by Ed James
Klaus sat back, stroking his beard.
A slight flicker of guilt, but was it enough?
Corcoran showed him the CCTV still again. ‘What happened that night?’
‘As usual, I left work not long after Sarah, and drove to the meeting place.’ Klaus swallowed. ‘But Sarah didn’t turn up. I waited for about fifteen minutes, then followed the route she would’ve taken.’ He picked up the photo and ran his finger over Sarah, mid-run. ‘I was worried she might’ve been in an accident, so I went to her house, but there was no sign of her.’
‘And that’s what you were doing in that photo?’
‘Of course. This was not far from her home.’
‘You saw her, though?’
‘We spoke.’ Tears filled his eyes. ‘She still had one earbud in, music still playing.’ He tossed the sheet back to Corcoran. ‘She told me it was over. She was worried about her husband finding out. I told her we could delete the messages; we could have a system that . . .’ He sighed. ‘But she said she wanted to save her marriage.’
‘You didn’t see it that way?’
‘I wanted to keep it going. I can’t leave my wife, but . . . But Sarah insisted it was over.’
‘How did you leave it that night?’
‘I drove off.’ Klaus snarled. He looked like he was going to add something, but he kept his peace.
Something left unsaid. Was it trivial or crucial?
‘But?’
‘But nothing.’ Klaus sighed. ‘I gather her husband has a furious temper.’
‘You know him?’
‘Christopher Langton.’ Klaus took a sip of his coffee. ‘We met at a work function a few years ago. I didn’t like the man.’
‘None of this explains why you didn’t come forward.’
Klaus took another drink of coffee, looking at Butcher then back at Corcoran. ‘Because I thought if I spoke to the police, I’d become a suspect.’
‘You are a suspect now. And your omission makes you look guilty.’
‘I didn’t want my wife to find out.’ His voice was small now, like a chided schoolboy. ‘I didn’t see anything happen to Sarah, I swear.’
Corcoran sat back in his chair and stared at him for a few seconds, weighing up his innocence in his mind. ‘She’s alive.’
Klaus’s eyes bulged. ‘What?’ He blinked hard, fighting confusion, relief, grief. ‘I thought . . . I thought . . .’
‘You thought she was dead. Well, she was found today. Alive, but very, very unwell.’ And Corcoran had seen enough to know that this was news to him.
Whatever transgressions the guy was responsible for, he didn’t look like an abductor, just a man guilty of adultery and living a lie.
Besides, they had no evidence against him.
Corcoran nudged Butcher and nodded at the door. He walked over and sipped coffee in the corridor until the door shut. ‘What’s your read on him?’
Butcher slumped against the wall, letting a pair of uniformed officers walk past while he gathered his thoughts. Couldn’t look at Corcoran. ‘I feel really bad about not getting these leads.’
‘Forget about your feelings.’ Corcoran arched his neck until he got eye contact. ‘I understand your situation, believe me, and I wish you’d been luckier with the timing. Maybe you would’ve found her with a few more days.’
‘I tried, mate. I just . . . kept drawing blanks.’
‘It happens.’ Corcoran swallowed down bile. ‘Do you think he kidnapped her?’
Butcher seemed to consider his words for the first time since they’d met. ‘We’ve got nothing to say he did.’
‘But his movements aren’t accounted for.’ Corcoran finished his coffee and handed the empty cup to Butcher. ‘Can you get an alibi from him and check it?’
Butcher looked down the corridor at a huddle of uniforms chatting about football or EastEnders or whatever. ‘Sure.’
‘Thanks.’ Corcoran slapped his back. ‘Call me. However it plays out, okay?’
‘You’re going?’
‘Let him go once you’ve got his statement. His wife’s going to give him worse hell than being held here. Maybe something will slip.’
Eight
[22:40]
Corcoran stepped into the whirlwind of the main Incident Room, still in the process of being set up, and stepped back out again. Their office space was dead, all the major players out hunting down whoever took Sarah. And no sign of Thompson in her office.
