‘Yes.’
‘H-How old was she when she died?’ she asked, spooning coffee into the cups. She then added a tea bag, and Kim was thankful that there was no expectation to drink them.
‘No older than seven,’ Kim said gently.
Lexi had been taken in 1998 when she was six, and the building works had been completed towards the end of ’99, before the millennium.
Many years this woman had waited with hope for the return of her daughter, and for twenty-two of those years, the hope had been futile. But Kim was surprised to see what looked like a sigh of relief shudder through her back.
‘Is Mr Walters…?’
‘Dead. Two years ago next month. He never got over it; neither of us did,’ she said, placing the hot drinks on the table at which they’d sat.
Bryant glanced her way. He’d obviously noted the mistake too.
Mrs Walters sat. ‘My husband eventually wanted us to try again for more children, but I couldn’t. All I could think was that if Lexi came back, she’d think we’d tried to replace her. I couldn’t bear the thought of trying to love another child, to play with it, to laugh with it while Lexi was going through God knows what.’ Another shudder passed over her but of a different kind. ‘Just another layer of guilt, and I didn’t deserve the happiness of a second chance.’
She paused and looked from Kim to Bryant and back again.
‘I’m sorry, you must think I’m awful. I haven’t cried yet. I don’t understand why not.’
‘Please don’t apologise, Mrs Walters. Your brain is dealing with many emotions. It’ll process them one at a time. The tears will come and then you can begin to grieve.’
She nodded.
‘Mrs Walters, can you tell us what happened that day, at the park?’ Kim asked.
‘Not sure how much it matters now but of course. It was a weekday and I’d had to take the day off work at short notice. It was the school holidays and my childcare arrangements for that day had fallen through. There were quite a few other kids there, but I didn’t really know anyone. I only looked away for a minute. I was an accountant, and Paul was an account executive for a petrol company. We were both ambitious. I wanted it all and I ended up with nothing.’
Kim waited.
‘I never went back to work,’ she said, regretfully. ‘I couldn’t face it. Felt too guilty and too angry.’
‘About what?’
‘My boss hadn’t been thrilled with my last-minute request for time off. I took a work call and got caught up with trying to resolve whatever problem it was. I was distracted and took my eye off my child. It seemed like just a minute, but when I finished the call and looked around, she was gone.’
‘One parent thought she’d seen Lexi heading off towards the ducks. I searched every inch of that park, but I knew she was gone and that it was my fault.’
Sadness filled her eyes as she stared off into the distance, reliving the whole event.
‘Mrs Walters…’
‘Please don’t waste your breath, Inspector; when I say I looked away for a minute, I’m trying to excuse myself in your eyes. It was probably closer to ten or fifteen. I resented being at the park. I wanted to be at work. Of course, it wasn’t until we lost her that we both realised we hadn’t made enough time for our child.’
Kim appreciated the woman’s candour but still felt she was being too hard on herself.
Bryant leaned forward. ‘You can’t blame yourself, Mrs Walters. You didn’t ask anyone to take your child. Lexi should have been safe at the park. The person who took her is to blame, not you.’
The woman offered him a look that said she was grateful for the sentiment, but she would stick with the feelings that had kept her company for decades.
She continued. ‘A massive search was arranged. Less people turned up each day. Contact with the police got less and less. They assured us that the case would remain open and that any fresh leads would be followed up. Then everyone went on with their lives except for us. We waited and hoped and waited.’
She sighed. ‘The news you bring me is in many ways a relief. There’s no more waiting and no more imagining the pain she might be going through. In the years since, with trafficking becoming more common, my nightmares turned to visions of Lexi being abused and trapped and beaten and—’
Kim held up her hand as the woman’s eyes began to redden. This conversation was no longer in the abstract. It was real and the emotion was coming.
‘Mrs Walters, your daughter was alive for only one year after she was taken.’
The tears were rolling openly over her cheeks now.
‘Oh my God, you have no idea how much it means to hear that my baby didn’t suffer for years and—’
‘Mrs Walters, there are no wounds to her body to indicate prolonged suffering, but the full circumstances of her abduction are not yet clear.’
‘Oh, thank God,’ she said as the tears now came thick and fast.
Kim took a moment to consider what it was about Lexi that had attracted him. Kim had seen the missing person’s photo. Lexi had been a beautiful child, but there was something more at play here.
Suzie had been enduring a miserable home life as her parents had contemplated divorce. Libby had been abused by her uncle. Melody was an invisible child, wanted by no one. So why Lexi?
The word neglect shot into her mind.
In his own sick, distorted view, the man had thought he was doing them all a favour.
Fifty-Two
‘So how’d the date go?’ Alison asked, turning to face her.
‘Huh?’
‘Giraffe and curry.’
‘Food was okay but the conversation was shit,’ Stacey said.
‘And yet you have this lurking smile on your face,’ Alison observed.
Stacey tipped her head. ‘How exactly does a smile lurk?’
‘It’s hovering around your mouth.’ Alison slapped her forehead. ‘Aah, Devon is back tonight and you’re already anticipating the—’
‘Alison, shut it,’ she said, allowing the smile to break free. And indeed that was the reason for it. No matter what the day brought, Devon would be waiting for her when she got home. And she couldn’t wait. Geoffrey had been a very poor substitute.
‘You’re clearly bored so do you want something to do?’ she asked Alison, who was busy drumming her fingers on the desk while staring at an empty screen. She’d just had a conversation with the boss which had done nothing to lighten her workload.
‘Oh, how I’d love to be listening in on their conversation,’ Alison said.
‘Yep, but there are laws against that,’ Stacey said. The camera to interview room one had been switched off while Harte consulted with his lawyer for the second time.
‘I don’t want to listen to his words. I want to listen to his body.’
‘And if you happened to just lip-read something he said, we could be looking at a mistrial.’
‘Details. Details. Details.’
‘I’ve got jobs you—’
‘Not authorised, Stace,’ Alison reminded her.
‘Details. Details. Details,’ Stacey threw back at her even though she knew it was true. Alison was assisting them on a consultancy basis about his behaviour, and it was tempting to try and use her as another pair of hands.