The Stranger on the Train (12 page)

“Oliver's,” Emma added, to save her asking.

“Well.” Joanne looked as if a piece of prawn had gone down the wrong way. “That's . . . that's . . . that's
great
.”

“Yeah.”

“When is it due?” Joanne managed to ask.

“August. I'm five months gone.”

“Oh.”

“So the thing is,” Emma said, “now isn't a good time for me to find a new flatmate. I only need somewhere until the baby is born. I'll be able to look for somewhere proper then. I'll be in a condition to pack and move and lift boxes. I'll be gone before you so much as see a nappy.”

She could hear the pleading in her voice. Joanne heard it too and shifted on the couch. She pushed away her carton of bhuna.

“Look, Emma,” she said. “I'm sorry if it makes things difficult for you. But Barry and I have discussed this, and we can't just change our plans.”

Emma looked at her stomach. She couldn't see her feet from here.

“Okay,” she said. “Okay.”

“You should have said something before. Five months, Emma.”

“I know.”

“Things are just getting really serious between Barry and me,” Joanne wailed. “And you and him have never got on, have you? You completely lost it with him the other night, he said, over something really trivial, he didn't even know what he'd done. You like your space, Emma, you know you do. I really couldn't see it working if you moved in with us. And if I don't move in with him now, he'll get another flatmate, and it could be years before we discuss moving in together again. This is my one chance, Emma. You've no idea how much I like him. I've been waiting for this for so long.”

“It's okay,” Emma repeated. “Honestly. I understand.”

There was a silence. Then Joanne got up off the couch. She came over to give Emma a hug.

“You're a great mate, Ems,” she sniffled. “And it's great about the baby, really it is. It's going to be really cute. And me moving out, you know. It's not going to affect anything between us. If you need any kind of help with the baby, babysitting and that, just feel free to ask.”

Emma smiled. But there was a cold space inside her. She allowed herself to be hugged, but her mind had moved to somewhere else entirely. She stared over Joanne's shoulder at the wall.

What on earth was she going to do now?

Chapter Nine

Saturday, September 23rd

Day Seven

In the dusk, on the steps of the Fulham Palace Road police station, Lindsay waited in her neat, dark coat.

Emma walked faster. She was out of breath by the time she arrived at the station.

“Am I late?” she asked anxiously.

“Not at all,” Lindsay said. “I've only just got here myself.”

Lindsay was carrying a slim, green handbag over one shoulder. Her hand was on the door, but she paused for a second to tilt her head and give Emma a concerned little smile.

“Sure you're ready for this?” she asked.

Emma nodded. But the blood was drumming in her ears.

The policeman at reception buzzed them through. Emma followed Lindsay into a dark, narrow corridor. Their shoes clumped on the hollow-sounding floor. The corridor turned into another, then another, until Emma had lost all track of where they were. Then they turned right again, through a doorway and into a room with a large, round table in the middle.

“Afternoon, Ms. Turner.” Detective Inspector Hill straightened up from the table. He was wearing his tan overcoat and carrying a rolled-up
Metro
newspaper.

“Good afternoon,” Emma said warily. Whenever Detective Hill looked at her, which he seemed to avoid doing, it was as if he despised her. As if she was wasting his time. Once she'd caught him raising his eyebrows at another policeman, clamping his mouth in a tight line as if to say:
Can you believe this woman?

“I'm sure all of this has been explained to you,” Detective Hill said. He pointed his
Metro
at a woman who was doing something to a computer in the corner. “Our computer expert, Police Constable Gorman there, has got some CCTV footage, taken at Stansted Airport the day after Ritchie was kidnapped. We've got a view of the couple and child who checked in for the Bergerac flight. In a minute we'll show you the tape, and you can tell us if the child in it is your son. Understand?”

“Yes.”

Detective Hill held out a gray plastic chair for her in front of the computer. Emma sat down. Behind her, she heard scraping and shuffling as several more people came into the room. She didn't look around to see who they were. The only thing on her mind was what might be about to appear on the screen.

“All right, lovey?” the woman at the computer asked. PC Gorman had short, graying hair and a kind face. “Now, when I start the film, the first thing you'll see will be a set of doors. After a couple of seconds, you'll see three people come through. A man first, then a woman carrying a child. For the time being, we're going to block out the faces of the man and woman. We just want you to concentrate on the child. Let me know when you're ready to start.”

“I'm ready,” Emma said. Her left leg was jiggling up and down. She pressed her hands on her knee to make it stop.

“Lights off, please,” the woman called.

The fluorescent glare disappeared. Now there was just the glow from the computer, casting a blue halo around the heads in front of it: Lindsay's smooth, dark bun; Detective Hill's moustache.

