by Simon Lelic
Don’t tell him I told you this, will you? Please? I’m just trying to be honest, that’s all. And he hates me enough as it is.
Because I’m brown, obviously. Why else?
Anyway, we managed to slip past him, and Cora was the one who knocked. Luke was hanging back, and Abi was holding his hand. I stood off to one side. In the end we had to bang on Mason’s window, because it turned out he had his music on.
He came out a minute later. Black jeans, black T-shirt, white earbuds dangling around his neck. It was no wonder he hadn’t heard us—I could hear the drums from where I was standing. I heard my mum’s voice, then, from the day she threw my headphones in the bin. They’ll make you deaf, is what she said. But I know what bothered her really was not being able to tell what I was listening to.
“Hey,” said Mason, sort of suspicious. It struck me that it was the first time we’d all been together since day one, since the day Sadie went missing. I’d seen Cora, and Abi, and Luke once, but not at the same time, and I hadn’t seen Mason at all. And it turned out later that Mason had been on his own the entire time.
“Hey,” Cora said back. Me and Abi nodded. Luke didn’t say anything. He only moved to let go of Abi’s hand.
“What’s up?” Mason said, into the silence. He looked at me, Cora and Abi in turn, and then his eyes locked on Luke’s.
Luke stepped forward then, and I suddenly had a feeling that it was a huge mistake. Mason, the search party, everything.
But Luke surprised us all, I think. He said, “We’re forming a search party. For Sadie. Wanna come?”
Just like that. Just like we were asking Mason if he wanted to hang out at our old base.
Mason didn’t answer right away. He looked at us, at our bags, at what we were carrying. At the sky, I think, and then over our shoulders toward the woods. And then he looked at Luke.
“I’ll pack my stuff,” he said. And he went back inside. And I guess that’s when he decided to get the knife.
CORA
WHAT DO YOU think?
No, I didn’t know he had a knife. Obviously. Do you think I would have gone with him if I had? Into the woods. At night. With nobody else around. Or thinking there was nobody else around, anyway.
Of course I wouldn’t have. None of us would.
I keep, like . . .
I keep seeing it. You know? Just, like, flashes. Out of the corner of my eyes. I even dreamed about it. Last night. It was in my hand and I couldn’t let it go.
And then, afterward, the way it was just lying there. Just . . . fucking . . . just lying there. All covered in . . . in . . .
Fuck.
I need a cigarette. I’m sorry but I do.
I’ll tell you one thing first, though. Mason deserves everything that’s coming to him. And you can tell him I said that, by the way. I don’t even care anymore. I don’t. I can’t believe I ever did.
To think I slept right next to him. And all the time his rucksack was just right there. He even used it as a pillow. And maybe his hand, the entire time, was holding the knife. I keep imagining him in the middle of the night, touching the knife against my throat. Watching me. Deciding. I keep imagining him using that knife on Sadie.
MASON
I TOLD YOU, I’m not going to explain myself to you. Not again. Not anymore. Just ask yourself this: what would you have done? I knew I was innocent. I knew I hadn’t killed Sadie. But if it was true what everyone was saying, that basically meant someone else had. And as far as I knew, that person had just turned up at my house, asking me to come for a little walk with them in the forest.
So go on. Tell me. What would you have done?
“SIR? THEY’RE HERE.”
Fleet nodded to the uniform who was poking his head through the door, and turned back to the interview room table. He indicated for Nicky to stop the recording.
“Let’s take a break,” he said.
He led Nicky into the corridor outside. They were in the local police station, where all the interviews with Sadie’s friends were being conducted.
“You want some backup on this, boss?” she said, when the door had closed behind them.
“More than anything,” said Fleet. “But there’s no sense you getting caught in the cross fire. Go and grab yourself a cup of coffee.”
The DS couldn’t hide her relief. “I’ll put a pot on,” she said. “Guard it till you get out.”
“I imagine by then I’ll need something stronger. A shot of cyanide should do it.”
