Leigh Russell, page 19
‘I don’t understand,’ Ariadne repeated. ‘You say Tom was taken yesterday and you heard from the kidnapper last night. Why didn’t you say anything before now? What’s going on, Geraldine?’
Geraldine tried to explain that she had been too frightened to tell anyone what had happened. She hesitated to admit that she hadn’t known whom she could trust. Fear flickered through her even now, as she shared what was happening.
Ariadne understood what lay behind the words. ‘You could have told me!’ she burst out indignantly.
Geraldine did her best to make her position clear. Not only was it difficult to be sure no one was listening, but any change in behaviour at the police station might have been noticed. She couldn’t discount the possibility that one of their fellow officers was communicating with Zoe.
‘If I reported it, there was a chance Zoe might have been warned. I couldn’t afford to take that risk. But now I think I know where Tom is, there’s no reason to wait any longer. I have to act. Now. And I can’t risk doing this alone. The kidnapper’s dangerous. They could be armed.’
Ariadne responded to Geraldine’s urgency and agreed to bring a few officers to Whitecross Gardens as discreetly as she could, without explaining where they were going.
‘I could bring a van?’ she suggested but they agreed that would be impossible to arrange without attracting attention. ‘Wait there and keep me posted if there’s any change,’ Ariadne said. ‘I’ll be there as soon as I can and I’m going to bring an armed response team. Don’t worry, I’ll make sure we arrive discreetly. I’ll have to tell Binita, but no one else will know what’s going on. I’ll fill the team in on the way, once we’re away from the police station. We’ll be there as soon as we can and I won’t tell anyone who doesn’t need to know.’
‘Make sure no one talks,’ Geraldine said, as Ariadne ended the call. And then there was nothing she could do but wait for her colleagues to arrive, and hope that they managed to rescue Tom before he could be harmed. She couldn’t entertain the thought that the worst might already have happened. He had to be alive.
43
Ten minutes later, Ariadne and a hand-picked team of armed and unarmed officers arrived in unmarked cars which they parked a few doors along the street. Ariadne had brought Naomi, Constable Sam Cullen and two more burly officers whom Geraldine deployed to cover the back of the building in case anyone tried to slip out that way. They had to move swiftly before Zoe returned or anyone inside the house noticed unusual activity in the street. Approaching the front door with Sam beside her, closely followed by Ariadne and Naomi, Geraldine had to force herself to keep walking. Despite her determination to maintain her composure, she could feel herself shaking with fear. Summoning all her reserves of energy, she rang the bell and after a moment the door was opened by a middle-aged woman. Her faded blonde hair was shot through with streaks of grey, but her resemblance to Zoe confirmed her identity.
‘Are you Mrs Pike?’ Geraldine asked.
As the woman looked apprehensively at Sam, who was in uniform, Geraldine nodded at him to position himself beside her.
‘I’ve come to collect Tom.’ Geraldine was amazed at how calm she sounded, when her thoughts were churning with powerful emotions.
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ Mrs Pike replied but she looked scared.
She made a move to close the door but before she could do so, Sam had put his foot over the threshold, and she had to content herself with folding her arms across her chest and glaring at Geraldine. The belligerence of her stance failed to conceal her alarm. ‘There’s no one called Tom here,’ she blustered. ‘You’ve got the wrong address. Now get out of the way,’ she added, scowling at Sam whose foot remained firmly planted in the doorway.
She tried to close the door and was again thwarted by Sam’s large black boot.
‘Tom is the name of a baby who’s gone missing,’ Geraldine said, trying to sound disinterested and maintain an appearance of professionalism.
The woman’s lips stretched out in a sour grin. ‘Do I look young enough to have a baby?’ she hissed. ‘Now get lost, all of you. There’s no babies here and there haven’t been for many years.’
As if on cue, somewhere in the house a baby began to cry. Geraldine thrilled at the sound. She had never believed other mothers when they swore they could recognise the sound of their own babies crying, but in that instant she knew she was listening to Tom. Behind her, Naomi let out an expletive, very softly.
