Ramsay 06 - The Baby-Snatcher (12 page)

But the noise of voices around them was now so loud that Brian had not heard. Or so it seemed because he jumped up suddenly and pushed his way through the crowd to the gents. When he returned he did not sit down.

‘I’d better go.’ He was holding his Burberry mac by the hook over his shoulder and his car keys were already in his hand. ‘Em’ll have my supper in the cut if I’m late again.’

‘Yes,’ Mark said. ‘Of course.’

‘Can I give you a lift?’

‘No. I’d rather walk.’

They left the pub together, and standing briefly on the pavement Mark made one more attempt to say his piece. Brian cut him off with an excuse that he was already late, but Mark was certain now that he did not want to hear.

‘Give Em my love, then,’ he said.

‘Sure,’ Brian answered. ‘Sure.’

When Mark walked home he stopped several times to listen, but there were no following footsteps.

The Shining Stars Day Nursery stood at the end of the street. Its corner position meant that there were gardens on three sides of the house. Marcia Frost, the proprietor, was a great believer in sending the little ones outside to let off steam. Now, however, it was dusk and too late for outside play. From her office on the first floor Miss Frost watched a group of high school students cross the road and make their way towards the town centre. They were late. Miss Frost realized that she had lost track of time. The lighter evenings had confused her. Already there was an adult standing by the high wooden gate. A father, presumably, waiting to collect a child, though he stood in the shadow and she did not recognize him.

Miss Frost hurried downstairs. She liked to be on hand when the parents arrived, to reassure. Fees for the Shining Stars Nursery were substantial. Clients were entitled to a personal service.

The nursery took children from newborn infants to four-year-olds ready to start school. Invariably the parents were professional. They liked Miss Frost because she was flexible and accommodating. Offspring could be dropped off at any time after seven thirty in the morning and collected as late as eight o’clock at night. She drew the line at weekends, though this service had been requested on a number of occasions.

Miss Frost, who had never suffered any maternal stirrings, wondered occasionally why some of these mothers chose to put themselves through the process. They saw their babies so infrequently. Hardly ever awake. She was very fond of cats. Her cat recognized her whenever she arrived home from work. Did these children recognize the parents who collected them, sleeping, from the baby room? What pleasure could there be in that?

At five thirty a rush of parents arrived. They stood in the hall, chatting to Miss Frost while the nursery nurses went to collect the children. Later Miss Frost identified this as the time when Tom Bingham must have escaped. One of the parents must have failed to shut the door properly. The staff had all been very carefully trained. She was emphatic that none of them could be responsible.

Tom’s mother was fat and cheerful. She worked as a reporter on the local newspaper. There was no father, at least no one she would admit to. Miss Frost thought she was feckless and a little slovenly. It had been known for Tom to arrive wearing odd socks and without his packed lunch.

‘How’s he been today, then?’ Jan Bingham asked, when she arrived at six o’clock. ‘A terror as usual?’

‘No,’ Miss Frost said. ‘He’s been much more settled.’ Though when she considered it she realized that she just hadn’t been bothered by Tom. Usually he was running backwards and forwards into the hall at this time to look for his mother, getting under the feet of other waiting parents. She was looking forward to losing Tom to the infants school.

She called to the nursery nurse in charge of the three-year-olds, ‘Tom Bingham, please, Hayley. His mother’s here.’

Hayley returned a few minutes later, anxious and blushing. This was her first position after completing her training and she still found her boss daunting.

‘I’m sorry, Miss Frost. I can’t find him.’

A search ensued. They looked in the toilets, in the baby room and the garden. Eventually, at Ms Bingham’s insistence, the police were called.

By chance two policemen in a patrol car found the boy on their way to answer the call. He was standing in the middle of the road, shivering because he had left the Shining Stars without a coat. He was lucky that a car had not hit him.

He would not tell the policeman what had happened to him or how he had left the nursery, though he enjoyed the ride in the police car, especially when they made the siren sound for him.

Miss Frost refused to accept that any of her staff had been careless.

‘Tom is a very wilful boy,’ she said, making it clear where she felt the responsibility for the whole incident lay.

