The Missing

by C. L. Taylor

  “Claire. Mark. There’s been a development in Billy’s case and I’m afraid it’s not good news.”

  The image of Billy, safe in my arms, becomes gray and distorted as the white noise in my head closes around him and he vanishes. A voice in my head screams through the white noise. Stop! Stop that man from speaking. I don’t want to hear what he’s about to say.

  “Does the name Jason Davies mean anything to either of you?”

  Jason Davies? I close my eyes and search my memory for someone, anyone, I may have met with that name but all I can see are the faces of my friends and family, whirling around in the darkness.

  “No,” Mark says. He nudges me. “Claire?”

  I feel paralyzed but somehow I manage to open my eyes and shake my head.

  “Should it mean something to us?” Mark asks.

  “I’ve got a photo.” DS Forbes reaches down by his feet and retrieves a black attaché case. Did he have it in his hand when he walked in? I can’t remember. I can’t remember anything apart from the somber expression on his face when he appeared in the doorway.

  “Do you know this man?” He holds out an A4 sheet of paper.

  The photograph quivers as Mark takes it from DS Forbes and then returns with it to the sofa, holding it tentatively by the edges as though it’s a bomb, primed to go off. He rests it on his thighs. A man in his mid-to late forties gazes up at us. He has a long face with deep hollows under his cheekbones, heavily lidded eyes and wide, thin lips. His graying hair is thinning at the front and neatly cropped. His face is unremarkable. He looks like someone who might live next door, or work behind the counter at the garden center, or play guitar in the pub on a Friday night. But it’s his eyes I focus in on. They are blank, expressionless: cold gray pools with pinprick pupils. I want to look away before his face imprints in my mind but I can’t stop staring.

  “No.” Mark snatches up the photograph and hands it back to DS Forbes. I inhale, snatching air into my lungs. How long have I been holding my breath?

  “Claire?” DS Forbes looks at me. “Do you know him?”

  “I’ve never seen him before. Who is he?”

  He rubs a hand across his jawline, dark with stubble, and Mark reaches for my hand. I press my face into his shoulder and squeeze my eyes shut. Oh please, God. Please don’t let him say—

  “He has confessed to killing Billy. And while we don’t yet have any evidence that he was responsible we have begun an investigation—”

  A gasp catches in my throat followed by a wail of anguish that begins in my guts and works its way up through my body and out of my mouth.

  No.

  No.

  No.

  NO.

  A roar fills the room—primal and terrifying. I clutch Mark instinctively but the sound is coming from him.

  “Claire. Mark.” I feel a hand on my shoulder and DS Forbes’s voice in my ear. Mark falls silent but I feel myself tense. I want the policeman out. I want him out of our house so I can drop to the floor and smack my head against the floor until I pass out.

  “Mark.” The hand remains on my shoulder but the voice fades, ever so slightly. “Mark, listen to me. At the moment it’s just a confession. Jason Davies is in prison. He confessed to his cellmate that he was involved in Billy’s disappearance and the cellmate was overheard discussing it with another inmate and—”

  “So he might be lying?”

  “That’s a possibility, Mark. But we have to take confessions of this nature very seriously.”

  “Has he done it before?” I can hear the fear and anger in my husband’s voice. “Is that why he’s in prison? Has he hurt kids before?”

  “I can’t share that information with you, Mark, I’m sorry.”

  “But you can tell me he confessed to killing our child!”

  “Mark, I know this is difficult—”

  “Difficult? You just told me someone has confessed to killing my son, our son, and you think it’s difficult. I—”

  “There’s no easy way of doing this, Mark. I had to tell you about this development. We needed to know if you or Billy knew this man.”

  I peel my face from Mark’s shoulder. “What are you suggesting?”

  “It’s a line of inquiry, Claire,” he says softly, “and we need to follow it up.”

  “Is he a pedophile, this Jason Davies?”

  “Billy wasn’t the only child he has confessed to abducting and killing. He mentioned some other names too.”

  “Oh my God.” I press my hands to my face. My cheeks are wet beneath my fingertips.

  Mark says nothing. He is staring at DS Forbes, his lips parted, his eyes flooded with fear.

