Standing in the center of the room, I saw myself reflected in a mirror over the mantelpiece. I looked white as a ghost. My hair, blackened by rain, hung in damp hanks around my face, and patches under my eyes were as dark as storm clouds. My skin looked slack and undernourished, and the injury on my forehead was healed, but prominent. My eyes were darting with fear and something else as well: there was desperation in them, and a glint of wildness.
I looked completely mad.
Doubt coursed through me.
This is what a total breakdown must be, I thought. You find yourself standing somewhere you shouldn’t be, doing something so out of character that you wonder if you’ve become somebody else entirely. You’ve lost the plot, taken a wrong turn, jumped onto a train whose destination is total lunacy.
I must leave, I thought. I must go home.
I would have done that, too, but as I turned to leave I noticed the door. It was in a corner, partially obscured by the kitchen units. An apron, oven gloves, and tea towels hung from it on a neat row of hooks. Layers of paint had dulled the paneled detail on it. It was probably a larder, I told myself, or a broom cupboard, and I should just go.
But I found that I couldn’t. I felt compelled to walk toward it, and, as I did so, I heard someone whimper and I realized it was me.
I stopped in front of the door. My left palm was molded around the handle of the knife, and I rested the tip of my index finger on the bottom of the blade, and pressed down a little, feeling it bite into me, making me flinch. There was nothing to be heard apart from the slow drip of rain from somewhere outside. Even the hands on the kitchen clock moved soundlessly.
With a feeling of horror uncurling within, I reached my hand out toward the door and clasped the handle. It turned, but something stopped the door from opening. It was jamming at the top.
I reached up to a bolt that was drawn at the top of the door. Tremulous, unreliable fingers fumbled but managed to draw it back.
I opened the door, stepped behind it, and there was a soft click as I pulled it shut.
I could see nothing. All around me it was pitch black, and I had to use the light from my phone to see that I was at the top of a short staircase, and that there was another door, also bolted, at the bottom of it.
I started to make my way down. The darkness was so dense that I needed my hands to steady me on the narrow walls.
Two more steps and I reached the door at the bottom of the staircase. Once again, trembling fingers pulled the bolt, pushed the door open.
My fingers felt for a light switch, and found one. The hesitant bulb blinked and then glowed the dull orange of a polluted sunset before it brightened, revealing the room to me, making me gasp.
It took me long moments to absorb what I could see.
It was a boy’s bedroom: freshly painted walls, bright yellow, thick blue carpet on the floor. A rugby poster, and rugby club scarf, both pinned up, some reading books, a teddy bear on the bed, wearing a scarf. There was some clothing, a pair of small slippers, a dressing gown in the softest white toweling. A wooden-framed bed made up with a cartoon-patterned duvet set on it, a pile of DVDs and a television set on a table in the corner, a chest of drawers with pirate stickers decorating it.
No Ben. No natural light.
I picked up one of the garments: it was a pajama top, for a boy, bright red cotton, a dinosaur printed on the front of it, grubby marks around the collar. “Age 8” read the label. I held the top to my face, I inhaled the smell of the fabric, and I knew that Ben had worn it.
He had been here.
My fingers dug into the soft cotton and I held on to it as if it were a living, breathing part of my son. “Ben,” I whispered into it, “Ben.”
My eyes roved again, looking for more signs of him.
And what struck me was that there was nothing in that room, nothing at all, not one thing, that was right.
If Miss May had made this space for my son, and I was convinced that she had, then she’d got it wrong. Ben didn’t like rugby. He’d never have chosen bright yellow walls, or a babyish duvet set, or the type of reading books she’d left out for him, and he wouldn’t have liked the pirate stickers on the chest of drawers because he preferred dinosaurs. The bear on the bed was a version of Baggy Bear, but wasn’t him. His ear wasn’t sucked.
This was a room made for an imagined boy, not for my boy, who would never have felt at home here.
And then I saw something else.
Scattered all over the bed, beneath a fresh scar on the wall where it looked as though it had made impact, were the components of a smashed laptop: shards of plastic, electrical bits, and keyboard keys, all separated from one another by significant force.
Ben would have liked the laptop. He might have played on it.
