returned with it to the table, John was not only gone but likely had been gone for nearly five minutes, more than enough time to get him out of the Barriers altogether.
Dresser did not at first think that John had been taken. Indeed, with the takeaway so crowded, that was the last thing on his mind. Instead, he thought the boy - restless as he'd been in Stanley Wallingford's DIY shop - had climbed down from his seat and wandered off, perhaps attracted by something inside McDonald's, perhaps attracted by something just outside the takeaway but still well within the arcade. These were vital minutes, but Dresser did not see them that way. Not unreasonably, he looked round the take away first before he began asking the adults therein if they had seen John.
One wonders how it is possible. It is midday. It is a public place. It contains other people, both children and adults. Yet three young boys are still able to walk up to a toddler, take him by the hand, and make off with him without anyone apparently noticing. How could this happen?
Why did it happen?
The how of it is, I believe, contained within the age of the perpetrators of this crime. The fact that they were children themselves made them virtually invisible because what they did was beyond the imagination of the people present in the McDonald's. People simply did not expect malevolence to arrive in the package in which it was presented that day. People tend to have predetermined mental pictures of child abductors, and those pictures do not include schoolboys.
Once it became clear that John was not in the McDonald's and had not been noticed, Dresser widened his search. It was only after he had checked the four nearest shops that he tracked down the arcade's security force and an announcement was made over the public-address system, alerting the patrons of the Barriers to be on the lookout for a small boy in a bright blue snowsuit. An hour passed during which Dresser continued to look for his son, accompanied by the shopping arcade's manager and the head of the security team. None of them considered looking at the CCTV tapes because none of them at that point wished to think the unthinkable.
Chapter Five
BARBARA HAVERS HAD TO USE HER ID TO CONVINCE THE constable that she was a cop. He'd barked at her, "Hey! Cemetery's closed, madam," as she'd approached the main entrance, having finally found a place for her decrepit Mini just behind a skip, where a building was being renovated in Stoke Newington Church Street.
Barbara chalked it up to the outfit. She and Hadiyyah had managed the purchase of that staple of all women's wardrobes - the A-line skirt - but that was it. After returning Hadiyyah to Mrs. Silver, Barbara had donned the skirt in a hurry, had seen it was several inches too long, had decided to wear it anyway, but had done nothing else about her appearance other than to loop the necklace from Accessorize round her neck.
She said, "The Met," to the constable, who gaped at her before he managed to gather his wits enough to say, "Inside," and to offer her the sign-in sheet on a clipboard.
How bloody helpful, Barbara thought. She replaced her ID in her shoulder bag, fished out a packet of fags, and lit up. She was about to make a polite request for a wee bit more information as to the pre cise location of the crime scene when a slow-moving procession emerged from beneath the plane trees just beyond the cemetery fence. This comprised an ambulance crew, a pathologist with professional bag in hand, and a uniformed constable. The ambulance crew had a body bag on a trolley, which they'd been carrying like a stretcher. They paused to lower its legs. They then continued towards the gates.
Barbara met them just inside. She said, "Superintendent Ardery?" and the pathologist nodded vaguely in a northern direction. "Uniforms along the way," was the limit of the guidance she gave although she added, "You'll see them. Fingertip search," to indicate there would be enough of them to give Barbara further directions should she need them.
She didn't, as things turned out, although she was quite surprised she managed to find the crime scene at all, considering the maze that constituted the cemetery. But within minutes, the spire of a chapel came into view and soon enough she saw Isabelle Ardery with a police photographer. They were