The Search Party

by Simon Lelic

  A mouthful of coffee caught in Fleet’s throat. It was nothing to do with the rancid taste.

  “Jesus, Nicky. You’re really not into sugarcoating things this afternoon, are you?”

  Nicky shrugged. “You asked, sir.”

  He had, it was true. And they both knew what he’d really been fishing for. To Nicky’s credit, she’d done him the favor of not mindlessly regurgitating what Fleet so transparently wanted to hear. That they were on the right lines. That he wasn’t responsible. That he hadn’t fallen into the trap of using current circumstances to try to wash away the past.

  Plus, that they weren’t wasting time by trying to piece together different strands of the same story when they already knew how it ended.

  “Would you do something for me, Nicky?” Fleet said. “All these rumors that have been flying around online. Round up any extra pairs of eyes you need, and see if you can find out where they originated.”

  “The rumors about Sadie, you mean? Or Mason?”

  “Forget about Mason for the time being. There was always going to be gossip about his involvement.” No thanks to us, Fleet didn’t add. “But the rumors that were floating around about Sadie before she went missing. And the more recent ones about her parents—the inference of sexual abuse.”

  Nicky showed her curiosity. “Do you think there’s something in them? I thought we’d discounted those stories already? There’s nothing in Sadie’s history to suggest even the slightest possibility of sexual abuse. No strange behavior, no teachers or other parents who claim to have had concerns.”

  “Can you trace them back though? Find out where the rumors originated?”

  There was the slightest hesitation before Nicky answered. “We’ll do our best, sir.”

  Translation: it’ll be like looking for a needle in a haystack. Or mapping the infection route of a virus. Backward.

  “I know you will. And one more thing. Sadie’s financials. Could you gather together any printouts for me? Bank statements, wage slips, whatever we have.”

  “Sure. That won’t take long. It’s pretty thin reading.”

  “No, I know. And, to be honest, I think I know the figures off by heart already.” Fleet set down his coffee.

  “Are you heading out, boss?”

  Fleet nodded. “Have someone take care of Sadie’s friends. Give them something to eat if they want it, all the . . . I don’t know, fizzy pop or whatever they can drink. I’ll be back shortly, but in the meantime keep them talking. And obviously make sure they know to come back in the morning. Ask, though. Don’t tell. Run it past their parents if they’re here.”

  “Kid gloves. Right?”

  “Right. For the time being.”

  “What are you going to do?” Nicky asked him.

  Fleet exhaled. “I’m off to break the habit of a lifetime.”

  ABI

  I’LL BE HONEST, I had my reservations from the start. About Mason, I mean. About even inviting him along. Because it was obvious you lot suspected him, and you wouldn’t have without good reason. Right? And when Luke called him a psychopath, I suddenly . . . I just had this feeling, that’s all. A bad feeling. Like, what if he was right? What if Mason did kill Sadie? I mean, he’s always had a temper. Always. To be honest, if it wasn’t for the others, I’m not sure me and him would have even been friends. But he was mates with Luke first, which meant he hung out with Sadie, which meant if I wanted to hang out with Sadie too, I didn’t really have much choice. I guess with us lot it’s always been a bit like it is in a family. Like, the way you don’t get to pick. I mean, don’t get me wrong. Mason can be funny and everything, and he’s the most loyal person I’ve ever known. But at the same time, he can also be cruel. To me, because I can tell he thinks I’m stupid. To Fash, because he’s always so nice. Plus, Mason’s always been so intense, you know? About music, for example. Or films. Me, I like to watch a movie without having to think about it. But Mason has to analyze them frame by frame. He pauses them and rewinds them and watches them over and over. And with Sadie, when Mason talked to her, he always had that same expression in his eyes, just as though he was talking about his favorite movie.

