Hard Time (3 page)

“Well?” Gallagher boomed, hoisting a straining waistband over a flabby gut.

The teacher’s uncertainty increased. “But Daniel’s not here.” She gave a tentative smile as if the head and Mrs Page were sharing a private joke. “He had a dental
appointment. He left at playtime.” Her no less troubled glance settled on Jenny. “With you.”

The blonde woman shook her head, more cross than concerned. “We changed the arrangement. I couldn’t get away. Daniel’s father...” Jenny’s jade eyes narrowed as she
worked it out. Richard was always moaning about not seeing enough of Daniel. He’d have taken him to the dentist, then rather than dash back to the office they’d have indulged in some
father-and-son bonding. Naughty but nice – Rich really should have phoned to let her know. Knowing her boys, they’d be catching a movie, then demolishing a pizza.

“But, Mrs Page, I saw you at the gates.”

Lost in thought, Jenny only half heard. “Sorry...?”

“I
saw
you.” She tilted her head towards the window. “At the gates.”

The teacher’s absolute conviction was slightly unsettling, but Jenny was equally adamant. “I was nowhere near the school.” Unless it had an annexe at Chez Jules where
she’d lunched
avec
Justin. “You’re mistaken, Mrs Wilson.”

“I don’t think so.”

“Come now, ladies.” Gallagher simpered. “I’m sure there’s a simple explanation. Why not call your husband, Mrs Page?”

“This is ridiculous.” Jenny snatched her mobile from her bag. Rich’s was switched off. Great.

Mrs Wilson was having more joy. After a short hushed conversation, she handed her own phone to Jenny. “Tanya Woodall, my classroom assistant.”

Tanya described how she’d watched Daniel walk away from the school hand in hand with a woman she’d swear was his mother. As Jenny listened, she felt the first faint chill in her
veins. She passed the phone back without a word. Maybe Richard had been unable to make it. He must’ve arranged for Daniel to be collected by someone from the office.

But she knew everyone who worked for Richard; none looked remotely like her. And why the hell hadn’t he called?

Angry now, she speed-dialled his number at the agency, Full Page Ads. No answer. The machine kicked in at home.

“Would you like to sit down, Mrs Page?” Gallagher offered a seat. “While we gather our thoughts.”

Her thoughts were beyond gathering and of the countless questions crowding in her head two were uppermost. Who had taken her son? And where the hell was he?

Byford was in the pulpit. Bev reckoned he was a natural, could just imagine him in a dog collar taking confessions. Great voice too; touch of Anthony Hopkins.
Space control
to Beverley: come in, please.
She tried concentrating but he was reading that Auden piece about stopped clocks and dogs not barking.
Four Weddings and a Funeral
had a lot to answer
for.

Tapping fingers on knee, she glanced round, shuddered. The church was crammed: cops and chrysanthemums. And a coffin.

As Byford reached the line about traffic police and black cotton gloves, her mobile vibrated against her hipbone. The message was short but sent another tremor – this time down her
spine.

Dear God. Not again.
The most traumatic case of her career had involved an abducted baby. Now it looked as if another child was missing.

When the guv resumed his pew, she tapped him on the shoulder, showed him the text.

Five minutes later, Bev and DC Darren New were dodging and weaving through rush-hour traffic on the Bristol Road, heading for Edgbaston.

She double-checked the school’s address, then stuffed the phone back in her pocket. These days, female cops didn’t always get the kiddie cases: she’d just been the only dummy
not to switch off her mobile.

“Could’ve been worse,” she said.

“What?” Daz eyed the Mars bar she was unwrapping. “Getting a call in church?”

She nodded. “My mate Frankie?” Like any man with a heartbeat, Daz had hit on Frankie Perlagio once or twice. “Coupla weeks back, she’s at some big wheeley-dealey do at
the Buddhist temple in Moseley. They’re all sitting round cross-legged, dead intense, doing that om thing.” She gave him a bite of the Mars. “Her mobile goes off. Full blast.
Doctor Who
theme tune.”

“Exterminate her. Exterminate her.”

Dazza’s Dalek didn’t raise a smile but Frankie’s brass neck did. “It’s across the room in her bag,” Bev wrapped up the story. “No one knows it’s
hers, so she just throws dirty looks like everyone else and bangs on about people showing a bit of respect.” Bev shook her head: typical.

Daz skirted a skinny pigeon making a meal of the tarmac. “Frankie still at your place?”