But he might not have been allowed to go online, to play his favorite game. The laptop might have been snatched from him, and hurled against a wall in anger.
And would that anger have then been directed toward him?
I fumbled for my phone. The reception was poor, but it was enough. I called 999.
And when I’d finished the call I stood in the middle of that space, with the painful wrongness of it in every corner of my vision, and the shattered computer components a glowering hint of violence, and I began to moan, and it was a dreadful, primitive sound, and the moans turned into a shout for him, a final desperate plea, an ululation, like the one I’d made in the woods one week before.
And I fell to my knees, hope shattered.
TRANSCRIPT
EMERGENCY CALL—10.29.13 at 10 hours, 17 minutes, 6 seconds
Operator:
Ambulance emergency. Hello, caller, what’s the emergency?
Caller:
I’ve found a boy.
Operator: OK, where have you found him?
Caller: I’m in the woods, Leigh Woods, just over the suspension bridge. My dog found him. He’s lying on the ground. He’s covered in a bin bag.
Operator: Can he talk to you?
Caller: He’s all curled up. He won’t wake up.
Operator: So he’s not conscious then.
Caller: No, he’s not conscious.
Operator: Is he breathing?
Caller: I don’t know.
Operator: OK, do you think you can check for me? If he’s breathing?
Caller: He’s curled in on himself, I can’t see his face properly. Hang on.
Operator: How old is the boy?
Caller: I don’t know, maybe seven or eight. He’s quite little. He’s so white, he’s really white. Oh God, you’ve got to send somebody quick.
Operator: They’re already on their way. It doesn’t delay them for me to ask you some questions, so don’t worry about that. I need you to have a look and see if he’s breathing or not, OK?
Caller: He’s freezing cold to touch. And he’s in a state. Oh God. Oh my God. He’s not even wearing anything except underwear. Jesus, oh my God…
Operator: All right, you’re doing really well and help is on its way, they won’t be long now. Can you tell me whereabouts in the woods you are?
Caller: I’m off the main path. By a swing. Help, quickly, help.
Operator: The whole time we’re talking, they’re on their way to you, so don’t worry about that. Have you managed to check if he’s breathing?
Caller: Oh God, it’s him, isn’t it? I think it’s Ben Finch, it’s the missing… [the phone goes dead]
Operator: [Calls back but gets voicemail.]
JIM
Nicky Forbes’s expression was complicated: proud and defiant, but with a touch of something else too that I read as surrender. We were close to getting a breakthrough, I knew we were, but then Woodley’s phone rang.
It was the world’s most stupid, immature ringtone. Of all things, it was the
Star Wars
theme tune, and just like that it destroyed the moment.
Woodley was mortified. I was furious.
Nicky Forbes laughed. “You are so fucking incompetent,” she said.
I felt an ache in my temples as Woodley, instead of turning the phone off, took it out of his pocket and looked at it.
She wasn’t as close to giving up as I’d thought. She was combative. But that was OK. That I knew I could work with, but Woodley’s phone wouldn’t shut up, he said, “It’s Fraser. I’d better take it.”
Nicky Forbes was watching, not missing a trick. I desperately didn’t want her to get the upper hand. The Reid technique depends on the interviewer keeping control of the process, moving from one stage of the interview to the next. It can be a long process and we’d only just got started. As Woodley slipped out of the room, I tried to regain control. “Let’s discuss what you were doing on Sunday, October twenty-first.”
“No,” she said. “Let’s discuss why you are here wasting my time and harassing me when you should be looking for Ben. Where’s Ben, DI Clemo? Where is he? You actually have somebody in custody, and you are here, targeting me. You know nothing about me! Nothing! Do they charge police for wasting their own time? Do they? Because that is what you are doing. My family is everything to me, it’s everything. At this moment in time, I can’t cope with it very well, but that is nobody’s business apart from mine and my husband’s. It’s not a criminal offense to take some time out, so stop treating me as if I am some kind of monster. My life has been difficult, and I cope with that the best I can. Do I want a son? YES! Do I want Charlie back? YES! Do I find my family too much to cope with sometimes? YES! Did I take Ben? NO, I DID NOT! Am I a monster? NO, I AM NOT! Do I love my husband, my daughters, my sister, and my nephew? YES, I DO! Is that it? Is that all your questions answered?”
