SOMEBODY IN A HURRY!
YARROW STEPPED BACK FROM THE WINDOW, deeply conflicted. His instincts shouted to him that Emily had been taken to Bolehill Copse, but standard procedures should be followed – firstly, to search the immediate environs of the children’s ward, widening out to encompass the entire hospital, the hospital grounds, and then spreading out further, the ripples in a pond of procedural search practice.
Frustrated, he stared again at the mosaic of footprints about the little girl’s cot, trying to gain some insight into the abductor’s movements and thoughts. He squatted down on his haunches again to study the footprint smears in the polished floor and noticed a drinking glass that had fallen from the night table and rolled under the bed. He carefully eased it out by using his pencil and then left it in sight for the fingerprint section to print. He doubted very much that an eagle-eyed matron or staff nurse would have missed it there under the bed and thought there could be a chance that the abductor may have touched it, knocking it over as he took the child from her bed. It seemed unlikely, but he could take no chances.
The pattern of footprints in the polish intrigued him. Puzzled him. At first glance, it seemed that footprints led from the ward entry across to Emily’s cot and then to the open window. But as he crouched down again to try and read the message in the footprints – we could do with a good Apache tracker here, he thought irreverently – viewed from a different angle, the impressions changed – footprints had led to the window, two clear sets of footprints made by a man judging by the size of the prints, smaller child’s prints, a cacophony of milling prints, and then, almost obscured, the same prints leading back to the door.
The abductor had not left the ward by means of the window.
Perhaps the little girl had got frightened at that point and baulked at being carried out through an open window into the night.
The trail of stockinged footprints and the bare footprints of the child seemed to lead back to the ward entry, to be lost in the confused melee of prints on and out of the ward doorway.
‘They didn’t go out the window,’ he said at last to Harding, ‘Look, the prints lead back to the door.’ He squatted down on his haunches again to point out to his sergeant how the pattern of smears and prints appeared to lead back to the door. Harding followed the line of Yarrow’s pointing finger, but in all honesty, he could not read the same story into the faint smudges in the polish as had Yarrow.
‘Ye-es,’ he answered hesitantly, not wishing to contradict his boss but reluctant to wholeheartedly endorse his theories – however, he had a deep-rooted respect for Yarrow’s instincts, so he answered again, more confidently, ‘Yes, sir, I see, could be. Could be.’
‘I’m sure of it. The little girl got scared, I think, and her abductor changed his mind about going out through the window. We must assume she has been abducted even though the search of the hospital and grounds is not finished yet.’ He turned his gaze back to the window, to Bolehill Copse. Harding followed his line of sight. ‘You think she’s been taken there, don’t you, sir?’
‘Yes, I do. I do. Certain of it.’
‘Do you want me to set up a search?’
‘Procedure, Marcus,’ Yarrow responded. ‘Procedure says we must first search the hospital and then the grounds before widening the search, calling for volunteers from the town to help.’ But Yarrow was conflicted, all his instincts as a policeman told him that Bolehill Copse was where the trail would end, but to divert resources from the hospital search meant that the search would take longer or not be so thorough.
But against that, if the little girl was injured or in danger, the longer she was left there, if that was where she was, and with every passing minute, he became more convinced of it, then the greater the need to find her quickly. He made his decision.
‘OK, Marcus, take two men with you, do as thorough a job as you can, and I’ll join you when we are done here. Just advise Inspector Trueman on your way out that I request you to take two of his bodies. I hope to God I am wrong and that the little girl will turn up in some hidden corner of this labyrinth lost and crying for her mother, but…’ he left the thought unspoken.
‘I understand, sir.’
Just then Yarrow saw DC Harry Rawlings approaching; he too looked dishevelled and unkempt, peremptorily called from his bed to join the search after a heavy night’s drinking and snooker at the police club. ‘Take Rawlings with you, Marcus. And see if there is a WPC available as well. If the little girl is injured… or …interfered with… you know, a female officer might be best. Ask Eddie Trueman if one is available. Harry,’ he called, ‘Go with Sgt Harding and search Bolehill Copse. Take a WPC as well.’
