Perfect People

101

Naomi sat on her own in front of two police officers. Although no one had said as much, it was clear that whilst she and John were being treated with kindness and courtesy, they were not themselves beyond suspicion. Which was why they were being required to make separate statements.

A tiny red light blinked on a video camera that was bolted high up on one wall and pointing at her. The room was small, anodyne and windowless. Bare cream walls that looked recently painted. A carpet that smelled new and comfortable bright red chairs with just a coffee table in front of them.

Two detectives faced her. One, in his early forties, was a bruiser of a man, in a fawn suit, with a precise, rather wooden air. The other, a woman about ten years younger, with short ginger hair, had a podgy face with small, suspicious eyes. She was dressed in a blue blazer sporting a club emblem on the breast pocket, over a thin roll-neck, and slacks.

Naomi could scarcely believe the speed at which the media had arrived at their home. The police had cordoned off the driveway down at the entrance, but within not much more than an hour of their first arriving there had been photographers snapping the scene with long lenses from the surrounding fields, and down in the lane there must have been a dozen different news vehicles, including a cameraman, high up above everyone else on a Sky TV hydraulic crane.

The male detective switched on the tape recorder in front of him. ‘This is Detective Sergeant Tom Humbolt and Detective Constable Jo Newman interviewing Mrs Naomi Klaesson, Friday, January sixteenth at-’ He paused to check his watch. ‘Ten twelve a.m.’

His tone was bend-over-backwards polite. ‘I’d like you to start, Mrs Klaesson, if you wouldn’t mind, with your taking us through the events that led to you calling the police this morning.’

With her shattered nerves made even edgier by the formal tone of the interview, she gave them, in a faltering voice, as detailed an account as she could.

‘Why exactly did you get up so early today, Naomi?’ the woman detective asked. ‘You said you don’t normally get up until seven on weekdays.’

Naomi gulped down a mouthful of hot, sweet tea and asked, ‘Do you have children?’

‘Yes.’

‘So you’ll know what I mean about a mother’s instincts?’

She nodded. Naomi glanced at Humbolt, who signalled with his eyes that he understood, also.

‘I just sensed something was wrong, I can’t put it any clearer than that – and I needed a pee.’ There was a brief silence. Naomi toyed with her cup. ‘Someone will call, won’t they? If they find them while I’m in here?’

‘The moment there is any news, we’ll be told,’ Detective Newman replied.

‘Thank you.’

Then tears welled up inside Naomi, and she began crying, deep, choking, sobs. Murmuring an apology, trying to compose herself, she pulled a handkerchief out of her handbag and pressed it to her eyes.

‘Interview suspended at ten twenty-one a.m.,’ she heard the DS say.

*

Half an hour later, feeling a little bit calmer, Naomi sat back down in the interview room, and the tapes were restarted. In her mind, a constant loop of the videotape of Luke and Phoebe was running, over and over. She saw them trotting across the driveway towards those strangers in their baseball caps and goggles, hugging them, embracing them, kissing them. Greeting them in a loving way they had never – ever – done with herself or John.

Greeting them like they were their parents.

And suddenly the deep, numbing cold that was in every cell of her body froze her rigid.

What if?

What if?

What if those people were their parents?

No. Unthinkable. Besides, Luke and Phoebe had so many of her and John’s features, everyone said that, and it was plain, absolutely plain to see sometimes when she looked at Luke how much of his father was in him.

And now she had another, even worse, thought. This was the first thing that had gone through her mind when she’d seen the body on the gravel and her children’s missing coats and boots. She stared down at the table, listening to the hiss of the air conditioning. This was the thought she had pushed away, tried desperately to push back into a chamber of her mind as she had stumbled down the drive, as she had staggered through the sodden fields.

The thought that she did not, absolutely did not ‘Mrs Klaesson?’

The voice of Detective Sergeant Humbolt cut through her thoughts. Calm, but insistent.

She lifted her eyes up to his face.

‘Would you like a little more time before we start?’

‘Would you like to see a doctor to give you something to help calm you?’ Jo Newman asked.

