haven’t done much shopping,’ Freddy remarked.
‘No. Auntie’s shopping,’ the boy responded.
‘Your auntie?’ Viv asked him.
Again he didn’t answer her. ‘Charming,’ she muttered to Freddy. ‘They must think I’m the Witch of the West.’
The little boy looked at Freddy with imploring eyes. ‘We’re waiting for her. We’re waiting for Auntie.’
The looks on their faces made Viv thank heaven she had taken the trouble to come to the Ellman Superstore on this dark and lonely night.
There was important, urgent work to be done, as fast and efficiently – and delicately – as they could.
Suddenly an alarm was screaming in the night, and would keep on screaming until answered.
Someone who didn’t belong there had tripped an alarm at Byron-Newman, a prominent engineering works that presented formidable barriers to any would-be intruder, although the alarm obviously indicated that this someone had trespassed beyond the point of no return.
Driving the panda, Toby Armstrong responded instinctively to the alarm with a hard jerk on the wheel, several seconds before they were told the direction over the radio.
‘We’re on our way,’ Anjali replied before the voice at the other end could finish a sentence.
The sound of the alarm grew steadily louder as they approached Byron-Newman Ltd. The panda screeched to a halt. Toby half-expected to see a drawbridge and moat guarding the fortress, but, alas, no such luck. This was the real world; nobility was ancient history. Menace was immediate, somewhere ahead in the dark, where that someone was hiding.
Constables Toby Armstrong and Special Constable Anjali Shah hit the ground running.
Police Sergeant McAllister was replacing the telephone as Viv Smith, along with her section officer, Bob Loach, waited for the report on the immediate disposition of the two lost children.
McAllister’s frown didn’t change. ‘Social Services will send someone as soon as possible.’
His gaze focused on Viv like a zoom lens in a movie camera.
‘Until they do, Bonnie and Clyde here’ll need looking after.’
The sergeant was plainly referring to the wandering waifs, yet Viv also gathered that McAllister was expecting her to do something about it. She bristled.
‘Why look at me?’ As if she didn’t know.
McAllister expressed exasperation by moving a centimetre closer, raising his left eyebrow a millimetre and lowering his voice.
‘Because you’re a woman, for pity’s sake.’
Enlightened Man, circa the Stone Age.
‘It might come as a surprise to you, Sergeant, but not all women come with a built-in maternal expertise of how to deal with children.’
The laughter down the corridor distracted her, and unexpectedly served as a reminder that she was getting much too serious. Her rising blood pressure surely needed to be cooled.
Viv glanced at the distraction, then looked again. The laughter was coming from the high-pitched voices of three children: the little girl on one side, the older little boy on the other and Special Constable Freddy Calder in the middle.
Actually there was a fourth party at the party: Freddy’s glove-puppet, Foxy, who was playing with a couple of coins. The two children were talking to Foxy as if he were more alive than Freddy – a frightening thought. Indeed it was Foxy who was showing them the coin tricks: Freddy was merely his quick-fingered assistant.
Each child was enthralled with Freddy’s antics. Viv looked over at Loach and Sergeant McAllister. She caught them smiling, and they caught her looking, and for a brief moment, they shared a quiet, knowing laugh among themselves.
Their amusement was interrupted by a PC rushing in with an urgent message written all over his face, yet his uniform suggesting he’d been in the middle of a poll tax demo.
‘We’ve got Big Jess in the hoolivan outside!’
The PC’s announcement brought Sergeant McAllister to attention. Viv was impressed. Who was this Big Jess all of a sudden?
‘Drunk?’ McAllister asked routinely.
‘As a cock-eyed owl, Sarge,’ the PC responded in the same old routine.
McAllister turned to Viv and Loach with a blunt request.
‘Give ’em a hand, will you?’ he asked with an edge of weariness in his voice. ‘They’ve got the Queen of the Night – Mrs Godzilla – out there.’
Apparently Loach was just as unaware of this notorious character as Viv was.
‘Who’s Big Jess?’
‘You don’t know?’ McAllister’s expression turned from incredulity to a nasty, knowing smile. ‘Then you’ve a nice surprise coming, laddie.’
A moment before Toby got there, Anjali had reached the elderly security guard outside the Byron-Newman building and quickly elicited the information they needed.
‘The noise came from round the back,’ Anjali briefed Toby.
‘Wait here,’ Toby told the old guard. ‘We should have some back-up pretty soon. Okay?’
Toby didn’t wait for the guard’s answer before signalling Anjali that they proceed with their own investigation, and they set off in hot pursuit around the corner of the building.
It wasn’t long until the pair raced into an area crowded with an obstacle course of tall waste-bins. On the other side of the congested area they spotted two figures who suddenly bolted from the deep shadows and made a run for the perimeter fence.
In the semi-darkness, the suspects appeared to be two boys or young men.
Caught on the wrong side of the obstacle course, Toby and Anjali tried to hurry through the clutter of bins that were slowing them down and facilitating the escape of the fugitives.
Being afraid didn’t paralyze Anjali; fear made her run faster. She had never been able to overcome her inner panic in the face of danger, and she had no idea what would happen if she caught up with these bandits, or quite what she would do if they suddenly turned to attack her. Rather, she was driven by a sense of urgency, a blind compulsion to force her legs to keep churning. She made herself do what she instinctively knew had to be done, suppressing any thought of the possible consequences.
As Toby and Anjali got closer, the young men were legging it to the high fence. One was clearly older than the other, and both appeared to be of Asian extraction. An inopportune thought flashed through Toby’s mind, wondering what Anjali’s reaction to them might be.
