Peter James - Perfect People

She stared out of the window and saw a helicopter clatter by overhead, barely higher than the trees. John came down in jeans, a roll-neck sweater and his fleece jacket, clutching two holdalls into which they had hurriedly packed washing kit and changes of clothing. Moments later, Detective Inspector Pelham came in from the garden.

‘I do not want to leave, Detective Inspector,’ she said. ‘I want to stay here, this is my home. I want to stay until my children come back.’

‘I’m sorry, Mrs Klaesson, we’ll be as quick as we can.’

‘How quick?’

‘A couple of days, I would hope.’ Then he said, ‘I see you have a security camera, hidden up beneath the guttering. Does it record?’

‘Jesus!’ John said, slapping his forehead. ‘Of course! It was only installed on Wednesday!’ He looked at Naomi and her eyes brightened a fraction.

‘Yes!’ she said. ‘Why the hell didn’t we think of it?’

John led the way along the hall to his den, and opened the cupboard where the recorder was concealed. ‘I – I haven’t tried – let me check.’

Shakily, he thumbed through the instruction manual.

‘Don’t wipe the tape, darling,’ Naomi said. ‘For God’s sake, don’t wipe it.’

He pressed the stop button on the machine. Then the rewind. ‘It’s activated by movement,’ he said. ‘And it has night vision.’

The digital display counted back to 00.29, then jumped back further to 19.10.

He pressed play.

All three of them stared at the black-and-white image on the small monitor beside the machine. It showed a glare of headlights. Then, moments later in fish-eye wide angle, John’s Saab pulling up next to Naomi’s Subaru. John got out and walked up to the porch and out of sight.

Then.

A flash, indicating a time jump.

John held his breath.

Sweet Jesus.

Total stunned silence in the room.

A figure clambering over the fence from the field. Wearing a dark cap, an anorak, wellington boots, gloves. He put one cautious foot forward on the gravel, as if he were testing water. Then another.

‘It’s him,’ Naomi said, in a strangled, tremolo voice.

The figure froze. Took another step, then another, coming towards the porch.

And then.

Coming over the fence behind him were two more figures, advancing stealthily. Both wearing dark bobble hats, jackets zipped, collars turned up, their faces almost totally obscured by goggles.

The figure in front stopped in his tracks. Then moved on towards the porch. He stopped again, pulled something out of his pocket, something long and slender, some kind of a tool.

He disappeared from view into the porch. Then, moments later, he came back into view and now he was holding a gun – the gun! – in his hand.

And in the same moment, one of the two figures behind him ran forward, also holding a handgun, raised it at the base of his head and there was a burst of light from the muzzle.

The head of the figure in the cap snapped sharply upwards, then he collapsed back onto the gravel, arms outstretched, gun falling from his fingers and coming to rest a few feet away.

As they had found him, Naomi realized.

And then.

No.

This could not be happening. This really had to be a dream. Luke and Phoebe in their raincoats, in their wellington boots, trotted into view and threw their arms around each of the two figures in goggles in turn.

There were several moments of warm embracing. Then the four of them hurried across the gravel drive. The adult figures, still wearing their goggles, helped Luke and Phoebe over the fence into the field beyond.

Then a flash, indicating a time jump. John came into view, in his dressing gown, holding his shotgun, walking towards the motionless figure of the man in the bobble hat.

‘No!’ Naomi said. ‘NO! PLAY IT BACK, JOHN, PLAY IT BACK! OH GOD, PLAY IT BACK!’

John rewound it a short distance. But the repeat was the same. Luke and Phoebe clambering eagerly over the fence. Then himself coming out of the house with his shotgun.

He pressed the stop button.

For some moments none of them spoke. Then John turned to the Detective Inspector and said, without malice, without anything, just drained, bewildered, not even desperate, just utterly helpless, ‘Do you still want to work on the likelihood that they are not far away?’

Naomi sat on her own in front of two police officers. Although no one had said as much, it was clear that whilst she and John were being treated with kindness and courtesy, they were not themselves beyond suspicion. Which was why they were being required to make separate statements.

A tiny red light blinked on a video camera that was bolted high up on one wall and pointing at her. The room was small, anodyne and windowless. Bare cream walls that looked recently painted. A carpet that smelled new and comfortable bright red chairs with just a coffee table in front of them.

Two detectives faced her. One, in his early forties, was a bruiser of a man, in a fawn suit, with a precise, rather wooden air. The other, a woman about ten years younger, with short ginger hair, had a podgy face with small, suspicious eyes. She was dressed in a blue blazer sporting a club emblem on the breast pocket, over a thin roll-neck, and slacks.

Naomi could scarcely believe the speed at which the media had arrived at their home. The police had cordoned off the driveway down at the entrance, but within not much more than an hour of their first arriving there had been photographers snapping the scene with long lenses from the surrounding fields, and down in the lane there must have been a dozen different news vehicles, including a cameraman, high up above everyone else on a Sky TV hydraulic crane.

The male detective switched on the tape recorder in front of him. ‘This is Detective Sergeant Tom Humbolt and Detective Constable Jo Newman interviewing Mrs Naomi Klaesson, Friday, January sixteenth at-’ He paused to check his watch. ‘Ten twelve a.m.’

His tone was bend-over-backwards polite. ‘I’d like you to start, Mrs Klaesson, if you wouldn’t mind, with your taking us through the events that led to you calling the police this morning.’

With her shattered nerves made even edgier by the formal tone of the interview, she gave them, in a faltering voice, as detailed an account as she could.

‘Why exactly did you get up so early today, Naomi?’ the woman detective asked. ‘You said you don’t normally get up until seven on weekdays.’

Naomi gulped down a mouthful of hot, sweet tea and asked, ‘Do you have children?’

‘Yes.’

‘So you’ll know what I mean about a mother’s instincts?’

She nodded. Naomi glanced at Humbolt, who signalled with his eyes that he understood, also.

‘I just sensed something was wrong, I can’t put it any clearer than that – and I needed a pee.’ There was a brief silence. Naomi toyed with her cup. ‘Someone will call, won’t they? If they find them while I’m in here?’

‘The moment there is any news, we’ll be told,’ Detective Newman replied.

‘Thank you.’

Then tears welled up inside Naomi, and she began crying, deep, choking, sobs. Murmuring an apology, trying to compose herself, she pulled a handkerchief out of her handbag and pressed it to her eyes.

‘Interview suspended at ten twenty-one a.m.,’ she heard the DS say.

*

Half an hour later, feeling a little bit calmer, Naomi sat back down in the interview room, and the tapes were restarted. In her mind, a constant loop of the videotape of Luke and Phoebe was running, over and over. She saw them trotting across the driveway towards those strangers in their baseball caps and goggles, hugging them, embracing them, kissing them. Greeting them in a loving way they had never – ever – done with herself or John.