Silent Child(53)

“Denise, would you mind checking on Aiden?” I asked.

“Is everything okay?” she replied with a bright smile.

“Sure.”

She hesitated for half a heartbeat before making her way out of the kitchen and through to the living room. But she did it.

“They’ve arrested someone with child pornography on their computer. But there were no pictures of Aiden.”

Rob gripped the kitchen table so hard that I could see his knuckles whitening. “And it was that duke, was it? The one who lives up in the big house lording it over us? Was it him, Emma?”

“Yes,” I confirmed.

His eyes widened and his jaw dropped and I knew his mind was racing through exactly the same thoughts that had raced through mine when DCI Stevenson had told me. He staggered away from the table and raked his hands through his hair.

“Fuck.”

“There’s no connection to Aiden yet.”

“He’s a paedo living in the area. What else do they need?”

“They need a lot more than that, Rob. They need to find where he was kept. They need proof.”

“It’s him,” Rob said. “I know it. It’s him.”

“Emma!”

Denise’s urgent call sent a jolt up my spine. I clutched hold of my bump as I rushed through the hallway into the living room. Aiden stood on one side of the room with Denise on the other. He had a pair of scissors in his hand and was holding them up high in a gesture that could be perceived as threatening. Behind him, the curtains had been chopped to pieces.

“I’m so sorry, I was setting up a DVD for him on the television. I didn’t see what he was doing and then when I did, I tried to get him to stop,” Denise said. “But he kept ignoring me.”

“Aiden, honey, put down the scissors.” It was only now that I realised how much he had grown since he had been living with us. He was still shorter than the average sixteen-year-old boy, but he had filled out. His pigeon chest wasn’t as prominent. His shoulders appeared broader. He cut a far more intimidating figure than he had a week ago.

“Mate, it’s all right. You’re not in any trouble. Just put the scissors down, okay pal?” Rob coaxed.

But Aiden ignored us. He turned around and resumed his haphazard chopping of the curtains, letting the world see into our home.

*

The media were spoiled for stories. I’m not sure they knew quite what to report on first. There was the arrest of the Duke of Hardwick and the warrant to search Wetherington House. There were pictures of Aiden cutting our curtains to shreds with Rob and myself standing like idiots behind him, clearly afraid. There was the aftermath of ‘screech-gate’ going on, with the YouTube clip still trending on Facebook. And in the midst of this toxic melting pot, I managed to get Aiden to the therapist, along with Marcus providing a police escort.

“What do you think brought on this new development?” Dr Foster asked. “Aiden hasn’t shown any other signs of disruptive behaviour. What has changed?”

“Perhaps he heard me telling Rob about the arrest. That could have triggered something. Or maybe it was all the reporters waiting outside the house. I tried asking him but...” I shrugged.

Today, Aiden scrawled red and black against a grey background. Then he drew what appeared to be solid steel bars in front of a dark background.

“This could be his cage,” I said, showing Dr Foster.

“It’s a shame there isn’t more detail for the police.”

I agreed. Aiden’s pictures never had an awful lot of detail. When we asked him to draw more, he clammed up and pushed the pens aside.

“What about at night?” Dr Foster asked. “Any changes?”

“The same. I’ll check on him at nine and he seems to be sleeping. When I go into his room at around 7 or 8am, he’s usually awake but still in bed. Then he’ll have a shower, though the bathroom door stays open. After his shower we eat breakfast. Then he’ll often sit and watch television. He’ll watch whatever’s on and remains impassive to it all. I’ve stopped trying to fill his days with children’s TV. He sits and watches daytime TV just as easily though.”

“The routine to his day is interesting. When inmates are released from prison they often live in the same routine that was forced upon them in prison. That means wherever Aiden was, he had a routine. He woke at a certain time, ate at a certain time and went to bed at a certain time.”

“So the kidnapper enforced this?”

Dr Foster shrugged. “Perhaps it was Aiden filling the days in the best way he could to stay sane. Or perhaps the kidnapper did it as a form of discipline.”

“Rob said that Aiden could be suffering from Stockholm syndrome, that maybe he is sympathetic to his kidnapper. Maybe… maybe he’s working with the kidnapper and against us. Is that possible?”

Dr Foster paused, a hint of uncertainty in her demeanour. She cleared her throat slightly and released her hand from a fist. To me it seemed she was stalling. She didn’t want to answer. When she did, she lifted a stuffed toy from the desk and poked at its eye with a thumb. “I think it is possible. It’s not a pleasant thought, I’ll admit. But the fact is that Aiden spent ten years in the company of this person and we don’t know what happened between them. We know there was abuse and neglect, but many children—I’m sorry to say—are abused and neglected by their own parents. Those children grow up to have a very complicated relationship with their parents.”