Luke Delaney - The Toy Taker

The door was swung open by a short, stocky man in his fifties with a crown of unkempt, curly, hazel hair that fitted his poorly fitting, cheap blue suit perfectly. He adjusted the ancient glasses that balanced on the end of his nose and spoke in a thick Welsh accent, despite having spent most of his adult life in London. ‘Can I help you?’ he asked, although he knew what they were.

‘DI Sean Corrigan,’ Sean told him quietly, discreetly showing him his warrant card. ‘My colleague, DS Sally Jones, from the Special Investigations Unit.’

‘How you doing?’ the stocky little man replied, holding out a hand that Sean accepted. ‘DI Ross Adams, from the local CID. I’ve been expecting you. My sergeant, DS Tony Wright, is inside looking after the family. Special Investigations Unit, you say? I don’t think I’ve heard of you before.’

‘No,’ Sean answered. ‘It’s a new thing.’

‘Is it now?’ Ross grinned. ‘Sounds very important.’

‘Perhaps you can tell me why this porch hasn’t been sealed off for Forensics?’ Sean asked, keen to change the subject. ‘This is a crime scene, isn’t it?’

‘Mr Addis … Assistant Commissioner Addis, he thought discretion was the order of the day. We had the door and its furniture examined when the street was nice and quiet like. Don’t want to draw unwanted attention by stringing police tape all over the house like bloody party streamers, do we now?’

‘Addis?’ Sean asked. ‘Addis told you to do it?’

‘He did indeed. Now, if you’re finished, you’d better come inside and have a look around.’ He pushed the door wide open and walked back into the darkness inside. Sean and Sally looked at each other for a second before they followed him, Sally carefully closing the door behind them while Sean spotted what he was looking for: the control panel of an alarm system. ‘I take it you’ve read the Missing Person Report?’ Adams called over his shoulder.

‘We have,’ Sean answered.

‘Then you know about as much as we do. Little girl seems to have just disappeared,’ he told them, his voice lowered as they approached the kitchen and the family. ‘Mum put her to bed about eight p.m. and checked on her about eleven. Everything was fine and normal. The au pair went to get her up for school about seven thirty this morning and she was gone — nowhere to be found. The parents and au pair have searched the house and so have we, and the uniforms who came here first. They recognized similarities between what they were being told and your case: one of them had seen a news article about it or something. Anyway, they thought they’d better tell us and here we are.’

‘How did Addis find out about it?’ Sean asked, Addis’s involvement still troubling him.

‘Not from me,’ Adams told him. ‘Must have had someone at the Yard monitoring Missing Person Reports as they were going on to the PNC. Here we are then,’ Adams almost cheerfully declared as they reached the kitchen. Always the kitchen, Sean thought, where families gather in good times and desperate times. Nathan and Jessica Fellowes sat close to each other at the table — a heavy block of mahogany that he guessed had been artificially aged to look antique. He was immediately struck by the similarity in general appearance of Mrs Fellowes to Mrs Bridgeman: the same toned, athletic body, luminous skin and immaculately faked ash blonde hair. But Jessica Fellowes’ facial structure was slightly different, as if she wasn’t from quite the same stock as Celia Bridgeman. Mr Fellowes also had a physique honed over many hours in an expensive health club with a personal trainer, tanned skin and pushed back, dark brown, wavy hair, the product of an upmarket stylist rather than a side-street barber. But his appearance somehow lacked the self-assurance of Stuart Bridgeman, his jet-black eyes betraying a crueller upbringing, as if he had only recently joined the ranks of the rich and privileged. DS Tony Wright, tall and muscular, his angular face and shaved head adding to his athletic appearance, despite his advancing years, stood leaning against the window frame with the expression of a man who really didn’t want to be there. Sean noticed Mrs Fellowes clutched a white-backed piece of paper to her stomach that he instinctively knew would be a picture of the missing girl.

‘Mr Fellowes — Mrs Fellowes, this is DI Corrigan, from the Special Investigations Unit — come to take over the investigation and get your little girl back for you.’

Adams’ over-the-top introduction earned him a glare from Sean.

‘Special Investigations?’ Mrs Fellowes asked, her gravelly voice and London accent catching Sean by surprise. ‘You think she’s been taken by the same animal who took that little boy, don’t you?’ Sean looked at Adams who looked at his feet.

‘How much has DI Adams told you, Mrs Fellowes?’ Sean asked. He had no intention of trying to gild the lily — it was way too late for that.

‘He told me you couldn’t be sure — that maybe, somehow she just got out of the house on her own.’

‘And what do you think?’ he continued.

‘I think someone took her,’ Jessica answered. ‘I think whoever took that little boy has taken my Bailey.’

‘So do I,’ Sean admitted.

‘Jesus Christ,’ Nathan Fellowes managed to say before allowing his face to sink into his hands.

‘You haven’t found that little boy either, have you?’ Jessica asked.

‘No,’ Sean told her, ‘we haven’t.’

‘So why should I believe you’re gonna find my Bailey?’

‘Because I’m your only hope,’ Sean told her straight.

She stared silently at the only man who could return her child — the child she’d carried in her belly for nine months and held to her swollen breasts to feed for another eighteen. For a moment she thought she could still feel her suckling, but told herself it was simply more recent memories of breast-feeding Bailey’s two-year-old brother.

‘It’s an unusual name,’ Sally spoke to break the silence, ‘Bailey?’

‘It’s what I’d drunk too much of when I conceived her,’ Jessica admitted, head held high on her stretched neck in defiance at being judged. ‘We thought it would be … fun. We regret it now, but you can’t just change a kid’s name.’

Sean examined her as she spoke, wondering whether she was as hardnosed and tough on the inside as she tried to look on the outside. Her strained, red eyes told him she wasn’t. ‘I like it,’ he lied. ‘It’s a bit more interesting than most other names.’ Jessica said nothing. ‘Anyway,’ he moved on, ‘time is crucial so I won’t waste it. I need to ask you a lot of questions, some of which you won’t like and some of which you may have already been asked. Firstly, I noticed the house appears to be alarmed. Was it set last night?’

‘No,’ Nathan Fellowes answered through his despair, sliding his hands away from his face. ‘We’ve only been here a couple of weeks. There’s an alarm control panel in the hallway, but it’s from the old alarm the previous owners had. We haven’t had it changed over yet. They were supposed to come and install the new one today.’ He shared the same somewhat heavy London accent as his wife.

‘So it wasn’t active?’ Sally asked.

‘No,’ Nathan replied.

‘And you’ve only been in the house a couple of weeks?’ Sean added.

‘Yeah. So what?’ Nathan asked, looking from Sean to Sally as they turned to look at each other. Who would know that? Sean asked himself. Who could know both families had only recently moved in and had no alarm systems?

‘OK,’ Sean cleared his head, ‘I’m going to need the name of the alarm company you were going to use and the names of the removal company you used and the estate agents too. I’ll also need the names of all tradesmen that have been in the house since you moved in and the name of the family that were here before you.’