She stiffened. He wasn’t savvy like Oz. There was a touch of the Andrex puppy about Daz: eager, enthusiastic, boundless bounce but not much sense of direction. Otherwise he’d know
he’d crossed a line. “Next left.”

Quick learner, though. He didn’t go any further. Lucky, given the taut messages her body was sending. She suppressed a sigh: her life had more no-go areas than Baghdad. If she’d kept
personal cards close to her chest before the rape, they were buried there now. Even Frankie couldn’t prise them all out. “Right at the crossroads.”

Frankie had taken up temporary residence in Baldwin Street after the attack, theoretically until Bev was back on track. Seven months down the line, she was still in the spare room. As for Bev,
she resented her best friend being there and dreaded the day she’d go.

Daz was tapping the wheel in time with one of his tuneless whistles; it could’ve been Frank Sinatra or Frankie Goes To Hollywood. She sneaked a glance. Open, friendly face, dark, strong
features. He wasn’t pissed at her – he was just being Daz: one of the lads, bright enough, amiable, bit of a bird-fancier. The guv hadn’t assigned her a new partner yet but
Daz’d probably fit the bill. If she took him under her wing.

“What’s tickled you, sarge?”

The prospect of Daz nestling on her breast was not one to share. “Trust me, you don’t want to know.”

Hampton Place was next right: a wide tree-lined road, all very blue-plaque-listed-building posh. Except for the brace of squad cars parked two-thirds along.

“That’ll do a lot for property prices,” she muttered. Daz was on the radio to control. She stretched her legs, had a look round.

Like its not-near neighbours, The Manor prep school boasted substantial grounds, screened by mature hedges. Closer inspection revealed the school’s grounds were mostly concrete, marked out
with hopscotch grids and a kids’ footie area. The herringbone façade sported all the green stuff: lush ivy all but concealed the brick. Barley-sugar chimneys and diamond-leaded windows
completed the look. All very National Trust – apart from the security gates and the odd CCTV lens twinkling in the foliage.

“Wotcha.” Bev raised a hand as a uniform approached school-side. PC Simon Wells was a fit twenty-something, despite the twenty-a-day habit that occasionally subsidised
Bev’s.

Simon’s forehead was uncharacteristically rumpled. “I don’t like it, sarge. Something’s not right.” A five-year-old gone walkabout? You could say that.
“We’re playing it by the book, but...”

“Just a tick.” Daz was approaching: no sense going over it twice. They listened carefully as Simon related the conflicting accounts he’d gleaned from Daniel Page’s mother
and teacher. Shirley Wilson’s having been confirmed by a classroom assistant on the phone.

“Check the dentist?” Stupid question but she had to ask.

“Natch.”

Daz nodded at the all-but-hidden lenses. “Anything on camera?”

Simon shrugged. “System pre-dates the wheel. There’s a few grainy images on one of the tapes. It’s being biked to the lab.”

“Mother’s seen it?” Again, Bev knew the answer.

He nodded. “Reckons it could be anyone.”

“OK.” She rubbed her hands, eager to get on. “What’s happening?”

“Patrols are out, door-to-door underway, dog handlers en route. Obviously we’re taking it seriously but – mystery woman aside – the mother’s still desperately
hoping he’s on a jolly with his dad.”

“And if he’s not?” Bev checked her watch: 4.15. It was nearly four hours since Daniel Page had been taken from the school.

Five minutes later Bev was in the head teacher’s plush wood-panelled office with one of the most striking women she’d ever seen. If Bev had balls, she’d
probably be making a pass. Jenny Page, the missing boy’s mother, had that glacial Nordic look: long blonde hair, flawless skin; it was difficult to believe she was pushing forty. The eyes
were like tiny circles of new grass. Daz couldn’t keep his gaze off.

In the same vein, no one would give Shirley Wilson a second glance. The boy’s teacher was all fuzzy perm and faded polyester. Bev’d had a few words, then asked Wilson and the fatso
in the loud shirt to wait next door.

So far she’d listened to Mrs Page without interruption, allowing her to say what she wanted, in the way she wanted. And decide what to omit. The recital had been unemotional, robotic, as
if relating events that didn’t touch her. Could be shock or denial, but the story had holes. If Jenny Page was involved in any way in Daniel’s disappearance, her attitude could also be
indifference. Morriss golden rule number two: don’t believe a word anyone tells you, even if you’re talking to your gran.

