Читать книгу In Safe Hands - J. P. Carter - Страница 16

The parents had been moved from the cafeteria to the largest of the meeting rooms. It looked out on the forecourt so they could see all the activity through the slatted blinds. The room had been due to host a lunch for a group of local pensioners. The lunch had been cancelled and the chairs and tables rearranged so that the parents could sit facing Anna when she spoke to them.

By the time she got there twelve people had turned up – four married couples, two divorced wives without their ex-husbands and two husbands without their wives. That left five of the parents who were still absent. Anna was told that the police hadn’t yet been able to contact the parents of four-year-old Toby Chandler or Phil Green, the father of Simone Green, who was also four. But the mother of Abdul Ahmed had been informed and was on her way to Peabody Street. Meanwhile, Molly Wilson’s mother was stuck at home with two other children and a family liaison officer was with her.

Anna’s plan was to provide them with an update and then later her team of detectives would interview them individually. She wanted to find out as much as possible about them and their children. She needed to know if any of them had their suspicions about who might be involved in the kidnapping. She wanted details of where they lived and worked, and access to their phone records. She also needed to check whether any of them were on the criminal records database.

Doing all that here rather than in their homes would speed up the process considerably. Time was a major factor now and it was already working against them. But at least they were beginning to make some progress. They had identified the minibus believed to have been used and were now tracking it across London.

And they had a witness who had seen the children boarding the vehicle. The same witness had also revealed that there was a fourth gang member – a young woman who’d been waiting on the bus to greet the children. No doubt her role had been to make them feel comfortable in the presence of so many strangers.

Anna felt ill-at-ease as she stood before her audience of desperate mothers and fathers, and she was aware that beads of sweat were gathering on her forehead.

She began by giving the parents the option of staying in the community centre for as long as they wanted or being taken home to wait for news there.

‘You might find that being here together for a time will help you cope with the situation,’ she said. ‘Officers are available to answer your questions and we can be of assistance when it comes to talking to the media. They are likely to hound you for interviews, which we would advise you to decline for the time being. Just let it be known what you’d prefer to do.’

She then asked them to introduce themselves and the first to respond was Ethan Brady, who said, ‘I’m Liam Brady’s father. You’ve already met my wife so you know that our son has cystic fibrosis. If he doesn’t get his medication he could die. So you need to do whatever you can to get him back quickly.’

Ethan Brady was much taller than his wife and came across as far more assertive. His narrow face sported designer stubble and his dark eyes had a piercing quality even from a distance.

He was about to say something else when one of the other fathers leapt to his feet and fixed Ethan with a hostile stare.

‘That’s typical of you, Brady,’ the man shouted. ‘But this time it’s not all about your precious fucking son. The rest of us have as much reason to worry as you do.’

‘I’m not saying you don’t,’ Ethan reacted. ‘But you know how ill Liam is.’

‘Sure we do, because you and your wife never stop telling us. I’ve told you before that I don’t think a kid with cystic fibrosis should be allowed in the nursery anyway. It’s too risky. And the staff ignore our kids because they spend too much time fretting over him.’

Anna was taken aback by the outburst and stepped in to stop things getting out of hand.

‘Please would you not raise your voice or be disrespectful to others, sir,’ she said. ‘One of the reasons for bringing you together like this is so that you can offer support to each other.’

The man puffed out his chest and appeared keen to carry on his rant but his wife took hold of his arm and pulled him back onto his seat. Ethan glared at the back of the guy’s head but remained silent, much to Anna’s relief.

‘OK, so let’s now moderate the tone and can you please carry on telling me who you are,’ she said.

Mr Angry turned out to be Kenneth Tenant, father of four-year-old Grace, the same man who had apparently threatened a PC when he was refused entry into the nursery earlier.

He was a rough-looking individual with stern features and a downturned mouth. His behaviour revealed what Anna took to be simmering tensions between him and the Brady couple. She just hoped the situation they were in did not make matters between them much worse. The last thing she needed was the parents turning on each other as the pressure on them mounted, as it surely would.

They got through the rest of the introductions quickly and with no more awkward moments. Anna then tried to inject an element of optimism into the proceedings by telling them that the minibus had been picked up on a traffic camera. She also told them what the neighbour, Mrs Bradshaw, had seen.

They were shocked to hear that a young woman had been involved. And all were adamant that they had no idea who the perps were.

‘This is a very unusual case in that so many children were taken,’ Anna said. ‘We don’t yet know what the motive is, but it’s possible that we’ll hear from the kidnappers soon if their intention is to demand a ransom.’

‘And what if that’s not what they want?’ asked Simone Green’s mother, Wendy, who had reverted to her maiden name of Ryan. ‘What if they took the kids because they want to …’ Her voice broke. ‘What if they want to do bad things to them?’

‘I think that’s extremely unlikely,’ Anna said, but stopped short of ruling it out altogether. ‘And for what it’s worth, we also think it’s doubtful that the kidnappers are terrorists. I’m sure if they were we would have heard from them by now.’

She was then asked to explain how the children had been taken so she talked them through what she’d been told. There was sympathy expressed for Tasha Norris, but a good deal of vitriol was directed at all the staff, especially Sarah Ramsay.

