by Simon Lelic
“Closer to Sadie! To . . . to proof. Or something! Closer to the truth.” Mason looked at me, Abi and Cora, one at a time. “How’s that knee of yours?” he said to Cora. “Because I noticed you moving a bit faster when you saw the barn. When you figured you were free and clear.”
“Oh, piss off,” Cora spat at him. “You think I’m faking? You think I’m the one playing games? Take a look at yourself before you start accusing the rest of us, Mason! Remind yourself why we’re even out here! Do you know, I actually meant what I said to you before. About believing you. About being certain you had nothing to do with Sadie’s disappearance. But now . . .” She sniffed. “Now I hope they lock you up and throw away the key.”
Mason took a step forward. He raised the bottle.
“Turn out your bags,” he hissed. Then, when none of us moved, “I said, turn out your bags!”
I was closest, and he ripped my rucksack from my shoulders. I was helping Cora stand, and when Mason pulled me like that, she lost her balance and fell onto her hands and knees. She cried out, but Mason acted as though he hadn’t heard. He’d wrenched my rucksack open, and was shaking it the way a dog would shake a rat it had caught between its jaws. I saw my Snickers bar fly off into the undergrowth.
“Here,” said Cora, tossing Mason her bag. “Help yourself.” He caught it and emptied it out the way he had mine. Next was Abi’s. She held it out to him the way she would have offered a tiger a piece of meat. Luke turned out his own bag, then tipped it upside down to prove to Mason that it was empty.
When it was over, our belongings were scattered all around us. Mason checked one way, and then the other, swiping at the ground with his feet. But there was no knife.
“Mason?” said Abi. Quietly, tentatively. “Mase? It’s not there. You can see it’s not.” She paused but Mason didn’t respond. “Please, Mason. Just try the phone. Please. At least tell us if there’s any recep—”
Now Mason spun. “Shut up,” he spat. “Just . . . just shut up, will you? I told you already. I said to you. No one’s calling anyone until we get this straightened out.”
I don’t think Mason realized how close he was holding the bottle to Abi’s throat. I’m not sure he was really aware what he was doing by that point, nor what he planned to do next. And Abi clearly didn’t know either. She started crying, whimpering really, as though she was genuinely afraid she was about to die. And I guess she realized there was no way she could get through to Mason. So she turned to Cora instead.
“Tell him,” she said, through her tears. “Just tell him, Cora! He’s not going to let us go until you do!”
I looked at Cora, frowning.
“Shut up, Abi,” Cora hissed. “Just shut the fuck up, will you?”
But Abi wasn’t listening. “Just tell him!” she said again. “Tell him what you did!”
Mason whipped his head toward Cora.
“Me?” said Cora, who was still only halfway standing. “What I did? What about you? Both of you!” She was back on her feet now, and her eyes, this time, landed on me.
And really, from that point on, all I can remember clearly is shaking my head. And a voice inside of me saying, Deny it. They don’t know. Nobody knows.
But obviously, somehow, they did.
I sensed Mason turn to face me. I felt the others looking at me, too.
And then, after that, that’s when it all came out.
The truth.
About what Abi did, about what Cora had done, about what I had. And the only reason I didn’t tell you before—why none of the others told you either—was because we were scared of what you’d think. It was like Cora said to Mason: after the way it all ended, if you found out what we’d been hiding . . . you’d lock us up and throw away the key.
And maybe that’s exactly what we deserve.
“YOUR BUSINESS CARD?”
“Yes, sir,” said Fleet. “And I added a message.”
“What message?”
“Just a few words,” Fleet said. “Nothing consequential.” What he’d written on the back of the card was: I want to help you. And I want to help your friends. But he had a feeling that, when it came to explaining to Superintendent Burton, it would be in everyone’s interests for Fleet to keep the details hazy.
“I left the card on a tree stump near the barns,” he said. “In a place it appeared likely someone had been hiding. Nicky here was the one who found the evidence.”
