The Missing Children Case Files
At the time, Mum said I wasn’t to blame, but I’ll never forgive myself for the argument that led to my sister stomping away in a huff. I still remember the scene as if it was yesterday. I’m sure my imagination has filled some of the holes in the memory, re-painting the background of the day, but that scowl on her face, those tears threatening to spill, are permanently etched on my mind.
I nod involuntarily as Rachel continues to await my response.
‘What did he say to you?’ she tries again.
I close my eyes, willing Anna’s tear-stained face to dissipate.
‘Does this have anything to do with the vigil you hold on that missing people website every night?’
My eyes snap open despite the sting of tears threatening to reveal all my secrets.
‘You think I didn’t know what you were doing in the early hours when we were in halls of residence? I would sense you some nights, coming over to check I was asleep before logging on. At first I thought you were one of those World of Warcraft nerds, but when I checked your browser history all I saw was that site. I figured you were deleting your internet search history, covering something much worse, but you weren’t, were you? What is it you don’t want me to know, Emma? I mean… I know what it is to keep secrets from those closest to you, and something tells me I’m getting close.’
I have to blink away the tears but I’m already past the point of no return. ‘Twenty years ago, my sister Anna was abducted and never found.’
The weight lifted from my shoulders makes me feel as though I might even take flight from this bridge and I have to grip the railing tighter just in case.
Rachel’s eyes narrow as the cogs behind them turn. ‘Oh my God, Emma, I’m so sorry.’
I was bracing myself for a verbal assault that I very much deserve, but Rachel’s reaction brings the tears closer to the precipice.
‘I don’t really remember what the argument was about. We were in the front yard, and I was on the skateboard Dad had bought me in the charity shop. I think Anna was saying I was doing it wrong, but I thought I knew better. She kept trying to get me off the stupid contraption but I didn’t want to listen. If only I had let her show me… then she wouldn’t have become upset and shouted that she was going to Grandma’s house. If I’d known that would be the last time I’d see her… I would have stopped her going, or I would have gone with her, or even told my parents that’s where she was going. But as a selfish and naïve seven-year-old I did none of those things; I was just happy to have the skateboard and yard to myself, without her interfering.’
Rachel hasn’t moved, I’m not even sure if she’s blinked in the last two minutes. I have to close my eyes to continue, as I don’t want to see the hurt and disappointment in her eyes.
‘I learned later that eighteen minutes elapsed before Dad came out of the front door and asked me where Anna was. I told him she’d walked to our grandma’s house, which was only four minutes away. It wasn’t uncommon for us to walk to her house, though I wasn’t allowed to do it on my own, but Anna was two years older than me, and she was trusted. There were no main roads to cross, and the alleyway between our road and my grandma’s road was surprisingly well-lit at night-time.’
I can still hear the piercing scream Mum let out when the police officer shook his head and said there was still no sign of her.
The tears are falling even though my eyes remain firmly clamped shut. ‘Apparently, another five minutes passed before Dad told Mum that Anna had gone to Grandma’s house, at which point Mum phoned Grandma to tell Anna to be home by five for dinner. That was the moment the alarm was raised, the moment both my parents lost years off their lifespans.’
I’m not even sure if Rachel is still here. I can’t hear her breathing and I wouldn’t blame her for hightailing it away. I’m not the person she thought I was and it feels somehow fitting that the only other sister I have in the world would abandon me here and now.
Only, she doesn’t. Instead, my best friend for the last eight years does something I don’t deserve: she wraps her arms around me and pulls me into the warmth of her embrace. ‘I am so sorry you’ve had to live with this on your own for so long. I don’t blame you for not telling me, but I wish you had so I could have been a better friend.’
My sister never made it to Grandma’s house and, despite an intense police investigation that seemed to last for months, she was never found. Nobody witnessed her journey; not a single nosey neighbour happened to be looking out of their window as she walked by; not a single dog walker happened to be in that alleyway when she was. Actresses were hired to play the two of us in the televised reconstruction and I remember thinking at the time that the actress playing Anna looked nothing like her, but I must have watched that reconstruction hundreds of times down the years and I now see that facially they were very similar. I met the two actresses before filming started and I think it’s my memory of that conversation that made me believe that she was nothing like Anna. The actress wanted to play with my doll’s house and she had such a pretty smile.
