Make Believe (8 page)

‘
Only what I’ve seen on the news,’ she replied.

‘
We may well want to speak to you again,’ Janine said. 

‘
Well, I won’t leave town, then,’ Felicity Wray said.

Janine left the room before she lost all reason and clocked her one.

‘She’s messing with us,’ she said to Richard once they got into the car.  ‘I think if she was involved, she’d tone it down a bit, don’t you?’

‘
If she was at the park and wearing that get-up then wouldn’t the witnesses have mentioned it?’ Richard said.

‘You know eyewitnesses
– notoriously unreliable.  We’ll see what Shap and Butchers have found out,’ Janine said.  ‘But we need to get to the bottom of this happy families malarkey and eliminate Looby Loo in there, and Phoebe and Clive Wray or look a lot deeper.  Why didn’t Clive tell us he’d taken Sammy round there?  Maybe that’s what kick-started this whole bloody mess.’

‘
Maybe that’s what he’s afraid of,’ Richard said.

‘
Let’s ask him.’

It was a very fine line to tread.  Claire and Clive could well be bereaved parents and nothing more.  If the Wray household had an air of tension on Janine’s previous visit it was now stretched to breaking point.

Claire
wore the same clothes as the previous day.  Had she even slept, Janine wondered.  Sue, the family liaison officer, looked tired too and when Janine asked her how everyone was, she gave a look of warning. 

Clive and
Claire Wray were at opposite sides of the room, Claire in the corner of the sofa, gazing at the floor, Clive standing over by the window. 

‘
We’ve been speaking to Felicity, Mr Wray.’

He stilled and Janine saw
Claire look up.  ‘Why did you take Sammy to see her?’ Janine said.

Claire
Wray gasped, her mouth open with shock.

‘
He’s just a little boy,’ Clive Wray said, ‘she acted as if he was the devil incarnate … I just thought if she saw him, got to know him—’

Claire
stood up quickly, stumbled a little.  ‘You took our son to see that bloody woman – after everything she did to us—’  She stopped abruptly, her frown clearing as if she’d made a discovery.  ‘The car, the tyres and the scratches.  That was her again, wasn’t it?  Not vandals.’  A reprise of the harassment that Felicity had subjected the couple to when Clive first left. 

He
began to object but Claire raised her voice.  ‘You still love her, don’t you?  Felicity’s been right all along.  You only left her because I was pregnant.  You never really loved me.  Always Felicity, wasn’t it?’

‘
No,’ Clive Wray said.

‘
Bloody tragic Felicity and her precious daughter,’ she was shouting, spittle flying from her mouth, her face suffused with red.  ‘She couldn’t even let me give birth in peace –  had to grab the spotlight, try and kill herself.’ 

‘
Claire, please,’ Janine made an effort to calm the situation.

Claire
glared at her then her face changed and she visibly crumpled, ‘My boy,’ she said quietly.

‘
She’d never touch him,’ Clive said insistently. 

‘
How do you know that?  How can you possibly know that?  She’s off her head and you let her meddle in our lives whenever she likes.’

He turned to Richard,
‘You’ve no reason to think so,’ he appealed.

Richard
took a breath.  ‘Felicity was seen outside this house, on the nineteenth; she admits she came here.’

‘
She killed him,’ Claire said in horror.  ‘It’s your fault.  That mad bitch came and took him.  See what you’ve done,’ she was sobbing, frantic with grief.  Then she lunged at her husband, screaming.  Richard and Sue moved in to separate the couple.  Janine called out to Claire to calm down.  Claire was slapping at Clive’s head.  He tried to dodge the blows.  Sue got hold of Claire’s shoulders and as she eased her back, Richard stepped in between the couple.

At that moment
Janine’s phone rang.  She stepped back to take the call.  She asked them to repeat the information and then she said, ‘Are you sure? There’s no doubt whatsoever?’  She felt the blood drain from her face.

Clive Wray
was shouting back now, ‘Felicity is not a killer.  And I love you, Claire.  You and Sammy and Phoebe.  I may have lost one child but I’ll fight damn hard now to be a father to the other one.’

Janine put her phone away.  Clive was still talking,
Claire shivering as he said.  ‘I can’t have Sammy back but I still want a life with you – and I want my daughter in it.  That’s how it’ll be.  And if you love me, you’ll accept that.’

Richard
saw Janine’s expression and saw that something had shifted.  Something had happened.

‘
What?’ he said.

She took a breath and moved closer. 
‘Clive, Claire.’

They looked at her. 
Claire distraught, dishevelled and Clive breathless.

‘
Oh, I am so sorry,’ Janine said.  ‘The child, the little boy we found.  It’s not Sammy.  They’ve got the DNA results back.  It’s not Sammy.’

It was a
s if the air had been sucked from the room.  A moment where no-one moved and then all hell let loose.  Claire flew at Janine, hitting out at her and crying.  Clive began shouting, ‘What do you mean? Where’s Sammy?  You said—’

Janine pulled
Claire close, so she couldn’t keep thumping her, and held her while she wept.

Detective Superintendent Louise Hogg never raised her voice, didn’t need to, but the message was crystal clear to Janine in every crisp syllable.  The two women were in Hogg’s office and Janine was acutely aware that her team out in the incident room, could see through the glass partition that she was receiving a comprehensive bollocking.

‘
So, Sammy Wray is still missing plus you have no idea who the murder victim is.  You’ve lost two days following false trails for the murder, two days acting as though the abduction led to it.’

‘
We never said it was Sammy Wray,’ Janine pointed out.

‘
But you assumed it was, you let that determine your strategy, your actions,’ Louise Hogg said.

‘
The same age, sex, colouring, they had the same t-shirt,’ Janine tried to defend herself. 

