The Deal (17 page)

As she had walked up to the front door, her gaze had met that of the local reporter who had penned the article. She could not hold back her stare of disbelief.

She entered the house and went through to the kitchen. Charles was staring into space. He was unshaven and untidy. Lucy was sobbing into her hands. Her eyes were red with emotion and she shook as she faced DCI Rudd.

“I phoned the school,” she pleaded. “I couldn’t leave my patient. The school said she was fine. I didn’t leave her in the street alone.”

“This is your fault, you bitch!” shouted Charles. “I was against using newspapers from the beginning. You’re risking my daughter’s life! Get out of my house!”

Sarah moved towards Lucy and whispered something in her ear. She responded immediately as DCI Rudd told them both to join her in the lounge. She shut the door and faced them.

“I’m going back to the kitchen to make us all a cup of coffee,” she said. “When I come back I hope we can talk in a civilised way.” She stopped and turned to Charles. “You, Mr Harriman, can start by apologising to me for your rudeness. We will then work together to find Tabitha.”

Five minutes later Sarah re-entered the lounge carrying a tray, from which she poured each of them a steaming mug of fresh coffee. As she handed a cup to Charles, he looked at her and muttered an apology.

Sarah started to pace slowly round the room, drawing the curtains and opening two of the front windows to let in some fresh air. She then turned and started speaking in a quiet voice.

“You have temporarily lost your daughter. The public tend to be hard in their judgements.” She paused. “We must all focus on the day ahead of us.”

“So were we wrong to involve the media?” asked Lucy.

“I understand how you feel. We can’t, as yet, find Tabitha and one of the best weapons we have is the local people. Forget the hotheads. Most residents out there will want to help us find your daughter. They will ignore the newspapers.”

“They’ll all be accusing Lucy,” Charles retorted.

“I doubt it. Most readers will realise it’s the media with a clever headline.”

“I really think this could have been avoided,” said Charles.

“Stop thinking about yourself,” Sarah snapped. “What’s done is done. We now have maximum publicity. We’re already taking calls at the station. Go upstairs and freshen yourself up. You are not to talk to the media unless I’m here. You do not go out of the house. The media will try every trick to get you to say something. You’ve already seen how they can turn words into sensational headlines. My officers will be with you all day. You must look after your other two children and prepare for Tabitha coming home.”

Her eyes met Lucy’s. “When will that be?” she asked.

“When I find her,” Sarah replied.

As she walked out of the house through the hordes of reporters and television crews, she felt a tight knot of anxiety form in her chest. This could be a very difficult day. The truth was that she had no idea where Tabitha was or whether she was alive.

Tabitha was unhappy. She had wet herself during the night and couldn’t make him realise what she’d done. When she’d refused to eat the cornflakes, he’d tapped her bottom. Now he thrust a piece of toast in her hand and she began to suck on it. She grabbed the cup of milk and drank it all. She didn’t like the noise and put her head beneath the pillows. She had a rash on the inside of her leg. She started to cry out for her mummy.

Amanda had returned to her room after eating her breakfast and was now lying on her bed. She had thirty minutes before she would be collected from the hotel reception by City Fiction’s Paris agent. They had a long day ahead of them, including three shop visits, and a lunch with an important French book distributor and several agents keen to introduce their clients to her.

However, she was thinking about Oliver and Alistair. She generally prided herself on her strength of resolve. She thought back to her decision to part with Zach. She had loved him so much and relished their time together, but had no doubts that she had taken the correct course of action. He had a wife and two children and that’s where he had to concentrate his attention. She had had to be firm.

But Oliver was turning her inside out. Days spent apart were only adding to her desire to be with him. But their deal posed an enormous challenge – where was she even with that? She had told him that she was willing to re-negotiate and her intentions could not have been much clearer. Yet now her brother wanted to make her COO and Oliver chairman of City Fiction.

“Merde,” she said to herself, as her bedside telephone began to ring.

Chief Superintendent Gardner sat in on the seven o’clock meeting where Superintendent Obuma briefed over thirty officers and discussed their responsibilities for the coming twenty-four hours.

