“We will, Dawn. I know this is hard, but we need to know a few more things to help us find Bella. When did you last see her? Was she on her own in the garden?”
“She was playing with the cat. On her own. After her nap. She hadn’t been out there long. Just a few minutes. I went out to bring her in about three thirty and she’d gone. We’ve looked everywhere. Please, help me find her.”
“Okay. Stay with me, Dawn. Can you describe Bella? What is she wearing?”
“She’s got blond hair—in a ponytail today. She’s only little. She’s just a baby.
“I just can’t remember what she was wearing. A T-shirt and trousers, I think. Oh God, I can’t think. She had her glasses on. Little round ones with pink frames—it’s because she’s got a lazy eye. Please find her. Please.”
It was thirty minutes later, after two uniforms from the Hampshire force had gone to confirm Dawn Elliott’s story and make an immediate search of the house, that Bella’s name came to DI Sparkes’s attention.
“Two-year-old gone missing, Bob,” his sergeant said, as he barged into the DI’s office. “Bella Elliott. Not been seen for nearly two hours. In the front garden, playing, and then gone. It’s a council estate on the edge of Southampton. Mum’s in pieces and the doctor’s with her now.”
Sergeant Ian Matthews laid a slim folder on his boss’s desk. Bella Elliott’s name was written in black marker on the cover and, attached with a paper clip, was a color photo of a little girl. Sparkes tapped the photo, taking it in before opening the file.
“What are we doing? Where are we looking? Where’s the dad?”
Sergeant Matthews sat down heavily. “The house, the loft, the garden so far. Doesn’t look good. No sign of her. Dad is from the Midlands, the mum thinks—a brief encounter who left before Bella was born. We’re trying to trace him, but the mum isn’t helping. She says he doesn’t need to know.”
“And what about her? What’s she like? What was she doing while her two-year-old was playing outside?” Sparkes asked.
“Said she was making Bella’s tea. The kitchen looks out over the back garden, so she couldn’t see her. Only a low wall at the front, barely a wall at all.”
“Bit careless to leave a child that age unsupervised,” Sparkes mused, trying to remember his two kids at the same age. James was now thirty—an accountant, of all things—and Samantha, twenty-six and newly engaged. Had he and Eileen ever left them in the garden as toddlers? He couldn’t remember, to be honest. Probably wasn’t around much at that stage—always out at work. He’d ask Eileen when he got home—if he got home tonight.
DI Sparkes reached for his coat, on a hook behind him, and fished his car keys out of a pocket. “I’d better get out there and have a look, Matthews. Sniff the air, talk to the mum. You stay here and get things organized in case we need an incident room. I’ll call you before seven.”
In the car on the way to Westland, he turned on the radio to hear the local news. Bella was top of the news bulletin, but the reporter had found nothing that Sparkes didn’t already know.
Thank goodness for that, he thought, his feelings toward the local media decidedly mixed.
The last time a child had gone missing, things had turned ugly when the reporters started their own investigation and stomped all over the evidence. Laura Simpson, a five-year-old from Gosport, had been found dirty, scared, and hidden in a cupboard at her stepuncle’s place—“It was one of those families where every Tom, Dick, and Harry was a relative,” he’d told Eileen.
Unfortunately, one of the reporters had removed the family album from the mother’s flat, so the police hadn’t seen a photo of Uncle Jim—a local registered sex offender—and realized his connection with the missing girl.
He’d tried to have sex with the child but failed, and Sparkes believed he would have killed her as the detectives ran around in circles, sometimes only yards from her prison, if another member of the extended family hadn’t got drunk and rung in with the name. Laura escaped with bruising to her body and mind. He could still see her eyes as he opened the door to the cupboard. Terror—no other word for it. Terror that he was going to be like Uncle Jim. He’d called a female detective forward to hold Laura in her arms. Safe at last. Everyone had tears in their eyes except Laura. She looked numb.
He’d always thought he’d let her down somehow. Should’ve found the link earlier. Should’ve asked different questions. Should’ve found her quicker. His boss and the press had treated it like a triumph, but he couldn’t celebrate. Not after he’d seen those eyes.
Wonder where she is now, he thought. Wonder where Uncle Jim is now.
? ? ?
Manor Road was filled with reporters, neighbors, and police officers, each interviewing one another in a verbal orgy.
Sparkes pushed his way through the knot of people at the gate of number 44a, nodding at the journalists he recognized. “Bob,” a woman’s voice called. “Hi. Any news? Any leads?” Kate Waters pushed forward and smiled mock wearily. He’d last seen her during a grisly murder investigation in the New Forest and had enjoyed a couple of drinks and a gossip in the weeks it took to nail the husband.
They went way back, bumping into each other every so often on different cases and picking up where they’d left off. Not really a friendship, he thought. It was definitely all about work, but Kate was all right. Last time, she’d held onto a line in the story she’d stumbled on until he was ready for the information to come out. He owed her one.
“Hello, Kate. Just got here but may have something to say later,” he said, ducking past the uniform guarding the house.
There was a smell of cats and cigarettes in the front room; Dawn Elliott was huddled on a sofa, trembling fingers clutching a mobile phone and a doll. Her blond hair was tethered off her face in a halfhearted ponytail, making her look even younger. She looked up at the tall, serious-looking man in the doorway, her face collapsing.
“Have you found her?” she managed.
“Ms. Elliott, I’m Detective Inspector Bob Sparkes. I’m here to help find Bella, and I want you to help me.”
Dawn looked at him. “But I’ve told the police everything. What’s the good of asking the same questions over and over? Just find her. Find my baby!” she shouted hoarsely.
He nodded and sat down beside her. “Come on, Dawn, let’s go through it together,” he said gently. “There may be something new you remember.”
So she told him her tale, dry sobs choking off her words. Bella was Dawn Elliott’s only child, the result of a doomed affair with a married man she’d met at a nightclub, a sweet little girl who loved watching Disney videos and dancing. Dawn didn’t mix much with the neighbors. “They look down their noses at me. I’m a single mum on benefits. They think I’m a scrounger,” she told Bob Sparkes.
But as they talked, his team and scores of volunteers from the community, many still in their work clothes, were searching back gardens, dustbins, hedges, attics, basements, sheds, cars, kennels, and compost heaps all over the neighborhood. The light was beginning to fade outside, and a voice suddenly cried out, “Bella! Bella! Where are you, lovey?” and Dawn Elliott jumped to her feet to look out the window.
“Dawn, come and sit down,” Sparkes said. “I want to ask if Bella has misbehaved today.” She shook her head.
“Have you been cross with her about anything?” he continued. “Little ones can be a bit of a trial, can’t they? Did you have to smack her or anything?”
The intent behind the questions slowly dawned on the young woman, and she shrieked her innocence. “No, of course not. I never smack her. Well, not very often—only when she acts up sometimes. I haven’t hurt her. Someone’s taken her . . .”
Sparkes patted her hand and asked the family liaison officer to make another cup of tea.
A young constable put his head around the sitting room door and gestured to his senior officer that he needed a word.
“Someone saw a bloke wandering about the area earlier this afternoon,” he told Sparkes. “A neighbor saw him. Didn’t recognize him.”