‘This note you said she left in the baby’s bag,’ Gilbourne says gently. ‘You lost it?’
‘It was in my handbag.’
‘That you left at this place?’
‘Yes.’
‘And just to be clear, everything else that you had – everything related to the baby – you handed over to the desk sergeant on arriving here, correct?’
‘I think so. I mean, Dominic took most of it from me and I left it behind when we ran.’
‘I need you to think hard, now,’ Gilbourne says. ‘Have you surrendered everything? All the baby’s clothes, cloths, feeding paraphernalia, dummies, toys, all that stuff?’
I shift in my seat.
‘I just took Mia and ran for the door,’ I say. ‘There was no time to pick up anything else. What do you need all that for, anyway?’
‘We need to gather all the evidence we can get for potential lab analysis down the line. Depending on how things pan out.’
‘Right,’ I say. ‘Of course.’
Holt says, ‘What about the guard on the train? Could they corroborate what you’re saying, did you approach the guard at any point?’
I shake my head.
‘There wasn’t one that I could see. Isn’t there CCTV on the train that can confirm what I’ve said?’
‘Not on Chiltern Line trains, unfortunately,’ Holt says. ‘And the cameras at Seer Green have been out of action since last winter. But the cameras at Marylebone picked you up getting off with the baby and heading straight for the exit. Tell us again, why didn’t you alert the station authorities?’
I cast my mind back to those crucial few minutes when I had stepped off the train with Mia in my arms, a little warm bundle of life in the crook of my elbow. Descending onto the platform into noise and chaos, aggression and alcohol, too many people packed in too close to each other.
‘It was chaotic, there were two sets of football fans and it looked as if it was all about to kick off, with us in the middle of it. A lot of hostility. Police with machine guns. And a weird-looking guy who followed me off the train.’
‘And he was different from the one you claim abducted you?’
I suppress a bristle of annoyance at his choice of words.
‘Yes,’ I say. ‘Two different men.’
‘The first of them, the one on the train, tell me about him.’ Holt has one of those posh accents that he’s trying hard to disguise but that slides out every so often. A home counties public school voice that he’s tried to flatten, coarsen into a generic London accent to blend in with colleagues and suspects alike. Gilbourne, on the other hand, has a natural, soft Cotswold burr.
I summon a memory of the man on the train.
‘He was mid to late-thirties, black leather jacket, average height, maybe a little bit shorter than me—’
‘And how tall are you, Ellen?’ Holt interrupts.
‘Five ten and a half.’
‘Right,’ he makes a note on his pad, taking his time. ‘OK. Carry on.’
‘He had these really intense staring eyes, dark eyes, black beanie hat on but I think he was bald. He was wearing these big combat boots and he was a bit scruffy-looking, like he’d been sleeping rough. He took a laptop out and when I looked over next, he was taking pictures of me and the baby on his phone.’
‘Taking pictures is not a crime,’ Holt says.
‘Maybe not but it’s bloodyweird,’ I say. ‘I just wanted to get her away from him, from all of it, to a police station. Somewhere safe.’
‘But you didn’t do that, did you?’