Nicky seemed about to protest, to perhaps insist it was Fleet who deserved the credit, but there was no need. Burton didn’t even glance in her direction.
“Evidence? I thought we’d searched that entire area!” Rather than worrying about assigning credit, Burton appeared more concerned with trying to decide who to haul over the coals.
“It’s unlikely there would have been anything to find at the time of the search, sir. The truth is, it was more of a . . . feeling.”
Burton made a face. He didn’t have to say anything to make it clear what he’d come to think of Fleet’s feelings.
The superintendent pianoed his fingers on the surface of a nearby desk. They were standing in the open-plan office at the station, the workspace full of officers trying to look busy, all of whom would have been following every word.
“It doesn’t change anything,” Burton announced at last. “The press conference goes ahead. The arrest goes ahead. You have him here, I take it? The Payne boy?”
“They’re all here,” answered Fleet. “And they all still have questions to answer. But I’ve got a feeling”—Fleet regretted the word the moment it escaped his mouth—“I’ve got a sense there’s only one person’s story now that matters.”
“You’re right, Detective Inspector,” said Burton. “There is only one story that matters. The one that will appear on the front pages of tomorrow morning’s newspapers.”
“But, sir . . .” Fleet took a breath. “Sir, if I may. I agree that it looks bad for Mason. He’s not going to come out of this with very much credit, however things turn out. He’s reckless, unstable, angry . . .” Which, given his provenance, is hardly surprising, Fleet didn’t add. “But I’d bet my career that he’s no killer.”
“But one of the others is? Is that what you’re saying? Because if you take with one hand, Detective Inspector, you sure as hell better be giving with another.”
“That’s not what I’m saying, sir. However . . .” Fleet added hastily, before Burton’s patience—and possibly one of his blood vessels—finally ruptured. “I believe we have a better idea now about what actually happened.”
“A theory, you mean,” said Burton, derisively. “If I may, Detective Inspector, the time for theories has passed. Theories aren’t going to satisfy the two dozen journalists who are less than an hour away from gathering in the room next door.”
“With respect, sir, nobody is going to be satisfied until we understand what happened to Sadie. Charging Mason isn’t going to alter that.”
Burton glanced around the room. Any eyes that had been looking in his direction immediately dropped away. Fleet could tell the superintendent was caught between looking like a fool in front of his troops, and making a bigger idiot of himself up onstage before the nation’s media. Fleet had suggested they have this conversation in private when Burton first strode in, but Burton had blustered that there’d be no need. No doubt he was regretting that now.
“I’m listening,” the superintendent said, grudgingly.
Fleet turned to Nicky, and gave her the slightest of nods.
“Well, sir,” she said to Burton. “The first thing is, we’ve had corroboration from Forensics that the phone the kids discovered in the woods was likely to have belonged to Sadie. They haven’t yet been able to draw anything conclusive from the blood traces, but what they did find was one of Sadie’s fingerprints.”
“A fingerprint doesn’t prove ownership, Det
ective Sergeant. You’re going to have to do better than that.”
“You’re right, sir. It doesn’t. Except this print was taken from inside the phone’s casing. On the battery, to be precise. And there was also a partial on the SIM card. Sadie’s print was there, and nobody else’s. Which, taken in the context of the circumstantial evidence linking the phone to Sadie . . .”
Burton had started nodding and was holding up a hand. “All right, all right. There’s no need to labor the point. And anyway, I don’t see how this changes things. I’d already said to you both that I accepted the phone was Sadie’s.”
Fleet blinked. He must have missed that particular conversation with his superior. The last thing he could remember Burton saying on the subject was, quote, Fuck the phone.
“The other thing we’ve had confirmed,” said Fleet, “thanks to DC Dalton over there . . .” Fleet winced as he twisted. The paracetamol he’d taken back at the hotel had long worn off, not that it had done very much to numb the pain in the first place. Nicky noticed, and shot him a frown, but Burton was looking where Fleet was pointing. DC Dalton was seated at his desk by the window, and he turned the color of one of the fist prints on Fleet’s rib cage.
