Make Believe

by Cath Staincliffe

  Butchers returned to his desk. He had been speaking to the community policing team who covered the Kendal Avenue area, checking out the neighbours and any known criminals. He was particularly interested to learn that Luke Stafford was already on their radar. Anti-social behaviour, police had been called to the school twice to deal with violent incidents.

  ‘Luke Stafford – bit of a bad ‘un,’ Butchers told Shap. Then he compared his notes and saw something else. ‘And, he goes to All Saints – same school as Phoebe Wray.’ Fluke or something more sinister? Butchers thought about it: Phoebe Wray is half-sister to the missing boy and Luke Stafford lives next door to where the dead child was found. OK, the boss had stressed the importance of keeping the two inquiries separate but a coincidence like that at the very least needed explaining.

  The office phone rang and Shap answered it, listened then said, ‘Kim, Tony Shap here – your fiancé’s better half.’

  Butchers shook his head, raised a warning hand – I’m not here. He felt sick. He’d blanked three calls from Kim already. It was busy and he was up to his eyes. If she was mithering him like this now, then just how much worse would it be once they were hitched?

  ‘Just missed him,’ Shap said smoothly. ‘All systems go for tonight?’ He listened and laughed. ‘Can’t wait.’

  Shap hung up and looked to Butchers waiting for an explanation. He could whistle for it. Butchers shrugged, easier than trying to justify his behaviour. Wasn’t sure what was going on himself, anyway. No time to be bothering about all that now, he needed to do a bit more digging with Luke Stafford.

  Butchers headed for the door then stopped. ‘Maybe we should postpone the party – everyone’s flat out.’

  ‘No way, mate,’ said Shap, ‘after the last few days we need a chance to get totally hammered.’

  Which was not what Butchers wanted to hear.

  The Staffords’ place was still a tip. Didn’t look like anyone had picked up anything since Butchers’ last visit. Ken Stafford simmered with resentment, if Luke Stafford had a temper, lost control and got into bother, Butchers could tell where he’d got that from. While the father sat in an armchair, sitting forward rather than relaxing back, the lad stood leaning against the door jamb. Butchers had invited him to sit down but the kid had replied, ‘Rather stand.’

  Butchers started with the Saturday of the abduction. They had already answered questions about that day, he’d lull them into thinking he was just going over the same old ground then chuck something new into the mix. See what it threw up.

  ‘A week last Saturday you were working?’ Butchers said to Ken Stafford.

  ‘I told you that,’ he said.

  ‘You work nights, so Luke’s here on his own?’

  ‘That’s right,’ Ken Stafford said.

  ‘Then what?’

  ‘We’ve been over this,’ he said.

  ‘I’d like to go over it again,’ Butchers said stolidly.

  Ken Stafford shifted in his seat, ‘Shift finishes at four am,’ he said tightly, ‘I get in at half past. Slept till five-ish that evening.’

  ‘Long sleep.’

  ‘I needed it,’ Ken Stafford retorted. ‘I’d only just got off when the bloody builders roll up.’

  ‘You remember this, Luke?’ said Butchers

  ‘I was asleep but he told me, later. You never shut up about it,’ he complained to his father.

  ‘What time did you get up?’ Butchers asked the lad.

  ‘Dunno,’ he gave a quick shrug.

  ‘Rest of that day. Where were you?’

  ‘Here, probably,’ Luke said.

  ‘You can’t remember?’

  ‘Here.’

  ‘And you didn’t see Luke for the best part of twenty odd hours?’ Butchers said to Ken Stafford.

  ‘That’s right,’ he said.

  ‘You’ve been in a bit of bother,’ Butchers said to Luke, ‘assault, anti-social behaviour. Make you feel big, does it, knocking people about?’

  Luke set his jaw, sullen, didn’t answer.

  Ken Stafford glanced sharply at Butchers.

  ‘You get a buzz out of hurting people?’ Butchers said.

  ‘Pack it in,’ Ken Stafford threatened Butchers, ‘don’t talk to him like that.’

  ‘You know Phoebe Wray well?’ Butchers asked Luke.

  Surprise flashed across the boy’s face and he blushed. ‘We’re mates,’ he stammered, ‘that’s all.’

  ‘Mates,’ Butchers echoed. ‘She said anything to you about her half-brother’s abduction?’