But he could smell coffee, meaning she was likely still around, so he walked over to the swanky silver machine. Thompson wasn’t there either. He hit the button, but got a bleeping noise. The pod tray was empty. Maybe he had a use for Butcher after all – get him to man a filter machine when he came over. He rooted around in the drawer, finding an Ethiopian pod at the back, the foil only slightly torn at one side, and he slid it in and hit the button for Americano. This time, the machine hissed and whirred.
Through the window, the car park was almost empty, dotted with regularly spaced trees, the thin wood just beyond giving way to a large field. Rural Oxfordshire, so far away from the grit of Corcoran’s home.
He reached into the fridge for the pint of semi-skimmed and shook it, then tipped it into his mug. He sipped the strong drink and played it all through in his head, but nothing stood out to him.
‘The boys are back in town.’ Thompson was standing behind him, hands on hips. ‘When did you get back to civilisation?’
‘Just now and this is hardly . . .’ Corcoran gave up, but waved around the desolate space. ‘Looks like the square root of—’
‘They’re all out.’ Thompson set off, beckoning him to follow. ‘Getting absolutely nowhere here.’
‘Which makes sense.’
Thompson stopped outside an interview room. ‘How?’
‘As far as we know, Sarah’s life is over in Cambridge, not Minster Lovell or anywhere in Oxfordshire. Did you listen to the voicemail I left?’
She grunted. ‘You seem to have made some good progress over there, no thanks to that beanpole knuckle-dragger.’
‘Butcher’s okay.’ Corcoran held her gaze, staring deep into the dark pits of her eyes. ‘Sure the same thing has happened many times over on similar cases in this force.’
‘Maybe in the Met, but you need to accept that this is your home now and act accordingly.’ Thompson opened the interview room door a crack, letting Corcoran see Sarah’s husband, Christopher Langton. ‘You got anything on him?’
‘Let’s just see.’ Corcoran followed her in and settled for the seat opposite Langton. No lawyer, which made for a nice change.
Langton shifted his gaze between them. ‘What’s happened?’
Thompson eased off her suit jacket and carefully rested it on the back of her chair. ‘Sounds like there’s something you should be telling us?’
‘You’re treating me like a suspect.’ Spoken into his hand, rather than directly at either of them.
‘Of course we are. It’s our job to look at all the stories we get, put them together, tear them apart, then find out who’s been hiding things from us. More often than you’d think, it leads us to who did it.’
Langton glared at Corcoran, then switched his ire to Thompson. ‘There is no way I could’ve done this to Sarah.’
‘By “this”, you mean abducting her, starving her, keeping her locked up for six weeks?’ Thompson snorted. ‘No way? Really? See, where I’m sat, I can see a really strong motive.’ She left an artful pause, her lips curling up at the edges. ‘Your wife had an affair.’
Langton just shook his head.
‘What she did made you hate her, made you want her to suffer. Right? You did this to her, didn’t you? Kidnapped her, starved her, kept her locked up.’
The shaking increased in speed as she spoke.
A flash of eyebrows instructed Corcoran to lead.
Corcoran leaned forward, resting his elbows on the wood. ‘You could’ve saved me the trip, you know? Two hours there, two hours ba
ck, plus three hours in Cambridge. Just to find out your wife had been sleeping with a colleague.’
Langton looked away.
‘Why didn’t you mention Klaus Werner to DC Butcher?’
Langton let out a deep sigh. Not the look of a vengeful kidnapper, but the resignation of a man clinging on to a failing marriage.
‘So you knew about their affair?’
‘I had a suspicion.’ Langton frowned. ‘But it was only a suspicion. I didn’t want the police to waste time on my theories . . . I mean, I had no proof and it might’ve made me look guilty, like I was trying to point blame elsewhere.’
Corcoran shared a look with Thompson, then doubled down on Langton. ‘You care to air this theory now?’
‘I thought it might’ve been Andy she was seeing. I don’t know.’ He gasped, all of his restraint and control snapping out in one motion. ‘It’d been going on for months. Over a year, at least.’ Eyes shut, he let out a long breath. Probably the first people he’d spoken to about this, including Sarah. He opened his eyes again, blinking slowly. ‘The worst part was I felt so guilty. I’d let Sarah down so badly that she was looking for someone else. We’ve been together since we were fourteen. Fourteen. We were just kids. And now we’re twenty-six and married and . . . it’s felt like it’s just hanging together by a thread for a long time now.’
