by Karen King
I saw the quick look the LEF officers exchanged, and my stomach lurched up into my throat.
Dad must have seen it too. He jumped up out of his seat and rounded on them.
“Have other Down’s children gone missing?” he demanded.
The two officers exchanged another glance. The woman answered.
“Not Down’s but a few other…”
“RADS!” Mum cut in, an edge to her voice. “Go on, say it. That’s what they’re known as, isn’t it?”
“A few other children with disabilities have gone missing over the past few months,” the woman officer stammered.
“Have any of them been found?” Mum asked.
The officer shook her head. “Not yet, I’m afraid.”
Chapter Three
The LEF called off the search late Tuesday night. The sergeant came to tell us of their decision just as we got back after another fruitless day searching.
“It’s obvious that Josh isn’t in the area so we’re just wasting manpower and resources looking for him here,” he told us. “We’ll continue our search nationwide, of course, and let you know of any developments immediately. And an officer will check in with you every week to give you an update.”
Mum stared at them, her eyes wide with disbelief. “You’re calling off the search already? I thought that when a child went missing, an officer was assigned to the family for a few weeks not a couple of days.”
“It depends on the circumstances and the resources we have available. I’m afraid that at the moment we don’t have enough officers to spare. But I promise you that we’ll keep in regular contact.”
“I bet you’d find the resources if Josh didn’t have Down’s,” Dad retorted. “No wonder you haven’t found any of the other missing children if this is how you conduct your search.”
“We understand your distress, sir, but there’s nothing else we can do here.”
“Of course there is. There’s plenty you can do. You can put his photo on the adscreens, for a start. Someone’s got to have seen him, someone somewhere knows where our little boy is.” The huge adscreens in the retail centres often flashed up important news alerts.
The sergeant looked at Dad for a moment before replying, as if she was choosing her words carefully. “I’m afraid we won’t be allowed to do that, sir.”
“Why not?” Dad demanded. “I’ve seen news alerts about all sorts of crimes. It’s the quickest way to let everyone know that Josh is missing.”
“It’s because Josh has got Down’s so his face isn’t perfect enough to go on your adscreen, isn’t it?” Mum asked, her voice breaking.
The sergeant looked awkward. “I am so sorry, ma’am. I don’t make the regulations.”
I could hardly believe it. “You’ll still look for Josh, right?” I asked. “You’re just calling off the local search?”
“That’s right, Miss. We’ll still keep your brother’s file open and let you know if we get any leads.” The sergeant nodded briefly at us, then left.
So that was it. We were expected to get on with our lives not knowing where Josh was or what he was doing. All we could do was wait for the LEF to find him.
If they did.
I felt defeated and totally exhausted. None of us had slept or eaten properly since Josh went missing, and it was taking its toll on me.
“Go to bed, Morgan. You look dead on your feet,” Mum said. “There’s nothing more any of us can do tonight.”
I thought I’d sleep maybe an hour or two but I must have zonked out for the entire night. The next thing I knew it was morning and my parents were shouting their heads off downstairs. The loud, angry voices made my stomach twist into anxious knots. What had happened? What were they arguing about? I scrambled out of bed and hurried over to the door, opening it so I could hear their words.
“Why didn’t you watch him? How long did you leave him out in the garden?” Dad yelled.
They were arguing about Josh, and it sounded like they were in the kitchen. I crept down the first flight of stairs.
“I kept checking on him. I can’t stand watching the window all day. I was working in the kitchen so I could keep an eye on him,” Mum’s words tumbled out. “You know I’ve been on a tight deadline.”
“Working! Looking after our son is more important than your precious work.”
“Do you think I don’t know that? It’s okay for you, you’re out all day. You don’t know what it’s like to be stuck at home, caring for Josh and trying to work as well. If you brought more money in, I wouldn’t have to work, would I?” Mum screamed back. “Then I could devote all my time to Josh, spend more time teaching him how to do things, instead of leaving him to his own devices.”
I knew that Mum struggled to work with Josh but we needed her wage. Dad was a solar panel technician, which wasn’t highly paid. How I wished I hadn’t moaned every time Mum had asked me to mind Josh for her, that I’d helped her more instead of rushing out with Summer.
“And you don’t know what it’s like being overlooked for promotion all the time just because the Ministry have put a mark on your file!” Dad yelled.
“So that’s my fault too, I suppose?”
My parents rowed sometimes, I guess everyone’s parents did. Stupid little rows over the chores or Dad coming home too late from an evening out with his friends, or Mum splashing out on something Dad thought was a waste of money. But never like that. As if they hated each other. Every word was like a poisoned dart of hurt speeding toward its target. Any minute they’d be throwing things at each other instead of words. I raced down the final flight of stairs, wanting to stop them before it all got out of hand.
“Well, if you’d realised you were pregnant earlier we might have found out that Josh had Down’s before he was born!”
Dad’s angry words stopped me in my tracks.
“Then what? Have him aborted?” Mum sounded hysterical. “That’s what you would have wanted, isn’t it? You’ve always blamed me for Josh having Down’s, and now you blame me for his disappearance too.”
