What She Knew (21 page)
“I’m not putting it away, Ben,” I’d replied. “I love it.”
“You can obviously do what you want, but I’d be very careful about a vigil,” said Zhang. “The press can be a law unto themselves. You don’t know how they’ll react, and we mustn’t compromise the investigation.”
“What would be very useful then,” said Nicky, “is if we could arrange a proper meeting with the police, with yourselves, to discuss some of these things together, agree on a proper course of action. We don’t want to do anything that would affect the investigation, but there must be something we could do to help.”
“I’ll ask,” said Zhang. “I promise I’ll ask. But be warned, everybody’s already working all hours on the investigation, so manage your expectations, and for now it’s best to keep channeling your questions through me.”
Before she left, she went out the back to see where the graffiti had been. She stood in the glare of my neighbor’s security light and looked at the newly scrubbed fence, where the words had gone but an orange wash remained. It struck me what a neat person she was. Alongside her warmth, she had a reserve about her and a sort of economy of both speech and dress that both impressed me and slightly intimidated me.
“I’m going to check out the rest of the alley before I go,” she said. “We’ll speak tomorrow.”
In both directions the alley stretched out into darkness. We could hear scuffling behind the fence as something took cover. Farther away, the wind was making somebody’s back gate creak and bang.
“Go back inside,” she said to me. “Stay safe.”
JIM
I did go home, but the flat felt hollow and cold, and I was unsettled. I called Emma.
“Where are you?” I said when she answered.
“I’m in the alleyway behind Rachel Jenner’s house.”
“And?”
“Well, they’ve washed most of the paint off, but you can see where the words were written in massive letters.”
“How is the family?”
“Rachel’s not good, she’s really fearful. Looks ill actually. Nicky’s holding the fort—she’s tough that one, proactive, I like her—and they’ve got Rachel’s friend Laura with them.”
“Are you going back in with them?”
“I don’t think I need to. They’re coping for now. I’m cold, Jim, I need to get going.”
“Are you coming round?”
“I’ve got to go and see John Finch, tell him about the forensics.”
“Afterward?”
“I’m so tired. I might just go to mine.”
“Please, Em. I missed you last night.”
She didn’t answer right away. The line went bad as the wind whistled into her handset and it was hard to hear her when she said, “Are you sure it’s a good idea, now that I’m working for you?”
“With me, not for me, and it doesn’t have to make a difference, of course it doesn’t. Please, come round tonight.”
“I’ll come round after I’ve seen John Finch, but I’m warning you I won’t be good for much.”
“Are you OK?”
“I hope I’m the right person for this job.”
“Of course you are. Of course! Don’t start getting wound up because of what you said at the meeting. Fraser knows you didn’t mean it.”
“The way she looked at me…”
“Honestly, don’t worry about it. Don’t. She’ll have forgotten about it by now. I promise you. You are the right person for this job. You’re tired tonight, that’s why it all feels bad. Just remember why you’re doing it: it’s for the boy. Emma? Are you there?”
“Yeah. I heard you. It’s for the boy.”
“Are you coming round?”
“I’ll see you in about an hour. Don’t wait up.”
After we spoke I turned on all the lights in the flat and put the heating up. Then I went to the shop around the corner and got supplies for breakfast, and a Mars bar, because Emma liked chocolate. I made a coffee and waited for her to arrive. I couldn’t wait to see her, but I wanted her to be her normal self. I wanted her to tease me, take me out of myself, and make me forget work for a while. I wanted to hold her.
RACHEL
When I got back inside, Nicky held the phone out to me. “It’s John.”
“The nursing home rang,” he said. “My mother’s distressed because you didn’t bring Ben to visit her today.”
“Oh God.”
I’d forgotten about Ruth. Ben and I made a regular weekly visit to see her in her nursing home. Spending time with her grandson was one of the only things she looked forward to.
“Does she know?” I asked.
