Jaime Raven - The Mother

She tried to speak but the words got stuck in her throat.

I rested a hand on her shoulder, crouched down so that we were face to face.

‘Mum, please. Where’s Molly?’

Her eyes grew wide and confusion pulled at her features. Then she shook her head and her lips trembled.

‘I … d-don’t know,’ she managed. ‘She was in the high chair when the doorbell rang.’

That was when I noticed the high chair for the first time, on the other side of the room next to the back door that stood open. There was a plastic bowl on the tray, along with Molly’s familiar spill-proof beaker.

‘Did you go and answer the door, Mrs Mason?’ Brennan asked her. ‘Is that what you did?’

I turned back to my mother. She nodded and closed her eyes, and I could tell she was trying to cast her mind back to what had happened.

‘A man,’ she said, her tone frantic. ‘He was wearing a hood, like a balaclava. He forced himself in and grabbed me. Then he put something over my face.’

My mother lost it then and started to cry, great heaving sobs that racked her frail body.

She was almost seventy, and seeing her like this, I felt the urge to comfort her, but a more powerful impulse seized me and I jumped up suddenly and went in search of Molly, praying that she was still here and hadn’t been taken away.

I ran out into the garden first, but it was empty except for the cat from next door that was lying on the lawn like it didn’t have a care in the world.

Then I dashed back into the house and through the kitchen, passing Brennan who was standing next to my mother while talking anxiously into his phone.

I checked the living room and ground floor toilet, then hurried upstairs in the hope of finding my daughter in one of the three bedrooms. I called out her name, told her that Mummy had come to get her. But there was a resounding silence. She wasn’t there. She was gone.

A new wave of terror roared through my body as I ran back downstairs. Now it was confirmed. My daughter had been abducted and I had no idea by whom. The nightmare that had loomed over me since I opened up the photograph on my phone had turned into a horrific reality.

The temptation to collapse in a tearful heap was almost overwhelming, but I told myself that I had to hold it together. For my sake and for Molly’s.

My mother was still on the chair in the kitchen and Brennan was trying to coax more information out of her. When she saw me she reached for my hand and said, ‘There was nothing I could do. It happened so – so quickly.’

‘Who could it have been, Mum?’ I said. ‘Do you have any idea?’

She shook her head. ‘I didn’t see his face. He knocked me out and when I woke up I was tied to this chair.’

I reached out and put an arm around her shoulders.

‘I’m so sorry, Sarah,’ she sobbed. ‘I really couldn’t …’

‘It’s not your fault, Mum,’ I said, choking back tears. ‘We’ll get her back. I promise.’

I heard a siren and the sound of it caused my heart to flip.

‘Your father needs to be told, Sarah,’ my mother said. ‘He’s still at the allotment. He thinks we’ll be meeting him at the pub.’

‘I’ll see to it, Mum,’ I said. ‘Don’t worry.’

I straightened up and looked at Brennan who told me that he had raised the alarm and that teams of officers were about to descend on the area.

‘I’ve also summoned an ambulance,’ he said. ‘The paramedics will take care of your mother.’

His words registered, but only just, and they failed to provide any comfort. How could they? My precious daughter had been kidnapped. My mind was still reeling and I felt weighted down by a crushing despair.

I was on the verge of losing control so I lowered myself onto one of the chairs around the kitchen table. There I sat, my head spinning, my stomach churning, as Brennan gently prised more information out of my mother.

She revealed that the man had rung the bell at just before nine – an hour or so after I had dropped Molly off. My father had just left the house to go to his allotment and she was giving Molly her breakfast before taking her to the park.

She remembered very little about her attacker. His face had been covered and he’d been wearing what she thought was a dark T-shirt and jeans.

‘He was average height but strong,’ she said. ‘I tried to struggle free when he attacked me but I couldn’t.’

She started crying again and this time it set me off. I broke down in a flood of tears and heard myself calling Molly’s name.

I was only vaguely aware of the commotion that suddenly ensued, and of being led out of the kitchen and along the hallway.

Raised voices, more people entering the house, some of them in uniform. Molly’s face loomed large in my mind’s eye, obscuring much of what was going on around me. I wondered if I would ever hold her in my arms again. It was a sickening, painful thought and one that I never thought I would have to experience.

I’d witnessed the suffering of parents who had lost children, seen the agony in their eyes. But as a copper I had always been one step removed, professionally detached and oblivious to the real extent of their plight.

Now I had a different perspective. I was in that horrendous position myself. The grieving, desperate mother wondering why fate had delivered such a crushing blow.

‘We’re taking you next door,’ Brennan was saying as we stepped outside, to be greeted by the flashing blue light on top of a police patrol car. ‘This house is now a crime scene and the forensics team needs to get to work. Mrs Lloyd, the neighbour to the right, has kindly agreed to make some tea for you and your mother.’

‘I don’t want tea,’ I wailed. ‘I want Molly.’

‘I’ll do whatever it takes to find her, Sarah,’ Brennan said. ‘We all will. But look, I really think it’s time that Molly’s father was informed about what’s happened. Do you want to call him or shall I?’

The prospect of breaking the news to Adam that his daughter had been abducted filled me with dread. I knew I couldn’t do it, that as soon as I heard his voice I would fall apart.

‘You ring him,’ I said. ‘Tell him to get here as soon as he can.’

The man in the dock at the Old Bailey looked as though he hadn’t got a care in the world. Even when the judge instructed him to stand up and turn to the jury he didn’t appear to be in the least bit anxious. He was facing the prospect of a long stretch behind bars, but from his expression you would never have guessed it.

‘The bastard is cocksure that he’s about to be acquitted,’ Detective Inspector Adam Boyd whispered to his colleague who was sitting beside him in the courtroom. ‘And I have a horrible feeling he could be right.’

The case against Victor Rosetti – a Romanian national – had been undermined during the past couple of days. One of the prosecution witnesses had disappeared before taking the stand, and the defence had managed to refute some of the forensic evidence, claiming it had been contaminated.

For the National Crime Agency, which was set up to fight organised crime in the UK, it would be a bitter blow if Rosetti did walk. As one of London’s nastiest villains and drugs traffickers, the man deserved to be locked behind bars. But securing a conviction was always going to be a challenge for Adam and his team.

Rosetti had an army of foot soldiers working for him, along with some powerful contacts. Several senior police officers were also believed to be on his payroll.

Adam had managed to build a strong case against him before bringing a charge that related to the importation and distribution of cocaine. But Rosetti’s defence had dismissed much of the evidence as circumstantial and had accused the police of ‘fitting up’ their client.