to tidy and the bed only slept in on one side. Stuart Bridgeman had been away the previous night, but Sean felt only a fading presence of the father in the room, as if he’d stopped sleeping here days or weeks ago. Maybe he never had, just using it to store his clothes for appearances’ sake – to keep the sad truth from the children? Did you come in here? Did you stand where I am now and watch her while she slept – watching her chest rise and fall – hypnotized by her beauty? But you didn’t come for her, did you? Again the answers evaded him. He scratched his forehead and left the room, passing what was indeed a bathroom, a room used as an office and another made up as a spare bedroom, but almost overly tidy and sterile. Was this where Stuart Bridgeman spent his nights – making the bed immaculately every morning before the children, nanny or cleaner could discover it had been used – quickly moving his used clothes into the master bedroom to complete the illusion? Probably, Sean decided, but what did it mean? What, if anything, did it have to do with George’s disappearance?
He left the room behind and climbed to the second floor and the children’s bedrooms, his foot finding a loose floorboard and making it creak loudly. Did you step on the creaking stair? Did it make you freeze with panic or fear? Or did you know it was there and avoid it? But how could you know it was there? He could feel the ideas, even possible answers straining to break free, but the weeds of his everyday responsibilities and life kept strangling his newly flowering strands of thought. Finally he lifted his foot, the returning floorboard making the same loud creaking that would have been magnified ten-fold in the dead of the night. No one came in here in the middle of the night and stole the boy, he almost chastised himself as he strode up the final few stairs and along the hallway. I’m letting things from the past fuck with my head. There’s no mystery here – just a little boy whose joke’s gone too far. The doors and windows are locked. No one came in here and the boy couldn’t have left, so he’s here – somewhere inside this house. He reached George’s room and unceremoniously pushed the door wide open, the sense of excitement that they would soon find the boy hiding instantly replaced by a deep sense of coldness. He felt as if he was stepping into a murder scene where the shattered soul of the victim still lingered, only there was no body, just an awful feeling of emptiness, as if the boy had never been there in the first place and the room was little more than a mock-up of a child’s room: the silhouettes of clouds printed on the powder-blue wallpaper, the train mobile above the bed with its matching bedclothes. The duvet remained on the floor where the mother had thrown it, along with a dozen or so teddy bears and other soft toys. More toys were neatly stacked on the shelving units and play table. But none of it seemed real any more – it felt surreal, just like so many other crime scenes he’d seen. And although the answers to his questions failed to come, the sickness in his stomach told him something had happened to the little boy. But what?
He crouched down and picked up a small brown bear similar to one his youngest daughter Mandy kept in her bed and tried not to think of how he’d feel if anything ever happened to either of his daughters. Sadness and rage swelled inside him at the mere possibility, but a sudden feeling of another presence in the room made him spin around and forget his fearful imaginings. Celia Bridgeman stood in the doorway, both hands clasped over her heart, her eyes red and her skin pale as her lips opened and closed as if she was trying to speak but couldn’t. ‘You all right?’ Sean asked and regretted it.
‘No,’ she answered faintly. ‘I don’t feel very well.’ She staggered a little into the room, Sean catching her by the elbow and forearm as he led her to the bed to sit, cringing at the possible forensic evidence he may be complicit in destroying. He watched her trying to catch her breath, breathing in and out a little erratically, but it was enough to put a little colour back into her lips and face. He gave her some time and space. ‘It’s like a dream,’ she told him, ‘or I should say a nightmare – like it’s not really happening. It can’t be happening, can it? He must be here somewhere,’ she continued, panic sweeping over her again as she tried to get to her feet.
Sean placed a hand on her shoulder, preventing her from standing. ‘I need to look for him,’ she pleaded, her red eyes swelling with fear and tears. ‘I have to keep looking.’
‘We’ll all look for him,’ Sean promised, ‘but you need to help me help you.’
‘I feel sick,’ she told him, jumping to her feet and rushing from the room. A few seconds later he heard the sound of her retching in a nearby bathroom, retching that seemed to go on for a long time, before he heard the sound of a toilet lid closing and the flushing of water. She returned to the bedroom looking like a ghost, walking past him and sitting on the bed without speaking, lifting a floppy-eared rabbit from the floor and holding it tight to her chest while she stared at the wall opposite.
‘Feel a little better?’ Sean asked, keen to get her talking before she went catatonic on him.
‘Not really,’ she responded.
‘I have some difficult questions that need answers,’ he warned her. ‘They’re best asked when your husband’s not here.’
‘Stuart?’ she asked in a conciliatory tone. ‘Don’t worry about Stuart – he’s just scared and angry. He always reacts like that when he feels something is beyond his control.’
‘I understand,’ Sean assured her.
‘You said you had questions.’
‘Keys,’ he began. ‘Is there anyone no one’s mentioned who could have keys to the house?’
‘Not that I know of,’ she answered.
‘Anyone who shouldn’t have keys to the house but does?’
‘I don’t understand.’
‘I need to know if both your children are yours and your husband’s – genetically?’
‘Yes,’ she answered, confusion etched into her face. ‘Why?’
‘Most children who are abducted are abducted by their estranged fathers,’ he told her. ‘If there was one and he had keys to the house, then …’
‘There isn’t,’ she stopped him. ‘How could you even think that? I’m his mother and Stuart’s his father,’ she insisted, but Sean sensed some doubt in her voice – and her eyes.
‘Any problems with your marriage?’ he asked.
‘No,’ she muttered, her eyes avoiding his.
‘Could Stuart be seeing anyone else?’
‘God no.’
‘And you?’ Sean ambushed her.
‘No,’ she swore, ‘nothing like that. I wouldn’t do that. I wouldn’t do that to my children.’
‘My children?’ Sean questioned. ‘Not our children, but my children?’
‘Stuart’s not around much,’ she explained. ‘He works hard for us – that’s all I meant.’
Sean watched her silently for a moment as she continued to hug the toy rabbit – watching her eyes and hands, her feet that stayed flat and still on the carpeted floor – judging her. He believed most of what she was saying, but there were doubts and untruths hiding in her grief.
The longer he stood in the boy’s room, the more sure he was that George had been taken. But why and by whom? His mind searched back for memories – going back more than ten years to when he was still a detective sergeant, deployed by SO10 on an undercover operation
