To the insultingly practical:
Don’t worry about returning Jack’s coat with what’s happening we understand completely. Thinking of you. Love Juliet xx
“What’s that supposed to mean?” I said. “What the hell’s that supposed to mean?”
Nicky read it. “It’s nothing. It doesn’t matter. They’re trying to be nice.”
“As if I care about a stupid coat.”
“They don’t expect you to. Don’t think the worst. It’s supposed to be a nice message.”
There were emails too, but I tired of reading them. The messages made me feel either sad or angry or resentful and I was feeling all of those things enough already. Needling at me, too, were the messages that weren’t there, from friends who I would have expected to support us. “Have there been voicemails?” I asked Nicky. “Don’t you think people should leave a proper message?”
“There’ve been one or two,” she said. “I wrote them down. People probably don’t want to tie up the phone line.”
I looked over the messages she’d carefully recorded. There were still at least two friends conspicuous by their absence from these lists. Were they being kind by not contacting me? Was that a thoughtful response? Or had they backed off now that I was tainted by misfortune, now that I was the person to whom the worst had happened, the one at the sharp end of the statistical wedge, where nobody else wants to be.
I sat there, the card in my hands, while Nicky trawled the web again, searching deeper and deeper for advice and information, for anything that might help us, as if it were a sort of addiction.
I had an impulse to phone John. I wanted to tell him I was sorry about the press conference, and that I was sorry I had let Ben run ahead in the woods. I increasingly felt a desperate need for him to absolve me of the things I’d done wrong. It felt like the only way I could lessen my pain. But he didn’t answer his mobile, and Katrina answered their landline.
“He’s not here,” she said. “He’s out driving the streets, looking for Ben. He hasn’t been home since the press conference.”
“You’ve seen it?”
“Yes.”
I didn’t want her to say anything about it. “I’ve got to go,” I said quickly.
Laura went home. She had cats to feed. I marveled at how the mundane activities that life demanded still needed to be done, even while the worst was happening.
I even felt resentful toward my body, toward its demands for sleep, for food, for drink, for bodily functions. I thought that life should stop until Ben was found. Clocks should no longer tick, oxygen should no longer be exchanged for carbon dioxide in our lungs, and our hearts should not pump. Only when he was back should normal service resume.
Anything else was an insult to him, to what he might be suffering.
Nicky continued to work, propelled by some kind of manic internal engine, as if an Internet search might yield a vital clue, or trigger a revelation. Once she’d finished looking online, she began to design a flyer, and to come up with plans for distributing it.
I tired of being in her orbit, and I went upstairs, my fingers running along the dado rail. Just above it, visible against the white paint, were Ben’s finger marks. He always ran, never walked, whether he was going up or down the stairs. Ignoring my shouts to slow down, he would have one hand on the banister and one hand on the wall to steady himself, and I would hear rapid footfalls. Usually I only noticed the marks made by his grubby fingers when they exasperated me, but now they seemed unbearably precious. I traced over them with my own fingers as I went up.
The house had been in a total state when we moved in. John, who’d viewed it because he was paying for some of it, advised me not to buy it. Horrible dark colors and tacky plastic cupboards had put off many people, but I could see that underneath the tatty decor and the tack there were some pretty, original features and I’d been excited by their potential. I’d tackled Ben’s bedroom first. Ben and I had spent a brilliant day putting the first coat of paint over the horrible dark maroon color left by the previous owners.
“Go on,” I’d said to Ben, “just slap the paint on.”
“What, anywhere?” he’d asked, hardly believing his luck, a wide smile dimpling his cheeks.
“Anywhere,” I’d said, and to prove my point I’d dipped my brush in the tub of pristine white undercoat and written “BEN” in huge capital letters on the wall. He’d loved the forbidden thrill of painting all over the walls, and he’d quickly got into it. We’d drawn pictures, written silly words, and had much fun until the room was covered in a patchy layer of undercoat.
It had felt good for both of us: we were taking possession of the house. The plan had backfired a bit because we never quite managed to smooth the wall out afterward, and even now that there were two coats of pale blue covering the undercoat it was possible to make out raised areas where some of our pictures and words had been. Neither of us minded that though. In fact we liked it.
Remembering, I eased my body down into the dent in his mattress that had taken on my shape now, obliterating his, and I touched the wall, feeling for those raised areas of paint.
I tried to make myself focus, to think through what had happened in the woods, to recover every detail. I was desperate to discover, somewhere in my mind, something significant, but I remembered nothing new.
Then I thought about John, driving the streets, desperately searching for Ben, and I thought about Katrina, and I regretted every moment that I’d let Ben be with them over the past year, and not with me.
She hadn’t even wanted him in their home at first. That had been clear from what Ben had told me. “She doesn’t let me slide on the floor in the hall,” he’d complained, and I’d been furious, imagining him tiptoeing through their perfect house, unable to relax in case he did something wrong. I recalled Ben’s reluctance to spend weekends with them after the breakup, especially in the beginning, when things still felt raw, and unstable. I came bitterly to my usual conclusion that Katrina didn’t deserve Ben, and I didn’t deserve to have to go through her to get to John.
