Perfect People

  In the fancy sports car in the parking lot behind the school-house. Those profiles through his night-vision glasses as they had turned to kiss. The man and the woman.

  It was them.

  97

  Halley was in his little battery-powered police jeep. Baseball cap on back to front, huge grin on his face, driving around and around the lawn in the back yard of their house. Roaring around the inflatable rubber paddling pool, swerving to avoid stray toys, flashing his lights, hooting his klaxon. It was his third birthday; he was fine today, he was having a great day.

  Naomi grinned, too, as she watched him. She gripped John’s hand with joy beneath a warm Californian sun. It was a day that was as perfect as it was possible for any day to be – when you knew your son had less than a year to live.

  The dream was slipping away. She kept her eyes shut, tried to sink back into it. But a cold draught of air was blowing on her face. And she needed to pee. She opened her eyes. The room was pitch dark and her clock said 6.01.

  The gale was still raging outside. There were all kinds of creaking noises from the beams above her, rattling noises from the windows; draughts.

  John was still deep asleep. She lay for some moments trying to resist that need to pee, pulling the duvet up over her face to shut out the cold air, closing her eyes, trying to return to that Californian summer afternoon. But she was wide awake and all her troubles were pouring back into her mind.

  What day was it today? Friday. They were taking Luke and Phoebe to see Dr Michaelides, to talk about special schools. Then in the afternoon they were going to see a couple of dog breeders, one which had a litter of Rhodesian Ridgeback puppies, and another breeder who had a litter of Alsatians sired by a police dog.

  Trying not to wake John, she slipped out of bed and padded into the bathroom, wrestled herself into her dressing gown and pushed her feet into her slippers. She peed, then washed her hands and face, brushed her teeth.

  Horrible bloody bags under my eyes.

  She peered closer into the mirror. More wrinkles. Every day there seemed to be fresh ones. Some were beginning to look like crevasses. Let’s face it, kiddo, you are ageing. Another decade and you’ll be a wrinkly. A couple more after that and you’ll be a crumbly. Next thing you know, Luke and Phoebe’ll be pushing you along the seafront in a wheelchair with a tartan rug over your knees while you sit there, with mad white hair, drooling.

  Except.

  Would Luke and Phoebe ever take care of John and herself? Would they ever care enough? Would they want to be bothered? Wasn’t that what kids were supposed to do? Wasn’t that the way life was supposed to work? How did that bumper sticker she’d seen go? GET EVEN! LIVE LONG ENOUGH TO BECOME A PROBLEM FOR YOUR KIDS!

  She closed the bedroom door behind her and switched the landing light on. Luke and Phoebe’s bedroom door was shut and the box-room door was shut. They were usually up at this hour.

  But this morning, silence.

  The stair treads creaked like hell, and she went down slowly, mindful of not wanting to wake John. Then, as she reached the hall, she felt a stab of unease. The safety chain on the front door, which they always kept in the locked position when they were indoors, was hanging loose.

  Had they forgotten to attach it last night? She supposed they must have done, and made a mental note to tell John. Right now they needed to be more vigilant about safety than ever.

  Then something else struck her. She turned and looked at the Victorian coat stand. It seemed emptier than normal. Where were the children’s coats? Her eyes shot down to the ground, to the hollow in the middle of the stand where they all kept their boots. Luke’s blue wellingtons and Phoebe’s red ones were missing.

  Her unease deepened. Had they gone for a walk? At this hour, in the pitch darkness, in the filthy weather?

  She opened the heavy oak door, pushing hard against the strong, biting wind and flinching against stinging droplets of rain, and peered out into the darkness.

  And froze.

  Something was lying on the ground right in front of the porch, a sack or an animal, or something.

  A slick of fear shot down her spine. She stepped back warily, looked at the panel of light switches, and pressed the red one.

  Instantly all the exterior floodlights, except one, came on and she saw it was not a sack or an animal. It was a man, sprawled on his back. A handgun lay in the gravel near him. Barely registering more than that, she slammed the door shut, pulled on the safety chain, and threw herself up the stairs, choking with shock.

