“COCAINE.”
“What?”
“He was in possession of a quantity of cocaine.”
One of the policemen had moved remarkably swiftly and had intercepted Darren just as he reached the exit, bringing him down with a masterly executed rugby tackle.
“So is that why he ran?” I asked.
“He claims so. He said he was trying to get outside so he could dump it before it was found on him. He vehemently maintains that he has nothing to do with your daughter going missing. But he also told us that both he and your daughter shared a line of coke before they came downstairs earlier. That might have affected her reasoning and could explain her subsequent behaviour.”
I’d always known that boy was a bad influence on her.
By now it was almost midnight, and the two policemen were in the house with Georgina, James, and myself, all of us sitting around the kitchen table. Our guests had gone, including Darren, who had been arrested for possession of a Class A drug and taken away in a police van for further questioning, about both the cocaine and any part he might have played in Amanda’s disappearance.
The policemen had initially said they wanted every guest to give their name and address, but I assured them that I could provide them with that information, so they recorded just those of the catering staff and the DJ, who had packed away his unused music and light equipment and departed—but not before he’d been paid, and in cash.
But there was still no sight nor sound of Amanda, and Georgina was getting increasingly frantic.
“So what do we do now?” I asked the policemen. “What if Darren Williamson is responsible?”
“If your daughter hasn’t turned up by the morning, we will initiate a search of the local vicinity. You said that Mr Williamson had not been missing from the party for more than forty minutes or so, so he can’t have taken her far, not on foot.”
“Can’t you search now?” I asked. “She may be lying somewhere out there injured.”
Or dead, I thought, trying not to believe that.
“We need daylight to be able to search properly,” said the policeman. “It is far too easy to miss objects in the dark, even something as large as a human being.”
“It’s light by half past four,” I said.
“We will have a search team here around eight.”
I’d be out long before that. In fact, I’d be searching all night.
“How long can you keep Williamson in custody?” I asked.
“Initially, we have twenty-four hours from the time he arrives at the police station.” He looked at his watch. “That will be about now, as he’s been taken to Oxford. After that we have to charge or release him, or get special permission from a superintendent or a magistrate, to question him further.”
“Is he likely to be charged with the drug possession?”
“Almost certainly, especially as he has had a previous conviction, even though that was not for drugs. It will be up to the Crown Prosecution Service to decide. They might recommend he gets charged with possession with intent to supply because he has openly admitted that he supplied cocaine for your daughter’s use.”
“What will he get?”
“The maximum sentence for possession of a Class A drug is seven years, although he would never get that long, considering the small amount we found on him. But for possession with intent to supply, the maximum is life.”
As far as I was concerned, life imprisonment for Darren would be too short.
“So you can keep him while the search is on for Amanda?”
“Almost certainly, but that will be up to my inspector. Depends on how long the search takes.”
The policeman stood up to go.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “There’s nothing more we can do here for now. We’ll report everything to our inspector in the morning, and I expect it will then be passed to CID. They’ll be here with a search team in the morning.”
The two policemen walked out of the kitchen towards the front door, and James went with them.
Georgina looked at me in despair, with tears in her eyes. “Where is our little girl?” she asked quietly.
Where, indeed?
Would Amanda really go off on her own volition during her party? Surely not. But what was the alternative?
I didn’t want to think about that and tried to banish such negative thoughts, but the mind is very powerful. As hard as I tried to bury them in my subconscious, they kept popping back to the surface to haunt me.
I had a vivid picture in my brain of Amanda’s lifeless body lying naked and bloodied, half hidden in the undergrowth. I shook my head to try and throw the image away, but it persisted and sent shivers down my spine.
How could this be happening to us?
I was finding it hugely difficult to control my own emotions, mostly the terrifying prospect of having lost Amanda forever. What had been one of the best days of my life had suddenly developed into its worst night.
“I’m going out to look for her,” I said, fighting to control my voice so as not to make Georgina’s distress even worse.
“Where?”
“I don’t know, but I can’t just sit here doing nothing.”
“Then I’ll come with you.”
“No. You stay here in case the police call. I gave them the landline number because the mobile signal is so poor. I’ll take James with me.”
“I don’t want to be left on my own,” Georgina said quickly, the tears now flowing freely.
“All right. James will stay here with you.”
“But are you okay to drive?”
