‘We don’t have anything from the camera over the postnatal ward’s main door, but we do have this footage.’ Holder pointed to the image of a pregnant woman making her way into a treatment room with a midwife. Shelby pursed her mouth, not sure what she was looking at.
‘This is probably nothing to do with the investigation. We just need to rule it out. This woman was on the ward around the same time that you were there. It looks as though it was just a routine examination. Only we can’t get hold of the midwife in question, so we wanted to ask you if you recognised her?’
Shelby stared at the image on the screen as she saw the woman re-emerge from the room.
‘Oh! Wow. Yeah. I do. That’s Imelda George. She lives a few doors down from me. We were both due around the same time. Maybe she was in labour? Poor cow still has to go through all that. It’s bloody horrendous. I was terrified.’ Shelby shrugged.
‘Why? You can’t seriously think she’s involved, do you? What, that she’s teamed up with the man who attacked me, and they both stole my baby?’ Shelby laughed then. ‘She’s harmless. Trust me. She wouldn’t hurt a fly. And we’re friends. Kind of,’ Shelby said, realising that in some ways they actually were. They’d struck up a strange little friendship throughout their pregnancies.
Seeing the fleeting look that passed between the two officers, Shelby figured that they didn’t share her optimism.
‘It’s just, if she was in labour, she’d have been down on the maternity ward…’ Lucy said, sharing her doubts with Shelby.
‘Look, she might have been trying to get in to see me while she was there. She was worried about me. That’s not a crime, is it?’ Shelby shrugged again, remembering how Ashley had mentioned that Imelda had waited outside their flat, and that she’d seemed really shaken by the news of Shelby’s attack.
‘Shelby? What’s happened?’ Pete’s voice came bursting into the room before he did. Still dressed in his coat and shoes, he eyed the officers expectantly, having seen their car parked in front of the house. ‘Well? Have you found him?’
‘Sorry, no. Not yet,’ Lucy offered, getting up from her chair. They didn’t want to impose on the family for longer than they needed to. ‘We’ve got everything we need for now. Thanks for your help, Shelby,’ Lucy said as Janey came back into the room with a tray of cups and a teapot. She placed it down on the table and stared meaningfully at her husband.
Lucy could see anger in her eyes as she raised her brow, as if to encourage Pete to say something. Only Pete instantly rejected her suggestion with an abrupt shake of his head, cutting her dead.
‘Right, well, I’ll show you out,’ he said, in an attempt to avoid the subject, eager to see the two police officers off.
Only Janey, furious now, took her moment. ‘Tell them,’ she said, her words trembling with anger as she stood in the middle of the lounge, her fists clenched to her sides.
‘Not now, Janey,’ Pete said, dismissing his wife with a wave of his hand. Pretending that what she had to say wasn’t of any real importance.
‘Tell them. Or I will.’ Janey stood her ground.
‘Mum?’ Shelby asked, not used to seeing her mother speaking so firmly to her father.
They could all feel the growing tension in the room.
‘He’s my grandson too, Pete. And I will not just stand here silently playing the dutiful wife. Not when so much is at stake. Tell them. Tell them, for fuck’s sake.’
‘Dad? What’s going on?’ Shelby said, staring at her father questioningly. Her mother never swore.
‘Nothing…’ Pete said, looking uncomfortable now that the police officers were staring right at him.
‘Just bloody well TELL THEM,’ Janey bellowed.
Pete hung his head. ‘I got a phone call about an hour ago. They didn’t leave their name, but it was a male caller. His voice sounded muffled. Disguised. But it was definitely a male,’ Pete said, coming clean. ‘I was told that if we wanted Riley back, then there was a ransom to pay.’
Lucy and Holder looked at Pete incredulously.
‘Please tell me you didn’t pay it,’ Lucy said, knowing full well that that was exactly what was coming next. High-profile cases like this one, with the amount of media attention on it, were prone to fraudsters chancing their luck on making money from vulnerable parties.
‘How could I not? This is my grandchild. I had to,’ Pete said, his voice breaking with emotion.
‘Mr Baker, with all due respect, you should have told us about the call,’ Holder said, thinking exactly the same as Lucy, and not wanting to voice his concerns that the caller could have been someone looking to make money out of the family, completely unconnected to the abduction.
‘And what about the press? They are out there, just digging around for their next headline. What if you were followed? What if they saw you? What if they mess the exchange up? There’s a lot of factors that can go wrong,’ Lucy said then, picking up her radio and knowing that now they were racing against time.
‘Where did you leave the money, Mr Baker, and what time is the exchange being made?’
‘I don’t know,’ Pete said desperately. ‘I was just told to leave the money in the bin, at the children’s playground on Wandsworth Common. I wasn’t told anything else.’ Pete knew how pathetic he sounded. He’d just left a considerably large amount of money out in the open, for anyone to find, and had no real confirmation that he’d get Riley back once the abductor
