Destroy Me Page 19

  ‘Not yet,’ I say abruptly. ‘Can you give me Luke’s number?’

  ‘He hasn’t got Dylan. I phoned him about ten minutes ago.’

  I supress a scream. ‘Could you give me his number anyway? I just want to speak to him. Find out if he saw who did take Dylan,’ I say, attempting to sound calm.

  ‘Er, sure. I’ll text you it and let me know if you need anything else—’

  ‘Thanks,’ I interrupt and hang up.

  A couple of seconds later my phone pings and I see that Georgia has sent me the number.

  I call it immediately and to my surprise Luke answers after a couple of rings.

  ‘Hello?’ He sounds like he’s outside. I can hear children laughing, shrieking in the background.

  ‘Where are you? Where’s Dylan? Is he okay?’ I say. My voice is shaking with anger and fear. If he hurts Dylan, I’ll kill him. I know that with bone-deep certainty.

  ‘Cat,’ he sighs. ‘How did you get my number?’

  ‘That doesn’t matter. Just tell me where Dylan is.’

  ‘I think you’ve got the wrong end of the stick,’ he says with exaggerated patience. ‘Georgia rang me earlier. She said you had the idea that I picked him up from school, but I didn’t.’

  Is he playing games with me? How fucking dare he? I’m filled with impotent rage, and I want to scream and shout at him, but I mustn’t make him angry. That could be dangerous for Dylan. I must try to sound calm, conciliatory.

  ‘What do you want from me?’ I say. ‘If you want me to go to the police and tell them what happened to Daisy, I will. I’ll do anything you want, only please don’t hurt him.’

  He speaks slowly and deliberately, as if he’s trying to pacify someone dangerously unstable. ‘I have no idea what you’re talking about. I haven’t got Dylan and I don’t know who Daisy is. Look, Catherine, I kept my side of the bargain. Now you need to keep yours and leave me alone.’

  He ends the call abruptly. But before he hangs up, I hear the deep, resonant chime of the church bell marking the hour. The sound is loud and close.

  Church bells, children playing. I know exactly where he is.

  The Abbey Grounds park is full of children, but I spot Luke straight away, sitting on a bench with his legs spread out straight in front of him, fiddling with a phone. I can see Harry too, climbing to the top of the climbing frame. But there’s no sign of Dylan.

  ‘What the . . .?’ Luke exclaims as I stride up to him. His hand flies to his collarbone and his eyes widen. ‘What are you doing here?’

  ‘I told you. I’m looking for my son.’

  He looks around to check that no one is watching us. ‘Well, I told you, I haven’t got him.’ He lowers his voice before continuing. ‘Look, I don’t know what you want from me exactly, but you need to leave me alone. This is bordering on harassment.’

  ‘Where have you hidden him?’

  He stares at me. ‘Hidden who? Your son? You’re not right in the head, you know that?’ He taps the side of his temple to emphasise his point.

  ‘Look at me, Dad!’ Harry shouts. He has climbed to the bottom of the climbing frame and is running towards the swings. If Luke won’t tell me, I think, maybe Harry will. So, not caring if I seem insane, I run after him and grab him by the arm.

  ‘Hi Harry, remember me?’ I say, breathlessly. ‘I’m Dylan’s mum.’

  He nods wide eyed.

  ‘Have you seen Dylan?’ I ask.

  Harry looks bewildered and a little alarmed. ‘What?’

  I try to speak less intently. There’s no point in scaring him. ‘Did Dylan leave school with you?’

  Harry looks at his dad, who is striding up behind me.

  ‘Um, no,’ he says.

  ‘Did you see who he left with?’ I entreat desperately.

  ‘No, you’re hurting me. Let go.’

  I look down and notice that I’m still grasping him tightly, my fingers digging into his arm.

  ‘Get your hands off my son,’ Luke growls, pulling me roughly away. ‘Look, I don’t know what’s happened to Dylan. He’s probably gone home with one of the other kids in the class or with your ex. All I know is, we haven’t got him.’

  He takes Harry’s hand and stalks away, leaving me standing alone in the middle of the playpark. A couple of women are staring at me. Maybe I look deranged. I certainly feel it.