‘
The most popular high street range, as I recall.  The Chief Constable is waiting to hear from me.  He wants to know exactly how we’re helping Sammy’s parents, how we intend to reassure the community and how we’ll protect the force’s reputation.  What can I tell him?’ She stared at Janine, displeasure clear in the set of her expression.

Janine
cleared her throat, stood up straighter.  ‘That no-one is more dedicated to solving this than me and my team.  That we will pursue every possible line of inquiry, and that I have no doubts of our eventual success.’

‘
All very well, but what we need is a breakthrough.  Instead we’ve been stuck down a blind alley for forty-eight hours.’

Louise Hogg
gave a curt nod of dismissal and Janine left, feeling awful.

The team were studiously avoiding eye contact with her
, pretending to be occupied as she made her way through the incident room to her own office.  Would she lose their trust, their support because of this?

‘
Tea, boss?’ Lisa spoke up and Janine felt a moment’s gratitude towards the young DC.

‘
Ta, no – make it coffee.  Then separate all the data on the boards out, everyone else the same with your reports, divide them into those related to the abduction and those relating to the murder.  Meeting in an hour-and-a-half, anyone out in the field call them in.’

Murmurs of assent rippled round the room.  Perhaps it was too early to say but she didn
’t feel any air of resentment.  Maybe they were all as surprised as she had been at the shock revelation.  And as gutted. 

Her preparation wasn’t as thorough as she would have liked for the new briefing, disentangling the evidence and information of the Sammy Wray disappearance from that of the murder was complicated but Janine felt it was more important to give the team some sense of momentum, to reinvigorate them rather than have all the details finessed and neatly presented.

Once everyone was in the room
, including Millie, Louise Hogg joined them, no doubt putting in an appearance to indicate she thought Janine required close supervision.  Janine felt as though she had been caught out, found wanting.  It wasn’t a sensation she liked.  Was she losing her touch?  Was there anything she could have done differently?  Would another SIO have handled things any better?  It was a genuine mistake, assuming the body was Sammy Wray, everything had seemed to point that way. 

Now she had to hold
it together, give a lead, no matter how badly shaken she was by the turn of events. 

Two distinct investigation boards ha
d been established.  The one on the left read Murder, it held all the details from the crime scene, information on individuals linked to the location: the builders, the Staffords and the Palfreys, other neighbours.  The post-mortem summary was there, as were forensics from the scene. 

The board on the right wa
s headed Missing Person: Sammy Wray.  Sammy’s photo was there, details about the Wrays and Felicity and Phoebe, information from the park inquiry, including the references to the single woman, elderly couple and the bearded man.

Each board now had its own distinct timeline.

Janine began, ‘We have an abduction and we also have the murder of an unknown child.  A week last Saturday, three-year-old Sammy Wray was abducted from Withington Park.  Two days ago, the body of a child was recovered from Kendal Avenue, a mile away.  This child was of similar age and appearance, but he is not Sammy Wray.  Sammy Wray is officially a missing person again.  Sammy’s been gone eleven days now.  We will discuss that case first.  Sammy’s father Clive Wray lied to us about his whereabouts and still has no alibi for the time of the abduction.  Mr Wray claims he was driving around in his car after an argument with his daughter Phoebe and can’t remember where he was.  He also failed to mention that he had taken Sammy to visit his ex-wife Felicity Wray without Claire’s knowledge.  A neighbour reports seeing a woman matching Felicity Wray’s description outside Clive’s house on the Saturday afternoon.  Felicity Wray denies going to the park but we are trying to establish whether the single woman from eye-witness reports is her.  Latest on that?’  Janine looked to Shap and Butchers.

‘
Three witnesses, all agree the woman had long hair, two say blonde, one says brown.  Age varies between twenty-five and forty,’ Shap said.

‘
Could do a line-up – see if people identify Felicity as the single woman at the park?’ Richard suggested.

Janine
nodded.  ‘Phoebe’s another contender for that.  We talk to her, too.  Her mother says she was at home but I’m not sure we can take her word for it.  Felicity Wray has made no effort to hide her resentment of the missing child or her belief that Clive Wray belongs with her and Phoebe.  She has a stronger motive then Clive, so she is at present our key candidate.’

‘
Did you search her house?’ Louise Hogg said.

Christ!
  What if Sammy was there?  Been there all along.  Alive?  Dead?  Did they have enough grounds?  Louise Hogg obviously thought so.  ‘We’ll get a warrant,’ Janine said decisively, ‘bring her in for further questioning as well as the line up.  And,’ she took a breath, ‘look into her recent harassment of Clive and Claire – what threats has she been making? Where are we up to with tracing other witnesses?’ 

‘We’ve found the older couple from the park,’ Lisa said.  ‘They were visiting a relative in hospital.’

‘The weirdy beardy man?’ Janine said.

‘Nothing,
’ Lisa said.

‘
Other actions?’ Janine surveyed the room, inviting contributions.  The team needed to be involved, invested in the case not simply told what to do.

‘
Revisit the sex offenders, anyone suddenly gone underground and so on,’ said Shap.

Janine nodded.

‘And if you rule out Felicity Wray?’ Louise Hogg said.

‘
The cases could still be linked,’ Richard said, ‘someone targeting three-year-olds.’

‘
Or there could be no connection.  We deal with these as two distinct inquiries,’ Janine said.  If a connection did emerge then so be it but until then the investigations would be treated as distinct and discrete.

‘
Reconstruction for the abduction set for one pm tomorrow,’ Millie said, ‘and Press Release in hand informing the media of the new situation.’

‘We don’t want scaremongering, hysteria,’ Janine said to Millie, though she felt close to hysteria herself, panic and confusion inside.  ‘We need to reassure people.’