Two hours later, I was standing behind a makeshift podium, staring down at my trembling hands, feeling small next to DS Clarke. It had been set up outside the forum, home to BBC East. The circular steps in front of us were filled with various journalists and reporters, all holding out their own microphones ready to amplify my pain to the crowd. Jesus, I thought I’d been nervous about the TV Today interview, but this was terrifying.
DS Clarke was already halfway through his speech when I managed to refocus on the moment.
“Anyone who saw anything suspicious, anything out of the ordinary, please do come forward. We need any information you have. Thank you.” He stepped back and nudged my arm, reminding me it was my turn to step forward.
I froze. Looking down at the reporters all gathered on the circular steps was like looking into a pit of starved wolves, hungrily waiting to tear apart whatever was thrown down to them. My eyes darted around, searching for a friendly face.
“Good morning,” I winced. Shit. I shouldn’t have said the word “good.” Nothing about this was good, for God’s sake. “I’m Suzanne Walker, Teigan Walker’s mother. I’m a woman living in hell.” I paused and scanned the faces. No sympathy here.
“Teigan is a vivacious, bright, and beautiful girl. I miss her terribly.” The sneer of irony plucked at me as soon as I said the words. Before this had happened, I had been planning to work on the response to the Walker Foundation and go through the chronology on Emma Beale’s case over the weekend. I probably would have spent the same amount of time with Teigan as I had the past few days. Zero.
“As most of you know, I am a social worker and founder of the Walker Foundation, a charity that protects children from sexual abuse. If the disappearance of my daughter has anything to do with my work, if someone is trying to prove a point through this personal attack, then, please, stop and think about what you’re doing. Teigan is innocent.”
Within forty minutes #SuzanneWalker was trending on Twitter. Along with #PublicityWhore and #MumsTheWord. Articles came pouring in from every electronic outlet possible.
CSE expert’s own daughter goes missing — publicity stunt in desperate attempt to acquire project funding?
Expert in protecting children misses the signs of her own daughter falling into danger.
Suzanne Walker: Social Worker and Child Abductor?
A picture of my tearful face during the press conference — Is this the face of a fool, or is she trying to fool us?
I dropped my head into my hands and kicked the table leg under me, much to the disapproval of the waitress. DS Clarke had suggested it would be a good idea to wait inside the forum until it died down out front, so we’d ended up finding a table tucked away in the corner and had ordered a coffee, half of which was now spilled on the table.
“Are there no positive responses?”
DS Clarke grimaced as he scrolled through his smart phone. “It’s a mixed bag.” He used his napkin to wipe up my coffee spillage.
Did he suspect me of something? Or did he just think I was a useless mother who deserved to lose her daughter? Teigan’s face floated in my mind like a ghost, along with the commonly parroted statistic. I decided to take the opportunity to ask DS Clarke.
“Detective … can I ask you a question?”
He nodded, putting down his cup of coffee. “Sure.”
“You know that thing you always hear, that if someone isn’t found in the first seventy-two hours, then they won’t be found. Is it true?” He was shaking his head before I even finished my sentence, which gave me some hope.
“No, that’s not true. Well, not in the way it’s thrown about these days, anyhow.” He sighed, tucking his chair in closer to the table. “Look, of course it is better to find someone in the first few hours. Normally, especially with younger kids, they haven’t gone far, and therefore you do find them within that sort of time period. But there are lots of exceptions to the rule. Don’t get bogged down by a stat like that. It isn’t going to do you any good.”
I nodded, my eyes welling with tears again. “It’s just that part of me thought that she’d be back last night. Even if she’d gone off with that ‘xoxo’ guy. I thought, maybe, she’d be back from wherever they’d gone. But, now I know it’s much more likely she’s being held somewhere against her will, even if she did go willingly in the first instance.”
DS Clarke was shaking his head again. “You don’t know that. You can’t jump to false conclusions.”
“But look at the state of her phone! Surely that suggests someone forced it off her and made sure it was out of use?” I was staring at him, willing him to convince me otherwise, but he stayed quiet, confirming that his line of thought was going down the same path.
“We’re doing everything we can,” he said, softly. “As I said, that ‘xoxo’ number has gone completely off the radar, but if it does come back into use, we will be alerted straightaway. We’ve sent officers out to search the surrounding area of the last known GPS, and we’ve been door-knocking all around Chapelfield Gardens to see if anyone saw anything suspicious in the park that morning. I think the first thing is to establish how Teigan became separated from her phone. If someone saw that, we may be on to something.” He studied me for a moment. “You’re sure she left the house around half past eight, are you?”
Part of me wanted to admit that I didn’t know for sure. But that would mean confessing to the previous lie, which would automatically make me look suspicious. I couldn’t have him going off down the wrong tangent and wasting resources on me.
“Yes, I’m sure.”