“The Internet gossip,” Fleet went on. “The rumors about Sadie that had been circulating over the summer. DC Dalton managed to pinpoint the account from which they originated. And by backtracking a bit further, he’s also managed to identify who owned them. The names of the accounts at first suggested they might have belonged to Lara Sweeney—either that, or someone who wanted to make it look like they belonged to Lara.”
“And? Which was it?”
“The latter,” said Fleet. “Dalton was able to establish a link between the accounts and an e-mail address owned by one of Sadie’s friends. Abigail Marshall, to be precise.”
Burton wore the expression of a man still waiting for the punch line. “So one of Sadie’s friends got pissed-off with her for some reason, and decided to spread a few rumors to settle the score. So what?”
“As it happens, sir, I don’t think it was Abi who started the rumors. It was her account, yes, but that doesn’t mean the posts were hers.” Again, it was just a feeling Fleet had, though he consciously avoided confessing as much. “But anyway, that isn’t really the point. The point is, we believe the rumors were based on fact. That Sadie was unfaithful to Mason, and somebody somehow got wind of this.”
“Sadie was unfaithful to Mason? Forgive me, Detective Inspector, but aren’t you supposed to be trying to convince me that Mason isn’t our man?”
Our boy, Fleet resisted saying. He had the distinct impression the superintendent had lost sight of the fact they were dealing with children here. Not adults. Not even potential criminals, by most international standards. Children.
“I hear what you’re saying, sir,” said Fleet, “but, taken together, it seems to me that these findings fundamentally alter the overall picture. There’s the phone, to start with. The fact Sadie bought it three days before she went missing. There’s the likelihood Sadie had been caught doing something she might have regretted, together with the possibility that she was pregnant. And remember her parents are Catholic, meaning abortion would at the very least have been problematic. And finally, there’s the fact that Sadie was keeping back money she would ordinarily have paid straight into her savings account.”
“I’m failing to see the connection, Detective Inspector.”
“We think Sadie ran, sir,” said Nicky, spelling it out for him.
“Ran? As in . . .”
“As in, ran away,” said Fleet. “Maybe she didn’t want to. Probably she felt she had no choice. But she’d bought a cheap phone nobody would have been able to trace. She had cash, allowing her to avoid leaving an electronic record, either of the fact that she was planning to leave, or—afterward—of where she’d gone. Because she knew full well that people would have come looking for her. She was smart, sir. Very, very smart. The only place she really tripped up was with her bag.”
“Her bag? The one we found by the river?”
Fleet nodded. “Containing her phone, her wallet, her house keys—everything people would have expected her to have been carrying, unless of course she no longer needed them.”
“It was a decoy?” said Burton, catching on. “To make it look like she’d fallen in the river? To make her disappearance look like an accident? She put it there?”
“That’s what I’m guessing,” said Fleet. “And that’s why the bag was so close to the towpath: to make sure someone found it. And it was wet through, as though someone had dunked it in the river first, to make it look as though it had washed up after Sadie had theoretically fallen in.”
“It was too high on the bank,” said Burton. “That’s what you said before. Right at the start.”
“It was just a feeling, sir,” said Fleet, unable to resist. Burton was too busy frowning to register the jibe.
“But if Sadie ran away—if what you’re saying is true—why haven’t we found her? Maybe she was smart, and maybe if her plan had worked and nobody had been looking for her other than out at sea, it would have been a different story. But in case you hadn’t noticed, Detective Inspector, the search for Sadie Saunders has turned into the biggest missing-persons inquiry in the county’s entire history. I know—I’ve been signing off on the bills you and DS Collins here have been busy racking up.”
This time it was Fleet’s turn to ignore the jibe.
