Stranger Child (17 page)

‘Bloody hell. What a dreadful thing to do. I’d never have expected that from Jack. You two always seemed so close.’

‘We were. We had our issues – what couple doesn’t after ten years? But nothing that couldn’t have been sorted out with a bit of compromise on both sides. I absolutely never saw it coming.’

‘Did you ever hear from him again?’

‘Oh yes.’ Emma lifted her head, staring past Tom as if she could see something in the far distance that was only revealing itself to her. ‘I heard from him once more – the day before he died. It was as if I’d lost him twice.’

This time the pause was longer, and Tom somehow knew her next words were going to hurt. She turned her head until her eyes met his.

‘The reason I haven’t been able to see you since then, Tom – the reason I’ve ignored you all this time – is that I couldn’t see you without telling you. Now I think I must. Jack wrote to me the day before he died to say goodbye. I’m sorry, but the truth is, his death was no accident. Jack killed himself.’

27

The road seemed to stretch endlessly before Tom as he walked quickly, head down, back towards where he had left his car. In the open air he felt exposed, unable to focus his thoughts as he struggled to come to terms with all that Emma had told him. He knew he should be concentrating on the missing baby, but he made a deal with himself. A few minutes – that was all – to try to adjust and to reconcile everything he had ever thought about Jack’s death with the truth.

Emma had turned to leave after she had broken the devastating news, but Tom had reached for her arm and held her there – perhaps unfairly in view of everything the poor woman was trying to deal with.

‘I know this is the least of your worries now, Em, but is there anything else you can tell me? What did he say?’ Tom could hear the despair in his own voice. Suicide had never been something he had found easy to deal with in his job. It spoke of a level of hopelessness that was outside his comprehension. Even in the bleakest moments of his life he had managed to retain the hope that each day, things would get a little better.

Emma had reached forwards and rested the palm of her hand against Tom’s cheek, to his shame adopting the role of comforter when her own life was in such turmoil.

‘Jack said he’d made many mistakes in his life and that the day of reckoning had finally arrived. He’d made a decision that he knew was going to cause pain, but as far as he was concerned it was the only way out of an existence that had become unbearable. I’m so sorry, Tom.’

Tom had wanted more than anything to keep Emma there and ask her more questions, but one look at her face – concern for him mixed with desperation and fear for her baby – had jolted him back to reality.

‘Thanks for telling me,’ he’d said, covering her hand with his own and gently removing it. ‘It’s a lot to take in, but there’ll be time for that when we’ve got Ollie back. Go, Em. Get
back to David and keep in touch. We’re going to find Ollie and bring him home. I know it’s wrong of a policeman to make promises, but I’ll move heaven and earth to get you your baby back.’

With a last swift hug they had parted, Emma walking back towards her home, and Tom moving in the opposite direction to exit the small wood at the far side a few minutes later.

His car was in sight now, and his fast walk turned into a slow jog until he was able to press his remote to unlock the doors and slide into the driver’s seat. It felt like reaching sanctuary, a place where he could pull his thoughts together.

Tom leaned forwards, his head resting on arms folded across the steering wheel.

‘
Why
, Jack?’ he muttered.

For all Jack’s wayward behaviour, he’d had a wicked sense of humour, and had relentlessly ‘taken the piss out of life’, as he had put it himself. In spite of his success and his obvious brilliance, Tom had known there was a darker side to his brother and although he had never understood it, he had always believed that Jack lacked confidence. He had mockingly called Tom ‘White Hat’ – when he wasn’t just calling him ‘little brother’ – because he always thought Tom was one of the good guys – Jack’s polar opposite.

Realising that understanding Jack’s motivation for taking his own life was not going to come to him in a flash, Tom leaned back, his head against the headrest, and closed his eyes.

Whatever it was, why didn’t he come and talk to me about it?

It was no good asking that question now. He would never know.

Opening his eyes, he leaned forwards again and put the key in the ignition. Time to think about the baby now – to focus on the living and not on the dead.

28

‘Where’ve you been?’ The words burst from David as Emma walked into the kitchen. Deep lines of stress were etched into his usually smooth forehead, and she could see he hadn’t coped well with her absence.

