Out of Mind (26 page)

I filmed the man in the car waiting. I waited. There was silence. For the very first time, it occurred to me that this enterprise
might end not in success or tragedy, but in sheer bloody boredom. Then, quite suddenly, I saw that someone else was in the
car park. He or she—it was impossible to tell in the dark—had emerged from a low door in the warehouse. The person stood there,
nothing but a dark shape against the dark metal of the building. The figure in the car also moved, emerging from the car and
into the light, and then I could see that it was Darling.

“Where is he?” In the still night air, Darling’s voice carried easily. He didn’t shout, just spoke, and if I could hear, then
so could the person at the door to the warehouse.

“Where’s the cash?” I’d have said the voice was male, but the night air and my nerves served as distortion.

Darling raised a bag high over his head.

The wraith slipped back inside the warehouse. Darling’s gaze never wavered from the door. After a moment it reopened and the
figure reemerged. Now I could see that he or she was dressed in black from head to toe and that even the face was covered.
The figure carried a baby against its chest.

I swore softly. The tiny scrap of flesh had been missing for days, but he’d never seemed as vulnerable as he did now in the
harsh glare of the searchlight, his fate in the hands of these two people.

I forced my eyes to move away from the baby and to his father and tried to listen over the pounding of my heart. With sight
of the baby, Darling assumed the authoritative voice of a soldier. “I put the money down. You take the money, you leave him.”

Darling moved so that for the first time his back was toward me. I saw—although the figure at the warehouse could not have
seen—the handgun strapped to the back of his thigh.

Where were the police? If Justin had called them as he’d promised, they would be here now. They would have alerted a local
patrol; no need to drive across London as we had. I cursed Justin under my breath. Why had he not kept his side of the bargain?

Darling walked to the point he had indicated and placed the carry-all on the ground. When he had moved away some ten yards,
the figure carried the child forward, coming to a halt by the bag and squatting to put him carefully on the ground. I could
see the child more clearly now, eyes closed in sleep or something worse, small fists relaxed.

Still squatting, the figure investigated the bag. Then, after picking it up, the figure moved away rapidly, leaving Christopher
where he lay. As the kidnapper retreated, never turning his back on Darling, Darling approached the tiny sleeping form until
at the last moment the figure in black finally turned and ran for the doorway.

But Darling was already firing, shots bouncing off the metal door. Twice, three times shots rang out, the last two hitting
the warehouse door with a metallic report as the figure disappeared back inside. It seemed to me for a moment that Darling
would give chase, and I abandoned my camera and started to scramble down the pile of rubble toward the child.

But Darling had wheeled around, and then he saw me, and he held the gun on me while I got to my feet and raised my hands.
There was such contempt and fear in his eyes that for a long moment I thought he would kill me. I waited, paralyzed, forgetting
to breathe, as he silently made his point, the gun trained at my chest. He could get rid of me if he chose. He would like
nothing better.

Then he turned abruptly away from me. For a moment I just stood there, eyes closed, gathering myself, listening to my heart
pound. I opened my eyes. Darling was kneeling by the baby.

I dialed Veronica’s number again while Darling gathered up his son in his arms. Then Jacqui appeared from the gateway, running
across the tarmac toward her father and brother. I listened to the ringing tone and watched the family huddle together, hugging
each other tight.

Veronica answered sleepily.

“Your phone was turned off,” I burst out angrily. “You’re supposed to be here. The police are supposed to be here. Justin’s
been trying to ring you, too.”

“Hey, don’t you speak to me like that,” Veronica snapped back. “My grandmother had a stroke. Mitford knew exactly where I
was. And I’ve got my phone right in front of me. The only calls I missed were from you. No one else tried to ring.”

“Well, why . . . ?” I started to ask why she hadn’t rung me back, but I knew why. She would think I was calling just to hassle
her for more information. And then slowly my brain picked up on what Veronica had said. “Is she all right?”

“No. But she’s alive. What do you want?”

I told her what had happened, and she muttered an expletive. Then she asked about Christopher.

