‘He’s only just outside,’ said Nicola.
Denise went back out, while Nicola finished being served. Denise came back.
‘I can’t find him outside.’
She went back to the door, as one of the shop assistants realised something was happening.
‘What’s wrong?’
‘The little boy’s gone missing from outside.’
The shop assistant told her to go to security and report it. Denise didn’t know where security was. The shop assistant told her. Round to the right, on the far side, by the back entrance.
Denise and Nicola ran out, heading for security. They looked into a couple of shops, Superdrug and a stationers, asking around as they went. ‘Has anybody seen a little boy?’
It was about quarter to four when Denise reached the security office with Nicola and Vanessa. She was very upset now, as she spoke to the guard on duty in the control room. James was the day’s first reported missing child. They were common enough to be unremarkable, and were almost always found within 15 to 20 minutes. Friday had been a quiet day all round, at the Strand. The fire alarm activated at Dixons at half past one had turned out to be the staff making toast for lunch.
The guard took a description of James and where he had last been seen, then relayed the details by tannoy throughout the precinct. Denise and Nicola went off to search and came back about five minutes later, asking the guard to repeat the tannoy message. He had been looking through the security cameras but had seen nothing. He repeated the tannoy message as Denise and Nicola went off again.
The guard received a phone call from TJ Hughes. Denise was there. Had the child been found yet? No. The guard passed on James’s description for the store’s own internal tannoy system.
Denise returned to the office shortly before a quarter past four, with an in-store security officer from TJ Hughes. Any news? No. The Strand’s guard then phoned Marsh Lane Police Station, around the corner, to report a missing child, and made his own entry in the Strand’s Site Book: ‘16.15: Child missing on Precinct approx. 30 minutes. Police informed and given description. Police will attend a.s.a.p.’