Naomi closed her eyes and shook her head. ‘Please, tell me something. These paedophiles – they target chatrooms, don’t they? You get these sick perverts chatting to young children, they become friends, then they lure them to meetings. This happens, doesn’t it?’

The two detectives glanced at each other, then Humbolt said, ‘For older children it is a real danger, but I don’t think at three years old that’s likely. They’d be too young.’

‘I don’t imagine at three, your children are old enough to be going on internet chatrooms, are they?’ Jo Newman said.

‘Their mental age is much older,’ Naomi said. ‘They are far more advanced than you could imagine.’

The woman detective gave her a look, as if both being mothers they shared a secret between them. It was a look that said, All mothers think their children are special!

‘Your children had full access to the internet?’ Humbolt asked.

‘We gave them a computer last Sunday, for their birthday. I’ve been very surprised at some of the stuff they’ve been looking at – most of it scientific.’

Humbolt raised his eyebrows. ‘At three?’

‘I mean it when I say they’re advanced. They are very advanced. They’re like – child prodigies.’

Jo Newman said, ‘Mrs Klaesson, all the computers in your home will be taken away for analysis. If they have been on any chatrooms, everything will be traceable.’

‘Look – I – I know these questions are important. But we’re sitting here and my children have been abducted – I just want to get back and find them. I don’t want to be here, answering questions, this isn’t right, we’re just wasting time; can’t we do this later?’

‘You have information that may be very important for us to find the children,’ the woman detective said, with a sympathetic smile.

Naomi had read recently that out of ninety-eight children who had been murdered in England in the past year, only three had been killed by people who weren’t either immediate family or friends. ‘Is that the real reason I’m here?’ she said. ‘Or is it because I’m a suspect? Is that it?’

She could see the sudden discomfort in their faces.

‘What’s the matter with you people? You have the videotape, you can see that strangers have taken my children – why am I here? Tell me?’

‘You’re not a suspect, Mrs Klaesson,’ Detective Sergeant Humbolt said.

‘We have a dead man on our doorstep, our children are abducted by strangers and instead of looking for them you’re treating me like a bloody suspect. You have John in another room, he’s been interrogated, too, and you are going to see if our stories tally. Let me tell you something: they are going to tally, OK?’

Neither detective said anything for some moments. Then Jo Newman said, ‘Mrs Klaesson, let me set your mind at rest. Everything possible that can be done to find your children is being done. Every available police officer is being called in to search the area around your home. The police helicopter is scouring the area.’

Naomi accepted what she said, but with considerable reluctance. What choice did she have?

More questions followed, a whole barrage of them, one after another. How was her relationship with her husband? With her children? With her neighbours? Friends? Their children’s friends?

She tried to answer each of them truthfully. But the two detectives didn’t seem to be capable of taking on board just how smart and advanced Luke and Phoebe were.

‘You say your mother saw this man on Tuesday? The one who was found outside your house?’

She shook her head. ‘No, I didn’t say that. I said that she was concerned about a stranger-’

Then she thought of something. ‘A crucifix! She said he was wearing a crucifix! I – I didn’t think to look this morning. Can someone check?’

Humbolt made a note on his pad. ‘I’ll find out.’

Looking a little awkward, DC Newman asked, ‘Do Luke and Phoebe have any birthmarks or scars?’

‘I – I – I don’t think so, no. No.’

‘And can you remember what they last had to eat?’

‘To eat?’ she echoed. ‘Why does-’

Then she remembered. A series on television she and John had been watching a while back, about a Home Office pathologist. In one of the episodes, a child had gone missing. The police asked the parents about birthmarks and about what the child had eaten.

That way, if they found the bodies, it would make it easier to identify them. Either from marks on their bodies – or from cutting open their bellies and seeing what was in their stomachs.

The door opened suddenly, and Detective Inspector Pelham came in, still in his raincoat. ‘Sorry to interrupt you,’ he said, fixing his eyes on Naomi. ‘But I thought you should know we have some developments.’