I turned to look. Christopher was in Jacqui’s arms as she climbed into the passenger seat.

“He’s alive; it looks as though he’s sleeping,” I told Veronica.

“Good.” Veronica heaved a sigh, but when she spoke she still sounded agitated. “Good. Look, I’m glad he’s alive. But because
of what Mike’s done, a kidnapper is out there on a high, thinking he’s won.”

As if he could hear what she was saying, Mike turned to me, his face suffused with victory. He raised his hand and made a
fist, punching it into the air.

“We got him back,” he crowed. “Tell her that. Left to them, he’d be dead.”

He got into the driving seat and raised his hand to me as he switched on the engine. I stood in the middle of the yard under
the spotlight, and I watched his taillights as he drove through the gates. I turned round and looked back at the dark warehouse,
its metal doors swinging in the wind, no sign of life inside.

“You have to send someone over here,” I told Veronica, “and a doctor to the house, to get him checked over.”

“Don’t tell me how to do my job.” Her voice was uneven. I could tell she was getting dressed as we spoke.

“Darling was shooting at the kidnapper,” I told her. “You might have someone dead or injured here, too.”

I closed my ears to Veronica’s curses and ended the call.

I
didn’t get home until dawn. A police patrol had arrived within seconds of my phone call to Veronica, not dispatched by her
but answering calls from nearby residents who’d heard gunfire. I ended up going to the police station to give a statement,
and while I was there I was given a long lecture on how I should have called the police before I set out with my camera. They
were right, of course. I shouldn’t have left it to Justin. I didn’t argue. They also wanted to see the film, and I let them
copy it. I couldn’t see why not. There was no secret.

Carol woke up when she heard me come in and she told me that William had slept soundly. Still I didn’t go to bed. My head
was spinning, but my synapses were still buzzing, random thoughts splintering and racing off at tangents.

I rang Maeve. I got her at home, in bed, about to get up. I told her what had happened. I told her I had film of Mike Darling
paying a ransom to a kidnapper and of Christopher being returned. I told her that as far as I knew, the child was at least
alive, but more than that I could not say. I told her that Darling had shot at the kidnapper, and that as far as I knew the
kidnapper had escaped unharmed.

“What do I do with the film?” I asked.

“I don’t understand why you’re even asking. Hand it over to News. Why didn’t you ring them there and then?”

“The whole thing stinks, in my opinion.”

“It’s a straightforward news story. Darling paid up, Darling got the baby back.”

“I know, I know.”

“Robin, we could have been first with the story, and you’ve been sitting on it like a bloody egg. The story is out there now.
The film might as well be, too. Hand it over.”

She was right, but I knew that showing the film would make a difference to the way people perceived what had happened; it
would give the words substance. I couldn’t explain why I was uncomfortable about releasing it. I did not know what I had witnessed,
I did not know what it meant, and I wasn’t sure what the value was of releasing a piece of film if we could not adequately
describe it. But Maeve was determined. If I wasn’t going in to the office, she said, she would send a courier around for the
tape.

I said good-bye and hung up, still unhappy. I saw that Carol had appeared in her dressing gown and was making tea.

“I heard,” she said.

I shook my head and sat, exhausted, at the table, laying my head on my arms. She put a cup of tea in front of me.

“The baby’s alive, that’s the main thing, isn’t it?”she reminded me.

And of course it was.

William carried on sleeping, worn out by his sickness the night before. Hannah woke up and behaved like an angel, delighted
to have me to herself. I played for a while, but I felt almost sick with tiredness and couldn’t keep it up. I lay on the sofa,
and Hannah came and stroked my forehead, her lovely face just above mine. Her eyes, so like her dead father’s, looked down
at me with exaggerated concern. Carol urged me to go to bed, but I was too wound up to sleep. In the end I sat at the dining
table, getting in Carol’s way, listening to radio accounts of what had happened the night before, and waiting for the courier
to pick up the tape. The minutes ticked by.

