[DCI Tom Douglas 03.0] Sleep Tight Read online

  I walk over to the bed and lift the cover, expecting to see Lottie – Jaz’s rag doll – lying on the pillow. She’s not there. I whip back the duvet. Where’s Lottie? Even at seven, Jaz loves to have Lottie in her bed, but there is no sign of her. I look at the policeman in my anguish, but he just watches me and says nothing.

  I walk slowly over to the wardrobe. I almost don’t want to open it. But he’s still watching me. I gently pull on the handle, as if doing it slowly will change the outcome. Jasmine’s pink backpack is not on the shelf. Suddenly I’m like a wild thing, pushing coat hangers backwards and forwards, pulling open drawers.

  ‘Nooo!’ I am wailing, dragging out the one syllable into twenty. Where are my daughter’s clothes?

  I hear a thundering up the stairs, and Philippa appears at the door. She comes over to me and holds my arm. She doesn’t have to ask questions – she can tell from my face what has happened. I’ve been trying not to admit it to myself, but now I have to face the truth.

  He’s taken my children.

  3

  Tom Douglas stood up wearily from his desk and stretched his arms above his head. Since his boss, Detective Chief Superintendent James Sinclair, had taken early retirement for health reasons, working at the Met hadn’t been the same. The new guy was good, but he was too much of a numbers man for Tom’s liking. And it wasn’t just that he controlled the budget with a rod of iron. That was his job. To Tom, the new DCS seemed to want to solve crime by numbers too, as if a magic formula could be applied according to a predefined set of criteria.

  Tom had originally taken a job with the Metropolitan Police to be close to his daughter, Lucy. His ex-wife, Kate, had upped sticks and moved to London after their divorce, and he had followed. In many ways this had been his dream job, but there wasn’t much about his London life that appealed any more. Kate had taken Lucy back to the North-west after her new relationship fell apart, so there was nothing keeping Tom here now and once again, he was missing Lucy.

  He grabbed his leather jacket from the back of the chair and picked up his keys. There were few signs of life at this late hour and, although the lure of his soulless apartment wasn’t exactly appealing, he did need some sleep. And some food; at least he could still enjoy cooking. He started to think about what he might prepare for a late supper.

  As Tom switched his desk lamp off, his phone began to ring. He glared at the handset for an indecisive moment, but he knew he’d have to answer it – he’d never been able to resist a ringing phone.

  ‘DCI Douglas.’

  ‘Tom, I’m glad I caught you. It’s Philippa Stanley. I could do with a bit of info, if you’ve got a minute.’

  As soon as she mentioned her name, Tom knew he was in for a long conversation, so he pulled out his chair and sat down, dumping his jacket and keys back on the desk. Philippa had been an inspector on his team just before he left Manchester, and she had already jumped up the ladder to match his rank of Detective Chief Inspector. There was no stopping her. She was definitely heading for the top.

  ‘Hi Philippa. Good to hear from you. What can I do for you?’ he asked.

  ‘I need to pick your brains about an old case – seven years old, in fact. Apparently you were getting a lift home from PC Ryan Tippetts and he got diverted to go and deal with a woman called Olivia Hunt, who had reported her boyfriend missing.’

  Tom knew there would be no friendly catch up with Philippa – she was all business. He could picture her clearly. She would be wearing the same version of her ‘uniform’ as always: a white blouse with an open neck, not showing too much cleavage, a straight navy-blue skirt and elegant but sensible shoes – what his mother would have called court shoes. Her short dark hair would be shiny bright and tucked behind her ears, with no make-up other than a subtle lipstick. She’d always looked perfectly neat and feminine, but any sex appeal she might have had had been beaten into submission by her imperious attitude.

  ‘Strangely enough I do remember, yes. I’d forgotten the name, but if it’s the one I’m thinking of, she had a small baby that wouldn’t stop crying, and she was adamant that something had happened to her boyfriend. When Ryan learned that the missing guy was a Muslim, he acted as if that answered everything. In his view we were bound to find the guy beaten up in some alley – which, of course, we never did. I gave him a right bollocking for his attitude, and apologised to the girl. What do you need to know?’