“I think so. I’ve had nothing to drink for the past two hours and not an awful lot before that. I must be fine.”
“The last thing I need right now is for you to be killed hitting a tree.”
“Then I’ll walk. I have to do something. I’ll just go around the village. Then I’ll come back.”
James came into the kitchen.
“I’m going out to search in the village,” I told him. “You stay here with Mum.”
“I’d rather come with you,” he said.
“But your mother needs you here. I’m going up to change.”
I had just reached the bedroom when there was a sharp knocking on the front door. I instantly started to go back down, but James beat me to it.
As he opened the door, I was halfway down the stairs, and I could see two uniformed policemen standing there, silhouetted against the headlights of their car.
Georgina came out of the kitchen and saw the same thing.
“Oh God, no!” she screamed, and sat down heavily on the hall floor.
Ever since it had happened to Georgina’s parents, when her sister had been killed in a car crash, at just eighteen years old, it had always been our worst nightmare that police would also arrive at our door in the middle of the night. We had discussed it often. Almost always, it meant only one thing.
One of the officers stepped through the door and I now saw that he was one of the two that had been here earlier. He went forward quickly to my wife, who was now lying on the floor, sobbing.
“It’s all right, Mrs Newton,” he said, crouching down and laying a kindly hand on her shoulder. “We’ve come to tell you that your daughter is safe and well.”
Safe and well!
I sat down on the stairs, and now I was also sobbing—weeping tears of relief.
“Pangbourne! But that’s miles away. How did she get there?”
“We are still trying to establish that,” said the policemen.
We were all back in the kitchen, sitting around the table.
“It seems she banged on someone’s front door in Pangbourne, asking for help, and the homeowner called 999. We heard the report on our personal radios when we were not that far down the road, so we came straight back to tell you.”
“Thank you. Thank you.” I said it with meaning.
“Where is she now?” I asked.
“She’s been taken to the Royal Berkshire Hospital in Reading.”
“Is she hurt?” Georgina’s voice was still full of fear.
“Not that I’m aware of,” said the policeman. “But it’s normal practice for missing persons who are found to be taken straight to a hospital. To check that they are well and that they have not been abused.”
“Abused?” Georgina asked.
“Injured or … anything.”
Raped, he meant, I realised.
“Can we go and collect her?” I asked.
“In due course,” he said. “She will need to be interviewed first. If it is believed she’s been the victim of a crime, she’ll have to be examined by our forensic team for traces of DNA. I assure you, she’ll be quite safe overnight in hospital. Security will be provided.”
“But we want her home,” Georgina insisted.
“Mrs Newton,” said the policeman quietly, “I understand your wish to have her back here with her family, but first and foremost, we have to determine her wishes.”
“What do you mean by that?” Georgina demanded.
“She’s over the age of eighteen, and therefore she is legally an adult. She may have left of her own free will. Perhaps she doesn’t want to come back.”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Georgina said.
But I could see the strength of his argument, even if I didn’t believe it.
Surely she would have not left of her own free will without at least taking her phone with her. Unless, of course, she didn’t want it to help trace where she had gone.
For the moment, I was just so thankful that she had been found. I could happily wait until the morning to get the answers to the questions of how and why she had disappeared, only to turn up nine miles away.
And there were certainly some pressing questions in my head.
Had she walked to Pangbourne? Or had she been driven?
Walking nine miles in three hours was not particularly difficult for a fit nineteen-year-old. But she’d been wearing a party dress and high-heeled shoes. Or had she stashed a change of clothes and footwear close by, ready for use?
“What was she wearing when she banged on this person’s door?” I asked.
“I don’t have that information,” replied the policeman. “I am sure that all the questions will be answered in the morning.
Probably not all of them, I thought.
“So what happens to Darren Williamson now?”
“He will probably still be detained overnight. Possession of a Class A drug is a serious matter. He’ll be interviewed in the morning and may be charged.”
“May be?”
“If it’s his first drug offence, he will likely be released with an official caution.”
“A caution? That hardly seems enough punishment for supplying my daughter with cocaine.”
“We have no evidence of that. It might have been the other way around. In fact we have no evidence that either Mr Williamson or your daughter took cocaine at all, other than what Mr Williamson said to us earlier, and he might not have been telling the truth.”
Now that wouldn’t surprise me for a second.