She wasn’t my Anna.
Things were never the same at home after that. My parents seemed to argue more. Mum gave up her job so she could continue searching for Anna and Dad spent more and more time at work. Then one day, when I was twelve, they sat me down and explained that they were going to get a divorce. I cried myself to sleep that night knowing that, had I just let Anna use my bloody skateboard, they would have stayed together. Dad moved out to a grubby flat not much bigger than our old living room but it was two bus rides away. Even though I was a trustworthy child, Mum never allowed me to travel there on my own. That was the other thing that changed after my sister’s disappearance: Mum’s paranoia spiked. She wouldn’t let me go anywhere on my own. Even when I turned fifteen, and all my friends would go out to the shops at the weekend, I was forbidden from going. I wasn’t allowed to date anyone and I nearly didn’t make it to university because she was so scared she’d never see me again. I had to promise I would phone or send her a text message every day so she knew I was safe.
I’ve never felt safer than I do right now, pressed up against Rachel’s T-shirt. ‘Anna’s case file remains open and unsolved with the police,’ I tell her. ‘I receive a phone call once a year when someone draws a short straw and is instructed to review the file for updates, and inevitably lets me know there are no fresh leads.’
I allow myself to look up as I feel a drop of water splash against my forehead, followed by another and another. The sun is still shining brightly in the distance, but a passing cloud has decided to drop its payload in this time and place. Neither Rachel nor I move from our position.
‘No wonder that guy’s story upset you so much,’ Rachel says tenderly. ‘You poor, poor thing. I’m amazed you managed to keep such a secret so quiet for so long.’
‘This year marks the twentieth anniversary of her disappearance,’ I say, staring back out at the murky river. ‘Twenty years of not knowing where she is, nor what happened to her, nor whether she’s still alive.’
‘That’s one hell of a burden to carry on your own.’
I meet her stare. ‘I’m sorry I didn’t tell you before.’
Her lips flatten into a thin and strained smile. ‘I understand it’s a precious part of you, and I don’t blame you for not sharing.’
In that moment, I decide I’m not going to bow to Maddie’s pressure. I’ve spent the last three years fighting for Freddie and now, having to set aside Anna’s disappearance, enough is enough. To hell with what my publisher wants, what Maddie thinks will sell, and to hell with Fitzhume for thinking I’m for sale. I know where my future lies, and that’s moving heaven and earth to find out where my sister is.
I wrap my arm around Rachel’s waist, not wanting this moment of revelation to end, but aware that it is beyond my control. A small tugboat emerges from beneath our feet, the sound of its wake crashing against the shoreline, reminding me of the sound of Weymouth Bay and all the promise of home.
‘What time does your train go?’ Rachel asks.
‘Soon,’ I tell her, checking my watch, the sound of home calling me to Waterloo.
Chapter Seven
Then
Chalfont St Giles, Buckinghamshire
The sound of an engine revving was followed by the groaning of the driver as the tinnitus slowly began to fade.
‘They’ve taken Cassie!’ Elizabeth Hilliard yelled, though it sounded muffled.
Her whole body ached and as she tried to take in her immediate surroundings, she could feel shards of broken window pressing into her right shoulder. The seat belt had her fully restrained but, fumbling with the catch, she was able to wrestle the strap away, and move herself into an upright position.
Hobbs, the driver, was still groggy, his head lolling from side to side as his brain tried to make sense of what had happened. He was no use to her in that condition. Pressing her heeled shoe into his headrest, she delicately gripped the edges of Cassie’s broken window, jagged edges breaking her soft skin. Driving her left foot into the middle headrest of the rear seat, she managed to poke her head through the window frame, and scanned the road for any sign of her daughter’s abductors.
To her right she just caught sight of the dark van with blacked-out windows as it broke around the bend ahead in the road. There was no way of seeing the registration number and she screamed out in agony as a hundred thoughts raced across her battered mind.
