Touch and Go

‘Okay guys, I hope we’re ready for a long day today,’ Chief Detective Mike Bobbins welcomed London's Metropolitan Police’s missing persons recovery team. It was seven o’clock in the morning, and Chelsea watched through the window of the office in New Scotland Yard as the smog fell heavily over St James Park. The team had been called in earlier than normal due to several reports of missing persons, and as Mike handed out assignments to the team, Chelsea chugged back thick black coffee, her eyelids feeling extremely weighty in her head.
‘Late one last night, was it Chels?’ Chelsea’s partner, George Clarke filled up her coffee cup as he whispered to her. They had worked together for almost four years now, and still George felt he knew nothing of Chelsea’s life outside of work.
Chelsea shrugged and kept an eye on her boss as she whispered back, ‘It was another nightmare actually – we don’t all have a different person in our bed every night!’
George grinned and patted her on the back, his eyes still watching her as she turned to a colleague. He could smell the scent of her coconut shampoo on her still-damp hair, and breathed in deeply to make the most of it. George had no trouble around the opposite sex usually, but he could not flirt with Chelsea – she seemed to be above that, as if there was something preventing her from being happy. He knew she was single, but still he kept their relationship on a friendly level.
‘Chelsea, George, I’m sorry to give this case to you, but I need the best on this one. A baby was snatched ten minutes ago from the Kensington Private Maternity Hospital. The press are gonna be all over it, and the father is Gordon Howlett, so we need to get over there.’ Mike handed the file to George.
‘Gordon Howlett. the television producer?’ George asked.
Mike nodded, and looked over at George's partner. ‘Chelsea, are you okay with this?’
Chelsea sat rigid in her chair, her eyes wide with panic and bulging out of her head. Her breaths became shorter and shorter and she started to sway slightly in her seat before she began to stand… and then as suddenly as her apparent panic began, she snapped out of her trance. ‘We’re on our way’.
She ran out of the room in the direction of the car park, leaving a puzzled George looking quizzically at his boss. Mike just shrugged his shoulders and turned away, leaving George to follow his partner out of the office.

*

Chelsea beeped the horn as she tried to follow the “panda” car on its route to the hospital. Her heart was beating fast, and she blinked away tears.
‘You okay?’ George held on to the dashboard as Chelsea swerved into Gloucester Road. ‘You kinda had a thing back there!’
Chelsea’s knuckles turned white as she gripped the steering wheel tight. ‘I can’t think about that now, George. If we find this baby, I might…’
‘”If?” Chelsea, that word purely does not exist in your vocabulary!’ George spluttered in amazement. ‘You…’
‘Okay, okay, I meant when we find him, okay!’ Chelsea told herself to concentrate on her breathing; she would not have a panic attack, she would not have a panic attack… ‘George, when we have found this baby I will tell you.’
George sucked in a mouthful of air as Chelsea relaxed in her seat. He knew why she was so uptight about this case. Almost three years previously, a mentally ill patient stole a newborn baby from a hospital in Islington. George had been on holiday in the Maldives at the time, but he had heard from colleagues how devastated Chelsea had been when they had discovered the woman with the dead baby cradled in her arms.
Chelsea was also thinking about that child. It was a case she tried to block from her mind day in, day out. It had been almost thirty hours since the baby was snatched when she had received a call reporting a dishevelled woman with a pram buying formula in a pharmacy on Bayswater Road. The cashier had heard her tell the baby they were going to feed the ducks. Chelsea led her team into Hyde Park just as the bitterly cold night became more dangerous with a sudden snowstorm. In an almost ironic tone, the snowfall became faster and settled as they searched the park, the light fading quickly.
She had stumbled upon the woman by accident, stopping to rest against a park bench and seeing somebody sitting upon it. A woman in her forties, dressed in pyjama bottoms poking out from a too-big duffel coat with wild, unbrushed hair catching snowflakes in its curls, was sitting up straight on the bench holding the naked baby girl. Chelsea grabbed the child from her arms, noticing the bluish tinge her cold skin had taken on. ‘I fed her and she stopped crying!’ the woman cried as a policeman put the handcuffs around her wrists. In a more timid voice, she said to Chelsea ‘I did okay, didn’t I? Her mummy couldn’t stop her crying, but I did!’
Chelsea turned to the woman, the girl still in her arms. She appeared to take on a whole new personality, eyes fiery and her face red both from the cold and the fury she felt inside. ‘She’s dead!’ she screamed at the tiny woman, who seemed even smaller with the handcuffs on and open coat flailing in the wind. ‘She’s frozen to death!’ She wanted to punch the woman; to kick her and hurt her; instead she fell to her knees in the snow with the baby’s body in her arms and cried. [The sobs engulfed her body so that she was practically convulsing in grief, her mind swimming with emotion.] As the woman was led away to a police car, paramedics took the baby from Chelsea’s arms. Her arms outstretched, she stared at her hands as though they were stained with the child’s blood.

