Out of Mind (22 page)

Then Anita lifted her face, and again the rustle of camera shutters sounded impatiently as her huge startled eyes gazed out
at us. The tremble of her lips, the rigidity of her jaw, would be immortalized in that second, whatever happened later.

“I haven’t seen my little baby for a long time.” Anita’s voice was disappointingly dead, and she was making no attempt to
disguise the fact that she was reading from a script. “Every minute apart from him is torture for both of us. I kissed him
good night, and in the morning he was gone.”

I looked at Veronica. If not a lie, this was perhaps a reinterpretation of history. By Veronica’s own mouth, it was Jacqui
who had put the baby to bed, Jacqui who had picked up the bundle of blankets that had fallen away empty. But Veronica’s face
was inscrutable.

“He’s tiny, and he needs me. Please, if you know anything about his whereabouts, telephone Inspector Mitford or his team.”
Anita stopped and looked toward Veronica, and her agitated voice was carried by the microphone. “You said there’s a number.
Where’s the number?”

Veronica stepped in smoothly, repeating the request that anyone with information should speak to the police and reading the
number slowly and clearly. When she had finished, Inspector Mitford ran through the bare facts in a slow, heavy voice that
suggested this would be a long, thoughtful, and painstaking investigation. He gave the approximate time Christopher had been
put to bed, the hour at which he had been found to be missing. Then he named the person who had called in the police as Mike
Darling.

I was surprised when Inspector Mitford said that Anita would take questions. I had expected the police to shield her, but
of course the questions were not unfriendly. Had there been credible ransom demands?

“Well . . .” Anita looked from the reporter to Veronica. “What do you mean?”

“Has there been a letter, a demand of any sort, either verbal or written?” the journalist clarified.

“A demand?” She shook her head, a small smile on her lips. “No, there are no demands.”

There was a moment’s silence in the room, journalists expecting more, waiting for a fuller answer that never came. Veronica
gazed into the middle distance, and Mitford twisted his head to exchange a word with an assistant.

“Mrs. Darling . . .” Another journalist stood up, the microphone in his hand. “Was there any clue as to how your son was removed
from the house?”

Anita did not seem unsettled by the question, nor did she seem to have any sense that time was passing, that people were waiting.

“I don’t know,” she said eventually, turning to Inspector Mitford, “was there?”

“Christopher,” Mitford said carefully and ponderously, “slept on the ground floor. So far we have no evidence showing how
an intruder came into the house, or left with the child. But some of you have seen photographs of the house—as you can see,
it is being extensively renovated. There are doors and windows that do not have locks. Indeed, there are windows and doors
that do not have windows or doors.” For an instant, light laughter ran around the room, then was extinguished as the journalists
remembered why they were there. “Ordinarily, because of the porous nature of the building during renovation, and because of
the kind of security concerns that we all share, there is an alarm system in place. However, because the ground floor was
occupied, and people were moving about on this level inside the house, it had not been switched on. Elsewhere, there were
spotlights at front and rear programmed to come on if an intruder approached. They may have done so, but these particular
lights do not emit an alarm, so if an intruder was sufficiently brazen, he or she could simply continue to approach the building
in the glare of the light.”

For more than a day now, he said a hunt had been under way, throughout the woods at the rear of the property, as well as through
the neighboring gardens and the streets within walking distance.

“We believe,” Mitford said, “that there is more than one person who knows what has become of Christopher. No matter what good
care is being taken of him, he will be upset. He is a baby, and there’s nothing he wants more than to be home with his mum.
There’s nothing any of us wants more than for him to be home. We understand there are many reasons why people feel moved to
take a child, and we can talk through those needs and provide help when someone comes forward with Christopher. But for now
the most urgent thing is for him to be returned safe and well. That will show us that whoever took him has only the best of
intentions toward the baby.”

The inevitable question then came:

“Mrs. Darling, can we ask you where your husband and daughter are today?”

But it was Inspector Mitford who stepped in to answer smoothly.