  ‘John!’ She burst into the bedroom and switched on the light. ‘John, for God’s sake, there’s someone downstairs, outside, a man, a man. Unconscious, dead, I don’t know. Gun. There’s a gun!’

  She ran out, along to the children’s bedroom, threw open the door; but even before she had hit the light switch she could see the room was empty. The box room was empty, too.

  John came out onto the landing in his dressing gown, holding his shotgun. ‘Where? Where outside?’

  Staring at him in wild, bug-eyed panic, she blurted, ‘F-f-f-front – f-f-front door. I don’t know where Luke and Phoebe are.’

  ‘Call the police – no – hit panic button, quicker – by the bed, press the panic button. They’ll come right away.’

  ‘Be careful, John.’

  ‘Where is he?’

  ‘Front door.’ Trembling. ‘I don’t know where Luke and Phoebe are. I don’t know where they are, they may be outside.’

  ‘Panic button,’ he said. Then he switched the safety catch off, and headed cautiously downstairs.

  Naomi ran to the side of the bed, pressed the red panic button and immediately the alarm began sounding inside and outside the house. Then she grabbed the phone and listened for a second. There was a dial tone. Thank God. She tried to stab out 999, but her fingers were shaking so badly that the first time, she misdialled. She dialled again and this time it rang. And rang.

  ‘Oh Jesus, come on, answer, please, please!’

  Then she heard the operator’s voice. She blurted out, ‘Police.’ Then, moments later, she heard herself shouting into the phone, ‘MAN! GUN! OH GOD, PLEASE COME QUICKLY!’

  She calmed enough to give their address carefully, then ran down the stairs, passed John who was in the hallway peering out of a window, and into the living room, calling, ‘LUKE! PHOEBE!’

  No sign of them.

  Back in the hall, Naomi stood behind John and stared fearfully out of the window at the motionless, rain-sodden figure in his anorak, bobble hat and wellingtons. His face was turned away from them so they could not make out his features. And she wondered, just for a fleeting instant, whether she had been overreacting. A tramp? He looked like a tramp?

  A tramp with a handgun?

  ‘I can’t find Luke and Phoebe,’ she said.

  John was opening the front door.

  ‘Oh God, please be careful. Wait. The police will be here—’

  ‘Hallo!’ John called to the man. ‘Hallo! Excuse me! Hallo!’

  ‘Wait, John.’

  But John was already stepping outside, holding the shotgun out in front of him, finger on the trigger, staring at the brightly lit drive and lawn, and the pre-dawn darkness beyond, swinging the gun from left to right, bringing it back onto the man each time. He took a few more steps, the wind lifting the bottom of his dressing gown like a skirt. Naomi followed.

  They were standing right over the figure, right over the man in his black cap and black anorak and black trousers and black boots. He was young, no more than thirty, she guessed. John crouched, snatched up the handgun and gave it to Naomi to hold.

  It was heavy and wet and cold and made her shudder. She stared out warily into the darkness beyond the lights, then back at the man.

  ‘Hallo?’ John said.

  Naomi knelt, and it was then that she saw the hole in his forehead above his right eye, the torn flesh, the bruising around it, and the plug of congealed blood inside that the rain hadn’t managed to
wash away.

  She whimpered. Scrambled on all fours round the other side of his head. Saw the patch of singed hairs at the base of the skull, the torn flesh, more congealed blood here.

  ‘Shot,’ she said. ‘Shot.’ Trying frantically to remember a First Aid course she did when she was in her teens at school, she grabbed his hand, pushing back the cuff of the leather glove, and pressed her finger against his wrist. Despite being soaking wet, the flesh was warm.

  She tried for some moments, but couldn’t tell whether it was a pulse or just her own nerves pulsing. Then his eyes opened.

  Her heart almost tore free of her chest in shock.

  His eyes rolled, not appearing to register anything.

  ‘Where are my children?’ Naomi said. ‘Can you hear me? Where are my children? For God’s sake, where are my children?’

  His eyes continued to roll.

  ‘Where are my children?’ she screamed, barely able to believe he could still be alive with these holes in his head.

  Then his mouth opened. Closed. Opened, then closed again, like a beached, dying fish.