‘I walked down as far as the wood. There’s a bit of tree trunk that some kids must have dragged into the clearing to use as a seat, so I sat there for a while.’

David looked horrified.

‘But it’s dark out there. Weren’t you frightened in the wood on your own?’

Emma closed her eyes.

‘My child has been kidnapped. I can’t imagine any single thing that would be more terrifying than that. I’m not sure I’ll ever be frightened of anything normal – like rats, or hurricanes, or marauding gangs of youths – ever again.’

She was being hard on him and that wasn’t fair.

‘You shouldn’t have gone out. We’ll only get Ollie back if we do exactly what they say. So stick to the rules, please, Emma. And then, when it’s all over, we can get help for Tasha. We just need to hang on in there.’

Sometimes she thought of David as an ostrich, burying his head in the sand and forcing himself to believe that all would be well. It was one of the few things about him that she found frustrating. It wasn’t so much optimism as an inability to face reality and a tendency to look for the easy way out.

It wasn’t going to work this time. There was no easy way out.

On her walk back to the house after meeting Tom, Emma had decided on a two-pronged attack on Natasha, the aim being to confuse her. She knew David would be cajoling her, which she was fairly certain Natasha would be able to resist. What she might find less easy to resist was kindness, the feeling of a home into which she was welcomed. And then, just as she was slightly thrown off-guard, Emma would introduce Ollie back into the picture.

‘Right,’ she said. ‘Nobody in this house has eaten a thing since this morning. Whatever’s going to happen, we can’t be fainting by the wayside – so like it or not, we’re going to eat.’

She pulled a Bolognese that she had made a few days earlier from the freezer, and stuck it in the microwave to defrost. She wanted life in this house to feel good to her stepdaughter, like a real home should feel. Then she might be less inclined to rip it apart.

David said nothing and set about laying the table. She saw him head towards the wine.

‘Sorry, darling, but I think it’s a really bad idea. What if you have to drive somewhere tonight and you’re stopped by the police?’

A look of irritation crossed David’s face.

‘It’s tomorrow,’ Natasha said – the first bit of information she had volunteered.

‘What’s tomorrow, Tasha?’ David asked, adopting a nonchalant tone as if this were an ordinary conversation.

But she merely tutted and raised her eyebrows.

David and Emma exchanged a glance and carried on with what they were doing. They ate dinner in virtual silence, all three of them pushing their food around their plates. As a strategy it had failed completely, and the thought of food actually made Emma feel sick. There was one more thing she wanted to try, though.

At the end of the table sat Emma’s laptop. She pulled it towards her, making sure that the screen was visible to everybody at the table, and tapped the space bar to bring it to life. She clicked an icon on the screen, and suddenly the room was full of Ollie – laughing, crawling. Emma remembered shooting this video on her phone. She knew what was going to happen next and she swallowed the vast lump that was lodged in her throat. She couldn’t cry now – it would ruin the moment.

First a pair of shoes came into view, then the legs of a person sitting on the leather sofa at the far end of the kitchen. Emma had zoomed out to get the full view of Ollie grabbing Natasha’s jeans and pulling himself upright. ‘Tassa, Tassa,’ he shouted with a huge smile as his face drew almost level with hers. Emma had managed to capture the one second when Natasha had allowed herself to smile at Ollie before her face settled back into her habitual scowl.

The three of them watched, almost mesmerised, until Natasha reached out and slammed the laptop lid shut.

‘It won’t work, you know. I’m not stupid. Do you think I’m a normal kid who does what she’s told, scared of getting in trouble and being grounded?’ She gave a cold laugh. ‘When
you come from where I do, what you’re scared of is being thrown in The Pit, starved until you’d do anything – yeah, anything – for a piece of bread. Or worse, you’re scared one of the big guys – the real evil bastards – is going to deal with you. Do you know what they call these men? No – I bet you don’t. They call them
enforcers
. So you see, a bit of mince and a family photo really, really doesn’t cut it.’

Emma wasn’t able to pull her eyes away from Natasha’s. An image of this girl’s life for the past six years was painted clearly in her mind and suddenly she felt no hope at all.