I thumbed through the newspaper and saw again the article reporting that Fred Sevi had been questioned for a second time by
police. I wished I had some direct line to DCI Coburn, but all my information from the investigation into Melanie’s disappearance
had come through Veronica or Finney, and I knew that it wasn’t the right time to call either of them.

I took the phone to the sofa and rang Beatrice. I had assumed that DCI Coburn would have kept her informed about developments
in the investigation into her daughter’s disappearance. In fact, Beatrice had seen the same article I had and had contacted
the police herself, demanding details.

“It’s something to do with mobile phone records,” she told me. “That’s all he would tell me, and he told me not to tell any
journalists, so please, if you would—”

“We know Fred called Melanie on the night of January ninth from the gate of HazPrep,” I said. “He admits it, there can’t be
any question about that.”

“I’m at a loss,” Beatrice said.

Something was tugging at my memory. Sevi shifting uncomfortably in his chair, saying that he had tried calling Melanie the
next day from central London after attending the public lecture at the Wolfson Theatre. I asked Beatrice whether Fred had
said anything to her about trying to call Melanie on January 10, the day she disappeared.

“I don’t think so.” Beatrice sounded mystified, and I told her what Fred had told me, that he had called Melanie but the connection
had been so bad that the call had lasted only a matter of seconds.

“I wonder if he told the police that,” she said, “although of course it doesn’t really get us anywhere.” Beatrice had started
out calm enough, but now I could hear the frustration in her voice. She had few illusions about Melanie’s fate, but she wanted
to know what had happened, and why, and at every turn there was a dead end. We said good-bye.

I got slowly to my feet. “I’m going out,” I told Carol.

“You’ll make yourself ill,” she told me disapprovingly. She nodded at the MiniDV tape lying on the table. “Do you want me
to give that to the courier man?”

I looked at it lying there. I picked it up, put it in my bag. “No. Tell him the order’s been canceled.”

She shrugged and watched as I picked up my keys and checked the battery of my mobile phone.

“It’s all very well,” she said quietly, “but if you get ill, you know who picks up the pieces.”

I gazed at her. “I’m sorry,” I said. “I promise I won’t get ill.”

“Right.”

It took a lot of asking, but eventually I found Justin and Jacqui in the hospital cafeteria, crutches propped next to the
table, toppled paper cups rolling around on the table in front of them. At the next table sat a weary-looking man and a pale
woman with tubes protruding from bandages at her neck.

The two young lovers were separated by the tabletop, but scarcely. Their hands were clasped together in front of them, and
as I approached I saw that Jacqui had kicked off her pumps and that her two bare feet rested on Justin’s one good remaining
foot. Her head was bowed, and Justin was leaning forward so that his lips pressed against her forehead.

“Hello.” I sat down, unasked, at their table. “How’s Christopher?”

“Sergeant Mann took Mum over to Lewisham Hospital to get him checked over,” Jacqui said. “He looks thinner, and he keeps crying,
but I think he’s just confused, poor thing.”

I had no idea what kind of psychological scar an abduction would leave. It was hard to believe that the child would ever completely
recover from being removed from his family and from his home. But Jacqui seemed upbeat about Christopher’s return, and I didn’t
want to pour cold water on that.

“I’m really glad you’ve got him back,” I said. “Your mother must be over the moon.”

Jacqui didn’t respond directly. “Mum seems better,” she said.

“But, Justin,” I said, “I have a bone to pick with you. We had a deal and you reneged.”

They looked at each other.

“You told me you’d call the police, and you didn’t.” I spelled it out for him.

He shot a glance at Jacqui. “Well, it was okay in the end,” he said.

“You weren’t to know that.”

“I told him not to call the police,” Jacqui intervened. “Dad knows how to handle himself. There was never going to be a problem.
If the police arrived, they’d have got involved, they’d never just have let it happen.”

Justin sat there with such a pained expression on his face that I couldn’t berate him further.

“I want to know how the kidnappers made contact,” I said.

“There was another note,” Jacqui said, “but this time Dad didn’t show it to anyone except Kes and me and Sheryl. I mean, not
the police or Anita. It asked for a hundred thousand pounds.”

“How was it delivered?”