyway. You can’t sit there all day. And don’t forget Emily – we should check on her too and that might be more useful than hanging around at the police station.’
Nina heard his mobile ring while she was in the bathroom, and came out to hear him say goodbye to David.
‘The police have your handbag, it was still in Paul’s car,’ he said, thrusting his phone into his pocket. ‘Nina, David says there are reporters camped out in front of the police station, so we shouldn’t go there. Thank God they don’t know you’re here.’
‘Hell,’ said Nina. ‘I suppose should be glad they’re publicising it but being hassled by the press is the last thing I need. I’ll phone The Elms again.’
She called the warden, and was told that Emily was up again sorting photos and they were welcome to join her. Nina smiled sadly. What a treasure Emily was, and what a great pity it was that they hadn’t known each other all this time. A desolate by-product of Claire’s lie.
Emily’s cheeks were pink and there were two rows of snaps on the coffee table in front of her. To Nina’s surprise most of them were from the ‘no-people’ selection; only a few had recognisable figures in them, and none were anyone she knew. Unless Paul was one of those indistinct children…
‘You’ve found something,’ she said, sitting beside Emily on the sofa without taking her jacket off.
‘I rather think I have,’ said Emily, gripping her magnifying glass and staring at one of the photos. ‘I haven’t thought about it for years. Your father and George Wright used to go fishing. It was always a ‘man-thing’, the women-folk stayed at home but sometimes the men took Paul. They went to an old farmhouse belonging to a friend of George’s – there was a stream with bass nearby. There are quite a few photos of the house, and some more with different youngsters and fishermen outside – look. You can see that’s the same building in the background here… and here. George was a keen photographer and the scenery was lovely, but there are… a lot of photos of the place. I’m not sure what to think.’
Nina bent over the coffee table. A couple of images were from the black and white selection, but the rest were colour. Five showed rural scenes, both with and without an old stone farmhouse in the background, and another handful showed various figures sitting around the garden in front of the house. Young Paul was there, and another boy. Had George taken these? Maybe the farmhouse was – what a truly horrible thought – a place where her father and Paul’s had taken children to be abused. Nina began to feel sick.
‘Emily, where is this farmhouse?’ she said, taking her great-aunt’s hand. And how difficult it was not to scream out loud, for this was certainly another place David Mallony would need to check out.
Emily rubbed her eyes, a distraught expression on her face. ‘That’s the stupid thing, I’m not very sure. I was only there once; we had a family picnic one Sunday. It was a long time ago, you were barely toddling around. It’s not far from Bedford, I know, less than half an hour in the car.’
‘I’ll call David. I’m sure they’ll have ways of identifying the landscape,’ said Sam, pulling out his mobile.
Nina listened to his side of the conversation, staring at the photos spread out on the table. How innocent it all looked, English countryside and people from decades ago. But the innocence might have been flawed.
Sam finished his call and gathered the photos together. ‘I’ve to scan them through from the office here,’ he said, leaving Nina and Emily looking at each other.
‘Scan?’ said Emily, and Nina thought how the world had changed since Emily was her age.
‘The computer system here can make copies and send them to the police computer,’ she explained.
Sam returned, having forwarded the images, and Nina hugged her great-aunt.
‘I’ll phone this evening and let you know the latest,’ she said. ‘Emily, thank you so much. I’ll probably see you tomorrow.’
For where else would she go if Naomi was still missing – and if Naomi was found, then Emily would be their first port of call, always provided that Nina didn’t have to keep vigil at her daughter’s hospital bedside.
It was two hours later when the phone call came. Nina spent the time on Sam’s sofa staring into the glass of juice he brought her, knowing how fragile her composure was. The thought of losing control was terrifying, and Naomi might need her soon. Please God Naomi would need her, please God Naomi was alive.
Sam grabbed his phone and held it between them, and Nina could see how his hands were shaking too.
‘We’ve found the farmhouse. It’s near Millburn, to the north of Bedford,’ said David Mallony.
Nina’s heart began to race, thudding behind her ribs. She pressed both hands against her chest.
David continued. ‘It’s called Cummings Farm. The land was sold off years ago, and an elderly couple called Wilson have lived in the house for years. It’s fairly outlying, a long way to the nearest neighbours. Anyway, the p
eople at the bottom of the lane noticed a pale green car going up and down to the farm yesterday, but it’s not there now. The Wilsons aren’t answering their phone, so we’re going in to check.’
‘I want to come too,’ said Nina immediately. This was important, the best lead they’d had, was she wrong to feel convinced this was where Naomi was? Or had been…
‘Nina, there are literally thousands of pale green cars in the area. At the moment this is no more weighty than any of the other leads from Wright’s computer,’ said David. ‘You can’t rush around checking everything yourself, you’d be exhausted in no time.’
‘I want to come,’ said Nina. ‘Please.’ She heard David Mallony sigh.
‘Okay. We’ll pick you up in five minutes. But you must do exactly as you’re told.’
She could hear he was already in the car.
‘I will. Can Sam come too?’
‘The more the merrier,’ said David Mallony dryly, and Nina clicked off her mobile.
The car, an unmarked police vehicle, picked them up and Nina squeezed her hands between her knees as they sped north along the A6. David was right, she’d make herself ill if she went on like this. But surely this must be it – a remote farmhouse known to Paul, an elderly couple not answering their phone – and the pale green car noticed by people in the same lane. Maybe she was driving towards Naomi at last, and there was still no way of knowing what her child had suffered all this time. Nausea, never far away now, welled up again and she leaned back, taking shallow breaths through her mouth.
Millburn was a village, larger than Biddenham, and a mile off the A6. The driver stopped in front of a red sandstone church on the High Street, and Nina saw that two more police cars and a paramedic on a motorbike were waiting. So maybe the police were taking this more seriously than the other leads from Paul’s computer; they didn’t take paramedics to every single check, did they? The churning in her gut increased. David Mallony went to consult his colleagues, telling Nina and Sam to stay put.