‘You must know you can’t get away with kidnapping a baby. The house is surrounded,’ Geraldine said carefully, trying not to provoke Zoe’s mother. ‘You can see I didn’t come here without back-up. So let’s end this peacefully, and no one needs to get in trouble. All you have to do is return the baby right now, without any fuss, and this will all go away.’
‘I can’t do that—’ the other woman began.
The baby’s cries grew louder. Geraldine shoved the woman to one side and barged her way into the house, leaving Sam to guard the door while Ariadne and Naomi dealt with Zoe’s mother, who was looking around with an air of desperation. Without warning, she darted forwards. Ariadne promptly seized her by both of her arms and snapped handcuffs on her wrists.
‘We’ll wait inside, shall we?’ Geraldine heard Ariadne say pleasantly.
Mrs Pike cursed and remonstrated, but her resistance was pointless. Leaving the kerfuffle behind, Geraldine entered a small square hall cluttered with a jumble of shoes, boots and an untidy pile of letters and local newspapers that appeared to have been discarded but not yet thrown away. In front of her was a carpeted staircase that climbed upwards between dull mushroom-coloured walls. The paintwork was chipped and had been rubbed away in patches, as though furniture had been dragged up and down there. The baby’s cries had stopped, but Geraldine was sure they had been coming from upstairs. As she was about to ascend, a figure appeared in the shadows above her. Gaunt and unshaven, he was barely recognisable as Ronny Pike, the man she had arrested five years earlier. His eyes glittered malevolently at her but, before either of them could speak, a commotion broke out behind Geraldine. She turned to see Zoe had returned and was standing in the doorway, her mouth open, her eyes stretched wide with fright.
‘You!’ Zoe shrieked accusingly at Geraldine. ‘What are you doing here?’
‘I’ve come to collect Tom,’ Geraldine replied.
Behind her, she was aware of movement. Looking over her shoulder, she saw Ronny was halfway down the stairs. Had she seen him in any other setting, she might not have recognised him, even at such close proximity. She remembered a stalwart figure, with a florid complexion and shrewd eyes, who had towered over her when she arrested him for withholding evidence in a murder investigation. He had been lucky to escape with nothing worse than a conviction for aggravated burglary, which was the only charge that could be proved against him, even though Geraldine had testified that he had been armed. He seemed to have shrunk since she had last seen him. His once ruddy cheeks looked pale and gaunt, and his shoulders were bowed. He stared at her dully and pushed past her without a word. She suspected he was high.
‘Look at him. Go on, look at him!’ Zoe screeched. ‘Look what you did to him. Do you know what four years locked in a cell does to a person? Do you have any idea? He’s a broken man. Broken.’ She began to weep.
‘Whatever happened to your brother, he brought it on himself,’ Geraldine replied as she turned on her heel and raced up the stairs.
Four doors led off the landing. All were shut. Geraldine opened the first door. Tom wasn’t there, nor was he in the second room. In the third room she found him lying on the floor beside an unmade bed, his tear-streaked face flushed. He wasn’t moving, and for a terrible instant she was afraid she had arrived too late to save his life, despite the colour in his chubby cheeks. As she held out her hands towards him, his eyelids fluttered and she let out an involuntary gasp. His eyes opened and he let out a piercing wail of protest. She scooped him up, her fingers grasping the warmth of his firm little body. Greedily, she clutched him close to her, ignoring the tears streaming down her face. Snuggled into her neck, snuffling and smacking his lips, Tom stopped crying, comforted by her familiar voice as she murmured gently to him.
Hugging Tom tightly, Geraldine wiped her eyes and made her way downstairs to the hall, where her colleagues were waiting for her. Zoe and her mother were both handcuffed and seething. Ronny was also cuffed, but he was standing with his head lowered, cowed and silent.
