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chapter 30
alex
I pull into my reserved spot in front of our campaign office and steel myself to run the gauntlet of protesters camped on the pavement outside: #TeamAlexa on one side, #JusticeForLottie on the other.
They’ve been here for six weeks now, ever since the INN interview aired. Their numbers vary, depending on whether it’s a slow news day, but the core supporters of each group show up every morning, waving their placards and shouting slogans whenever someone enters or exits the building. I’ve long since stopped wondering if they have jobs and homes to go to.
Ignoring the catcalls, I hitch my bag on my shoulder and keep my head down till I’m safely inside. At least the abuse is only verbal, now. In the immediate aftermath of the interview, I had death threats and, on one occasion, someone threw eggs.
When Quinn Wilde cornered me on live television, I defended myself as best I could, wanting only to change the narrative and refocus the spotlight on the search for Lottie, but all I did was open up a whole new front in the media war. Of course I care about the struggles of women in the workplace, and the hypocrisy around male and female parenting, but the noise I’ve created has almost drowned out the mission to findmy daughter. I’m starting to wonder if I’m doing more harm than good by staying in Florida.
Jon Vermeulen, the Find Lottie campaign’s new manager, is waiting for me inside. When Marc returned to the UK three weeks ago, he hired Jon to take over. An ex-CNN producer, he’s a tough, shrewd South African in his mid-fifties who bears more than a passing resemblance to a Sherman tank.
‘Your fan club is back in force today,’ he says, handing me a cup of Colombian dark roast.
‘Channel 5 devoted the whole of theirMorning Expresssegment to Sexy Lexi yesterday,’ I say.
‘Still with that dikshit?’ Jon says. ‘Fokkers.’
The red-topDaily Postin London was the first to come up with the humiliating nickname, the day after the Wilde broadcast aired. The tabloid made much of my ‘beach romp’ with a ‘hot tennis hunk’, and while the other newspapers weren’t quite as salacious, they all picked up the ridiculous tag.
No one cares that I’ve never been called Lexi in my life or that using the word ‘sexy’ in the context of a child’s abduction is sickening. I’m thankful that at least the media haven’t managed to track Ian Dutton down. He left Florida the morning after the first press conference, along with most of the other wedding guests, and seems to have gone to ground since then. Despite the insinuations of thePost, he’s the one person I know couldn’t have taken Lottie: he was with me when she disappeared.
Jon hands me a stack of opened mail. ‘I’ve logged the donations and binned the crazies. These are the ones I thought you’d want to see.’
‘Thanks. I appreciate that.’
‘Aweh,’ Jon says: a catch-all Afrikaans term of acknowledgement that can mean anything and everything.
On more than one occasion in the past few weeks, I’ve hadreason to feel grateful for Jon’s protectiveness. Ten years ago, his wife and five-year-old son were murdered during a botched home invasion in Cape Town, when Jon was away covering the war in Iraq for CNN. He’s never forgiven himself, and helping people like me is his way of being able to sleep at night. Now that everyone else has returned home to their own lives, he’s the closest I have to a friend here.
It took some persuading to get Mum and Dad to leave. But Mum’s misplaced optimism was too much for me to bear. She insisted Lottie would never have gone with a strange man, so it must be a woman who’d taken her; a bereaved mother, perhaps, someone who’d lost her own baby and so took mine. But the grieving mothers of her imagination snatch infants, not small children. Mum repeated the idea that Lottie was being spoiled and showered with love, over and over, until I couldn’t stand it any longer and begged Dad to take her home.
Jon folds his meaty arms together as I sift through the mail, radiating disapproval.
‘Is there something else?’ I ask.
‘Simon Green called.’
Simon’s one of Marc’s hires, too, an ex-MI6 agent whose private investigative firm, Berkeley International, specialises in finding missing children. He has a number of former special forces investigators and surveillance experts on his payroll, and connections to the intelligence services on both sides of the Atlantic.
Jon is sceptical of bringing in paid outsiders, wary of scammers exploiting my desperation, and Simon’s firm doesn’t come cheap.
But in the three weeks since he was hired, he’s already identified several potential leads the police have missed, including a second witness who believes she saw the ‘thin man’, and provided an e-fit we handed over to LieutenantBates. We’ve had thousands of tips from the new Lottie Hotline that Simon set up, including several from convicted paedophiles saying they know where she is. While the thought makes me sick to my stomach, those tips are the first concrete leads we’ve had. Simon says it’s notifwe find Lottie, butwhen.
‘What did he want?’ I ask now.
Jon grunts. ‘Money, I’m guessing.’
I call Simon back, but it goes straight to voicemail. I leave a message, crushing the tiny flicker of excitement that flares despite my best efforts to remain calm. Jon’s right. It’s probably just an admin question. Two months of dead ends and red herrings have taught me that hope is the enemy.
To distract myself, I read some of the post Jon has filtered for me. Letters of support from across the world: a child’s drawing inscribed ‘to lottys mommy’, prayers, poems, a card signed by the pupils of an entire primary school.
‘Mrs Martini?’
I glance up. A Black man in his mid-forties, conservatively dressed, stands near the main door, his path blocked by Jon’s protective bulk. He’s accompanied by a Latinx woman a few years younger. Not police, but not civilians either.
‘It’s OK,’ I tell Jon.
‘My name is Darius James,’ the man says, as Jon steps aside. ‘This is my colleague, Gina Torres. We’re with the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children in Lake Park, Florida. We’ve received a message from the British embassy in Washington—’
I’m already on my feet. ‘Have you found her?’
‘The ambassador has asked us to take you to the embassy,’ James says.
‘Is she there?’
‘I’m so sorry, Mrs Martini. It’s not quite that simple.’