“Mr. Darling has been advised by his doctor to rest, and I believe Jacqui Darling is out looking for her brother even as we
speak,” he said.

While I was listening to Inspector Mitford, I was watching Anita’s face. I had expected, somehow, that her pain would be so
raw that it would be almost too much for me to bear. Several times in the night I had awoken with my heart pounding and my
chest tight, the sense of a child missing from his bed, vanished, unreachable, so real that I could hardly breathe. But I
could not fathom this on Anita’s face. I saw confusion and unhappiness. But I have seen the parents of dead or missing children
before, and always it has seemed to me that they have become a personification of fear. If Anita did not look like them, did
that mean she knew something that we did not? I could sense that the journalists around me were frowning at Anita as if they
too were wondering what was going on here.

I asked around and eventually found Justin at St. George’s Hospital and in physiotherapy, sweating to move a prosthetic leg,
lurching his upper body along metal bars that supported him. I found Jacqui there, too, standing silently in the corner, her
eyes swollen almost shut from crying. She was clutching Justin’s sweatshirt in shaking, nervous hands, her eyes following
every movement of his muscles as they bunched and stretched, dwelling on the stump, her jaw tightening as his body fought
for balance and lost it. I went over and stood next to her, touching her shoulder.

“I couldn’t bear to be at home,” she muttered. “There’s nothing I can do there. We’re going to drive around as soon as he’s
finished and take another look.”

Justin’s face, gray and damp with effort, had aged ten years. In the twenty minutes that I watched him working, it seemed
that the naiveté had gone for good, to be replaced by the knowledge that sheer willpower was the only thing that would save
him. At first he didn’t see me, he was concentrating so hard. When he did, he raised his hand briefly in greeting, then carried
on doing as he was told until the physiotherapist dismissed him.

Leaning on crutches, his prosthesis removed, he came over to stand next to Jacqui, and I saw her hand go to his good thigh
and pull him close to her, so that the side of her face was resting against his shoulder. Clearly, Justin’s fear of rejection
and his suspicion that his love was unrequited were unfounded.

“How are you doing?” I asked him.

“It doesn’t matter how I’m doing,” he said, “what matters is Christopher.”

He rested his hand on Jacqui’s head and started to stroke her hair.

“We’ve got to get going. We’re going to look for him. We thought we’d try house to house, and we’re going to make some posters.”

Jacqui buried her face in Justin’s shoulder, and her hand snaked up inside his T-shirt. I heard her sob.

“I can’t bear it.” Her face emerged, tears swelling. “The police aren’t going to find him, and Mum’s worse than useless. They
can’t see what’s in front of their eyes.”

“What’s that?” I asked her.

But Justin’s hand had moved from Jacqui’s head, and it was resting lightly across her mouth.

“Don’t listen to her,” he said with a forced smile, “she’s upset, she’s imagining things.”

Jacqui swiped his hand away. “I don’t need to imagine anything,” she said, “and neither do you.”

“Come on, she wouldn’t magic Christopher away.”

“Who are you talking about?” I persisted. Jacqui would have said, I think, but she had one eye on Justin, who glared at her.

“Well, does Mike have any ideas?” I asked in exasperation.

“What do you mean, does he have any ideas? We’ve all got the same idea, but no one will say it.”

“Jacqui, let’s get out of here,” Justin said. “You want to look for him, we should go.”

He gave her a look that told her to move, and then he turned toward me. “Leave her alone,” he said to me, but it was more
of a plea than an order. I stood aside as they left, Jacqui head down, Justin clumsily following.

When I returned to the office, Sal was emerging from the editing suite, arguing with Penny. They had, it appeared, been watching
a feed of the press conference at the same time as editing tape.

“The mother knows something, don’t you agree?” Sal turned to me for support.

Penny was shaking her head. “You’re mad,” she told him. “Why would any mother kidnap her own child?”

“Or kill,” Sal corrected her. “Let’s not look on the bright side. Anyway, all I’m saying is that she knows something. Her
son is gone, yet she showed so little emotion. Goldilocks, you understand women, unlike Penny.”

