Claiming Noah Page 12

  Dejected, Diana sank back on to the chair.

  Sergeant Thomas smiled at her with what Diana assumed was pity and then resumed his line of questioning. ‘Now, this may be a hard question for you to answer, but can you think of anyone who might want to take Noah from you?’

  Diana blinked. ‘Take him?’

  ‘A former partner, or a relative maybe?’

  ‘No, of course not,’ Diana said. ‘Our friends and family all love Noah, they’ve been so happy for us.’

  ‘Have you or your husband ever received threats towards Noah?’ Sergeant Thomas asked. ‘Do you know of anyone who is resentful or jealous that you had a child and might want to harm him?’

  Diana looked over at the younger officer, who was helping himself to a cup of water. He seemed unperturbed by the question. ‘Do you really think that’s what happened?’

  ‘Hopefully not,’ Sergeant Thomas said, ‘but we just need to rule out all the possibilities so we can find your son as quickly as possible.’

  Diana stared at the posters on the corkboard. One of them advertised a sale that had ended six months earlier. Who would ever want to harm a baby? Is that what had happened? Was Noah in danger?

  ‘No,’ she said to Sergeant Thomas when she realised he was still waiting for her response. ‘We don’t know anyone who would want to harm Noah.’

  The younger officer took a seat and picked up his notepad, pen poised at the ready. ‘Mrs Simmons, we need you to give us as much detail as possible about your movements in the shopping centre today. We need to know which shops you visited and what time you think you entered and left each shop. That way we’ll be able to study the footage on the shopping centre’s CCTV and that should hopefully help us to work out what happened to your son. There’s an officer looking at the footage already, but it will make it much faster if he knows exactly what he needs to look at.’

  ‘Of course,’ Diana said. ‘I understand. I’m not sure that I’ll be able to remember the times exactly, but I’ll try.’ She wondered whether she should call her mother and ask her to help answer the police officers’ questions, but she didn’t feel strong enough to deal with her mother’s reaction.

  Diana recounted everything she could remember of her day while the officer took notes. She told him about the cafe and the clothes shops she had visited with her mother, the amount of time she thought she had spent in the supermarket, and then there was the butcher and the health-food store. Sergeant Thomas suggested she look at her receipts to find out the exact time she had been in each shop, but the receipts were all in the boot of her car along with the shopping, so the younger officer went to get them. That made Diana think idly about the meat and frozen products that would have turned warm by now, but then she reprimanded herself for thinking about something so irrelevant and unimportant when she had lost her only child and didn’t even know if he was okay, let alone who had him.

  Diana heard Liam’s voice shouting at someone from the other side of the office door before it flew open and slammed against the wall. He scanned the room and then ran over to Diana and embraced her. ‘Di, are you okay? What’s happened to Noah?’

  A fresh bout of tears started to course down Diana’s cheeks. ‘We don’t know where he is. They’re studying the footage of the cameras to see if they can work it out. They think someone might have taken him.’

  ‘That’s bullshit,’ Liam said. He straightened up and pointed to the pram. ‘How can anyone have unstrapped him from the pram without you noticing?’

  Diana looked up at him, her cheeks wet and her breathing ragged. ‘It’s not our pram. I don’t know where our pram is. That’s missing too.’

  ‘How’s that possible?’

  ‘I don’t know, the prams must have got mixed up.’

  The incredulous look on Liam’s face disappeared and was replaced by one of anger.

  ‘You let someone take the pram?’ he said to Diana. ‘You let someone take our son because you were too busy shopping to notice? How stupid can you be? You lost our son!’

  As Diana buried her head in her hands to hide her sobs, Sergeant Thomas steered Liam to one of the seats and forced him to sit down. ‘Mr Simmons, that’s not helping. You can’t blame your wife for this. She’s been very helpful in our investigation and if you calm down and cooperate with us as well then we can make this process as quick and easy as possible.’

