The Baby-Snatcher

Chapter Fourteen

The Shining Stars Day Nursery stood at the end of the street. Its corner position meant that there were gardens on three sides of the house. Marcia Frost, the proprietor, was a great believer in sending the little ones outside to let off steam. Now, however, it was dusk and too late for outside play. From her office on the first floor Miss Frost watched a group of high school students cross the road and make their way towards the town centre. They were late. Miss Frost realized that she had lost track of time. The lighter evenings had confused her. Already there was an adult standing by the high wooden gate. A father, presumably, waiting to collect a child, though he stood in the shadow and she did not recognize him.

Miss Frost hurried downstairs. She liked to be on hand when the parents arrived, to reassure. Fees for the Shining Stars Nursery were substantial. Clients were entitled to a personal service.

The nursery took children from newborn infants to four-year-olds ready to start school. Invariably the parents were professional. They liked Miss Frost because she was flexible and accommodating. Offspring could be dropped off at any time after seven thirty in the morning and collected as late as eight o’clock at night. She drew the line at weekends, though this service had been requested on a number of occasions.

Miss Frost, who had never suffered any maternal stirrings, wondered occasionally why some of these mothers chose to put themselves through the process. They saw their babies so infrequently. Hardly ever awake. She was very fond of cats. Her cat recognized her whenever she arrived home from work. Did these children recognize the parents who collected them, sleeping, from the baby room? What pleasure could there be in that?

At five thirty a rush of parents arrived. They stood in the hall, chatting to Miss Frost while the nursery nurses went to collect the children. Later Miss Frost identified this as the time when Tom Bingham must have escaped. One of the parents must have failed to shut the door properly. The staff had all been very carefully trained. She was emphatic that none of them could be responsible.

Tom’s mother was fat and cheerful. She worked as a reporter on the local newspaper. There was no father, at least no one she would admit to. Miss Frost thought she was feckless and a little slovenly. It had been known for Tom to arrive wearing odd socks and without his packed lunch.

‘How’s he been today, then?’ Jan Bingham asked, when she arrived at six o’clock. ‘A terror as usual?’

‘No,’ Miss Frost said. ‘He’s been much more settled.’ Though when she considered it she realized that she just hadn’t been bothered by Tom. Usually he was running backwards and forwards into the hall at this time to look for his mother, getting under the feet of other waiting parents. She was looking forward to losing Tom to the infants school.

She called to the nursery nurse in charge of the three-year-olds, ‘Tom Bingham, please, Hayley. His mother’s here.’

Hayley returned a few minutes later, anxious and blushing. This was her first position after completing her training and she still found her boss daunting.

‘I’m sorry, Miss Frost. I can’t find him.’

A search ensued. They looked in the toilets, in the baby room and the garden. Eventually, at Ms Bingham’s insistence, the police were called.

By chance two policemen in a patrol car found the boy on their way to answer the call. He was standing in the middle of the road, shivering because he had left the Shining Stars without a coat. He was lucky that a car had not hit him.

He would not tell the policeman what had happened to him or how he had left the nursery, though he enjoyed the ride in the police car, especially when they made the siren sound for him.

Miss Frost refused to accept that any of her staff had been careless.

‘Tom is a very wilful boy,’ she said, making it clear where she felt the responsibility for the whole incident lay.

Ramsay heard of the missing boy while he was drinking coffee in the staff canteen. His shift was over but Prue was on her way back from Scotland and he’d promised to collect her from the arts centre. It wasn’t worth his going home. He’d probably still be there anyway.

Hunter passed on the information. He too was working late. He was still trying to trace the man in the red Mazda who had stayed with Kim Houghton the night before the murder. The local press had been very helpful about publicity but he was no nearer a result. He was glad of a distraction.

‘You hear there’s been another one, then?’ He carried a plate with a fried-egg sandwich. He sat at Ramsay’s table without waiting to be asked.

‘Another murder?’ Please, Ramsay thought. Let it not be the girl.

‘Na. Another kid’s been snatched.’

‘Oh.’ The child abductions were no longer his problem.

‘From a private day nursery near the high school.’

‘From inside the nursery?’ Despite himself, Ramsay was interested.

‘The woman in charge claims not. She says that would be impossible and the boy must have got out somehow.’ Hunter paused, grinned. ‘ But then she would say that, wouldn’t she? She’d have her reputation to think of. I knew a lass once who was a nursery nurse. She told me there was a fortune to be made in private nurseries.’

Ramsay thought Hunter knew so many lasses that between them they could provide a comprehensive careers service.

‘Is the boy all right?’

‘Apparently. Two of our lads found him wandering in the middle of the road a couple of miles away from where he went missing.’

‘We are sure that he was abducted, then? He didn’t just go walkabout?’

‘Well that’s what everyone thought at first. He’s a bit wild apparently and he’s tried to run away before. But the timing’s all wrong. The kids have tea at five o’clock and he was definitely there for that. And for the story afterwards. They reckon he must have gone at about a quarter to six. Lots of parents arrived at about that time and they think he could have slipped out in the scrum. Our lads found him just before six thirty. An adult could walk two miles in three quarters of an hour. But a three-year-old? In the dark? And it’s a nice respectable neighbourhood. Nosy. A busy time of the evening with folks coming home from work. If anyone had seen a kid that small on his own they’d have taken him in, phoned us.’

‘So there was a car, then? Like the others?’

‘Either that or he was carried piggy back. And that’s hardly likely.’ Hunter grinned. ‘Still, it’s for some other bugger to sort out now. We’ve got enough on our plates.’

‘He was all right, the boy? Unharmed?’

‘So it seems.’ Hunter paused. ‘The woman in charge saw a bloke hanging round outside at about quarter past five. She thought he must be one of the dads. They’re trying to trace all the parents who were there. So far no one’s identified him.’

‘Did the woman give a description?’

‘Nothing worth having.’

‘Did she see a car?’

‘Na.’

‘It’ll all come down to the boy, then?’

‘Aye. And the strange thing is, he’s not talking. Not a word. He doesn’t seem frightened or upset, and he’s not known for keeping his mouth shut, but he’ll not tell them a thing.’