The Missing: The gripping psychological thriller that’s got everyone talking... (8 page)

I’d expected syringes and drug paraphernalia on the floor, or at least the stench of weed, mixed with urine and shit. I’d also imagined piles of rubbish, fast-food boxes, split bin bags, dirty walls and stained mattresses. Instead the walls are white – grubby but not soiled – and decorated with posters and murals. Mark would call it graffiti. There’s a frayed sofa too, an armchair and a low table holding what looks like some kind of screen-printing equipment. A guitar is propped up in the corner of the room along with several piles of books and half a dozen blank art canvases. Two men are sitting on the sofa. One’s reading a book about Andy Warhol; the other’s asleep, his head tipped back and his mouth wide open. I should be terrified, shut in a room with three men I don’t know, but I’m too shocked to feel fear. I thought I was about to walk into a drugs den and instead it’s as though I’ve walked into a student flat.

‘He was up late working,’ says the large man in the red hoody who hissed at me to come in. ‘He’s off to a festival soon. T-shirts,’ he adds, gesturing towards the screen-printing equipment. ‘He does them all by hand.’

I feel myself gawp. ‘Squatters work?’

‘We all work,’ says the man with the book, looking up, and my cheeks burn. Did I just say that aloud? ‘Jay busks and—’

‘You don’t work,’ says Red Hoody who must be Jay. ‘You’re a student.’

‘I use my brain,’ says the man on the sofa. ‘It’s work, believe you me.’

‘I’d offer you a cup of tea,’ says Jay, ‘but the council shut off the electric last week. We’ve still got water though, if you want some?’

‘No, thank you.’

He’s holding Billy’s flier, crumpled up in his hand, but no one has mentioned my son since I walked in. And there’s no sign of the bike.

‘Have any of you seen Billy?’ I gesture at the flier.

Jay shakes his head. The art student shrugs. Sleeping man snorts in his sleep and wakes with a start. He stares at me through glassy eyes, then seems to jolt into himself. ‘Who are you?’

‘Claire Wilkinson. Billy’s mum. I think you might know him.’

‘Billy?’ He scratches his head. ‘I know a Will Turner. Is that him?’

‘No. His name’s Billy Wilkinson. He’s fifteen. He disappeared over six months ago. I know he had friends near Gloucester Road.’

‘Never heard of him, sorry.’

‘You must know him then.’ I turn back to Jay. ‘You let me in.’

He runs a hand over his ginger beard, finds the end and tugs on it. ‘You were shouting through the letterbox. What else was I supposed to do?’

I feel myself grow hot under the scrutiny of three pairs of eyes.

‘But the bike …’ The door is open on the other side of the living room revealing a dark hall or passageway.

‘What bike?’

‘I saw you on a bike. A BMX. Distinctive. Yellow and black.’

‘And?’ Jay crosses his arms over his broad chest and takes a step back, as though to get a better look at me.

‘Could I …’ I take a step towards the hallway. ‘Could I have a look at it?’

‘It’s not for sale.’

The atmosphere in the room has changed. When I entered the house they were amused and curious. Now they want me to leave.

I hear a sound from beyond the open door, the
squeak-squeak-squeak
of rusty bed springs and a low groan. Jay and the art student exchange a look. The student hides a smile behind his book. Why are they looking at each other like that? Is Billy here? Are they hiding him?

‘All right, lady.’ Jay puts a hand on my arm. ‘I think it’s time for you to go now, don’t you?’

There’s another sound from beyond the hallway. A moan of pain. The art student sniggers.

I snatch my arm away from Jay and, before he can react, I dart round him and run across the living room towards the open door. It’s dark in the hallway but I can just make out a bike, propped up against the wall. There are several rooms along the length of the corridor. All the doors are open apart from the one at the far end of the hallway. As I sprint towards it a hand grabs my shoulder and I’m yanked backwards, but not before I’ve kicked out a leg and made contact with the door with the heel of my boot.

It swings open.