  Sergeant Thomas cleared his throat and turned to a fresh sheet in his notepad. ‘Now, we’ve asked your wife this already, but we’d like to ask you as well. Can you think of anyone who might want to cause you, your wife, or Noah any harm?’

  When Liam didn’t answer straightaway, Diana lifted her head from her hands and looked at her husband. Liam wasn’t even looking at Sergeant Thomas. He was staring at Diana with a look of contempt she had never seen directed at her before from the man she loved.

  • • •

  The next day Diana and Liam walked into the police station as strangers: not talking, not touching, not even making eye contact. The past eighteen hours had been the worst of Diana’s life. The day her father died had been the previous frontrunner for that title, but the uncertainty of not knowing what had happened to her baby, coupled with the debilitating guilt of losing her son and Liam’s anger towards her had rendered Diana nearly catatonic with grief. After hours of Liam berating her, as she cried and pleaded with him to forgive her, they had retreated to separate corners of the house. Diana had spent the night in Noah’s room, running her hand over the furniture and toys until she became so exhausted from crying that she fell asleep fully clothed, curled up on the floor of the nursery. Liam had found her there the next morning, and with dull eyes told her that the police had called and asked them to come to the station. The only reason Diana was able to wash her face, change her clothes and climb into the car was the hope that Sergeant Thomas had some positive news for them.

  He met them in the foyer. ‘Diana, Liam, thanks for coming in.’ He guided them to a meeting room down a short corridor, where the younger officer from the day before was already waiting for them in one of the seats grouped around a small square table. There was a television screen mounted on one wall, and paused on the screen was a grainy image from what looked like the inside of a supermarket.

  Sergeant Thomas indicated for Diana and Liam to take the two seats closest to the television. They sat in silence, each fixing their gaze on the image on the screen.

  The younger officer spoke. ‘We’ve been through all of the CCTV footage from yesterday and we think we’ve isolated the incident when your pram was swapped. We need you to examine the footage and let us know if you recall the moment and if you recognise the person we feel may have been responsible for the kidnapping.’

  Kidnapping. Diana repeated the word to herself. Of course, that’s what this is. It seemed such a vicious word. It was much easier to deal with if she thought of Noah as being lost.

  ‘You can actually see it?’ she asked. ‘Did you see someone take my baby?’

  Sergeant Thomas sat in the chair next to Diana. ‘Unfortunately the quality of the footage isn’t great. And it looks like the supermarket was busy at the time, so there are a lot of people on the video. But we think we may have something.’

  He picked up the remote control and then paused, looking at Diana. ‘Are you ready to see this?’

  She nodded, feeling the thud of her heart against her ribcage. ‘I think so.’

  Sergeant Thomas pressed play. For a few seconds there wasn’t anyone in the shot and then people started to walk through the path of the camera, up and down the supermarket aisle. It appeared that the camera was mounted on the ceiling, because the angle of the footage was from a vantage point well above people’s heads. Diana saw herself come into view. She recognised her dark hair pulled back into a ponytail and the long grey cardigan she had worn nearly every day since Noah was born to hide the extra weight leftover from her pregnancy. In the footage Diana had the pram with her, but Noah couldn’t be see
n because of the wrap covering him. As they watched, Diana positioned the pram up against one of the shelves and then moved a couple of metres away. She was half out of the shot, scanning the shelves for something. The damn pasta sauce, she remembered.

  Out of the corner of her eye Diana noticed Liam glaring at her, but she ignored him and kept watching.

  ‘It’s coming up now,’ Sergeant Thomas said. ‘Watch the man with the pram closely.’

  Diana and Liam leaned towards the television simultaneously.