I couldn’t believe they had said such awful things to each other. Dad loved Josh, I knew he did. He didn’t wish he’d been aborted. Why were they being so cruel to each other when they should be supporting one another? I flung the door open just as Dad thumped the back wall with his clenched fist. I stood rooted to the spot, stunned, gaping at the fist-shaped dent in the wall.
“Stop it!” I yelled, tears streaming down my cheeks. “Stop it, both of you! Isn’t it bad enough that Josh has been kidnapped without you two tearing into each other?”
Dad leaned against the wall, and rested his head on his arm, his breath ragged. I’d never seen him like this, it was as if he was struggling to gain control. Mum looked at me, her face all red and blotchy from crying.
“Morgan,” she whispered. She took a step forward, reaching her hand out to me.
I held back. I didn’t want to take sides. If I did it would be like I was widening the rift. So I just stood there, glaring at Dad, his head still bowed against the wall.
Dad drew in his breath, and let it out again. Then he straightened up and turned slowly towards me. His skin was pallid, as if all the blood had been drained from it. His eyes tired and heavy. “Sorry, love,” he said gruffly. “Things got a bit heated.”
I didn’t know what to say so I didn’t say anything. Neither did Mum. We both stood in silence as Dad walked out of the kitchen. I watched through the open door as he crossed the hall and went upstairs, almost as if I was in a dream. Neither Mum nor I had moved or spoken when he came down a few minutes later carrying his travel bag with clothes spilling out of the open zipper.
“I’m going to look for Josh. I can’t just sit here and do nothing. I’ve got to find him. I’ve a week’s leave due to me so I’m taking that.” He ran a trembling hand through his hair, glanced at Mum then looked quickly away again.” I’m sorry, but I’ve got to do this. I’ll keep in touch.”
Then he walked out of the do
or.
****
The next day was awful. My little brother was still missing, my dad was wandering around goodness knows where and my mum was like a zombie, huddled in her dressing gown clutching Bobo and drinking endless cups of coffee. Her face etched with pain and worry, her bloodshot eyes heavy with grief, she constantly checked her squilb for messages. I guessed that, like me, she couldn’t stop thinking about Josh, wondering where he was, what was happening to him, hoping, praying that no one had hurt him.
Every time I closed my eyes, I saw my little brother, his blue eyes bewildered, crying for us, wondering where we were. It nearly killed me, so goodness knows what it did to Mum and Dad. And the worst thing was because Josh had Down’s, people seemed to shrug it off--the LEF, neighbours, everyone. His disappearance was never mentioned on the E-screen again, or the newssheets. It was as if the Down’s made him less of person. That we shouldn’t care about him as much because he wasn’t a perfect human being. What they didn’t realize was that most of the time we didn’t notice the Down’s. Josh was our flesh and blood and we loved him. The thought of how frightened and confused he must have been made me sick to the stomach. Did he think we’d forgotten about him?
If only I could have called Summer and talked to her but she’d gone back to school. She was dying to tell everyone about our great night at Roxy’s and how could I blame her? Part of me wanted to be with her, to pretend that everything was normal, but I couldn’t. Life would never be normal again. And I couldn’t cope with the pitying faces of my friends, or hearing the inevitable cruel comments from the kids who thought Josh should have been in a RLC anyway. Especially Opal and Tiffany. That pair of stuck-up snobs had made my life miserable ever since Josh had been born
I was mad at Dad for the row and for storming off like he did, but I understood why he had gone away. He needed to do something, to know that he’d tried his best to find Josh. I felt the same. But what could I do? Mum and Dad had already put pictures of Josh and details of his disappearance on the social networking websites. I’d hi-waved. How else could we have spread the word?
Then I remembered the LEF officer had mentioned that some other children had gone missing too. I did a websearch to see if I could find any connection between the disappearances.
I went up to my room, selected the webscreen on my E-centre and keyed in ‘missing children’ in the search bar. A list of links for runaway or missing kids from all over the world appeared on the screen so I defined it to ‘missing children in England, UK’. I had a shock when I saw that over 70,000 kids went missing every year. When I investigated further, I found that most of the kids had returned after a few weeks or so.
Suddenly, an advertising banner flashed across the top of the webpage. Do you know how many disabled children have gone missing in the last year? I clicked on it, and was directed to another website that had been created by a boy called Jamie Harving. His five-year-old sister, Holly, had gone missing a couple of months earlier. According to Jamie, thirty children with disabilities had disappeared from the UK in the last year. None of them had been seen again.
There were pictures of Holly--a pretty little girl with cerebral palsy--and some of the other missing kids on the site, with details of how they disappeared. I read through them and discovered that a lot of the children had been taken from their back gardens, like Josh had. Others had disappeared from retail centres, activity areas, and a couple of them had even been taken from inside their houses. It seemed like the kidnappers watched and waited for a time when the children were left alone, then swooped.
I read the information on the screen in disbelief. Thirty children couldn’t just disappear from the face of the Earth in one year. That was almost three a month. And they were all under ten. There had to be a connection. Someone must be deliberately targeting these children. But why?