There’s a gasp and a grunt and my breath catches in my throat as two men, naked and flushed, spring away from each other. The thinner and paler of the two men, standing at the base of the bed, grabs an item of clothing from the floor and presses it to his crotch. The other man, still on the mattress, shouts, ‘What the fuck?’ and picks up a shoe. He stares at me as though deciding whether or not I’m a threat, then launches himself off the bed and slams the door shut. ‘You can fuck off too, Jay,’ he shouts as his flatmate, still standing behind me with his hand on my shoulder, roars with laughter.

‘Come on, mad bird. Time for you to leave.’ Jay moves his hand to the small of my back and manoeuvres me out of the hallway, back into the living room and across to the front door.

‘Please.’ I twist away from him as he reaches for the door handle. ‘Please just tell me where you got the bike from. Is it stolen? I won’t tell the police. If it is Billy’s bike it could be a clue, it could help us—’

‘It’s not stolen.’ Jay glances back at his friends but they aren’t on the sofa any more. They’ve moved to the other doorway, where they’re nudging each other and laughing as they peer into the hallway. ‘It’s Rich’s bike, the guy in the bedroom. He hates us using his stuff, particularly me. Says I’ll buckle the frame.’ He laughs drily.

‘But you saw me, in my car, and you sped up.’

‘What car?’ He looks genuinely confused. ‘I was trying to get the bike back before Rich got up. Look –’ his expression softens as he opens the door – ‘I’m sorry your son’s missing. We’ll stick the leaflet up in the window, okay?’

‘Thank you,’ I say, even though it is no longer in his hand. It’s in a crumpled ball under the table.

‘All right then. You take it easy.’

‘Wait! Are there any other squats around here? My son—’

The question hangs in the air as the door is shut in my face.

‘Oh, crapping hell, missus.’ Liz squeezes me tightly, then holds me at arm’s length so she can look me up and down. ‘I’ve been so worried about you. Where the hell have you been?’

I open my mouth to reply but my best friend gets there first. ‘Come in and tell me everything. Do I need to lock the front door this time? Because if you do a runner again I swear I’ll rugby-tackle you to the ground. I’ve eaten a metric fucking tonne of chocolate in the last few days so I’m packing a few pounds!’

We’ve been sitting at Liz’s kitchen table for ten minutes. I’ve been talking non-stop since I stepped into her house. When I finally pause to take a breath Liz stares at me, her eyes large and round. ‘And all this has happened in the last few days?’

I nod.

‘Why didn’t you come round? I mean, I appreciated the text you sent saying you were okay but Jesus, woman, you only live next door. You could have popped in. When Mark and Jake came round to say you’d disappeared I totally freaked. I thought it was my fault. That bloody newspaper.’

‘I know.’ I reach across the kitchen table for her hands. ‘I’m so sorry. I should have come round earlier but it’s … it’s all been so … I feel like I’m going mad. That’s the only way I can explain it. I’m literally losing my mind.’

‘Of course you are, bab. Anyone in your situation would be. But I’ll tell you something for nothing – don’t you be going to any more places on your own. You need to let the police do their job. Anything could have happened to you in that squat. They could have robbed you or worse.’

‘They weren’t like that.’

‘And you know that for sure, do you? People turn, Claire. You need to be a bit less trusting.’

‘I’m not too trusting.’

‘You bloody are.’

‘But I need to find Billy. If Caleb went missing you’d do everything you could to get him back. I’ve waited six months for the police to find him but I can’t keep doing that. I need to find him. I can’t just sit at home doing nothing. But I’ve started to see him everywhere I go. Everywhere …’

I snatch my hands back from Liz’s and rest my forehead on my curled fists, suddenly exhausted. I don’t know what to think any more. Or what to do. Each time I think I’m one step closer to finding Billy I get my hopes up. Only for them to come crashing back down again.

‘Deep breaths.’ I hear the squeak of Liz’s chair on the kitchen tiles and then her hand on my back. She rubs circles over my shoulders with the palms of her hands, just the way I’d do to the kids when they were little and upset. ‘Take deep breaths, Claire.’

