Claiming Noah (15 page)

‘Please God,' Diana prayed while Kenny spoke to the police. ‘Please let me find my baby. Please God.'

As she sat waiting for Jade to return, Diana tried again to remember when she had last checked on Noah. She remembered he had been sleeping most of the day. She knew he had been in his pram when her mother left, because she remembered her kissing Noah goodbye. Had she checked on him again after that? Yes, she was sure she had. That nosy woman in the supermarket had wanted to look at him. But she hadn't let her, had she? What did that mean? Was Noah in the pram while she was in the supermarket? Surely he was. But she hadn't let go of the pram, had she? She was driving herself mad, nothing made sense. Women don't just lose their babies.

Jade returned ten minutes later, pushing Diana's pram.

‘You found him!' Diana jumped out of the seat, opened the flap to the kiosk and ran over to her.

‘No, ma'am, I'm sorry, I didn't. This is just the pram.'

Diana sank to the floor. She felt as if someone had taken to her heart with a hammer. Her son, she had lost her son. She had lost the most precious thing in her life, a baby who was dependent on her for his survival. Jade and Kenny tried to help her off the floor, but she was a dead weight and didn't have the strength or the motivation to stand up. She barely registered the stares people gave her as they walked past.

‘Ma'am,' Kenny said, as he crouched down on his haunches so his eyes were level with hers. ‘Is there anyone you want me to call for you before the police get here? Your husband?'

‘My husband,' Diana repeated, her tone flat and her stare blank. ‘Yes. He needs to know.'

‘Can I have the number?' Kenny handed her a notepad and pen.

She tried to write down Liam's phone number but she couldn't remember it, despite having called the number thousands of times.

‘Is the number in your phone, perhaps?' Kenny asked.

‘My phone. Yes, of course.' Diana reached into her handbag, picked up her phone and handed it to Kenny. ‘His name is Liam.'

•  •  •

Diana stayed in her puddle of inertia on the floor until the police arrived a few minutes later. They helped her up and took her and the pram to an office, directed by Kenny. It was a small, fluorescent lit room with a basic desk and four vinyl chairs. Besides a water dispenser in the corner and a few advertising posters pinned to a corkboard, there was nothing in the room to indicate whose office it was.

One of the police officers, a man in his forties with a receding hairline and a ruddy complexion, handed Diana a plastic cup of water. She hadn't realised she was thirsty but as soon as she took a sip she felt parched and gulped down the rest.

‘Mrs Simmons,' the officer said. ‘My name is Sergeant Thomas. I know this is a very traumatic situation for you, but we need your help so we can find your baby. Is that okay?'

Diana nodded.

‘Can you tell me your baby's name, and how old he is?'

‘Noah Simmons. He's two months old; he was born on the eleventh of March.'

The sergeant made a note of this on his pad. ‘Where was the last place you remember seeing him?'

‘The supermarket, maybe?' she said. ‘I can't remember exactly, I'm really sorry. I had a wrap over the top of the pram so Noah could sleep.'

‘Is this the pram you're referring to?' the other officer asked her. He was younger than Sergeant Thomas, and had a closely shaved head and a dimpled chin that seemed at odds with his stern expression.

‘Yes, that's my pram,' Diana said.

The officer searched through the capsule of the pram, as well as the pockets and the pouch underneath. ‘Have you noticed whether anything else was missing from the pram, Mrs Simmons? Any personal belongings?'

Diana thought about what she had taken with her that morning. ‘Well, yes, I had Noah's baby bag in the pram. It had nappies, a change of clothes, things like that. I have my handbag with me. I think that was everything.'

He held out the wrap printed with images of a smiling giraffe that Diana had used to cover Noah's pram. ‘This is the only item in the pram. So, I take it the bag is missing, then?'

‘Yes, I suppose so,' Diana said. ‘I don't think I'd packed it into the car yet.'

Diana studied the pram, hoping to bring her mind back to a state of clarity so she could help the police. She noticed the wheels of the pram looked more worn than she remembered. And the pouch underneath was green . . . wasn't hers blue? She tried to find a clear image of the pram in her memory. Yes it was blue, she was sure of it.

‘That's not my pram!' She jumped to her feet in excitement. ‘It's the wrong pram. Someone must have taken mine by mistake. They have Noah. Quick, we need to find whoever has my pram. They'll be looking for me.'

