The Overlooker

by Fay Sampson

  His eyes were intent on the precinct below the window. He was searching for any sign of Suzie hurrying towards the café. He knew it was a vain hope. She should have been here nearly an hour ago. A cold numbness was creeping over him. He didn’t know what to do next. Everything in him wanted to put the clock back. To keep a close watch on Millie, so that she could not have crept out of the house unseen. To forbid Suzie to go off into town alone to find her. Another part of his mind wrestled with the problem of how he could have come with her and left Uncle Martin waiting in vain.

  He should have sent Suzie to the hospital and come here himself. But was he invulnerable? Were any of them? Whoever was behind those phone calls might have missed Millie slipping out of the house. But they must have followed Suzie. Seen the point at which Nick left her on the pavement. Walked behind her the short distance into the precinct. And then . . .

  The shutters came down on his imagination. He had no idea how they could have seized her in broad daylight with so many witnesses.

  He rubbed his hands over his eyes to clear the unsettling vision.

  ‘We’re wasting time,’ Tom said. ‘She’s been missing for an hour, and we still haven’t told the police.’ He had his phone out. ‘You’ve got a number? I don’t just mean 999. Who did you talk to?’

  Nick retrieved some slips of paper from his inside pocket where he kept his phone. His own business cards, some handwritten memos. He selected Inspector Heap’s card and put the rest back. ‘I’m not sure she’s the right person now. She’d gone cool on Hugh Street.’

  ‘She’s not going to stay cool about a kidnapping, is she?’

  Tom dialled the number. Nick realized the state of shock he must be in to let his son take the initiative. But when the call connected, Tom pushed the phone across to him. ‘You’d better do this. She knows you.’

  Nick felt a numb certainty that she would not answer. But he was startled into action by the sound of her voice.

  ‘Inspector Heap.’

  ‘It’s me. Nicholas Fewings. My wife and I came to see you about a threatening phone call.’

  ‘I told you to leave it to us, Mr Fewings. I know these things are unpleasant, but we don’t think there’s any substance behind it. Just a nuisance call to warn you off.’

  ‘There have been three more calls since. And my wife’s missing.’

  There was silence at the other end of the phone.

  ‘Just a moment. I’m copying someone else in on this. Right. Go ahead.’

  Wearily he went over the events of the afternoon. Millie’s absence. Suzie’s belief that she could find her. The hospital visit. Millie’s call. A sense of futility stalked over him. He knew already that the police would have no more idea where Suzie was than he did.

  He closed Tom’s phone and handed it back. ‘They’re coming. At least she believes me now. She’s taking it seriously this time.’

  Millie had gone quiet. They were all watching the shifting patterns of humanity in the shopping mall below them.

  Nick was watching for the trim female figure of Inspector Heap. Another part of his mind was alert for something less reassuring. He was not sure what he expected. The teenager in the grey hoodie? The seemingly innocent Reverend Redfern?

  His eye caught the two men striding along the shopping precinct immediately. Amongst the drifting window shoppers and the harassed young mothers with toddlers and pushchairs they stood out. Their middle age and masculinity; the speed and purposefulness with which they walked. The way their eyes were scanning the shops around them, on the lookout for something.

  He caught his breath.

  One was taller than normal, with something burly about his build. From above, Nick could see his bald head within a ring of black hair. He wore a dark suit, but the jacket was unfastened casually. The other was shorter, younger, a shock head of golden-brown hair above square shoulders. A tweed jacket and grey trousers. Nick had had a stereotyped suspicion that there would be something foreign about whoever was behind what was going on. Asian? East European? Russian? There were too many fantastic scenarios whirling through his brain.

  This pair looked uncompromisingly white British. He would not know until he heard them speak.

  The eyes of the shorter one went up to the café window.

  There were only moments left.

  He shot a look around the café. The only exit seemed to be the stairs they had come by. There must be another through the kitchen. In a few seconds the men would reach the door.

  Tom had caught his alarm. He half rose to his feet. Millie looked scared.

  None of them had put their thoughts into words, but it was obvious to all of them that the two men had come looking for them.