*

‘Why would somebody take my baby?’ cried Sabrina Howlett, her rhetorical question dissolving into the stark whiteness of the hospital room. ‘Where is my baby?’
Chelsea was sat interviewing the parents of the snatched child while George tried to get through the hospital bureaucracy to obtain CCTV and meetings with members of the medical team. Speaking to the upset relatives was a job everyone on the team hated – everyone except for Chelsea. She connected with them, and wanted to spend time getting to know each and every one, whether it would help the case in hand or not.
‘Sabrina, we will find out who took Porter, but first of all, we need to do our background checks.’ Chelsea perched on the edge of Sabrina’s bed and held her hand as her husband Gordon paced the length of the room. ‘Is there any other information you think I should know?’
Both parents shook their heads as George poked his head around the door. ‘Chelsea, can I borrow you?’
Chelsea acknowledged his presence with a nod and turned back to Sabrina. ‘If there is anything you think of, please call my mobile, even if you don’t know how important it may be.’ As she stood up from the bed, the weariness caught up with her and she stumbled slightly, the feeling of adrenaline having worn away. Gordon grabbed her arm as she started to leave the room, genuine panic in his eyes.
‘Please find our son, Ms O’Connor. I…’
Chelsea patted his arm. ‘That’s my job, Mr Howlett.’

*

‘The receptionist gave me a file with photos of all the women who have had stillborn babies or ones who died whilst still in the hospital,’ George told Chelsea as she sat down on a hard wooden chair in the sister’s office. A room where fathers were told of their babies’ deaths or illnesses, it was not a welcoming place. The floor was covered in dark mahogany parquet and the walls in the same off-white tone as the patients’ rooms, there was no pictures or items of colour on the desk, just a computer and piles of paperwork. Chelsea shivered, uncomfortable just being there, a throng of memories filling her mind.
‘There were several security issues in London maternity wards in the last decade, so all hospitals started up this system.’ She opened up the binder George handed to her. ‘Have we got the CCTV footage yet?’
George shook his head. ‘I’m waiting on the hospital director to get it to me. I think he’s worried what the press are going to find out.’
‘He’s going to need to be – if the footage doesn’t show anything, we may have to ask the parents to do a television appeal. We don’t have a lot of time…’
The detectives looked up as Stanley Norman, the hospital director, entered the room. A tall, butch man, the ex-rugby-player carried with him an air of authority, but the grave expression on his face gave the impression of his control disappearing.
‘Chelsea – it’s been some time,’ he greeted Chelsea, his hand outstretched. At the same time, he nodded at George by way of a greeting. ‘How have you been?’
Chelsea shook his hand, ignoring the question. As she returned to the file and Mr Norman set up the video equipment in the room, George glanced at the two of them, trying to place the tension between the two – had they worked together? Were they ex-lovers? He jumped as Chelsea gasped audibly.
‘There’s a file here for a Jane Summers, whose son died within three hours of his premature birth last month.’ Her voice appeared detached to Chelsea, as if someone else were speaking. ‘Mr Norman, please tell me I am not imagining this…’ She showed the director the file, and the panic Chelsea felt appeared in his face. In unison, they both uttered the name ‘Sarah White.’
George grabbed Chelsea as she wobbled on her feet. The director hurriedly forwarded through the tape. He looked at her inquisitively.
‘She was the nurse who was acquitted on a snatching from this hospital that happened about six years ago,’ Chelsea explained, her throat dry. ‘There was no CCTV footage and when she was found with… with the child’s body she claimed she had found him and was returning him to the hospital…’
George tilted her chin so that he was looking her in the eyes. ‘Wasn’t that when you were in university?’
‘This is just before the nurse reported the baby missing,’ Mr Norman announced, snapping the detectives out of their private moment. All three watched the screen as a person in a hooded jacket walked down the corridor and returned four minutes later, a baby clearly in her arms. She looked around the hallway, and Stanley paused the tape. The face was the same as the one in the file for Jane Summers, otherwise known as Sarah White.
Both men looked at Chelsea as she shrieked on recognition of the person. Her face was drained of all colour; [her eyes practically popped out of their sockets] and her forehead was damp with nervous sweat. ‘George, call Mike and get that photo distributed. If we don’t find White soon, she will kill that baby. She was found at Buckingham Palace, that’s where we need to start.’ There was no weakness in her voice, just the return of cold, hard determination. Her pulse raced yet again, and she tried to block any memories from her mind. She could not let anything stop her from finding this baby. She signed, and as she walked towards the door she remarked sadly to the director, ‘This should never have happened once, let alone twice.’
‘I know, Chelsea,’ he murmured as she left.
*