She pulled her handbag over her shoulder and started for the door. The two officers looked at each other, but didn't move.

‘Mrs Simmons,' Sergeant Thomas said. ‘We have two officers scouring the shopping centre looking for Noah. They've been instructed to question anyone with a pram. If someone did take your pram by mistake, they'll find them. Please take a seat.'

Dejected, Diana sank back on to the chair.

Sergeant Thomas smiled at her with what Diana assumed was pity and then resumed his line of questioning. ‘Now, this may be a hard question for you to answer, but can you think of anyone who might want to take Noah from you?'

Diana blinked. ‘Take him?'

‘A former partner, or a relative maybe?'

‘No, of course not,' Diana said. ‘Our friends and family all love Noah, they've been so happy for us.'

‘Have you or your husband ever received threats towards Noah?' Sergeant Thomas asked. ‘Do you know of anyone who is resentful or jealous that you had a child and might want to harm him?'

Diana looked over at the younger officer, who was helping himself to a cup of water. He seemed unperturbed by the question. ‘Do you really think that's what happened?'

‘Hopefully not,' Sergeant Thomas said, ‘but we just need to rule out all the possibilities so we can find your son as quickly as possible.'

Diana stared at the posters on the corkboard. One of them advertised a sale that had ended six months earlier. Who would ever want to harm a baby? Is that what had happened? Was Noah in danger?

‘No,' she said to Sergeant Thomas when she realised he was still waiting for her response. ‘We don't know anyone who would want to harm Noah.'

The younger officer took a seat and picked up his notepad, pen poised at the ready. ‘Mrs Simmons, we need you to give us as much detail as possible about your movements in the shopping centre today. We need to know which shops you visited and what time you think you entered and left each shop. That way we'll be able to study the footage on the shopping centre's CCTV and that should hopefully help us to work out what happened to your son. There's an officer looking at the footage already, but it will make it much faster if he knows exactly what he needs to look at.'

‘Of course,' Diana said. ‘I understand. I'm not sure that I'll be able to remember the times exactly, but I'll try.' She wondered whether she should call her mother and ask her to help answer the police officers' questions, but she didn't feel strong enough to deal with her mother's reaction.

Diana recounted everything she could remember of her day while the officer took notes. She told him about the cafe and the clothes shops she had visited with her mother, the amount of time she thought she had spent in the supermarket, and then there was the butcher and the health-food store. Sergeant Thomas suggested she look at her receipts to find out the exact time she had been in each shop, but the receipts were all in the boot of her car along with the shopping, so the younger officer went to get them. That made Diana think idly about the meat and frozen products that would have turned warm by now, but then she reprimanded herself for thinking about something so irrelevant and unimportant when she had lost her only child and didn't even know if he was okay, let alone who had him.

Diana heard Liam's voice shouting at someone from the other side of the office door before it flew open and slammed against the wall. He scanned the room and then ran over to Diana and embraced her. ‘Di, are you okay? What's happened to Noah?'

A fresh bout of tears started to course down Diana's cheeks. ‘We don't know where he is. They're studying the footage of the cameras to see if they can work it out. They think someone might have taken him.'

‘That's bullshit,' Liam said. He straightened up and pointed to the pram. ‘How can anyone have unstrapped him from the pram without you noticing?'

Diana looked up at him, her cheeks wet and her breathing ragged. ‘It's not our pram. I don't know where our pram is. That's missing too.'

‘How's that possible?'

‘I don't know, the prams must have got mixed up.'

The incredulous look on Liam's face disappeared and was replaced by one of anger.

‘You let someone take the pram?' he said to Diana. ‘You let someone take our son because you were too busy shopping to notice? How stupid can you be? You lost our son!'

As Diana buried her head in her hands to hide her sobs, Sergeant Thomas steered Liam to one of the seats and forced him to sit down. ‘Mr Simmons, that's not helping. You can't blame your wife for this. She's been very helpful in our investigation and if you calm down and cooperate with us as well then we can make this process as quick and easy as possible.'

Sergeant Thomas cleared his throat and turned to a fresh sheet in his notepad. ‘Now, we've asked your wife this already, but we'd like to ask you as well. Can you think of anyone who might want to cause you, your wife, or Noah any harm?'

