I sprinted down the road, the tears welling in my eyes so much that I couldn’t see properly.
‘Oliver! Oliver!’ I shouted his name over and over desperately as I ran.
There was a main road he had to cross to get to the village shop, a road along which cars regularly drove too fast.
Why had I let him out alone? Why? Why? Why?
He was only a boy.
I’d tried his mobile phone but it had rung on the kitchen worktop. He hadn’t taken it with him.
I arrived at the main road. There was no sign of Oliver or his bicycle, no bloody mess, nothing.
I crossed over and ran on, cursing myself for not having brought the car. It would have been so much quicker.
It was almost exactly a quarter of a mile from our house to the village shop and an Olympic athlete would have had nothing on me.
There was no sign of Oliver’s bike outside. I burst into the shop, frightening Mrs Atherton, who owned it.
‘Where’s Oliver?’ I shouted at her.
She looked at me quizzically.
‘Oliver, my son,’ I said. ‘He was coming here to buy bread, eggs and crisps.’
Mrs Atherton nodded. ‘He’s been. Served him myself.’
‘So where is he now?’
‘Sorry, dear, I’ve no idea,’ Mrs Atherton replied. ‘He took his change and left.’
‘How long ago?’
‘Not more than ten minutes.’
Ten minutes! A quarter of a mile on a bicycle would take just one, two at most. He should have been home ages ago.
I ran out of the shop and retraced my steps. I surely couldn’t have missed him.
‘Oliver!’ I shouted as I ran. ‘Oliver!’
I was now in full panic mode and I could feel myself shaking with fear.
I looked over every garden fence and wall between the village shop and our house but there was no sign of Oliver or his bike.
When I arrived back, Toby was standing at the open front door.
‘Is he back?’ I shouted at him.
I could see fear in his face as he shook his head.
I was beginning to go into meltdown; I could feel the tingling in my fingers.
I rushed past Toby and grabbed the house phone, my fingers seemingly huge on the buttons as I dialled Grant’s mobile number. He answered at the second ring.
‘Oliver’s been abducted,’ I shouted down the phone at him.
‘What?’
‘Oliver’s been abducted,’ I repeated breathlessly. ‘He went to the shop for some crisps and he’s disappeared.’
‘How long ago?’ Grant asked.
‘Twenty, twenty-five minutes. I ran to the shop. Mrs Atherton says he was there but left ages ago. He never came home. Oh my God. Where is he?’
I was crying uncontrollably.
‘Calm down, darling,’ Grant said. ‘He’s probably stopped off at a friend’s house.’
‘Why would he?’ I screamed. ‘He knew we were waiting for him. I’m telling you, he’s been snatched.’ I was sobbing. ‘I’m calling the police.’
I hung up and immediately dialled 999.
‘Emergency, which service?’ asked the operator.
‘Police,’ I shouted down the line. ‘My son’s been abducted.’
I had to give the Gloucestershire Police some credit.
The first squad car arrived with blue flashing lights and a blaring siren in only five minutes. It contained two uniformed police officers and I ran down the drive to meet them.
‘We were already in Bishop’s Cleeve,’ one of them said. ‘Diverted from another job. Shall we go inside? To take down the details.’
‘Inside?’ I screamed. ‘He’s not inside. We need to find him.’
‘Mrs Rankin,’ said the policeman, ‘we understand how you must be feeling but we have to get the details correct.’
Understand? Neither policeman looked old enough to be out of school, let alone be parents. How could they possibly understand how I was feeling?
One of them took me by the elbow and guided me into the house and then through into the kitchen. We sat down at the table.
‘Now,’ the policeman said, extracting a notebook and pen from his stab-proof-vest pocket, ‘how old, exactly, is Oliver?’
‘He was fourteen last September,’ I said. He looked up at me sharply as if he’d been expecting him to be younger, then he wrote it down in a notebook. ‘And what does he look like?’
‘Like that,’ I said, pointing at Toby, who was standing by the door into the hall, still in his football kit. ‘They’re identical twins.’
‘And how long has he been missing?’
‘He went to the village shop on his bike to buy some bread and crisps but he didn’t come back. I’ve searched for him but . . .’ I broke off, trying unsuccessfully to hold back the tears.
‘And when was this?’
‘About half an hour ago.’
‘Half an hour?’ He didn’t quite sound incredulous, but close. ‘Do you not think he may just be taking his time?’
‘No,’ I said. ‘I’ve searched everywhere between here and the shop. And I told him to come straight back.’
‘And does he always do what you tell him?’
I could tell from his tone that he was rather sceptical.
‘Well, no, not always, but he would have done this time. He knew his brother was waiting for him.’
The doorbell rang and I jumped up but it was only two more uniformed policemen, one of them a woman, who joined their colleagues in the kitchen. Child abduction was obviously taken very seriously.
‘What was he wearing?’ asked the same policeman as before.
‘His school uniform,’ I said. ‘White shirt, dark grey trousers, navy pullover, with his school crest over the heart. Toby, go and get yours to show them.’
Toby disappeared, presumably up to his room to fetch his uniform.
‘Jacket and tie?’ asked the policeman.