  DS Forbes rocks back onto his heels and looks from Mark to me. “It’s very important that you keep this development to yourselves and I’d urge you not to reveal it to anyone beyond your immediate family, particularly not the media, as it could hinder our investigation. You must not attempt to seek retribution or carry out your own inquiries as it could prejudice any future case we might file against this man. Do you understand?”

  “Yes.” Mark’s voice is little more than a whisper.

  “Claire?” DS Forbes looks at me. “Do you understand?”

  “Yes.”

  “We’ll keep you informed about any developments and you should bear in mind that it may take some time. A few weeks at least.” He looks at Mark again. “Have you got any questions? Bearing in mind what I said earlier about information I can’t divulge.”

  Mark shakes his head. He looks numb.

  “Claire?”

  “No.”

  “Okay.” He eases himself up from the chair, groaning as he straightens his legs. “I’ll give you both some space now. I’m sorry I wasn’t able to bring you more positive news. Don’t get up,” he adds, even though both Mark and I are still rooted to the sofa. “I’ll let myself out.”

  He crosses the living room in six large strides and disappears into the hallway. I grit my teeth and dig my nails into the palms of my hands but there’s no holding back the tidal wave of grief building inside me and I howl with pain.

  Chapter 29

  Jake and Kira stumble through the back door at 11:12 p.m., giggling and shushing each other. There’s a low thump, then a squeak of wood on tiles as though one of them has knocked against the kitchen table.

  “Shit,” Jake shouts. “I dropped my kebab.”

  “It’ll probably taste nicer.”

  Their voices are dialed up to eleven and they bounce off the walls, joyful and drunken, as Mark and I sit side by side in the half-lit living room, holding hands. They must have met up in the pub after Jake finished work. My palm is tacky with sweat and my fingers are aching but there’s no way I can let go of Mark’s hand. A few hours ago I asked him to turn off the overhead light and put on a lamp instead. I feel like an exposed nerve. The noises in the kitchen are making my ears hurt. My throat is dry and my tongue feels too large for my mouth. I can’t remember the last time I had something to drink.

  “God, that thing stinks,” Kira says, her voice growing closer. “The bedroom’s going to smell like an abattoir.”

  “Yeah, yeah. You love a bit of meat.”

  “Jake!”

  He laughs.

  “Okay, fine,” he says. “I’ll eat it in the living room then. We can watch—”

  He steps into the living room. Then stops.

  “Ooph.” Kira charges into him. Her laughter catches in her throat as she peers around his shoulder. Her eyes catch mine.

  “What is it?” Jake says. “Mum, what’s happened?”

  “Sit down, kids.”

  Jake doesn’t move a muscle. A piece of wilted lettuce tumbles out of the box he’s holding loosely in his right hand. It lands on the carpet.

  “Mum?” Jake says again. “What’s happened?” He’s still in his work gear, his jeans frayed at the bottom, his sneakers dusty around the edges. His jaw is dotted with stubble, his fair hair swept back from his eyes. Behind him K
ira’s bottom lip is stained red with drink or the remains of her lipstick.

  “Sit down,” Mark says again but there’s no power left in his voice and no one moves. “Jake. Kira. DS Forbes came around earlier this evening. He had some news about Billy.”

  Jake sways on the spot and a thick slab of kebab meat tumbles to the floor. For a second I think he’s going to faint but then he regains his composure.

  “Some nonce . . .” Mark says. “Some piece of scum in jail told his cellmate that he abducted and killed Billy. He’s confessed to killing other kids too.”

  Kira is the first to react. She gasps and runs from the room, her bag bouncing against her shoulder as she sprints up the stairs.

  Jake makes no move to go after her. Shock is etched into every line on his face.

  “Mum?”

  I want to tell him that it’s not true, that it’s the sickest of sick jokes. That Billy is in his room, in the hospital, at the police station. I want to tell him anything but the truth.

  “Mum?” The word is loaded with fear.

  “It’s true, sweetheart.”

  “The police are investigating,” Mark says. “They said it might be a few weeks until we hear any more. We’re not to share the news with anyone outside the family and you mustn’t breathe a word on Facebook.”