  Tom had his phone out. He’s got quicker reactions than I have, thought Nick.

  ‘Are you dialling 999?’

  Tom nodded.

  ‘They can’t do anything, can they?’ breathed Millie. ‘Not here in front of everybody.’

  Everybody. Nick looked round at the two women behind the counter. An elderly couple drinking tea. A younger woman with an older one who was probably her mother. A couple of teenagers not much older than Millie, drinking milkshakes. The men had looked powerful, fit. They had vanished from sight below the window.

  As Tom lifted his mobile to his ear, there were footsteps pounding up the stairs.

  The tall man paused in the doorway momentarily. It took only a second for him to identify the Fewings at their window table, made all the more conspicuous by the fact that all three of them were on their feet. He strode across to them, with the shorter man in his wake. One of the women behind the counter gave an audible gasp. The other customers stopped drinking to watch.

  The leading man’s hand went to his inside pocket. Is he going to draw a gun? Here? Nick thought incredulously.

  Tom was already making contact. ‘Police. I’m in the Banana Tree Café, in the shopping precinct. Two men . . .’

  The taller man thrust a warrant card at them. Nick saw the multi-pointed police star surmounted by a crown.

  ‘Detective Superintendent Mason. And this is Inspector Collinge.’

  The younger man flashed a brief smile as he offered his own card.

  For moments, the shattered pieces of Nick’s interpretation of the scene whirled through his mind. Tom’s mouth was open. His phone had dropped away from his face.

  ‘Are you the police?’ Millie asked unnecessarily.

  Mason’s eyes narrowed as his glance went quickly round their fearful faces.

  ‘You called us. You reported your wife was missing. And you said you’d had threatening messages.’

  ‘I was expecting Inspector Heap.’

  ‘Sorry to disappoint you, sir. You’ll have to make do with us.’

  Nick’s mind was making rapid calculations. A detective superintendent must be two ranks above an inspector. And he had his own inspector in tow. Did that mean the police were suddenly taking this more seriously than the theories of an illegal workshop or even forcible prostitution had warranted? For the first time, he felt the warmth of hope.

  Superintendent Mason cast a rapid glance around the small café. The tables were close together. Everyone in the room was listening avidly.

  ‘I think, sir, we’d be better doing this somewhere more private.’

  He turned and led the way briskly downstairs.

  The Fewings followed dumbly in his wake, with Inspector Collinge bringing up the rear like a vigilant sheepdog.

  The precinct had an air of unreality. The shoppers moved past Nick like fish seen from the other side of a glass tank. He was no longer one of them. He inhabited a different sphere of existence.

  In spite of his anxiety, he felt something of the burden of responsibility lifted away from him. Detective Superintendent Mason exuded an air of authority. Nick even began to hope that he might have an answer to the strange events that had engulfed the Fewings. That he might actually know where Suzie was.

  Mason turned into
a walled garden. The flowerbeds were mostly bare, but a few purple and pink petunias blazed a late farewell to summer. There was a roofed shelter in the centre, with benches. The detective led the way to it and motioned them to sit down.

  ‘Now, sir. Let’s hear it from you. Start at the top.’

  Inspector Collinge had his notebook out. A flicker of Nick’s mind wondered why he didn’t simply record the interview.

  He took a deep breath, and tried to steady his thoughts.

  ‘It began two days ago.’ Even as he said it, he was struck with incredulity that so much could have happened in forty-eight hours. ‘My family came from here, a couple of generations ago. So I wanted to see if the house where my grandparents lived was still standing.’

  Hugh Street. Such an ordinary row of millworkers cottages. It seemed an unlikely setting for the drama that was now being played out.

  The Superintendent heard the rest of Nick’s story in watchful silence.

  ‘And then I got Millie’s phone call, asking where Suzie was. She hadn’t shown up. She was supposed to be here over an hour ago.’

  Mason turned swiftly to his inspector. ‘Get some uniforms down here, fast. There may still be people around who saw her. What was she wearing?’ he asked Nick.