  Does Luke have a point? Should I ring Theo? I take out my phone. There’s just an outside chance that he has Dylan. Perhaps Ms Hamlyn was mistaken. She could have confused Dylan with another child or just got confused in general. It can be chaotic at pick-up. On the other hand, what about the note? It’s too much to hope that that note is just a hoax and arrived coincidentally on the same day that Dylan goes missing. Besides, I’m not sure telling Theo is a good idea. What if he decides to go to the police?

  I’m slotting the phone back in my pocket when it beeps, and I see that I have a message from George Wilkinson. I open it quickly.

  And my heart stops.

  There’s a photo of Dylan in his school uniform. He’s leaning against a blank white wall, his hands behind his back. His expression is blank, but physically he looks well. There are no signs of bruises or marks to indicate that he has been hurt. I read the message underneath, bile rising in my throat.

  Dylan is safe for now. He will stay that way if you go to the police and tell them the truth about Daisy.

  I stagger backwards and sink on to a bench, trying to breathe. This is really happening.

  Fingers shaking, I download the photo and gaze at his dear little face feeling heartsick. If only I could reach into the photo and pull him out. I just want to hold him close and keep him safe. Where are you, Dylan? I scour the image for clues but there’s nothing to give away his location. Just a blank white wall and a standard light switch by his head. He could be anywhere.

  For Dylan’s sake, I would go to prison a thousand times over and I don’t hesitate in typing my answer.

  I will talk to the police. I will do whatever you want, but first I need to see Dylan.

  I wait a minute, holding the phone in my hand as if it’s a bomb that might go off. But there’s no reply.

  Please. Where are you? Who are you? Give me your number at least, so I can speak to him.

  No response.

  Thirty-two

  One thing is certain. Luke didn’t take Dylan. That’s obvious now. He was here when I got the message. I could see him all the time sitting by the lake with Harry and he didn’t have a phone in his hand, so he couldn’t have sent it. But I need to make sure Luke thinks Dylan is safe now. I can’t risk the kidnapper finding out that I’ve told someone.

  I shove the phone back in my pocket and head over to the lakeside where Luke and Harry are sitting on a bench. Harry is eating some sandwiches from his lunch box.

  ‘You’re kidding, right?’ Luke glares at me as I approach.

  ‘This will be quick. I’ve just come to apologise,’ I mutter. ‘I made a mistake. I’ve just received a message from my friend. She picked Dylan up. Apparently, we arranged it weeks ago. Crossed wires.’ I try a little laugh. It comes out as a strange, strangled wail.

  He nods and grunts. ‘Well, you can’t just go around accusing people like that.’ Then he pulls me aside and says in a lower voice so that Harry can’t hear. ‘This has got to stop. There’s nothing between us. Do you understand?’

  He meets my eyes directly. His green eyes are cold with anger. He doesn’t believe that Dylan was ever really missing, I realise. He thinks this was just a ruse to get his attention. He’s so egotistical. And how crazy does he think I am – to use my son in this way just to get close to him?

  ‘No, you’re right. I’m sorry,’ I say. I don’t want to argue with him. It’s not important. Nothing is important except Dylan. Finding Dylan.

  I am back to squa
re one. I still have no idea where Dylan is or who he’s with. My stomach is twisted in knots as I walk briskly back to the car. I can’t afford to waste any more time. I need to think calmly and rationally. But working out who took Dylan seems impossible. Anyone could walk into the school at pick-up time. Who would notice a stranger among the crowd of parents? Then again, Dylan is a cautious child, mistrustful of people he doesn’t know. I’m almost certain he wouldn’t have willingly gone anywhere with a stranger. It stands to reason that he was picked up with one of his classmates, as Luke suggested. But who? I should speak to the teachers again to find out what they can remember. I swallow a hard kernel of anger at their sheer incompetence and negligence. Once all this is done, I’m going to kick up a stink about it. But as I’m driving, I realise with a kind of sinking hopelessness that I can’t speak to the teachers. If they’re aware that Dylan’s missing, they’ll insist on calling the police.