‘No,’ I said. ‘Just a pullover these days.’
‘Any coat?’
I thought back. ‘No. He was only going to be gone a few minutes.’
‘Type of bike?’
‘Raleigh. Kid’s mountain bike. In blue. Toby’s is red.’
Grant arrived, throwing open the front door with a crash and rushing into the kitchen. I stood up and hugged him. He pulled away from me and turned to the four police officers.
‘Why aren’t you out searching for my son?’ he demanded.
‘All in good time, sir,’ replied one of them. ‘We need to get all the details first and a photograph. Do you have one we could show to our officers?’
‘We have one upstairs that was taken at school,’ Grant said. ‘I’ll fetch it.’
I was getting even more agitated.
‘We must go and look for him,’ I shouted at the police. ‘Why are we all stuck in here when he’s out there somewhere?’ I was openly sobbing and losing control. ‘My poor baby.’
Into this intense scene of acute maternal hysteria walked Oliver.
He came through the open front door, down the hall and into the kitchen holding a white plastic shopping bag.
At first I thought it was Toby, assuming that he’d put his school uniform back on to show the police, but then I saw the bag.
‘Mum,’ Oliver said with a slightly worried tone while looking around at the four police uniforms crowded into the kitchen, ‘what’s going on?’
My first emotion was one of relief but this very quickly turned to anger.
‘Where have you been?’ I shouted at him.
‘Looking for my bike,’ he said rather tearfully.
‘What?’ I screamed.
‘I’ve been looking for my bike,’ he repeated. ‘Someone took it while I was in the shop.’
Grant came into the kitchen clutching the photo and instantly grasped the situation.
‘Where the hell have you been?’ he asked loudly, turning to Oliver.
The poor young boy was now in floods of tears.
‘I’ve been looking for my bike,’ he said once more between sobs. ‘It’s been stolen.’
‘What do you mean, stolen?’
Gradually, over the next half-hour, the full story came out.
Oliver had cycled straight to the shop and had gone in, leaning his bike against the wall outside. He had bought the items but, when he came out, the bike was gone.
‘I was only in there a couple of minutes,’ he said miserably. ‘I thought someone was playing a trick on me. So I looked to see if it’d been moved. But I couldn’t find it anywhere. Then I thought Jamie Williams must have taken it.’
‘Jamie Williams?’ asked one of the policemen.
‘From school,’ Oliver said. ‘I thought I saw him on my way to the shop, near the phone box. He lives at that farm up the hill on Gretton Road.’
‘But why would he take your bike?’ another of the policemen asked.
‘Because he doesn’t like me. And he’s always nicking my stuff at school – pens, sports kit, stuff like that. Anyway, I walked all the way up to the farm to see if he had it.’
‘Why didn’t you come back here first?’ I asked angrily. ‘We were desperately worried.’
‘I was afraid,’ he said. ‘I thought you’d be cross that I’d lost my bike.’
He might have been right.
‘So did Jamie Williams have your bicycle?’ the policeman asked him.
‘No. At least, he says he hasn’t. So I had to walk home.’
‘Perhaps we’ll go and have a word with young Mr Williams. What’s the name of the farm?’
‘Stoop Farm,’ Grant said. ‘On the right, about a mile out of the village.’
‘Right,’ said the policeman. ‘We’ll leave you in peace now. I am pleased that the young man is back home safe and sound. We will go and see the Williams boy to check on the bicycle, and let you know.’
‘Thank you,’ I said. ‘I’m very grateful. And I’m sorry I was so emotional earlier.’
‘That’s all right, Mrs Rankin. As long as the boy is unhurt. That’s what really matters.’
Nevertheless, I was embarrassed that I’d shouted at them, so I let Grant show them out.
‘I’m sorry, Mum,’ Oliver said, coming over and giving me a big hug.
‘It’s all right, darling,’ I said, hugging him back and stroking his hair. ‘As the policeman said, you being back home unhurt is the most important thing. And you’re too big for that bike anyway.’
‘It’s too late for me to go to football practice,’ Toby announced loudly. ‘So can we have the crisps now?’
Crisis over. Proper priorities had been restored.
The policeman came back while I was preparing the scrambled eggs.
‘No luck, I’m afraid,’ he said when I opened the front door. ‘I’m satisfied that the Williams boy knows nothing about your son’s bicycle.’
‘So who did take it?’ I asked.
‘Sorry,’ he said, holding his hands open, palms uppermost. ‘I went and asked the lady who runs the village shop but she had no idea either. She’s agreed to keep an eye out for it. In the meantime, I’ll make out a stolen-property report so you can claim on your household insurance.’
‘Won’t you go and look for it?’ I asked.
‘Sorry, ma’am,’ he said, not sounding it. ‘We don’t have the manpower. We would definitely search for your child but not for his bike. But the details will remain on file in case it’s found and handed in.’
I suppose I couldn’t blame him. The police could hardly go door-to-door asking about a child’s mountain bike, even in our small village.
Life in the Rankin household returned to what might be considered as normal for a Monday night but there were clearly underlying tensions.
