The Lost

Chapter 30

Rosa had been busy on Instagram, enjoying the early-morning sun. Although it was half-term, the park was quiet this early in the day, except for the bickering of the twins. They were sweet kids most of the time, except for the squabbling. Usually she ignored it, unless it became too loud or threatened to spill over into actual violence. Which it sometimes did, and God forbid she should take them home with so much as a scratch. The last time that happened she’d been lucky to keep her job, and losing it would be even more of a pain in the ass than putting up with their stuck-up bitch mother. She needed the references as well as the money.

Although she sometimes wondered if it was worth it.

The noise level was rising enough to be a nuisance. Rosa looked up from her phone. ‘Harry, please leave your sister alone.’

The boy put on an expression of injured innocence. ‘I was only explaining the rules.’

‘Yes, but why do you get to make them?’ his sister protested.

‘Because that’s one of the rules.’

‘No, it isn’t! That’s not fair!’

Rosa sighed and lowered her phone. ‘No arguing, please.’

The boy considered. ‘Mum and Dad do.’

‘They argue all the time,’ his sister agreed, suddenly on his side. ‘Dad always loses.’

‘Well, that’s...’ Rosa tried to think of a convincing counter- argument, then abandoned the attempt. ‘That’s because they’re grown-ups.’

The two children looked at each other, as though communing on some level that excluded anyone else.

‘But why is it OK for them and not us?’

‘Because they’re your parents, OK? Do you want me to tell them you’ve been quarrelling again?’

They both considered, then gave near-identical grins. ‘No.’

They’d inherited their looks from their mother, Rosa thought. But, lucky for them, not their natures. She felt a smile tug at her mouth.

‘Well, it’s time to go home anyway.’

There were moans but not heartfelt. The twins only dragged their feet a little as they gathered their things. Carrying her phone, Rosa ushered them towards the park gates. There were more joggers and cyclists on the paths than park users, so Rosa automatically walked on the outside of the twins. The volume of their argument made them hard to miss, but she didn’t want to have to explain grazes or broken bones either, thank you.

The park was within easy walking distance of the house. When she’d started working there, Rosa had hoped that she’d be allowed to borrow the mother’s Range Rover for outings. She’d tried hinting, telling the parents she had a clean licence and liked to drive. But the father seemed not to hear and the mother had looked at her and said, ‘Better save up for a car, then.’

So, they walked.

They took the usual route home, on the quieter streets away from the main road. Her phone vibrated in her hand, alerting her to a notification. She had it permanently on silent, because it was better to miss a call than be lectured on socialising when she should be watching the twins. She glanced at them now, but they’d resumed their squabble and were too engrossed to care what she did. She swiped her phone screen, and a second later was smiling at an Instagram post.

She didn’t notice the white van ahead of them.

It was parked under the low-hanging branches of a horse chestnut. As Rosa passed into its shade, the rear door of the van opened. Still preoccupied with her phone, she heard the squeal of its hinges as she drew level. Sight and air were suddenly cut off, choking her scream before it started. She felt herself lifted and spun, and then the cold metal floor of the van slammed into her. Stunned, she tried to wrestle whatever it was that covered her face, and then the air was knocked out of her again as something small and solid hit her. She could hear the twins wailing as they floundered on top of her, and there was a slam as the van doors were shut. Half suffocated, she was still trying to free herself from the sack or whatever was over her head when the engine growled to life. The next moment she was flung to one side as the van pulled out, tasting blood in her mouth as a small head caromed into hers. The twins were screaming and crying, and she was too, but then a gruff voice came from in front and above them.

‘Shut the fuck up!’

The twins continued to howl.

‘I said shut the fuck up!’ the man’s voice boomed. He had a strange accent, different to the London one she was used to hearing. ‘You want something to fucking cry about?’

‘No, please—’ Rosa began, but then the van took a corner and sent the three of them sliding to the other side in a tangle of arms and legs.

A new cacophony joined theirs, and in her dazed state it took her a moment to realise it was music. Heavy metal, deafeningly loud. She felt a small body against her and instinctively pulled it close. Long hair: Abigail. Rosa couldn’t feel Harry but she could hear him close by.

‘It’s all right, it’s all right,’ she shouted, knowing it wasn’t. She was struggling to breathe, and with her free hand she tried to pull up the sack or hood from her face. As she got it part way the van swung around another corner, tumbling her and the twins over again.

And then she was thrown forward as the van came to an abrupt halt. Bruised and dazed, she was still trying to process what was happening when there was a grating screech as the doors were opened. She felt herself seized and dragged backwards.

‘No!’

Daylight seeped underneath the sack as she was pulled out of the van. She thumped down onto a hard, gritty surface, banging her head and tearing her skin. Rough hands gripped the front of her jacket, lifting her. She felt warm breath through the cloth as the accented voice hissed in her ear.