  ‘I’d like your impression of her – the girl.’ Philippa answered.

  ‘Why? What’s up?’ Tom asked. This was a long time ago and the records would contain all the details, but Philippa wouldn’t be asking without reason.

  ‘I’ll get to that – I don’t want to cloud your judgement. Tell me what you remember, and then I’ll explain why I want to know. I’ve tried speaking to Ryan about this by the way. He’s a DC now, although God knows who made that astonishing decision. He has an over-inflated opinion of his unacknowledged brilliance, and yet he’s still as bloody useless as he’s always been. I thought I might be more likely to get some sense out of you.’

  Tom wasn’t sure if this was Philippa damning him with faint praise or not, but he decided to ignore it because this wasn’t a case Tom would forget in a hurry. Not because of that night specifically – but because of what happened later.

  ‘As I said, the first time I met her she called because her boyfriend – an Iranian lad, I think – hadn’t come home. It wasn’t that late, though, so we did think that maybe he’d just buggered off to the pub and would turn up in the early hours looking sheepish and apologetic. But the boyfriend was quite strict about his religion’s anti-drinking rules, apparently, so the girl knew this couldn’t be right. We registered him as missing, but after a bit of digging we found there had been some activity on his credit card. He’d bought a train ticket from Manchester to London, and then later that night he’d booked a flight to Australia. He sent her a text message too, I think, saying he was sorry. It was transmitted from somewhere around Heathrow. You’ll be able to check that. I seem to remember he didn’t catch the flight he’d booked – but he’d bought a flexible ticket so he could have gone at any time, and once Olivia had heard from him there wasn’t any reason to follow it up.’

  ‘It all ties in with what we have in the records. That’s some memory, Tom.’

  ‘Well,’ Tom answered with a laugh, ‘I don’t think I would have remembered it quite so clearly if she hadn’t become my case again a couple of months later. You know what happened next, I presume?’

  ‘I’ve read the file, but you tell me.’

  Tom paused. He could see Olivia Hunt now – a look of such desolation on her tear-streaked face that the whole idea of investigating her seemed ridiculous, but also inevitable.

  ‘She’d sold her flat and was about to go and live with her parents – out of necessity, I think, rather than desire. Anyway, the day she was due to move, she drove round to her parents’ house to find out why her dad was late with the van they’d hired to move her stuff. She found her mum and dad dead in their bed. Carbon monoxide poisoning from a faulty boiler and a blocked air inlet, it turned out. We investigated it, and we looked at Olivia very closely. To lose her boyfriend and then her parents in the space of a couple of months seemed more than odd – especially as the boyfriend had paid a significant deposit on the flat and put it in her name, and she was the only beneficiary of her parents’ will. The Foreign Office tried to track down the boyfriend’s family – I think his name was Dan?’

  ‘Danush Jahander,’ Philippa interjected.

  ‘Yes, that’s it. They wanted to find out if his family had heard from him. It wasn’t easy with the relationship between Britain and Iran being what it was, so I don’t think they found anything either one way or the other. Olivia was already in a state of shock because her boyfriend had dumped her and left her with a tiny baby, but she completely fell apart when her parents died. She said her father was paranoid about safety, and an accident like this didn’t make sense.
’

  ‘But nothing was proven – either against her or anybody else.’

  ‘That’s right,’ Tom said. ‘It seemed to be just a tragic accident. Olivia was utterly distraught. She’d completed the sale of her flat that very morning, and she couldn’t stay at her parents’ house – nor did she want to. She had the baby to worry about too, but I seem to remember that the guy who bought the flat from her offered to let her stay on. He had somewhere else to live so I think he let her move back in. But I can’t remember anything much about him.’

  ‘His name was Robert Brookes. He ended up marrying her.’

  ‘Well, something good came out of it then,’ Tom said with a smile. ‘But all this information is in the files. What can I help with?’

