Peter James - Perfect People

‘Who are you?’ John said. ‘Who are you, please?’

‘Lara,’ he said again and again faintly, but just loud enough for them to hear that he had an American accent.

‘Where are my children?’ Naomi said, yet again, her voice wracked with desperation.

‘Call an ambulance,’ John said. ‘Need an ambulance-’

His voice was cut short by the distant whoop of a siren.

‘Lara,’ the man whispered again. His eyes locked and widened, for a brief moment, as if he was now seeing her, then they roamed again, lost.

A disembodied blue light strobed in the darkness, in the distance, not seeming to get any closer. A siren wailed but didn’t seem to be getting any louder. Maybe it was going somewhere else, not coming to them at all, Naomi wondered, stumbling across the lawn, calling out with increasing desperation every few moments, ‘LUKE! PHOEBE!’, staring into the bushes, the shadows, looking back at John who was still kneeling by the man, then at the blue strobing light again, then at the dark, empty fields.

At the void that had swallowed up her children.

Now the siren was getting louder, and suddenly she was fearful that the children were in the drive, and the police in their haste, in this darkness, might not see them. Balancing her way across the bars of the cattle grid with difficulty in her sodden slippers, pointing her flashlight into the darkness, oblivious to the cold and the pelting rain, she stumbled along the metalled surface of the drive, calling out again, ‘LUKE! PHOEBE! LUKE! PHOEBE!’

Headlights pricking the darkness ahead of her now. Twin blue lights streaking along above the hedgerow at the bottom of the drive. Electrifyingly fast. She stepped onto the verge, felt her dressing gown snag on a bramble, but ignored it, frantically waving her torch.

As the car came round the bend, she stood frozen like a rabbit in the dazzling glare. The car stopped right beside her, slivers of blue light skidding off the paintwork, skidding off the face of the uniformed policewoman in the passenger seat, who was lowering her window and peering out at her. A voice crackled on the radio inside the car and the male driver said something Naomi didn’t catch. Heat and damp, rubbery smells poured out of the window.

Pointing frantically towards the house, Naomi said, near breathless, ‘Man – there – need ambulance – you didn’t see any children – down the drive – two children?’

Looking at her with a concerned expression, the policewoman said, ‘Is someone armed? Is there someone with a gun?’

‘Shot,’ Naomi said. ‘There’s a man shot – there – he’s up there – and my children, I can’t find my children.’

‘Are you all right? Do you want to get in?’ the woman police officer asked.

‘I’m looking for my children,’ she said.

‘I’ll come back down to you in a few minutes.’

The car pulled away barely before she had finished speaking, accelerating harshly, clattering over the cattle grid. She watched the brake lights as it halted on the gravel, saw both driver and passenger doors open and the two officers stepping out purposefully.

Naomi turned away, carried on running down the drive, following the torch beam, her slippers slapping on the hard tarmac, her feet coming out of them every few steps. She went ankle-

deep through a puddle, lost both her slippers, retrieved them and hooked them on her feet again, calling out, her throat rasping, ‘PHOEBE? LUKE? LUKE? PHOEBE?’

Halfway down the drive there was an open gate leading into a field of stubble, where she sometimes took Luke and Phoebe for a walk. Several pheasants, bred on a shoot at nearby Caibourne Place, had made a refuge here. Luke and Phoebe took a delight in startling the pheasants out of their covers, giggling at the strange, clanky sounds of their beating wings and their metallic croaks. She went in there now, shining the beam of the torch around, calling out to them.

Silence. Just the wind and a creaking hinge. And another siren.

Moments later a second police patrol car ripped past her and up the drive. Then, seconds later, as if it were being dragged in its slipstream, a third car with four people inside, this one unmarked and no siren, just the urgent roar of its engine and the swish of its tyres.

She stumbled on, calling out their name every few moments, crying in shock and despair and exhaustion. ‘Luke! Phoebe! Darlings! Where are you? Answer me! Where are you?’

Dawn was breaking now. Watery grey and yellow tints streaked the darkness. Like celluloid developing, the darkness turned into increasingly clear, shadowy shapes, and these in turn were lightening into the familiar sights of the buildings, trees, houses that were their surrounding landscape. A new day was breaking. Her children were gone and a new day was breaking. Her children were gone and a man was dying outside their front door.

She ran back onto the drive and, at the end of it, headed towards the village. She stumbled along a corridor of hedges and trees, the beam of the torch becoming less necessary with every step, fear clenching her throat like a fist, hoping desperately that suddenly she was going to see Luke and Phoebe in their winter coats and their red and blue wellington boots, walking hand-in-hand back towards her.

Another siren now. Moments later an ambulance with all its lights blazing came around the corner. She waved the torch, frantically, and the ambulance stopped. ‘Dene Farm Barn?’ the driver asked.

She pointed, gulping air. ‘Just back there, a hundred yards, turn right, the first entrance, up the drive. I can’t find my children.’

Seconds later she stood, breathing in a lungful of diesel fumes, watching streaks of cold blue light dart like angry fish across the shimmering road, watching the ambulance turn right, slowly, ever so slowly, like one frame at a time, into their drive. Their home. Their sanctuary.

She stood still, blinking tears and rain from her stinging eyes, gulping down more acrid air, shaking, shivering so badly her knees were banging together. ‘Luke?’ she said, her voice feeble now, forlorn, lost. ‘Phoebe?’

She stared at the lame yellow glow of the torch; the beam didn’t even register on the road any more. She switched it off, swallowed, hugged her arms around herself to try to stop shaking. The rain hardened; she could have been standing in a shower, but she was oblivious to it as she turned, one way then the other, taking one last hopeless look, as if she might suddenly spot their little faces peeping out from behind a bush, or a tree or a hedge.

Where are you?

She was trying, desperately, to focus her mind. Who was the man? Who had shot the man? Why? How had anyone got into the house? How had anyone got Luke and Phoebe into their coats and boots and taken them away? Who were these people? Paedophiles?

The Disciples?

Could Luke or Phoebe have shot him? Then run away? Was that why they had run away?

Run away? Taken away – abducted?

In some space, way beyond her bewilderment at the moment, in some dark place deep inside her heart, she harboured a certainty, an absolute dead certainty, that they were gone for ever.

A grey van pulled up beside Naomi as she trudged back up the drive to the house, and a man asked her in a kindly voice if she was all right. For a moment, her hopes soared.

‘Have you got them?’ she said. ‘Have you found them? Have you got my children? Are they OK?’

‘Your children?’

She stared at him, utterly bewildered. ‘My children? Have you got them? Luke and Phoebe?’

He opened the door and moved over, making space for her. ‘Jump in, love.’

She backed away. ‘Who are you?’