‘Tell the parents I want Colley to bring half a million to the warehouse at midnight. Alone. He knows the one. If they fuck around or tell the police, they’ll get their kids back in pieces, all right?’

The next second she’d been pushed down onto the ground. She heard the van doors slam. The hood had ridden up and through the dazzling sunlight she recognised her surroundings. She was lying in the road outside the house where she worked.

The twins were nowhere to be seen.

‘It’s your fault! You did this. You fucking brought him here.’

Jonah stood mutely in the kitchen of the big house, making no attempt to defend himself as Chrissie flailed at him while her husband tried to pull her away. He felt simultaneously numb and raw, as though in shock from some injury too big to process. Two thoughts chased each other around in his head. One was disbelief that history could be repeating itself. The other was that Chrissie was right.

It was his fault.

He’d heard the story in more detail from the nanny. She’d been in the kitchen when he arrived, her face tear-stained and her knees grazed and bloody. She couldn’t describe the man who’d bundled her and the twins into the van, but she’d had an impression of size and strength. Then there was the voice. Gruff, with a funny accent like she’d heard on TV. Liverpudlian.

‘I don’t want to get into trouble,’ Rosa told Jonah, a fearful expression on her face.

‘It’s all right,’ he told her. ‘Why don’t you go up to your room for now?’

Chrissie had stopped crying but her face was a clown’s mask of smeared make-up. Her husband was slumped on a bar stool at the granite island, ashen and dazed as he gripped a tumbler of whisky like a lifeline. As the nanny went out they were both looking at him, hoping for answers he didn’t have.

‘Don’t just stand there!’ Chrissie burst out. ‘For fuck sake, say something! What do we do?’

Jonah felt in freefall. But there was really only one thing to say.

‘You’ve got to tell the police.’

They should have called them straight away. Each minute that passed diminished the probability of getting the twins back alive, though he didn’t say so. Waverly had wanted to, as soon as they’d made sense of what the hysterical nanny had been telling them. It had been Chrissie who’d overruled him and called Jonah instead.

And now he had to convince them that had been a mistake.

‘The police? Didn’t you hear what he told her? He warned he’d send them back in pieces!’ She ran her fingers through her hair, her face a mask of disbelief. ‘Jesus, I can’t believe this is happening again! It’s him, isn’t it? Owen fucking Stokes! I asked you if there was a risk, and what did you say? Don’t worry, Chrissie, it’ll be fine! Well, it’s not fucking fine, is it? He’s got my kids! My kids!’

Her husband stirred, looking like someone trying to surface from a nightmare. Jonah had never liked the man, even before he suspected him of sleeping with Chrissie, but he felt for him now.

He’d been through the same nightmare himself.

‘Jonah’s right,’ Waverly said. ‘We should call the police. They have specialist teams. Experts. They’ll... they’ll know what to do.’

‘Like they did with Theo? I’ve lost one son, I can’t...’ Chrissie pressed her hands to her head. ‘Jesus, this isn’t happening! Not again! Why us? What does he want?’

Me. This time, he wants me. Jonah felt as though his heart was being cut out. ‘Chrissie, I’m sorry but you don’t have any choice.’

‘Any choice? We do what he says, that’s the choice! This sick bastard wouldn’t even know about us if you hadn’t led him here, so don’t you dare tell me I don’t have a choice!’

Jonah felt flayed by her words. He knew Stokes must have followed him to Chrissie’s, and that guilt weighed on him heavily enough already. And this must be at least partly because — thanks to Jonah — the police had found the money hidden in the bedsit. Money Jonah was now certain Gavin had either stolen or somehow cheated Stokes of. How that had happened remained a mystery, but an unimportant one now. If the twins had any chance of survival, Jonah knew he couldn’t afford to trust the man who’d kidnapped them. Chrissie didn’t know what they were dealing with. She hadn’t seen Stokes’s handiwork in the warehouse at Slaughter Quay, didn’t know what he’d done to Corinne Daly. Giving in to his demands wouldn’t save the twins. It would only ensure he killed them.

If he hadn’t already.

‘I’d give myself up to him now if I thought it would do any good,’ he told her. ‘But it won’t. That’s not how he works. I know it’s hard, but the best chance of getting the twins back is to let the police take over. Right now.’

‘Why, so I can wait while they piss around and hold press conferences, and then be told “sorry, there’s nothing more we can do”?’ Chrissie gave a broken laugh. ‘Been there, done that. I’m not playing that game again!’

‘This is different—’ Jonah began.

‘Yes, because this time we know where they are! We know what’s happened, the bastard’s taken them! And we know what he wants, so for fuck’s sake let’s give it to him! I’m not losing my babies because you’re too scared to put your own neck on the line!’