It was the way she said it, hand slamming down on the table as she made each point, as if her very existence depended on my understanding those things.
Faced with those words and her certainty, I simply felt everything start to slip through my fingers: the interview, and the case I wanted to build against her.
I pulled my chair back, loosened my collar.
Outside the kitchen door the mist was still thick, and it was impossible to see more than a few meters into the garden.
Get a grip, I told myself. Get back into it, hold your nerve, you can do this, but then Woodley reappeared and when I saw the look on his face I knew that I’d be lucky if I came out of this with even a shred of dignity.
He held his phone up as if it had something written on it that I should read. “We have to go,” he said. Something about the way he said it made me understand that it wasn’t negotiable.
“Thank you for your time,” I managed to say to her, and the chair scraped on the floor as I stood. There was a static noise in my head. It had a size and a shape, and it was swelling as if it was being pumped in.
“Get out,” she said, quietly, as if she’d never seen a creature more disgusting than me.
Outside, by the car, Woodley said, “They’ve found a boy. In the woods. And they’ve found the site where he was held.”
“Woodley,” I said, but then I didn’t know what else to say.
I puked onto the thorny stems of one of Nicky Forbes’s neatly pruned rosebushes. Bile and bits of unidentifiable spew spattered around its base, leaving a pattern that can’t be mistaken for anything other than the hot disgorging of somebody’s guts.
I wiped my mouth, straightened up, and felt pain ripple across my abdomen.
“I’ll drive,” I said, and Woodley handed me the keys.
RACHEL
They pried me up off the carpet, which had been so freshly laid that bits of blue fluff stuck to the knees of my trousers and my forehead and my arms.
They escorted me up from the flat with a blanket wrapped around me and they put me in an ambulance that was parked on the street.
The press was there too, of course they were. Only a few of them arrived quickly enough to photograph me being wheeled into the ambulance, but one person with a camera is all it takes. “Rachel! Rachel!” they shouted, as the shutters fired. “Are you all right? Can you tell us what happened?”
Inside the ambulance a paramedic did checks and asked me questions. They said they were treating me for shock.
I refused to lie down. I sat up, blanket wrapped around me. It was all I had the strength to do. Shaking racked my body, like convulsions.
Then it was the turn of the police. They told me they were in pursuit of Joanna May. They said nothing about Ben. Their faces were grim, and I found I had no voice to ask questions.
I had imaginings. I felt as if chunks of me were separating themselves from my body, falling off. I imagined blood creeping in at the edges of my vision, a red tide. It was because I knew I was too late. He had been there, and now he was gone, and what were the odds that she’d keep him alive?
I felt myself let go. I let go of hope.
And then, cutting through the murmured voices, I heard the ambulance radio. The dispatcher was calling for somebody to respond to a call in Leigh Woods. Precise location unknown. A young boy found. Status unknown.
They had to sedate me. Blackness fell as swiftly as the blade of a guillotine.
TRANSCRIPT
EMERGENCY CALL—10.29.13 at 10 hours, 38 minutes, 28 seconds
Operator:
Hello, ambulance and emergency, how…
Caller:
Oh my God, thank God. I’ve been disconnected. Can you hear me? I’ve been trying to call, trying to call you back. I was talking to somebody, but my phone went dead and I couldn’t get a signal again. I’ve found that boy. I’ve found him. But he’s in a really bad way.
Operator: Where are you, caller?
Caller: Please, hurry up.
Operator: Can you tell me where you are?
Caller: I’m in Leigh Woods, by a rope swing. Off the path. Are they looking for us? Should I go to the path?
Operator: Hold on just a second, OK… [consults somebody briefly]. . . . All right, help is already on its way, they’re nearly with you, but it’s best if you stay with the boy and I really need you to tell me if he’s breathing if you can.
Caller: He is breathing, but it’s really bad breathing. I can’t feel a pulse in his arm. He’s freezing cold. I’ve put my coat on him.
Operator: Right. Is he conscious at all?
Caller: No, he’s not.