A Cry in the Night

by Tom Grieves

  Angus was sick and started to cry. The boys wailed and waved to the unhearing folk on land for help, but they knew it was in vain. Not sure whether they dared leave him there or not, Cameron eventually took the lead, tying a length of fishing line to his naked ankle and slowly dragging the poor little lad back to land.

  Cameron made Angus drive the boat. He held tight to the line, watching Arthur the entire time, scared that the boy would slip off.

  Later he told his friends that he was sure that the boy winked at him. But then he remembered that Arthur had no eyes, and he would fall silent, and no one around him could think of anything else to say.

  TWENTY

  Zoe and Sam stood amongst the chaos. A forensics team were already on site and a white tent had been quickly assembled, covering the boy’s naked body. Locals had swarmed down to the lake, and after some brief, gentle questioning, the Farmborough boys had been released, emerging as local celebrities as they recounted their horror to everyone, over and over. Inevitably, their story lost nothing in the telling.

  The shoreline was crammed as everyone looked for their own slice of tragedy. Sam stood amongst them, almost unnoticed, and listened to their conversations.

  ‘Just rose up, from the deep.’

  ‘How did he get all the way out there, then?’

  ‘Underwater currents, aren’t there? Drag anything down to the bottom.’

  ‘Fish had pecked at him, Jack said.’

  No one mentioned witches, but Sam knew that he wasn’t the only person thinking about them; playing with the little lad on the bottom until they’d had their fun with him. He thought about the other cases – the drowned children – and he felt an involuntary shudder shake itself out of him.

  But there was still no sign of Lily.

  Zoe nudged him and gestured to the path – Sarah and Tim were coming down towards them. She was dressed in a long coat and her eyes stared bleakly and hazily before her, as though she were drugged. Tim held her arm. Sam watched as everyone fell silent.

  ‘What’s she doing here?’ Zoe hissed. They’d visited the Downings earlier, explained that Arthur’s body had been recovered and had arranged a private viewing later in the day when the boy’s corpse could be made a less traumatic sight for the parents. Sarah had barely spoken when hearing the news. Tim’s pained reaction had been more obvious, but Sarah had just closed her eyes and laid her head on the kitchen table.

  Sam walked over to them, greeting them with a raised eyebrow.

  ‘She wants to see him,’ Tim replied tersely, and so Sam led them to the tent. He watched Sarah, saw her red eyes, her fluttering fingers and unsteady step. And then he looked to see the locals all watching her as well, all studying her in exactly the same way that he was.

  Sarah stepped into the small tent and Tim followed. It was cramped inside with the other officials there, and as Sam followed them inside, a photographer’s flash blinded them all. Sam took a step back and came outside. He looked around and saw the wary, cool stares of the public. He went up close to Zoe and looked at her – What do you think?

  ‘If it’s a performance, it’s a very good one,’ she said, her hand covering her mouth so no one could catch her words.

  ‘Yeah, but why is she here?’ Sam asked, his eyes still scanning the crowd.

  ‘She needed to see him. I’d be the same.’

  Sarah’s scream roared out from inside the tent and silenced everyone. It was as though this primal, gut-wrenching howl was a biting wind, such was its effect – the way everyone turned away from it, their heads ducking down into their chests, birdlike, their eyes closing, wincing in its wake. While quieter sobs could then be heard from inside, outside no one moved or spoke.

  When Sarah eventually emerged, she needed Tim to help her walk. He practically carried her back up the path as someone ran over and offered to drive them the remaining distance. Tim thanked them with mournful politeness, but Sarah was engulfed in grief, unaware of anything around her.

  All eyes were on the car as it drove off. The cops walked away, further along the shoreline.

  ‘A bit spooky, eh? Him popping up out of the lake like that,’ said Zoe.

  ‘Not according to forensics. Apparently a couple of warm days is all you need – gets the bacteria going in his stomach and he pumps up like a balloon.’

  ‘Nice.’

  Zoe looked out at the water, towards the spot where he had appeared.