Penny let out a breath of exasperation.

“Penny, don’t huff like that, you know yourself you are an honorary man,” Sal told her. “You have dedicated yourself to the
cause of hard news; there is no subtlety to you anymore, no more nuance, you might as well be a man dealing in the pseudocertainties
of black and white. Your jaw too set. I, meanwhile, a man of some sensitivity . . .”

“And idiocy . . .” Penny managed to interject.

“Of some sensitivity despite the coarseness of the profession I find myself required to pursue—am appealing to Robin, the
mummy-meister.”

Penny rolled her eyes at me and made murderous gesticulations behind Sal’s back.

“You’re stirring, Sal,” I said sternly.

“Well, of course I’m stirring. Do you think I’m serious?” He turned to Penny, who glared at him. “We disagree, so naturally
I have to be offensive to you. Goldilocks, you agree with me, I can tell, so I adore you.”

“I have problems with the concept of Anita knowing what day of the week it is, let alone who kidnapped Christopher,” I said.

“The police think she knows something,” Sal taunted. “Sources, my dear girl, sources. They are our lifeblood. You should be
sleeping with a police officer. Oops, I forgot, you are.”

T
HE next morning, the rain was hammering down with an intensity that lent a background hiss to everything. I’d had to turn
on every light in the kitchen just so that we could see our breakfast. I was out of the habit of trying to listen to the news
over breakfast because it was, in general, such a frustrating experience. But that day, shut in by the weather and desperate
for news of Christopher Darling, hope triumphing over experience, I switched the radio on. I shushed the children when I heard
Christopher’s name. Hannah, naturally, responded with an ear-splitting shriek that left William giggling hysterically. By
the time I reached the volume control, the news bulletin was already over.

Afterward, as I spoon-fed Hannah with cereal and put William back on his chair a dozen times, I heard the baby’s name again.
This time William reached across the table and wiggled the volume control, as he had seen me do. Now the report boomed out
over the kitchen, and Hannah clapped her hands over her ears in alarm and clambered down from her chair to hide under the
table. I adjusted the volume to a more reasonable level and concentrated on the reporter and the news anchor interviewing
him, holding my finger to my mouth, silently begging the children to be quiet.

“Police are staying tight-lipped about the exact nature of the developments in the case because they don’t want to compromise
Christopher Darling’s safety. What they are prepared to say is that they have received some sort of communication that relates
to the baby’s disappearance and that they continue to hope for his early return. We don’t yet know any details of that communication—we
don’t, for instance, know whether it is a ransom note or a message from an informant—and the police stress that it’s going
to be kept under wraps until such time as they feel it is safe to release it. The police, of course, have set up camp inside
the house Christopher disappeared from, there’s pretty much a permanent police presence in there, monitoring calls and so
on. And I can tell you that this morning there have been lots of comings and goings, and there is no doubt that the police
feel that there is movement on this case today in a way that we did not see yesterday.”

“Do you get any sense of optimism on the part of the police?”

“Well, we can take it, I think, that the communication, whatever it is, does not dash hopes that Christopher is still alive.
But I would have to say that I sense a great deal of anxiety as well. There is a sense of urgency here this morning, but I
would also say that the police officers I’ve tried to speak to today are looking fairly grim. Christopher, after all, has
now been missing for forty-eight hours, and I would say that this awful wait is entering a critical stage.”

They moved on to other news, and I sat and watched Hannah and William, now both underneath the table, competing to see which
of them could put their fingers farther up their nostrils. And I thought how fragile it all was.

I couldn’t—or wouldn’t—ring Finney. Even if he had been able to drag himself away from Emma (my imagination was working overtime),
he had never been keen to share information with me. So I rang Veronica’s mobile repeatedly, leaving messages each time that
her voice mail invited me to do so. In the end, I annoyed her into phoning me back.

“Come on, Veronica, you know I know the family. You know you can trust me, Christopher’s abduction isn’t even my story. You
have to have a coffee break. Or lunch. You have to eat.”