  Several people were in the footage: an elderly woman, two girls who appeared to be school children judging by their backpacks, Diana, and a mother holding on to the hand of her small child. None of them approached the pram. A man then appeared from the bottom left-hand side of the screen, pushing a pram that looked identical to Diana’s. As the four people in the room watched the screen intently, they saw the man pass Diana. She had her back to him as she studied the shelves, picked up a jar, read the label and replaced it on the shelf. As he passed Noah’s pram, the man paused. The elderly lady was between the man and the camera so it was difficult to see exactly what he was doing, but at one point he appeared to have the wrap from the top of Noah’s pram in his hands. Then he kept walking down the aisle and out of shot, pushing the pram. Once the elderly woman moved out of shot the pram could be clearly seen, but it was further to the left than where Diana had left it. The wrap still covered the pram, so it wasn’t possible to see whether Noah was in it. Diana returned to the pram, holding her basket of groceries. She then walked out of shot pushing the pram in front of her, oblivious to what had just transpired.

  Was that it? It wasn’t obvious to Diana that the man had done anything to the pram, except for perhaps disturbing the wrap in some way and moving the pram away from the shelves.

  Sergeant Thomas paused the video and turned to Diana. ‘Do you recognise the man in the footage?’

  ‘Maybe,’ Diana said, desperately searching her memory. ‘I do remember seeing a man pushing a pram in the supermarket. I remember thinking how nice it was that he was out alone with his baby.’ At that remark she paused and looked at Liam, but he was looking down at the table.

  ‘Do you remember any distinctive features about him?’ Sergeant Thomas asked Diana. ‘His height? Hair colour? Did he have any tattoos or scars?’

  Diana knew she had been in the supermarket – there was a video to prove it – but she couldn’t remember anything she had seen or done. It was like driving down a stretch of road so familiar that you arrive home without remembering anything of the journey that got you there. But that was the man she had noticed with the pram, wasn’t it? She closed her eyes in an attempt to visualise his face, or his clothes, anything that would help the police to identify him and track him down, but all she was rewarded with was the black behind her eyelids and a memory devoid of any visual images.

  ‘I’m really sorry,’ Diana said. ‘I don’t remember what he looked like.’

  The younger officer interjected. ‘Did you speak to him? Did you make eye contact with him?’

  She pressed her fingertips against her eyelids as if that gesture would bring the memory back to her, but she couldn’t remember anything. She was flustered by the questions and angry at herself for her inability to recall any discerning facts about the man. ‘I’m sorry, I don’t remember anything. I just noticed that he was pushing a pram, and that was it.’

  The officers turned to each other and exchanged a look of disappointment.

  ‘Do we have anything to go on?’ Sergeant Thomas asked the younger officer.

  ‘Not from this shot. But we’re analysing the footage from other cameras in the centre to see if we can get a better visual. And we’re interviewing everyone who works in the centre; someone might be able to ID him. Forensics are trying to get prints from the pram.’

  Sergeant Thomas turned back to Diana. He spoke directly to her even though he addressed both of them. ‘You may as well go home now, Mr and Mrs Simmons, there’s nothing else you can do for the time being. Thank you for coming in.’

  He stood up, walked over to the door and held it open for them while Diana and Liam rose from their seats. ‘Please call us if you remember anything else, Mrs Simmons. We’ll be in touch if we find anything.’

  11

  CATRIONA

  Monday, 7 May 2012

  It was a full week before James came to the clinic again, and to Catriona’s surprise he didn’t bring Sebastian with him.

  James answered her question before she asked it. ‘I left Sebastian with your mum. He seemed to really upset you last time and I thought that probably wasn’t what you needed right now.’

  Catriona nodded, but his comment and actions hurt her. Why hadn’t he asked her whether she wanted him to bring Sebastian instead of making that decision on his own? She had been looking forward to seeing her son and putting into practice some of the techniques she had learned. She and Doctor Winder had discussed how her confidence as a mother would grow once she stopped comparing herself to other mothers and her preconceived notion of how motherhood should be. She wanted to spend time with Sebastian so she could feel more comfortable with him before she left the clinic and went home – but how was she supposed to do that if James wouldn’t let her be around him?

  They returned to the garden cafe, and Catriona was surprised to see that this time it was James who seemed nervous. She tried to keep the conversation light by talking about Lana and the cognitive behavioural therapy, but as time went on James seemed more and more distressed. He had barely looked at her since he arrived at the clinic and he spilled half of his coffee on to the table.