  Temporarily defeated, I’m on my way home when, stopping at traffic lights in town, I notice the small, unobtrusive camera swivelling on the edge of an office building, its red light blinking. That’s it, they’re everywhere, I think, with a flash of inspiration. The school must have CCTV.

  With a new sense of purpose, I turn the car around and head back to school.

  Thank God, reception is still open and the secretary, plump, rosy-cheeked Nicky Ewens, is there. She’s involved in an animated phone conversation, and when I enter the room, she cups a hand over the receiver, mouths hello and gestures for me to take a seat.

  I perch on the edge of a chair, my knee jiggling with nervous tension. I still it with my hand and breathe slowly. I need to appear calm and collected.

  ‘Hi,’ she says, when she finally puts down the phone. ‘Sorry about that. Can I help you?’

  I take a deep breath. ‘Hi, yes, I’m Catherine Bayntun, Dylan Bayntun’s mother—’

  ‘Oh, little Dylan! He’s such a little sweetheart,’ she beams. ‘Where is he?’

  ‘Um, he’s with his dad,’ I say, thinking fast. ‘Anyway, the thing is, I’ve mislaid my handbag and I think I might have put it down somewhere here when I came to pick up Dylan. I was wondering if I could check the security footage to see if I was carrying it when I left the school.’

  She frowns, ‘Oh no. I’m sorry, I don’t think I’m allowed to do that, but you can check lost property if you want. You’d be surprised the stuff we find in there. Last year we found a diamond ring in the pocket of a cardigan. It turned out it was one of the parents’ engagement rings,’ Nicky continues chatting in her easy, friendly way as I follow her into another office, and she hauls out a large cardboard box from under a desk. ‘There you go,’ she says. ‘Be my guest.’

  I rummage through the box, pretending to look for my bag. It’s mostly full of old school cardigans and bizarrely a single shoe. How can someone lose one shoe?

  ‘No luck?’ she says when I emerge after a suitable length of time.

  I shake my head. ‘I’m afraid not. Are you sure you can’t show me the CCTV footage?’

  She bites her lip and gazes at me, head on one side. I can see she’s weakening.

  ‘Please. That handbag has everything in it . . . my whole life!’ I beg.

  She grins and lowers her voice conspiratorially, even though there’s no one around to hear her. ‘Oh, all right, then, as it’s you. But don’t tell anyone or muggins here’ll be in trouble.’

  Sitting at her desk, she clicks on a camera icon on her desktop and after a few moments, a split-screen live stream of various parts of the school appears on the ­monitor. There’s the front gate, a car whizzing past, part of the empty playground, nothing but a few fallen leaves drifting in the wind and another section of the playground with climbing apparatus. Nearby, a cleaner is tipping a dustpan into the bin, but otherwise, there’s not a soul about.

  ‘About what time and where do you want to look?’ Nicky asks.

  ‘Can you look at just Butterflies classroom? Outside. From about four to five o’clock?’

  She scrolls down, obligingly. ‘I’m quite enjoying this. I feel like a detective,’ she says laughing, and I smile wanly.

  I watch the screen, my heart in my mouth, as the first parents arrive at four o’clock in dribs and drabs and until there are a crowd of them some with prams, some chatting, some just standing waiting. Then at four o’clock, the doors fly open and the children begin pouring out. I catch my breath and peer closely at the monitor until Luke arrives. I watch Harry run up to him, trailing what looks like a kite made of paper and string. Now . . . where’s Dylan? But Luke shoves the kite into Harry’s backpack, grabs Harry’s hand and they walk away out of shot. There is no sign of Dylan.

  Who took him? I can only think that it must have been someone in that crowd. I watch the footage like a hawk until most of the children have been picked up and I see myself arrive. But all that time Dylan never appears on the screen. I sit back, disappointment twisting in my belly.

  ‘There you are, look,’ Nicky exclaims suddenly, pointing with excitement at the monitor. ‘You had your handbag when you arrived.’

  It’s an odd feeling, like an out-of-body experience, watching myself enter the classroom and emerge again a few minutes later without Dylan. I look relaxed, unhurried, as if I’ve got all the time in the world. I feel sorry for that oblivious woman, a stranger to me now. In a few seconds, I think, your world is going to come crashing down around you.