Emma's chest fizzed.

What if this was Ritchie?

No. Don't even think it. Don't get your hopes up and end up even more of a wreck than you already are.

But if it
was
?

Emma gritted her teeth. She'd been at this all night, her mind swinging first one way, then the other, until she didn't know which way was up. Footsteps clumped along the corridor outside the room. “Oi,” a man's voice shouted. “You going to Tesco?”

The footsteps faded. On the screen, an image lit up. A white hall, with double doors at one end. White metal and glass.

“Watch, now,” the woman at the computer said.

Behind the glass doors, a shape loomed. Then the doors slid open and a man came striding through. He was tall, wearing jeans and a navy short-sleeved shirt. An oval-shaped blur covered his face, breaking it up into tiny pink and yellow squares. The man was pulling a wheelie case and walking very quickly. In no time at all, he was past the camera and gone from the screen.

“Wait . . .”

Emma sat up. The film was moving way too fast. If the rest of it was like this, she wasn't going to be able to see it properly. But beside her, Lindsay was still focusing on the screen. Detective Hill, PC Gorman . . . everyone was busy watching the tape. No one but her seemed to be having trouble following it.

“Here come the woman and child,” PC Gorman said.

Panicking, Emma jerked her eyes back. Her vision blurred. Now she couldn't see anything at all. Roughly, she scrubbed at her eyes. When she looked again, a woman, her face also obscured, was coming through the doors, holding something bulky in her arms.

A child.

Emma strained, using every muscle in her face to try to see the child. But it was impossible to get a proper view of him. The woman's body was turned away from the camera. All you could see of the child was a tuft of hair—darker, surely, than Ritchie's?—and a small foot sticking out.

Look up,
Emma wanted to shout.
Ritchie, if that's you, look up.

But it was the woman who glanced up instead. Although her face was covered with little squares, she appeared to be looking straight at the camera.

The film froze.

“Are you all right?” Lindsay asked.

Emma was staring at the screen. Even taking the blurring of her features into account, this woman had nothing familiar about her whatsoever. Her hair was dark, tied back instead of down by her ears. She wore baggy trousers and some sort of hooded top. Very casual. Very different from the posh, horsey woman at the tube station.

“I don't think that's her.” Emma chewed at her thumbnail. “I don't think that's the woman who was in Mr. Bap's.”

“Take your time,” Lindsay advised. “We haven't seen the child yet.”

But Emma had lost her nerve. Face it. It wasn't them. It wasn't Ritchie. She should have known. The police could be looking for Ritchie some other way, instead of all of them just sitting here. Emma wanted to scream with frustration. She wanted to get up and run out of the room. This was a complete waste of everyone's time.

She had her mouth open, about to say as much to Lindsay, when the film started again. The woman's face moved in jerky little squares. A second later, she turned her body towards the camera, and all Emma's thoughts flew away. There was the child in the woman's arms, in plain view for the first time. A solid little lump, a sheen of hair. Emma's head shot up; she felt herself lifted off the seat. Her body knew before she did. She was on her feet, pointing at the screen.

“That's him,” she said. “That's Ritchie.”

Someone sucked in a breath.

“What . . . ?”

“Did she say . . . ?”

The exclamations faded. Emma was rising, floating in the room like a ghost.
Oh, Ritchie, Ritchie, my precious baby, you're alive.
You're alive! She wanted to touch the screen, to hold it, to take his head in her hands. It was real. It wasn't real. A cold drink in the desert which you couldn't feel in your throat. Her own breath filled her ears. Everything else, the people, the room, all had been subtracted. There was just her, breathing like Darth Vader, gazing down a quiet tunnel at her son. Here they came, the dark-haired woman in her hooded top, Ritchie in her arms. Ritchie had dark hair too now. How funny it looked on him. He was wearing a green top that Emma had never seen, and brown trousers. Brown boots which made his feet look huge. His arms dangled at his sides. The only thing she couldn't see was his face, which was turned into the woman's shoulder. He was slumped against her, clearly asleep.

“Emma.” Detective Hill's voice echoed down the tunnel. “Emma.”

Emma's ears popped. Dazed, she looked at Detective Hill.

“Are you sure it's him?” Detective Hill asked. “You can only see the top of his head. And this child has brown hair, not bl—”

“His fringe,” Emma babbled.

She'd cut Ritchie's fringe herself, the day before he was kidnapped. He wouldn't stay still, and the right side ended up an inch shorter than the left. There it was now, on top of his head. Right side shorter than left. Exactly the same.