  ‘She sure does know how to make a scene,’ Sam said slowly, as though he was testing out the words. Zoe saw that he was staring at the forensics tent.

  ‘Go on,’ she said.

  ‘Those kids saw her down by the lake when she claimed she found the bike. She started screaming. She made sure they all saw her.’

  ‘She might just have been panicking – like any worried mother would.’

  ‘Yes, but she was seen by them, all the same. Just like today. You think anyone’s going to be accusing her of murder after that?’

  ‘I guess not,’ she said, making sure the lack of conviction was clear in her voice.

  ‘Just run with this for a second,’ Sam said, aware of her doubts. ‘Is there a reason why she made such a scene down there? Is there something she’s trying to distract us from?’

  ‘Or maybe she was trying to distract the teenagers? From something down at the lake at the time?’

  ‘Yes. Good. We should question them again.’

  One of the forensics team, all white in a paper suit, had come out of the tent and was waving to them. They walked back towards him. They knew he’d probably have little to offer – the water would have washed away the killer’s secrets and the temperature of the lake would make an exact time of death almost impossible to determine.

  ‘I should deal with him,’ Sam said. ‘You okay with the kids?’

  ‘Sure.’

  They were closer to the crowd now and their voices dropped.

  ‘Can I say something?’ Zoe asked.

  Sam stopped, and they turned their backs on the crowd so that they were shielded from them.

  ‘What about a motive? You’re acting like it’s her that’s done it.’

  ‘She’s a person of interest, yeah.’

  ‘But there’s no motive, no evidence, no link, nothing. And we still don’t know what’s happened to Lily. It’s not like you, boss.’

  ‘You think we’re barking up the wrong tree?’

  ‘No. Maybe. I don’t know.’ She shrugged, annoyed with herself. ‘I just don’t see why everyone’s looking at Sarah.’ She sighed. ‘I’ll go question the kids.’

  ‘Thanks. I’ll get divers organised – do a proper trawl of the lake.’

  They were too close to the crowd to say more. Zoe strode back towards the car. Sam wondered about her for a moment. She was right, things were drifting towards Sarah without any proper motivation, but he didn’t feel any impulse to push them in another direction. What other direction was there?

  TWENTY-ONE

  Sarah lay on the bed, face down. There was a knock on the door but she didn’t seem to hear it. A little later Tim came in. He stood in the doorway then padded quietly to the edge of the bed and sat there for a while. But she didn’t move and eventually he had to speak.

  ‘That was Bud.’

  No reaction.

  ‘He was in a bit of a state. The police have been round.’

  She turned over and stared at him, her eyes red.

  ‘What did he say?’

  ‘Not a lot. He wants to talk to you.’

  She started to cry again. Tim wanted to go to her, but he’d been pushed away so many times recently, he didn’t dare.

  ‘Oh, my love,’ was all he could say. He cursed his stupid, inadequate words and their failure to cut through to her. Their boy was dead and their little girl still missing. What words could possibly help with that?

  ‘Get him back,’ she said, and there was ferocity in her voice. It surprised him. ‘Get Bud here.’

  Tim had never
been sure about Bud. He’d watched Sarah flirt with him in the garden and then seen her face fall to a stony blankness when she came back inside. He’d thought that these were silly, personal jealousies that he should ignore. But then his neighbour had caught him at the bins and that big cop had pushed his way into his head, and now he wondered all sorts of things.

  ‘I don’t think that’s a good idea,’ he said.

  ‘What would you know?’

  It’s just the grief, he thought, it’s just the grief coming out. This isn’t the real Sarah, not the Sarah you know. This will pass.

  ‘Honey, we need to be strong together now,’ he said. But somewhere deep inside, he wanted to slap her.

  ‘Go get Bud, get him here and make sure no one sees.’

  ‘Why?’

  She didn’t answer.

  ‘What have you done, Sarah?’

  He stared at her. This isn’t you. This isn’t the woman I married.

  ‘The police don’t trust us,’ he said. ‘There’s stuff they won’t tell me and I don’t know why.’

