The Search Party

by Simon Lelic

  The only answer he received was the boy’s sobbing. Fleet waited a moment, then nodded at Miss Jeffries to approach. He took a breath, steeling himself . . . and then turned to look at the oak tree.

  He started forward.

  Every step he took felt like a hammer blow against his heart, and it was nothing to do with the pain that was lingering in his ribs. Five strides away, he noticed the smell, although it struck him that in fact he’d noticed it sooner. He’d assumed it was the forest: dying plants and decaying leaves. But it was more than that. Sharper. More acrid.

  Three steps away, Fleet spotted the hollow. It was no wonder none of the search party had noticed it. It was masked anyway by the shape of the tree trunk, the lumps and gnarls where the dying oak had turned in on itself. But the opening had also been blocked off with branches, most of which had now lost their leaves. There was just enough of a gap for Fleet to peer inside. The sound of the rain on the canopy above was like a constant murmur, but when he saw the girl’s body lying crumpled in the hollow, the sight was one of devastating silence.

  Before Fleet could properly react, there was a yell from behind him.

  He snapped his head around, in time to see Nicky and the young PC rushing toward him. Miss Jeffries, the social worker, was holding herself up against a tree, and Luke . . .

  Luke was nowhere to be seen.

  “THAT WAY. HE went that way.”

  Fleet spun in the direction the social worker was pointing, and caught a flash of movement between the trees. His first reaction was confusion. Why was Luke running? How on earth did he expect to get away? He had a head start, yes, but there was no way he could hope to . . .

  And then Fleet realized. A head start was all the boy needed.

  No, thought Fleet. No, no, no.

  He waved an arm frantically toward Nicky. “Go that way!” he called. “Both of you! Try to cut him off!” And then he was running himself, directly after Luke. Nicky and the young PC veered in the direction Fleet had indicated. There was no way any of them would be able to catch Luke before he cleared the tree line, but there was a chance Nicky would be able to outflank him. As for Fleet . . . all he could hope was that he’d be able to get close enough in time to convince the boy to change his mind.

  As Fleet ran, he felt every bump and bruise from the night before. Every cigarette he’d ever smoked, too, and every spoon of sugar he’d ever added to his coffee. On top of which, Luke was twenty years younger than him. He was lighter, fitter, faster.

  “Luke!” Fleet yelled, but either the boy didn’t hear or he didn’t want to. He continued to hurtle through the trees, as effortlessly as if he were sprinting across a field. Fleet, by contrast, sensed every root trying to trip him, every branch clawing to hold him back.

  He stumbled, found his feet again, but when he looked ahead the boy had disappeared from sight. He cast around frantically, and once again caught a flash of movement.

  Cursing himself for his clumsiness—not to mention his stupidity for giving in to Luke’s wishes and instructing Nicky to hang back—Fleet redoubled his pace. They were heading parallel with the stream, Fleet guessed—and directly toward the river.

  Not another one. Please, God, not another one.

  Fleet tried digging his mobile phone from his pocket as he ran. It caught on the zip as he pulled it free, and almost somersaulted from his grip. Somehow he caught it, but when he finally reached a gap between the trees that allowed him to focus on the screen, what he saw almost made him hurl it away in frustration anyway. There was no signal. Of course there wasn’t. He just had to hope that Nicky was having better luck.

  It was only when Fleet burst unexpectedly through the tree line that he realized how close to the river they really were. It greeted him with a roar, which to Fleet sounded disconcertingly like laughter. And unless it was his imagination, the flow of the water appeared to be even faster here than it had been at the point they’d crossed earlier. But, of course, it wasn’t how rapidly the river appeared to be flowing that really counted, Fleet knew. It was the currents beneath the surface that made the water so treacherous. The unseen hands that tugged you down with their icy grip.