  So, yeah, I wasn’t sure about asking Mason along. But Cora was all like, “He’s our friend, don’t call him a psychopath,” that sort of thing, just basically taking Mason’s side. Which is hardly surprising, considering their history. You know, the fact she’s never got over Mason dumping her so that he could be with Sadie. If you ask me, he only went with Cora in the first place to try to make Sadie jealous. Which maybe it worked, or maybe it didn’t. I mean, him and Sadie didn’t get together for another six months, but it was obvious Mason had fancied her all along, at least to the rest of us, and just as obvious that Cora never stopped fancying him. Not even after they broke up.

  Plus, the other thing about Cora is, she always has to get her own way, which is exactly how it turned out this time.

  Although the weird thing was, after we picked Mason up and started heading back toward the footbridge, I have to say, I felt . . . it felt . . . OK. It’s odd, but sometimes seeing people is all it takes. It makes you realize how much you’ve missed them. Do you get that? Sometimes it goes the other way, too, like the way it does with my mum and her sister at Christmas, but I’d basically been in this bubble since Sadie had gone missing, not really talking to anyone, just watching what was going on through my phone. Reading the rumors, all the stories, not knowing what to believe. But then, getting everyone together, it was actually like this huge relief. It even felt good seeing Mason. Not good exactly, but not as creepy as I thought it would feel. And rather than being scared of him, I actually felt a bit sorry for him. At the time, I mean. There was the way he looked at us when we turned up at his front door, for example. It’s like that thing my mum always says about spiders.

  Spiders, right.

  Like, Mum always goes, They’re more scared of you than you are of them. Which is obviously bullshit. I mean, they’ve got eight legs, and eight eyes, and they’re all, like, hairy and gross, whereas we, you and me, we just look normal. Right? So how is it remotely possible that a spider would be more scared of you than you are of it?

  But with Mason that was the phrase that came to mind. He looked like he thought we were about to attack him. And then afterward, as we left, we got spotted by his dad. Who’d been round the corner. Painting, I thought, until I realized he was standing there going over and over the exact same spot.

  “Mason?” said his dad. “Where the hell do you think you’re going?”

  Mason ignored him. He kept walking, away from the house, so the rest of us just had to follow him. Although, personally, I couldn’t help looking over my shoulder.

  “Mason!” his dad said again. “Mason! Get back here!”

  Mason stopped. He waited for a second, then he turned. Like, what? You know? But he didn’t say it.

  “I asked you a question,” said his dad.

  “I’m going out,” said Mason. “What does it look like I’m doing?”

  “Out?” his dad repeated, like it was the most ridiculous thing he’d ever heard. “You’re going out. With your friends. While I’m slaving away out here, trying to get rid of”—he stabbed his thumb into the air above his shoulder, and half turned around toward the wall—“that.”

  I had to lean to get a better view of it. Of the wall, I mean. The graffiti. URDERER, it said. Without the M. The first letter was just a splodge of red now, where Mason’s dad had gone at it with his bucket of suds.

  “I told you to leave it,” Mason said. “Someone’ll only come back and do it again.”

  “Leave it,” his dad repeated. “Leave it. That’s your solution to everything, isn’t it. Just shut yourself in your room and stick your headphones on.”

  Mason gave this little shake of his head. “Which is it, Dad? Have a go at me for staying inside, or shout at m
e in front of my friends when I decide to go out? You don’t get to do both.”

  His dad was holding the bucket he’d been using in one hand, a big yellow sponge in the other. He squeezed that sponge so hard, water dripped down all over his shoes. It was red from the paint, and it looked like blood.

  “Come on,” Mason said, talking to the rest of us. “Let’s go.” And he turned away from his dad and started walking. This time when the rest of us followed, I didn’t dare look behind me. I kept expecting to hear a shout, or for Mason’s dad to come charging after us. It’s what my dad would have done, I reckon. I mean, he’d kill me if I ever spoke to him like that.

  “Jesus Christ, Mase,” said Cora, once we were safely down the lane. “What was all that about?”

  Mason shrugged. “He thinks I did it,” he answered. Just matter-of-fact. You know, like, Ho hum, my dad thinks I’m a murderer. No big deal.