Where are they taking her? Who has taken her? Will I ever see her again?
Screeching tyres to her left were followed by slammed doors as the two occupants, a black couple dressed in white polo shirts and colourful tracksuit bottoms, exited and rushed over to the car.
‘Jesus Christ!’ the man exclaimed. ‘Are you all right? What happened?’
Elizabeth turned to face the two of them, her mind still a blur. She knew she needed to act fast but she wasn’t sure how to.
‘I’ll call for an ambulance,’ the woman said, putting a phone to her ear and moving away from them so she could relay what had happened.
Her partner, with a crisp white sweatband wrapped around his forehead, looked as though he had just stepped onto the courts at Wimbledon. He was tall enough that he didn’t need to stretch to see her.
‘Let me help you get out,’ he suggested, moving closer to the car, but hesitantly, as if he couldn’t quite determine whether it was safe to be so close to a potential fire hazard. ‘Can you move okay? Are there any broken bones?’
She didn’t respond. Shock had settled in, her mind little more than clouds as grey as those overhead.
‘Whoa, whoa there,’ the man said, taking her hand in his, warmth radiating from it. ‘You nearly passed out there. Here, let me help you out; I think there’s something leaking beneath the car, and it smells like diesel.’
She allowed him to put his warm hands beneath her arms and he began to lift her before stopping.
‘Hold on, all this broken glass could cut you up. I have a picnic blanket in the boot. Give me a second.’
He released his grip, and she nearly crumpled back into the belly of the car as her knees threatened to give way, but she just about managed to hang on to the jagged frame, watching the stranger race to the back of his car, open the boot, and return carrying a tartan woollen blanket that he then pushed in through the window, using it to bash out more shards. Flattening the blanket so that it covered the lower half of the window, he placed his hands beneath her arms again and almost effortlessly pulled her through.
‘An ambulance is on its way,’ his partner said, joining them. He helped Elizabeth to the edge of the road, several metres away from the upturned Range Rover.
Elizabeth looked back at the wreck, only now seeing that the entire rear passenger-side wheel was missing… but not just the tyre; it was as if something had bitten a chunk out of that section of the car. A thin trail of smoke rose from where she’d emerged.
‘How are you feeling?’ the woman asked.
Elizabeth was about to respond when a roaring burn in the back of her throat forced her head between her legs and she retched painfully. The image of Cassie disappearing with the gloved hand fired back to the front of her mind.
‘Police,’ she said, looking from the man to the woman. ‘They took my daughter. Phone the police.’
With the narrow road now cordoned off to prevent further traffic, a team of men and women dressed in protective overalls swarmed around the car. Still groggy, Hobbs had been cut from the vehicle and transported to hospital for further observation but Elizabeth remained at the scene. Wrapped in a protective foil blanket for warmth, and with her knees tucked beneath her chin, she tried her best to answer the questions being thrown at her by the woman in uniform who had identified herself as PS Zoe Parsons.
‘It looks as if some kind of propelled rocket was used to disable your car,’ the young officer said, reading from her notebook. ‘The fact that they stopped to take Cassie on this particular stretch of road suggests that this was a targeted attack as opposed to a chance encounter.’
Elizabeth wiped her eyes which hadn’t stopped running since she’d demanded the couple who’d stopped to aid her call the police.
‘Where is my daughter?’ she asked again.
PS Parsons stepped further into the ambulance, closing the door behind her. ‘You did the right thing in calling us. We’ve put an alert out to our colleagues across London. They’re searching for Cassie based on the picture you forwarded to me and for the van based on the description you provided. We also have a team of officers scouring for CCTV to track the van’s movements. We will narrow the search and do our best to get her back.’
Elizabeth didn’t share her optimism. ‘What kind of sick bastards would do something like that?’
‘Mrs Hilliard, given the equipment used by the perpetrators, and the speed with which they were able to get away, I believe we are dealing with professionals. Now, either these men were hired by someone to cripple the car and take Cassie, or they’re acting under their own volition. Either way, these are not just a couple of crooks who acted on the spur of the moment; this operation took time and planning. You said you were travelling back from a children’s birthday party? Who knew that you would be there?’
