I passed my phone from hand to hand, my fingerprints oily on its screen. Silent, it felt to me a useless object, its very existence mocking both my reliance on it and the isolation that bred that reliance.
I wanted a phone call from the police to let me know that they were searching properties, that they were knocking down doors and smashing windows as they looked for Ben.
I didn’t want process. I didn’t want twenty-four hours of questioning. Them and Lucas Grantham in a room, with the tea, and the biscuits, and then after that no charges brought and all that time Ben could be somewhere with nobody to care for him, nobody to bring him food, or water, or he could be somewhere with somebody else, somebody who made him log off Furry Football late at night, in a hurry.
But my phone remained mute.
Silently, in its depths, I knew that emails would be pinging in: media requests, contact from friends and families we knew, those who were too scared to speak to me, people who were most content monitoring me from afar.
But the phone itself didn’t ring. The police didn’t call me. Nobody did.
And in that silence those two thoughts went around, and around, and I didn’t know what to do with them. I felt as if I was no longer the wild-eyed fighter, the scrapper, who stood up at the press conference and dared Ben’s abductor, who looked down a lens and into every corner, trying to find an assailant to challenge.
Instead, my nerves were scraped so raw that they lent me the perfect purity of feeling of the addict, ecstatic in the midst of a high, so those two questions loomed large and unanswered in my psyche, like a high-pitched note that will not stop, and, when morning came, I acted as if in a trance.
There were no voices in my head telling me not to do it when I called a taxi, advising me that it wouldn’t be a good idea to turn up unannounced at the police station again. There was just an impulse to make my voice heard, to tell them what I knew, and what I feared. I wanted to communicate.
The morning was bitterly cold and every outside surface was shiny with rain that had fallen in the night and was close to freezing. It still fell, in fat, intermittent droplets that chilled my hands as I opened the taxi door. “Kenneth Steele House,’ I said to the driver, “Feeder Road.”
The driver must have just come on shift; he was too preoccupied with trying to clear condensation from his window to talk to me. I watched the moisture disappear from the windshield incrementally as the fans worked: two spreading ovals of clarity, revealing the city in sharp, unflattering lines. It was 7:45 a.m. Darkness was beginning to lift from the city and the Monday morning traffic was already starting to build, so we traveled in fits and starts, dirty spray showering the pavement whenever the driver accelerated. Red lights blocked our progress at every junction, and he braked late and hard as we approached them. The city felt grimy and hopeless.
At Kenneth Steele House the receptionist recognized me instantly, launching herself out from behind her desk and intercepting me with the purpose of a sheepdog, who can see that one of his ratty, stupid sheep is about to go astray.
“Are they expecting you, Ms. Jenner?” she asked, hand on my elbow, guiding me to the sofa in the waiting area, away from the stream of Monday morning arrivals.
“I need to speak to somebody on the investigation,” I said. I tried to hold my head up straight, make my voice as steady as possible. A hank of my hair fell across my face and I brushed it away, noticing only then that it was unbrushed and unwashed.
They didn’t take any chances this time. A scene in reception was obviously not going to be in the cards. It took only ten minutes for me to get an audience with DCI Fraser.
I don’t even remember which particular characterless room we met in, but I do remember DCI Fraser. I hadn’t seen her for a week in the flesh, though I’d watched her updating the press on TV. She looked like she’d aged, but I supposed that I did too. Her skin was grayer than before, the crow’s-feet by her eyes more pronounced. She’d brought a black coffee in with her and she drank it in three gulps.
“Ms. Jenner, I know you’re aware that we currently have somebody in custody,” she said.
“Yes.”
“And this morning I’ve already begun a string of interviews that I hope will bring us closer to being sure that we have the right man in custody and therefore to locating Ben.”
She was spelling it out to me. It was Policework 101.
“OK, so that is my priority this morning, but I wanted to see you personally because I know how difficult it is for you to wait at home for news.”
