‘We don’t know that, Mrs Mildmay,’ he said, still trying to evaluate the woman’s response, and also trying to sound more reassuring than he actually felt. ‘We have to keep an open mind while we continue with our enquiries. Meanwhile, I know it’s difficult for people to think straight when something like this happens, but I want you to try to stay calm and think as hard as you can. To begin with, are you absolutely positive there is nowhere else Fred would have gone?’
Joyce shook her head.
‘Think, Mrs Mildmay,’ Vogel persisted.
‘I am thinking,’ responded Joyce sharply. ‘In any case, you don’t understand. Molly spent the morning going through every number on Fred’s phone. She called everyone on it — his school friends, his football team-mates and the coach, his cricket mates. Even people who live miles away. There is no one and nowhere else. There really isn’t.’
Vogel was blinking furiously behind his horn-rimmed spectacles.
‘Mrs Mildmay, you told the officers who came here earlier that Fred’s phone was missing, that he must have taken it with him. Indeed, you said that he never went anywhere without it. And you mentioned that Molly had to get on to directory enquiries to get numbers for his classmates. But now you’re saying that Molly went through every number on Fred’s phone.’
Joyce nodded. ‘We didn’t have Fred’s phone when Molly first tried to call his schoolmates. Nor when the two policemen came. But eventually we found the phone in the bathroom, in the pocket of his dressing gown. That was typical Fred. He’s so attached to that phone, he would take it with him to the bathroom rather than leave it in the bedroom for a few minutes. But he’s also absent-minded. So he must have forgotten about the phone and gone to bed. We’re always finding it in odd places.’
‘But what if he planned to leave the house — he would look for his phone then, presumably. And he’d be reluctant to leave the house without it, wouldn’t that be the case?’ asked Vogel.
Joyce nodded. She was having real trouble holding back the tears now. Vogel gave her a moment to compose herself. The business of the alarm had led him to believe that, although allegedly so out of character, young Fred Mildmay must have taken himself off somewhere in the middle of the night. The fact that he’d left his phone behind was a totally contradictory piece of evidence.
‘You do realize the significance of this, don’t you, Mrs Mildmay?’
Joyce sniffed, swallowed and nodded again, almost imperceptibly.
‘Mrs Mildmay, I’m sorry to have to tell you this but I suspect this new information makes it far more likely that your son has been removed from this house by a third party, and possibly against his will,’ said Vogel.
‘I know,’ said Joyce, in a voice that was little more than a whisper. ‘Oh my God, I know. I realized it as soon as we found the damned phone.’
Vogel continued to stare at her. There was something about her that wasn’t right. Police officers are trained not to exclude the parents of a missing child as suspects. It is a statistical fact that in the majority of cases either the parents or somebody close to them, more often than not another family member, is responsible for that child being missing. Vogel’s initial gut reaction had been that Joyce would not have harmed her son. He saw nothing in her behaviour to suggest that; her demeanour was unmistakably that of a caring, shocked and distraught mother. However, something was troubling him about Joyce Mildmay.
He cast his mind back over the case notes, including the first interviews conducted by PCs Yardley and Bolton.
‘You didn’t report it, did you, when you found the phone?’ he continued. ‘You must have realized how important it was. Why didn’t you call the police again straight away?’
Joyce looked puzzled. ‘We didn’t think,’ she muttered. ‘We were too busy hoping that now we had his phone we had a better chance of finding Fred. Molly just pounced on it. Later we knew you were coming, and obviously we would tell you...’ She stopped speaking. Then began again after a brief pause. ‘I guess we didn’t want to dwell too much on what finding that phone might mean.’
Vogel changed tack. ‘Mrs Mildmay, do you know of anyone who might have wanted to take your son from you?’
Joyce appeared startled, as if she hadn’t expected that question. But again there was something else there. Vogel thought she was trying to avoid meeting his eye. She shook her head, leaning forward slightly at the same time.
Vogel decided to go for it.
‘Mrs Mildmay, is there something you are not telling me?’ he asked.
Joyce shook her head again.
‘Mrs Mildmay, have you heard of the golden hour period?’ Vogel enquired, and continued to speak without giving her time to respond. ‘It’s the twenty-four hours or so after a crime has been committed. That’s the period when we are most likely to find a person who has been abducted. If you know anything that might help us take full advantage of the golden hour, you should tell me now. You seem certain that your son has been taken. If there is even the slightest chance that you know something that might lead to whoever could have taken Fred, then every minute you hold that information back you lessen the chances of his being returned to you safely.’
Joyce did not respond for several seconds. Then she raised her head and looked Vogel straight in the eye for the first time since the interview had begun.
With his floppy brown hair, greying at the edges, and those horn-rimmed glasses, he was more like a university lecturer than a copper. He appeared to be clever. She so hoped he was. She decided she had to trust him. Up to a point, anyway.
Wordlessly she reached into the pocket of her cardigan and handed Vogel the letter from her dead husband which she had received two days earlier.
Nine
Vogel read the letter carefully. Joyce sat in silence whilst he did so. When he’d finished he stood up and turned to Dawn Saslow.
‘Please stay with Mrs Mildmay, PC Saslow,’ he said. ‘I need to make an urgent phone call.’
He left the room, and once outside used his mobile to call his senior officer, DCI Hemmings.
‘There’s been a development, guv,’ he said. ‘I don’t reckon this is a kidnap. More likely somebody in this family knows darned well what’s happened to Fred Mildmay. I’ll explain later. I’m calling now because I need back-up soonest. If we put some pressure on this lot I reckon we could get an early result. And I could well be bringing at least two of ’em in for formal questioning.’
Hemmings agreed to do what he could as soon as he could. Vogel returned to the sitting room. He again sat down opposite Joyce Mildmay, and next to Dawn Saslow.
Joyce Mildmay looked absolutely drained. Vogel didn’t care. He had far from finished with her.
‘Who else knows about this?’ he demanded, holding up the letter in one hand.
‘Well, Charlie left it with Stephen Hardcastle to be delivered to me only after his death, and Janet must have known about it too,’ Joyce replied. ‘But Stephen claimed neither he nor anyone else knew the contents. The letter came in a sealed envelope. And I certainly haven’t told anyone what it said.’
She explained how Charlie’s letter hadn’t arrived until two days previously, more than six months after her husband had died, something explained away by Stephen as a clerical error.
‘Do you accept that explanation?’ asked Vogel.
‘I don’t know, I suppose so,’ muttered Joyce. ‘It was only, well, when Stephen came round and I confronted him about it I had this feeling he was hiding something. He didn’t seem quite himself. He’s such a po-faced bloke. It’s hard to know what he’s really feeling or what’s going on inside his head...’