Nicky smiled. “I’ll see what I can pillage from the evidence locker.”
They parted, and Fleet headed toward the room that had been cleared for him to use as his office. In reality it wasn’t much more than a storeroom. It had a window, but it was paned with security glass, and it was positioned too high for anyone less than eight feet tall to be able to see out. Otherwise the room was no more comfortable than any of the interview rooms he’d lately become so familiar with. Gray walls, gray furniture, gray floor. To think people these days were painting the walls in their homes a similar color. Or so Nicky had told him. Interview-room chic, she’d called it. “We should go into business, boss,” she’d said to him. “No one knows shades of gray like an ex-copper.” Which was true enough, Fleet thought—the irony being that the law itself was so black and white. True or false. Innocent or guilty. Alive or dead.
Fleet knocked before he entered. He’d gone for polite, courteous, but the noise his knuckles generated sounded weak to his ear, almost cowardly. It was a nothing sound, when the news he bore warranted a warning siren.
When he stepped inside, the first thing that struck him was the hope. He could see it in their faces, in their eyes, in the way they rose the instant he walked in. It came off them in waves, like a force field driving him back.
Yet he stepped through it, and at the same time punctured it completely.
“You’ve found her. Oh God. Oh God. Oh please God, no.”
Alison Saunders, Sadie’s mother, collapsed backward into her chair. She was a thin woman, lost in the dripping shell of her raincoat, yet the chair scraped on the concrete floor from the momentum of her weight. The noise carried all the way up Fleet’s spine and into his teeth, which he realized were already clamped tight.
He raised a hand consolingly. “Sadie is still missing, Mrs. Saunders. The search is ongoing.” Gently, he closed the door behind him.
“You’ve found something though, haven’t you?” Ray Saunders, Sadie’s father, was a tall man bent short by his grief. He was using the chair back to hold himself upright. Seeing him up close for the first time in several days, Fleet found himself questioning why he didn’t feel more sympathy for the man. He and his wife had just lost their son. The daughter they cherished had been missing for a week. If Fleet had been standing in their shoes, he had his doubts he would be capable of standing at all.
So he respected them, there was no question about that, and he couldn’t begin to comprehend their heartbreak. Even so, he couldn’t warm to them. And although there was no direct evidence linking them to Sadie’s disappearance—nothing, at least, that Fleet and his team had been able to find—Fleet couldn’t shake the feeling that they’d played a role in their daughter’s disappearance somehow.
And of course there was the question of their responsibility for what had happened out there in the woods . . .
“Take a seat, Mr. Saunders. Please.” Fleet gestured to the chair Sadie’s father was clutching. Like a blind man feeling his way, Ray Saunders lowered himself into it.
Fleet moved a third chair to the same side of the table, careful not to drag it on the floor. He sat down himself, so that the three of them formed an awkward triangle.
“First of all, I’d like to express my deepest condolences,” Fleet began. “I know you’ve spoken to Superintendent Burton, but I haven’t personally had a chance to—”
“Please,” said Sadie’s father. “Just tell us. What’s happened? Why did you ask us here?”
For a moment Fleet held Ray Saunders’s eyes. The only thing he saw in them was desperation.
“We found Sadie’s jacket,” Fleet said.
He noticed Alison Saunders’s hands tighten around the seat of her chair.
“We’ll need you to confirm it was hers, naturally,” Fleet went on. “But it matches the photograph you gave us. And I should warn you . . .” He looked at the father. “There is blood.”
Sadie’s mother let out a keening sound, so inhuman that Fleet’s first instinct was to think something had found its way into the room. Sadie’s father slumped forward, so the back of his head was level with his shoulders. Fleet had thought of the man as being black-haired, but in just the past few days he seemed to have turned predominantly gray.
Fleet waited.
Ray Saunders said something he didn’t catch.
“I’m sorry, Mr. Saunders. Could you repeat that?”