My thoughts circulated fruitlessly like this until finally sleep conked me out, knocked me into my unconscious, where I dreamed of being surrounded by looming trees and by foliage with sharp edges, and by shadows and dark tunnels where you could get lost forever.
In the small hours I woke up and reached for my phone. I opened the Internet browser and Googled “News Benedict Finch.” When the results came up I only needed one or two clicks before a feeling of dread coursed icily through me.
JIM
Addendum to DI James Clemo’s report for Dr. Francesca Manelli
Transcript recorded by Dr. Francesca Manelli
DI James Clemo and Dr. Francesca Manelli in attendance
Notes to indicate observations on DI Clemo’s state of mind or behavior, where his remarks alone do not convey this, are in italics.
FM: So not a good day on the case for you, your second day?
JC: No. It’s not what I would have wanted, but you pick yourself up, keep on going, try to put things right. By the end of the day we had lots to think about.
FM: I wonder if you feel that the press conference knocked your confidence?
JC: Because of what the mother did?
FM: Yes.
JC: No. It didn’t. I’d make that call again. Nobody could have predicted that she was going to do what she did. If I’m honest, I didn’t think it was fair for me to take the rap for it.
FM: Did you say that to DCI Fraser?
JC: No. I’m proud, I’m not suicidal. She was just venting anyway. That’s what she’s like so I didn’t take it too seriously.
FM: How was the case progressing overall?
JC: We had stuff going on. We all sat down together at about fourteen hundred hours that night. Fraser was still bitching and moaning about the press conference to start off with, but she settled down because we had a few obvious leads so there was a feeling that we might be getting somewhere.
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br /> FM: What were the leads?
JC: We were still looking into the fantasy role-play folks. The majority had alibis, but one of them in particular was being difficult, refusing to answer questions, and that got Fraser’s goat. He didn’t have an alibi and she liked him for the abduction.
FM: How was he being difficult?
JC: He claimed that the only authority he would recognize was the Order of Knights who ruled his fantasy world, which basically meant that he refused to talk to us. Wouldn’t answer any questions. On a point of principle.
FM: Is that allowed?
JC: He can claim what he likes and we couldn’t make him talk to us. Fraser decided to interview him herself. She wanted Woodley and me to go with her the next day, pay him a visit at home and see if we couldn’t shake something out of him.
FM: And the pedophile? The one you were trying to trace?
JC: He was a definite concern. We still didn’t have a location for him, but the DC who was on the case reckoned his mum knew where he was and it was eating her up not telling us. She was going to pay her another visit. We had the psychologist working on possible profiles for abductors and other than that we were drawing up lists of people to interview, checking alibis, and responding to all the calls that had come in after our appeals.
FM: Did you have a large response?
JC: Huge, almost overwhelming. Fraser had pulled together as big a team as she could but it was still going to be hard to follow up everything quickly. As a priority, we needed IDs on the cyclist Rachel Jenner mentioned seeing in the woods and the lone male walker, so we were focusing on those.
FM: What was the atmosphere like among the team?
JC: Totally adrenalized. Everyone wanted to get on with it, find the kid.
FM: Had there been a public reaction to the press conference?
JC: That was an issue. Even that first night there was already a massive online backlash against Rachel Jenner. People were saying, or insinuating, everything under the sun, online news sites included. We were dreading the headlines the next morning.
FM: What kind of things were they saying?
JC: The headings were “Mother’s Angry Outburst,” that kind of thing. Not too bad yet but it was the comments that people were making that were worrying us. On Facebook hundreds of people were discussing the case and they weren’t holding back. They thought she was guilty.
FM: And what did you think?
JC: Couldn’t rule it out. She certainly had the opportunity to do something to Ben, and we hadn’t verified her story yet.
FM: What was your gut instinct?
JC: That she was volatile.
FM: Meaning?
JC: She could have done it.
FM: You weren’t convinced of her innocence after her display of grief at the press conference?
JC: Grief isn’t proof of innocence. If she’d done something to Ben she could still have been feeling distress.
FM: True.
JC: I felt she could have murdered him, or killed him by mistake, and hidden the body and made up the story about the woods. It’s a pretty unlikely scenario but by no means impossible. We asked the forensic psychologist to look at the footage from the conference and give us his thoughts about Rachel Jenner.
FM: So apart from the negative press, were you happy with the response to the press conference? Did any good come of it?
JC: We did get some positive response. Like I said, we had a lot to manage but once we’d weeded out the nutters, we were hoping something would come of it, maybe a sighting, maybe people to add to the list we had to interview.
He’s got me interested. If truth be told, this case fascinated me at the time, as it did many people. I must have let this show, the fact that I’m finding what he’s telling me compelling, because he leans forward, asks me the question that’s really on his mind.
JC: How many sessions do you think it will take until you can sign me off?
I have to put my professional face firmly back in place.