  For a stupid moment, Nick stared back at him. He had a vivid impression of Suzie’s heart-shaped face. The intelligent hazel eyes. The way the soft brown curls framed her face. The rosy lips that hardly needed make-up.

  But what was she wearing today? He had no idea.

  ‘White jeans,’ Millie said firmly. ‘And a sort of soft woolly jumper. Angora, or something. Sky blue.’

  Nick smiled at her thankfully.

  ‘Any coat?’ the DSI asked.

  ‘I wasn’t there, was I?’ Millie retorted. ‘She’s had a sort of pinky-purply quilted jacket she’s been wearing here.’

  ‘Mr Fewings?’

  ‘Um. I can’t remember if she put it on. Yes. Probably.’

  DI Collinge nodded. ‘Do you want me to cordon off the shopping mall? Question everyone inside it, before they leave?’

  ‘You’ve got two multi-storey department stores. I’m not sure we’ve got the manpower to cover every exit and question half the town. Just do what you can.’

  Nick realized the horror that the whole world would not come to a stop because Suzie was missing. There were finite resources to search for her. The police were taking him seriously now, but there were limits to what they could do.

  It was not as if they were investigating a murder.

  He prayed desperately that this was true.

  ‘But I don’t understand,’ he protested. ‘I left her on the edge of the precinct. The mall was full of people, like now. How could someone kidnap her in front of them?’

  ‘You’d be surprised, sir. People don’t like to get involved. And perhaps it didn’t need to be strong-arm stuff. Your man might have said something to her to persuade her to go quietly.’

  ‘Threatened her, you mean?’

  ‘Put a gun in her back?’ Tom chimed in, almost eagerly.

  ‘Or threatened someone she cared about.’

  Nick’s eyes, like Mason’s and Tom’s, swung round on Millie.

  Colour flamed in her cheeks. ‘Don’t blame it on me! I didn’t know, did I? Nobody told me.’

  ‘There’s no need to go blaming yourself, lass,’ Mason told her. ‘I don’t know what’s going on at the back of this. But I’m getting the feeling of some nasty customers. You just happened to stumble along at the wrong time. Try not to worry. Inspector Collinge will have got half the force on the look-out by now.’

  ‘Do you think she’s at Hugh Street? Are you going to search it now?’

  The Superintendent thought for a moment. ‘There’s something not quite right about this. He was warning you off reporting the goings-on there. But if he knows you’ve already been to us, why carry on? Like they say, if you’re in a hole, stop digging. I gather we’ve got officers staking out the premises. Hoping to catch more than the small fry. They should have seen if he took your good wife there. But yes, I think we’ll have to go in now, make sure. If you’ll excuse me, I’ll get on to it right away.’

  ‘What can we do?’

  ‘You, sir? Stay out of trouble. I’ll send a police officer to keep an eye on you. If you have any change of plan, tell her.’

  ‘Can’t we help?’ Millie said. ‘Ask people if they’ve seen her?’

  ‘Kind of you to offer, but best leave it to the professionals, lass.’

  Nick looked at his watch. ‘We ought to be getting back. Thelma will be home from work soon. Or was she going to drop in on Uncle Martin first?’ He rubbed his forehead. ‘I can’t remember. But what are we going to tell her when she gets home?’

  ‘How about the truth?’ Tom suggested. ‘She’s got to know.’

  It was at that moment that the reality struck home to Nick. This was not just a bad dream, like the sense of disconnection he had felt among the shoppers unaware of his catastrophe. Once they told Thelma, it would become fact. Someone from the sane, ordinary world would become involved. The Fewings’ frightening secret would become public property. He would be acknowledging that it had actually happened. Someone really had kidnapped Suzie.

  He thought of the cold harsh voice of that telephone call.

  As though his thought had triggered an electronic response, his mobile buzzed.

  For a moment, he went cold, rigid. He was suddenly aware of the others staring at him. Tom, Millie, the Detective Superintendent who had been on the point of leaving.

  He tried to control his hand as he drew the phone out and pressed the key to retrieve the message. He glanced down at the screen.