“Thank you.” I did appreciate it. I could tell that she was being kinder to me than she need have been.
“But I would request that you try to be patient, and do just that. We did get your message last night, and we are acting on it. We’ve done some research this morning, we’ve already talked to one of Ben’s friends, and it seems that the boys who play Furry Football often share identities and passwords.”
“I know it was him,” I said. The knowledge was an itch that wouldn’t go away, and her words, however kind, were failing to act as a salve.
“I realize that the idea is terribly attractive, Ms. Jenner. Believe me, it’s a tantalizing thought that we might be able to communicate with Ben, but you must realize that there’s no way we can confirm that it’s him, and I don’t want you to raise your hopes too much.”
“Did any of his friends admit that it was them?”
“Nobody has so far, but you must remember that children aren’t always truthful. Not because they want to lie, but sometimes they’re scared. And it could have been another friend; we’ve only been able to talk to one boy so far this morning.”
“I’m his mother. I know it was him. He had a new player on his team, a player that he was talking about wanting on Sunday morning. It was a giraffe.”
She ran her index finger up and down a deep line between her eyebrows.
“Could another child have got the new player?”
“It was Ben. He’s alive, DCI Fraser. I know he is.”
“God knows, Ms. Jenner, I hope he is too, and I am taking this seriously. It is very useful information, of course it is, and I will not forget it, I am listening to you. But, it is important that we view it in the context of what else is happening in the investigation at this moment.”
She shifted toward me, her eyes penetrating and sincere.
“Believe me, I shall do everything in my power to return Ben to you safe and sound. I understand that waiting for news must be desperately difficult for you, but we are working around the clock here to make progress, and the bottom line is, every moment we spend with you is time taken away from the focus of the investigation.”
Her words, finally, got through to me, for what worse sin could I commit than to divert their energies from the investigation?
I began to cry again and I wondered if that would ever stop happening, that public leaking of emotions. I didn’t apologize for it anymore, it was just something that happened to me that other people had to get used to, like your stomach rumbling, or a sweat breaking out.
“I didn’t mean to waste your time,” I said.
She took my hand in hers and the warmth of her hand surprised and disarmed me. “You’re absolutely not wasting my time. You’re informing me, and the more information I have, the better. But I can’t just go out there and search every house in Bristol where somebody logs on to Furry Football. It’s impossible. At this stage in the investigation my quickest route to finding Ben is via whoever took him, using all the information I have at my disposal, and this information is logged in my noggin now. I won’t forget it, nor will my team. We’ll have it in mind whenever we interview somebody or whenever we make a decision. Do you understand that?”
I nodded.
“Your information is valuable.”
“OK.”
“I’ll arrange for somebody to drive you home.”
“Ben’s alive,” I said.
“I’ll be in touch,” she said
, “as soon as there’s any news. Wait at home.”
Heading down to the foyer, vision blurred still, unsteady down flights of identical stairs, feet slapping on the linoleum treads, feeling things slipping away. In the foyer downstairs I was surprised to see Ben’s teacher.
A picture of composure in contrast to my wrecked self, Miss May was perched on a sofa in the waiting area, handbag on her knee, hands draped on top of it. She wore very little makeup. Her hair was pulled back neatly and fastened at the nape of her neck. When she saw me, she got up.
“They asked me in for an interview,” she said. “About Lucas.” She whispered the name, eyes wide with disbelief, red-rimmed and bloodshot. I wondered whether that name would be whispered more now, only spoken of in hushed terms, because Lucas Grantham might be a child abductor, a predator, a monster.
“What did they ask you?”
“I’m not allowed to say.”
That didn’t stop me. “Anything? Did you think of anything? Do you think they’re right?”
“I told them absolutely everything I could think of,” she said.
“Do you think he did it?”
There was a heightened quality about her, flushed cheeks and quick movements.