  ‘You still had your handbag when you left,’ Nicky says, triumphantly. She sits back as if she’s solved a great mystery. ‘You didn’t leave it in the classroom.’

  Thankfully, she’s so focused on the missing handbag that she hasn’t noticed the glaringly obvious absence of Dylan. ‘Are you sure it hasn’t fallen under the seat of the car?’ she continues. ‘I know that’s happened to me before.’

  ‘You’re probably right,’ I say, swallowing a sudden wave of hopelessness. I was so sure that I would see who had taken Dylan. ‘I’ll check the car again. Thank you.’

  Dylan must have left through the back entrance to the classroom because he didn’t come out the of the front. I want to ask Nicky if there are cameras at the back but can’t think of a legitimate reason why I would want to see the CCTV footage of the back of the classroom when we’ve just established that I still had my bag when I left.

  ‘You’re very welcome, love,’ Nicky smiles. ‘I hope you find it.’ And she turns away, back to her computer.

  There must be something else I can do. Someone from the class must know where he is. I’m about to leave when I pause in the doorway. ‘While I’m here, I don’t suppose you have a list of contact numbers for Dylan’s class?’

  She shakes her head and presses her lips together. ‘I’m afraid I can’t give you that. Data protection. Sorry, I don’t make the rules. What do you want them for?’

  ‘Oh, it’s just that he’s having a birthday party next week. And I don’t want to miss anyone out.’

  She sighs. ‘Well, I can give you a list of the children’s names in the class without the phone numbers. Will that do?’

  I suppose it’s better than nothing. ‘Thank you,’ I say.

  While she’s printing out the list, grumbling about all the rules and regulations she has to follow, I glance at the various notices and photos on the wall. There are a few different timetables and a collage of pictures of children on a school trip and of various sports teams. And at the far end of the room, there’s a large board with individual head shots of all the members of staff, accompanied by quotes from each of them in speech bubbles. One picture in particular catches my eye and I draw in my breath sharply. What’s he doing here? Floppy blond hair, intense blue eyes and a smile of perfect white teeth.

  ‘Life would b flat without music,’ says his speech bubble.

  I had no idea that he was a teacher. It can’t be a coincidence, can it?

 
‘I know Adam,’ I say, trying to keep my voice light and conversational. ‘But I didn’t know he worked here.’

  ‘What?’ Nicky looks up from her computer. ‘Oh, Adam Holbrooke, yes, he comes in sometimes to help out with extra music lessons. He plays the ukulele. He taught the year threes this term. The kids love him.’

  ‘Was he here today?’

  ‘Um, as a matter of fact, he was.’

  ‘Wait, don’t you want your class list?’ Nicky waves a sheet of paper at me as I dive towards the door.

  ‘Yes, sure, thank you,’ I say, snatching it from her hand. ‘Sorry, I just remembered something really important.’

  ‘Well, good luck with finding your bag.’

  ‘Thanks. I expect it’s in the car like you said.’

  In my car, I check my phone to see if I have any more messages. But there’s nothing, just a message from Georgia apologising for the mix-up and asking if I’m okay. I wonder what Luke has told her about me. Still, I don’t have time to worry about Luke and Georgia. I need to follow my gut – and my gut is leading me to Adam and Cecily House. I drive home quickly, drag out my photo album and select a photo. Then I hop back in the car and drive to Cecily Hill.

  Thirty-three

  Adam seems taken aback that I’m here, outside his house again.

  ‘Catherine, hi,’ he says warily over the intercom. We didn’t have an appointment, did we?’

  ‘No, but I need to speak to you. Can I come in?’

  ‘Um, well, now isn’t a good time,’ he says.

  I take a deep breath and try to remain calm. I’m not going to make the same mistake I made with Luke. I mustn’t accuse him of anything or show how agitated I am until I’m sure he has Dylan.

  ‘It’s important. It’s about Charlie,’ I say.

  There’s a long pause. ‘All right,’ he agrees at last and he buzzes me through into the dimly lit foyer. As my eyes adjust, I see that he’s already standing at the door to his flat, ready to greet me.