The Mother

by Jaime Raven

  ‘Well it’s actually become necessary for us to ask him questions as a matter of urgency in relation to another matter,’ Adam said. ‘Would that be possible?’

  ‘I’m afraid not. He’s drugged up to the eyeballs and I’m not prepared to induce consciousness because it might prove harmful.’

  ‘So when is he likely to come around?’

  ‘Not for some hours. Perhaps not even until tomorrow morning.’

  ‘Then I’ll wait if that’s OK. I promise not to get in the way.’

  ‘As you wish. You can make yourself comfortable in the waiting room. It’s just at the end of the corridor.’

  ‘Thank you. Has he had any visitors?’

  The doctor nodded. ‘He has a son who came in early today. But I gather Mr Lomax is divorced and his parents are no longer alive.’

  ‘Would it be all right if I just pop in and see him?’

  ‘Don’t see why not.’

  Lomax was lying on the bed hooked up to a drip and a monitor, and there was a thick bandage around his chest. But his face was uncovered and after a close look Adam realised that he had never met the guy before.

  He was in his forties, with a lined forehead and a crown of curly fair hair. Adam touched his arm and asked him to wake up. But Lomax didn’t move a muscle. He was out cold and breathing heavily.

  Adam looked at his watch. Just after five. He decided he had no option but to stay until the guy came to. He couldn’t walk away without knowing if the man they called The Keyholder held the answer to Molly’s whereabouts.

  48

  Sarah

  A handful of reporters and photographers were still hanging around in front of my block. But I managed to avoid them by parking in the road behind it and using the rear entrance.

  My head was pulsing with a deep, relentless ache by the time I stepped back into my flat. So the first thing I did was dose up on paracetamol. Then I poured myself a glass of wine and puffed on a cigarette.

  I was glad I’d forced down the bacon sandwich earlier because it meant I didn’t have to think about food. I did not want to think about anything other than my precious daughter.

  Despite the promising developments, the fear that I would never see her again was like a raging fire inside me.

  I longed so much to hold her and smell her and smother her with kisses. I wanted to put her on my lap and tell her she was safe and that I would never let any more harm come to her.

  I found myself in her bedroom again, clutching the wine glass and talking to her as though she could hear me.

  ‘It won’t be long, sweetheart. You’ll soon be back with Mummy. I promise.’

  I ran my fingers over her clothes and pillow. I breathed in the scent of her and it made me shake with emotion.

  When my glass was empty, I went downstairs for a refill. I was in the kitchen when my phone rang, and as usual now my heart did a backward somersault.

  It was Adam, calling to tell me that he was following up a lead.

  ‘The guy I need to speak to has been stabbed,’ he said. ‘He’s in hospital and I’m waiting for him to wake up. It’s possible he knows where Bobby Knight is.’

  Adam filled me in on Eddie Lomax and why he was known in the underworld as The Keyholder. The revelation made me feel tense but hopeful. Was it really possible that the man could lead us to Molly?

  ‘So I can’t leave without talking to him,’ he said.

  ‘Does Brennan know?’

  ‘Not yet, and I don’t want him to. He’ll just make me step back from it and if I do there’s no way they’ll get the guy to open up.’

  ‘Well you need to be careful.’

  ‘I know and I will,’ he said, before hanging up.

  I took the fresh glass of wine into the living room and switched on the television. There was nothing else for me to do and it was encouraging to see that the story was still leading all the news bulletins. Publicity could only be a good thing, I told myself.

  Most of the content was a rerun of what had gone before, but at ten o’clock the BBC carried a short clip of an interview with Bobby Knight’s mother and brother. The reporter had caught them arriving outside the mother’s house in Peckham.

  She looked nothing like the woman I’d seen at the Old Bailey during her son’s trial. She had aged considerably and her face was full of bags and wrinkles.

  ‘I want to believe that Bobby is still alive but I’m convinced that he isn’t,’ she said tearfully. ‘I’m also convinced that he had nothing to do with the abduction of that little girl.’

