‘He’s not available at the moment; can I put you through to his voicemail?’
‘He’ll be available for me,’ I said, trying to get a note of command into my voice, thinking it would have been more effective if I had been able to control the shake in it. ‘Tell him there’s something he needs to know urgently
before
they talk to Danny Keane. Tell him it’s vital that he speaks to me.’
With a muffled sound of irritation, she put me on hold and I waited, tapping my feet impatiently, an instrumental version of ‘Islands In The Stream’ whining in my ear, off the note. I would not have put money on getting through, life-or-death dramatics notwithstanding, and I was almost startled to hear Vickers at the other end.
‘Hello, yes?’
‘You need to ask him about the necklace,’ I said without preamble. ‘The one on the bookshelves. Leather, with beads on it. A leather thong.’
‘Hold on,’ Vickers said brusquely. There was a sound of shuffling and I pictured him leafing through the file. ‘I’ve got a photo of it, yes. On the top shelf. What’s the significance of it? Did it belong to Jenny?’
‘No, it did not,’ I said grimly. ‘It belonged to my brother. And there’s no way that Danny Keane should have it. The summer he disappeared, Charlie never took it off. Not even in the bath. He was wearing it the last time I saw him, and I was the last person to see him before he went missing.
‘Are you sure?’ Vickers asked.
‘Without a doubt,’ I said. ‘Will you call me and let me know what he says?’
‘Without a doubt,’ Vickers echoed, and put down the receiver.
I sat and listened to the silence, fiddling with my phone. Things never worked out the way I thought they would. I had assumed for years that my mother had been wrong
to
think I could unlock the mystery of what happened to Charlie. I had resented her for being unreasonable; it had burned through our relationship and salted the earth it stood on so nothing else could grow. And now, it was starting to look as if she’d been right, much though I hated to admit it.
I felt totally drained, but I had to muster the energy to move. It was time to go home.
The park is different at night. It’s dark under the trees, where the streetlights don’t shine, and all I can see is the red glow from the end of Mark’s cigarette. The cherry, he calls it. It flares and fades as he draws on it and I can see the side of his face, the line of his cheek, his eyelashes sweeping low. I think he likes me, sometimes, and other times I’m not so sure. He’s three years older than me. He’s just passed his driving test at the first time of trying. And he’s good-looking enough to turn heads as he swaggers down the high street. All the girls in my school are obsessed with him.
There’s a scuffling sound: Stu changing position beside Mark. I move over, trying to take up less space. A light rain has started to fall, and the little group of us crowd closer together. Annette’s elbow is in my side and when everyone laughs at a joke Stu’s cracked, she jabs me, hard. It’s deliberate. She doesn’t like me.
‘Let’s play spin the bottle,’ she says, holding up the vodka bottle and shaking it so the mouthful of liquid left inside sloshes about. I lean into Mark’s side, hoping that he’ll say no. I feel sick. I just want him to put his arm around my shoulders and talk to me in that funny, quiet way he has. It’s not what he says, exactly. It’s the way he makes me feel.
‘It’s too dark,’ another girl says, and someone else – Dave – takes out a bike light and puts it on. Around the circle, faces are sloppy with drink, all drooping eyelids and wet mouths. I haven’t had as much as everyone else, and I don’t want to play spin the bottle, not with these people, not now. It’s late, and I’m tired, and I keep checking that my keys are in my pocket, so I can get back in quietly, before Mum realises I’ve gone out.
Abruptly, I come to a decision. I get to my feet and Annette laughs loudly. ‘Don’t fancy it, Sarah?’
‘I’m going home.’ I pick my way over legs, bending to clear the branches as I step out into the open air. Behind me, there’s a scuffle, and Mark follows, shrugging off the jeers of his mates. He puts his arm around me and I feel warm, cared for, thinking that he’s going to walk me home – but he guides me away from the path, towards the groundsman’s hut, a couple of hundred yards away from the group.
‘Don’t go,’ he murmurs into my hair. ‘Don’t leave.’
‘I want to, though.’ I’m pulling away from him a bit, half laughing, and his hand tightens on my arm. ‘Ow. That hurts.’
‘Shut up. Just shut up,’ he says, and pulls me after him into the shelter provided by the wall of the hut.