“Honestly, I don’t know. Maybe, definitely maybe. I’m trying to think back over everything, in case there were signs, I’m really trying. There was nothing obvious or I’d have said before, but there are some things, little things that—”
She opened her mouth again as if to say more, and I felt as if she was going to confide something in me, give me a drop of hope, but our conversation was brought to a halt because the officer who had retrieved the book from me and John a few days earlier appeared suddenly beside us, car keys jangling in his hand. “DI Bennett,” he said. “OK if I drive you both home together? Apparently you live reasonably close to each other.”
It was nine a.m. and the rush hour was abating. Bennett drove us through the city center, where the roads were hemmed in by smog-drenched modern buildings throwing endless reflections of tinted glass back at each other, OFFICE TO LET signs, boarded shopfronts, student accommodations with jauntily colored plastic windows, and concrete sixties edifices rotting in the pollution, graffiti-covered and stained. At street level, office workers were arriving for work, trainers on, coffees and briefcases in hand.
I broke the silence in the car. There was something I wanted to say to Miss May. “I’m not sure I’ve ever thanked you properly for all the effort you made with Ben last year, when we were going through our divorce. I really appreciated it. He did too.”
“He did have a hard time.” She gave me a wan smile.
“Well, you helped him a lot.”
“It was the least I could do,” she said. “They’re such little souls. It’s a privilege to be a part of their lives. You must feel so very empty without him.”
Bennett cursed at a cyclist who was climbing laboriously up the steep slope of Park Street, wobbling into our path with the effort. I fixed my gaze on the tall Victorian Gothic tower at the top, dominating the skyline, Bristol University’s most recognizable building. Beside it was Bristol Museum. I thought of Ben’s favorite things there: the ichthyosaur skeleton, a case of glowing blue crystals, a stuffed dodo, and the painting by Odilon Redon.
“I don’t feel empty,” I said to Miss May, “because I know he’s alive. I know he is. But I do feel very afraid.”
My words petered away, the last few dregs of sand falling through an hourglass.
She looked out of the window, and I worried I’d spoken too freely, exposed the depths of my misery without enough filtering. It’s a line I’ve crossed many times since. If you talk too openly about terrible things people shrink from you.
Her handbag was on the seat between us. It sagged open and in the silence my gaze fell on its contents. A set of keys, phone, plastic-wrapped tissues, A4 papers folded in half, charger cable, hairbrush, a leather document wallet, and yet more stuff underneath: the assorted paraphernalia of a life.
When Miss May turned back toward me, her expression was unreadable.
“I’m so sorry,” I said. “It’s just hard.”
“No, it’s fine. I just can’t imagine how awful it must be for you. I mean I can’t sleep at night, and that’s just me. I think all the time about how difficult he must be finding it to settle without his nunny.”
My hand went to my mouth, knuckles pressing on it, trying not to let myself break down again.
“Sorry.” This time the word caught in my throat.
“Please don’t be sorry. I totally understand. I’m the one who should be sorry. I didn’t mean to upset you any more than you are already.”
I took deep breaths that shuddered and ached, got control of myself eventually.
“I’m fine,” I said. “And you’re right. I don’t think he’s ever slept without his nunny before.”
She nodded. The light was murky in the back of the car and her face looked drab and shadowed. Behind her, through the window, prettier streets flashed past now, houses painted in pastels or mellow in Bath stone, attractive even under the flat gray sky.
When I think of it now, that moment has a filmic quality, as if time was stilling.
“Poor little soul,” she said.
The parting and closing of her lips was mesmerizing. An unsettled feeling prickled at the back of my neck.
I glanced at DI Bennett. He was oblivious to us, concentrating on a turn he was waiting to make, indicator light thudding, his lips slightly parted in concentration.
“Are you all right?” said Miss May. “Really?” She was peering at me.
“I . . .” I started to say something, but lost my train of thought. I was trying to deal with the unease I suddenly felt, the sense that something didn’t fit.
“Ms. Jenner?”
