For Your Own Protection(21)

Matt, lost in terrible thoughts, failed to reply. His lack of recognition of the lifeguard’s presence seemed to unnerve the young man.

‘Sir, you’ve got to come back down,’ he said, almost apologetically. ‘It’s just for children.’

Finally his words got through. ‘My boy, Charlie, he’s missing.’

‘Oh, right, okay. We’d better get a call out.’ The lifeguard pulled out a walkie-talkie from his waistband. ‘We’ve got a child missing from their parent. His name’s Charlie.’ The youth addressed Matt again. ‘How old is he and what does he look like?’

‘He’s four, four and a half. Wearing red swimming shorts, with red armbands. Dark brown hair, brown eyes.’

The lifeguard repeated the words to his colleague on the other end of the line. ‘Where did you see him last, and when?’

‘He was going to go on the slide, I was waiting at the bottom. It was three, four minutes ago.’ As Matt said the words, the guilt was there. He had let him go off alone in a way that Beth would never have allowed. If anything were to happen, she’d never forgive him. And he’d never forgive himself.

‘Please, please help me find him,’ Matt pleaded.

‘We’ll find him,’ the lifeguard replied, as they came back down the steps and over to the pool’s edge. ‘This kind of thing happens every day. We always find them.’

‘Thanks.’ His words were reassuring for a second or two. But as Matt continued to scan the pool, feeling increasingly helpless and hopeless, the words felt hollow.

‘We’ve got staff on all the doors,’ the lifeguard explained. ‘No one can get out without us knowing about it.’

Almost immediately a sickening thought swelled to the surface. What if in those few minutes before the alarm was raised someone had already taken Charlie out of the centre?

‘Cameras,’ Matt said. ‘Can you look at the cameras?’

‘Well, yes, I guess so. We haven’t had to do that before, as far as I know.’

‘Please,’ Matt said. ‘Get someone to look at the cameras.’

The lifeguard nodded and reached for his walkie-talkie again.

Matt moved forward, back into the shallow water, still scanning the pool. Charlie had disappeared. Shit. He felt so helpless and longed to do something proactive. He ran through the conversation he might need to have with Beth, and shuddered. He looked around again, this time trying to think more logically where Charlie might be. And then came what should have been an obvious thought. The toilets. Charlie was great when it came to taking himself to the toilet. He might have been caught short on the way to the slide, tried to find the bathroom on his own, and got lost.

‘You okay, sir?’ the lifeguard asked as Matt rushed past him.

Matt didn’t answer. He took the corner of the pool at speed, his legs sliding from under him, just managing to stay upright with the help of the wall.

He ran into the communal changing area, narrowly avoiding a woman leading a young girl towards the poolside.

He didn’t stop, heading for the toilets and shower area. He darted inside the toilet block and pushed at each of the cubicles in turn. Of the four doors, three swung open to reveal they were unoccupied. The fourth was locked.

‘Charlie? Are you in there? Charlie?’

He went to crouch down to try to look underneath the door, but checked himself. What if it wasn’t Charlie? He’d risk the wrath of the adult behind the door, or worse still, the accusations of the parent whose child he had just disturbed. And either of those would hinder his search for his boy.

‘Charlie?’ he said, a little less forcefully. ‘Is it you in there?’

‘Please, leave me alone,’ a voice whispered, almost like a soft prayer. ‘Please, bad man, leave me alone.’

It was the voice of a little boy. But it wasn’t Charlie. Matt’s skin prickled in horror at the thought he was scaring some child half to death. ‘I’m really sorry, I thought you might be my son Charlie,’ he said, trying his best to sound friendly. ‘I didn’t mean to scare you.’

There was no reply as Matt raced out of the bathroom and turned a hard right into the shower room. There was a man on the far side, lathering up his hair. He turned to acknowledge Matt’s arrival, but almost as soon as their eyes met, Matt was out of there. He burst back into the changing area, looking in every direction. He raced down one of the aisles, a bank of lockers to his left, changing cubicles to his right, and emerged at the side of the main pool. Serious swimmers were shearing through the water in lanes, while a small area was roped off for informal swimming. In this section, a mixture of families and slower swimmers battled for space. Charlie would know better than to go into this pool unaccompanied, but it was worth looking, just in case. Matt’s eyes swept the whole pool. Charlie was nowhere.

Matt glanced over at the windows that showed the street outside. Again that horrible thought came to him: that someone might have taken Charlie. He could be anywhere by now – led down the road into town, in the back of a van, dragged into a . . .

Matt turned and headed for the reception. He ignored the calls of the lifeguard patrolling the edge of the wet zone. She shouted something about not going dry-side wearing swimwear. Not that Matt had remembered he was only wearing shorts. He rushed up to the front desk. There was no queue.