Reported Missing: A gripping psychological thriller with a breath-taking twist

by Sarah Wray

  Twenty-Nine

  Sunday, 15 November

  Barnacles looks even more shabby by day – chipped tables, stained carpet, browning net curtains. I was jittery at the van, needed a change of scene to try to pass the time. A girl I haven’t seen before is still taking stools down and wiping tables. She looks annoyed that I have dared come in so early. Her leggings are thin, bobbling and stretched – you can see the flesh colour pushing through.

  I sip a lime and soda with ice, enjoying the refreshing tang and the fizz burn at the back of my throat. I need to think about what I am going to do. If Chris is back, when will he let me know?

  Maybe I should stay at the house for a few days, wait for him there. He wouldn’t know where to look for me at the caravan. Perhaps he wants to see me in person, rather than calling.

  The smell of my chicken dinner arrives before the food itself: savoury, piled high on the plate.

  ‘Try this for me, will you?’ It’s Julie. ‘New chef. You can be my guinea pig. If you live, he can stay.’ She slaps the back of her hand across my arm. ‘I’m just kidding. Just let me know if it’s alright.’

  When she hands it to me, the plate tips to one side it’s so heavy: gloopy mash causing the whole thing to almost flip over. A little gravy sludges onto the table, blending into the shade of the wood.

  ‘Thanks, Julie.’ I don’t want the food really, but I don’t want to hurt her feelings.

  ‘Enjoy.’ She shoots me a smile, patting her maroon, chipped nails on my shoulder, skin wrinkling in folds at the knuckles, gold bracelets jangling together. She waves to a couple of men at the bar waiting to be served, gesturing that she’ll be over. The place is getting busier now.

  Jeannie jokes that she wouldn’t mess with Julie, wouldn’t like to meet her in a dark alley, but she’s been good to me. I feel a wave of gratitude to her. One day I will tell her, make sure she knows how much she’s helped me these past months. It strikes me that for the first time, I am daring to look ahead, think of the future.

  The gravy is thick and salty and the chicken skin is gristly and rubbery in my mouth, slicking my lips with grease. But it tastes good anyway. I’m even enjoying the over-boiled cabbage, giving off a pungent smell, and the dense roast potatoes that burn my mouth.

  Physically, I feel a little better after the food.

  The bar has filled up. I was the first one in when it was just opening. There’s been a steady trickle of people since then. There’s shouting and jeering from the bar, patting on the back, gullets contracting as beer goes down.

  As I am thinking about leaving, there’s a commotion at the bar. Something about it catches my attention. A half-caught word, a shift in the tone. It isn’t about the sport on the TV or a game of pool. Over the chatter, I strain to make out the words, ‘Hey, have you heard? They’ve found a body in the river, a few miles out.’

  My ears tune in to the conversation now.

  ‘Is it her?’

  Her.

  Julie and one of the men are coming towards me, faces unreadable. I grip my glass in my hand. Would I really be capable of using it as a weapon? The man stands up on the padded stool just next to me and I cower down, covering my head with my hand. But the next thing I hear is the TV. I chance a look through the crook in my elbow and see that the man is changing the channel on the TV above my head. I allow myself to unfold and see Julie is staring at me, arms crossed. I can’t tell if she is looking at me with pity or disapproval.

  ‘I was worried the TV might fall...’ I offer, obviously lying.

  ‘I’d get out of the way if I were you,’ she says, raising her eyebrow and over-emphasising her words as if to get a message across.

  I’m standing now; I’m not sure if she means because I am blocking the TV or I need to get out of the bar.

  I should. I should get out of Barnacles. And right out of the way in general. I move from my seat and turn round so I can see the screen, and don’t have to look at the faces of the crowd of people gathering behind me to watch the news. I know I should leave, but I am rooted to the spot. I need to see what the news is. All of it.

  A reporter stands at the edge of the river. I don’t recognise the spot. An industrial area. You can hear the water rushing behind him. The wind is whipping his collar around his face. In the distance, police tape wobbles, not stretched taut. A white cloth tent in the background, people milling around in forensics suits.