“No.” His voice was quiet. “I’ve asked them to keep her away from the media.”
I knew it would be easy to keep Ruth away from the TV—she didn’t have a television in her room, and she was fiercely dismissive of the communal areas of the nursing home, keeping to her own room mostly. She loved to listen to Radio 3, though, and I wondered how they were managing that. She’d be desolate without it.
John was one step ahead of me. He said, “They’ve told her that her radio’s broken, and Katrina dropped off some CDs for her, and a player. It should keep her going for a while.”
“You’ll have to go and see her,” I said.
“I can’t see her.” This said so quietly that I could hardly hear him.
“Well, one of us has to go. We don’t have to tell her.”
I wanted it to be him who went. I didn’t want to have to look into Ruth’s eyes and lie to her about Ben, but to tell her would break her heart.
“No. Don’t ask me to,” he said. “I can’t.”
“John!”
“I’m sorry,” he said, and he hung up. I stood there with the phone in my hand, incredulous.
“How does he think I can deal with this any better than him?” I said.
“I’m not sure he’s coping,” said Nicky.
“Nobody’s coping,” I said.
“He’s really on the edge.”
“We’re all on the edge.”
“Don’t argue.” Laura tried to be peacekeeper.
“I just don’t see why everybody has to be so worried about John.”
“We ought to be thinking of him,” said Nicky. “It’s not just you who’s affected by this.”
“Oh and it’s so hard for you with your perfect husband and perfect daughters safe in their perfect home?”
Nicky gasped. “That’s just not fair.”
She got up and left the room. I’d gone too far.
“She didn’t deserve that,” said Laura.
“I know.”
“She’s trying to help.”
I knew I should apologize to Nicky, but I couldn’t bring myself to. She came back down soon afterward, eyes red, but face composed.
“Rachel, I know this feels unbearable, but we’re all on your side, and there are even people out there who are on your side too. The stuff online, it’s not all bad. People are out there searching for Ben. People we don’t know.”
“They’re organizing themselves online,” said Laura. “Using social media.”
“And the police are going to meet with us,” said Nicky. “Don’t forget what Zhang said earlier. We’ll be working with them to find Ben. It’ll give us the best chance.”
She held my hand and squeezed it gently, but all I could think of was those people out there who hid behind online nicknames, or anonymous blogs, or found safety in numbers on the payroll of newspapers. I thought about how they’d started hunting me from the moment I went off message at the press conference, and I felt preyed upon. Just like my son.
JIM
On the night of Wednesday, October 24, after working all hours, basically until I was ready to drop, I dreamed of Emma and I dreamed of Benedict Finch too. I remember this because in the moment before waking properly, when the dream was most intense, I clutched her, pulled her to me, and expected her to understand why. She’d been in the dream with me, after all.
Instead I scared her. She yelped and sat up, confused by being woken abruptly.
“What?” she said. “What is it?”
I realized my mistake then. Her voice, her actual real voice, chased the shadows of the dream away.
“Sorry,” I said.
She relaxed, fell back onto the pillows, and looked at me with sleepy eyes. She said, “You look exhausted,” and then, “What time is it?”
I’d forgotten for a moment that dreams are private.
The dream starts at Portishead lido, where I’m meeting Emma for a coffee in the café. I sit down opposite her. We’re the only customers. Across the room, among a host of empty tables, there’s one that has a RESERVED sign on it. Outside, the water in the Bristol Channel looks gray and squally under clouds that are darkening, filthy, and low. I feel as if we’re in the last place on earth. I crave a cigarette.
“I like it here,” says Emma.
“Really?” I say. “I feel as if I’m in an Edward Hopper painting.”
She laughs. “
Nighthawks
? I know what you mean.”
“Something like that,” I say. I don’t know what the painting is called, just that it shows a stark bar, only four people in it, muted colors, and a big dose of bleakness as its theme.
“You don’t like it?” says Emma.
“No, it’s fine. It’s nice.”