  ‘No,’ Luke said.

  ‘Nothing? Odd that.’

  ‘Said you lot went round there.’

  ‘That all?’ Butchers said.

  ‘Yeah,’ he said. But Butchers had the sense there was more, that Luke was hiding something. He turned to Ken Stafford, ‘Have you any objection to me taking a look round?’

  ‘Yes, I have,’ Ken Stafford said baldly.

  ‘I could get a warrant,’ Butchers said.

  ‘You best do that, then.’

  ‘We normally expect a degree of co-operation in a case involving a child.’

  ‘You get a warrant and we’ll co-operate,’ the man said. ‘And don’t come back without one.’

  Charm personified.

  Donny McEvoy was having a tea break when Shap caught up with him, mug balanced on a pile of breeze block, rolling tobacco on his knee. ‘Mr McEvoy?’

  He looked up eagerly, ‘You from the papers?’ McEvoy’s eyes gleamed, the bloke was practically slavering.

  Shap flashed his warrant card. McEvoy didn’t look quite so keen then.

  ‘My boss,’ Shap said, ‘she’s not very happy. You shooting your mouth off. That could compromise our investigation.’

  ‘I’m only giving my side of the story,’ McEvoy protested.

  ‘Not any more, you’re not.’ Shap lit a fag of his own.

  ‘What about free speech?’ McEvoy bleated.

  ‘It isn’t free if it costs us the case,’ Shap told him. ‘Get it? Now – dates, places, times. I need to go over it all with you again.’

  ‘Fine,’ he said. ‘It’s all in here,’ he tapped at his head. ‘I can see it, that little bundle. It was horrific …’

  ‘Back up a-ways,’ Shap interrupted. He got out his phone to record McEvoy’s answers. ‘Let’s start at the beginning, how long had you been working at Kendal Avenue?’

  Butchers called Lisa who was at Felicity Wray’s to check that the search was still ongoing. It was Phoebe’s bedroom he was most interested in and when he walked into it, he could see it looked promising. The posters on the wall were the stuff of nightmares: people in clown masks looking far from funny, blood and gore, vampires and images of war, a band all dressed in skeleton suits. One slogan read, Death is Freedom.

  He scanned the bookshelves, and then he saw the title: Children Who Kill by Carol Anne Davis. He grabbed it and opened the cover. A name written inside, Luke Stafford.

  ‘Look at this,’ he said to Lisa, ‘Luke Stafford has lent her a book on child murders.’

  Lisa raised her eyebrows. ‘And everyone says kids don’t read anymore,’ she joked.

  Butchers placed the book in a sealed evidence bag. He hadn’t pieced it all together yet but there was something here, he could feel it. Two teenagers going off the rails, egging each other on. Impressionable at that age, risk takers, no sense of consequences. Butchers felt a kick of excitement; he was onto them, he was going to hunt them down and bring them in. Not exactly sure who’d done what yet. But both Luke Stafford and Phoebe Wray looked guilty as sin.

  Chapter 14

  Claire’s mind was on a loop, it’s not Sammy, it’s not Sammy, it’s not Sammy. She found the concept impossible to grasp. The previous forty-eight hours she had been doing her hardest to accept the awful truth; to accept the image of her little boy in a drainage tunnel, his small body lifeless, so terribly damaged they would not let her see him.

  She had been carrying that in he
r heart and now they were telling her that poor child was not her child. They didn’t know who he was but they were absolutely certain he was not Sammy.

  It was a violent wrench, them snatching away the truth, the certainty, cruel finality, almost as violent as Sammy being stolen in the first place and Claire was reeling from it, unable to reconfigure the features of the dead child into those of a stranger. It’s not Sammy.

  The words didn’t sink in. Her body, every fibre from the hair on her skin to the marrow in her bones had been devastated by the shock of Sammy’s death, fighting to absorb it. And now to have it reversed, to have this macabre resurrection was incomprehensible. It was so hard to unthink it, unfeel it.

  Perhaps he was dead anyway. Was this her mother’s instinct recognizing the fundamental truth? That even though this dead child was not her boy, her boy was still a dead child.

  She was sick and dizzy with it all. And angry. Angry that suddenly she was expected to readjust. For a third time.

  First to be bereft, full of fear and shame, mad with desperation that her boy had gone, disappeared. Magic, Mummy, Izzy-whizzy.

