Dying Fall

otherwise Ruth might genuinely not have recognised him. He seems to have aged twenty years since this morning.
    ‘Ruth,’ he takes a step forward.
    Ruth backs away. ‘You lost Kate.’
    Nelson takes hold of Ruth’s arm. ‘OK, OK. Let’s all be calm. Cathbad, who’s in charge here?’
    A young woman in a high visibility vest steps out from behind one of the cartoon children.
    ‘Hi, I’m Holly. I’m the Duty Manager. Are you Kate’s mum and dad?’
    Ruth is about to deny this when she realises that actually – yes – they are Kate’s mum and dad. She nods mutely.
    ‘Try not to worry too much,’ says Holly. ‘I’m sure we’ll find her. I’ve taken a full description of Kate and I’ve radioed it to all our staff. We’ve got a specialised lost child unit and I’m checking in with them every few minutes. I’ve also sent out messages on the tannoy. Would she recognise her name if she heard it on the tannoy?’
    ‘Yes,’ says Ruth. ‘No. I don’t know.’ Kate is a bright little girl – a wonderful, clever, adorable little girl – but would she pick out her name from the cacophony of fairground music, screaming children and current pop hits? Ruth doubts it.
    ‘Have you got CCTV?’ asks Nelson brusquely.
    ‘Yes,’ says Holly. ‘We’ve got cameras at every exit. It’s impossible for her to leave without our staff knowing.’
    ‘Why is it impossible?’ asks Nelson. ‘There must be thousands of people here. Your staff can’t check everyone.’
    ‘She’ll have her bracelet on. The staff at the gates all have Kate’s details. If anyone … if anyone tried to take her out of the park, the staff would check her bracelet.’
    Bracelet? Kate wasn’t wearing a bracelet. But then Ruth sees that Cathbad has a white paper band round his wrist, stamped with an orange ‘Pleasure Beach’ exclamation mark.
    ‘The bracelet will record the time Kate entered the park, which rides she went on and so on,’ says Holly. ‘And it would show the time she leaves. I mean … it’s impossible for her to leave.’
    Holly is being kind, Ruth knows, but her words have conjured a new spectre. A sinister figure leading Kate out of the park to … Where?
    She knows that Nelson is thinking the same thing because he cuts in, saying, ‘Have you called the police?’
    Holly looks slightly defensive. ‘We’ve got a community officer on the beat and she’s looking at the CCTV now. As I say, though, the child usually turns up within ten minutes.’
    ‘Meanwhile a pervert’s halfway to London with my child in the boot of his car,’ says Nelson brutally. Ruth gasps and Cathbad makes a choking noise. Holly looks shocked, ‘I know you’re upset but …’
    Nelson thrusts his warrant card in her face. ‘I am the police,’ he says. ‘And I want all units here now.’
    He has hardly finished speaking when the wail of sirensis heard in the distance. Ruth knows that Nelson called Sandy on the way to the Pleasure Beach, but to Holly this must seem proof of immense, almost supernatural, influence. She stares at Nelson in awe.
    ‘I want police at every exit,’ he says. ‘And I want to see the CCTV footage now.’
    Holly is about to speak when her walkie-talkie crackles. Ruth’s heart contracts. Please, please let them have found Kate. She wishes it so hard that she can almost hear Holly’s soft Lancastrian voice saying, ‘She’s been found and she’s fine. She just wants her mum.’ She even feels her face relaxing into a relieved smile. But Holly’s actual words are very different.
    ‘There’s been a development,’ she says.
    *
    The CCTV cameras are in a room above the booking hall. From the window they can see the startled faces of punters on the Ice Blast, an infernal machine that shoots its occupants two hundred feet in the air and then back down again. But the shock and horror on the faces of the Ice Blastees are nothing to the expression on Ruth’s face as she enters the room. She knows that the news cannot be good.
    A young man is sitting at a frozen TV screen. The picture is blurred and indistinct but Ruth can just make out a tiny figure in a Hello Kitty hat.
    ‘That’s her!’ she screams.
    Nelson and Cathbad surge forward. Over Nelson’s shoulder Ruth sees that the tiny figure is holdingsomeone’s hand, a woman with blonde hair, wearing a long coat. It’s such an everyday image, a child holding a woman’s hand, that Ruth can hardly take in the horrific implications of what she is