“They've dyed his hair,” she said. “But I know it's him. I know what the rest of him looks like. He's in France, isn't he? They've taken him to France. What happens now? How do we get him back?”

Detective Hill scratched the back of his head. He said to PC Gorman: “Haven't we got any proper views of his face?”

“No,” PC Gorman said. “It's the same in all the pictures. He's got his head in her shoulder the whole time.”

“She's trying to hide him,” Emma said, caught between joy and exasperation. It was so obvious. “A child that age wouldn't stay asleep that long in a noisy place like an airport. Ritchie definitely wouldn't. He'd wonder what was going on. He'd be trying to get down, get into everything.”

“Then maybe it isn't Ritchie,” Detective Hill suggested.

“She's drugged him,” Emma said grimly. “It
is
him.”

Detective Hill opened his mouth, but PC Gorman got there first.

“She's got a point,” she said. “My granddaughter's the same. You'd have to drug her to keep her quiet in an airport.”

A ripple of chuckles from behind.

Detective Hill said: “All right, then. We'll check them out. We'll get onto it straightaway.”

“What will you—” Emma began again, but Detective Hill had already left the room.

The fluorescent lights came on. Emma blinked. She couldn't see the screen so clearly now. Five days ago, that video had been taken. Today was Saturday. Five days ago, while she had been weeping in their flat and answering a million questions about Oliver, Ritchie had been in an airport, wearing a strange green top and sleeping on this woman's shoulder. While Emma had lain in bed, clinging to Gribbit, Ritchie had boarded a plane and flown almost directly over her head.

Around her, people in navy jumpers with badges on the shoulders were stretching in their gray plastic seats. Some of them were still chuckling over the comment PC Gorman had made about her granddaughter.

Hurry up,
Emma wanted to shout at them.
Time is passing. Get back to your jobs and find him.

Five days. Ritchie could be anywhere by now. Her happiness at seeing him was replaced again by fear. She couldn't feel her legs. She had to sit down.

• • •

Outside the station, she was still having trouble believing it. Had that really been Ritchie in there? It was hard to keep still. She pulled at the zip of her fleece, tugging it up against the cold, then down again, shifting from foot to foot on the steps. The urge to do something, anything, was overwhelming. It was after eight, but the traffic was still flowing. Saturday shoppers on their way home. The headlights picked out the trees in the park and cemetery across the road.

“You did so well,” Lindsay kept saying. “What an amazing breakthrough.”

“You do believe me, don't you?” Emma asked anxiously. “That it was him? You are going to follow it up?”

“Of course we are. This is wonderful.”

“It doesn't mean he's okay now, though.” Emma was still agitated.

“But it's much more likely,” Lindsay said. “That footage was taken nearly twenty-four hours after he disappeared. And he looked okay, didn't he? Things are looking more hopeful for him now, really they are.”

“No thanks to you.” Suddenly, Emma was very angry. “What were you all waiting for? Why has it taken this long for us to get anywhere? I'm his mother. You should have believed me from the start.”

“We never
didn't
believe you, Emma.” Lindsay sounded troubled. Her smooth beautician's face gleamed in the lights from the cars. “It's just that . . . with Dr. Stanford . . . We had to think of every . . . I admit it would have been helpful if we'd had more CCTV evidence. But the cameras at Stepney Green tube station had been vandalized. They've been having trouble there recently with gangs of schoolkids messing about. Two of the lenses were painted over. Someone was supposed to come and sort them out. And the street outside Mr. Bap's had no CCTV at all.”

Emma said bitterly: “That's funny, because I heard that in London the average person gets caught on camera three hundred times a day.”

“Well, they're not all police cameras,” Lindsay said. “But you're right. I've heard that too. Just, unfortunately, not in the one place where we needed a camera to be.”

She turned to Emma, tucking her green bag under her arm. She put her hands on Emma's shoulders.

“Look,” she said. “After all this, we're definitely on the same page now, aren't we? What's happened this evening is wonderful. Really it is.”

Emma chewed again at her thumb.

“What will the police do now?” she asked.

It was at least the third time she'd asked that, but Lindsay didn't seem to mind.

“We'll give the passport details of those people to Interpol,” she said. “Copies of their photos as well, from the passport office. The French police will start looking for them over there.”

“But if they used false passports?”

“We'll still find them. There'll be cameras in the airport at the other end. We'll be able to see who met them, how they left the airport. From there, we'll know where they went. We know who we're looking for now,” Lindsay said. “That's the difficult part. Once we're on the trail, it's hard to get us off.”

“What time will they look until?” Emma asked.

“Who?”

“The police. What time do they work until?”

“All night if we have to, Emma.” Lindsay was patient. “You know that.”