  ‘Police here in Shawmouth have today confirmed that the body of a young woman has been found in the River Swathe. The body was found ten miles outside of the seaside town of Shawmouth, but investigators say it could have been swept downstream. Police report injuries consistent with being dragged through a rocky, fast-flowing waterway. It is still unclear the exact location or circumstances in which she entered the water.’

  He looks at the camera for a few moments, sombre-faced, before going on, ‘Local teenager Kayleigh Jackson is still missing. The fourteen-year-old schoolgirl has been at the heart of a four-month police investigation after she disappeared on the last day of term at St Augustine’s School on 17 July. Police stress that they are yet to confirm the identity of the body found today.’

  Fifteen, I think. She’s fifteen now.

  As I run from Barnacles, crashing a table of drinks onto the floor with my bag, I hear Julie call after me, but I don’t look back. I can’t bear to see the faces staring at me. I need to think, to get back to the safety of the caravan.

  I am trying to compute all the information at once, and an ugly picture is starting to emerge. The last sighting of Chris on the CCTV – at the top of The Parades. Close to the river. His ghostly grey figure. And I remember, too, something that the police said at the time, something that has always puzzled me. It niggled at me then, something so small. But now it feels like it could be the missing piece of the puzzle that I hoped I wouldn’t find.

  Could Chris really be involved? And whatever ‘it’ is, it looks like it could be the worst possible scenario. A murderer too? The thought of them being somewhere together is horrific enough.

  But it might not be Kayleigh. It might be some other poor girl. Someone drunk who fell in. Someone who wanted to die. Other people’s lives ruined. Not mine this time, not mine.

  When he first went missing, I answered their questions, hours and hours on end in that bleak, square, windowless room. There was nothing I could tell them that they didn’t already know.

  But then there was that moment of dread. When they came back again the next day. I recognised the knock on the door, the pattern becoming all too familiar. Three quick knocks and one for good luck. They had ‘a few more questions’, Detective Fisher had said.

  ‘Tell me,’ Detective Fisher was testing the waters then. ‘Tell me, where do you think your husband – Chris – would have gone? When he said he was going to work but, you know, wasn’t?’

  I remember that I thought I could detect a note of mirth or mockery when she said this last part, but having got to know her a bit better now, perhaps not after all.

  I shrugged. I was defensive, tired of being poked and prodded.

  ‘Ms Pendle?’

  She wouldn’t let it go. She was driving at something specific. Not just fishing like before. That made me panicky. I felt like I had something to hide, like I needed to choose my words carefully, but I wasn’t sure why. It was a strain, racking my brains, trying to think ahead to the next step, the next question – and keeping a calm, impassive face. I didn’t want to give anything away, create the wrong impression. Even now I can still remember clearly the tense silence that hung in the air. It felt like a power game.

  I cracked first. ‘Seriously, how do you expect me to know?’ I was trying but failing to sound calm. The persuasive, decisive tone I was going for was coming out shrill. ‘I was too stupid to even realise he wasn’t going to work. I clearly know nothing at all about the man!’

  ‘I understand this is upsetting for you, Ms Pendle. But please try to think. It’s important tha
t we try to piece together Chris’s whereabouts before he went missing.’

  I lost it then. ‘Answer me this.’ I knew I was being too cocky at that point. ‘Would you really care about any of this, about Chris, if it wasn’t for this teenager as well? Would you?’ It was spiteful of me, I hated myself straight after for refusing to use Kayleigh’s name.

  I think I went down in Detective Fisher’s estimations. She looked disappointed in me.

  It was the opacity I found the most frustrating. I still do. Not knowing anyone else’s hand. I obviously hadn’t known Chris’s and I definitely didn’t know the police’s. I couldn’t even guess what they knew, what their assumptions were – where their questions were leading, what my answers might suggest.

  ‘I am guessing he was going to the arcades, the bookies,’ I told Detective Fisher. ‘I mean, I’m guessing – with what you’ve told me about the gambling and everything. Maybe in the next town along to get out of the way. I am sorry, but I really don’t know.’