‘Guv,’ Harding was about to protest, ‘He and I…’
‘If you can’t work together as a team, I’ve got no time or use for either of you. Especially not now,’ snapped Yarrow, in no mood for office rivalries or discordant personalities.
‘Right, sir.’ There was no other answer he could give.
Yarrow fished in his pockets for his car keys, ‘Here, take my car; you can’t all travel on that heap of junk you call a motorcycle. I’ll join you in one of the squad cars.’
‘Sir, I can’t drive, at least I can but haven’t got my licence yet.’
‘Go, only don’t crash it, or scratch else I’ll have your hide.’ And he thrust the keys into Harding’s hand and propelled him past the nurse’s station and then carefully walked backwards, trying again to read the signs in the polish of the floor. He stood for a long minute staring back into the ward, and as he did, a shaft of pale-yellow morning sunlight speared through the open window by Emily’s cot, the glare obliterating the faint traces of footprints in the polished floor.
Nurse Alison Worthywool watched him in some amazement; the policeman seemed so totally absorbed in his thoughts, it was as if the rest of the world did not exist for him. She had tried not to stare at his hideously burned face and the twisted scar tissue from his skin graft operations—both successful and unsuccessful— but found it hard not to do so.
A nurse standing next to her whispered that he was a widowed fighter pilot injured during the war and more recently severely burnt during an incident at the local asylum.
She felt such a sudden well of pity for him that her own troubles, the concern for her job in the wake of Emily Black’s disappearance, seemed so futile and small in comparison to what he had suffered.
She wanted to get to know him better, she thought, but felt that she never would. She had once been engaged to marry, but Alan, her fiancé, had left her for a girl in the typing pool in the office where he worked, and when she thought back on it, she was glad, relieved even, though the hurt of rejection had left her emotionally scarred and reluctant to enter another relationship. The rejection of her for a prettier girl (his parting words, so cruel) had deeply damaged her self-confidence.
Yarrow came up to her now, but without really seeing her, his thoughts entirely focused on his search for the direction of the abductor’s movements once he had left the ward with the girl in his grasp. He did not so much as push her aside as simply did not see her, brushing past her so that the back of his mutilated left hand swept across the outside of her thigh, but he had so little feeling in the scarified flesh he did not sense he had done so. But Alison did, and the memory of the touch stayed with her; she felt as though his hand was still on her leg. It was a feeling she liked. She took a sudden deep breath, her heavy bosom straining against the confines of her uniform.
Yarrow now stood in the doorway, casting his glances up and down the corridor which led back to the main entrance and then to another shorter corridor which led off to the right and a fire exit door which led to the outside. Alison Worthywool thought he looked like a bloodhound on the scent; at any moment, she thought, he’s going to get down on his hands and knees and start sniffing or else produce a large magnifying glass from his inside pocket and follow a trail that way.
She almost giggled to herself before the seriousness of the situation came rushing back to hit her with a force that sent a lurch of fear and worry for the safety of Emily coursing through her. The pit of her stomach roiled with a sudden tension, and she had to swallow down hard, hearing the click of her sinuses in her eardrums as she did so.
Yarrow slowly walked on down the corridor leading to the fire exit, all the while scanning to the right and left, looking for signs of struggle or anything to confirm this was the route taken. Behind him, Alison, the hapless night doctor, his coat still flapping, two more PCs who had somehow found their way there, and a gaggle of assorted bystanders, nurses, orderlies, and a patient or two followed, whispering and chattering amongst themselves, like children playing blind man’s bluff. He turned suddenly and snarled at the two policemen; his twisted face further contorted by his anger. ‘Constable, get this rabble out of here. Have you no sense? This is a crime scene. Get this area secured; nobody is to come closer than fifty feet unless I expressly say so.’
‘Yes, sir,’ one of the coppers responded, ‘Come on, you lot, you heard the Inspector, get back, go on, clear the way. Back. Back,’ waving his arms as if to shoo them away. Yarrow turned back to the exit door; his anger already subsided.
The exit door opened with a panic bar, and as he approached, he could see the door slightly ajar. Somebody had passed through the door and simply allowed the door to swing back on the overhead door closer, not waiting to see if the door had closed fully and re-locked onto the panic bar.
Somebody in a hurry!