Within forty minutes, every television channel in the country had Sarah’s photo on the news. The Metropolitan Police were combing Kensington and the parks as Chelsea and George met up with Mike and Eddie Kearns of the Dog Unit outside Buckingham Palace.
Mike handed Eddie a copy of the photograph. ‘Some of my team should be back with something from Sarah’s flat soon to get you started with the dogs.’ He turned to his detectives. ‘Chelsea, I’m not sure if…’
‘Don’t say it, Mike,’ she interrupted. ‘I will find her this time.’
George nodded in agreement. ‘We won’t let you down, Mike.’

*

An hour had passed, and there were no further traces found of Sarah or Porter. The dogs were having little success, and Sarah’s flat did not turn over any clues. The rain had been falling with large, bulbous drops for the last five minutes, and they were all aware that any evidence to be found was slowly being washed away.
Chelsea was sitting in the car, rummaging through a file she had had a colleague retrieve from her desk. As she leafed desperately through the papers, George let himself in the driver’s side.
‘We’re losing time,’ Chelsea muttered, almost to herself.
‘I know,’ George replied. ‘What’s that file? Is it from the original case?’
Chelsea held up a hand to silence him. ‘George, when they found Sarah she was carrying a Starbucks coffee cup – there’s one at the tube station!’
George buckled his seatbelt. ‘You call Mike to get officers at each one in the area. We’ll go to that one!’

*

Chelsea and George approached the coffee shop from opposite corners of the street, guns drawn. Sitting at a table in the relentless downpour, Sarah did not notice Chelsea come up behind her and grab a screaming Porter from the pram. As a police officer cuffed Sarah, George examined the items on the table – a baby’s bottle and a pot of magnesium. ‘Did you give him any of this?’ he demanded of Sarah, waving the magnesium in front of her face.
She shook her head as Chelsea wrapped up the wailing baby in dry blankets. ‘All I want is my baby! Why should he be allowed to live? It’s not fair!’
Chelsea handed the baby to a waiting paramedic and approached Sarah. ‘No, it isn’t fair, is it Sarah?’ She nodded to the policeman. ‘Get rid of her.’

*

Chelsea and George drove back to the hospital in silence. The ambulance had gone on ahead with Porter, but paramedics had confirmed he was unharmed. As they approached a traffic jam on Kensington High Street, George pulled the car into a parking space. He turned to look at his surprised partner.
‘The first baby Sarah took was your baby, wasn’t it? Why didn’t you tell me?’
Chelsea’s grim expression suddenly softened, and the tears she had contained all day finally broke free as she nodded.
‘Sarah’s first baby mysteriously died about seven years ago, and for some reason, she did not try to snatch a baby until Charlie, my son,’ she said quietly, looking at George. ‘He was only two hours old when she took him – he didn’t stand a chance! He was premature, and in an incubator due to his breathing problems – and still she took him!’ She sighed in relief, the pressure of containing her secret finally dissolved. ‘I couldn’t tell anybody – it would have meant admitting he was gone. That’s the reason I went for the job Missing Persons – I would never give up.’
‘This is why you put the families at ease – you know exactly how they feel,’ George prompted after a silent pause.
Chelsea smiled thinly through her tears. ‘It’s as if all of these years I’ve been looking for closure. I never knew if Sarah did take Charlie, but I’m always checking the database for her name.’ She took a sharp intake of breath. ‘I so wanted it to be her in Hyde Park three years ago – that’s why I was so devastated!’ George took her hand. ‘Charlie can finally rest in peace now – I know she won’t be able to hurt anyone how she hurt us!’
George took Chelsea in his arms and she clung tightly to him. In one day, the emotional barricade that had surrounded Chelsea for years had come tumbling down. George had seen her [inner] emotions – the heartache, the anger; the furious need to avenge her son’s murder. As the pair held each other, the rain ceased and the heavy grey clouds parted marginally to allow a thin beam of sunlight to stream through. Stretched across the city sky appeared a rainbow, its colours vibrant across the dark sky. In Chelsea’s eyes, the world had not seemed that beautiful in a long time.