When Liam didn't answer straightaway, Diana lifted her head from her hands and looked at her husband. Liam wasn't even looking at Sergeant Thomas. He was staring at Diana with a look of contempt she had never seen directed at her before from the man she loved.

•  •  •

The next day Diana and Liam walked into the police station as strangers: not talking, not touching, not even making eye contact. The past eighteen hours had been the worst of Diana's life. The day her father died had been the previous frontrunner for that title, but the uncertainty of not knowing what had happened to her baby, coupled with the debilitating guilt of losing her son and Liam's anger towards her had rendered Diana nearly catatonic with grief. After hours of Liam berating her, as she cried and pleaded with him to forgive her, they had retreated to separate corners of the house. Diana had spent the night in Noah's room, running her hand over the furniture and toys until she became so exhausted from crying that she fell asleep fully clothed, curled up on the floor of the nursery. Liam had found her there the next morning, and with dull eyes told her that the police had called and asked them to come to the station. The only reason Diana was able to wash her face, change her clothes and climb into the car was the hope that Sergeant Thomas had some positive news for them.

He met them in the foyer. ‘Diana, Liam, thanks for coming in.' He guided them to a meeting room down a short corridor, where the younger officer from the day before was already waiting for them in one of the seats grouped around a small square table. There was a television screen mounted on one wall, and paused on the screen was a grainy image from what looked like the inside of a supermarket.

Sergeant Thomas indicated for Diana and Liam to take the two seats closest to the television. They sat in silence, each fixing their gaze on the image on the screen.

The younger officer spoke. ‘We've been through all of the CCTV footage from yesterday and we think we've isolated the incident when your pram was swapped. We need you to examine the footage and let us know if you recall the moment and if you recognise the person we feel may have been responsible for the kidnapping.'

Kidnapping.
Diana repeated the word to herself. Of course, that's what this is. It seemed such a vicious word. It was much easier to deal with if she thought of Noah as being lost.

‘You can actually see it?' she asked. ‘Did you see someone take my baby?'

Sergeant Thomas sat in the chair next to Diana. ‘Unfortunately the quality of the footage isn't great. And it looks like the supermarket was busy at the time, so there are a lot of people on the video. But we think we may have something.'

He picked up the remote control and then paused, looking at Diana. ‘Are you ready to see this?'

She nodded, feeling the thud of her heart against her ribcage. ‘I think so.'

Sergeant Thomas pressed play. For a few seconds there wasn't anyone in the shot and then people started to walk through the path of the camera, up and down the supermarket aisle. It appeared that the camera was mounted on the ceiling, because the angle of the footage was from a vantage point well above people's heads. Diana saw herself come into view. She recognised her dark hair pulled back into a ponytail and the long grey cardigan she had worn nearly every day since Noah was born to hide the extra weight leftover from her pregnancy. In the footage Diana had the pram with her, but Noah couldn't be seen because of the wrap covering him. As they watched, Diana positioned the pram up against one of the shelves and then moved a couple of metres away. She was half out of the shot, scanning the shelves for something. The damn pasta sauce, she remembered.

Out of the corner of her eye Diana noticed Liam glaring at her, but she ignored him and kept watching.

‘It's coming up now,' Sergeant Thomas said. ‘Watch the man with the pram closely.'

Diana and Liam leaned towards the television simultaneously.

Several people were in the footage: an elderly woman, two girls who appeared to be school children judging by their backpacks, Diana, and a mother holding on to the hand of her small child. None of them approached the pram. A man then appeared from the bottom left-hand side of the screen, pushing a pram that looked identical to Diana's. As the four people in the room watched the screen intently, they saw the man pass Diana. She had her back to him as she studied the shelves, picked up a jar, read the label and replaced it on the shelf. As he passed Noah's pram, the man paused. The elderly lady was between the man and the camera so it was difficult to see exactly what he was doing, but at one point he appeared to have the wrap from the top of Noah's pram in his hands. Then he kept walking down the aisle and out of shot, pushing the pram. Once the elderly woman moved out of shot the pram could be clearly seen, but it was further to the left than where Diana had left it. The wrap still covered the pram, so it wasn't possible to see whether Noah was in it. Diana returned to the pram, holding her basket of groceries. She then walked out of shot pushing the pram in front of her, oblivious to what had just transpired.