Her neck looked long and white as she leaned toward me. I turned away from her and toward the window as I tried to concentrate, to pinpoint the source of my edginess. I replayed our conversation in my head, and the unease crystallized into a thought, a moment of perfect certainty, a bright white light that was terrifying for its clarity.
My throat went dry.
“Is this it?” said DI Bennett.
The road was narrow, with cars parked on either side, and we were blocking it. We’d pulled up outside a four-story Georgian townhouse, fronted by a broad sidewalk constructed from huge slabs of stone, uneven and worn. The house was part of a long, elegant crescent, which had leafy gardens opposite enclosed by wrought-iron railings. The crescent had far-ranging views across the city and the floating harbor, toward the countryside beyond: trees and rooftops in the foreground, then more buildings falling away below, the glint of the river, and beyond, distant fields and hills under rolling gray skies, and on that morning sheets of rain approaching relentlessly, one after another.
And I knew then that I had only seconds to act.
What I did next, I did on sheer impulse.
JIM
I woke up with my head in a vise, mouth dried out, and the urge to vomit, which turned out to be unproductive. I was still in my clothes.
Woodley picked me up at quarter past seven. It was still dark, and freezing cold. Woodley had the heaters in the car turned up full, pumping warm air around. I’d just finished fumbling with the seat belt when he tapped the dashboard with the flat of his hand. “Ready, boss?” he said.
“Are you going to put the address in the GPS then?” I asked. “Or will we guess how to get there?”
He got going. Tucked into the footwell by my feet was a newspaper. I picked it up. The first-page headline had moved on from Ben Finch:
SUPER STORM SANDY
Hurricane heads toward New York
Sixty million Americans could be affected by high winds, rain, and flooding as super storm expected to make landfall on the East Coast on Tuesday.
I flicked through, found him on page four:
HIT A WALL?
Police investigating mi
ssing Benedict Finch still “pursuing multiple lines of inquiry.”
I didn’t bother to read on. It wasn’t good, but at least it wasn’t nothing, and they didn’t have news of the arrest yet. The blog was bad, negative publicity was bad, but no publicity was worse.
I dropped the paper back into the footwell.
It was dark and shiny wet on the road, taillights ahead of us blurring when the wipers swiped intermittently. We left the motorway and were immediately on country roads that twisted and turned so that oncoming headlights loomed out of nowhere, blindingly, and forced us into the side, where our wheels hit deep puddles, sending spray clattering up onto the windows.
As dawn broke, the landscape around us began to emerge: low rounded hills in washes of black ink against a blue-black sky. The sky finally lightened as we made a steep descent into Pewsey Vale, showing us that it lay flat and wide below us, a dense white mist lingering at its lowest points so that it resembled an inland lake. It was a freezing mist and once we were down into the valley it settled firmly around us so that our headlights were muted and reflected back at us in the whiteness.
As we got closer to the cottage, the lanes got narrower, and the mist thicker still until we could see only yards ahead, and the car decelerated until we were crawling. Tall, dense hedges reared up oppressively on either side of us, and Woodley had to drive carefully to avoid the potholed verges.
We pulled onto the shoulder about half a mile from the cottage according to the GPS. We were too early to call on Nicky Forbes. It was only 8:30 and we needed to kill a bit of time. Fraser didn’t want her complaining that we were harassing her.
I got out of the car, and lit a cigarette. I went to stand beside Woodley’s window. He wound it down a touch.
“Did you notice if we passed any houses on the way here?” I asked.
“Closest one I saw was about half a mile down the road.”
“Same here.”
I felt uneasy. The mist was impenetrable, limitless, and disorientating, and inhabited by a deep cold so that my toes were already numb. The cigarette was doing me no favors, so I stubbed it out when it was half smoked, carried the butt back into the car with me, and saw Woodley’s nose wrinkle when I stuffed it into the ashtray. I felt a curl of nausea in my gut and I rubbed my eyes hard and Woodley said, “Are you all right, boss?”
What She Knew Page 30