I close my eyes as she continues to rub my back but the darkness behind my eyelids is too dense, too deathless, and I open them again.

‘Maybe what you need,’ Liz says softly, ‘is a bit of normality. Let me finish,’ she adds quickly. ‘I know there’s no normal – I know life can’t be normal until you get Billy back – but what I mean is maybe you need a routine. You’ve got too much time on your hands, Claire. Too much time to think and brood. Have you thought about going back to work?’

‘Oh God, no.’

‘I thought Stephen was a good boss?’ Her voice softens as she says my brother-in-law’s name. I think she’s always had a bit of a soft spot for him, not that she’d ever admit it. ‘He let you take six months off after Billy disappeared. I’m sure he’d be glad to have you back.’

‘I know, but it’s complicated.’

‘How is it complicated? You loved your job at Wilkinson & Son. You were always telling me about the banter you had with the customers on the phone and how you and Stephen had a laugh.’

‘Loved is a bit strong and anyway, what about Mark?’

‘What about him? You went back to work after the argument, didn’t you? And he didn’t give you any grief.’

Mark and his stepbrother Stephen fell out a year ago. It was my birthday and we were having Sunday lunch in a local pub when Billy and Jake came to blows in the garden. They never revealed what started it but there was a lot of name-calling and insults thrown about before Jake landed the first punch. Mark intervened, heavy-handedly, and Stephen made a comment about Mark’s parenting skills.

He said it jokily but Mark bit back, asking what the fuck Stephen knew about bringing up children. It was a low blow. Stephen and his wife Caroline can’t have kids. They’ve tried everything, all the tests you can get. ‘Unknown fertility issues,’ the consultant said. Caroline got pregnant once, after ten years of trying, but she lost the baby in the second trimester. They never discovered why. She was broken by it and so was Stephen. I thought Mark was completely out of order for what he’d said to him and I let him know as much. I went back to Wilkinson & Son the next day, as though nothing had happened. Mark didn’t give me grief about it but I could tell by the offhand way he greeted me that evening that he was secretly smarting. Where was my loyalty? Why hadn’t I sided with him and told Stephen to stick his job? Because I was angry with him, that was why. Between him and the boys they’d completely ruined my birthday.

Mark and Stephen haven’t spoken since their argument, other than a few brusque words during the search for Billy, but I know Mark misses his stepbrother. He’s just too proud to admit it.

‘And – don’t mind me saying this, Claire – but it’s not as though you couldn’t do with the money.’

Liz is right, again. Every spare penny we’ve managed to save over the years has been spent on publicizing Billy’s disappearance. There’s nothing left. Mark suggested cancelling our Sky subscription and giving up a few other luxuries he thinks we could live without but why put everyone through that when I could go back to work for a bit? I could deal with a few hours a week, at least until Dr Evans gets back to me with the result of the blood test.

‘So?’ Liz stops rubbing my back and slaps me square between the shoulder blades. ‘Are you going to give it a go? Give Stephen a ring and arrange to go back to work. You only have to do a few hours, see how it feels.’

I twist round in my chair and smile up at her. ‘And if I don’t?’

She winks. ‘I’ll run you over and put you out of your misery myself.’

I feel sick as I indicate right and turn the car into the yard of Wilkinson & Son builder’s merchants and park. It’s been three days since my conversation with Liz about going back to work. Nothing has changed since the last time I was here. The yard is still full of fork-lifts, vans and lorries. There are empty pallets stacked high in one corner. The sign – a yellow and blue logo that looks like a triangle made out of bricks – dominates the side of the warehouse. Inside, and in the larger yard beyond the building, dozens of builders and tradesmen will be perusing the timber, bricks, pipes, paint and power tools. Mark’s dad John will be on the shop floor, making sure the customers and staff are happy. And Stephen, Mark’s younger stepbrother, will be in the office: a phone in one hand, a stained coffee mug in the other. I used to be the office manager – a fancy title for what basically involved answering the phone, printing and mailing invoices, organizing the cleaners and running ads in the local press.