I had to tell Mum. I sent the details of the website to the E-centre in the lounge and went downstairs Mum was still sitting in the chair, in her dressing gown, cradling a long-gone-cold cup of coffee in her hands, Bobo beside her, as usual. She’d barely left the little blue teddy out of her sight since Josh had gone.
“Look at this, Mum.” I switched on the E-centre and the webpage flashed up. “I was looking on the Internet for some information on other missing children and I found this. See? This boy’s sister has gone missing and he said thirty other children with disabilities have also disappeared in the past year. It hasn’t even been in the news.”
Mum leaned forward, put the cup on the floor, and silently scrolled down the screen as she read the information. I heard her catch her breath, and knew I’d got her attention.
“It’s as if someone is deliberately targeting children like Josh,” I said. “Why would they do that?”
She shook her head. “It doesn’t make sense.”
“And why hasn’t this been publicized? There’s been no report on any of these disappearances on the E-news, or in the newssheets. Why are they keeping it quiet?”
Mum reached for the phone. “I don’t know, but I’m going to find out.”
I only heard one side of the conversation, of course, but it didn’t sound as if Mum was pleased with their response. When she put the phone down she told me that the officer said they were aware of the website set up by the teenage brother of a missing child, but that the numbers of missing children had been grossly exaggerated. “Oh. And they assured me they were thoroughly investigating all the disappearances.”
“Well they’re taking their time. None of the children have been found yet. Maybe we should contact this Jamie,” I suggested. “He might have some information that could help.”
Mum lowered her head into her hands. “Leave it to the authorities, Morgan. What can a young boy like that do?” She sounded tired. Defeated.
“A lot more than the LEF! At least he’s making everyone aware of what’s going on and trying to find his sister. What have we got to lose by contacting him and finding out what else he knows?”
Mum didn’t answer. I slipped my squilb out of the wristband, selected email and copied the email address on the E-screen into the tiny message box. I wasn’t sure what to write, but finally decided on a quick message, straight to the point.
“Hi, I’m Morgan and my kid brother, Josh, went missing a few days ago. He’s got Down’s. I found your website and saw that your sister and lots of other kids have gone missing too. I don’t get it. It’s like some weirdo’s targeting them ‘cos they’ve got disabilities. The LEF don’t seem to be getting anywhere and I want to find Josh. Have you any info you can share?”
I pressed ‘send’ and selected the box for an instant alert when Jamie replied. If he did know something then we had to act on it fast. Josh’s life could depend on it.
Chapter Four
Jamie replied less than an hour later. He said Holly had disappeared from a recreation area just over ten weeks earlier. Her nurse had left her colouring on her E-pad whilst she popped to get a drink from a nearby vendor. When she returned, the wheelchair was empty. Holly had gone. The nurse had searched frantically, but there was no sign of Holly and no one had seen who’d taken her. Jamie gave me his number and suggested a vid-chat.
I went back up to my bedroom, keyed in the number and waited for his face to flash onto the screen. He was a bit geeky with short black hair that stuck up on the top of his head, light coffee-coloured skin and serious slate-grey eyes that looked right into mine.
Then I realized that he was probably assessing me too. I must have looked a total dog. I’d been so upset and worried about Josh that I hadn’t worn make up for days, and couldn’t remember the last time I checked my reflection in the mirror. For goodness sake, this isn’t the time to be worrying about your looks, I thought. Besides he’s not exactly a hunk, is he?
“Hi Morgan,” Jamie said then got straight to the point. “When did your little brother go missing?”
“Sunday. And the LEF don’t want to know,” I told him. “They’ve given up sea
rching for him.”
“Yeah, they were like that with Holly. Half-heartedly looked around for a few days, and that was it.”
We started talking, tentatively at first, but soon we were pouring out stuff about ourselves as if we’d known each other for years. It turned out that Jamie lived in Spearton, only an hour’s drive away. He told me how his mother had died a couple of years ago, and his Dad had buried himself in his work ever since. Even more so since Holly had been kidnapped. “He hasn’t done anything to try and find her. Just left it to the LEF and they aren’t bothering,” he added, his voice edged with bitterness. “They’re trying to deny that so many disabled children have gone missing.”
“How did you find out about the other missing kids if the LEF are trying to keep it a secret?” I asked.
Jamie explained that he’d been so desperate to find Holly, he’d put some photos of her on a web chat page with a message about her disappearance. “I asked people to contact me if they had any information about Holly, if they’d seen her anywhere,” he leaned forward. “Then I got loads of emails from people who knew of other missing children. And they were all disabled in some way. That made me think something sinister was going on.”
I leaned forward, focusing all my attention on him, as he continued that was what had prompted him to build his website. Then, he’d hacked into other websites to post the banner that linked to his website. “I hack into chat forums too,” he added. “Leave a message and a link to my website. It all helps spread the word.”
“That’s pretty clever,” I said. “Aren’t you scared that the Ministry will find out and shut you down?”
“It’s a chance I’ll have to take. I’ll do anything to find my sister. Anything.”
I saw how determined he was. “And I’ll do anything to find Josh.” I sat back, my head reeling with what he’d told me. “I can’t believe that so many children are missing and that the LEF aren’t doing anything about it.”