‘You know that isn’t—’

‘Then prove it!’ she shouted. ‘Let’s do what he wants! He can have the fucking money, and if you won’t take it to him, I’ll do it myself!’

‘We don’t have that sort of cash,’ her husband began.

‘So find it! I don’t care if you have to steal it from the fucking practice, just—’

‘For Christ’s sake, shut up!’ Waverly’s hand slammed down on the granite island. ‘You think this is helping? Just... let me think!’

Jonah expected an explosion, but instead Chrissie’s face crumbled. She pulled away from her husband’s hand when he reached for her, but then sagged against him as he folded her into a hug. Watching, Jonah felt the fear and pain of losing Theo again as fresh as when it happened.

Except he couldn’t remember he and Chrissie ever comforting each other. When Theo had disappeared they’d turned on rather than to one another, tearing themselves apart in the process.

‘I’m sorry, but you need to decide,’ he told them. ‘I’ll go with whatever you say, but if you’re going to involve the police it has to be now.’

Wiping his eyes, Waverly moved away from his wife, trying to compose himself.

‘If we...’ He cleared his throat and tried again. ‘If we go to the police, what’ll happen?’

‘They’ll put out a Child Rescue Alert for Abigail and Harry. It’ll go out on email, text and social media as well as TV and radio stations. They’ll release Stokes’s name and description as well. They’ll throw everything at it.’

Waverly was nodding as though he understood, but there was a dazed look in his eye. ‘This Stokes... he was a suspect for your son as well.’

There was a low moan from Chrissie. Jonah felt a corresponding pain in his own chest.

‘Yes.’

There would be a time to talk about what had happened in the past, but this wasn’t it. Waverly had the sense to realise as much.

‘Then this isn’t the first time he’s... I mean, he’ll know what the police do in this sort of situation.’

‘It’s possible, yes.’

‘And if an alert goes out on TV and radio, he’ll hear it as well. He’ll know that we’ve ignored his instructions.’

Jonah could see which way this was heading but he couldn’t think of a way to prevent it.

‘They’d use discretion. They wouldn’t do anything to put a child at risk.’

‘Perhaps not, but Stokes obviously planned this. I think we’ve got to assume he’ll have anticipated the police response as well.’ Waverly’s confidence was returning now as he turned his lawyer’s mind onto the problem. ‘He’ll cover his tracks and take the twins somewhere that won’t be easy to find. He’s given us till midnight for you to take the money, which gives us... OK, that’s a little more than twelve hours. Can you guarantee the police will be able to find the twins by then?’

‘No,’ Jonah admitted. ‘But there’s no guarantee Stokes will keep his word even if he gets what he wants. I know it’s not what you want to hear, but I don’t think he’s got any intention of doing what he says.’

Waverly looked as though he might be sick. ‘Chrissie? What do you think?’

Her face was a ball of misery. ‘I just want my babies, I don’t care how. Please, just get them back.’

Waverly passed a hand over his hair, unconsciously smoothing it. ‘I agree. We have to do what he wants.’

Even though logic said it was the wrong thing to do, Jonah couldn’t blame the man or fault his reasoning. Faced with the same choice — the same chance — when Theo had disappeared, would he have ignored it?

‘Can you get the money?’ he asked.

‘By tonight?’ Waverly seemed to sag. ‘Not that much. Nowhere near.’

Chrissie rounded on him. ‘Then try! Jesus Christ, these are your children we’re talking about!’

‘You think I don’t know that? I can’t just snap my fingers and...’ He ran out of steam. ‘Even if I empty the firm’s accounts it wouldn’t be anywhere near enough. We don’t have access to that sort of money, not by tonight. If I call in a few favours I might be able to raise a hundred thousand or so, but that’s all.’

Chrissie was looking at him, her desperation laid bare. ‘If we can get the money, are you going to help us?’

If Jonah agreed, he’d be gambling his own life as well as Chrissie’s young son’s and daughter’s. Stokes had unfinished business with him, that much was obvious. Wanting to meet again at the warehouse sent a clear message, and Jonah knew this time would be different. He’d had surprise and luck on his side before. Especially luck. But now Stokes would be ready for him.

Yet if Jonah didn’t do as he’d demanded, he’d be condemning two children to death. Barring miracles, there was little chance the police could locate them before Stokes’s deadline expired, and his faith in miracles had disappeared along with Theo. The twins might be dead already, he knew that. But Jonah had brought this down on Chrissie’s family. If there was even a faint chance of saving them, he had to take it. That was an opportunity he’d never had with his own son, and he was going to do everything he could to grasp it now.

‘I’ll need some things,’ he said.