The good thing, if it can be called that, about working for members of your family is that I didn’t have to explain my absence when Billy disappeared. John and Stephen didn’t go to work either. They spent the best part of a week driving around Bristol, plastering posters of Billy’s face onto lampposts, hoardings and billboards. Our house was a hive of activity, every room crammed with friends, neighbours and family. Mark was the epicentre, taking charge and instructing people where to search and flypost. He took down the mirror above the fireplace and replaced it with a huge map of Bristol which he stuck pins into – red for areas the police had searched, green for the places we’d be combing.

He ran everything by DS Forbes. ‘That’s the correct terminology, isn’t it, DS Forbes?’ ‘It’s important we have a chain of command, right, DS Forbes?’ ‘What’s the latest, DS Forbes?’ I was proud of him, assuming control, role-playing the career he’d so desperately wanted but part of me felt like screaming, ‘This shouldn’t be happening. Why is this happening? What did we do to deserve this? What did Billy do? No one should feel this kind of fear.’

Now my mobile phone bleeps impatiently in my bag and I snatch it up.

‘Claire Bear!’ I hold the phone a bit further away as Liz’s voice booms into my ear. ‘Are you at work?’

‘Nearly. I’m parked up outside.’

‘You don’t have to go back, you know. I know it was my idea but—’

‘It’s all right. I can do this.’

‘Did you tell Mark you were going back to work?’

‘Yes, this morning.’

‘And?’

‘He said, “Do what you need to do, Claire.” Then he walked out of the bedroom.’

‘Supportive. Oh, shit. Sorry, lovely, early shift today and I’m due back on the tills. I’d better go. I’ll give you a ring during my next break, okay?’

‘Thanks, Liz.’

‘Good luck. You’ll be fine.’

The line goes dead.

I look at the screen. 9.25 a.m. It’s not too late to text Stephen to say I won’t be in after all.

A thumping sound on the driver’s-side window makes me jump.

‘Claire!’ Stephen makes a ‘wind down the window’ gesture. ‘Good to see you!’ he shouts. ‘You coming in?’

The second I step through the wide double doors, every pair of eyes in the building swivels in my direction.

‘All right, Claire!’ Wendy, one of the cashiers, raises her hand. Her smile is tight, nervous.

‘Good to see you back, Mrs W.’ Tony, the timber specialist. He gives me a nod, but it’s short and sharp. The kind of nod you give someone at a funeral – nice to see you but not in these circumstances.

‘Morning!’ One of the regulars, whose name I don’t know. He glances away before I can acknowledge him.

‘Stephen, could you excuse me for a second.’ I sprint away before he can object and head for the ladies’ loos.

When I emerge from the cubicle I am shocked by the reflection that stares back at me from the tarnished mirror. My hair is wet with sweat around the hairline and my cheeks are flushed. This wasn’t how I imagined coming back to work. Not that I’ve given Wilkinson & Son much thought since Billy left but this place has always represented normality. I come in, I do my job, I banter with my colleagues and the regulars. We swap stories about the weather and the traffic and how we spent our weekend. Will I ever be able to do that again?

I tidy myself up the best I can with my comb and the pressed powder I find in the bottom of my bag but it’s a losing battle and Stephen’s eyebrows twitch upwards in surprise as I walk into the office. To his credit he doesn’t ask if I’m okay. Instead he pulls back the chair from my old desk and points at the steaming cup of coffee to the right of the keyboard.

‘Milk, one sugar. Just how you like it.’

I sit down, wrap my hands around the mug and gaze about the office: same furniture, same carpet, same tea-stained countertop, same JCB calendar on the wall. Over six months have passed since I last sat at this desk and the only thing that has changed is me.

Stephen plonks himself into the chair on the other side of the room and picks at the top button of his shirt, sighing as it finally comes free. He is about the same height as Mark, but he’s heavier and he looks as though he’s put on even more weight since I left. He gave up smoking when he and Caroline were trying for a baby and she would pack him off to work with a Tupperware box full of carrot sticks and celery to crunch on. These would mount up in the fridge, box piled upon box, until the end of the week when Stephen would tip the contents into the bin, hiding the packets of Maltesers he’d demolished instead.