Grant was never normally at his best on Mondays when the whole week of work seemed to stretch ahead of him interminably. It wasn’t that he hated his job, just that it was mundane and predictable compared to his years in the military, and I knew that he sometimes hankered after the excitement and adrenalin generated by being in mortal danger.
Oliver spent the evening very morose, apologising at least every ten minutes for causing such distress to his mother. And he wasn’t helped by Toby, who gave him no quarter, constantly accusing his brother of ruining his life as he was certain that, having missed the team practice, he would surely be dropped for the next match.
I, meanwhile, was desperate to get back to my investigation of races ridden by Jason Conway and Mike Sheraton since the previous November. By the time I had been interrupted by the suspected abduction of my son, I’d looked at races up to the end of January and had a list of forty-two in which Conway had jumped the first fence in front, with twenty-six others where Sheraton had done the same.
But was that significant? After all, someone had to be in the lead at the first fence.
Over that three-month period, Jason Conway had ridden in just over two hundred races. So he had led over the first fence in only a fifth of them.
Was that by chance or by design?
I could see that I would have to spend many more hours studying videos of races, even those in which Jason Conway had not been riding, to see if his numbers were significantly greater than anyone else’s. But there was something about the determination he often showed to be the one in front that I found suspicious.
Not that I’d get any chance to continue my research on that particular evening. To say that Grant would not have approved would be a gross understatement. He was determined that I should do nothing but rest, as if that alone would solve all my ills, both physical and mental, while I felt I needed a goal, a target, something to occupy what Hercule Poirot always referred to as ‘the little grey cells’.
After supper, the boys went up to their rooms to do their homework while Grant and I sat together on the sitting-room sofa in front of the TV, testing our general knowledge by attempting to answer a question or two on University Challenge.
Over the past year, watching television had seemingly become our way of not having to speak to each other. It was easier to allow the programmes to wash over us, filling the void, than to address the one thing that was most important in our lives – the elephant in the room – my mental state, and whether I was continuing to recover.
I was certainly in a better place than I had been back in November. For a start, I no longer believed that taking my own life was the inevitable outcome, and that was a major step in the right direction. Admittedly, I still thought about suicide now and then but, since coming out of Wotton Lawn Hospital in December, I felt that I was able to rationalise my thinking and positively decide against any form of self-harm.
Not that I didn’t sometimes feel the weight of gloom and depression hanging on my shoulders, when a fear of being self-indulgent was the only thing preventing me wallowing in tears and despair. But those episodes were now more rare and less intense, helped, I was sure, by a regimen of regular weekly blood tests and targeted hormone therapy. At last I could begin to appreciate how fluctuating amounts of thyroxine or testosterone, oestrogen or progesterone, could affect my mood – not that I fully understood why.
However, I was becoming increasingly frustrated that I had to go on taking medications in ever-greater numbers. Every trip to a doctor seemed to add another tablet to my lengthy list. But I wanted to stop pill-popping altogether, to stop ingesting man-made chemicals and to become ‘organic’ once again.
I was fed up with my body and its continually changing hormone levels.
I was fed up that, in spite of the drugs, I never felt happy.
Indeed, I was just fed up.
‘I think I’ll go up to bed,’ I said to Grant at a quarter to ten.
‘Are you OK?’ he asked with concern. Quarter to ten was very early, even for me.
‘I’m fine,’ I said. ‘Just tired.’
‘I’ll be up in a while.’
‘I may be asleep,’ I replied. ‘Night, night.’
‘Goodnight.’ He didn’t lean over and give me a kiss, he merely waved a hand in my general direction as his eyes, and his concentration, returned to the TV screen and the end of a murder-mystery drama that I hadn’t been following.
It was hardly married life as I’d expected it.
I was woken by Oliver, shouting outside our bedroom door.
‘Mum, Mum. My bike is back. It’s out on the drive.’
‘Great,’ I said, turning over and looking at the clock on my bedside table.
Six-forty. Not too bad. The alarm was due to go off in only a few minutes anyway. I turned on the light and sat up on the edge of the bed.
‘What time is it?’ Grant asked, sleepily. I hadn’t heard him come to bed so I expect he’d stayed up watching a movie until midnight, as he often did these days.
‘Almost a quarter to seven,’ I said. ‘Oliver says his bike is back and lying on the drive.’
‘I bet that Williams boy had it all along,’ Grant said. ‘I imagine he’s handed it back before the police returned to ask him a second time.’
I heard both the twins running down the stairs and the front door being thrown open. But there was no joy or delight at the discovery.
‘It’s all bent and broken,’ Oliver said gloomily as he came back up the stairs. ‘Both the wheels are twisted and the frame is all out of shape.’
He was close to tears again. It was bad enough for him to have lost his bike in the first place, but then to believe it had been returned safe and sound only to find it ruined was almost more than the poor boy could handle.
Grant put on his dressing gown and went downstairs and out onto the drive.
The phone rang and I immediately picked it up using the handset beside the bed.
‘Hello,’ I said.
‘Dr Rankin?’ asked a quiet male voice.
‘Yes,’ I replied.
‘You were told before to stop asking questions. I’ll not tell you again. Next time I’ll run over your kid, not just his bike.’