‘Mrs Hendry wasn’t to know that he was going to abduct them,’ she said in a soothing voice in the hope that Lauren would not antagonise the situation by shooting off her mouth and getting the hackles up on the already worried and guilty-looking head teacher.
‘She was negligent in her duty of care.’ Lauren managed to call out, having slapped away Olivia’s restraining hand. ‘A couple of phone calls and she could have deduced that he was up to no good.’
‘Hindsight is always in 20/20 vision. I’m sure Mrs Hendry was too shocked and concerned for your condition when Kenneth paid his visit here.’ Could her partner really not see that she was hindering rather than helping things? ‘Mrs Hendry, I’m sure you would like to get off home, so if you would give me your address, I’ll make sure that someone calls on you to take down an official statement.’
As the woman grabbed her briefcase and made for the door, Lauren just couldn’t let her go without another dig. ‘Do you have children, Mrs Hendry? How would you feel if this were happening to you? How would you feel about the person who had let them be led away without any kind of corroborative information?’
‘Can it, Sergeant!’ barked Olivia as the headmistress slipped out. ‘That was not at all helpful. All you’ve done is put her back up and made her less likely to co-operate. Come on, let’s get you back home so that we can get photographs, and then have a word with the superintendent. And what about poor Mrs Moth, probably back at your place with no information and somehow thinking that she should have prevented this from happening?’
Earlier, at the other end of the phone, Mrs Hendry had also been in a daze of anxiety. If the weeping figure of Mrs Moth hadn’t been enough, the fact that the children’s mother was a police officer had made her blood run cold. How could she have been so stupid? But the man had seemed so plausible. He was so respectable, and he seemed genuinely worried about his wife.
There were little touches like his tie being slightly askew, his hair slightly rumpled, as if he had run his fingers though it in despair, and she remembered thinking it had been bad enough for him for his marriage to break up without him coming home on leave to discover that his wife was seriously injured and in hospital. He seemed charming, but at his wits’ end. How was she to know that it was all an act to get his hands on the children?
Of course she should have made a few corroborative phone calls before releasing them into his care, but how was she to realise that this was all a plan to get them away from his estranged wife? And now she’d be vilified and probably lose her job just because she had been taken in. As Mrs Moth had continued to cry quietly on the chair on the other side of her desk, a solitary tear had rolled down her cheek, testament to the depths of her self-pity and humiliation.
And now that police officer mother had been in and there was bound to be a considerable fuss over her crass stupidity. She would make her pay, and she only hoped that she didn’t lose her position and would be able to find another one after she’d been mangled by a professional.
Fortunately, Mrs Hendry had not mentioned the ‘accident’ to the children when Kenneth had made his visit to the school, believing that any information should come from a parent, and Kenneth took full advantage of this situation when the inevitable questions began.
‘Where’s Mummy?’ asked Sholto as soon as they had got into the car.
‘Yes, where’s Mummy?’ echoed Jade.
‘She just can’t be with us,’ replied Kenneth, who had little imagination.
‘Has she gone somewhere to have her drinking helped?’ asked the ten-year-old boy, who saw and understood more than Lauren realised.
Kenneth’s thoughts were scattered by this question? What drinking? Had she taken to the booze since he’d left? If she had, then he could surely use this to his advantage. Little imagination he might have, but he was always a good manipulator of situations.
‘That was clever of you to work out, son. Yes, she’s gone away somewhere where they can make her better, and she said that, as we’d missed Christmas together, I should look after you and give you a summer Christmas just for us.’
At least the very last bit was true. He’d worked very hard getting the things together that would give the atmosphere of a house being in the middle of the festive season, and had rented a place that was isolated. The presents and the usual customs should keep them distracted for a few days, at least.
He intended to apply for custody of the children but, in the interim, he was determined to recreate the important celebrations that he had been forced to miss through Lauren’s insensitivity and selfishness. Gerda was, this very minute, cooking the turkey with all the trimmings, and they had an artificial tree, suitably decorated, in the back window, and a large array of presents stacked underneath it. He didn’t know how long he could keep them here, but he needed enough time to get a solicitor who was sympathetic to his cause, to fight for his custody.
Gerda was three months pregnant, and he wanted them to be one happy family. Places were already arranged in an English boarding school far from the one they had attended before, and he had applied as a single father working abroad. They could fly back for the holidays, and he wouldn’t even notice that Lauren was no longer in his life. Then, all he had to do was get the house off her to help towards his expenses, and he’d have it made. He wasn’t made of money, and Lauren would have to be made to understand that this was the best way for things to happen.
Sholto and Jade already knew Gerda and, no doubt, Lauren would not even notice they were missing from her daily round, so absorbed was she in her job. She’d come round – eventually.
At the house, he was careful to put the hire car in the garage and enter through the door to the kitchen. Both children made appreciative noises at the smell, and Sholto reached down and rubbed his stomach in appreciation of what was to come. They acknowledged Gerda’s presence by waving ‘hi’ to her, and were then ushered into the living room to see the tree.
