Ken McClure - Deception

The wave of frustration that swept through him made him want to be out on the streets again, searching every copse and culvert but behind the urge he recognised the hopelessness of the situation and lowered himself into the warm water to ease away his aches and pains. Somewhere out in the woods an owl hooted. There was no comfort to be found anywhere.

When he was through, Steven hid the gun under the covers of the bed he always used when he came to visit and went downstairs, wrapped in the bathrobe he’d been given.

‘Feel better?’ asked Sue.

‘Much.’

‘Your clothes are just about dry. I did all them on “high” so God knows what sort of a state they’ll be in but I thought the main thing was that they should be dry.’

‘Thanks, Sue, I appreciate it.’

Peter came out from the kitchen and said, ‘I’ve heated up some soup. You must eat something.’

Steven nodded and thanked him. He saw that it was well after midnight and said that Peter and Sue should go to bed.

‘I don’t think any of us are going to get much sleep tonight,’ said Sue.

‘You must try,’ insisted Steven. ‘I’ll have my soup and clear up here. I’ll knock on your door if there’s any news. Off with you!’

Peter and Sue went reluctantly upstairs and Steven had his soup and a chunk of bread while sitting at the kitchen table. By the time he had finished, the tumble dryer had ended its cycle so he took out his clothes and found that, as Sue had predicted, they were already dry. None of them appeared to have shrunk. Any other damage due to the high heat was irrelevant. He got out of the bathrobe and put his clothes back on then he put the kettle on to make some coffee.

He came back into the living room and switched on the TV, channel-hopping to find a 24-hour news programme. He watched it while he sipped his coffee, all the while glancing at the telephone, willing it to ring. It didn’t but around a quarter past one he heard the sound of a car outside and immediately anticipated that it was going to stop at the front door. He went to the window but could see nothing although he could hear the car’s engine idling. A door slammed and the engine note rose, although the car did not drive off immediately. Steven guessed from the subsequent sounds that it was doing a three-point turn. It then drove off and he was about to close the curtain when he saw a movement by the garden gate. Jenny was walking up the path.

Steven wondered if his mind was playing tricks on him. Although he rebelled against the notion that fate could be so cruel, like a man, lost in the desert, wanting more than anything to find water, he acknowledged that he could be seeing what he wanted to see most in the whole world, his daughter Jenny. This possibility did not however, stop him rushing to the door and throwing it open. It was no mirage. Jenny was walking up the path. She seemed tired, confused and frightened but more importantly, she appeared to be unharmed.

‘My Daddy!’ exclaimed Jenny, using up what little energy she had in making a headlong rush for Steven.

Steven swept the little figure up into his arms, smothering her in hugs. ‘Oh, my baby, my sweet, sweet baby,’ he murmured, tears filling his eyes. ‘Sue! Peter!’ he called out. ‘She’s back!’

DCI Grant and his sergeant arrived within fifteen minutes. They brought with them a WPC trained in dealing with children who had been subject to trauma. The police doctor arrived shortly afterwards and it was quickly established to everyone’s relief that Jenny had apparently suffered no physical harm. She was a very subdued and frightened little girl but none of Steven’s worst fears had been realised and, like a successful actor on Oscar night, he was filled with an overwhelming desire to thank everyone in the entire world, such was his sense of relief. For the first half-hour or so it didn’t matter who had taken Jenny away or why. The only thing of any importance was the fact that she was back safe and well. The police however, had a different priority and wanted to question Jenny as soon as possible.

Steven sat with her on his knee, providing comfort and assurance, as Grant and the WPC talked Jenny gently through what had happened to her. Grant, with the admirable common sense he had shown throughout the inquiry, sensed quickly that Jenny was an articulate child for her age and encouraged her to tell them the series of events in her own words, rather than subject her to the demands of a question and answer session.

It transpired that Jenny had been taken away by a man who had approached her in the bushes near the road when she’d gone to collect the ball. He had told her that her daddy wanted to see her. Jenny, having been well warned about not speaking to strangers, had been suspicious and had told him that she would have to tell Robin and Mary first, whereupon the man had snatched her up and put her into his car. Jenny mimed to them how he had held his hand over her mouth. He had not struck her and the car she described was in fact, the blue Range Rover.

She had been driven to a house ‘a long way away in the country’, which she thought was very ‘old fashioned’ because of the furniture and the smell. It smelled, ‘old, like Granny’s house’. She had been locked in a room but given books with pictures in them and pens to colour them in. She had been given something to eat on two occasions — ‘yukky food’ — and ‘yukky orange juice’ when she’d asked for something to drink. She hadn’t been allowed to go to the bathroom but had been told to use the potty in the room. Jenny was very embarrassed about this.

‘Did this man touch you at all, Jenny?’ asked the WPC.

‘Once, when he came into the room, I tried to run away but he caught me and carried me back. He threw me on the bed and said I wasn’t to try that again or it would be the worse for me.’

‘Apart from that?’

‘I don’t think so.’

‘Did he ask you to do anything for him, Jenny?’

‘He said to keep quiet. I was crying a lot and he said I should be quiet. He said I was a pain in his arse and I was getting on his nerves.’

‘Was there just the one man, Jenny?’

‘Yes.’

‘Can you tell us what he looked like, Nutkin? Was he young or old?’ Steven asked.

‘Old.’

‘Old like Granddad or old like Daddy?’ asked the WPC.

‘Like Daddy.’

Jenny gave a reasonable, although childish, description of a well-built man in his thirties with dark hair who had taken her from the park, driven her to a cottage out in the country somewhere and kept her there all day. She had been fed and given colouring books to play with and, after falling asleep at some time during the evening, she had been woken up and returned unharmed.

‘It’s weird,’ said Grant.

‘Maybe he got cold feet when he thought about what he was doing,’ suggested his sergeant. ‘Abducting a child still gets you a lot more than a slap on the wrist, even in these “enlightened” times.’

‘Possible, I suppose,’ said Grant. ‘But I feel there’s something we’re missing here.’ He looked towards Steven who was also deep in thought and not liking what he was coming up with. ‘Jenny,’ he asked. ‘Did this man say anything to you when he brought you back?’

‘He said, “Here we are, kid. There’s no place like home. Tell your daddy that.’

Steven felt his blood run cold. Everyone was looking at him and he didn’t quite know what to say. He was suffused with feelings of guilt as he realised that he’d got the whole thing completely wrong. Jenny’s abduction had not been the work of some child-molesting weirdo from the darker wastelands of society, as they’d all been assuming. The whole thing had been a ploy to get at him. It had been another warning from Sigma 5 to get out off the case.