‘So,’ he says. ‘What … uh … what prompted the decision to come back to work then?’

‘Liz suggested it and it didn’t seem like such a terrible idea.’

‘Right. Right.’ He nods. ‘And how is Liz? Did she ever find out if Lloyd was having an affair?’

I almost laugh at how out of the loop he is but then I remember, we’ve barely spoken since Billy disappeared.

‘They haven’t spoken in a while. Last thing I heard he was still denying there was anyone else involved.’

‘But she found texts on his mobile, didn’t she? Explicit ones.’

‘Yeah.’

‘And she never rang the number?’

‘She did but it went straight to voicemail. It was the generic one. You know, the one that your phone’s set up with.’

‘Ah.’ Stephen shifts in his seat. His lips part, then he closes them again. I think he’s run out of small talk. ‘Okay, cool. So, I’m not going to throw you in at the deep end today. There’s a bit of invoicing to be done and a stack of orders in the in-tray. We’ve taken on a contractor for the cleaning since you were last … since …’ He pauses to swipe at the bead of sweat that trickles down the side of his face. ‘Anyway, the cleaners were cutting corners so we got some new ones.’

‘I’ll do a bit of invoicing,’ I say. ‘Thank you.’

The tinny radio in the corner of the room plays pop songs as Stephen and I fall into companionable silence. The first order form I pick up takes me for ever to turn into an invoice because I can’t remember my password for the computer or which buttons to click to make the accounting software add everything up. But then, like riding a bike, it becomes instinctive and I complete invoice after invoice and the fraught thoughts that have been whizzing around my brain like angry bees grow silent.

‘Another coffee?’ Stephen asks and I’m surprised when I look at the clock in the bottom right-hand corner of the screen. Half an hour has passed since I turned on the computer.

‘Please.’

Stephen cracks his knuckles, stands up and crosses the room to turn on the kettle. It bubbles and then whistles as he unwraps a packet of biscuits. Out of the corner of my eye I watch him put two into his mouth in one go. He chews quickly, crumbs falling from his lips in his haste to eat them.

‘Any news after the appeal?’ he asks as he turns his back to pour the boiling water into two mugs.

‘No, not yet.’

He says nothing. The spoon clanks against the mugs as he stirs the coffee. His hand shakes when he adds the sugar and half of it ends up on the countertop. Is he uncomfortable with me back in the office? Is that why he seems so twitchy? Or is it because we’re talking about Billy?

He was distraught when Billy disappeared. He kept asking me, over and over again, to tell him what had happened the night he’d disappeared. Billy was always his favourite out of his two nephews. They both shared a love of Formula 1 and Billy would spend every Sunday at his house when it was racing season. Jake went along too the first few times but he said it was boring, watching cars whizz round and round the track, and he asked to stay at home instead. When I pressed him he said he thought Uncle Stephen was weird. He said he didn’t like the way he hugged him – he squeezed him too tightly. Jake’s never been keen on physical affection but his comment made me nervous. I started quizzing Billy about his visits to Stephen’s house, and I looked for abnormal behaviour like lying or bed-wetting or night terrors, but Billy seemed fine. If anything, he seemed happier on leaving Stephen’s house than he had been when he went in. I needed to be sure, though, so I went to pick him up an hour early once, just so I could peep through the window before ringing the bell. There was nothing worrying going on. Just Billy and Stephen sitting beside each other on the sofa with a can of Coke each, a tub of Roses chocolates between them, the TV blaring in the corner of the room and Caroline sitting at the table reading a magazine.

