The Shadow Man Page 9

  ‘You should get in there and tell them that.’ Connie leaned back against Baarda’s car, studying the body language of the schoolgirl as she looked from the police to her presumptive mother, appearing increasingly exasperated.

  ‘I’m only on backup at request. I have no authority in there. Nothing worse than one officer treading on another’s toes.’

  ‘I think the scene requires less Eton manners and more leadership, don’t you? No one’s listening to that girl. If you can ignore your ridiculously frustrating tendency towards Victorian etiquette – no offence intended—’

  ‘I doubt that,’ Baarda muttered.

  ‘Then I might be able to help with your witness before she’s either fed information that organically changes her story, or she becomes exhausted and gives inaccurate information just to get everyone off her back.’

  ‘How did you figure that out from here?’

  ‘She’s hugging herself, making fists with her hands, refusing to look at the woman who’s either a relative or a guardian next to her. Shoulders getting higher by the minute. She’s stressed and self-protecting. Do you need me to write a textbook, or do you want to assert yourself and maybe achieve something?’

  ‘Keep up,’ Baarda said, walking towards a small pedestrian gate near the library. ‘And I resent the suggestion that I’m somehow so polite that it’s a failing in my duty,’ he remarked over his shoulder.

  ‘That’s not what I said,’ Connie told him, jogging slightly to catch up. ‘It’s more that being with you is like being an extra in a Jane Austen movie.’

  Baarda glared at her before flashing his badge at the officer guarding the gate. ‘Kidnap unit,’ he said. ‘Superintendent Overbeck from MIT asked me to consult. Who’s in charge?’

  The officer pointed in the direction of the furthest congregation of bodies, and Baarda strode off in that direction. Connie turned her attention to the girl, who was now openly crying as too many people asked her questions at once.

  ‘Okay, that’s enough,’ Connie announced as she forced her way into the circle of adults surrounding the child.

  ‘Who’re you? This is a crime scene, love. You’re not allowed to be here.’

  An enormous officer decided to insert himself in front of her, straining his shoulders outwards to increase his size.

  ‘Dr Woolwine. I’m assisting DI Baarda, who’s on secondment to MIT from the specialist kidnap unit. You should go and check with him. What I’m going to do now is take this young woman inside where it’s quieter, sit her down and let her speak. Is that her mother?’

  He deferred to the officer at his side, who nodded and stepped away for Connie to get closer.

  ‘The girl’s name is Melanie Chao. And yes, this is her mother. The lady was shouting the place down before she even got through the gate.’

  The more senior officer whispered the last part, but it was unnecessary. The mother was still mid-rant in what Connie guessed was Mandarin.

  ‘Mrs Chao, I need to take Melanie inside now,’ Connie said, slipping her right shoulder into the small gap between mother and daughter, shielding Melanie’s face a little from her parent. ‘You can come with us; in fact, I’d encourage you to. This police officer here …’ She waved a hand at the officer who’d provided the names.

  ‘DC Champion,’ he said.

  ‘DC Champion will be coming with us to take notes. Melanie is in no trouble at all, but we need to get relevant information out of her fast without any distractions, so I’ll be asking you to remain calm and quiet. Can you do that?’

  Melanie stared at Connie, who pointed towards the library steps and set off before Mrs Chao could formulate an answer.

  ‘Why do you need to question her again? She told the police everything she saw. My daughter should be at home studying. I want to know why she was outside at all. She was supposed to stay inside the library until five o’clock. Do the staff here not monitor students at all?’ Mrs Chao continued the diatribe as she hurried along behind them.

  Connie spotted a small room, directed Melanie to go ahead, then looked pointedly at Mrs Chao.

  ‘A girl is apparently missing. I don’t know much about the circumstances, and I understand this is very upsetting, but it’s going to get much more upsetting very quickly if any harm comes to Melanie’s schoolmate. I need your daughter relaxed before she tries to recall what she saw. I’m pretty sure Melanie is going to get special dispensation tomorrow regarding homework, but now I need absolute quiet. You can come in, but you don’t speak.’