  “Luke! Lu—”

  Fleet had been scanning one way and then the other, scouring the riverbank for some sign of the boy. But then he’d spotted him: not on the bank of the river yet, but running north, still clinging tightly to the tree line. Where was he going? There was only a short stretch of open ground between Luke and the river itself, and he was far enough ahead of Fleet that he might have crossed it in plenty of time to make the leap into the water. Unless he wasn’t trying to reach the river after all. Maybe he—

  The relief Fleet was feeling swan-dived when he realized where the boy was heading. He heard a shout, then, and turned to see Nicky and her colleague emerging from the woods, twenty meters farther downstream. There was a similar gap between Nicky and Fleet as there was now between Fleet and Luke. And Luke was getting farther and farther away. Closer and closer to the old pipeline bridge for which he was no doubt aiming.

  The structure had long ago fallen into disrepair. It was nothing like the arched pedestrian bridge on the southern edge of the woods, which was broad and flat and made of stone. The pipeline bridge was little more than a steel truss girder lying sideways, held in place by suspension cables. There was an access ladder on each bank, of the type you saw on pylons. And the ladders rose almost as high. Unlike the pedestrian bridge, which sat relatively low to the water, the pipeline bridge crossed the river at least a dozen meters above its surface. Maybe the fall itself wouldn’t be enough to kill someone, but there was every chance the resulting impact would snap a bone. After which, the currents would be waiting like crocodiles, ready to devour their injured prey.

  “Call for help!” Fleet yelled to Nicky. “And keep your eyes open! Be ready if . . .” He had half a thought that Nicky might somehow be able to fish Luke from the river as the water bore him past—assuming it came to that, of course—but the channel was so wide, there was no way she would be able to reach him without risking being carried off by the undertow herself. “Just be ready!” Fleet called, knowing Nicky would be as ready as it was possible to be, even if she didn’t yet know what for.

  And then Fleet was off.

  He could move more quickly now that he was out in the open, but the pain in his ribs hadn’t diminished, and Luke was taking advantage of the clearer ground, too.

  “Luke!” Fleet yelled as he ran. “Luke, don’t!”

  The boy had already reached the bridge. He’d clearly heard Fleet calling, because as he placed a foot on the ladder that would take him to the walkway, he turned his head. But he only paused for a second. He began to climb, swiftly and surely, and was already near the top by the time Fleet finally reached the ladder.

  When he started climbing, Fleet made the mistake of looking up. Luke seemed impossibly far above him. In the fog, the walkway itself was almost lost to view. Worse, the rungs on the ladder were treacherously slippery, and the safety cage was mostly rusted away.

  Fleet forced himself to focus on his hands, on the sturdiness of the freezing metal beneath his grip, but still he felt that familiar free fall in the pit of his stomach that told him he was no longer on solid ground.

  About three meters up, there was a mesh guard that was supposed to deter members of the public. There was a hole, and Luke had managed to slip through easily, but Fleet was twice the boy’s size, and the mesh caught on the fabric of his coat. It was all he could do to keep climbing. At first it was as though someone were attempting to pull him down, but then there was the sound of his jacket ripping, and all at once he found himself free.

  The boy was waiting for him. It was the only explanation as to why, when Fleet reached the top of the ladder, Luke hadn’t already jumped. He was out toward the center of the bridge, his legs hooked over the slender guardrail. Looking at hi
m balanced there like that, Fleet’s vision began to swim. He closed his eyes for a moment, then hauled himself from the ladder onto the walkway. He gripped the guardrail with his left hand, and kept his right firmly planted by his knees. Then he forced himself to clamber to his feet.

  There may have been no breeze at ground level, but as soon as Fleet was upright, he found himself buffeted by a crosswind. In reality it probably wasn’t all that strong, but to Fleet it felt like a gale. Even the bridge itself seemed to sway, and for one horrible moment, Fleet genuinely believed he was about to fall. He looked down, and saw the water churning far below him. There was no sign of Nicky. Wherever she was, she was shrouded by the fog.

  He took a step.

  “Stop,” said Luke. He was standing—teetering—barely three or four meters away, but his voice sounded improbably distant.

