he didn’t want to see that look on anyone’s face again as long as he lived.
‘Hey!’ he shouted, because for the life of him he’d forgotten what the other man was called.
Gareth turned back. There it was again, that look: sheer terror. He opened his mouth and Harry could just about make out what Gareth was croaking at him. Not Millie then, Millie was OK after all.
Joe was the one who’d gone missing.
69
‘OK, THEN, THIS IS WHAT WE KNOW.’ DETECTIVE CHIEF Superintendent Rushton stopped and cleared his throat. He had to look at the top of Alice’s head, her eyes were staring down at a stray cornflake on the kitchen table.
‘Joe was definitely still in King George’s at the interval,’ continued Rushton, ‘which took place from three fifteen to three forty-five. The front-of-house manager was quite definite about timings. Joe was bought an ice cream and more than one little lad remembers seeing him in the toilet queue. What we can’t be certain of is whether he was still in the theatre for the second half.’
‘Who the hell was sitting next to him?’ said Gareth. He hadn’t stopped moving since he and Harry had walked through the door. He paced the floor, he rocked back and forth on his heels, he wandered from room to room, shouting his thoughts out to whoever might be listening. Alice, in sharp contrast, had barely moved in three hours. Her face seemed to be getting paler and smaller by the minute.
Harry looked at his watch – almost eight o’clock. He pulled his phone from his pocket and checked the screen. No messages.
‘Well, that’s the thing,’ said DI Neasden. ‘The kids didn’t have allocated seats, they all swapped round at the interval. One or two of the little ones got scared of the baddie up on stage and went to sit next to the teachers. The theatre wasn’t completely full, so there were empty seats. No one we’ve spoken to can definitely remember seeing Joe during the second half. We’ve checked with the event stewards; there were three of them on duty and none of them remember seeing a young lad wandering round by himself.’
‘The school didn’t know for certain he was missing until they got all the kids back on the coaches and did a head count,’ said Rushton. ‘This was at ten to five. The staff went back into the theatre to search, and gave up after another thirty minutes. We were notified at twenty-five past five.’
‘He could have been gone two hours by then,’ said Gareth, pushing his way past DI Neasden to get to the sink. He ran himself a glass of water, raised it to his lips and put it down again. He turned as the kitchen door opened and Tom came in. The boy stood in the doorway, looking from one adult to the next. No one seemed to know what to say to him. Then Jenny Pickup appeared behind him, paler and more dishevelled than usual, with Millie in her arms.
‘Come on, Tom, love,’ she said. ‘Let’s leave everyone to talk. Shall we play on the computer?’
Tom opened his mouth as if to say something, but his bottom lip began to tremble. He turned and ran from the room, just as Millie started squealing to get to her mother. Alice stood and held out her arms. She took her daughter and dropped down into her seat again, as though the effort of standing was just too much.
‘I’ll stay with Tom,’ muttered Jenny.
‘Thanks,’ said Gareth. ‘I’ll come through in a sec. They should probably be in bed.’
Harry checked the screen of his mobile again as Jenny slipped out of the room.
‘OK then,’ said Rushton. ‘Next thing we did was have a look at the CCTV footage. Not the easiest of tasks; it’s a big building. As well as the pantomime, they had a conference in the Northgate Suite and the café-bar was as busy as you’d expect a few days before Christmas.’
‘And?’ said Gareth, pouring the water down the sink.
Rushton shook his head. ‘The cameras in the foyer didn’t pick up anything. Of course there were a lot of people milling around in the interval and it’s not impossible he slipped out behind someone else, but the school had a member of staff standing by the doors to prevent exactly that. She’s adamant no child went past her and she seems pretty reliable.’
‘What about other doors?’ asked Harry.
‘Including the staff entrance and the fire doors, there are nine exits