‘Mark,’ I say, protesting, and he shoves me hard into the wall so my head bangs against it. Then his hands are on me, grabbing, feeling, probing, and I gasp from shock and pain and he laughs under his breath. He goes on and on, mauling me, and then there’s a noise nearby and I look and it’s Stu, with Dave coming up beside him. Their eyes are wide, curious. They are there to stop me from running away. They are there to watch.
‘You love it, don’t you,’ Mark says, and his hands go to my shoulders and push, so that I fall to my knees in front of him and I know then, I know what he wants me to do. He is fumbling at his jeans, his breath coming fast, and I close my eyes, tears prickling the inside of my lids. I want to go home. I’m afraid to do what he wants, and I’m afraid to say no.
‘Open your mouth,’ he says, and cuffs the side of my head to make me look at him, to make me see what he’s holding. ‘Come on, you bitch. If you don’t want to, there’s plenty of girls who will.’
I don’t see what happens, but suddenly there’s a bright light that’s red through my eyelids and I hear Dave swear, his voice high and frightened. The two boys run, their feet slipping on the grass, and before Mark can react there’s a hollow sound and he buckles, falling sideways, his legs kicking. I jump up, my eyes screwed up against the light that I now see is a narrow beam from a torch, and whoever is holding it turns away from me, playing the light over Mark’s body, over his lower half, his trousers and underwear bunched around his ankles.
‘You cunt,’ the person holding the torch says, and at first I think he’s talking to me. ‘Couldn’t you find someone your own age? Taking advantage.’
He steps forward and kicks at Mark, connecting hard with his thigh, and Mark groans. The torch wheels around and for a moment I see a face I know: Danny Keane, Charlie’s friend. I don’t understand. I step back, and the torch stabs the shadows, finding me, running over my top. It’s ripped at the front, I realise, fumbling at the tattered edges, trying to draw it together.
There’s silence for a second as Danny stares at me and I look back, eyes screwed up against the light of the torch.
‘Go home, Sarah,’ Danny says, and his voice is dead. ‘Go home and don’t do this again. You’re
just
a kid. Be a kid, for God’s sake. This isn’t for you. Just go home.’
I turn and run, haring across the grass as if I’m being chased, and behind me I hear a thud, and another, and I have to look, to see what’s happening. Danny is crouching on top of Mark, and slowly, methodically, he’s knocking out his front teeth with the heavy torch, while Mark screams and screams.
As I run, I know two things. Mark will never speak to me again. And I will never be able to look Danny Keane in the eye again for as long as I live.
NOT FOR THE
first time, I sat beside my mother on the sofa and had no idea what she was thinking. She seemed to be concentrating on the television, watching a quiz show I had never seen before and couldn’t get a handle on at all. The bright colours of the set and the audience’s shouts and cheers jarred; I would have preferred to sit in silence. My mouth was dry, and the urge to fidget was almost irresistible; nothing could ease the restlessness that I was feeling. The plush fabric on the arm of our ancient sofa had come in for some surreptitious gouging. It wasn’t doing the material any good, but it went some way towards relieving my feelings. I had tucked my feet up under me to stop myself from tapping them compulsively in time to the quickened beat of my heart, and now they were tingling, threatening pins and needles. My stomach twisted. I hadn’t eaten for hours – couldn’t think of eating. The only thought I had, running around and around in my head remorselessly, was
what did he say?
The phone call had come twenty minutes earlier, after a long day of waiting. Vickers, asking very properly if my mother was there, if he might come around and talk to us both, as he had information he thought we would be interested to hear.
Tell me now
, I had nearly begged, but I knew he wouldn’t. There was nothing but professional courtesy
in
his voice. Deliberately or not, he had shut me out again. I was back on the wrong side of the partition between the police and the civilian world.
I’d warned Mum as soon as I got off the phone with Vickers. I’d told her that the police were coming to the house for the second day in a row, that it was something to do with Charlie’s disappearance. She hadn’t seemed surprised. No hand to her chest, no widening of the eyes, no uptick in blood pressure. She had waited a long time for this. I could only guess that she had lived this moment in her mind more times than I could imagine, so there was nothing to surprise her. She sat beside me, as remote and unfathomable as the stars, and I couldn’t find the words to ask her how she was feeling. She hadn’t even spoken to me about the search the police had conducted the previous day, the questions they’d asked her. I’d stood in my room and stared at it for a long time when I got back from the hospital, trying to see it through Blake’s eyes, trying to see what had been opened and what had been moved. It felt strange – altered, somehow – and I had turned to leave it with a feeling of claustrophobia that overlaid the shame that had stayed with me since I’d heard about the search.
