At a loss for what else to do, I take a seat. The chair’s plastic squeaks loudly as I sit. I should have just called. I shouldn’t have come, I decide.
But then I know there would have been no point in calling 999.I wouldn’t have been able to explain, or tell them where to go. Best to just show them the footage.
I clutch my laptop tighter under my arm. They’ll be able to search for her once they see that she’s trapped, and have her name. They’ll be able to track the route or something, I reassure myself.
But the panic and the urgency that got me out of the house and down to the station, my resolve, is now already beginning to sour.
Because no one is here, so maybe I shouldn’t be here, either?
It’s a little after eleven on a Friday night. Surely it should be busy here, or am I thinking of A&E?
You spend your whole life thinking the police are ready and waiting at the end of the phone line to spring into action, and then you end up here, in an empty waiting room.
I think of Anna, alone in her room, waiting somewhere so close, hoping someone saw her message. It seems crazy that I can’t just get her, can’t simply reach into the footage and free her.
Simon Hughes.The name repeats in my head like I might otherwise forget it.
Outside, the woman’s shouting escalates, becoming throaty and demonic.
Suddenly, and without ceremony, a short, balding uniformed officer appears through a door behind the counter. He pops a mug down beside the front-desk computer system, seemingly oblivious to both the screaming and me.
I stand and slowly make my way over to the counter. He doesn’t look up, even when I am directly in front of him, my presence unavoidable.
“You all right there,” he singsongs, a little too loudly, given my proximity to him, still not looking up as he jabs away at the keyboard.
“I need to report a crime,” I say, as if that weren’t the most obvious part of this entire situation.
The short man finally looks up, his eyes quickly scanning over me, my clothes, hair, the sliver of MacBook under my arm. I almost see him slotting me into the not-drunk, not-dangerous, “middle-aged, middle-class,” female bracket. The hint of a smile creeps into his eyes.
“How can I help,madam?” he asks, his smile tight.
I sigh inside, but push myself on.
“I believe someone is being held against her will in a house near mine. In a basement,” I say simply. “I know it sounds ridiculous, I sound ridiculous, the situation ridiculous, but I have a video of it, here, so…”
The officer stares at me, and then blinks. “Okay.”
“I’ve got evidence, of the trapped woman, I mean,” I clarify, but he doesn’t seem to be getting the urgency of this. “I’m pretty sure this is time-sensitive. She looked injured, and very distressed.”
“Right,” the officer concludes, then winces as the woman’s voice outside, incredibly, rises an octave.
His eyes flutter past me out to her, and her cart, which is still receiving abuse. He frowns deeply.
“Okay, ma’am. Just one second, yeah,” he tells me, then lifts the edge of his reception-counter flap and heads out through the constantly opening and closing automatic doors to talk to the screaming woman.
Their conversation is inaudible. There is a lot of pointing, nodding, and patting of shoulders, on both sides.
To the man’s credit, the woman has stopped screaming now, and she looks surprisingly mollified as she begins to shuffle away, her cart in tow, in the direction the balding officer has suggested.
He reenters, then, letting out a mighty sigh, proceeds to double-, triple-, and quadruple-pump hand sanitizer from the wall dispenser onto his waiting palms.
He slaps his wet hands together loudly, gloopy droplets showering the floor, before he rubs the whole lot in, like a surgeon prepping. Then, flapping his hands dry, he ducks back under the reception barrier and turns back to me.
“Sorry—say all that again.”
—
Twenty minutes later, I am led through the station’s security doors and the corridors beyond to a seat outside an interview room.