  Her youngest son, named on the screen as Noah Carter, stepped between her and the camera and said, ‘Can I ask you please to respect my mother’s wish to be left alone. We won’t be giving interviews, but I want it to be known that we’re cooperating fully with the police and we do not know what’s happened to my brother.’

  They were filmed going into the house and when the door was closed behind them the reporter faced the camera and before signing off, he said, ‘Meanwhile the search for Molly Mason and her kidnapper is now concentrated on the town of Hayes near Bromley where Bobby Knight was last sighted.’

  I sat there reflecting on what I’d just seen, and it wasn’t long before an uncomfortable thought began to form in the back of my mind – could the mother and brother be lying? Brennan had interviewed them both, but what if they had managed to pull the wool over his eyes?

  It was a question I suddenly knew that I had to seek the answer to. And the only way to do that was to go to the house in Peckham myself.

  I knew I was the last person that his mother would want to see. But that didn’t stop me from going online to find Mrs Knight’s address.

  Five minutes later I picked up my bag and car keys and headed for the door. The time had come to act on my own initiative.

  Bobby Knight’s mother lived less than two miles from my flat in Dulwich.

  I parked across the road from her house and didn’t spot any reporters or photographers outside, which was a relief.

  As I approached the house I saw a strobe light from the television dancing across a ground-floor window. I shivered when I reached the door, a knot tightening in my stomach.

  Until this moment I hadn’t really thought about what kind of reaction I could expect, although I knew it wouldn’t be pleasant. I was, after all, the person Bobby Knight accused of stitching him up. He blamed me for ruining his life and his family probably did as well.

  But I was also the mother of the little girl he had abducted, so to my mind that made it all right for me to be here.

  I stiffened my spine and braced myself as I rang the doorbell.

  It was Knight’s mother who answered. She was wearing a dressing gown and looked exhausted, her eyes red-rimmed and bleary.

  ‘If you’re a reporter then you can bugger off,’ she said. ‘I’ve told you I’m not …’

  The sight of my warrant card stopped her.

  ‘My name’s Sarah Mason,’ I said. ‘Detective Inspector Mason. I’ve come here to speak to you about your son, Bobby.’

  A puzzled look wrinkled her features and she stared at me for at least five seconds, as though trying to place the name and the face. Then it dawned on her who I was. She drew a swift breath and her chest inflated.

  ‘I can’t believe you’ve got the nerve to come here after what you did to my boy,’ she said.

  ‘I have to talk to you about what he’s doing to my daughter,’ I said. ‘I have a feeling you know where he is despite what you told the police.’

  Her eyes hardened with anger. ‘How dare you say that to me, you filthy, lying bitch. Now piss off and leave me alone.’

  She started to slam the door in my face but I stepped over the threshold and put my shoulder firmly against it.

  ‘You’re mistaken if you think I’m just going to go away,’ I said.

  Before she had time to react I put my hand against her chest and pushed her into the hallway. She let out a small cry and stumbled back, but manage
d not to lose her balance.

  The fire grew in her eyes and her body shook with rage.

  ‘That’s fucking assault,’ she screamed. ‘I’ll have you done for that.’

  I shut the front door behind me and stabbed a finger at her.

  ‘I don’t care what you do after I leave here, Mrs Knight. And I don’t care what happens to me. But I do care about my little girl and your bastard son is holding her somewhere.’

  I stepped forward and she backed away from me towards a doorway that I could see led into the kitchen.

  ‘Where is your other son?’ I said. ‘I want to speak to him as well.’

  ‘You can’t. He’s gone home.’

  I knew I was overstepping the mark and I wasn’t proud of myself. But I was possessed now by something I couldn’t control. I didn’t see the woman before me as weak and defenceless. What I saw was a ghastly creature who was protecting her vile son.