  Sadly, it was the truth. I didn’t know. I still don’t know. Trying to picture him, not being at work, lying to me each day. I can’t visualise that... maybe I just don’t want to. Where would he go? Where would I go?

  One of the awful images that keeps coming into my head, creeping around in the shadows, then leaping in all at once, is him and her in one of Shawmouth’s cheap little B&Bs – ugly 1970s bedspreads, plastic under the sheets.

  Then the police dropped the bombshell, the one that’s firing off shrapnel now.

  ‘We have intelligence, Ms Pendle, that Chris had been seen close to the river around the days of Kayleigh’s disappearance. Close to The Cut. Do you know the area?’

  Now I am trying to remember the exact words. Did she say the day of or the days around? It was the word intelligence that stood out. So official, the cool distance. Does it even matter? He was seen there. And now a body has been found in the river. Ten miles out, I remind myself again – it might not be her. Swept downstream. But still miles out.

  Should I go to the police, now someone has been found? Let them know about the house? No, I need to stay calm, do nothing. They’ll come and find me. I’m just a bit-part character in all this. It might not be Kayleigh. Please don’t be Kayleigh.

  I am humming with anxiety, my teeth clenched, pacing the caravan, but there’s nothing practical at all that I can do. A nausea is coming over me. Would I really cover for him? Is that what I am doing?

  But I am trapped here in this hellish purgatory. Even now with this latest evidence ‘presented’ to me – a body – something in me won’t allow me to be totally sure. But something has definitely shifted, hardened.

  I picture what he might have done, and I am repulsed. I picture his face, our time together, and I am full of warmth and love and yearning for him and what we had, our life together.

  I take a swipe at the drying rack, sending all the crockery flying onto the floor, but it doesn’t break. One of the cups even bounces. I let out a scream, as loud as I can until it burns my throat, frustration and anger welling up inside me. I am grabbing clumps of hair at the side of my head and pulling until the pain sears, coloured dots popping in front of my eyes, temples hot and pulsating, a vein throbbing.

  I tire myself out after a while and I sit in the corner on the floor, pull my knees in and make myself as small as I can. I wait like that for I don’t know how long, expecting the police to knock at any moment.

  Thirty

  Sunday, 15 November

  My phone rings and I pull it out straight away. I hope that it’s Detective Fisher. I decided to call her in the end; just to get an update. But she hasn’t been available or answered her mobile yet. She hasn’t called me back either. Is that a good sign or a bad one?

  But the number is Sandra and Geoff’s house. It’s 3 p.m. My first strange thought is how Sandra would have started making the Sunday dinner earlier like she always does. How she’ll have let it burn or go cold now. I feel guilty, but I let it ring and ring. I just can’t do it right now. I’m only just holding it together as it is, if I am even doing that.

  My body is all tension; I can’t just wait at the caravan. It’s unbearable.

  I’ve just been walking around the town. I don’t know for how long or where I have been. I just have to keep moving. I keep thinking to myself, if it is Kayleigh, or even if it’s someone else, now would be the time, Chris – whatever’s happened – to come back, to explain everything, to rescue your reputation. To show that it wasn’t you.

  He wouldn’t know to come to the caravan. So I’m standing now near the top of The Parades. Near the river. A sudden headache and my thoughts start spinning again.

  He was near the river. The body is in the river. Chris grabbing Kayleigh; a fight at the edge. Or maybe… maybe it could be that Kayleigh was in trouble and Chris went in after her to try to save her? Then I see his face, water-bloated, like a horror film. Will he be found next? Please, no.

  But he’s been to the house. I feel more sure now. That’s where he’d go, isn’t it? He’d look for me there. Surely he’d try to reach me. My hands are shaking and I take my phone out again. More missed calls and a text from Sandra. Ignore. I try Chris’s phone again. The first time in a while. The wait seems to take forever; the little clicking sound as the number dials. I don’t think I breathe.

  ‘Sorry, the number you are calling is not available.’