Ramsay heard of the missing boy while he was drinking coffee in the staff canteen. His shift was over but Prue was on her way back from Scotland and he’d promised to collect her from the arts centre. It wasn’t worth his going home. He’d probably still be there anyway.

Hunter passed on the information. He too was working late. He was still trying to trace the man in the red Mazda who had stayed with Kim Houghton the night before the murder. The local press had been very helpful about publicity but he was no nearer a result. He was glad of a distraction.

‘You hear there’s been another one, then?’ He carried a plate with a fried-egg sandwich. He sat at Ramsay’s table without waiting to be asked.

‘Another murder?’ Please, Ramsay thought. Let it not be the girl.

‘Na. Another kid’s been snatched.’

‘Oh.’ The child abductions were no longer his problem.

‘From a private day nursery near the high school.’

‘From
inside
the nursery?’ Despite himself, Ramsay was interested.

‘The woman in charge claims not. She says that would be impossible and the boy must have got out somehow.’ Hunter paused, grinned. ‘ But then she would say that, wouldn’t she? She’d have her reputation to think of. I knew a lass once who was a nursery nurse. She told me there was a fortune to be made in private nurseries.’

Ramsay thought Hunter knew so many lasses that between them they could provide a comprehensive careers service.

‘Is the boy all right?’

‘Apparently. Two of our lads found him wandering in the middle of the road a couple of miles away from where he went missing.’

‘We are sure that he was abducted, then? He didn’t just go walkabout?’

‘Well that’s what everyone thought at first. He’s a bit wild apparently and he’s tried to run away before. But the timing’s all wrong. The kids have tea at five o’clock and he was definitely there for that. And for the story afterwards. They reckon he must have gone at about a quarter to six. Lots of parents arrived at about that time and they think he could have slipped out in the scrum. Our lads found him just before six thirty. An adult could walk two miles in three quarters of an hour. But a three-year-old? In the dark? And it’s a nice respectable neighbourhood. Nosy. A busy time of the evening with folks coming home from work. If anyone had seen a kid that small on his own they’d have taken him in, phoned us.’

‘So there was a car, then? Like the others?’

‘Either that or he was carried piggy back. And that’s hardly likely.’ Hunter grinned. ‘Still, it’s for some other bugger to sort out now. We’ve got enough on our plates.’

‘He was all right, the boy? Unharmed?’

‘So it seems.’ Hunter paused. ‘The woman in charge saw a bloke hanging round outside at about quarter past five. She thought he must be one of the dads. They’re trying to trace all the parents who were there. So far no one’s identified him.’

‘Did the woman give a description?’

‘Nothing worth having.’

‘Did she see a car?’

‘Na.’

‘It’ll all come down to the boy, then?’

‘Aye. And the strange thing is, he’s not talking. Not a word. He doesn’t seem frightened or upset, and he’s not known for keeping his mouth shut, but he’ll not tell them a thing.’

The next day Mark escaped school at lunchtime. He didn’t go into town because it was market day and he couldn’t face the crowd. He bought an apple and a Mars Bar from a corner shop near the school. The place was packed with kids. They weren’t supposed to leave the grounds at midday and it was a shock for them to see him there. He had a reputation for being strict. One of them muttered, ‘Here we go. Detentions all round.’

But he didn’t say anything. He just bought his apple and his Mars Bar and pretended he hadn’t seen them.

He took his lunch to Prior’s Park and sat on a bench near the children’s playground. On the way he had the same sense of being followed as he had the night before, but he put it down to nerves. And to a guilty conscience. If he’d managed to talk to Brian perhaps he’d find it easier to relax.

In summer he hated the park, the regimented rows of bedding plants, the semi-naked teenagers lounging in the sun with their transistor radios and their cans of lager. At this time of year it was windswept and neglected. Tolerable. Banks of dead leaves still lay under the trees. The river was full.

There were no children playing on the swings, but a woman pushing a pram walked past him and sat on a bench next to his. He would have liked to get up to look at the baby. He could tell that it was very tiny, tightly wrapped in a white blanket and covered with a quilt. The quilt was blue so he supposed the child was a boy. One hand had escaped. It was covered in a cotton mitten to stop the nails scratching the face. A middle-aged woman could have gone up to the pram and asked for a peep and the mother would have been delighted to show her baby off but Mark knew this was out of the question for him. It was not considered normal for men to like babies.