And now I was waiting for the police to come again, this time impatiently. In the end, I wasn’t even in the sitting room when they came to the door. I was in the kitchen, boiling the kettle to make tea that neither of us particularly wanted to drink. Out of sight of Mum, I could pace and fidget to my heart’s content. The long-drawn-out hiss of the kettle coming to the boil effectively blocked out sounds from the rest of the house, and as it clicked off, I
froze
, hearing voices from the hall. Forgetting about the tea, I shot out of the kitchen, my heart pounding.
‘Hello, Sarah,’ Vickers said, looking past my mother, who had opened the front door. A pretty female officer that I recognised from the station stood beside Vickers. No Blake. Well, that didn’t matter.
‘Please,’ I said, gesturing to the sitting room. ‘Sit down. Would you like a cup of tea? I’ve just boiled the kettle.’ After all that impatience, I was stalling. Now that they were here, I didn’t want to hear what they had to say. I couldn’t imagine how Mum was going to deal with it either.
‘We’re all right for tea at the moment,’ Vickers said, leading the way into the sitting room. ‘But don’t let me keep you from having one yourself.’
I shook my head wordlessly, and sank down on a hard chair by the door. Mum settled herself with dignity in Dad’s old armchair. The police had taken the sofa. The female officer perched on the edge uncomfortably. Vickers leaned forwards, his elbows braced on his knees, and ran the fingertips of his right hand over the knuckles on his left, over and over. He didn’t say anything at first, just looked from Mum to me and back again. I couldn’t read his expression for a moment – was there no news? Maybe I had been wrong about the necklace. Maybe Danny had stalled them. Maybe he had refused to answer any questions. I rubbed my hands down my jeans and wondered how to begin.
‘How can we help you, Chief Inspector?’
The words had come from Mum and I blinked at her, surprised. She was sitting there as calmly as a queen, in
complete
control. I started a rough calculation of how much she had had to drink during the day, then gave up. Enough to stiffen her backbone, not so much that she couldn’t deal with this visit like a lady. Her hands were folded in her lap; the telltale quiver wasn’t apparent.
‘Mrs Barnes, as you are probably aware, we’ve been investigating the murder of a young girl in this area that occurred a few days ago. During that investigation, some things have come to light about the disappearance of your son. We have reason to believe, Mrs Barnes, that Charlie was murdered very soon after he disappeared in 1992, and we know who was responsible.’
Mum waited, her composure holding. I couldn’t breathe.
‘Charlie was friends with a boy named Daniel Keane – Danny – who lived at 7, Curzon Close with his mother and father, Ada and Derek. Charlie spent a lot of time with Danny, and indeed he was interviewed following Charlie’s disappearance. At the time, he denied any knowledge of Charlie’s whereabouts and there was no reason to believe he was lying. He has come to our attention in connection with the murder of Jennifer Shepherd – the young girl I mentioned just now. Having him in custody, we raised the issue of Charlie’s disappearance, and found that he was more helpful on this occasion. He told us a number of things we didn’t know before.’
Vickers’ voice dropped slightly. A wind that wasn’t there lifted the hairs along my arms. I could barely breathe.
‘What we didn’t know at the time of Charlie’s disappearance was that Derek Keane was a prolific and determined sexual predator. He operated in this area,
attacking
women over a period of fifteen to twenty years. At the same time, he engaged in physical and sexual abuse of his son and a number of other children.’
‘Not Charlie,’ Mum said, shaking her head.
‘Not initially,’ Vickers said heavily, regretfully. ‘Daniel Keane claims that he went to some trouble to ensure that his father was never alone with Charlie, and managed to hide the abuse he was experiencing from your son. Derek Keane preyed on young girls and boys from poor backgrounds – children who had been taken into care, mainly, who he met through the youth club that used to operate on this estate. I don’t believe that he ever did an honest day’s work in his life, but he used to act as a general handyman at the club. It was the perfect place for him to meet and gain the trust of vulnerable youngsters, and he took full advantage.’