  “Luke, listen . . .”

  “I came back to tell you what happened. So that you wouldn’t blame my friends. That’s all. If it hadn’t been for them, I would have come here sooner.”

  “No one’s blaming your friends, Luke. Not anymore. They made mistakes, yes, but we all do that. Please don’t make another one now.”

  The boy shook his head. “I told you what I did. I killed Sadie. My brother, too. I killed them both.”

  “Luke, listen, we can—”

  But Luke didn’t wait. One moment he was standing on the walkway, the next he was gone—his fragile body plunging toward the water.

  “No!”

  Fleet lunged, but there was never a chance he would reach the boy in time. Even as he closed the distance there had been between them, there was a splash as Luke hit the water.

  “Shit. Shit, shit, shit.”

  Fleet was already climbing over the handrail, fighting every instinct that was wrestling to hold him back. He looked down, all the way down, and saw only the water—cold and cruel, and gray like concrete. Luke appeared to have sunk like a piece of granite. There wasn’t even a ripple discernible from the churn that showed where the boy had broken the surface.

  Dimly, Fleet heard Holly’s voice. You can’t save everyone, she’d told him, and not for the first time in his life, he found himself wishing he would learn to follow his wife’s advice.

  And then he jumped.

  His first sensation, strangely, was one of relief. The second was of time standing still. But then the world came rushing toward him, at a speed he couldn’t have imagined. He barely had time to hold his breath before his feet impacted against the water, and pain coursed from his heel bones through his spine to the top of his skull.

  He felt himself panic as he was swallowed by the water. He flailed uselessly, desperately trying to propel himself toward the surface. At first it had no effect. He was still falling, still plunging toward the riverbed far below. But then there was a moment of feeling in between, a sensation not dissimilar to how he’d felt when he’d been falling. He frogged his legs, the old muscle memory kicking in, and he found himself rising, rising, his lungs threatening to explode—until finally he broke the surface of the water.

  He gulped in air, coughed it out again. He kicked against the current, rotating all the while as he searched for the boy. But there was nothing—just the cold and the rushing river. Dimly he found himself wishing he’d at least removed his coat before he’d jumped, because his clothes were suddenly as heavy as a suit of armor. He’d only been in the water a few seconds, and already his legs were burning from the effort of trying to keep himself afloat.

  “Luke!” he called, whether out loud or in his mind, he couldn’t tell. His mouth filled with water, and he spluttered. “Luke!”

  He took a breath and then ducked beneath the water. Immediately the world went quiet, as though he’d dropped into a void. But he could see even less through the murk below than he’d been able to through the fog above the river’s surface. He kicked for the sky, gasped as he stole another breath, then dived again—but as before, he saw nothing but a muddy swirl.

  This time when he surfaced, he heard a shout. He whipped his head around in time to see Nicky and the young PC on the bank. Already the current had carried Fleet alongside them. Nicky was yelling, pointing. Fleet spun around, floundering to see anything but the spray of the water. Unless . . . there.

  “Luke!”

  It was only the boy’s jacket and the back of his head that broached the surface. If Nicky hadn’t shown Fleet where to look, there was no way he would have spotted him. The boy was right in the center of the river, and the current there seemed to be at its strongest, because the distance between him and Fleet was steadily increasing.

  Fleet wrestled to free himself from his coat. Then he propelled himself forward, thrashing his way toward the boy in a messy mix of strokes. He was aware of a pain in his chest, which at first he’d assumed was coming from his lungs, until he realized it was the groaning of his ribs. He hadn’t wanted to say anything to Holly that morning, but he’d been fairly sure that at least a couple of them were broken.

  Ahead, Luke was still floating facedown. Fleet was struggling to close the gap. His shoulders were on fire, and his arms and legs felt as weak as ribbons. But then something in the river seemed to catch hold of him, and it was as though he were being funneled along a flume. He’d entered the same channel that had hold of Luke, and steadily Fleet began to draw nearer. He was closer, closing . . . until at the last he felt certain he would be carried straight past by the current.