“And accepting an official police caution is a formal admission of guilt and becomes part of the person’s criminal record. It’s a lot more than just a slap on the wrist.”
It didn’t sound like it to me.
“Right,” said the policeman, standing up. “Time for us to leave.”
I walked the two officers through to the hallway and out onto the driveway.
“Do you still need the list of names and addresses of our party guests?”
“That will depend on what your daughter has to say. I’ll let you know.”
The two officers climbed into their car and drove away, and I went back to the kitchen.
“I want to go to the hospital,” Georgina stated determinedly.
“We will in the morning,” I said.
“I want to go now. I need to look after my little girl.”
“She’s not a little girl anymore.” I said it quietly and gently. “She’s a fully grown young woman.”
“To me, she’ll always be my little girl,” Georgina said, looking across the table. “And I want to see her right now!”
“But even if we do go to the hospital, there’s no guarantee the police will let us see her.”
“I still want to be close by, in case she needs me.”
Even I could see that further argument would be futile. Either I drove Georgina to the hospital or she would drive herself, and I wasn’t at all sure that her mind was sufficiently rational under the circumstances. James was certainly in no fit state to get behind the wheel of a car. He was the only one who had continued drinking after the party had come to an abrupt halt, and he still had a can of lager in his hand even now.
“Okay,” I said. “I’ll take you to the hospital.”
“Will you be all right to drive?”
“I’ll have to be,” I said. “James, you stay here in case the police call again on the landline.”
“Why would they do that?” he asked, somewhat slurring his words.
“Just stay here in case they do,” I said, resisting the temptation to get cross with him.
“All right,” he said, standing up and swaying slightly. “No problem.”
If he had any more alcohol, I thought, he wouldn’t hear the phone even if it exploded.
We didn’t hit a tree, or anything else for that matter, and made it to the Royal Berkshire Hospital in Reading without incident.
I parked in front of the impressive porticoed north entrance and decided not to bother paying the parking charge—surely no one would be checking at three o’clock in the morning.
The only entrance we could find open at this time of night was the Accident and Emergency department on Craven Road.
Even at this hour, the department was quite busy, with at least fifteen people sitting on metal chairs waiting to be seen, a couple of them holding babies.
“We’re enquiring after one of your female patients,” I said to the young woman sitting behind a glass panel in the reception. “Her name is Amanda Newton. We’re her parents.”
The receptionist typed something into her computer before looking up at us through the glass.
“She’s no longer here in A&E. She’s been taken upstairs to the general admissions ward.”
“Can we see her?” I asked.
“Visiting times are from two o’clock in the afternoon until eight o’clock in the evening,” the receptionist replied unhelpfully.
“But we have come here especially,” Georgina pleaded. “Amanda went missing from her home, and she was found and brought here by the police.”
She looked at us, as if deciding. “I’ll give the ward duty nurse a call.”
We waited as the call was made. I could hear that it was ringing, but it was quite a long while before it was answered.
The receptionist turned away from us as she spoke, so I couldn’t make out what was being said on either side. After a couple of minutes, she turned back, holding her hand over the phone mouthpiece.
“Your daughter is in a side room under protection. She’s not permitted to receive visitors.”
Georgina burst into tears and begged. “Please, can we see her?”
“It has been a very emotional evening,” I explained. “Please ask the nurse if it would be possible to see her just for a moment, even if it’s just through a window or through a crack in the door. So we can reassure ourselves that she is safe and well.”
The receptionist turned away and spoke again into the phone before once more turning back to us.
“The night duty nurse is seeing what she can arrange. But she would have to find someone from security to come and collect you, and it might take a while. If you still want to wait, go and sit over there.” She pointed across at some of the metal chairs.
“Thank you,” I said.
We went over to the seats.
“I need to go to the loo,” Georgina said, walking off towards the ladies.
As I sat down, my phone rang.
I looked at it. No Caller ID had appeared on the screen.
Who on earth could be calling me at this hour?
“Hello,” I said slowly, answering.
“Is that Chester Newton?” asked a funny-sounding voice, all high pitched and squeaky, as if using an electronic voice changer or a swazzle, like Punch in a Punch and Judy show.
“Yes,” I said warily. “Who is this?”
“See how easy it was for me to take your daughter,” said the squeaky voice. “In the future, you will do as I say, or next time she’ll come home in a body bag.”