Читать книгу At Your Door - J. P. Carter - Страница 16

Sophie had picked up a copy of the Evening Standard after leaving the dental clinic. And she’d been so anxious to read it that she’d considered popping into a café or pub rather than wait until she got home. But the feeling that she was being watched had returned as soon as she’d hit the High Street, so she’d decided to get back to the flat as quickly as she could.

From the moment she stepped through her front door she was battered by a perfect storm of panic and paranoia. She was even grappling with the chilling thought that if she was indeed being stalked then it might have something to do with the revelations in the paper. If so, then perhaps it was already too late to prevent her world from falling apart.

Alice had still been up, of course, so Sophie had made every effort to pretend that nothing was wrong.

‘Has the film finished, sweetheart?’ she’d asked as she’d walked into the living room with a fake smile on her face.

Alice had jumped up from the sofa, her tablet in one hand, a bag of crisps in the other.

‘Ages ago,’ she’d said. ‘And it was really good. I’m going to watch it again tomorrow.’

‘Now why doesn’t that surprise me?’

Alice had crossed the room and Sophie had wrapped her in her arms.

‘And thank you for looking after the flat while I was at work,’ she’d said. ‘I take it nobody rang the bell.’

‘No one ever does, Mum. You know that. And even if someone did, I would never answer it. You know that as well.’

‘Of course I do. And that’s why I trust you.’

Alice was a mature twelve-year-old and Sophie was glad of it because it made things so much easier. She rarely answered back or threw a tantrum, and she had such a pleasant, sensitive nature that it was hard to ever be cross with her.

That didn’t mean that she was a goody-two-shoes, though. She often demonstrated to Sophie that she had a mind of her own and a stubborn streak that she’d no doubt inherited from her late father.

‘It’s time for bed now, sweetheart,’ Sophie had told her. ‘Finish your crisps, clean your teeth and get yourself ready.’

‘Remember I’m going to Ruth’s house tomorrow.’

‘I haven’t forgotten. I told Ruth’s mum that I would drop you off between ten and eleven.’

Alice was in bed and asleep before eight o’clock and by nine-thirty Sophie was half way through her second bottle of wine. Getting drunk was her way of dealing with the despair that now engulfed her. The alcohol dulled her senses and took the edge off the pain that she’d inflicted on herself by reading the second instalment of the Anna Tate story in the Evening Standard. She felt the sting of tears in her eyes as she tried through a boozy haze to process what she had learned along with the wretched implications.

She was sitting at the kitchen table in the downdraught of the ceiling fan. In front of her she’d spread out the centre pages of that day’s Standard. There were more photographs, and every time Sophie looked at them her heart lurched in her chest.

Detective Anna Tate featured in two of them. One showed her speaking at a press conference during the nursery kidnap case two weeks ago. In the other – taken ten years ago – she was holding her two-year-old daughter in her arms while smiling broadly at the camera. The caption beneath it read: Anna and Chloe just weeks before her ex-husband Matthew Dobson abducted the child and fled abroad with her.

Next to it was what the paper described as an age progression photo of Chloe. Beneath it were the words: This is a computer-generated impression of what Chloe might look like now at the age of twelve.

The image had taken Sophie’s breath away when she’d first laid eyes on it. And even now it was causing a riot of emotions to run through her.

‘I just can’t believe this is happening,’ she said aloud to herself before losing control for the second time that evening. She buried her face in her hands as the tears flowed. Her body shook, and bile burned furiously at the back of her throat.

It was at least a minute before she managed to stop crying. She wiped her eyes and poured herself another glass of wine. She told herself it’d be the last before she sloped off to bed, where she would no doubt lie awake trying to come to terms with the revelation that her life had been filled with so many lies.

As she drank, her eyes were drawn back to the newspaper and she found herself re-reading the second part of the Anna Tate story. And once again the words stirred up bitter memories that sadly had not been subdued by the passage of time.

A MOTHER’S TEN YEAR NIGHTMARE

Part two of this Evening Standard exclusive

DCI Anna Tate is currently one of the most high-profile detectives in the Metropolitan Police. She was in the headlines recently as the officer in charge of the hunt for the gang who kidnapped nine children from a South London nursery school and murdered one of their teachers.

Yesterday we explained why that case was so close to her heart. Her own daughter Chloe was abducted ten years ago by her ex-husband and she hasn’t seen either of them since.

But Anna has never given up searching for Chloe, who was two when she was taken.

Sophie skimmed over the next few paragraphs which repeated the information contained in part one – how during the nursery investigation Anna discovered that Matthew had obtained fake passports in the names of James and Alice Miller before disappearing, and how she learned that Matthew had actually returned to the UK with his daughter three years ago but weeks later was murdered in a park close to where they’d set up home in Southampton.

Today’s article picked the story up where the first instalment ended – with Anna meeting the detective who investigated Matthew’s murder and asking him: ‘So where is my baby? Where’s Chloe?’

The answer Anna was given came as another devastating blow.

‘We simply don’t know,’ the detective informed her. ‘The child disappeared along with the woman who had been living with her and her father.’

It transpired that Anna’s ex-husband and daughter had been sharing a rented house with a mystery woman for three weeks. But on the night Matthew was murdered the woman was seen leaving the house with Chloe and several suitcases. They drove away from Southampton in a car that Matthew had hired in the name of James Miller. The car was later found abandoned in London.

Mystery

The murder of Matthew Dobson (aka James Miller) is as intriguing as the mystery surrounding the sudden disappearance of the woman he had described to their landlord as his partner.

He was stabbed to death one evening while walking through a park in Southampton city centre. It was dark and there were no witnesses, but there were signs he’d been involved in a struggle.

‘Police found a mobile phone in his pocket and it seems he made one last call before he died,’ Anna told the Standard. ‘The call was to a number that was still transmitting a signal later that night. That was how the police found out where he’d been living.’

But when officers later called at the house they found it had been cleared of all personal possessions except for the unregistered phone that Matthew had called. And there was no way of knowing who it belonged to. The log only showed calls to and from Matthew’s own phone.

Buried

The murder investigation is still open three years on but the police have no idea why he was stabbed or by whom. It’s now believed that Matthew probably called the woman to tell her to flee the house with his daughter.

Before leaving Southampton, Anna learned that her ex-husband had been buried in a city cemetery, so she visited his grave.

His headstone, paid for by the council, carried the simple inscription:

Here lies James Miller. May he rest in peace.

The real name of the man in the grave is now known to be Matthew Dobson. But to Anna Tate’s immense frustration his secrets died with him. She’s left with questions that she’s desperate to know the answers to.

Who killed her ex-husband and why?

Was his death linked in any way to his return to the UK?

Why did he return from wherever he’d been living for seven years?

Why did he settle in Southampton of all places?

How long had he been with the mystery woman?

And where did she take Chloe?

Nightmare

‘The fact that the woman left the house in such a hurry after Matthew was killed suggests to me that she was scared,’ Anna said. ‘But the police don’t know who she was running from.’

Anna has told her story in the hope that someone somewhere has information that might bring her ten year nightmare to an end.

‘I live in hope,’ the detective said. ‘And I’ll search for my daughter until I find her, no matter how long that takes.’

Sophie’s mind was ranging in all directions as she finished reading the article, and more tears were welling up in her eyes.

It was too much for her to take in, too much to get her head around with a bottle and a half of wine sloshing around inside her.

She pushed her chair back and stood up, which made her feel dizzy.

She drained her glass, but as she placed it on the table her legs gave way beneath her. She collapsed onto the floor like a bag of cement and passed out.