‘Take these things off at once,’ Mrs Pike ordered. No one took any notice of her outraged bleating.
‘You’ll pay for this,’ Zoe hissed, glaring at Geraldine. They both knew those were idle threats. Her attempt to take revenge on Geraldine had failed and she wouldn’t try again. Meanwhile, Ronny remained silent, subdued by the commotion around him. Geraldine wondered if he had even been aware that her son had been kidnapped. He gazed around, without seeming to register anything.
‘If prison was so horrible, why did you want to send your brother back there?’ she asked Zoe, who glowered in response.
Geraldine turned to Ronny. ‘You realise what you’ve done? You and your sister and mother have all just committed a serious crime.’
Ronny shrugged and gazed at her with the blank eyes of a man who could no longer understand anything. It was not Ronny who had masterminded the abduction, but Zoe. Clutching Tom tightly, Geraldine left. She had a murder investigation to pursue, but first she needed to take care of Tom who was soiled and hungry, and crying again.
44
Tom appeared none the worse for his abduction. Once Geraldine had fed him and bathed him, he gurgled happily at her, waving his little fists in the air and chuckling with delight when she tickled him. She played with him until he fell asleep and didn’t wake when she put him down, merely grumbling and fussing before he settled, without crying to be picked up. In fact, he showed no signs that he had been at all bothered by his recent experience. He had a generally cheerful nature, except when he was hungry, and seemed as happy as usual. Of course, he had no idea he had been kidnapped. He was familiar with Zoe, who knew how to take care of him, and he would have been asleep for most of the time anyway. Now he was home, it was hard to believe he had ever gone missing. Nevertheless, that night Geraldine slept on the floor of the nursery, waking up intermittently to check that Tom was all right even though it was obvious that, while she had been driven almost insane with worry, he remained oblivious to the danger he had so narrowly escaped. Zoe had been looking after him every day, so nothing had actually changed for him. He had probably not even noticed that he had spent the night in an unfamiliar house.
By the next morning, Geraldine had started to recover from the trauma of Tom’s disappearance, but she couldn’t think about the murder investigation yet, and called the police station to say she would be off for a few days. She had bought herself a little breathing space, but she couldn’t shake off the feeling that she had come close to solving the mystery of Serena’s death. There was something off about Nigel and his wife, and she needed to discover what it was. Perhaps she was deluded, but she thought if she could only concentrate on the case for a few more days, she might be able to wrap it up. She couldn’t walk away from it now. As long as the killer remained at large, she was going to have to find someone to take care of Tom so she could return to work.
Holding Tom on her lap, and rocking him backwards and forwards, she considered her limited options. She didn’t want to use an agency. Apart from the expense, she couldn’t consider leaving Tom with a stranger again. After her recent experience, she was apprehensive about leaving him at all, but she wanted to return to work and would need to focus without being distracted. The question was, whom could she trust? She had a twin sister in London, but Helena had no experience with babies and, besides, she smoked. Even if she could be relied on to look after a baby, Geraldine knew Ian wouldn’t be happy if Tom was left in her twin sister’s care.
The only other solution that immediately came to mind was to ask her adopted sister, Celia, to come and stay until a replacement for Zoe could be found. Geraldine had only learned as an adult that she had been adopted at birth. Although she had grown up with Celia, she had never felt close to her when they were younger, but since discovering she had been adopted, somehow she and Celia had grown close. Celia’s daughter was a teenager and old enough to be left at home with her father for a short time, while Geraldine looked for another childminder. If her sister was unavailable at such short notice, Geraldine wasn’t sure what she would do.
Celia answered the phone straight away. ‘Geraldine, how lovely to hear from you. It’s been a while, hasn’t it? Too long. How are you? And how are Tom and Ian?’
After exchanging news for a few moments, Geraldine broached the reason for her call, explaining that their childminder had let them down unexpectedly. She didn’t go into any details over the phone. She couldn’t trust herself to talk about it without breaking down.