  ‘I don’t see what more Melanie can—’

  ‘Then you remain outside,’ Connie said. ‘Take a seat, Mrs Chao. I’m going to be as long as it takes to make your daughter feel safe and comfortable talking to me. You’ll just have to wait.’

  ‘I’ll be silent,’ Mrs Chao murmured, following Connie in.

  Melanie was sipping from a bottle of water as they entered. Connie sat Mrs Chao behind her daughter to keep the girl focused.

  ‘Melanie, I’m not a police officer, and you don’t have to speak to me, but I’m hoping you will. I’m a forensic psychologist, and at the moment I’m working with a policeman who’s helping on this case. I want to help you clarify what you saw. DC Champion, can you give me a rundown of what you know so far?’

  ‘Sure.’ He flipped back a couple of pages in his notebook. ‘At approximately half past four, Melanie ran into the library looking flustered. She tried to speak to the librarian, but the lady was on the phone, so Melanie was told to wait and remain quiet. She became increasingly upset, so the librarian finally hung up the call, at which point Melanie explained what she’d seen. The librarian spent some time trying to ascertain if it was accurate, but after some minutes, she did decide to call 999. She said that Melanie had seen what she thought might have been a girl being pulled into a car.’

  Melanie began shaking her head furiously.

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘That’s not right. She wouldn’t listen to me, and then everything she said to the police was wrong. I’ve been trying to explain.’

  ‘Okay, we’re going to do it slowly and just once,’ Connie told her. ‘I’m going to ask you questions, then you can take it from there. As much detail as possible. No pressure. No one’s recollection is perfect. It’s actually not possible. What I need is for you to close your eyes, put your hands loosely in your lap, and relax your shoulders.’

  Melanie did as she was told. ‘Are you going to hypnotise me?’

  ‘No, we don’t do parlour tricks. This is memory heightening. Like a visualisation technique. You ready?’

  ‘Um, yeah.’

  ‘Okay. What did you have for lunch?’

  Mrs Chao butted in predictably and on cue. ‘I don’t see—’

  ‘In or out, Mrs Chao, you decide. Last chance.’

  Mrs Chao huffed. ‘In,’ she said quietly.

  Connie watched Melanie give a tiny satisfied smile. Nothing won a child’s trust like getting one over on an irritating parent.

  ‘I had a ham sandwich and a smoothie,’ Melanie said. ‘It was all a bit over-chilled, like they had the fridges turned up too high.’

  ‘Great. Did you eat it anyway?’ Connie asked.

  ‘Sure. I’d had PE in the morning, so I was hungry.’

  ‘What classes did you have after lunch?’ Connie continued.

  ‘Chemistry and English.’

  ‘Did anything annoy you in either of those classes?’

  ‘No, nothing. Why is that …’ Melanie paused. ‘Wait. The boy in front of me in chemistry was chewing gum. I could hear him. English was fine, but the teacher set more homework than usual, and that’s not fair when we have a maths test tomorrow.’

  ‘Do you remember the look on your English teacher’s face when she was setting the homework?’ Connie asked.

  Another pause.

  ‘I can! She was screwing up her eyes and looking slightly away from us at the board, like she knew she was being mean,’ Melanie said. ‘Is that weird? Why can I
remember that?’

  ‘Because you were feeling cross at the time. Whenever you experience raised levels of emotion, your senses work overtime to assess a situation. You were cross, your body’s natural reaction was to figure out what was going wrong in order to rectify the situation. All that increased brain function made you more observant, which means you have an accurate memory of the moment.’

  ‘Oh,’ Melanie said. ‘I get it now.’

  ‘That’s good, but I don’t want you trying too hard to remember anything. When we do that, we fill in blanks of information using common sense or deduction. But that’s not true memory. At first you thought there was nothing annoying that had happened today, then it hit you. That’s reliable memory because you weren’t searching for it.’

  ‘Got it. What do you want to know?’

  ‘What time did you get to the library?’ Connie asked.

  ‘Three thirty, as soon as school finished. I came straight here. I put my coat on the back of my chair, took my books out of my bag and sat in the furthest corner from the front door because that’s the quietest place.’

