by Ruth Dugdall
The last dribble of vodka kicked like a mule, warm and strong like all good medicine.
Still, though, where were the boys?
The house felt so empty without them.
92
Now
FACEBOOK: FIND HUMBER BOY B
Noah’s mum: The skate park is going ahead. All the finances have been agreed and today I am visiting the site, to see where the building work begins tomorrow. I’m going to take the Hull Rover’s scarf from above Noah’s bed and tie it to the railings of the bridge and say a prayer for my boy.
Because he’s not here, in my home. It’s so quiet, with Dave out at work. I’m going to the bridge because that’s where Noah is, his spirit. His soul is in the River Humber. And though it hurts and I cry, it’s better than the emptiness of the house without him.
93
Cate
Cate woke in the darkened hotel bedroom hearing activity in the corridor; cleaners or other guests already awake. As her eyes adjusted she could see the standard objects around her, the TV, the dressing table. Her work clothes from yesterday mixed with Olivier’s on the floor. She shifted gently, not wanting to disturb him, feeling unaccustomed muscle tension in her legs from their lovemaking. It felt good, until she remembered Ben was still missing. But now her brain was alert to a new thought. She had experienced this before, the way a problem can unravel and resolve during sleep, how upon waking things seem clearer.
Cate turned on her side, taking a moment to look at Olivier’s toned body, his tussled dark hair, his long eyelashes. She could allow herself a moment of sentimentality, before he was awake, because once he was, everything would change. They had work to do.
She touched his chest, feeling the steady beat of his heart beneath her palm.
“I know where Silent Friend has taken Ben,” she said.
She was worried he would dismiss her, that this time would be just like in the meetings when he would say they needed evidence, not gut feeling. But she misjudged him. This time he agreed with her.
“I want to go with you, Olivier. I know this case better than anyone, I’ve read every witness statement and I know the exact journey the boys took before Noah died. Somewhere on that route, that’s where they will be.”
Cate sifted through the details of what they knew so far. Silent Friend was someone from Ben’s past, someone who knew Jessica Watts. Cate’s belief was that this was a person involved with the case, and as they had now kidnapped Ben it was logical that they would take him back to the scene of the crime. Because this person wasn’t a simple vigilante, this person had some emotional involvement. They would want answers. Their goal may be to kill Ben, the ultimate justice, but they would make him face what he had done first.
Olivier took a quick shower and, still damp, swiftly began to get dressed simultaneously fielding calls on his mobile. “The Humberside police have been alerted, and they will be speaking to Ben’s family too. We can’t rule out him having gone home.”
“He hasn’t gone home,” Cate said. “It’s Cheryl. She’s the anomaly, the person from the past who doesn’t fit. Why was she even here, why did she stay when Adam left?”
“You think she’s Silent Friend?” Olivier turned away but she saw his suppressed smile in the dressing table mirror and Cate remembered his dismissive approach to female criminals.
“You know what, Olivier, if I was placing money on it I’d say she is.”
“But she didn’t bust Ben’s nose. That was a man.”
Cate rose from the bed, clipped on her bra and reached for her shirt. “She’s involved. Silent Friend doesn’t have to be one person.”
“Cheryl and Adam?”
“That’s possible,” Cate smoothed the creases of last night’s clothes, sifting through the witness statements in her head, stopping with the one that had affected her most, Cheryl’s dad, who had tried to save Noah.
“It’s her father,” Cate said, suddenly excited. “Silent Friend said he’d let Jess down, but he wouldn’t do it a second time. He tried but failed to rescue Noah! This is his way of making up for that failure. Cheryl was his scout. You need to alert the Hull police. Ben has been kidnapped by Roger Palmer.”
“We can be there in four hours if we don’t hit traffic.”
“We?”
“You’re the best detective I’ve got Cate.”
Cate discovered that she knew it would be this way. Almost as soon as she took the case, she knew she’d end up visiting Hull.
Ben had always seemed like a boy who needed saving and now, whether she was capable or not, she would have the chance.
They stopped for petrol once they hit the A14, bought coffee and a sandwich each, and were just getting back in the car when Olivier’s phone rang.
“DCI Massard, speaking… I see, did you check with the neighbours? Okay. Thanks.”
He clipped the phone into the hands-free holder and put it on speaker, then re-started the car.
“No sign of Roger Palmer?”
“Neighbours last saw him two weeks ago. His house has free papers and flyers sticking from the letter box.”
“It’s him.”
“Sounds like it. Tell me Cate, have you ever thought about a career in the police force?”
Cate bit into her sandwich, swallowed a swig of bitter coffee and winced. “Absolutely never.”
94
Ben
Through the fabric of the balaclava I can see light, the sky, though it is spitting rain. A dark silhouette as the monster leans over me, not a monster, a man. Around me in the car boot is my own puke, my own piss and the stench of my bowels. I want it over. I want him to kill me now, the only thing I fear is prolonged suffering.