  Same as always. I feel like screaming at the top of my voice again.

  The area around The Parades is quite busy today. Daytime drinkers, squeezing the last out of the weekend. It surprises me somehow – that the whole town isn’t indoors crowded round their TVs, waiting for news of Kayleigh. It reminds me how small my world has become. Some people won’t have heard yet, others will only care on a distant level. For everybody else, life goes on; it’s background noise. Upsetting but not central.

  I think of Janice, Kayleigh’s mum, what she must be going through. Is she at the police station? Or sitting in her living room, curtains closed, coiled like a spring, jumping at the slightest noise or movement? Maybe she’s already had more news; she’d be the first to know, surely.

  When I see it, I think my heart stops for a second.

  It can’t be him – he’s walking down the street with the pubs and bars on, where I was out for Jeannie’s birthday. Was it just last night? It already feels like weeks ago.

  I know it can’t be him. But it is. It is him. Even the trainers with the navy-blue stripes. They’re the same. The parka. The specific way he walks. The height. He’s further down the road from me. I can’t shout. Would he run? Is he on the way to the house? Or the police station to explain everything?

  I speed up to a slow jog – a couple of people smoking outside one of the bars smirk at me, probably for running in the street. I’m trying to catch my breath and calm myself at the same time. I’m sweating, a cold film around my hairline.

  As I get closer, he turns into one of the pubs at the bottom – an old man’s pub – I’ve been in before. All wood beams, ship paraphernalia everywhere. Yes, he used to drink in here, didn’t he? With Sean. With football lads after practice.

  There are bouncers on the door when I get there, but they’re busy talking to two women standing to the side of the door. They don’t notice me. Why would he come here? I don’t want him to get attacked. Everything has to be brought out into the open first before he can just waltz into a pub here. Maybe, somehow, he doesn’t realise the strength of feeling around here. Could he not have heard what’s happened?

  I feel sick, my jaw is clenched.

  Inside, the pub is rammed. There’s a football match on the big screen. Groups everywhere, standing, leaning over the backs of seats, kneeling on stools. Everyone is melding into the next person; I can’t see anyone clearly. Glasses clinking, the sound of money clattering. There’s a goal; the whole place erupts and I get jostled around, beer spills down my front.

  When the commotion settles, Chris is there at the
front. Drinking a pint, looking up at the TV. Deep breath. Maybe he needed Dutch courage to come and see me. We just have to get out of here, go somewhere that we can talk.

  My legs are carrying me over there. I stand behind him for what feels like over a minute. People are starting to notice. Then my finger goes out, jabs him gently on the back. I wait for it, I want to really feel and experience that moment that I see him face to face again.

  When he turns round, he’s scowling.

  It isn’t Chris.

  ‘I’m… I’m sorry; I thought you were… someone else.’

  He looks sideways at me and shakes his head, wiping the beer I caused him to spill from the sleeve of his jacket. The people sitting at the table nearby are laughing between themselves.

  Then, I am pushing people out of the way. I feel claustrophobic in here, need to get outside.

  ‘You alright, darling?’ the bouncer asks me, smirking.

  I don’t answer him. I walk away, dazed. I need to keep my wits about me here. I’m spinning off: of course he wouldn’t just go to the pub in town. And he wouldn’t go to the river. He would be at the house, it’s the safest place to be. And the place he’d be most likely to find me.

  The bus waited for ages at the previous stop, trying to get back onto a regular schedule most likely. I couldn’t stand it any longer so I jumped off and tried to speed-walk the rest of the way, although I have a stitch now. How can something so minor be so painful? I stop and lean on a fence, doubling over to try to manage the stabbing pain in my side. The house isn’t in view yet.

  But I hear the low rumble, a car again to my left. Everything tenses. Has someone followed me? Is it the police? I have to get to the house. Get inside. See if Chris is there. This is my last chance.

  I break into a run, my feet stumbling over each other before I am crashing down to the pavement, a hole tearing in my jeans as I scrape along the pavement. A car door slams. My hands instinctively come up to my head to protect it. Someone is coming over.