‘And when you found out, the thread snapped. Right?’
Langton looked over, eyes pleading with Corcoran. ‘Right. I swear I didn’t know his name. Who is he?’
‘He knows you.’
‘That doesn’t help me.’
Corcoran held his gaze, but caught Thompson’s strange look at him in his peripheral vision. ‘Do you think it’s possible Klaus did this to your wife?’
Langton flinched at the last word. ‘It’s possible . . . I mean, I don’t know the man.’ He stared hard at Corcoran, fire burning in his eyes, his jaw clenched tight. Then he looked away, shaking his head.
They’d lost him.
[23:21]
Thompson shut her office door with a clatter and stomped over to her desk chair. ‘So is Butcher just inept or is it something much worse?’
‘Are you asking me if he’s corrupt?’ Corcoran stayed near the door. ‘I doubt it. I spoke to his boss over there and I totally understand the situation they were in when Sarah went missing. And based on what I’ve seen, I don’t think Butcher’s inept or corrupt. He’s just way too busy and they’re short-staffed.’
Thompson slid into her chair and ran a hand through her hair. ‘I need to speak to his DI over in Cambridge. You meet them?’
‘DI Thomas “Call me Tom” Hinshelwood. But I don’t think scoring points is a good use of our time.’ Corcoran caught her glare, warning him he should tread carefully. But he ignored it anyway. ‘I mean, by all means grab some of their lads to progress things at that end, but my take is Butcher’s a good cop caught in a shitty situation.’
She huffed out a laugh, harsh and short. ‘So, we’ve got two suspects. Klaus Werner and Christopher Langton, right?’
‘Both are possible.’ Corcoran got out his notebook and flicked through it. ‘Her neighbour too. Guy called Andy, used to run with Sarah, wife’s back in Australia for family stuff. I always get a bit itchy when someone shuts their door behind them.’ He shut his notebook. ‘None of them offer a decent explanation for the starvation. And why drop her in Oxfordshire? That doesn’t seem to mean anything to them.’
‘You’re thinking there’s something else going on here?’
‘That makes me think you’ve got evidence there is.’
‘Touché.’ Thompson reached into a drawer and pulled out a document. ‘Initial stab at forensics shows no evidence of rape, but the ligature marks are old and sustained. Indicating someone’s held her.’
Now Corcoran saw it for what it was, and cast aside what it wasn’t. Forget a suicide attempt, or someone running away, or a breakdown caused by drugs, or just failing health. Someone had abducted Sarah and held her captive.
He refocused all the information but still came up short.
‘We’ve got precious little in the way of leads. Sure, an affair is juicy, but does it explain what they did to Sarah?’ He got a flash of the living skeleton in the hospital. ‘What happened to her was brutal. And premeditated. Calculated. But also completely senseless.’
‘It makes sense to someone.’
Corcoran had to blink away the image of Sarah again. ‘And that someone has contended with the logistics of keeping Sarah hostage for six weeks. That requires an isolated space, regular supervision, and some means of restraining her. It’d take a lot of effort and determination. And letting Sarah go would surely be self-defeating, too. If she recognised them, she could identify them to us.’
‘But she didn’t, Aidan. When you spoke to her in the ambulance, she gave her name, not Christopher or Klaus. Even this Andy.’
‘Well, until we’ve spoken to Sarah, we need to keep our options open.’ Corcoran slid the report back across to her, but she didn’t take it. ‘Have you made any progress here?’
‘Nothing.’ Her sigh gave away just how little. ‘Absolutely nothing. Only crumb I’m clinging to is that stonemason told us he spotted an SUV hurtling down the lane just before he found Sarah. If we can pin it to one of their suspects, then we’ll be golden.’
‘That’s a long shot.’
‘Aidan, I could do with some positivity here.’ She unlocked her computer and winced as she scanned the screen, probably her email inbox bursting at the seams. ‘Get yourself home, get some shut eye. This is a major inquiry now. Seven o’clock briefing, all that jazz.’