He grabs me by the upper arm, yanks me up, but I’m weak and shaky and it’s awkward. He lifts the balaclava, so I can finally see and breathe, but this is when I’m most terrified because now I can see his face. And if he is letting me see his face he must plan on killing me, so I try not to look. He doesn’t care, he just wants me out of the car, so in a final heft I land in a heap on gravel and dirt. I see shoes: his, sturdy brown shoes, the kind men wear for fishing, and Cheryl’s green pumps. I lift myself to a dog position, head down and heave, but my stomach is empty and nothing comes out. Then I look up and face my assailant.
Roger Palmer is looking down at me.
“God, what a mess!” Cheryl is talking about the car boot, or me. Both would be true.
I lift my head and it’s there, the shame of my nightmares, my stomach twists despite the hollowness, my head swims and I know why I’m here and what it is Roger Palmer is going to do. But I can’t walk, I won’t make it. He may as well just do it here, on the river bank. I can’t climb to my destiny, it has to come to me.
I’m hauled up by my shoulder and I stumble until a hand steadies me, then I stand, leaning on the car. He has a large black umbrella that he opens against the wind and the rain, the fabric flaps like an enormous wing, hiding us from view.
“Are you sure it’s him?”
A woman’s voice calls from the driving seat of a parked car. Before anyone answers the car door opens. I turn my head to see who it is but my eyes are watery and unfocused, she is just a shape walking towards me, a blur. Hanging from her hand is a scarf, red and white, Hull City Rovers. I know who she is then, and she says my name, my old name. Just when I thought everything was as bad as it could get, I discover a new level of pain.
She comes closer, standing just beyond the protection of the umbrella, but clearly not caring about the rain dripping in her eyes. Noah’s mum, Jessica. It’s her. But she looks older, more than the eight years that have passed. Her eyes are world-weary, her mouth is downturned. I did this to her. I made her skin sag and wrinkle, I made her look that sad. Both of her hands work around the Hull Rovers red scarf as if for comfort and I think of Noah, because he was their biggest fan. Whatever she does to me, it will be in his name.
She calls me by my old name again and it is worse than a punch,
worse than a knife. She doesn’t sound angry. She sounds so very sad, just saying that one word. And it is worse than if she was shouting or punching me, because I know, I can see, that what she wants is the one thing I can’t give her. She wants her son back.
Roger Palmer holds the umbrella with one hand, but the other has a firm grasp of my forearm. Noah’s mother breathes heavily following behind as we climb the gravel bank towards the bridge. Ahead is Cheryl, leading us, taking the rough path easily, her slim but strong legs carrying her upwards. She doesn’t care about the rain, she never did. But what she does care about is still a mystery to me. How is it that I held her just twenty-four hours ago? She kissed me, made love to me.
I see now what a good actress she is, that it meant nothing to her. I’d like to see her face, to know for sure how she feels, but she can’t be happy at this moment. She also has secrets.
The bridge is busy, as it always was. Cars speed along the road sending torrents of water splashing down onto the walkway. Roger may now look to them like he’s frogmarching me, he’s simply at my side, but close enough so if I try anything he’ll soon grab me. The car drivers won’t care anyway, I know that from personal experience. No-one is coming to save me.
I have no desire to escape. The inevitability of my story ending here is so clear to me. I keep walking, my gaze fixed only on Cheryl, listening to the red lorry, yellow lorry zoom by. My only wish is that Adam was here. I’d have liked to say goodbye to him. It would be better, the three of us should be together when justice is meted out, real justice, not the phoney kind in court. The woman who is judging me today loved Noah, so I won’t fight my sentence.
We walk farther along the pathway that goes across the bridge to Lincolnshire, with the road above it and the water down below. It’s been eight years since I was last here and everything is the same. Cheryl must feel it too, she grips the railing as she walks, as if for support. Then she says, “This is it.”
The exact spot where Noah climbed over the railing. The place from which he dropped to the water below, never to come up again.
Cheryl and me, Roger and Jessica, we huddle under the umbrella. To the passing drivers we may look like a family on an outing. But what a family we are, united by death and vengeance, yet I feel closer to these three now, as close as I felt to Adam the day Noah died. Why does no-one talk about this, the way a death can unite people? Why is it such a dirty secret?
I know, from the court case, that CCTV cameras will have filmed us as we arrived, and in my head I imagine the footage. It will be played on the news, maybe even tonight. Humber Boy B murdered by his victim’s mother. No-one will blame her.
95
The Day Of
Nikki was getting a stitch when she arrived at the bridge, but her personal trainer had said to work through it, so she cycled hard, blocking out the pain in her side as she tuned in to the beat of ‘Eye of the Tiger’, promising herself that when she got to the other side she could stop for water. She was training for the London to Paris bike ride, already had her sponsorship page open. Last night her boss had pledged a hundred pounds and she didn’t even think he liked her, but people always admired effort. She was raising money for disadvantaged kids, planned on hitting five grand, with the added bonus of getting fit.
She hated it when people got in the way of her bike, and up ahead a group of kids were taking over the pavement. She found the best thing was to put her head down, adopt a racing pose and power through.
Why weren’t they in school, anyway?
The music and the speed transported her, fast pumping feet on pedals, slowing only as much as they needed to for the kids.
Whatever they were up to, it was no concern of hers.