He had spoken to Sheena about children. Hypothetically. Not wanting to put any pressure on her. Afraid, as always, of boring her. From the very beginning her reaction had been one of revulsion.

‘Oh, God no. Don’t worry, Mark. I’ll spare you that at least. Really, darling, I’m not the broody sort. Never have been. Can you
imagine
the process of giving birth? I’d die!’

And, of course, she had died, though not through childbirth.

Occasionally he had heard friends talking without realizing he could hear them.

‘At least,’ they said, ‘there were no children.’

Only Emma had seemed to understand the pleasure he took in baby Helen Scarlet and to her it was perfectly natural. She was potty about the baby, entranced by the way she stretched her hands, unseeing, groping for food. Why shouldn’t Mark be? It was Brian’s lack of interest which had astounded her.

‘Tell me, Mark,’ she demanded. ‘How can he bear to spend so much time in the office? He’s missing everything. Her first smile. She’ll be crawling soon and then she won’t be a baby any more.’

She had been delighted when Mark held Helen against his shoulder to wind her after she had been fed, when he jumped her up and down on his knee to make her laugh.

On his recent exile from the Coastguard House he had missed the baby as much as he had his contact with Emma.

The woman stood up from the park bench. She leant into the pram and put her hand on the baby’s forehead to check presumably that he was not too cold. The baby woke and began to grizzle. The woman walked on briskly.

It was then that Mark noticed the tall man in the heavy raincoat. He had been standing by the wire mesh fence surrounding the playground for some time, though Mark had been too taken up with the baby to realize.

‘Mr Taverner?’

He walked across the grass and sat beside Mark who had the sudden thought that they were like spies in a Le Carré novel. He almost expected a password.

‘Yes.’

‘I hope you don’t mind. One of your colleagues pointed you out. I thought it would be more discreet to talk here than at school. I’m the detective in charge of the Kathleen Howe case.’

So, Mark thought, he had been followed. Ramsay had watched him leave the shop and walk to the park. Then he had waited for the woman to leave so they would not be overheard. A patient man. Mark admired that.

‘Do you have time to talk now?’ Ramsay was asking. ‘If you prefer I could make an appointment to see you at home this evening.’

‘No,’ Mark said. ‘I’ve a free period first thing this afternoon. There’s no rush to get back.’

‘I know you gave a statement to one of my officers but there are a few points I’d like to clear up.’

‘Of course.’ Now that the moment had come, Mark felt quite calm, clear-headed. There was none of that ridiculous panic he’d felt last night on his way to meet Brian.

‘Did you know Mrs Howe well?’

‘Not well. I’d met her at parents’ evenings. She came to school concerts.’

‘You would have recognized her?’

‘I suppose so.’

‘But you didn’t see her on the day she disappeared?’

‘No. I said so in my statement.’

There was a brief silence.

‘What was your opinion of Mrs Howe?’ Ramsay asked. ‘I mean as a parent.’

‘She was supportive. Involved. I wish all our parents were as well motivated.’

‘But?’

‘But on occasions her interference could be irritating. And it didn’t do Marilyn any good.’

‘Perhaps you could explain.’

‘Marilyn’s a competent violinist. She works hard, passes all her exams, but there are other, more talented musicians in the school. Last term Mrs Howe barged into a rehearsal and demanded that Marilyn should be moved from second to first violins. It was perfectly true that Marilyn could have coped quite adequately with the music, but so could many of the others in her group.’

‘How did you deal with the situation?’

Mark smiled, briefly. ‘I left it to Mr Scott, our head of music, to sort out. That’s what he’s paid for.’

‘What did Marilyn make of the fuss?’

He shrugged. ‘Naturally she would have liked to play first violin. She’s a competitive child. But she was profoundly embarrassed by the incident. I tried to make light of it, to make the others see that Marilyn could hardly be held responsible for her mother’s … over-enthusiasm. All the same it can’t have been easy.’