  ‘What were you studying?’

  ‘Well, maths, because like I said, we have—’

  ‘A test tomorrow, but what exactly, Melanie? Were you using a textbook, did you have your calculator out?’

  ‘No, I was revising from a worksheet. It’s algebraic equations, so the calculator is irrelevant. I’d done one whole sheet – you have to write every step of each equation out and show your working – and I was moving on to the back of the sheet. Then I decided I wanted some fresh air and went outside for a minute and that’s when I saw—’

  ‘You’re rushing now,’ Connie said. ‘Stop a minute. You’re still inside the library, at the desk, working. Something inside you felt a need. What senses were triggered? Were you too hot, too cold, suddenly hungry, did your neck ache?’

  Melanie’s cheeks darkened in tone.

  ‘What is it? There’s nothing you can’t tell us,’ Connie said.

  ‘It’s stupid. Kind of embarrassing.’

  ‘Were you embarrassed, then?’

  Melanie nodded.

  ‘Good. Find that feeling again. Were you still in your seat when you first felt that?’

  ‘Yeah,’ Melanie said quietly.

  ‘Okay, in your own time, try to explain what was happening.’

  ‘Well, I needed, you know …’ She gave a sideways glance back at her mother, then rolled her eyes. ‘I needed to fart, and there’s no bogs in the library. I couldn’t do that inside, so I went out.’

  Mrs Chao was unable to resist the tut but managed to refrain from commenting.

  ‘That’s fine, Melanie. These are helpful memories. Nothing to be embarrassed about with us. This is in the past. I’m only asking you to concentrate on how you were feeling. Carry on.’

  ‘Okay, so I just left everything where it was, and I suppose I kind of rushed out through the front door and down the steps, and then there’s some hedges at the bottom closer to the road. I didn’t want anyone walking past and hearing, you know?’

  ‘I get it,’ Connie said softly.

  ‘My stomach was hurting a bit, and I sort of stood pretending to check my watch and look out at the road as if I was waiting for my mum. I didn’t want anyone asking me what I was doing, and I realised there’d been some noise in the car park, but even now I’m not sure what it was. Voices, I think, but I only decided that afterwards. I don’t remember any words. It’s just like there was definitely something going on. I came back out from behind the bushes, and I was kind of just wanting to get back inside. I felt a bit daft, to be honest, rushing out like that. There was this guy putting something in the boot of a car. I wasn’t really even looking at it, but there was something that made me keep on watching.’

  ‘So he didn’t pull the girl into the main bit of the car?’ Connie checked.

  ‘No. That was just what the librarian told the police on the phone. She wasn’t really listening to me. I think at first she thought I was making it up. I tried to tell her she was getting it wrong while she was on the phone, but she told me if I wasn’t quiet, I’d get a detention.’

  ‘Let’s go back,’ Connie said. ‘You’re coming back up the steps, you’re aware that something is going on but not concerned about it yet. Something to do with the man and the boot.’

  ‘I just can’t figure out what made me think it was a girl … I’m scared I just made it up in my head, and now there are parents here freaking out, and what if I was wrong?’

  ‘Melanie, none of that’s your problem, or your responsibility. That’s what the police are for. You have a picture inside your head, and I need to see it. No rush, no pressure. Like I said, don’t try to fill in the blanks. Relax again.’

  The girl breathed in, out, depositing her shaking hands back in her lap.

  ‘Is this a co-ed school?’ Connie asked.

  ‘It is,’ DC Champion confirmed, taking a break from his note-taking.

  ‘So there are boys here too, but you got the impression that it was a girl in trouble?’

  Melanie’s head flicked up.

  ‘That was ’cos of the voices. They’d been arguing, and I knew there was a deep voice and a girl’s voice.’ She gave Connie a firmer smile.

  ‘When you think back to what you heard, can you hear any of the words at all, maybe a name or a phrase? Any specific accents?’

  ‘Didn’t notice any unusual accents, so I guess they were from round here. I know I thought they were angry at each other. Speaking fast – and the words were all at the same time, like they were talking over each other.’