Sadie’s father looked up. “How much blood?” he said, his voice broken.
Fleet’s gaze flicked briefly to Sadie’s mother. She had a hand over her mouth and her eyes screwed shut. She sat so still, Fleet couldn’t even be certain she was breathing.
“The jacket was found in the river,” Fleet said, “a considerable way downstream from where we found her rucksack. Forensically speaking, therefore, it presents something of a challenge.”
Ray Saunders was looking at him as though he were speaking a foreign language. “How much blood?” he repeated. It was like he was stuck. Like he couldn’t move on until his question was answered. Perhaps he was feigning his reaction, but if so, he was doing it well.
“Some,” Fleet said. “That’s all I can tell you. What I can’t say is how much would have been washed away by the water.”
“And is it . . . it’s definitely Sadie’s?”
“It is her type,” Fleet answered. “We’re sure of that much, at least.”
Sadie’s mother made a movement with her right hand, as though she were describing something in the air. Her husband interpreted the gesture before Fleet could, and folded his wife’s hand between his. Alison Saunders was forced to stretch, and she teetered on the edge of her seat.
Sadie’s father cleared his throat. It took him three attempts.
“What, um . . .” He coughed again. “What state was her jacket in?”
Fleet frowned slightly.
“Was there . . . I mean, was it torn? Were there signs of violence?”
“The jacket is intact,” Fleet told him. “The blood is largely on the hood.”
He watched for a reaction, but all Ray Saunders showed was confusion. Again, if he was acting, he was extremely convincing. Fleet wondered how long it would take for either one of Sadie’s parents to show they had worked out what the blood being on the hood implied. Because if Sadie had been wearing the jacket, and the blood was hers, it would almost certainly have flowed from a wound to the base of her skull.
“I wish I could offer you better news,” Fleet said. “But there is no reason yet to give up hope. There is still the possibility that—”
“Was it him?”
Alison Saunders’s voice stopped Fleet short. She was in the same precarious position on her chair, her eyes raw and her shoulders hunched, but she was facing Fleet now, confronting him, and her tears had dried on the sudden fire in her cheeks.
“I’m sorry, Mrs. Saunders?”
“Was it him? Mason Payne. And the rest of them. Those . . . children. My daughter’s so-called friends. They’re here somewhere, aren’t they? What have they said? What aren’t you asking them? If they know what happened to Sadie, why won’t they tell you?”
Fleet paused before answering. His training dictated that he should stick to the company line, that he should assure Sadie’s parents that he and his colleagues were making progress, but that it would take some time, and that obviously he wasn’t at liberty to divulge specific information relating to ongoing interviews. But that was bullshit, and Sadie’s parents would have smelled it. And although Fleet had his doubts about them, he felt that, on balance, they deserved better.
“Sadie’s friends haven’t been able to tell us anything yet that might lead us to your daughter,” he said. “They’re . . . confused. Understandably. And I have to stress that they are here voluntarily, and that there are limits on how much time we can spend with them. But rest assured—”
“Voluntarily?” spluttered Sadie’s father. “You haven’t arrested them?”
“No one has been formally charged, no.”
“Why the fuck not?”
Fleet flinched at the profanity. It wasn’t the word itself, but the fact it had come from Ray Saunders’s mouth. So far, from day one, the man hadn’t so much as raised his voice. But everyone had a breaking point, Fleet supposed. And he had no doubt that his own would have come much sooner.
“Because, to put it frankly, Mr. Saunders, we lack evidence. It would be an egregious error to make an arrest if we couldn’t back up our assertions in court.”
Egregious? Jesus, Rob. So much for plain speaking.
“So what you’re telling us is that you’ve been barking up the wrong tree,” said Sadie’s father. “This whole time you’ve been looking in the wrong direction, just like everyone’s been saying.”