  ‘AREN’T YOU GOING TO CUM AND GET HER?’

  TWENTY-ONE

  The Superintendent snatched it out of his hand.

  ‘What does it say?’ Millie demanded. ‘Tell us!’

  Tom read it out over the Superintendent’s shoulder.

  ‘He’s taunting us,’ Mason fumed. ‘He’s not even trying to keep it secret. He’s assuming you know where she is.’

  ‘But we don’t know,’ Nick protested. ‘At least, I’d taken it for granted that it wouldn’t be Hugh Street, because he’d know that was the first place we’d think of. But maybe it is. It doesn’t make sense. He warned us not to tell you about it. So why would he lead us there, if it’s supposed to be some undercover operation?’

  ‘Perhaps he doesn’t care now,’ Millie said. ‘If you’ve blown his cover, he’ll empty out his factory stuff, won’t he? Leave Mum tied up in some horrible, boarded-up room.’ She spun round aggressively to the Superintendent. ‘What are you waiting for? Aren’t you going to get her?’

  ‘Hold your horses, young lady. There’s something about this that doesn’t smell right. We’ve got officers watching those premises. If they’d tried to move their stuff out, we’d have seen it, and gone in fast. I’ve told them to alert me if anything happens there, and nothing has. Still, the waiting game’s over. We’re going in.’

  ‘I want to be there,’ Nick claimed. ‘She’s my wife.’

  Detective Superintendent Mason was making for the exit from the park. ‘I understand your feelings, sir. But the best thing you can do is stay out of the way and go home. We’ll tell you as soon as we’ve found her. I gather you’re staying in the area.’

  ‘With my cousin. Up at High Bank. Yes.’ He scribbled Thelma’s address on a business card and passed it over. But an unspoken rebellion was telling him he would not go straight there. How could he not be around when the police broke into Hugh Street and brought Suzie out?

  If they did. If she was there. If it all went according to plan.

  The mocking tone of that message haunted him. Why would her kidnapper want them to come? Why had he kidnapped her in the first place? What good would it do him? A colder thought was quelling his first excitement. What trick had that unknown abductor got up his sleeve?

  Was he even sa
ne?

  He wanted desperately to be in Hugh Street when the police went in. But he was increasingly, chillingly afraid of what they might find waiting for them.

  DSI Mason was already striding ahead across the precinct in the direction of his car. Inspector Collinge had disappeared, but he had not been idle.

  ‘They’re out in force,’ Tom remarked. ‘If you’ll excuse the pun.’

  The shopping mall bristled with police officers. Black-and-white uniforms, chequered hat bands, some fluorescent jackets. They were stopping everyone at the exits from the pedestrian precinct. In spite of DSI Mason’s pessimism it looked like a fairly comprehensive coverage.

  Nick suddenly felt the futility of it. What if someone remembered seeing Suzie with an unknown man? How would it help the police find where he had taken her? What he intended to do with her, and why?

  The taunting text message echoed in his brain. Aren’t you going to come and get her?

  The caller knew that the Fewings had been to the police, but the message had been sent to Nick, not the constabulary. He felt that he, and he alone, was being dangled on a string for the macabre amusement of a man whose motives he had no way of understanding.

  This couldn’t be all about a sordid sweatshop in a back street, could it?

  ‘You’re not really going back to Thelma’s, are you?’ There was a belligerent tone in Millie’s voice.

  ‘Too right, I’m not. Tom, will you take Millie back? It’s over the bridge and straight up the hill.’

  ‘No way!’ Tom cried. ‘If you’re going up to Hugh Street, I’m coming too.’

  ‘And don’t think I’m going back on my own,’ Millie protested. ‘It would be a whole lot more scary than coming with you. From the sound of it, there’s going to be half the Lancashire police force there. It’ll be much safer than Thelma’s.’

  Nick felt an odd sense of relief. He should never have let Suzie go off alone. He would feel much safer keeping Millie and Tom within sight. And Millie was right. The police wouldn’t let them do any more than watch the raid on Hugh Street from a safe distance. But he would be there to comfort Suzie when they rescued her.