‘I wouldn’t ask, only I’m right in the middle of a complicated murder investigation and I really don’t want to abandon it.’
To her relief, Celia immediately agreed to come and look after Tom, as long as she could bring her own toddler with her. Celia declared she would be happy to stay for a week to begin with, after which they could review the arrangement, and Geraldine promised to start looking for a permanent childminder first thing the following morning, while she was waiting for Celia to arrive.
‘I’ll ask around,’ Geraldine said. ‘I’m in touch with a few mothers from a local toddler group and I can contact my health visitor and see if she knows anyone. I really appreciate you dropping everything to help me,’ she added. ‘I don’t know what I would have done without you. We’re in the middle of an investigation and it would disrupt everything if I quit right now.’
Celia didn’t answer but Geraldine could imagine what she was thinking. ‘Oh yes, your all-important police work, that takes precedence over everything else, even caring for your own child.’ Celia had given up any hope of a career when her first child was born and had seemed genuinely happy to stay at home, insisting that being a wife and mother was career enough for her. She had been predictably critical of Geraldine’s decision to return to work so soon after Tom was born. In many ways, Geraldine envied her. She wished she could be satisfied with her role as a mother. But being a detective was her passion. She knew she was good at her job, and she needed to work to feel fulfilled. She was relieved that Celia refrained from finding fault with her now. She was already struggling with guilt and fighting to dismiss the uneasy feeling that she was responsible for Tom’s kidnap. As a mother, she should have been taking care of him herself; as a detective, she ought to have researched his childminder more carefully. She had failed on both counts, and he was so little and so reliant on her. If Celia had launched into criticising her decision to spend time at work when she could have been at home with Tom, Geraldine’s resolve might have weakened.
But Celia asked only whether Ian would mind having another a second infant in the flat. ‘Or me, for that matter.’
Geraldine explained that Ian was away for a few days, prompting Celia to enquire whether everything was all right.
‘Yes, everything’s fine. Couldn’t be better. He’s just away for a few days with work. How soon can you get here?’
Gazing down at Tom sleeping peacefully in his cot, she hoped she was doing the right thing. But Celia would only need to look after Tom until a new childminder could take over. Geraldine hoped Ian wouldn’t arrive home while she was at work and wished there was a way she could contact him to warn him in advance that Celia and her little boy were coming to stay. In the morning, she would have to start looking for a replacement childminder, but for now she was busy preparing for Celia. While she was making the bed in the spare room, she received a message that Barry had been traced. He had moved to Leeds and would be brought in for questioning the following day. Celia had to travel all the way from Kent, so she wouldn’t be in York until early afternoon. As soon as she arrived, Geraldine would go to work.
Lying in bed that night, Geraldine’s thoughts drifted to Serena, and she wondered whether Barry was guilty of murdering her, or if a member of Martin’s family was responsible. Something about Nigel was bothering her, but besides him there was no shortage of suspects. She sighed and promised herself she would take time off once the investigation was over to review her priorities. But right now she was impatient to get back to work.
45
Next morning Celia set out early and arrived in York before midday, bringing her infant son with her. Geraldine and Tom were waiting for her at the station. It was cold and they spoke little, apart from rushed greetings, as they bundled Celia’s bags and toddler into the car and joined the traffic crawling out of the station. Once they were back at Geraldine’s flat, they hugged and greeted each other, and exchanged news briefly as Geraldine was impatient to leave. She expressed her regret that a proper chat would have to wait until later. Once Geraldine had shown her sister where everything was and they had succeeded in opening a two-seater baby stroller Geraldine had borrowed, Celia wanted to hear about Tom’s routine.
‘What about his bedtime? You need to tell me everything about him. Everything. I don’t want to disturb his routine.’
Geraldine smiled. ‘There’s no need to look so worried. You know what to do. You’ve had two children yourself. Feed him if he cries and put him in his cot when he’s tired.’