Fleet had been watching both of Sadie’s parents closely, but like the confusion he’d shown before, the anger Ray Saunders was exhibiting seemed authentic. There was nothing to suggest he hadn’t genuinely come to believe what he and his wife had been hearing from their friends and neighbors. That Sadie’s friends perhaps weren’t to blame after all. That Fleet had been blinded by some personal vendetta. That he was at fault for what had happened in the woods, and that he’d allowed whoever was really responsible for Sadie’s disappearance to get away.
The irony in the sudden reversal of popular opinion hadn’t escaped Fleet. At first the community had been only too eager to interpret the police’s interest in Mason and the others as proof that Sadie’s friends had been involved. But now, after what had happened in the woods, opinion had flipped. People in the community were closing ranks—exactly as they had in the past.
“Mr. Saunders,” Fleet said, “Mrs. Saunders. I can assure you that we have been pursuing every line of inquiry that has been open to us. If you know my personal history, as I’m sure by now you do, then you’ll understand that there is nothing I want more than to find your daughter.”
Ray Saunders stood, pulling his wife up with him. Sadie’s father appeared too angry to speak. Alison Saunders was shaking her head, fresh tears tracking the makeup that scarred her cheeks.
“You’re too late,” she said to him. “Whatever you do now, whatever you say . . . it’s already too late.”
“Mrs. Saunders, I—”
“I hope she haunts you,” said Sadie’s father, and Fleet recoiled as though he’d been slapped.
“Excuse me?” he managed.
“My little girl,” said Ray Saunders. “Your sister, too. I hope they both do.”
* * *
* * *
“One lump of cyanide?” said Nicky. “Or two?”
She had a cup of coffee waiting for him in the kitchenette. Outside, the open-plan office was strangely quiet. Most of Fleet’s team were either down by the river or up in the woods. If you were a visitor, you wouldn’t know you were standing in the nerve center of the biggest missing-person inquiry the south of England had seen in the past twenty years. Fleet didn’t want to think about how a journalist might paint the scene.
“Give me all you’ve got,” said Fleet, in response to Nicky’s question. “Just make sure it does the job. And I’d take quick over painless.”
Nicky clicked a single Canderel into the mug. The swe
etener sank meagerly into the tar-colored liquid.
Fleet frowned. There was a perfectly good bowl of sugar on the sideboard.
“Just following orders, sir,” said Nicky, seeing his scowl, and Fleet recalled how he’d asked her at the start of the investigation to refuse to put sugar in his coffee no matter how much he begged. It was a token gesture toward a healthier diet which, at the time, Fleet didn’t think he’d notice.
“Besides,” said Nicky, wincing as she sipped from her own mug, “not even the good stuff could improve the taste of this shite.”
Fleet gave half a smile. He was staring vacantly at the liquid in his cup, his mind already back on Sadie. I hope she haunts you . . .
“Do you know he barely mentioned his son?” he said.
“Luke, you mean? Or Dylan?”
That was one of the things he’d learned to appreciate most about working with Nicky. She could follow his non sequiturs almost as well as Holly could.
“Either. Both. For Ray Saunders in particular, it was all about Sadie. He didn’t even ask what was happening out in the woods.”
“But that’s been the theme,” said Nicky. “Hasn’t it? Of Sadie’s entire life, from what we’ve gathered. Sadie’s the one they worshipped, Luke the one they tolerated, and Dylan the one they wished they’d never had.”
“Quite,” said Fleet, bobbing his head. He looked up. “There’s been no further news, I take it?”
“No, boss. Nothing from the woods, other than complaints about the weather. And nothing from the river since they found Sadie’s jacket.”
Fleet sank again into his thoughts. “What have we got, Nicky?” he said, after a moment.
“Boss?”
“With the case. Give me your take.”
Nicky exhaled. “We’ve got a search area the size of a small country, a bunch of guilty-looking teenagers telling us stories, the superintendent breathing down our necks, and a press like a pack of wolves—not to mention a town that’s decided we dropped the ball. At best, we’re guilty of incompetence. At worst, there’s blood on our hands.”