  Four years ago I learned about her chequered past, about the whoring and the shoplifting, and I thought then, just as I thought now, that she had to bear responsibility for creating the monster that was Bobby Knight.

  ‘Go into the kitchen and sit down,’ I said. ‘We can talk in there.’

  She shook her head. ‘You can’t make me. You’re a copper. You shouldn’t be doing this.’

  ‘I’m here as the mother of a young child,’ I said. ‘Not as a police officer. And as you can see, I’m desperate. So I suggest you do as you’re told before I lose my bloody temper.’

  There was nothing stopping me now. All the pent-up anger and frustration was coming out and it felt like I was plugged into the electricity mains. I was determined to find out if this woman was holding something back and to hell with the consequences.

  ‘Let’s just get this over with shall we?’ I said. ‘I don’t want to stay here a second longer than I have to.’

  She realised I meant business and stepped into the kitchen, which was drab and dated.

  She sat down at the table and as I watched her light up a cigarette I felt myself shaking all over.

  I sat down opposite her and tried to steady my breathing before I spoke.

  ‘The police don’t believe that your son Bobby is dead and neither do I,’ I said. ‘And if he isn’t dead then he must be hiding out somewhere with my daughter. I’m certain you know where they are and I’m begging you to tell me.’

  She blew smoke at the ceiling and fixed me with a hard stare. Then she said, ‘Even if I thought he was alive, and even if I knew where he was, I wouldn’t tell you. Not in a million fucking years.’

  ‘As a mother you must surely know what I’m going through? Molly is just fifteen months old, for heaven’s sake,’ I said.

  ‘You gave no thought to me when you lied about my son and planted the evidence to get him convicted.’

  ‘But I didn’t plant any evidence,’ I said. ‘I would never have done something like that.’

  ‘Liar,’ she bawled. ‘Bobby swore to us that the gun and the drugs didn’t belong to him and I knew from the start that he was telling the truth. I could always tell when he was or wasn’t lying.’

  ‘Your son is a vicious drug trafficker, Mrs Knight. He’s not a saint. He would have ended up in prison sooner or later anyway.’

  She drew on her cigarette again and glared at me.

  ‘Not long before you arrested him, he told me and his father that he wanted to get out of the business,’ she said. ‘He and Lauren were going to get married and start a family. They even talked about moving away. But you ruined his life. You ruined all our lives. Lauren left him, my husband committed suicide because of all the stress and Bobby got fucked up inside because he couldn’t accept the way things had turned out.’

  ‘And that’s why he stole my baby,’ I said. ‘So that he could get back at me. Have you seen the sick messages and photos he’s been sending me? And the videos? He’s even threatening to rape Molly.’

  She leaned towards me across the table and I could feel her smoky breath on my face.

  ‘And why shouldn’t you be punished for what you did? I have no sympathy for you. You brought this on yourself the day you put that gun and those drugs in Bobby’s bedroom.’

  ‘So you do accept that your son is the one who’s punishing me and that this stuff about him being dead is just nonsense.’

  ‘I didn’t say that. I know he’s dead because if he wasn’t I would have heard from him before now. And although it was Tony Kemp who must have killed him, I blame you for that as well. Everything that has happened is down to you.’

  The force of her words shocked me and I felt my hands grow damp.

  She suddenly threw her lighted cigarette across the room and into the sink. Then she abruptly stood up.

  ‘So there you have it, bitch. Coming here was a waste of your time and mine. Whoever has taken your daughter has my blessing. I’m sure he’ll be a better parent than you are anyway.’

  I stood up slowly, my nerves shrieking.

  ‘I still think you’re lying,’ I said. ‘And I’m going to do everything I can to prove it.’

  Her eyes drilled into mine, unblinking. ‘There’s nothing to prove and deep down you know it. Now fuck off and don’t ever come near me again.’

  We continued to stare at each other across the kitchen for what seemed an eternity. If the woman had been much younger I would have grabbed her by the shoulders and shaken her until she told me what I wanted to hear. But she must have been twice my age and she looked quite frail, so it wasn’t an option.