“So let me get this straight.” She mimed note-taking at Daz, then leaned forward to narrow the gap with the mother. This close, Bev discerned holes of a different nature: defunct
piercings at the side of the nose and below the bottom lip. Youthful rebellion now regretted? Also apparent, despite the perfectly applied make-up, was a lattice of fine lines round the eyes. Not
crow’s feet, perhaps, but getting there. “You couldn’t collect Daniel yourself...”

“Something came up at the last minute. I couldn’t make it.” She crossed a well-toned leg.

“Work?” Bev asked.

“No.” The smile was a tad smug.

“Right.” Bev cleared her throat. “So you rang your husband from home this morning and asked him to go to the school?”

“Rich was fine. He loves spending time with Daniel.”

“But he didn’t arrive.” It wasn’t a question. She let it sink in but nothing surfaced. “Where were you?”

Jenny glanced in Daz’s direction. “Sorry?”

“You couldn’t get here? To pick Daniel up?”
Hello, come in, please.
“Where were you?”

The hesitation could’ve been genuine. “A medical appointment. It slipped my mind.” She gave a faltering smile.

Bev didn’t return it, felt strongly the woman was lying. “I’ll need details.”

Jenny Page nodded, impatient. “Look, officer, I still think it’s a misunderstanding. I’m sure Richard must have asked one of the girls to collect Dan-Dan.”

The quick change of subject was not subtle. “Girls?”

She shrugged. “Secretary, PA, someone from the agency.”

Bev sat back, arms crossed. “Got a double then, Mrs Page?”

“Sorry?” She patently wasn’t. Bev was clearly ascending Jenny Page’s perfect nostrils.

“A double? At the agency?” The cues weren’t picked up. Bev threw another. “The woman at the gates looked so much like you, Shirley Wilson and Tanya Woodall let Daniel go
with her.”

“The old biddy wasn’t wearing her glasses. I asked.”

“And Miss Woodall?”

“How should I know? She’s only been here five minutes. Trust me: they’re mistaken.”

“And Daniel?” Bev snapped. “Was he wrong too?” A tad harsh. But Jenny Page was a big girl. The little boy was Bev’s prime concern. And she had to admit there was
still distance between her and the woman. She’d come across similar bimbos before: leg-flashing eyelash-flutterers who – if they noticed other women at all – looked straight
through them. The Jenny Pages of this world felt easier with men because men were a soft touch. Bev didn’t do little woman.

“Where’s your husband now, Mrs Page?”

The eyes closed briefly. “I don’t know. I can’t raise him.”

“Is that unusual?” She kept her voice neutral.

“Extremely.”

“Are you happily married, Mrs Page?” She returned the woman’s glare, letting the silence linger, aware Daz was shifting in his seat.

“I see now.” Page rose, shrugged on a leather coat that matched her eyes. “You don’t believe me. You think I’m wasting your time.”

Or your husband is.
“Right now I don’t know what to think, Mrs Page.”

True. At this stage, they were starting from scratch, knew naff-all about the Pages. Depending how things panned out, they’d soon know the lot. Cops were like the media: digging into
private lives, uncovering intimate details. Big difference: the police didn’t splash the goods all over the front page.

As for the Pages’ possible involvement in Daniel’s disappearance... Like it or not, parents harmed their children. Bev wasn’t pussyfooting around so as not to hurt a few
feelings.

Jenny Page looked down, hands on hips over a still seated Bev. “Know what? I don’t care what you think. Your attitude stinks. I’m going home. I’ll wait for my husband
there.”

Before she reached the door, the phone in her bag trilled. The tension in her face eased as she checked caller ID. Turning her back, Jenny Page listened more than she talked.

Bev didn’t need to hear. The ice maiden was losing her cool. “That was Richard.” The woman was shaking. “He hasn’t seen Daniel since breakfast.” A single tear
ran down the almost perfect face. “He says I called. Told him he didn’t have to collect Daniel. That I’d do it after all.”

Mummy always said never to go with strangers. But the nice lady wasn’t really a stranger, was she? Even so, Daniel had hesitated just for a second when he saw who was at
the gates. He wasn’t scared or anything but he’d been so looking forward to seeing mummy. He’d met the nice lady before. It would be OK. And the bag from the Disney store must be
for him, mustn’t it?

“What you reckon, guv?”

Byford was on the phone, listening to Bev’s take on the interview with Jenny Page. The superintendent reckoned that his wayward sergeant shouldn’t need to ask for his input. That she
needed guidance too often these days. That she was in danger of losing her direction. And failing to give it. In part the big man was flattered she sought his advice; in greater part he was afraid
where it might lead. Professionally and personally.