Peter James - Perfect People

Greeting them like they were their parents.

And suddenly the deep, numbing cold that was in every cell of her body froze her rigid.

What if?

What if?

What if those people were their parents?

No. Unthinkable. Besides, Luke and Phoebe had so many of her and John’s features, everyone said that, and it was plain, absolutely plain to see sometimes when she looked at Luke how much of his father was in him.

And now she had another, even worse, thought. This was the first thing that had gone through her mind when she’d seen the body on the gravel and her children’s missing coats and boots. She stared down at the table, listening to the hiss of the air conditioning. This was the thought she had pushed away, tried desperately to push back into a chamber of her mind as she had stumbled down the drive, as she had staggered through the sodden fields.

The thought that she did not, absolutely did not ‘Mrs Klaesson?’

The voice of Detective Sergeant Humbolt cut through her thoughts. Calm, but insistent.

She lifted her eyes up to his face.

‘Would you like a little more time before we start?’

‘Would you like to see a doctor to give you something to help calm you?’ Jo Newman asked.

Naomi closed her eyes and shook her head. ‘Please, tell me something. These paedophiles – they target chatrooms, don’t they? You get these sick perverts chatting to young children, they become friends, then they lure them to meetings. This happens, doesn’t it?’

The two detectives glanced at each other, then Humbolt said, ‘For older children it is a real danger, but I don’t think at three years old that’s likely. They’d be too young.’

‘I don’t imagine at three, your children are old enough to be going on internet chatrooms, are they?’ Jo Newman said.

‘Their mental age is much older,’ Naomi said. ‘They are far more advanced than you could imagine.’

The woman detective gave her a look, as if both being mothers they shared a secret between them. It was a look that said, All mothers think their children are special!

‘Your children had full access to the internet?’ Humbolt asked.

‘We gave them a computer last Sunday, for their birthday. I’ve been very surprised at some of the stuff they’ve been looking at – most of it scientific.’

Humbolt raised his eyebrows. ‘At three?’

‘I mean it when I say they’re advanced. They are very advanced. They’re like – child prodigies.’

Jo Newman said, ‘Mrs Klaesson, all the computers in your home will be taken away for analysis. If they have been on any chatrooms, everything will be traceable.’

‘Look – I – I know these questions are important. But we’re sitting here and my children have been abducted – I just want to get back and find them. I don’t want to be here, answering questions, this isn’t right, we’re just wasting time; can’t we do this later?’

‘You have information that may be very important for us to find the children,’ the woman detective said, with a sympathetic smile.

Naomi had read recently that out of ninety-eight children who had been murdered in England in the past year, only three had been killed by people who weren’t either immediate family or friends. ‘Is that the real reason I’m here?’ she said. ‘Or is it because I’m a suspect? Is that it?’

She could see the sudden discomfort in their faces.

‘What’s the matter with you people? You have the videotape, you can see that strangers have taken my children – why am I here? Tell me?’

‘You’re not a suspect, Mrs Klaesson,’ Detective Sergeant Humbolt said.

‘We have a dead man on our doorstep, our children are abducted by strangers and instead of looking for them you’re treating me like a bloody suspect. You have John in another room, he’s been interrogated, too, and you are going to see if our stories tally. Let me tell you something: they are going to tally, OK?’

Neither detective said anything for some moments. Then Jo Newman said, ‘Mrs Klaesson, let me set your mind at rest. Everything possible that can be done to find your children is being done. Every available police officer is being called in to search the area around your home. The police helicopter is scouring the area.’

Naomi accepted what she said, but with considerable reluctance. What choice did she have?

More questions followed, a whole barrage of them, one after another. How was her relationship with her husband? With her children? With her neighbours? Friends? Their children’s friends?

She tried to answer each of them truthfully. But the two detectives didn’t seem to be capable of taking on board just how smart and advanced Luke and Phoebe were.

‘You say your mother saw this man on Tuesday? The one who was found outside your house?’

She shook her head. ‘No, I didn’t say that. I said that she was concerned about a stranger-’

Then she thought of something. ‘A crucifix! She said he was wearing a crucifix! I – I didn’t think to look this morning. Can someone check?’

Humbolt made a note on his pad. ‘I’ll find out.’

Looking a little awkward, DC Newman asked, ‘Do Luke and Phoebe have any birthmarks or scars?’

‘I – I – I don’t think so, no. No.’

‘And can you remember what they last had to eat?’

‘To eat?’ she echoed. ‘Why does-’

Then she remembered. A series on television she and John had been watching a while back, about a Home Office pathologist. In one of the episodes, a child had gone missing. The police asked the parents about birthmarks and about what the child had eaten.

That way, if they found the bodies, it would make it easier to identify them. Either from marks on their bodies – or from cutting open their bellies and seeing what was in their stomachs.

The door opened suddenly, and Detective Inspector Pelham came in, still in his raincoat. ‘Sorry to interrupt you,’ he said, fixing his eyes on Naomi. ‘But I thought you should know we have some developments.’

Before their interviews, John and Naomi had been introduced to a family liaison officer, Renate Harrison. In her early forties, with brown hair cut into a short, stylish bob, she was dressed in a businesslike way, in a grey Prince of Wales check suit over a lace-collared cream blouse, but she had a gentle demeanour.

She now led John and Naomi along a corridor to the Detective Inspector’s office, and sat them down at a small round conference table.

DI Pelham followed them in a few moments later. He closed the door and hung his mackintosh on a peg. In the three hours since Naomi had seen him, he was looking more ragged. His shirt was creased, the knot on his tie had slipped, and there was a patina of perspiration on his face.

‘Right,’ he said, sitting down. His eyes moved from Naomi to John and back, repeatedly. ‘To cut to the quick, we’ve found a car in the Caibourne village car park that we think belongs to the man on your doorstep. It’s been there overnight and was rented from the Avis office in Brighton three days ago, by a man fitting his description, using an American driving licence and credit card we found in his wallet. The name on them is Bruce Preston. Does that mean anything to you?’

Naomi and John shook their heads. ‘Never heard of him,’ John said.

Glancing at his watch, Pelham said, ‘It’s still night time in America – we won’t be able to find out if that’s his real name until after the start of business hours. There was a laptop in the boot of the car and the contents of that and a mobile phone found on his person are being analysed. Hopefully we’ll get something from them.’

Then, standing up and going over to his desk, he returned with a brown envelope, from which he removed a photograph.