  ‘My children! Where are MY CHILDREN?’

  In a voice quieter than the wind, he whispered, ‘Lara.’

  ‘Who are you?’ John said. ‘Who are you, please?’

  ‘Lara,’ he said again and again faintly, but just loud enough for them to hear that he had an American accent.

  ‘Where are my children?’ Naomi said, yet again, her voice wracked with desperation.

  ‘Call an ambulance,’ John said. ‘Need an ambulance—’

  His voice was cut short by the distant whoop of a siren.

  ‘Lara,’ the man whispered again. His eyes locked and widened, for a brief moment, as if he was now seeing her, then they roamed again, lost.

  98

  A disembodied blue light strobed in the darkness, in the distance, not seeming to get any closer. A siren wailed but didn’t seem to be getting any louder. Maybe it was going somewhere else, not coming to them at all, Naomi wondered, stumbling across the lawn, calling out with increasing desperation every few moments, ‘LUKE! PHOEBE!’, staring into the bushes, the shadows, looking back at John who was still kneeling by the man, then at the blue strobing light again, then at the dark, empty fields.

  At the void that had swallowed up her children.

  Now the siren was getting louder, and suddenly she was fearful that the children were in the drive, and the police in their haste, in this darkness, might not see them. Balancing her way across the bars of the cattle grid with difficulty in her sodden slippers, pointing her flashlight into the darkness, oblivious to the cold and the pelting rain, she stumbled along the metalled surface of the drive, calling out again, ‘LUKE! PHOEBE! LUKE! PHOEBE!’

  Headlights pricking the darkness ahead of her now. Twin blue lights streaking along above the hedgerow at the bottom of the drive. Electrifyingly fast. She stepped onto the verge, felt her dressing gown snag on a bramble, but ignored it, frantically waving her torch.

  As the car came round the bend, she stood frozen like a rabbit in the dazzling glare. The car stopped right beside her, slivers of blue light skidding off the paintwork, skidding off the face of the uniformed policewoman in the passenger seat, who was lowering her window and peering out at her. A voice crackled on the radio inside the car and the male driver said something Naomi didn’t catch. Heat and damp, rubbery smells poured out of the window.

  Pointing frantically towards the house, Naomi said, near breathless, ‘Man – there – need ambulance – you didn’t see any children – down the drive – two children?’

  Looking at her with a concerned expression, the policewoman said, ‘Is someone armed? Is there someone with a gun?’

  ‘Shot,’ Naomi said. ‘There’s a man shot – there – he’s up there – and my children, I can’t find my children.’

  ‘Are you all right? Do you want to get in?’ the woman police officer asked.

  ‘I’m looking for my children,’ she said.

  ‘I’ll come back down to you in a few minutes.’

  The car pulled away barely before she had finished speaking, accelerating harshly, clattering over the cattle grid. She watched the brake lights as it halted on the gravel, saw both driver and passenger doors open and the two officers stepping out purposefully.

  Naomi turned away, carried on running down the drive, following the torch beam, her slippers slapping on the hard tarmac, her feet coming out of them every few steps. She went ankle-deep through a puddle, lost both her slippers, retrieved them and hooked them on her feet again, calling out, her throat rasping, ‘PHOEBE? LUKE? LUKE? PHOEBE?’

  Halfway down the drive there was an open gate leading into a field of stubble, where she sometimes took Luke and Phoebe for a walk. Several pheasants, bred on a shoot at nearby Caibourne Place, had made a refuge here. Luke and Phoebe took a delight in startling the pheasants out of their covers, giggling at the strange, clanky sounds of their beating wings and their metallic croaks. She went in there now, shining the beam of the torch around, calling out to them.

  Silence. Just the wind and a creaking hinge. And another siren.

  Moments later a second police patrol car ripped past her and up the drive. Then, seconds later, as if it were being dragged in its slipstream, a third car with four people inside, this one unmarked and no siren, just the urgent roar of its engine and the swish of its tyres.

  She stumbled on, calling out their name every few moments, crying in shock and despair and exhaustion. ‘Luke! Phoebe! Darlings! Where are you? Answer me! Where are you?’

