Henry then pointed towards a small woman with a disproportionately large bust who was hovering around the room, even now there was a police presence, unable it seemed to settle anywhere. She was no chicken, as Vogel’s mother would have said, and was wearing far too much make-up for a woman of her years. Her top was too tight over her straining bosoms. Her hair was peroxide white. She looked completely out of place.
‘And this is Miriam Fox, our neighbour—’ said Henry.
Before he could elaborate, the woman leapt in: ‘Yes, I’m right next door. Came as soon as I heard. Dreadful thing. Poor little lad. Only yesterday I watched him playing in the garden. Such a sweet little boy. I had to come round, but if you don’t want me, well, I’d better be getting back. My Joe’s due home early today and I haven’t started on his dinner yet and...’
Miriam Fox spoke estuary English with more than a hint of Essex. And she was gabbling. It was Vogel’s turn to interrupt.
‘Yes, yes, Mrs Fox. As you’re only next door you can leave. It’s the family I need to speak to first. But we will need to talk to you again later. Perhaps you would be kind enough to give your details to PC Saslow here?’
Miriam Fox said of course she would.
Vogel turned his attention to Joyce Mildmay.
‘Right, Mrs Mildmay, perhaps we could have our chat straight away?’ he asked. ‘Is there somewhere private we could go?’
‘Yes, we can go into the sitting room,’ said Joyce, standing up.
‘Thank you,’ responded Vogel, turning to address the others. ‘And, please, would everyone else stay here. You may already have given interviews, but I’m afraid we do need to speak to you all again.’
The two police officers followed Joyce out of the room. In the sitting room she sank into one of the two big brocade sofas on either side of what Vogel assumed, somewhat uncharitably, to be a reproduction Adam fireplace. Well everything else about the house was fake. His wife would never have anything reproduction in their home. Antiques were Mary’s passion. She couldn’t afford to pay a lot, but she was an expert bargain hunter interested only in the genuine article.
Vogel sat on an upright chair, with Saslow on another alongside, looking slightly down at Joyce.
‘So, Mrs Mildmay, would you please take me through the chain of events which led to you discovering that your son was missing?’ he asked.
Joyce did so, in as much detail as Vogel could have hoped for in the circumstances. Once or twice, she seemed about to burst into tears again, but she managed to hold herself together reasonably well.
‘So after you went up to Fred’s bedroom and discovered that he wasn’t there, after you, Molly, and Monika had been right through the house and made certain that Fred was no longer inside, what did you do then?’ he asked.
‘We checked the garden. And the shed down the bottom where Charlie used to mess about with bits of carpentry and stuff. He was always good at that sort of thing. He was restoring an old wooden sailing boat when we met...’
Joyce paused for a moment, disappearing into a long-ago world.
‘Fred seemed to take after him in that,’ she continued. ‘They were building a model boat, the pair of them. They used to spend hours down there. When Charlie could spare the time, of course. He was always so busy...’
Joyce swallowed hard. Vogel wondered what she was thinking.
‘We didn’t expect Fred to be there, though. Not at that hour in the morning. Likes his bed too much, Fred. And in any case I don’t think he’s spent any time in the shed since his father died. He misses his dad terribly. Anyway, we looked there, just in case. Then I rang Mum and she came over, and we phoned round anyone we could think of who Fred might have gone to. We didn’t really believe he would have done that, gone to any of the people we called, but we made ourselves go through the motions, tried not to panic too much, tried to think clearly. Molly joined in. She and Fred are at the same school, so she knows a lot of Fred’s classmates. She went on to directory enquiries and got the home numbers of anyone she could.’
‘And nobody had seen or heard anything of Fred?’
‘No. As soon as it was nine o’clock we called the school, just in case. But he wasn’t wearing his school uniform. Fred was never early, and even if he had taken off on his own he wouldn’t have gone to his school. I was pretty sure of that.’
‘Was that when you called us?’
Joyce nodded. ‘Yes. Mum, Molly and I were all positive Fred wouldn’t have taken off on his own. I think all three of us wanted to call the police earlier, but we were kidding ourselves that it was going to be all right, that it was maybe some silly prank. Somehow dialling 999 made it real. Brought home what we were all thinking. What we were afraid of. That somebody had taken Fred.’
Vogel nodded encouragingly.
‘We’d already called Dad. He, Mark and Stephen came straight back from the office, with Janet. They took Molly and Monika and some of the neighbours we’d contacted and set off to look for Fred. I don’t suppose any of us thought they were going to find him wandering around the estate, or nearby, but it was better than doing nothing. Mum and I stayed here, with Miriam from next door, in case he came back. Although by that time I’d stopped thinking he was going to. Not of his own accord...’
Joyce’s voice tailed off again.
‘Mrs Mildmay, I noticed on the way in that you have a burglar alarm,’ said Vogel. ‘Do you normally switch it on at night, and was it switched on last night?’
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘There’s an exclusion setting so that it operates only downstairs. I’m sure it was on. I switch it on every night. Dad had the alarm installed. He’s very keen on security. I didn’t think about it before.’ She paused. ‘It didn’t go off, obviously...’
She let the words drift.
‘I’ll get it checked out, but these systems are not easy to tamper with,’ said Vogel. ‘So the likelihood is that if you switched it on, somebody must have switched it off in order for Fred to leave the house without activating the alarm.’
‘Oh my God,’ said Joyce.
She shook her head. ‘I can’t explain it, Mr Vogel.’
‘Did Fred know how to operate the alarm?’
‘Well, yes. We each have our own remote control, so we can switch it on and off.’
‘Do you remember if the alarm was on when you got up this morning?’
‘Yes...’ She looked uncertain. ‘That is, I think so. I may not have noticed. I always push the button on the remote before I go downstairs. It could already have been off, I suppose.’
‘Or switched on again, having been switched off. This suggests that either Fred left of his own free will and deactivated the alarm in order to do so, or whoever took him was able to deactivate the alarm. Does anyone else apart from you and your children know the passcode or have a remote control?’
‘Mum and Dad... I can’t think of anyone else.’
Joyce had been looking down. She raised her gaze to meet Vogel’s. He could see the panic in her eyes.
‘Look, Detective Inspector, I can’t explain about the alarm. I really can’t. But Fred would never leave the house in the middle of the night of his own free will. Someone’s taken my boy, I’m sure of it.’
There was no doubt in Vogel’s mind that Joyce Mildmay’s distress was genuine. The woman was in pain. From the look in her eyes, the mental anguish she was suffering went far beyond anything she had ever experienced. There was also bewilderment there, and something else, something Vogel could not quite put his finger on. Fear, perhaps, but not just the fear of a mother who dreads that she might have lost her son.