Elizabeth frowned at the question. ‘You think the parents of that child did this?’
Parsons shook her head. ‘Not necessarily, but we need to establish the identities of anyone who knew you would be on this particular stretch of road at this particular time. Is this a road you travel along often?’
Elizabeth winced as the pain in her head erupted from where she’d bashed it during the crash. ‘My driver chose the route. I think it’s the direct way from their house in Rickmansworth to our home in Chalfont St Giles. I don’t know. I don’t drive.’
A knock on the side of the van was followed by a male officer opening the rear door and Elizabeth’s husband Richard jumped into the ambulance and joined his wife on the edge of the mattress. He didn’t embrace her; he never embraced her anymore. Reaching for her hand, he squeezed it limply.
‘I’ll give you two a moment to talk,’ Parsons said, excusing herself and closing the door.
The formality of their relationship was as painful now as it had been when he’d first told her he was gay. Their tragedy was a marriage neither of them could leave because of the lies that held their entire world together. But right now, she just wanted him to hold her and tell her that everything would be okay.
Richard spoke first. ‘I phoned your father and he’s going to catch the next flight back from Geneva. He should be here in a few hours.’
Elizabeth wiped her eyes again. ‘Who took her?’
He didn’t respond, staring at his feet as if the answer might be found on his handmade moccasins.
‘Richard, I swear to God, if this has got anything to do with you, I’ll—’
The ambulance shook as he leapt to his feet and glared at her. ‘What do you take me for? How could you think I would…?’ But his words trailed off as his eyes filled with tears.
Elizabeth swallowed down her own sob. ‘I didn’t mean that you had taken her, but I know your line of work attracts enemies, Richard. You may not tell me about the day-to-day running of things, but I’m not deaf and blind. Not taking an interest is not the same as being ignorant.’
He was still glaring at her but anger was swiftly turning into shock. ‘Tell me what you saw. Did they say anything?’
‘I saw a glove. That’s it. A single gloved hand that reached in and took our daughter.’ She paused, watching the muscles twisting in his face and the way his eyes darted left and right, searching for answers. ‘Oh my God… You know who took her, don’t you?’
His head snapped up and, despite its shaking, his eyes betrayed the truth.
Elizabeth jumped down from the trolley, swallowing the space between them until her face was almost touching his. ‘Who are they? What do they want with Cassie?’
Richard stepped backwards, almost bumping into the door. ‘I don’t know who’s taken her; I’m as dumbfounded by this unfolding situation as you.’
But she didn’t buy it. ‘Either you tell me the truth or I’m calling in that police officer and you can explain to her what you know. So help me, Richard, I don’t care who I have to throw under the bus to get my child back!’
He took her hand and pulled her to the opposite end of the cabin. ‘Shush. I swear to you, I don’t know who took her,’ he whispered. ‘Do you really think I’d be standing here if I did? You’re right that my work does attract enemies, and I will kick over every stone until I find who is responsible, but I really am in the dark here too. There must be something else you remember about what happened. Are you sure they didn’t say anything? Anything at all?’
Elizabeth closed her eyes, replaying the moment in her memory again. ‘No, I told you, no words were spoken. Or if they were, I didn’t hear them over the ringing in my ears. All I saw was that…’ She didn’t finish the sentence. She couldn’t finish the sentence as the image in her head sharpened and for the first time she realised exactly what she had seen, something she hadn’t noticed until that moment.
‘Four fingers. The hand I saw was missing a digit!’
Chapter Eight
Now
Weymouth, Dorset
I’m somewhere between sleep and waking when a loud banging at the door cuts through the haze. Opening my eyes, I’m surprised to see the ceiling fan overhead… until the temporary amnesia wanes and I realise I must have fallen asleep at my desk last night. My laptop is still displaying the homepage of the site I created to further the search for Anna. Having arrived home late, I’d made a coffee and headed straight for the desk, desperate to see if anyone had messaged with any news since I’d posted the new images. I had paid a specialist company to mock up some images of what Anna might look like now. It wasn’t cheap, but what’s the point of sharing a picture of Anna from when she was taken? If she’s still alive she will no longer look like that same clumsy nine-year-old who preferred football to dolls, and trains to unicorns.