  Just like that.

  The rest of us exchanged these little glances. I looked at Fash, who looked at Cora. Then all three of us looked at Luke.

  Luke didn’t say anything for a second. Then he said, “I told you the graffiti would be overdoing it, Fash. And you could at least learn to spell. ‘Murderer’ begins with an ‘M.’”

  Which, for a second, was like . . . is that even funny? You know?

  And then I noticed Fash’s face. About the same time Cora did, I guess. Luke and Mason, too.

  And suddenly, from nowhere, we burst out laughing. All of us. Together. Fash maybe slightly behind the rest of us, but in a way I hadn’t laughed since the start of the summer, when all six of us—Sadie, too—had taken some speakers and a bottle of wine each down to the sand dunes, and Fash had got so drunk he kept insisting he could light a fire using only his eyes.

  It was just the sudden release of tension, I suppose. All the worry and stuff that had been building up inside us. The fear, too. The irony is, even as I was laughing, I kept thinking to myself, what if somebody sees us? Laughing like that, when Sadie was . . . when she was still missing. Like, how would that look?

  To be fair I was thinking mainly about Mason’s dad. I kept checking behind to see if he was following us. But we kept laughing all the way to the footbridge. We’d try to stop, one of us would, and it would quieten down for a sec, but then someone would snort and get us all going again.

  Which is what I mean about it being ironic. Because when we got to the footbridge, guess who was sat there waiting? With this smile that said, Well, well, well. You know? As though, by laughing the way we were, we’d just proved everything people had been saying about us all along.

  CORA

  LARA FUCKING SWEENEY, that’s who. Arse on the railing, arms propping up her tits, and hair so dry from the peroxide, I was surprised it didn’t catch fire in the sun.

  We were laughing until we saw her, I can’t even remember why, and then, just like that, we stopped. Lara kind of has that effect on people. She could suck the atmosphere from a rain forest.

  “Hey, gang,” she said, loud enough that anyone within a hundred meters would have heard. “Off to bury another body?”

  She was standing in the middle of the bridge, these two sixth formers beside her. Sam Powrie and Ian Nolan. I didn’t know them, but I knew their names. Lara’s always got some horny sixth former in tow, rarely ever the same one twice. They don’t give a shit about her, just like she never gives a shit about them. All Lara cares about is looking popular, and the sixth formers only hang around with her on the off chance she’ll let one of them cop a feel. Or both of them at the same time, knowing her.

  “You’re not doing it right, Lara,” I said to her. “Trolls are supposed to wait under the bridge.”

  “For the fat little piggies to come traipsing across, you mean?” she said, running her eyes top to toe over me and Abi.

  “Goats, you mean,” chipped in Abi, looking all superior until it dawned on her what she’d just called herself.

  That smirk of Lara’s widened. “Whatever you say, Scabby.”

  That’s what Lara calls Abi, on account of the fact Abi had eczema literally about a decade ago, when the lot of us were all in primary school together. Lara was a bitchy little cow even then.

  The boys just watched on mutely, gauging their chances if it turned into a fight, I expect. It was three against five, not that Lara would have got her hands dirty, but it still didn’t look good. Mason’s handy enough, obviously, but Luke would have tried making peace even as he choked to death on his broken teeth, and Fash . . . Fash is just Fash. He’s been in more scrapes than any of us, probably even more than Mason, but only because of the color of his skin, and with Fash there’s never any need to ask about the other guy.

  “Seriously,” said Lara. “What’s with the Sherpa look? If I didn’t know better I’d say you were heading out of town. Running away, even.” Her sharp little eyes had taken in our rucksacks. Abi’s in particular was stuffed to bursting.

  Sam and Ian had moved either side of Lara in the middle of the bridge. They were both a head taller than her, so they looked like bodyguards. The three of them were blocking our way.

