Ken McClure - Deception

‘One like Daddy’s.’

‘A Range Rover?’ said Sue.

Robin nodded.

‘Bingo,’ whispered Steven. ‘Now Robin, I want you to think very carefully. Later, when you and Mary went to the bushes to see where Jenny had got to, you found the ball but you didn’t find Jenny. When you came out of the bushes... can you remember if the blue car was still there?’

Robin shook his head.

‘You don’t know or it wasn’t there?’

‘Not there,’ said Robin.

‘I’m off to find the officer leading the search,’ said Steven. ‘Robin, you and your sister have been a big help. Have a think about the blue car and if there’s anything else you can remember, tell Mummy.’

Steven left the car and ran down into the village on foot where he found the mobile incident room, parked outside the village hall. He brushed past the constable outside and found the officer in charge. He and two other officers were poring over a map of the district. ‘I’m Jenny Dunbar’s father.’

‘I think it might be best if...’

Steven showed his ID and said, ‘I’m in the business. I’ve just been talking to the other two kids. Jenny was taken by a man driving a blue Range Rover. Blue isn’t as popular as green. Get on to all the Rover dealers in the district and get a list of the owners of blue Range Rovers. There can’t be that many. Get your patrol cars to stop any blue Range Rover they come across and search them thoroughly.’

‘We don’t know for sure that the vehicle was purchased in the district,’ said one of the other officers.

Steven was about to bite his head off when the senior officer intervened and said, ‘See to it, Sergeant.’ He introduced himself as Detective Chief Inspector Grant. He and Steven shook hands and Grant sympathised. He asked about the source of the Range Rover information and Steven told him. Grant gave a nod of resignation. ‘Well done for getting it out of them.’

Steven came round to the other side of the table and looked at the map. It was marked out in search sectors. ‘Anything?’ he asked.

‘Not a thing,’ replied Grant.

‘Will you keep on with the search?’

Grant nodded. ‘I’ll keep you informed of anything that happens. Right now, you’re making my men nervous.’

Steven took the hint and left the incident room. He walked through the village to the park and stood there as despair welled up inside him, looking out over the green, empty sward. Some bastard was driving around in a Range Rover with Jenny in it... or maybe he wasn’t... maybe he had finished with her... maybe... He let out a cry of anguish and smashed his fist into a tree trunk. The pain in his knuckles was so much sweeter than the one inside his head.

Darkness fell and the search by men of the village and police officers on foot was called off, to be resumed again at first light. Their search of gardens, outbuildings and undergrowth in the immediate vicinity had yielded nothing but Steven did not see this as bad news. If they couldn’t come up with a live little girl, he didn’t want them coming up with bits of clothing or a shoe. He supposed that the blue Range Rover’s entrance into the reckoning was making the local search redundant, but he appreciated that Grant would feel obliged to pursue it. It wasn’t absolutely certain that the Range Rover had been used in Jenny’s abduction; it just seemed bloody likely.

Steven could not sit in the house with Sue and her husband for any length of time. They were the nicest people in the world and they cared about Jenny as much as he did but he found the silence oppressive and the strained attempts at optimism even worse. He needed to be outside, moving around, because motion made him feel like he was doing something useful even though he knew that he wasn’t. There was however, little comfort to be gained from the silhouettes around him as he tramped the verges of the roads around the village. It seemed that the whole world had changed. It had become an evil, threatening place. Every tree was a centurion of the night. Every copse hid a dark secret.

At times Steven felt tears of frustration well up in his eyes. He was a doctor, trained to save lives in the most demanding of situations: he was a soldier, capable of taking on the best the opposition had to offer and winning, but here he was, absolutely useless when it came to helping his own daughter when she needed him most.

It started to rain but Steven hardly noticed. When he finally did and pulled up his collar he saw it as being welcome. Every physical discomfort the elements had to throw at him was welcome right now. Any distraction from the sheer hell going on in his head was more than welcome. He heard a car coming up behind him and stepped further across the grass verge as the road was very narrow at this point. Unfortunately there was a narrow drainage ditch where he put his foot down and he went sprawling, face first, into the wet long grass, scratching his cheek on the hawthorn hedge as he went down. He lay there as the car swept past, its driver unaware of his presence, its headlights lighting up the hedgerows ahead and briefly restoring colour to the night. The road was black but everything else was green save for the little red object that caught his eye before darkness returned.

Jenny’s bag! Steven was paralysed by the thought. Jenny had a little red plastic bag that she was very fond of. She wore it on a strap across her shoulder and carried her hankie in it. Whenever they had been out for walk and come home, Jenny would hold the bag up in front of her and pretend that she was looking for her keys in it, just like she must have seen Sue do on many occasions. It was Jenny’s bag he’d seen lying on the verge up ahead!

Steven scrambled out of the ditch, trying to run before he had fully become upright and covered the twenty metres or so to the spot in an ungainly stumbling run interspersed with continual falls. It didn’t matter to him as long as the impetus was forward. He reached the spot where he felt sure he’d seen the bag and started to feel around frantically with the palms of his hands. He made contact and knew almost immediately that he’d been mistaken. It wasn’t Jenny’s bag: it was a potato crisp packet.

His whole body went limp and he slumped down into the wet grass to lie there with the bag scrunched up in his hand, feeling utterly exhausted and mentally numb. He had the sense to recognise that he was coming near to the end of his tether. It was time to stop tramping around aimlessly and return to the house.

Sue and her husband were drinking cocoa when Steven arrived back. He’d done his best to brush off the dirt from his clothes but the fact remained that he looked as if he had been rolling around on wet ground, as indeed he had.

‘Look at the state of you,’ said Sue, getting up to help him out of his wet jacket.

‘I’m fine, just a bit wet, that’s all,’ said Steven, already starting to feel claustrophobic.

‘I’m not sure if I have any clothes that’ll fit you,’ said Peter, who was considerably smaller than Steven. ‘The police rang while you were out. They’ve managed to check out all the owners of blue Range Rovers who purchased their vehicles from local franchises and who are still living in the district, with the exception of two, who they think may be away on holiday at the moment. They’ve drawn a blank, I’m afraid.’

‘Shit,’ murmured Steven.

‘Look, why don’t you go upstairs and have a bath to warm yourself up. ‘I’ll pop your wet things in the tumble drier and you can use a bathrobe until they’re ready,’ suggested Sue.

Steven agreed and went upstairs to run himself a bath. While the water was running he changed into the bathrobe and put his wet clothes in the basket that Sue had left by the bathroom door. The gun and holster was a problem. For the moment, he kept it in the bathroom with him. He rested his hands on the edge of the bath and allowed the steam to condense on his cold cheeks while he thought things through. If Jenny’s abductor wasn’t local, did this make it more likely or less likely that she would still be alive? The thought conjured up images of Jenny as a little bundle in the back of a Range Rover speeding south... or north... or east or west. Jesus! She could be anywhere.