‘Daddy,’ said Sholto, with a big smile, ‘that looks so naff in summer.’
‘How do you think Christmas is in Australia?’ Kenneth asked, knowing that this would make his children think.
‘It’s always summer there at Christmas, isn’t it?’ asked Jade.
‘You bet it is, my little honey.’
‘And they go for barbecues on the beach on Christmas day, don’t they?’ This was Sholto again.
‘They do, but we’re not near the coast out here, so you’ll have to make do with a traditional Christmas lunch with pudding and ice cream and crackers and presents and sweets …’
‘Oh, Daddy, I love you,’ said Jade, throwing her arms around his waist.
‘So, how would you like to come and live with me and Gerda?’ he asked, suddenly realising that he was pushing his luck.
‘I’d rather live with you and Mummy,’ replied Sholto, keeping a little distance between them, ‘like things used to be, before you went away and Mummy started drinking so much wine.’
‘We’ll have to see.’ He’d have to box a bit clever here. ‘Now, who wants to open some presents? Father Christmas has been, and I think you’ll find your presents from him upstairs in your stockings.’
Leaving them to rootle around upstairs, he went back to the kitchen to have a word with Gerda. ‘Are you sure you’re all right about this?’ he asked, nervous, all of a sudden.
‘Of course I am. I looked after them before, and if you want them in your life, then I want them too,’ she replied, but a bit too off-pat for his way of thinking. What if she was only humouring him? There was another child to take into account now. Was he really being selfish wanting the new child to be just for them, and then having the pleasure of his old family in the school holidays? No, that was no way to think – he was their father, and they had been used to boarding school, happy there.
He’d been watching the house for a little while now, and surely they couldn’t be happy with that dried-up old bat caring for them when Lauren was at work? And all he wa
nted was what was his. He’d always been territorial. And if the law couldn’t deliver his children to him legally, then perhaps Lauren really would have to have an accident that rendered her incapable of looking after them – or even dead.
He knew, deep down that the break-up of the marriage was his fault, but he was that thing that is even worse than a woman scorned: a proud and possessive man deprived of what he believes is rightly his. And he’d get his way. Thank God he had thought to turn off his iPhone so that they couldn’t locate him by its signal, and buy a throwaway pay-as-you-go that he could literally dump when all this was over.
CHAPTER TWELVE
It was Olivia who had to locate the most recent photographs of the two children, and to turn up one of Kenneth, and there hadn’t been many of those taken since he had started his current job. Lauren was still too distraught and kept ringing Kenneth’s mobile number over and over again, as if that would magically make it turn itself on.
‘Get a grip, woman. You’ve got to speak to Devenish when we get back and launch a hunt for those two. You know he has no patience for a woman in tears, or for hysterics. You need to tell him what happened in a rational and logical way, not snivelling and sobbing through your tale.’
It had been a long day and, quite honestly, Olivia would be glad to get back to her own home, even if it was empty and echoing with silence. Anything would be better than this swamp of emotion she had struggled through since she had arrived at the office: in fact, it had been ever since Harris and Strickland had stumbled into that benighted house.
She might have argued that all the horrors stemmed from this; that it was the unusually hot June weather that was turning all the bad guys crazy, but she knew that wasn’t the case. These old seaside towns were all the same. They had been born in prosperity, a getaway for those of means to visit and bathe, and breathe in the health-giving sea air.
The town had more than its fair share of those who were unemployed due to the local economy, and those who didn’t work from choice, deciding, instead, to keep body and soul together through crime and drugs – either dealing them or taking them.
This was no time for idle speculation, though, and she bundled Lauren back into the car and drove her back to the station. She realised her sergeant was unfit to drive as soon as they had received that phone call about the children and would eventually send her back to her oh-so-empty house with a family liaison officer, who could drive her car and then be picked up when Lauren was in a fit state to be left.
At least the alarm had been raised without delay after school had ended for the day, so they could get something on the six o’clock news and get things rolling promptly.
She rushed Lauren past the CID room so that they wouldn’t have to tangle with Buller, but she’d have to go in there herself after the sergeant had been escorted home, to check information that she had left stewing. She needed to see those reports from the officers who had searched at the tip, and she needed to check to see if Baz Bailey was back in custody yet. Life was just about impossibly crowded at the moment.
They had all eaten so well that events were unrolling just as Gerda had planned. Kenneth was asleep after too much to eat and a few glasses of wine too many, and the children were completely absorbed in their play. It had been simplicity itself to suggest that they didn’t eat dessert until later; just before bedtime, in fact.
In the kitchen she took the tablets she had managed to wring out of the tired, disillusioned English doctor and began, quietly, to grind them up into a fine powder. When they were ready, she mixed them with a little diluted brandy and sucked them up in the syringe she had hidden in one of the kitchen drawers, right at the back. Kenneth would never have dreamed of looking there for anything. The kitchen was women’s work, and he would have none of it.