  We walked onto the bridge ourselves, stopping a couple of meters away from them. You could see the river through the cracks between the boards. I didn’t like that. It’s like when you’re standing on the pier down on the seafront. It always feels as though you’re going to slip through. And even though the river wasn’t flowing particularly fast, on account of the fact it had been so dry, I guess, everyone knows how dangerous it is. If you grow up in this town, it’s basically the first thing anyone tells you. Stay away from the river—the currents will carry you out to sea.

  “You don’t know any better, Lara,” said Mason. “But don’t be too hard on yourself. Personally, I blame the parents. Maybe one of them dropped you when you were a baby.”

  Lara’s parents are almost as bad as Sadie’s are. You know, just in terms of the whole my little princess thing. That’s probably where the rivalry came from. Between Lara and Sadie. Not so much about grades and stuff, and not that Sadie ever bought into it, but at some point someone had told Lara that life was basically a popularity contest, and that if you weren’t winning, you were losing.

  I laughed at what Mason had said. “It would explain the snout,” I said, pushing up the tip of my nose.

  Lara’s got this thing about her nostrils. I heard from Poppy, this girl in my class, who heard from Hanna, Hanna Crawley, who heard from one of Lara’s mates that Lara’s been saving up for a nose job. Which doesn’t surprise me at all. Talk about vain. She’s worse than Abi. And the difference is, Lara likes looking in the mirror because she’s convinced she’s beautiful. Abi only spends so much time fussing about her appearance because she’s paranoid she’s ugly.

  Plus, the thing about Lara’s nose is, and for God’s sake don’t tell her I said this, but it’s not even that bad. She only looks like a pig now and then because she spends so much of her time looking down at people.

  For once, though, Lara didn’t react. Normally if you talk about her nose, you can pretty much rely on her to turn the color Mason’s dad did back at his house. Instead she just batted her eyelashes.

  “Blame the parents,” she said, all sweetly. “Now that’s an idea.” She looked at Luke.

  I stopped smiling then. Mason did, too.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” Luke said.

  “Haven’t you heard what people are saying?” Lara answered.

  I was just about to reply, but Abi piped up from across my shoulder.

  “No one here’s interested in what people are saying. Especially when all the rumors that are flying around were started by you.”

  She was talking about all the stuff online. The stuff about Sadie before she went missing. The stuff about Mason and us lot afterward. And obviously the shit about Sadie’s parents.

  Lara gives us
this who me? look, which to be fair she’s world champion at. It’s like, she never gets in trouble at school. She always manages to blame someone else, or casts just enough doubt that the teachers believe her. Or choose to, anyway. It helps that Lara’s mum is chair of the school governors.

  “You’d have to be pretty sick to make that stuff up,” she said. “Right, Luke?”

  I caught Luke’s eye and gave him this little shake of my head. But I guess he couldn’t help himself.

  “What are you talking about, Lara?”

  Lara feigned surprise. “You haven’t heard? Did your friends not think they ought to fill you in?”

  Luke looked at me and I sort of shrugged. It was supposed to be an I have no idea what she’s going on about shrug, but I winced at the same time, and Luke could tell right away what it meant. Because I did know. Of course I did. Luke had messaged us to say he was deleting his accounts—Facebook, Instagram, all that—because he realized none of it was helping, that it was all just making things worse, but I’d sort of kept an eye on things. Not like Abi, nothing like Abi, who can’t go to the cinema without ducking underneath her coat every twenty minutes to check her phone, but I wanted to know what people were saying. Just . . . just because. So obviously I knew exactly what Lara was referring to. I mean, you lot must monitor all that as well, right? So you must have seen the stuff about Sadie’s parents, too.

  But Luke—he obviously hadn’t.

  “What’s she talking about, Cora?”

  “It’s nothing, Luke. It’s bullshit, that’s all. Just more of the same twisted bullshit they’ve been saying about the rest of us. That they were saying about Sadie before she disappeared. And Abi’s right. It probably all came from Lara in the first place.”