Chapter 10
Janine had sent Butchers and Shap to talk to those witnesses who’d seen a woman on her own at the park when Sammy was taken. Richard was updating the incident board with the new details about Clive Wray and his first family and other information from the various lines of inquiry. Janine was in her office catching up on reports from the different teams and trying to plan a strategy for the next twenty-four hours when Millie came in.
‘I’ve just had The Star on. Donny McEvoy’s trying to flog them pictures from the crime scene. Took them with his phone.’
Janine groaned. ‘What a prat,’ she said, ‘they’re not biting?’
‘No. They know the score,’ Millie said.
Richard interrupted them. ‘A witness sighting of a woman hanging outside the Wrays’ on Foley Road on Saturday the nineteenth of April. “Hippie-chick,”’ Richard quoted, ‘“but a bit past it. Frizzy blonde hair.”’
‘Felicity Wray,’ Janine said. ‘Why didn’t this come up in the missing persons inquiry?’
‘The girl who reported it was visiting her father, went home on the Sunday morning, so they missed her on the first door-to-door,’ he said.
‘Let’s see what Mystic Meg has to say for herself?’ she invited him.
‘Phoebe’s not here,’ Felicity Wray said when she answered the door.
‘It’s you we want to talk to,’ Richard told her.
‘Honoured I’m sure,’ she said archly, turning away and leaving them to follow her in.
‘Saturday the nineteenth of April, you were seen at Foley Road, shortly before one pm.’
‘Was I?’ she said with that little smirk.
‘What were you doing there?’ said Richard.
‘If Clive wants to play daddy to Phoebe again then he’ll have to give it one hundred percent, I went to tell him that.’
‘You want him to come back to you?’ Janine said.
‘Yes. I went to tell him. All or nothing. When I think what he’d done. Our lovely girl, he abandoned her, cut her dead. He almost destroyed me. I know what it means to be insane with grief.’
Oh, please, spare me.
‘You knew Clive had been up to see Phoebe playing in the tournament?’
‘Yes, she rang me on her way home – so upset.’
‘And what did Clive say?’ Richard asked.
‘Oh, he wasn’t there, no-one in,’ Felicity said.
‘So you went to the park?’ Janine said. ‘You saw Sammy and Claire.’
Felicity ignored her. She stroked her neck, speaking dreamily. ‘He loves me. That’s what people miss. That connection, the passion-’
Janine interrupted her, ‘They looked happy, Claire and Sammy. You and Phoebe had been happy, you and Phoebe and Clive. Until Sammy came along.’
‘Times like this, people see what really matters,’ Felicity said. ‘Like Clive and I. It’ll bring us closer in the end.’
The self-obsession of the woman. Janine lost patience. ‘Did you go to the park?’ she demanded.
Felicity surveyed her for a moment, one eyebrow raised. ‘You’re holding on to a great deal of anger.’
Janine felt heat in her face.
‘Mrs Wray,’ Richard said in warning.
‘No,’ Felicity said.
‘And after that?’ Janine said.
‘Had a walk, came home.’
‘And Phoebe?’ Richard said.
‘She was here.’
‘What time was that?’ he said.
‘I don’t wear a watch,’ she said.
‘Mrs Wray do you know anything about the abduction of Sammy Wray?’ Janine said curtly.
‘Only what I’ve seen on the news,’ she replied.
‘We may well want to speak to you again,’ Janine said.
‘Well, I won’t leave town, then,’ Felicity Wray said.
Janine left the room before she lost all reason and clocked her one.
‘She’s messing with us,’ she said to Richard once they got into the car. ‘I think if she was involved, she’d tone it down a bit, don’t you?’
‘If she was at the park and wearing that get-up then wouldn’t the witnesses have mentioned it?’ Richard said.
‘You know eyewitnesses – notoriously unreliable. We’ll see what Shap and Butchers have found out,’ Janine said. ‘But we need to get to the bottom of this happy families malarkey and eliminate Looby Loo in there, and Phoebe and Clive Wray or look a lot deeper. Why didn’t Clive tell us he’d taken Sammy round there? Maybe that’s what kick-started this whole bloody mess.’
‘Maybe that’s what he’s afraid of,’ Richard said.
‘Let’s ask him.’
It was a very fine line to tread. Claire and Clive could well be bereaved parents and nothing more. If the Wray household had an air of tension on Janine’s previous visit it was now stretched to breaking point.
Claire wore the same clothes as the previous day. Had she even slept, Janine wondered. Sue, the family liaison officer, looked tired too and when Janine asked her how everyone was, she gave a look of warning.
Clive and Claire Wray were at opposite sides of the room, Claire in the corner of the sofa, gazing at the floor, Clive standing over by the window.
‘We’ve been speaking to Felicity, Mr Wray.’
He stilled and Janine saw Claire look up. ‘Why did you take Sammy to see her?’ Janine said.
Claire Wray gasped, her mouth open with shock.
‘He’s just a little boy,’ Clive Wray said, ‘she acted as if he was the devil incarnate… I just thought if she saw him, got to know him-’
Claire stood up quickly, stumbled a little. ‘You took our son to see that bloody woman – after everything she did to us-’ She stopped abruptly, her frown clearing as if she’d made a discovery. ‘The car, the tyres and the scratches. That was her again, wasn’t it? Not vandals.’ A reprise of the harassment that Felicity had subjected the couple to when Clive first left.
He began to object but Claire raised her voice. ‘You still love her, don’t you? Felicity’s been right all along. You only left her because I was pregnant. You never really loved me. Always Felicity, wasn’t it?’
‘No,’ Clive Wray said.
‘Bloody tragic Felicity and her precious daughter,’ she was shouting, spittle flying from her mouth, her face suffused with red. ‘She couldn’t even let me give birth in peace – had to grab the spotlight, try and kill herself.’
‘Claire, please,’ Janine made an effort to calm the situation.
Claire glared at her then her face changed and she visibly crumpled, ‘My boy,’ she said quietly.
‘She’d never touch him,’ Clive said insistently.
‘How do you know that? How can you possibly know that? She’s off her head and you let her meddle in our lives whenever she likes.’
He turned to Richard, ‘You’ve no reason to think so,’ he appealed.
Richard took a breath. ‘Felicity was seen outside this house, on the nineteenth; she admits she came here.’
‘She killed him,’ Claire said in horror. ‘It’s your fault. That mad bitch came and took him. See what you’ve done,’ she was sobbing, frantic with grief. Then she lunged at her husband, screaming. Richard and Sue moved in to separate the couple. Janine called out to Claire to calm down. Claire was slapping at Clive’s head. He tried to dodge the blows. Sue got hold of Claire’s shoulders and as she eased her back, Richard stepped in between the couple.
At that moment Janine’s phone rang. She stepped back to take the call. She asked them to repeat the information and then she said, ‘Are you sure? There’s no doubt whatsoever?’ She felt the blood drain from her face.
Clive Wray was shouting back now, ‘Felicity is not a killer. And I love you, Claire. You and Sammy and Phoebe. I may have lost one child but I’ll fight damn hard now to be a father to the other one.’
Janine put her phone away. Clive was still talking, Claire shivering as he said. ‘I can’t have Sammy back but I still want a life with you – and I want my daughter in it. That’s how it’ll be. And if you love me, you’ll accept that.’