She sucked it up and began to inject it into the solid, sticky pudding. This would disable all three of them, and she would be able to deal with the spawn of that dreadful woman while he slept. She was sure he’d understand that she didn’t want anything to do with this second-hand family, and was interested only in their own child.
A pillow should do that job, and then she could persuade him that the two of them should go back whence they’d come and get on with their lives, unencumbered by the past. She needed absolute peace in which to carry out her mission, for she could expect no help or contrivance from him. She knew he would understand after the event that what he wanted was monstrous; that she could have nothing to do with those awful brats.
It would be time to put this little sweetmeat on to steam in a while, and she could look forward to getting him all to herself so that she could have their baby with peace of mind.
Olivia left Lauren to tell the superintendent what had happened and went back to her desk to collect the reports of what the Uniforms had picked up at the tip. It didn’t amount to much, but there had been mention of a lot of foreigners around, working in one of the few nurseries that had survived the march of the developers, although no one had any idea where they were staying.
A little poking around in areas not usually inhabited might help that one. She’d have to take a drive out into the countryside, maybe investigate the woodland that still stood to the north of the town. Dr MacArthur had provided a preliminary post-mortem on the dumped newborn and had given it as his opinion that the child was not of English parentage: it probably had a Middle Eastern parent, which was something that wasn’t noticed when Penny Sutcliffe had first opened that little bag of tricks and nearly lost her breakfast. ‘Oh, and in case nobody noticed it, the placenta was in there too, under the baby’s body,’ he concluded. Yummy!
The doctor had also got to work pretty quickly on little Stacey Shillington and sent the inspector an email to say that he thought the little girl had been shaken to death. That would be something she’d have to ask Carole about. She must know something. Either she’d done it or Baz was responsible, and she somehow couldn’t see Carole herself extinguishing the spark of life in her own child.
Shit! And it was Friday today. That meant that Operation Zee-Tee kicked off this evening. So much for going home. She’d have to be on hand to interview people arrested and detained and there would be no rest for her until Monday morning, if then, as there would probably be a backlog of ‘guests’ to clear before they had to be let go.
This had been quite a nice town to work in when she was younger, but it just got rougher and rougher, and there was little difference between this small town now and the city as it had been when she first joined ‘the force’, as it was known then. Over those years it had more than doubled in size, consuming surrounding small villages and other rural communities in its path as if they were just snacks for its ever-growing bulk. In one Internet review of the place as a resort, it had been referred to as ‘the arsehole of the world’. That might be a bit strong, but she got the gist.
Having checked around, the sole officer available to escort Lauren home was Terry Friend, as the only other woman at her disposal at the moment would have been Penny Sutcliffe – who would be off home to her children. So be it. Olivia didn’t want to offer her own hospitality to her sergeant because of that falling-out earlier, and didn’t think she’d agree to it either.
No, Terry, although not a family liaison officer – yet – would be ideal, and Olivia could hardly ask Lauren to stay on to help conduct interviews now these abductions had taken place. She’d have to go home to get over the shock and await developments. Basically, Olivia was on her own now, to sort out the cases of two unrelated dead babies and a brace of kidnapped children.
She was vaguely aware of Buller saying that he thought the illegal activity in Gooding Avenue was the work of a newcomer, for he and his department had managed to gather no intel on the situation, but she wasn’t really interested. She had her own worries, and little did Olivia know that, while she and her colleagues were involved in their Operation Zee-Tee, there were far more evil deeds afoot in her town.
INTERLUDE
Eventually he was hustled through what smelled like a garden and through a door into some kind of building. He hadn’t seen who had taken him. They had grabbed him as he went outside to put the rubbish in the bin – such an everyday action that he wasn’t expecting them, hadn’t been on his guard.
He was pushed down into what felt like a wooden chair and, to his surprise, his blindfold was removed. Those who had taken him, however, had shielded their faces with scarves; they just wanted him to see what was going to happen to him.
His wrists were unbound, but each was seized roughly and held firmly on the table-top. A figure in front of him had appeared, producing a hefty hammer and two six-inch nails. ‘I will show you what happens to those who trespass on my territory,’ it hissed from behind its scarf, and the captive’s eyes widened as he tried to scream.
‘You used this house on my patch, so now you die in it,’ the hissing continued, and the man put the point of one of the nails to the back of his right hand. He made distressed nasal noises behind his gag, but he could not stop the inevitable.
Bang!
The first nail drove its way home, and the figure held the point of the other nail over his left hand, as the prisoner squirmed in agony and continued to moan loudly, but not loudly enough to arouse any suspicion. He knew how thick the walls were: that was why he had put his minders in there. Only a full-blooded shout would reach the neighbours, and that was something he was unable to do. Bang!
The second nail was driven through his hand, but he wasn’t lost yet. Through the clouds of his pain he knew he would be able to drag the table to the door or bang it around to attract attention. He wasn’t completely done for. Not until the still unidentified figure pulled out a craft knife and moved towards him. ‘I am not cruel man,’ he continued, still in the hissing voice. ‘I not let you die slowly from starvation. I help you die a quicker death.’
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