The process followed by the police throughout that Thursday was almost exactly the same as the previous day. Calls were coming through from the media exposure and the follow-up process was underway. As yet nobody had seen a green car. The school was searched again. Nigel Brewer, the caretaker, suggested they look at an adjoining warehouse which had already been searched once. They crawled all over it, but found nothing. Tabitha’s home and local area were searched again. The police closed the sweet shop and tried to re-interview the Masters. They had searched the shop and accommodation after facing a tirade from Alice Masters, who said that her husband was “out consulting a solicitor”.

“So, DCI Rudd. We’re not making any progress. We are nearly past forty-eight hours. Is she dead?” Avril Gardner sat back in her chair. “Superintendent Obuma. Your thoughts too, please.”

“We go back to square one and repeat the whole exercise again. That’s usual procedure.” He sighed. “Informants, local intelligence, sex offenders’ register visits, house to house working out wider from the high street, local schools… and that’s for starters.”

“Yes, I know that, superintendent. The list?”

There followed a long discussion involving those engaged in tracing and interviewing the registered sex offenders. An officer provided the details.

“There are sixty-seven on our register within a five mile radius. We’ve also interviewed six others who should be convicted. Eight are on holiday… with the Far East a popular destination!”

There was a ripple of laughter rapidly hushed by Avril Gardner.

“No more jokes, please. We have a missing child.”

“Ma’am,” continued the officer, “we’ve interviewed forty-six of the fifty-nine we believe to be here. We intend to re-interview four of them but at this point in time we do not believe we have a serious lead.”

Superintendent Obuma informed the meeting of yesterday’s events with Eugene Watson and the subsequent arrest of another registered offender. Several officers suggested further possible cases that should be re-visited, including one man who was under investigation. Each idea was logged and responsibilities allocated.

“DCI Rudd,” said the chief superintendent, “please tell me more about Nigel Brewer.”

Andrew handed Sara the menu and invited her to make her choice. Somewhat to his surprise, she selected grilled kippers. He relayed this to the waiter, together with his own selection of a full English breakfast with Earl Grey tea and green tea for Sara.

The tables at One Lombard were almost fully occupied. A table of eight gave off the distinct air that they had been working through the night and were now celebrating the completion of a transaction. The bottles of champagne suggested that the professionals were in line for generous fees.

“The City fights back from recession,” he laughed. “I hope that you were pleased to receive my invitation to have breakfast?”

“Not really,” replied Sara. “You will have a reason, I’m sure. I understand from Abbi that you don’t usually ask staff members out for meals – apart from Oliver, I suppose.”

He looked at her in surprise. “Straight to the point as usual, Sara.”

“I’ll make you a prediction,” she said. “You’re going to give me a paternal chat about making more of an effort to get on with Gavin and Duncan.”

He gulped. “Well, that was certainly something I had in mind to cover with you.”

“Do you want to know what’s wrong with Harriman Agnew, Andrew?”

“I’m sure that your short time with us has equipped you with exactly that information,” he replied.

“A few days were ample.”

Their breakfasts arrived. The kippers were soaked in melted butter and smelt delicious. Andrew thought his tomatoes were over-cooked but decided to carry on stoically. He wanted to know what Sara thought was wrong with his firm. The waiter arrived with fresh pots of tea and a basket of brown toast.

They began eating. The noise from the table of revellers was increasing and everybody seemed keen to start the working day in positive territory. A journalist from CityAM, the free financial paper distributed at central tube stations, was interviewing a chief executive of an online betting company. Tempers were fraying as the topic of a recent profits warning, made to investors via the market information system, was aired.

“So what’s wrong with Harriman Agnew, Sara?”

“Simple. You and Charles.”

“I really think what with Charles having his daughter
kidnapped
that we need to be circumspect, Sara.”

“Why? I’m sure they’ll find Tabitha. The issue here remains.”

“So Charles and I are the problem.”

“Yes.”

“Is that what everybody thinks?”