“And what about her coat?” the superintendent went on. “None of what you’ve just outlined explains how or why we found Sadie’s coat in the river, her blood all over the hood. Unless it’s your contention that Sadie planted that as well. That, rather than an accident, she wanted her disappearance to look like murder.”
Fleet shook his head. “No, sir. I don’t think she wanted that at all. Quite the opposite. I believe she went to considerable lengths to ensure nobody would be blamed.”
Burton was waiting. “Well?” he said. “How does it all tally up, Detective Inspector? Where does your theory lead now?”
Fleet glanced at Nicky. The truth was, they’d reached the point at which the evidence ran out. From here on in, it was all conjecture.
“All I can say, sir,” Fleet said, “is that just because Sadie ran, doesn’t mean she got away.”
There was a silence which filled the entire room. There was no pretense now among the officers present that they were anything other than attuned to what Fleet was saying. Probably, like Fleet, most would have recognized a long time ago how slim the chances were of finding Sadie alive. But recognizing the fact and accepting it were very different things.
“So what we’re dealing with here is a runaway and a murder?” said Burton.
As so often in recent days, a phrase echoed in Fleet’s head. More than one thing going on . . .
“Yes, sir,” he said. “You asked me about my theory, and that’s basically what it boils down to. Sadie ran, and someone tried to stop her. Someone who didn’t want her gone.”
“But that’s Mason!” said Burton. “And if Sadie was unfaithful, as you claim, that’s all the more reason to suspect him. I’m sorry, Rob, but nothing you’ve just been saying to me does anything to change my opinion. Which was your opinion at one stage, too, I might remind you!”
Fleet didn’t bother to correct him. The truth was, the superintendent had reacted exactly as Fleet had feared he would.
“The only thing I can say, sir, is that Mason wasn’t the only one who loved Sadie.”
Burton opened his mouth, then shut it again. He looked over Fleet’s shoulder, toward the corridor leading to the interview rooms. After that, he checked his watch.
“The social worker’s in there?” he said.
“She is. She has been for a while.”
Burton’s nostrils flared as he breathed out. “One last interview, Rob. Is th
at what you’re promising me?”
“All I can promise, sir, is that it will be worth listening to. I don’t know yet whether it will change your mind.”
Once again Burton exhaled. “I suppose we had better find out,” he said at last.
LUKE
YOU SAID YOU’D help. Right? You said you’d help my friends. So the important thing, the thing I want to begin with, is to say that none of it was anybody else’s fault.
I’m guessing you know pretty much what happened out there in the woods by now. Because you’ve been speaking to the others, right? So what I’m saying is, please don’t blame them. Not even Mason. Especially not Mason. They were just . . . they were scared. That’s all. All of them. That’s the reason no one told you the truth before we set off. Why they agreed to stay quiet after. Because they were worried about how things would look. Cora thought you’d think she did it. That she was the one who . . . who killed my sister. Because she figured you’d decide she hated her or something. That Cora hated Sadie, I mean. Which she didn’t. I know for a fact she didn’t. She only did what she did because of Mason. Because she was so in love with him. And Abi . . . Abi got herself in a mess. Which was partly Cora’s fault, too. As for Fash . . . I mean, Jesus. I’d never have guessed. I really wouldn’t. And I can see why he kept it a secret. He must have been terrified. Not just after Sadie vanished, but before. The whole summer. With Mason, and his mum, and then you lot . . .
Sorry, I . . . I’m getting ahead of myself again. It’s so hard keeping everything straight in my head.
No, I’m . . . I’m just tired, that’s all. Just really, really tired. My head’s fine. It’s just a scrape. It was only ever really a scrape. I made it look worse than it feels, I promise. What I want is for it all to be over. For everything to be out in the open. Finally.
So where was I? Where should I . . .
Yeah. Yeah, OK. That’s the point it all came out anyway. When we reached the farm buildings and . . . and just before it happened . . . For all of us, that was when we finally realized what had actually been going on.