The others echoed what Ruth Brady had said earlier and Toby Chandler’s mother, Rebecca, revealed that she had raised the issue of security with Sarah Ramsay on several occasions.

‘Before we moved here from Stratford we sent our daughter to a nursery that had much tougher procedures in place,’ she said. ‘It had a fingerprint entry system and a webcam so that we could watch our kids from home. I told Sarah that I didn’t think her nursery was as secure as it should be. She disagreed and told me that it met government requirements and that she took safety seriously.’

‘But that’s total bollocks,’ said Daniel Neville’s dad, Wesley. ‘At the end of the day she’s a businesswoman who doesn’t even have a kid of her own. With her it’s all about money and what happened at her nursery in Lewisham last year cost her a small fortune. So the last thing she wants is to have to fork out on expensive security equipment.’

‘Could you tell us what happened in Lewisham, Mr Neville?’ Anna asked.

Wesley, a pot-bellied black man with sunglasses perched on his head, said, ‘A little girl died after choking on a grape at the Peabody Nursery there. The inquest returned a verdict of accidental death and she had to pay a three-hundred-thousand-pound fine for gross negligence.’

Anna hadn’t heard about the case and it annoyed her that nobody back at the station had made her aware of it. Surely officers researching the nurseries would have unearthed the information before now. She would have to ask Sarah about it when she next spoke to her. Right now, however, she couldn’t see how it would have a bearing on what had happened this morning.

She checked her watch, saw that she had been with the parents for forty-five minutes, and decided it was time for her detectives to talk to them individually.

She finished off by telling them that she and her team were doing everything possible to find the children.

‘Scores of officers are already involved in the search,’ she said. ‘We’ve set up a mobile command outside on the forecourt and for the time being we’re using this community centre as a base for our operations. Officers all across London are on the lookout for the minibus and I’ve already issued a short television appeal for information.’

Kenneth Tenant shot to his feet again and this time he locked his angry gaze on Anna.

‘I just watched the interview you gave on the telly earlier,’ he said. ‘One of the reporters asked you a question that you didn’t answer because you got interrupted. So I’ll ask it now. Is it true that your own kid was snatched ten years ago?’

Anna drew a deep, steadying breath and said, ‘It is true that my daughter was taken from me, Mr Tenant, but as I made clear to that reporter it has absolutely no relevance to what’s happening now.’

‘Well, it’s relevant as far as I’m concerned,’ he said.

‘And why is that, Mr Tenant?’

‘Surely that’s bloody obvious.’

She held his gaze and said, ‘Not to me it isn’t, Mr Tenant. So perhaps you could explain what you mean.’

His wife tried to say something to him but he gestured for her to be quiet.

Then his eyes narrowed and he said, ‘If you’ve been searching for your own little girl for ten years and still haven’t found her, then why should we trust that you’re up to the job of finding our kids?’

She’d known where he was going with his accusation as soon as he began the sentence; each of his words felt like a blow to her stomach, but Anna knew she had to roll with the punches. The man was clearly distressed and aggression was obviously a coping mechanism that helped him avoid becoming outwardly emotional.

‘I have been appointed as the senior officer on this case and I can assure you, as will the entire MIT that have chosen me to be the leader of this investigation, that I am up to the job, Mr Tenant,’ she said, keeping her voice low and even. ‘The circumstances surrounding my own daughter’s abduction were entirely different to this. And for reasons that you may or may not be aware of, for most of the last ten years I’ve been the only person looking for her. But in the search for your children and the people who took them I have the support of every police officer in the country and access to an unlimited amount of resources. Plus, I hope you can take comfort from the fact that, because of what I’ve experienced, I can more fully appreciate exactly what you and the other parents are going through.’

Tenant’s whole demeanour changed in an instant and blood coloured his cheeks. He ran a hand through his thin brown hair and blew out a long, slow breath.

Then he shook his head and said, ‘I’m a fucking dickhead and I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have had a go at you like that. I’m just worked up and my mind’s all over the place.’

‘No need to apologise, Mr Tenant,’ Anna said. ‘Just please understand that myself and my colleagues will not rest until we find your children.’

After telling the other detectives to stay with the parents until the family liaison officers arrived, she made a swift exit from the room.

She went straight outside and round to the side of the building where she rested her back against the wall and fired up a fag, her first of the day.

The blood was beating in her ears and adrenalin charging through her body. It wasn’t that she was hurt by what Kenneth Tenant had said. It was that his words had made her realise just how hard it was going to be to head up this particular investigation.

She wasn’t going to be able to squeeze the memories to one side like she usually did while working. It had started already. She was being reminded of how it had felt after her daughter had been taken from her. As each moment had passed, she’d known that she was less and less likely to see Chloe ever again. Anna had walked around in a fog for weeks, out of sync with her surroundings, and the pain was constant, crushing and unbearable.

She closed her eyes and dragged heavily on the cigarette, then let the smoke drift from her nostrils.

She tried to keep the memories at bay by focusing on the nine children who were missing. But she couldn’t. Her hands started to shake and the cigarette fell from her fingers as her back slid down the wall. When she hit the ground she put her head in her hands and her mind spiralled back through the years to when her life was changed forever.