Emma starts talking fast. She’s brimming with ideas that spill out of her and bounce off in different directions, as if you’d tipped out a basket of tennis balls and suddenly they’re bouncing everywhere at once, their individual trajectories too fast and too random to track.
Her dark eyes flash and dart, and her skin is a soft, dusky brown. Her lips are full. In repose, her face is symmetrical, perfectly proportioned. When she’s animated she looks intelligent, intense, and engaging. When she smiles it’s surprisingly mischievous.
As she talks, Emma disentangles the string of her tea bag from the handle of her cup and dances the bag up and down. It releases dark curlicues of flavor that creep through the hot water and mesmerize me. I’m enjoying the moment, loving her company, but my cozy trance is broken abruptly by a silence that’s weighted with suspense, like a breath held, because Emma’s stopped talking, and she’s fixated on the table that’s on the other side of the café, the one that’s reserved.
“Jim,” she whispers. “He’s right under our noses. Look.”
I turn and I see him too. Benedict Finch is sitting a few feet away from us, and I realize that the table was reserved for him. He’s wearing his school uniform, just like in the photo we put out of him. He’s a really beautiful child.
I get up, but my motion is retarded, and I can’t move toward him as quickly as I want to. The air around me is viscous and intolerably heavy. Where my bones should be I feel only weakness, a confusing absence of strength.
While I make only a few paces of progress, Benedict Finch stands up and peels off his school sweatshirt and top, and then his trousers, shoes, and socks. He’s wearing swimming trunks. He smiles at me and says, “I’m going to take a dip,” and still I can’t move any faster. I haven’t even covered half the ground between us.
Benedict Finch strolls toward the doors that separate the café from the pool outside, and disappears through the glass, ghostlike. I reach the doors just after him but I’m trapped behind them. I hear Emma say, “Jim, we’ve got to get him. I don’t think he can swim.”
Outside Benedict Finch is standing on top of a very high diving board. I don’t know how he got there because I can see that it’s been cordoned off, and the ladders removed. I bang on the doors, I shake the handles, and I shout until I’m hoarse, but Benedict Finch, bold as brass, jumps, and it’s then that I realize the worst thing of all, which is that there’s no water in the pool. None at all.
And I can’t look. I pull Emma into my arms.
Of course then I wasn’t dreaming any longer. I was awake, and I’d woken Emma up and I had to say sorry and I told her it was three o’clock in the morning and she should go back to sleep.
She didn’t though. After a while, she said, “Jim? Are you awake?”
“Yes.”
“I’m bothered by Rachel Jenner. There’s something about her.”
“What do you mean?”
“She’s unstable.”
“I know.”
“Even her sister seems to treat her like she’s made of china or something.”
“What’s your point?”
“I don’t trust her.”
“Do you think she’s harmed Ben?”
“I don’t know. It’s just a feeling right now. But I think she could have.”
“Trust your instincts. Talk to Fraser about it, and keep your eyes peeled when you’re with the family. If Rachel Jenner’s done something she might well let it slip.”
“I am already. I will.”
I reached over and ran my hand up and down her arm, then let it rest on her skin, which was always perfectly soft. I felt myself getting drowsy, but after a while Emma got up. “Where are you going?” I asked, and she said, “I can’t sleep. I’m going to read for a bit next door. I’m fine. Go back to sleep.”
After she left, I was asleep again in moments, my hand resting on the warm spot on the bed where she’d been.
THURSDAY, OCTOBER 25, 2012
You and law enforcement are partners in pursuit of a common goal—finding your lost or abducted child—and as partners, you need to establish a relationship that is based on mutual respect, trust, and honesty.
—“When Your Child Is Missing: A Family Survival Guide,”
Missing Kids USA Parental Guide
, US Department of Justice, OJJDP Report
WEB PAGE—www.whereisbenedictfinch.wordpress.com
WHERE IS BENEDICT FINCH? For the curious…