FM: That’s impossible for me to say. All I can say is that you’re making good progress so far.
He sits back again, but he’s agitated. His right knee jiggles up and down.
FM: I’m interested in the work that the forensic psychologist was doing. Can you tell me more about that?
JC: He’d not submitted anything in writing at this point, but Fraser and I had both talked to him.
FM: And what were his thoughts?
JC: They were a mixed bag.
FM: Can you describe them to me?
JC: It’s not nice stuff.
FM: I’m interested. It’s not a million miles away from what I do.
JC: The main distinction that profilers make in child abduction cases is between family and nonfamily abduction.
FM: Is either one more likely?
JC: Statistically, a family abduction, because it’s usually the result of divorce or custody arrangements that have gone bad. You often read about kids who are kidnapped and taken abroad by a parent. Rarely, a family abduction involves a member of close family: an uncle, or a stepfather maybe, who harbors an unhealthy sexual interest in a child, but in those cases the victim is usually a girl.
FM: Presumably those cases are easier to solve.
JC: Absolutely. The nonfamily perpetrator is much more challenging for us. If a child is snatched right out of the family’s lives, without trace, the pool of potential suspects can become vast. Obviously we look at everyone they know, but once you’ve ruled them out, it could be anyone. And time is always against you.
FM: It must leave the parents in a living hell.
JC: You wouldn’t wish it on anyone.
FM: No, you wouldn’t. There’s a term we use for it: “ambiguous grief.” It can be a life sentence. It’s a kind of unresolved grief. You might feel it if you have a child or another family member who is mentally impaired. You might mourn the person you think they could have been if things had turned out differently. That person is physically present but psychologically absent. Conversely, and this is what happens in cases of abduction, or more commonly in divorce, the child or the person is psychologically present but physically absent. And in the case of abduction the parents have the added uncertainty over whether the child is alive or dead.
JC: It’s what we wanted to avoid. We wanted to get that kid back safe and well. We were waiting to get written profiles from the psychologist, but he’d told Fraser he was veering toward a nonfamily abduction, because of the circumstances of the abduction.
FM: Why?
JC: Based on Ben’s age and gender it was likely to be a lone male abductor with a sexual motive, probably acting opportunistically.
FM: And how did he come to this conclusion?
JC: Past cases, the circumstances of Ben’s life and his disappearance. He advised us to look out for someone odd when we were interviewing and looking through statements.
FM: Odd? You surely didn’t need a profiler to tell you to look out for somebody odd?
JC: I don’t mean overtly odd. There are signs to look for. Often they are craving control, in sexual relationships perhaps, or just in their lives.
FM: Which presumably might have been a fit for your fantasy role-play suspect?
JC: That’s right.
Describing his work has given him an energy I haven’t seen before. I change the subject, hoping he’ll carry this momentum into talking about his personal life.
FM: And Emma?
JC: What about her?
FM: What were her thoughts?
JC: To be honest, we hadn’t really had a chance to talk properly. She was getting on with the job though. Fraser was pleased with her.
FM: I’m very surprised you hadn’t talked. I understood that you were living together.
JC: It was hard once the case started. You don’t keep sociable hours. When you get home you’re so tired you just want to sleep. It was easier for us both to sleep at our own places some nights. And Emma could be h
ard to read sometimes, you know?
FM: What do you mean?
JC: I don’t know. You know how people sometimes get very quiet, go into themselves a bit when they’re focused on the job?
FM: Yes.
JC: She’s like that. So when she wanted to keep herself to herself I respected that. And, to be honest, we didn’t really have time for our relationship once the case started because it consumed us both. It’s the nature of it.
FM: Do you think Emma was prepared for that?
JC: Absolutely.
FM: You put a lot of responsibility on her, recommending her for the post.
JC: I’ve already told you, I had faith in her.
FM: Did you talk about that?
JC: I wasn’t going to patronize her. That would have been out of order. And she didn’t need me to.
His foot begins to tap a swift staccato on the floor, signaling that he knows it’s only minutes until the end of our session.
FM: Just one last thing before you go.
He raises an eyebrow inquiringly.
FM: Did you feel that you were able to keep your distance from the case? Personally?
JC: What do you mean?
FM: The age of Benedict Finch, the visit to his school. Occasionally when I read your report I get the feeling that he might have got under your skin a bit.
JC: I was professional.
FM: I’m not suggesting for a moment that you weren’t.
He stares at me.
JC: It’s not wrong to care.
FM: Was this the first case you worked on where a child was involved, or in danger?
JC: Yes.
FM: Was that hard?
JC: It was hard in that we had to find him. It was our responsibility to him. He’d done nothing wrong. He was just a kid. But that didn’t make any difference to anything I did.
FM: Do you think your response to the case could have been affected by the relatively recent death of your father?
JC: What?
FM: Sometimes when we lose a parent it makes us reflect on our childhoods. It’s not an uncommon response to parental bereavement. That might have made you more vulnerable to identifying with Benedict Finch, and what could be happening to him?
What She Knew Page 12