  Fleet kicked again, trying to slow himself now, and flailed with an outstretched arm. He missed, flailed again, missed again, until—

  Got you.

  Fleet stopped kicking, allowing the water to carry them both on, and focused all his efforts on turning Luke over. From the angle Fleet had hold of the boy, it was like trying to flip a sodden mattress. But again, the current helped. The river kinked, and all at once the boy rolled onto his back. Fleet had to catch him to stop him rolling too far. He threaded an arm underneath the boy’s armpit, hoisting his chin clear of the water. There was no way of telling whether Luke was breathing or not, and no way Fleet could administer mouth-to-mouth—not while they were both still in the water.

  Doing his best to hold Luke steady, Fleet turned his head from side to side. They were right in the center of the waterway, a twenty-meter swim to either bank. With all his strength gone, and knowing it was probably useless, Fleet began kicking with his legs. His rib cage screamed at him, and when his body convulsed, his head whipped back and he found himself breathing in a mouthful of water. He coughed, kicked again, blind now, and kept on kicking until exhaustion threatened to overwhelm him. By the end, he couldn’t be sure his legs were moving at all anymore, or whether he and Luke hadn’t been turned back around and were being carried by the river straight out to sea.

  But then he heard a voice, and felt something latch on to his arm. “I’ve got you,” said the voice, over and over, and Fleet would have sworn in that moment that it was Jeannie’s. His little sister, a ghost in the river, come to bear him back to shore. Luke, he tried to say, but he found himself gasping. And then the weight Fleet was bearing suddenly lifted, and after that he was aware of nothing more.

  DAY TEN

  HE SPOTTED HER the moment he stepped outside. She had on her raincoat, even though the weather was finally lifting. The rain had stopped, anyway, and a gentle breeze was stirring the puddles on the pavement. On the horizon there was even a streak of blue, approximately the color of Holly’s eyes. On a good day, that is. When she was cross, or upset, her eyes turned darker, more like the clouds that still dominated the sky.

  Fleet descended the steps, and checked quickly in both directions before crossing the road.

  “I figured you must have left,” he said, as he drew near. He hadn’t seen Holly since he’d woken up to the sight of her the day before—the morning after his altercation with Stephen Payne. In the time since, and following hi
s little swim in the river, Fleet had spent the night at the local hospital, before discharging himself first thing that morning and heading directly to the station. It was now late afternoon, and the investigation was as good as over, though the repercussions of what Fleet had uncovered were only just beginning to unfold.

  “I’ve been spending some time with Anne,” Holly said to him. “She gave me a tour of the local sights.”

  In all their years together, Holly had never seen the town in which Fleet had grown up. His choice, obviously—not hers.

  Fleet looked at his watch. “I can’t imagine that would have taken very long. What have you been doing for the other thirty-five and a half hours?”

  “Shopping,” said Holly, and she reached into her pocket. “Here. After what you’ve been through, I imagine you feel like you need them. And I felt bad for throwing yours away.” She held out a ten-pack of cigarettes. “I couldn’t bring myself to buy you twenty. You can think of these as being like a countdown. Ten more, and then you stop. Agreed?”

  Fleet narrowed his eyes at her. He took the packet from her hand, then shook out a cigarette and planted it between his lips. “Thanks,” he mumbled. He patted his jacket. “I don’t suppose you brought a—”

  “Agreed?” Holly repeated. This time she held out a box of matches, just out of Fleet’s reach. She gave it a rattle.

  Fleet smiled. He plucked the cigarette from his mouth, and fed it back into the packet. “In which case,” he said, “I suppose I’d better make them count.” He tucked both the cigarettes and the matches into his pocket. The truth was, he didn’t feel much like smoking right now anyway. His lungs felt as though the insides had been scrubbed with sandpaper, and his throat was equally as raw. And with his ribs the way they were, it was hard enough breathing as it was, without adding carbon monoxide into the mix.