29

One look at Tom’s face as he walked towards her, and Becky knew something had happened. Tom had what Becky’s mum would call an open face; wide blue eyes that looked straight at you, and a relaxed, confident expression. Not tonight, though. His face seemed narrower, his eyes slightly downcast with a smidgeon of a wrinkle between his brows. His skin seemed paler too, and his generous mouth was set in a straight line, as if his teeth were clenched. Forlorn was the word that sprang to her mind.

He was a good-looking bastard, by anybody’s measure. Six foot tall or more with those wide shoulders and broad chest, he usually had an easy way about him that felt comfortable and secure to be around. Mind you, he had a temper. On more than one occasion Becky had seen him come close to losing it with a suspect – particularly when kids were the victims. And he could be a bit gruff and direct when the mood took him. But all that just added to the interest, in her book. Not that she should be thinking that way. After all, he had Leo – studying for a degree in psychology, no less. Smart as well as beautiful, it seemed.

‘Cup of tea?’ she asked, squashing the twinge of irrational resentment of a woman she had never met. Tom barely registered her question, giving her a distracted look as he marched into his office. Taking that as a yes, she diverted into the kitchen.

‘How did it go with Emma, then?’ she asked five minutes later as she plonked a mug of tea on Tom’s desk.

‘Nothing much to tell you, really,’ he replied shortly, staring at the drink in front of him.

‘I sat with David and Natasha, as instructed,’ she said, thinking that if she jabbered on for a bit it might give him time to pull himself out of whatever was bothering him. ‘Course, I was careful because of the bugs, so I asked her questions about where she’d been living. I knew she wouldn’t tell me anything. She walked out – so I followed and cornered her in the hall – a bug-free zone. I said we’d had some new information, and I wanted to run some names by her. She was quite sneery about it, as if to say, ‘Do you think I’d tell you?’ but it
didn’t matter because I made them all up. I did, however, think there was a flicker of something when I mentioned the name Rick or Richard Harvey. Whether it was the first name or the last I don’t know – but if I had to put money on it, I would say that it was the name Rick that did it. I’d only wanted to unnerve her – so that was a bit of a bonus.’

Becky waited. Tom had been looking at her throughout, but his eyes were distant, unfocused.

‘Good. Well done, Becky.’ Tom closed his eyes for a second and she saw his shoulders move up then down as if he was trying to get himself under control.

‘We’ve got bugger all to go on, if we’re honest about it,’ he said. ‘What exactly
do
we know?’

And so it had begun, the trawl through the information on whoever had taken Natasha in the first place, who had brought her back and who had taken Ollie. They had just about nothing.

Tom’s phone beeped in his pocket. He pulled it out and read the screen, suddenly pushing himself forwards, sitting upright in his chair for the first time.

He raised his eyes from the phone and looked straight at Becky. Her heart rate increased. Tom’s expression said it all.

‘A text from Emma. It’s moving. Whatever they want, whatever is planned, according to Natasha, it’s going to happen tomorrow,’ he said.

*

Alone in his office once more, frustration was coursing through Tom’s veins. He had now selected and briefed a small team to work on the kidnap, and they were pursuing every line of enquiry they could think of, but he felt they were working completely blind.

His personal mobile phone rang.

‘Tom Douglas,’ he answered.

‘Hi Tom, it’s Leo,’ Tom breathed out slowly. He had forgotten to tell Leo he wouldn’t be home – maybe not at all – tonight. He realised he had no idea how she would react on the rare occasions that he might have to be secretive.

‘Bollocks. I’m sorry, Leo – I’m a useless cretin. Look, I’ll call you back. Sorry – we can’t use my personal mobile at the moment. Give me two minutes.’

He hung up. This was the number that Emma would use if she needed him, and he couldn’t be tied up talking to Leo if she wanted to get through.

He quickly dialled Leo’s number on his office phone.

‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘I need to leave my other line free.’

‘Is it Lucy?’ Leo asked, the concern showing in her voice. She had met Lucy a few times, and they were getting along better on each occasion. There had been a slight wariness on Lucy’s part to start with, but Leo had been sensitive to any possible jealousy.