  He waited for the response, the acknowledgement, at the very least an admission that they were still together, still fighting for each other.

  But she said nothing. She was a stranger to him.

  He was about to leave her, about to scream, but suddenly she was there, with her arms around him and her cheek pressed against his. He felt her hand stroke the back of his neck. He hadn’t seen her move from the bed. It was as though she’d just appeared next to him.

  ‘I’m sorry, Tim, I’m so sorry,’ she whispered. Her lips kissed his mouth. It felt as though he was being pulled gently into velvet sheets. He closed his eyes as she hugged him tighter.

  ‘We’ve lost our baby,’ she said. And they cried as one, locked together, forgetting all about anything and everything else.

  He could have stayed like that, wrapped in her web, for ever.

  TWENTY-TWO

  Zoe’s search for the teenage gang was laborious. Eventually she managed to find a spotty boy called Ian Popper who was munching his way through a family-size packet of crisps outside the convenience store. Ian, however, offered nothing of use (‘yeah’, ‘no’, ‘no idea’) and his dull idiocy jabbed at her until she was so angry that she virtually charged back to Bud’s house. He wasn’t there, but it didn’t take her long to track him down. He was working on a long line of post-and-rail fencing at the far end of the village. A small brook gurgled over moss and rocks nearby while he lugged heavy, rough lengths of wood into position. The fencing joined the end of an old stone wall, which felt as though it had existed for centuries; as though some ancient immortal had laid the rocks there at the dawn of time. Bud’s Labrador sat panting in the passenger seat of his Land Rover Defender.

  He saw her and straightened, the wood clasped in his hands like a medieval lance.

  ‘You heard about Arthur?’ she asked.

  ‘Yeah. Awful.’

  ‘Dead. Not missing. Dead. Where do you think Lily is?’

  ‘I don’t know. Why are you talking to me like this?’

  ‘Because I can’t be arsed with your secrets any more.’

  ‘Is Sarah okay?’

  ‘Why do you mention her when I ask you about secrets?’

  He looked at the floor and she went in close and kicked the wood out of his hands. He looked up, startled.

  ‘You’re going to talk to me. I’m not leaving till you do.’

  Bud snorted angrily and Zoe had to hide her unease. If he had a hand in the kids’ disappearance, and in Arthur’s death, then she shouldn’t be here alone with him. But she was angry herself and she wanted someone to shout at.

  ‘You’re a liar,’ she said.

  ‘You can’t talk to me like that!’

  She threatened him with arrest, telling him how she’d drag him to a nearby station and let him fester in a cell. She saw his shoulders hunch and knew that his memories of foster parents were giving her words extra weight. It wasn’t difficult to imagine his fear of institutions. She saw him crumbling.

  ‘Bud. Stop lying to me.’

  ‘I don’t want to get her into trouble.’

  ‘Did she murder her children?’

  ‘Of course not!’

  ‘Then spit it out.’

  ‘I promised I wouldn’t.’

  ‘Matthew Bryden, I’m arresting you on suspicion—’

  ‘No, don’t, please!’

  ‘Tell me. Tell me everything.’

  ‘She just, oh shit.’

  ‘Tell me!’

  ‘She had some drugs in the house. She had drugs in the house and she was scared that the police would search the place and find them. And then they’d think she was worse than she was and do all the things that you lot do.’

  ‘What do we do?’

  ‘You twist things, you screw things up. Just because people don’t fit into the way you want them. I’m not right like that and you’re always after me. Council, cops, always the same.’

  ‘And Sarah?’

  ‘Yeah. She’s different too. It’s why we get on. We’re rejects.’

  He said the word with a bitter sense of pleasure. Again, she wondered if he’d worked this out on his own, or if Sarah had spelled it out for him. But either way, the words made sense.

  ‘She didn’t do anything,’ he said again, his voice stronger now the truth was out.

  ‘Thank you for telling me this. I’m sorry I was so angry. But you mustn’t hide things from us.’

  He just nodded back at this.