Corcoran’s late-evening coffee wasn’t battling through four hours of driving on top of a full shift. ‘I’ve still not spoken to Sarah’s parents yet.’
‘No need.’ Thompson grabbed her car keys and got up with a yawn. ‘I’m heading to the hospital right now.’
Nine
[Thompson, 23:36]
The car park’s lights caught them perfectly, huddling in the smoking shelter like they were still at school, bunking off third-period French. He held her hand while she sucked deep from her cigarette, letting it out in a fine mist.
Thompson got her notebook out of the glovebox and flicked through the pages. There. Sally and Richard Norton. She looked up and their breaths misted in the bitter air as they came to terms with the shock of their daughter’s return. She turned to a fresh page, just blank lines waiting for the time, the date and their names. Sally and Richard. Remember them. She scribbled a loose to-do list, all the standard activities she needed to complete, in a completely non-standard case. She got out into the cold night and scanned the car park. Hospitals were never empty, even at this time.
A Volkswagen SUV was between them, a grieving man sitting with his head pressed back, tears streaming down his face. No time to ask if he was okay, even if it was her place.
She sloped over to Sally and Richard, and stopped with a friendly smile.
Red lines spidered the whites of their eyes. The extra grey hairs. The frown lines. The doubt. The fear. The toll Sarah’s disappearance had taken on them.
Her father more hopeful, standing there with his chest puffed out, but even he couldn’t cope with the sheer terror of having Sarah back in that state, teetering on the brink of death.
Sally lit a second cigarette and took a deep drag. Her eyes looked like she’d put used teabags underneath them. Probably drinking so many cups to help her through the long nights she could barely sleep. Her silvery-brown roots pushed through the blonde and she clearly hadn’t had time to dye her hair in six weeks of terminal worry.
‘Alana Thompson.’ She held out her warrant card with a comforting smile, leaving it long enough for them to scan the front and memorise everything, enough time to gain their trust. ‘I’m the Deputy Senior Investigating Officer on the investigation into your daughter’s disappearance.’
Smoke clouds rounded Sally’s face. ‘Abduction.’<
br />
‘We’re trying to establish whether your daughter went missing by her own—’
‘Someone took my daughter.’ Sally took another drag on her cigarette. ‘I want you to find out who.’
The VW’s engine started up, then it pulled away, trundling through the empty car park. A Tiguan, 65 plates. Dark grey.
Thompson gave Sally another smile, firmer and making it clear she wasn’t going to take no for an answer, but still with a trace of sympathy. ‘We should do this inside.’ She held out a hand and gestured into the cloying warmth of the hospital.
Richard looked like he was going to follow her lead.
But Sally didn’t. She just stood there. ‘All this time, you’re arguing about whether someone’s taken her. I know they have.’
Maybe she’d held something back. Probably not, but Thompson nodded, letting her get it out of her system.
‘And it’s not just about my Sarah. That’s bad enough. But I can’t help but think there’s someone else going through what I have, their child suffering through this horrific, horrific ordeal.’
So there wasn’t anything. Concern and empathy, though. And the forensics only gave part of Sarah’s story. Thompson smiled, knowing she needed to get Sally and Richard Norton’s part next. ‘I appreciate your concern, Mrs Norton, but we’ve no concrete evidence to confirm Sarah was abducted, let alone that there’s anyone else going through this.’ Again, she gestured inside. ‘Now, shall we?’
Ten
Howard
His chest moves up and down, his eyelids fluttering as he comes up from the dream like a diver from the ocean depths. Howard has no recognition of anyone else in the room, just himself, lying on the bed, the chains rattling as he moves.
Then the speakers crackle into life. A deep thud of bass erupts, the noise jolting him upright.
‘He’s Charlie the Seahorse and there’s nothing he can’t do!’ Shrill children’s singing, twisted and distorted by the sheer volume.
Breathing hard, Howard takes in his immediate surroundings. The same place as ever. Harsh brick walls, burnt and blackened, dull in the pale overhead light. The door, locked as it always is, metal bars preventing any attempt at an escape, any consideration of it. The bed he lies on. The desk mounted to the wall, the office chair in front of it, bolted down.