  ‘I need to know what you thought. Not what the evidence suggested, but what you thought of Olivia – how much credence you gave to her, and how good you think she might have been at acting.’

  ‘Okay, but you’re going to have to tell me why,’ Tom responded.

  ‘Because I’m with her now. This time it’s her husband – Robert Brookes – who’s missing, and so are her three children.’

  4

  They want to know about Robert, to understand our relationship. How can I explain it to them when I can’t even figure it out for myself? All I know is that Robert rescued me from everything at a terrible time in my life. First I’d lost Dan, and then just two months later, I lost my parents. Dead. Both of them.

  I don’t know what I would have done if Robert hadn’t come into my life at that moment. He was a virtual stranger to me then. He was just the man who had bought my flat, but somehow he seemed to understand what I needed and had steered me through the worst time of my life.

  Since Dan had gone I’d been sleepwalking through the days. The only thing that penetrated the fog of my confusion was the realisation that I had to sell the flat that Dan and I had lived in together. I couldn’t afford it on my own, and every corner of the place reminded me of him: the furniture we had bought from junk shops and car boot sales, the hideous pale pink paint we had used in the kitchen because it was free. Every nook and cranny held a memory. But I was out of options. Jaz and I were going to have to go back home to Mum and Dad’s and, much as I loved them, I didn’t know how I would cope.

  When Robert arrived to move into the flat on a freezing cold day I was still there, standing in the hall with Jaz in a buggy, my boxes around us, waiting for Dad to arrive. My dad who, it turns out, I was never going to see again.

  Robert was the only person who seemed to know what to do afterwards. He let me stay in the flat and he kept his old place on for a couple of months. He wouldn’t hear of me trying to find somewhere else to live, and when he finally had to move in, he let us have the spare room. He even dealt with the funeral and the sale of my parents’ bungalow for me.

  I know I should be grateful, and I am. I don’t know how I would have coped without him then, but his constant silent demands for praise and recognition for all he does for us have become exhausting.

  And he is always watching, looking at me. Even when the children are being funny and making me laugh, he doesn’t watch them. His eyes are on me, and he smiles when I smile. If I walk out of a room, he watches me as I go. I can feel him staring. And when I return, he is still looking at the door as if his eyes have never left it.

  It’s why we don’t have friends. On the few occasions that I have tried to mix with other couples, Robert’s gaze never leaves me. If I talk to a woman, he is wondering what I’m saying and I have to suffer an inquisition on the way home until I have recounted every word. If I talk to a man, he’s by my side in seconds.

  For the first time in years, I long for Sophie. Sophie was the closest thing I ever had to a sister, and a vivid memory of her eyes, brimming with laughter, flashes into my mind like a bright, white light – there and gone in a second.

  When I met Sophie, she drew me into her world and everything became more fun; life was our adventure. I had seriously believed we would be friends forever, but all Sophie had ever wanted was to join the army, and within weeks of leaving university, she was off to Sandhurst to begin her training. Suddenly she was no longer part of my everyday life, and nobody has ever filled her place.

  So here I am, alone, with just one thought.

  Where are my children?

  *

  I can sense that the police are getting increasingly concerned. It’s mid-morning, and nothing seems to have advanced at all since last night. I can’t stop shaking. My hands are clammy and clumsy and each time somebody tries to tempt me with coffee or tea I have to say no because I don’t think I could hold the cup. There’s a change in the atmosphere. It’s much more urgent, and I know they are seriously worried about my children.

  Philippa has already told me they are checking the cameras on the main A roads. I know how crucial the first twenty-four hours are, though she’s kind enough not to remind me.

  When they discovered some of the children’s clothes were missing, they started asking me about passports. I’m sure they think he’s abducted them and taken them out of the country as part of some ridiculous custody battle. But they don’t have passports, and neither do I. We don’t go on exotic holidays. We like Anglesey, an island off the coast of North Wales. It’s only a couple of hours’ drive, and we know our way around.