“No idea. I don’t discuss these thoughts with anybody else. I’m raising them now because I’ve no intention of being treated like a naughty school girl.”

Andrew paused as he carefully considered the train of events. He wanted to know the answer to his own question.

“You don’t care if you lose your job, do you?”

Sara laughed out loud. “Actually, Andrew, I do. I love it at the office. They’re a great set of people and they’re desperate to succeed. I was taught in my business studies course that mergers are difficult to make work. Harriman Agnew is working ok.”

“So why are Charles and I the problem?”

“Because the company is carrying both of you.”

He gulped and spilt his cup of tea.

“While you wipe your shirt I’ll explain what I mean. The company is too small for two effective chairmen. I realise that’s a result of the merger and I accept there had to be compromises. But Oliver runs the business and Gavin – ok, we’ll talk about him in a moment – runs brokerage. Abbi, Martin, Jody, Melanie and I do the rest. What do you do, Andrew? You’re out most of the time having breakfasts and lunches and you go to your club in the evening. When did you last bring in some new business?”

He didn’t like this line of questioning at all. “I run the business, Sara.”

“No you don’t. Oliver does that. He’s so decent that he covers up your own lack of activity. And what’s Charles done in the last few weeks exactly?”

She was not to know that this was a question Andrew had been beginning to ask himself.

“I’m not going to discuss Charles with you at any time, Sara, and certainly not today when his daughter is missing.”

“Let’s discuss you then.”

“I think not. We’ll talk about your relationship with Gavin.”

“What’s there to say? He’s a total arsehole,” she said loudly.

As her words echoed around the restaurant, there was a momentary lull in festivities at the neighbouring table.

For DCI Rudd the day was horribly frustrating. On two occasions word came through that the officers interviewing the sex offenders might have a lead. On each occasion it proved negative. The media interest produced a torrent of phone calls and the computerised logging system was swamped. One gentleman from Hampstead caught a tube train to Ealing and presented himself at the police station reception to confess to the kidnapping – not the first he had admitted to, either.

Sarah went back to the high street in the afternoon and stood outside the school. She walked past the Masters’ shop but did not go inside, speaking instead to some of the officers who were delegated to question the public. One told her that the Masters had left the shop at lunchtime and that there were temporary staff serving the customers.

Around three o’clock there was a sudden flurry of activity in one of the buildings being searched by the police and council officials – but it transpired it was just a tramp who had converted it into his temporary home.

The tensions were rising. The media coverage was growing in its intensity and the Madeleine McCann tag was sticking. CS Gardner telephoned her every hour and she met with Superintendent Obuma on three separate occasions. Tabitha had disappeared completely. Other police forces were searching for the dark green car without really knowing what they were looking for. There were extra checks at the ports, which all had Tabitha’s photograph.

Around five o’clock Sarah went home, where she took a well-earned shower and spent some time with her children. Nick poured her a small brandy which she drank quickly. Their conversation of the previous evening was weighing heavily on both their minds.

“We don’t know where she is, Nick,” she confided. “I’m running out of ideas and I’ve looked in every direction.”

He held her hand and kissed her on the lips. “The media is saying she’s probably out of the country by now.”

“No, she’s in Ealing, Nick.”

“Sure?”

“Certain,” she said. “I just have the feeling that I’m missing something.”

“Certain is a strong word, Sarah.”

“My favourite college lecturer told us that missing children are nearly always found in the most obvious place.”

“And where is that?”

“I wish I knew.”

She stood up, gave her husband a quick hug and kissed each of her children. She left her home to continue the search for Tabitha.

Charles was walking the streets around his home with a hip flask in his pocket. The police had stopped trying to keep him indoors and he had avoided the press by going through the hedge at the bottom of his garden.

He was telling himself he didn’t need a drink because he had chosen a new way of life for himself. But he was carrying the flask just in case he decided he might choose to have one. He thought back to his drinking days. He would plan his schedules so that he always met a client or contact at around noon in a hotel. It was perfectly acceptable to have a gin and tonic at that time – and it never affected his work in any way. But it affected him in other ways.