  And that was probably a good thing because I wouldn’t be doing myself any favours if I ended up in a police cell.

  I didn’t want to go straight home but at the same time I didn’t want to be with anyone. So after leaving Knight’s mother, I drove around for a bit, with no sense of where I was going.

  I felt I’d achieved nothing by confronting the woman, but I had discovered just how much she hated me. It was a raw, visceral hatred that went to the core of her being. And it was probably exactly how her son felt.

  I saw a pub and pulled into the small customer car park. Thought I would get myself a quick drink before closing time. Only one, though, because the two glasses of wine from earlier were still sloshing around inside me.

  But one large neat vodka wasn’t enough to silence the screams in my head. And neither were two. When I asked for a third I slurred my words and the barman shook his head.

  ‘It’s time to go home, lady,’ he said. ‘We’re about to close.’

  But he let me buy a bottle of white wine and I took it out to the car. The plan was to drink it when I got home, but I realised suddenly that I was in no fit state to drive. I didn’t even know where I was.

  Shit.

  I looked around and noticed that the pub was called The Bell Inn, and I wondered if that meant they had rooms. So I went back inside and got lucky. They had three rooms and only one of them was occupied tonight. I handed over my credit card and took the key.

  It was a small room with absolutely no character, but I didn’t care. My aim was to lie down on the bed and think about Molly while slowly drinking myself into oblivion.

  But I was still awake twenty minutes later – and had only drunk half the wine – when my phone pinged with a new message.

  In my haste to reach it on the bedside table I dropped the bottle on the floor and the wine went everywhere.

  My head spun and it took a few moments for me to pull the screen into focus and then a few more to figure out how to open the message.

  There was an attachment and I looked at that first through bleary eyes.

  It was Molly and she was sitting outside on grass in what looked like a garden. She was holding a big red ball against her chest and behind her there was a small plastic slide. She wasn’t smiling, but she didn’t look upset either. She was wearing a yellow top and blue shorts that I’d never seen before, and her feet were bare. I could only assume that the picture had been taken earlier in the day.


  I checked the message next but the words were hard to read because they swam in front of my eyes.

  Molly cried today and asked for her mummy. So I told her you didn’t want her anymore. She’s fine now. BTW I’m not who you all think I am. You’re looking for the wrong man in the wrong place. But that’s cool.

  I felt the room tilt and I went with it, landing with a crash on the floor.

  And that was where I stayed, crying into the carpet until the darkness pulled me under.

  49

  DCI Brennan

  Brennan called his wife to tell her that he wouldn’t be home any time soon.

  ‘I’m really sorry, love,’ he said. ‘But this is shaping up to be another all-nighter.’

  ‘Don’t you worry, my dear, I completely understand. Just do whatever it takes to bring that little girl home to her mum.’

  It was almost midnight and there was still a lot going on in the incident room. The latest text message to Sarah’s phone had thrown everyone.

  I’m not who you all think I am. You’re looking for the wrong man in the wrong place.

  So what were they to make of it? he wondered. Was it true? Or was it a desperate ploy by Bobby Knight to deflect attention away from himself?

  ‘It wouldn’t surprise me if he’s beginning to panic,’ Brennan said as the team gathered around him for a briefing. ‘Firstly I’m sure it would have come as a shock when he was linked to Molly’s abduction. He couldn’t have known that Victor Rosetti would spout his mouth off. And then evidence emerged that he might have taken up residence in Hayes. So he could be concerned that the whole thing is unravelling and we’re closing in.’

  ‘If that is the case then I think we should be even more worried about Molly,’ DC Foster said. ‘Who knows what he’ll do to her if he is panicking? If we’re lucky he’ll leave her somewhere so that she can be found. But the ultimate punishment he can inflict on her mother is to kill her.’

  Foster’s words came as a sobering reminder of the kind of person they were dealing with and it gave everyone pause for thought.