  Then to be crushed, sobered, broken by the notification of death.

  And now, a third yank of the rope, fresh torture.

  It hurt when she breathed, her lungs, her ribs were sore.

  How dare they, the police, fate, whoever.

  The logical part of her brain told her this might yet be a good thing. Sammy might be alive if he’s not in that sewer. But her instincts felt heavy, swollen, leaden. Then there were flashes of piercing guilt when she thought that her reprieve meant that somewhere else another mother had lost her son.

  Why hope, she thought, so there can be yet another fall? Another blow to the skull, another attack on her heart.

  Where was he? Was he frightened? He had a way of freezing, shrinking when he was scared. He wouldn’t scream and run, sometimes he didn’t even cry, just stilled, frozen like a wary animal.

  There were people on the television, voices, news headlines, the police detective – DCI Lewis. Clive turned up the sound.

  Claire looked at it stupidly for a second then felt her gorge rise. Sickening. That’s what it was. Sickening and brutal and pitiless and she wanted it to stop. All of it. Forever.

  Chapter 15

  Janine was in her office trying to work. Richard and Millie were just outside, Richard looking over the new press release to accompany the reconstruction of Sammy Wray’s abduction.

  ‘Great,’ Richard said.

  ‘Needs sensitive handling,’ Millie said.

  ‘You’re good at that,’ Richard said with a throaty chuckle.

  Oh, please, Janine prayed, enough. It was hard to concentrate without this going on. She got up to close her door and saw Butchers and Lisa arriving back. ‘Boss,’ Butchers called. Janine went to see what he was so excited about.

  ‘Luke Stafford and Phoebe Wray are mates,’ he said. ‘He’s a history of violent behaviour and he lives next door to the murder scene. She’s got reason to want rid of Sammy Wray.’

  ‘What are you saying?’ Richard asked before Janine had chance.

  ‘It’s a pact,’ Butchers answered, ‘she does Sammy – he does another child.’

  ‘Oh, come on,’ Janine said.

  ‘Or maybe he was going after Sammy, to prove himself to her, like, but he got the wrong child,’ said Butchers.

  ‘They’re kids,’ Janine said incredulously. Murders of children by children were relatively rare. Janine had never worked one in all her years as a detective. When it did happen it sent shock waves through the nation; was held up as evidence of the collapse of society. The names of child murderers lived on for decades in popular imagination: Mary Bell, Jon Venables, Robert Thompson. And as for a pact between a teenage girl and boy, to abduct her half-brother and also to kill another child, it was ridiculous. Butchers was living in some fantasy land.

  ‘You should see her room.’ Butchers wasn’t giving up, ‘Chiller DVDs, stuff about death and pain. Sick stuff. Look,’ he waved a book at her, ‘Children Who Kill.’

  ‘I can read,’ Janine told him.

  ‘In her room, but it belongs to Luke Stafford. And the stuff all over the walls—’

  ‘She’s fourteen,’ Janine slapped him down. ‘Leonard Cohen, purple ink, crap poetry. I know you sprang fully formed Butchers but the rest of us have been there, got the T-shirts.’

  He wasn’t deflected. ‘The Staffords wouldn’t let us look round. They’re acting guilty.’

  Janine looked to the others for reactions. Were they buying this? Richard shook his head.

  But Shap played devil’s advocate. ‘They’re being obstructive. And they are right on the doorstep, plenty of chance to nip out and dump the body.’

  ‘We should interview both Phoebe and Luke,’ Butchers said.

  Janine considered it for a moment, she didn’t agree. ‘I know I’m desperate but I’m not that desperate. I’m not pulling juveniles in on the basis of a freaky DVD collection and the fact that they’re in spitting distance. Can you put Luke at the park, or Phoebe?’ she asked him.

  Lisa’s phone rang and she answered it.

  ‘Not yet, but I can try,’ Butchers glanced at his watch.

  ‘Thought you were otherwise engaged this evening,’ Janine said.

  Butchers shrugged. Didn’t seem particularly buoyant about it.

  ‘Giving her a preview,’ Janine said, ‘life with a cop?’

  Butchers didn’t respond, just got a sick look on his face, embarrassed.

  ‘You need a whole lot more than what you’re giving me to question either of them,’ Janine said.