  Philippa has come to sit down next to me again. I worry when she does this. I always expect it to be bad news.

  ‘Olivia, I think the time has come to notify the press about your children. I know they’re with their father, but we haven’t managed to track him down. You gave us a picture of the three of them last night, but can you find some more photos for us, please? It might be useful to have some individual shots as well as group ones.’

  I stand up, hoping my legs will hold me, go to the sideboard and pull out the box of photos. I’m not sure that I can bear to look at them, because all I see when I picture my children is pain. Surely if there had been an accident, somebody would have found them by now? Maybe my children are in a hospital somewhere, crying for me and wondering why I’m not there. But why am I even thinking that? I know this is no accident.

  I carry the box to the dining table, but somebody has left a coat scrunched up on the floor, and in my clumsy, inattentive state I trip over it. I’m caught just in time, but the photos fly everywhere.

  I recognise the man who catches my arm now. I couldn’t work it out earlier, but he was one of the policemen who came when Dan didn’t come home that night. The one I didn’t like; the one who searched under the beds and in the wardrobes as if Dan might be hiding there. I suppose it’s all part of their procedure. I hadn’t remembered his name until I heard Philippa say, ‘Is that your coat, DC Tippetts?’

  Tippetts. It fits. There’s something mean sounding about the name, and he has a rat-like face with a pointy nose and beady eyes. I can’t help feeling glad he is not in charge.

  I look away from his face and down at the mess all over the floor. Trivial as it is, it’s nearly enough to make me collapse and I grab the back of the sofa for support. Pictures of my children are smiling up at me from amongst the debris.

  On the top is a picture of Danush. I’ve tried not to look at his picture for so long, and I stifle a gasp as I devour every feature. Curly black hair down to just below his collar, brushed back from his face, his dark brown eyes are sparkling with laughter and his generous mouth is smiling down at a lovely young girl with long blonde hair and bright blue eyes, wearing a cream baker boy hat with a shiny buckle on the side.

  Philippa looks at me, and then back at the photo.

  ‘That’s you, isn’t it?’ she says, barely able to keep the disbelief from her voice. Yes, that was me.

  I had a bit of an obsession with hats at the time, and I used to try to persuade Sophie to wear them too – I even offered to lend her my favourite black fedora, but she said the only hat she would ever wear, and even then only under duress, would be her a
rmy officer’s cap.

  It suddenly hit me that not only has Robert never met Sophie, he’s never met Liv either – he’s only met Olivia – the sensible, vanilla version of me.

  I look at Dan’s picture. What would he think of the person standing before him now? My hair is still long, although the striking blonde has faded into a pleasant light brown. My old obsession with choosing the brightest, most vibrant shades has disappeared, along with my love of danger and excitement. Sophie and I did some wild things together, usually with Dan cheering on the sidelines – everything from skydiving for charity to bungee jumping from a bridge. But now I realise that I’ve settled for mediocrity. How had I let it happen? How did I lose myself?

  At the back of my mind there’s a little voice, telling me that if my children come back – no, when they come back – I must revert to being that person. I have to find a way to rediscover myself. Perhaps Robert isn’t the uninspired one after all.

  I push the photo of Danush into the pocket of my jeans. I don’t think it’s a picture that Robert will want to see when he gets home. Because he will come home – he has to.

  *

  I can’t believe I’ve slept. I refused to go to my bedroom to lie down, even though the living room was full of people talking. But I think exhaustion must have taken over – or perhaps my body just couldn’t take any more stress.

  I wake to sounds of instructions being fired at everybody in the room. Suddenly, instead of the slow, plodding, subdued tones of concern there is a heightened sense of excitement.

  ‘Cancel the press briefing. Don’t tell them anything; we’ll fill them in later.’

  I don’t think they have realised I’m awake, but the sense of urgency is driving me to shake off the last vestiges of sleep. The empty void inside me starts to fill with a strange sensation that I can only believe is hope, and I struggle to sit up. Philippa notices, and casts a silencing glance around the room. They take her cue and leave as she sits down next to me.