  ‘That’s really good, Melanie. Now, I want you to think about what you saw. Imagine where you were standing near the bushes. Remember which way you turned to go back inside. To your left or your right?’

  ‘My right,’ the girl said softly.

  ‘Good, now close your eyes again. It’s all still there in your memory. You’re outside, the ground is hard beneath your feet, because it hasn’t rained for a while. There’s some traffic noise from the road outside the school. You can hear the argument at a distance, and you know something unusual is going on. You need to get back inside and carry on working, because you haven’t finished your algebra yet. So you turn to your right to go back towards the library steps. Just hold it there. Don’t take a step yet. There’s a tree out there, right? Between the edge of the library and the car park exit. So you didn’t have a clear view to start with. When you begin to walk, which direction do you look in?’

  ‘I was already looking towards the voices, but the tree was in the way then. It’s leafy at the moment. As I reached the bottom of the library steps, it had all gone quiet. I took a couple of steps up, and by then I had a view past the edge of the tree. I could see the back of a man …’ She paused.

  Connie held a hand up to DC Champion and Mrs Chao to keep them quiet.

  ‘Only at first I thought I wasn’t looking at the people whose voices I’d been hearing. I wasn’t sure it was a man.’ Melanie banged a hand on the desk. ‘I wasn’t sure it was a man because he was so thin, like really crazy thin, and he was wearing all denim. These super-skinny jeans and this jacket with a tight waist, and I remember thinking I’d seen clothes like that in the retro store and that I’d never seen a man that thin.’

  ‘His hair?’ Connie asked.

  ‘Don’t know. I think he had some sort of hat or cap, but I’m not sure. I remember just staring at his legs and thinking I’d never seen a grown-up with legs like that.’

  ‘Was he tall or short?’

  She shrugged. ‘Kind of tall. I wasn’t close enough to compare him to me, but not, like, short or anything.’

  ‘Skin colour?’

  ‘White. Something happened when he closed the boot.’

  Connie sat back in her chair. This time she didn’t need to persuade anyone else to keep the silence. Melanie was breathing hard, her face a knot of concentration, head tilted to one side. Mr
s Chao had one hand over her mouth, and DC Champion was leaning in, pen at the ready.

  ‘No, it’s no good. I can’t remember anything else.’

  There was an almost inaudible sigh. Champion sat back in his seat.

  ‘No problem,’ Connie said. ‘What I’m really curious about is that at some point you looked away. Even though by then you were worried about the fact that there might be a girl in that car. I don’t think I’d have looked away in those circumstances.’

  Mrs Chao changed tack in a heartbeat.

  ‘My daughter can’t help any more. Now you’re pressuring her. She’s told you everything …’

  Melanie reached a hand back to her mother, who met it with her own.

  ‘It’s all right, Mum,’ she said. ‘The lady’s just helping. The man started to turn. I thought he was about to look at me. It was the first time I’d felt scared. Before that I was sort of curious. I wasn’t sure what I was seeing.’ Melanie put her head back and looked at the ceiling. ‘When I came past the tree, he was still shutting the boot, but he had one hand in there until the last second, like he was pushing something down. It made me feel sick, because I remember thinking if he was pushing down, was something trying to push back up? I don’t mean I was thinking that at the time, but now that feels right. Then I noticed how skinny he was, like – what’s the word – gaggly?’

  ‘Gangly?’ Connie asked.

  ‘Yes!’ Melanie gave a light slap to the table. ‘Have you seen that film, the one with Santa Claus and the Easter bunny and the Oogie Boogie man?’

  It was Connie’s turn to smile. ‘The Nightmare Before Christmas? I love that movie.’

  ‘That’s it. The man stood at the boot of the car was like Jack Skellington, like all bones so that his head looked too big for his body, but dressed in really crappy denim. It looked a bit dirty, too, kind of yellow.’

  ‘Good,’ Connie said.

  ‘When he slammed the boot shut, he looked to his right, then to his left, and his head was turning in my direction and I didn’t want him to see me looking, so I looked away as quick as I could and walked into the library.’