  ‘Now. For me,’ Zoe continued. ‘One last time. You went down to the lake …’

  ‘I went down after work to walk Meg,’ he said, gesturing to the Labrador. ‘And I saw Arthur’s bike and I took it up to the house. And Sarah was there. And Mr D. And they ran down with me and we looked everywhere and called the police. And it was then, after we’d searched and searched and got home, that Sarah remembered she had some stuff on her. And she got even more scared. She was in bits ’cos of the kids, see? She was frantic. And so she asked me to take it and get rid of it. Do you see? It’s bad but nothing like … you know.’

  ‘What were the drugs, Bud?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ He saw her disbelief. ‘I don’t! I’m not into any of that. She just said it would get her into trouble and she asked me to dump it.’

  ‘And did you?’

  ‘Yeah. Of course. Burnt it on the bonfire.’

  She winced inwardly; the evidence was gone.

  ‘We already knew she took drugs,’ she said. ‘We found that out almost as soon as we got here. You’ve wasted our time.’

  ‘Sorry,’ he said without much conviction.

  ‘You’ve made us suspicious of her for all the wrong reasons.’

  Bud just sniffed and picked up the wood and began his work again. Zoe wanted to say something else, but his answers made perfect sense, and in so many cases the truth was just dull and depressing. Sometimes the job felt equally messy; digging up the dirt and shining a light on it. But on this one it felt as though too many people were already peering and pointing.

  Sarah was no murderer, and Bud no accomplice. It didn’t matter what everyone said, she needed to look elsewhere. In the field opposite, two sheep had wandered over and stared at her, chewing hard like teenage brats. She headed off without bothering to say goodbye to Bud. She needed to talk to those bloody teenagers.

  TWENTY-THREE

  Sam found Ashley sitting alone in a small brick shack that passed as a bus stop. She was smoking a cigarette, her feet up, headphones on. Sam could hear the pumping bass as he approached her. She saw him and didn’t move, just blinked slowly and looked away. He stood in front of her and waited. Eventually she turned off her music and looked at him.

  ‘Now?’

  ‘No, I want to talk to you.’

  ‘Well I want to fuck.’

  ‘Jesus, Ashley.’

  ‘What? Come on, you like it too.’

  ‘This is about the case
. About the boy.’

  ‘I heard he turned up without his eyes, but his skin was still perfect.’

  ‘I’m sure there are all sorts of stories going around.’

  ‘I know you want to.’

  ‘I want to talk to you about Sarah Downing,’ he said, ignoring the tease. ‘Can you go back through everything you saw on the evening when Arthur and Lily disappeared?’

  ‘Everything? God, I’ve already done it for the last coppers.’

  ‘Ashley, it could be important.’

  ‘Are you saying she did it?’

  ‘No. I’m not saying anything like that at all.’

  She shrugged, bored, then reached out and grabbed at his belt buckle. He took a step back.

  ‘The time. Come on, girl, the time.’

  ‘I don’t know, whatever time I said before. Five? I don’t know.’

  ‘Did any of you go down to the lake earlier?’

  ‘No, we all went down together.’

  He sagged, hoping for more.

  ‘Are you hard?’ she asked. He feigned boredom at the crudeness of the question, but his pulse was racing. ‘There’s a back way into the pub,’ she said. ‘You can go in the front, I’ll come the other way, see you in your room.’

  ‘Are you sure about the time?’

  ‘God,’ she tutted. ‘Like I said. Whatever we said to the cops before. You’re being very boring.’

  He didn’t understand how this brat of a girl could have such a hold on him. The sex was meant to make up for his loneliness and help him keep his mind straight, but now this stroppy young woman had got under his skin and he found himself thinking about her all the time. He didn’t even like her.

  ‘You’re in room four, aren’t you?’ she said. ‘End of the corridor. Shit carpet but the view is nice.’

  He looked at her and knew he couldn’t resist. So he nodded – a nod that was small and embarrassed considering his big frame – and walked away. He knew he’d be with her in less than five minutes. And his heart pumped wildly in his chest.