  ‘Boss,’ Lisa held up her phone, she looked fed up. She sighed before she spoke, ‘None of the witnesses picked Felicity Wray out of the line-up.’

  ‘Shit,’ Janine said succinctly.

  They were getting nowhere fast. Nothing at the house, barring Butchers’ booty, and now no eyewitness testimony. Janine raised her eyes heavenward and sighed, turned to Lisa and caught sight of Louise Hogg watching from her office. Her old boss Hackett used to do that: snoop and hover, it drove Janine mad. She hoped it wasn’t going to become a habit of Hogg’s too.

  ‘Release her,’ Janine told Lisa. She felt a wave of frustration, almost wanted to weep. The low point of a bloody lousy day. It felt like they were lurching from one false lead to another. First thinking the child was Sammy and now hitting a brick wall with their most likely suspect. When would their luck change? Would it change? Was this going to be one of those cases that ran aground, the sort of case that broke careers, broke people?

  She went back to her office and slammed the door, not caring who heard.

  On her way home Janine called to see Claire and Clive Wray. Claire looked empty, her greeting dulled, indifferent. And Clive’s reaction on seeing Janine was almost a snarl. The man hummed with suppressed anger. Janine couldn’t blame him, even though his duplicity had caused the team problems. She simply could not imagine what it must be like to have believed your child dead and then be informed there’d been a cockup and he was still missing.

  ‘As Sue has told you we’ve reinstated the missing persons investigation,’ Janine said. ‘I also wanted to let you know that we have questioned Felicity and released her—’

  ‘You’ve let her go,’ he said quickly.

  ‘We are satisfied that there is no evidence to show she had any involvement.’

  ‘You see,’ Clive turned to Claire, ‘I told you.’

  Claire stared at her husband and gave a short, derisive laugh.

  ‘The reconstruction is timed for one o’clock tomorrow,’ Janine said.

  ‘That’s it?’ Clive Wray demanded, his eyes hot with rage. ‘We go through it all for the cameras, so they can plaster it across the news—’

  Janine cut him off, ‘Yes, that’s exactly what we want.’ They needed to keep the couple on side, to try and redeem the trust in the police that had been compromised by the mistaken assump
tions that Janine and her team had made. The same went for the wider community. If the Wrays made any official complaints or criticised the police to the media the damage would spread.

  Momentarily Janine wondered if she should step down, sacrifice herself to try and contain any backlash. Career suicide. But she was not a quitter. She’d be better trying to make things good instead of giving up. ‘The right sort of publicity brings us vital information,’ she said. ‘There are still people we haven’t managed to talk to. I’m hoping they’ll come forward. But we don’t need you to be there, we don’t want to make this any harder—’

  ‘Oh, we’ll be there,’ Clive Wray vowed, ‘you can count on that.’

  Claire Wray began to speak, not looking at Janine but staring unseeing at the window opposite. ‘When you told us that you’d found him, when we believed he was dead, it was so … raw and dark. I couldn’t breathe,’ her voice shook, ‘but this – hour after hour wondering – this is worse.’

  ‘I am so sorry,’ Janine said. She knew from other cases that the hardest thing for families was often the not knowing, the limbo they were thrust into when people disappeared or when foul play was suspected but no body recovered. Even not knowing how someone had died could haunt those left behind.

  ‘I don’t know what’s happening to him,’ Claire Wray said. ‘I watch the clock move, I count his hours. But I’m not there, I should be there.’ She began to cry, the tears falling down her cheeks, arms folded across her stomach as she rocked forwards and backwards.

  It was Sue who went to comfort her as Clive Wray stood, his fists balled and his face set and Janine forced herself to wait until Claire had stopped weeping to take her leave.

  Chapter 16

  The newspaper headline that greeted Janine when she got home did not help. Dead Boy Not Sammy. Wray Family Agony. She threw it across the room then retrieved it. She had to read what they were saying about her, about the investigation, swallow it all, every acidic line and barbed reference.

  Tom had been playing up, trying to provoke Eleanor into a fight by calling her names, ‘bum face’ and ‘snot features’ among them, snatching more than his share of the apple pie and then refusing to do his homework. Exasperated, Janine had first warned him then banned him from any video games that evening. When he carried on being disruptive she sent him upstairs to cool down for half an hour.