I still thought it was odd, the way Stephen had bonded with one of the boys and not the other, but there was no denying how much they had in common. As well as Formula 1 they both adored
Top Gear
,
The Gadget Show
and anything to do with robots. Stephen said he could relate to Billy more than Jake, being a younger son too. He said he saw a lot of himself in Billy, even though they weren’t related by blood. He tried not to show his favouritism but you could see it in the presents he bought for the kids. Billy’s were always more expensive, something he’d ‘desperately wanted’ whilst Jake’s were generic ‘boy’s toys’ that you might give to one of the kids’ friends for their birthday. I hated seeing the hurt look in Jake’s eyes so I started putting his Christmas card from Stephen in a different envelope, along with a tenner from my purse. I had to stop when Jake thanked his uncle for the money and Stephen said he didn’t know what he was talking about.

Billy’s visits to his uncle’s house increased when he started getting into trouble at school. He said Uncle Stephen understood what it was like to be the black sheep. I told him that was rubbish. If Stephen got on so badly with his family why was he working for his stepdad? I tried to get Billy to open up about what he and Stephen talked about but he refused. ‘Aren’t I allowed to have any secrets, Mum?’

‘And how’s Jake?’ Stephen asks now. He texted me to ask if everything was okay after he saw the appeal on TV. I didn’t have the energy to get into what happened so replied obliquely, saying Jake hadn’t been feeling well.

‘Yeah, he’s fine. Doing well with his apprenticeship and his weights. He’s quite big now, muscles on top of muscles.’

‘He’ll get that from Dad. Size of a house he was, even as a teenager. I was a pipsqueak compared to him.’

‘Yeah, Mark said.’

Stephen’s back stiffens at the mention of his brother’s name.

‘And how’s Kira?’ he asks.

‘Still living with us. She’s still at college, doing well on her photography course by all accounts.’

‘She took a few photos of me last year, can’t remember why. Some project or other.’

‘Yeah, she’s always got her camera to hand. She took a lovely one of Mum on her birthday. You know she got her tongue pierced a few months ago. Kira, not Mum.’

He doesn’t laugh. ‘Tongue piercing, eh? She’ll be getting a tattoo next. What is it with girls these days? It’s like they’re desperate for attention. Tits out, lips plumped, skirts barely grazing their arses. You’re a very trusting woman, Claire Wilkinson, that’s all I’ll say.’

‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

‘Well –’ he continues to stir the coffee – ‘it’s temptation, isn’t it?’

‘What is?’

‘Letting a nubile young thing like that into your home.’

My jaw drops. Nubile? Just the sound of the word makes my skin crawl, never mind the flash of damp tongue as he rolls it around his mouth.

‘Look –’ he holds up his hands – ‘if you’re comfortable with Kira parading around your house half-naked in front of your husband then good for you. There aren’t many women who’d be so trusting.’

My horror switches to amusement and I laugh. Has he been saving that one up since he fell out with Mark this time last year? Oh, I know. I’ll put the boot into my brother by implying that he’s been leching over his son’s girlfriend.

‘Is that some kind of joke?’

‘No.’ He shakes his head, genuinely confused, then the mist seems to clear. ‘Oh, I get it. You think I’m having a dig? I’m seriously not. Ask Caroline. She said there’d be no way she’d let a young woman live with us, wandering about in a towel and so on.’

‘And you agree with her, do you?’

‘Yeah—’ He stops abruptly as he realizes what he’s just said.

‘Well, if you can’t trust yourself …’ I leave the sentence hanging and smile sweetly as I get up from my chair. ‘Do you know what, Stephen? I think perhaps I made a mistake coming in today. I’m not ready to go back to work just yet. I need to be with my family and I’ve got a mountain of laundry to wash. I think Kira had a shower this morning. I’d better get her towel in the machine before I catch Mark sniffing it.’

I stroll across the office, reach for the door handle, then turn back. ‘Bye, then!’

Stephen doesn’t reply. He’s slouched back in his seat, gawping at me, his mouth a perfectly formed ‘o’.

I slip into the car and take my phone from my bag. I can’t believe I ever sided with Stephen over my own husband. Mark always said Stephen was jealous of him and I thought it was his ego speaking. But Mark was right. For Stephen to keep taking pot shots at him, this long after their argument, and with Billy missing too, he must be seriously screwed up. I won’t let him draw me in. Not any more.