  ‘No more caffeine for you,’ Catriona joked in an attempt to elicit a smile from James as she helped him mop up the spill with paper napkins, but he didn’t even seem to register that she had spoken.

  She thought about how James had said on the phone a few days earlier that Sebastian wasn’t sleeping and she wondered if he was unwell. It would be like James to keep that from her so she didn’t worry. James looked as if he hadn’t slept either; the skin under his eyes was dark and the rest of his face sallow.

  ‘Okay, what’s going on?’ Catriona said. ‘Is there something I should know?’

  James’s head snapped up to look at her, his eyes wide. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘You’re a nervous wreck, what’s going on with you?’

  James took his time piling the sodden napkins into his empty coffee cup.

  ‘Sorry,’ he said finally. ‘I know I’m not myself today. I had a terrible night’s sleep last night. I don’t sleep well when you’re not there.’

  He had never mentioned that before in the six years they had been together, but she didn’t want to probe him. He was probably finding it difficult to look after Sebastian on his own, especially if he was sick.

  ‘I can come home in a couple of days if you want,’ she said. ‘I’m feeling so much better.’

  ‘I thought you were staying another week,’ James said, his words coming out rushed.

  ‘I was going to, but I don’t have to. Doctor Winder said my treatment’s going really well, so I can leave earlier if I want to. Don’t you want me to come home?’

  ‘Of course I do, but don’t rush it. Stay the whole week. I’m fine, really.’

  ‘But what about Sebastian?’

  James seemed to pale before her eyes. ‘No, he’s . . . fine. We’re fine.’

  Catriona reached across the table and placed her hand on James’s forehead. It felt hot and clammy under her palm. He had probably caught whatever Sebastian had. ‘I think you’re getting sick. You look awful. Why don’t you go to the doctor on your way home? I’m sure Mum can look after Sebastian for a bit longer.’

  James nodded. ‘I think you’re right, I’m not feeling great. I should probably go now.’ He stood up and gave Catriona a quick peck on the cheek. ‘I’ll see you in a week, okay?’

  Catriona barely had time to respond before James walked off in the
direction of the car park. This time she was the one standing still, watching him walk away.

  • • •

  ‘You’re back early,’ Lana said when Catriona returned to the third floor and found her sitting alone at the table in her room, writing in a journal.

  ‘James couldn’t leave fast enough. I barely finished my coffee before he ran off.’

  Lana closed the journal and pushed it to the side of the table. The cover looked worn, with several unidentifiable stains and a series of pockmarks as if from keys or some other sharp object the journal had come up against over its lifetime.

  ‘Do you write in that often?’ Catriona asked her, gesturing towards the journal.

  ‘I’m supposed to do it every day, but it doesn’t always happen. My psychiatrist said it’s a good way to recognise whether I’m in a manic or depressive stage, so he can adjust my medication.’

  In the days they had spent together in the clinic, Catriona hadn’t once asked Lana about her bipolar disorder, even though they had discussed Catriona’s psychosis and depression at length. Lana’s ability to empathise with Catriona had made it easy for her to speak about her condition without holding back; she admitted things to her that she hadn’t even told Doctor Winder. Perhaps she hadn’t asked Lana about her disorder because it seemed as if she had it under control, but that didn’t make Catriona feel any less guilty when she realised how one-sided their friendship had been.

  ‘How long have you had it?’ Catriona asked, sitting at the table next to her.

  ‘I was diagnosed when I was twelve – ten years ago. Just after my dad left. Mum thought I was just playing up, so it took her a while to take me to a doctor.’

  ‘So, you’ve been on medication for ten years?’

  Catriona wondered if she would need to stay on her medications for years as well. She made a mental note to ask Doctor Winder when they next met.

  Lana tucked her hair behind her ears. ‘Yep. I’ll be on it forever.’

  ‘Sorry if this is a personal question,’ Catriona said, ‘but why do you need to be in here? You seem fine.’