Her eyes are the same, but I don’t recognise the rest of the face staring back at me on the screen. I supplied the company with some digital copies of pictures of Anna, her face captured at as many different angles as possible, in order for them to create a 3D composite of her face, which they subsequently aged with skin tone manipulation and various hairstyles. The Anna on the screen now is a virtual stranger to me, and if I walked past her on the street, there would be no way of knowing she was my big sister. It drives me crazy to think I could have walked past her in the last twenty years and not realised. I can’t imagine what type of clothes she would be wearing these days. Would her obsession with dungarees and parkas have evolved into jumpsuits and trench coats or would she have found a completely different style?
I showed Mum the older versions of Anna but she didn’t think they were an accurate portrayal of the daughter she’s been mourning for twenty years. We don’t often talk about that time anymore. It’s too painful for Mum and I don’t want to make her relive the nightmare. I remember the media attention that followed the police appeal for information. I remember my parents both being accused of negligence. I remember the police investigating them both in case they were somehow involved. Despite my witness account that both my parents were in the house when Anna stomped away from our front garden, the police weren’t prepared to take the word of a vulnerable seven-year-old who would naturally jump to the defence of her parents.
I dare myself to sip the half-drunk coffee and wince at the error as the cold liquid washes over my tongue. Beside the mug lies the battered, old edition of Elinor Wylie poems that Anna would never be without… until that day. It’s face down at Anna’s favourite poem, ‘Full Moon’; back then it was all just garbled nonsense to me, but now I understand why she loved it so.
Sitting upright, curious to know who could be disturbing me so early, I wipe the damp from the corner of my mouth with the back of my hand, pull the glasses down from the top of my head, and make my way to the front door, stifling a yawn as I unfasten the chain and stare through the gap.
‘Morning, sunshine,’ Freddie Mitchell trills from just outside, grinning. He lifts two takeaway cups and a small paper bag. ‘I brought you breakfast. Can I come in?’
My mind is still half asleep, but I pull the door open and the five-foot-tall Freddie enters my flat, the smell of fresh pastry wafting after him as he heads through to the kitchen and places his treasures on the table. He immediately opens the blind, allowing bright sunshine to flow in through the window, and I won’t deny feeling guilty at the state of the kitchen. Half a dozen plates, bowls, and mugs – which I’d meant to wash-up yesterday – are lined up beside the sink, but my eyes have barely left the screen of my laptop since I returned from London.
I’ll admit it: I’m a slob when I become enveloped by a story. It isn’t something I’m proud of, and I certainly wouldn’t choose to invite people to my flat when it’s in this state, but in my defence, I didn’t invite Freddie over. Besides, he’s not just people. Not anymore.
He’s watching me as I rub sleep from my eyes. ‘Heavy night?’ he asks, without judgement. ‘God knows, I’ve had a few of those.’
‘Not what you think,’ I say, stifling another yawn. ‘I was working.’
Freddie nods. ‘Well, it’s just as well your fairy godmother has come to your rescue. Sit down and I’ll find you a plate.’
He’s emphasising his naturally effeminate voice, which is something he does when he’s nervous of his surroundings, a defence mechanism he’s been employing since he was a child. Even though he’s rapidly approaching his fortieth birthday, it’s still his go-to setting. I know that if I ask him what’s wrong he’ll pretend everything is okay, but if I can keep him here and talking for long enough, he’ll eventually settle and tell me whatever is on his mind. I do wonder in hindsight whether others would have listened to his story sooner had they realised this about his psychological makeup.
He’s finished searching through my cupboards and places a clean plate in the only clear spot on the table. ‘Sit yourself down,’ he encourages and I obey, pulling out a chair.
Opening the lids of the two cups – I know that Freddie only drinks green tea these days – I extract the latte from the cardboard cup-holder and take a sip. ‘Thanks for this, Freddie. You really are an angel sent from above!’