She had a sponsored race to train for.
It was only the following day, when she saw the papers, that she realised she was the last person who could have stopped the murder of Noah Watts. She raised even more money for the charity, selling her story of this fateful bike ride to The Sun. Life can be funny like that.
96
Now
FACEBOOK: FIND HUMBER BOY B
Silent Friend: Dear Jess, I am so sorry for your loss. I think about that moment each and every day. That moment when you lost your son to the River Humber. You said you wanted to know why it happened and I want to give you that chance. Meet me in twenty minutes.
Noah’s mum: I don’t even know who you are.
Silent Friend: I was your future, my dad and I both were. We would have all been together now, one happy family, if things had happened as planned. We’ll be waiting for you, you know where.
97
Cate
The sign announced they were approaching Hull but she knew it anyway, the seagulls were swooping frantically overhead and she could see the Humber Bridge in the distance, curving upwards as if to the rain-torn heavens, the fall on the far side hidden from view. Olivier let a low whistle escape from his teeth, “So much water,” he said. “It’s always strange to me, after living in a land-locked country.”
“How far is Luxembourg from the sea?”
“Oh, four or five hours to the coast, Belgium or France. But we have rivers and lakes. And there is no wind there, it is better than the sea.”
Cate cracked her window and breathed in the salty drizzle, letting raindrops hit her cheeks. No, it could not be better than this. She loved the coast and for a moment forgot why they were here, and simply enjoyed having Olivier next to her, talking to him. In the four hour trip she had enjoyed listening to his stories from home, the pictures he painted of Luxembourg and his apartment there, the visits to his parents in their art nouveau home in Nancy. It sounded quaint, like a fairy tale, so different from the stories of her own childhood, the imploding family drama that was about to take place with Liz and the imminent trial of her father.
“What is it, Cate?”
Without noticing it her thoughts had surfaced, she was sighing, she was gazing out of the window blindly. Olivier placed a hand on her thigh.
“Cate?”
“I was just thinking how much I wish I could escape. I wish I could fly away sometimes.”
Olivier squeezed her leg, and said, “But you can, Cate. You are free to do as you wish.”
They drove over the bridge, a huge arc of motorway in the sky, but as they began to descend the curve, Cate cried, “That’s them, look! Four of them, by the barrier down on the footpath, with the umbrella.”
“I can’t stop here, not without alerting them.”
Olivier drove off the bridge then swung round and down into the viewing area. Part of it was cordoned off with steel barriers and a sign that announced a skate park would soon be built there.
Olivier reached for his radio and began to ring in the sighting.
“Wait,” Cate said, and he paused. “If you ask for backup we’ll have a road block situation, you won’t give Roger any options if he feels boxed into a corner. Ben is sure to be thrown over the side. Can’t I try first, to talk to him? Without the drama?”
Olivier looked up to the bridge.
“A police siren will just escalate things,” Cate said, based on instinct and not experience. Nothing in her career or life had prepared her for this. “Please, Olivier. Let me try.”
“I can get a trained negotiator here, Cate. That would be better.”
“Olivier, please. I know I’m not trained, not in that way, but I know this case. I know Roger Palmer’s witness statement as well as if he’d described to me first-hand what he felt that day. And I know Ben. That must give me an advantage?”
Olivier checked his watch. “I’ll wait here. If you haven’t talked them off the bridge in twenty minutes I’m calling for back up from the local team. Go.”
Cate checked her watch. It was a quarter to twelve.
Her twenty minutes started now.
98
Ben
I look to where Cate is half-running along the puddled walkway, towards us. But she is too late, eight years too
late.
I want to tell her to turn around because this is where I should be. All roads, all choices, were always going to lead back to the Humber.
99
The Day Of
Noah had acted without thought beyond the desperate need to be seen or to feel, and that was why he was over the other side of the metal barrier, stood on the narrow ledge, with his arms wrapped around the railings, the steel painfully pressed to his spine as if supporting his whole body. He felt the closeness of the drop below, he felt alive. More alive than ever before.
It was enough. He was shaking now, at his own daring. He was ready to climb back to safety.
“That girl Cheryl,” said Adam to Ben. “She’s fucking crazy. I mean, I know she must be mental or summat. But she’s beautiful, too. And she seems to like me. She must, mustn’t she?”
As he spoke he was watching Noah holding on to the railing, and Ben wondered what she had said to make Adam act so weird.
Ben looked from his brother to Noah.
“Come on, Noah. Come back over now. It’s not funny anymore.”
Ben didn’t recognise his friend right now. Noah was facing out, staring at the water, and it made Ben nervous. Near him Adam was hopping from foot to foot like a boxer about to enter the ring. Ben felt uneasy.
“Let’s make tracks, lads. Come on. I’m nithered.”
Neither Noah nor Adam moved.
“Come on,” Ben turned to Adam, but his brother’s face was Stuart’s, the fixed determination that he so feared his step-father for. “What’s up?”
“It’s her,” said Adam, speaking in a voice that came from low in his gut. “She touched me, she kissed me. But I hurt her, made her bleed. She said… she said… ”