I reached in and picked it up.
‘Found it?’ Toni asked, coming into the room.
‘Finally,’ I said, holding the passport up triumphantly. ‘It must have fallen down the back from the overfull top drawer.’
‘What’s all this?’ she asked, waving a hand at the stuff still lying on the bed.
‘I emptied the drawers out.’
Toni lifted one of the printed leaflets off the bed, one of those that had been under the black notebooks.
‘BUGS,’ she said.
‘What’s that?’
‘BUGS. That what it says on this flyer.’ She held up one of the leaflets. ‘The Bristol University Gambling Society.’
‘What about it?’ I asked.
‘This flyer. It’s advertising materiaclass="underline" “Join the Bristol University Gambling Society and get a guaranteed return on your stake money.” ’
‘Guaranteed return?’ I said. ‘They must be joking. Have you ever met a poor bookmaker?’
‘I’ve never met any bookmakers,’ she replied.
‘I just hope that James isn’t wasting his money.’ I held up the passport. ‘Come on. Let’s go and scan this in my office.’
‘How about this mess?’ Toni said, pointing at the stuff still lying on the bed.
‘I’ll deal with it later.’
We went downstairs, through the kitchen and utility room, to my office.
‘This house just keeps on giving,’ Toni said in her broad Southern accent. ‘I have two beds and a bath upstairs, and a kitchen and living room downstairs. That’s it. No frills. No extras.’
I put the picture page of the passport face down on the scanner and made the copy, which I then emailed to the letting agency, using the address James had texted to me, with a cc to him. I left the passport lying on my desk.
‘Remind me to post that to him in the morning.’
Toni put the BUGS leaflet down on my desk next to it.
‘Now what?’ she said.
She had been right. Scanning the passport had taken my mind off the most pressing issue of the moment, if only for a while. Now it all came flooding back with a vengeance.
‘Hadn’t you better call your wife?’ Toni said.
‘I’ll call the boyfriend first.’
I pressed Amanda’s number on my phone.
‘Hello,’ Darren said, answering at the first ring.
‘Is she back?’ I asked.
‘No.’
I looked up at the clock on my office wall. It was ten minutes to ten. She’d now been missing for almost three hours.
‘Did you and Amanda have another argument?’ I asked him.
‘No,’ he replied, but there was something in the tone of his voice that slightly worried me. But it might just have been because he didn’t like me.
‘I think I should call the police,’ I said.
‘The police?’ He didn’t sound at all happy about that.
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘The police. No doubt, they will want to interview you. Are you sure there is nothing more you want to tell me? Like, are you responsible for Amanda’s disappearance?’
‘What do you mean?’ he said.
‘Have you done something to her?’ I asked him outright.
‘No. Of course not.’
Did I believe him?
Maybe I did. Or maybe I didn’t.
Chapter 26
Amazingly, Detective Sergeant Christine Royle answered her phone at the first ring.
‘I didn’t think you’d be working at this late hour,’ I said.
‘I’m not. I redirect my office line to my mobile. Who is this?’
‘Chester Newton,’ I said. ‘My daughter, Amanda, was abducted three weeks ago. You came to my house.’
‘Yes, Mr Newton,’ she said. ‘I remember. How can I help you?’
‘She’s gone missing again.’
‘Where from?’ the DS asked.
‘From Darren Williamson’s flat in Didcot. It seems she popped out to go to the local shop at seven o’clock and has not come back. Darren says he went to the shop, looking for her, but the shopkeeper told him she never went in.’
‘Where is this flat?’
‘Above the Raj Tandoori takeaway, near Didcot station.’
‘What was she wearing?’
‘Jeans and a black T-shirt. And flip-flops.’
‘Did she take anything with her?’
‘Nothing,’ I said. ‘Not even her phone. Just a five-pound note.’
Not even some honey and plenty of money, I thought, my mind wandering for some reason to Edward Lear.
‘No other clothes or shoes?’
‘No,’ I said. ‘Darren Williamson told me she took nothing. She told him that she’d only be a few minutes.’
‘Lots of people say that who want to go missing.’
‘But why would she?’ I said, getting somewhat agitated by the detective’s lack of urgency. ‘If you remember, she didn’t want to go missing last time. Someone injected her with ketamine and abducted her.’
‘Are you implying that the two events are linked?’
‘Bit too much of a coincidence otherwise.’
‘But why would the same person take her again?’ she asked.
What could I say?
Because I didn’t stop Potassium from winning the St James’s Palace Stakes.
I don’t think so.
I now so wished I’d told the police at the very beginning, after I’d received that first telephone call in the middle of the night at the Royal Berkshire Hospital.
But I hadn’t.
And now I was complicit in race fixing.
My whole future life flashed before my eyes: financially ruined; warned off by all the worldwide racing authorities, with my reputation totally destroyed; divorced, and quite likely homeless — that’s if my home wasn’t a prison cell by then. And, worst of all, maybe with a dead daughter on my conscience as well.
‘But you must think it’s odd for someone to go missing twice in such quick succession.’
‘Mr Newton,’ she said slowly, ‘there are several members of the public in the Thames Valley Police region who go missing regularly, some of them almost on a weekly basis.’
‘I can assure you,’ I said firmly, ‘that my daughter is not one of those. She wouldn’t be missing without good reason. I believe she must have been abducted again.’
‘Do you have any evidence for that?’ she asked.
Yes, of course I do.
‘No,’ I said.
‘I will file a missing person report, which will mean that all police officers will be looking out for her. At this stage there is nothing more I can do.’
‘You could organise a search.’
‘Not at night,’ she said. ‘And not until we have some further information.’
‘So will you go now and interview Darren Williamson to get that further information?’ I asked.
‘We will speak to him in the morning — that’s if your daughter is still missing. In the meantime, please inform me if she contacts you.’
‘Is that all?’ I asked in frustration.
‘All for now,’ said the detective. ‘Call me again in the morning.’
She hung up.
‘Why do you believe that someone would abduct your daughter?’ Toni asked intently, having listened to my conversation with DS Royle, or at least my side of it.
‘I don’t know,’ I lied. ‘But someone did it before.’
I told her about Amanda going missing from the party and turning up several hours later in Pangbourne, agitated and with ketamine in her system.
‘But that’s crazy,’ she said. ‘Who goes to all the bother of kidnapping someone and then lets them go without demanding a ransom?’
‘You sound like an expert,’ I said.
‘But it stands to reason,’ she said. ‘Kidnapping is a major crime. In the States, after the Lindbergh baby kidnap in the 1930s, right up until the 1960s, you could get the electric chair for kidnapping. That’s before our stupid lawmakers worked out that no one would ever be released alive, even if a ransom was paid for them, because the kidnapper had nothing more to lose by then killing their hostage.’