  Dawn was breaking now. Watery grey and yellow tints streaked the darkness. Like celluloid developing, the darkness turned into increasingly clear, shadowy shapes, and these in turn were lightening into the familiar sights of the buildings, trees, houses that were their surrounding landscape. A new day was breaking. Her children were gone and a new day was breaking. Her children were gone and a man was dying outside their front door.

  She ran back onto the drive and, at the end of it, headed towards the village. She stumbled along a corridor of hedges and trees, the beam of the torch becoming less necessary with every step, fear clenching her throat like a fist, hoping desperately that suddenly she was going to see Luke and Phoebe in their winter coats and their red and blue wellington boots, walking hand-in-hand back towards her.

  Another siren now. Moments later an ambulance with all its lights blazing came around the corner. She waved the torch, frantically, and the ambulance stopped. ‘Dene Farm Barn?’ the driver asked.

  She pointed, gulping air. ‘Just back there, a hundred yards, turn right, the first entrance, up the drive. I can’t find my children.’

  Seconds later she stood, breathing in a lungful of diesel fumes, watching streaks of cold blue light dart like angry fish across the shimmering road, watching the ambulance turn right, slowly, ever so slowly, like one frame at a time, into their drive. Their home. Their sanctuary.

  She stood still, blinking tears and rain from her stinging eyes, gulping down more acrid air, shaking, shivering so badly her knees were banging together. ‘Luke?’ she said, her voice feeble now, forlorn, lost. ‘Phoebe?’

  She stared at the lame yellow glow of the torch; the beam didn’t even register on the road any more. She switched it off, swallowed, hugged her arms around herself to try to stop shaking. The rain hardened; she could have been standing in a shower, but she was oblivious to it as she turned, one way then the other, taking one last hopeless look, as if she might suddenly spot their little faces peeping out from behind a bush, or a tree or a hedge.

  Where are you?

  She was trying, desperately, to focus her mind. Who was the man? Who had shot the man? Why? How had anyone got into the house? How had anyone got Luke and Phoebe into their coats and boots and taken them away? Who were these people? Paedophiles?

  The Disciples?

  Could Luke or Phoebe have shot him? Then run away? Was that why they had run away?

/>   Run away? Taken away – abducted?

  In some space, way beyond her bewilderment at the moment, in some dark place deep inside her heart, she harboured a certainty, an absolute dead certainty, that they were gone for ever.

  99

  A grey van pulled up beside Naomi as she trudged back up the drive to the house, and a man asked her in a kindly voice if she was all right. For a moment, her hopes soared.

  ‘Have you got them?’ she said. ‘Have you found them? Have you got my children? Are they OK?’

  ‘Your children?’

  She stared at him, utterly bewildered. ‘My children? Have you got them? Luke and Phoebe?’

  He opened the door and moved over, making space for her. ‘Jump in, love.’

  She backed away. ‘Who are you?’

  ‘Crime scene officers.’

  She shook her head. ‘I have to find my children.’

  ‘We’ll help you find them. Hop in, you’re going to freeze to death like that.’

  A two-way radio crackled. The driver leaned forward and pressed a button. ‘Charlie Victor Seven Four, we have just arrived on scene.’

  The man in the passenger seat held out his hand. Naomi took it and climbed in, then pulled the door shut. A fan was roaring; hot air began toasting her feet, blasting on her face.

  She shook her head, the giddying heat making her feel faint and disoriented. ‘Please help me find my son and daughter.’

  ‘How old are they?’

  ‘Three.’

  ‘Don’t worry, love, we’ll find them.’

  The van moved forwards. She watched the hedgerows passing as if in a dream. ‘They weren’t in the house when we woke up,’ she said numbly.

  ‘We’ll find them, don’t you worry.’

  The kindness in his voice made her burst into tears.

  The van clattered over the cattle grid and onto the gravel. Sobbing uncontrollably, she saw the ambulance, its doors shut, side window screened off from view, the first police car she had seen earlier, and two more. There seemed to be police everywhere. Three were standing in the garden wearing flak jackets and holding rifles. No sign of the shot man; she presumed he was in the ambulance.