  The clock tick-ticks in the corner of the room like a clockwork mechanism being wound inside my son. I brace myself, waiting for an explosion of rage and fury to burst from him.

  None comes.

  He bends at the knees and I feel sure that he’s going to collapse but then he plucks the slice of meat and the shred of lettuce from the carpet and tucks them back into the polystyrene container. He closes it, his large hands fumbling the squeaky plastic lip back into the box, then he turns and walks up the stairs, taking them one at a time.

  Chapter 30

  Unlike the counselor the police arranged for me to see after Billy disappeared, Sonia works from home. We’re sitting in the back room of her terraced house in Bedminster. Not in an office block in town. It is a bright and airy room, decorated in shades of brown and beige with little touches of orange—the cushions on the sofa, the lampshade of the standard lamp in the corner of the room and a single white hydrangea in a vase above the black iron fireplace. On first glance it looks like a living room but it’s too carefully arranged. There are no children’s toys picking up dust under the sofa, no books propped open on the arm of the chair and no abandoned Diet Coke can on the table in the middle of the room. It’s homely but there are no traces of Sonia’s personality. I imagine that’s deliberate.

  Mark didn’t go to work yesterday. Neither did Jake. I could hear him and Kira talking in low voices behind their closed bedroom door when I went to the bathroom a little after 7 a.m.

  Mark and I stayed up in the living room for hours on Friday night. We both cried, taking it in turns to hold and console each other, whispering platitudes like, “We’ve been through worse,” “We can get through this,” and “There’s been a mix-up. Jason Davies has confused our son with some other family’s child.”

  Neither of us wanted to go to bed but exhaustion gnawed at our bones and we dragged ourselves up the stairs a little after 1 a.m. I slept fitfully, waking on the hour, every hour, just as I had when Billy was little. Only it wasn’t his tiny face, turned toward me in his cot, mewing for milk that jolted me awake. He was in my dreams, crying, screaming, reaching for me, begging for me to save him. When I woke up on Saturday morning I went straight from the warmth of my bed to the cold keys of the laptop. I Googled “psychotherapist Bristol qualifications,” as Dr. Evans had suggested and Sonia’s name came up first. Somehow I made it through the rest of the weekend. It’s all a blur now. I rang Sonia yesterday morning, the second the clock in the living room chimed 9 a.m.

  Sonia leans back in her chair and knits her fingers together in her lap. She gives me an appraising look but it’s warm and sympathetic rather than cold and detached. I sobbed on the phone earlier, when I told her why I needed an urgent appointment, so she has some idea what she’s let herself in for.

  She’s a few years older than me, late forties I’d guess, but she has the tight, gaunt face of someone older. Her multicolored kaftan-like dress is diaphanous but her impossibly tiny wrists poke out from the sleeves and her collarbones are so prominent I could pour water into the triangular hollows on either side of her neck and it wouldn’t dribble out. Her vivid red hair is piled on top of her head and secured with two wooden sticks. Chunky beaded earrings swing from her ears.

  “Tell me how you’re feeling, Claire.”

  I have been asked how I am a thousand times since Billy disappeared and I still don’t know the answer. I feel overwhelmed yet empty, frantic yet numb.

  I shake my head. “I don’t know.”

  “Okay. That’s fine. Why don’t you tell me what’s happened instead. Take your time.”

  It’s a quarter past eleven when I finally stop speaking and take a sip of water. I’ve been talking, and Sonia has been listening and nodding, her eyes never once leaving my face, for over half an hour.

  “Thank you, Claire,” she says as I place the glass on the coffee table in front of me. “It must have been very difficult for you to relive that experience.”

  I nod mutely.

  “You’ve been through a lot recently, haven’t you?”

  My heart splinters. I don’t want her pity. I want hope. But she can’t give me that. No one can.

  “We’ve got two issues here that we need to deal with,” she continues. “The episodes of amnesia that you’ve been suffering, and the grief and pain you’re going through as a result of Billy’s disappearance. I’d like to tackle them separately, if that’s okay with you. Starting with the amnesia.”

  “Okay.”

  “You’re a private client,” she says, resting her elbows on her knees and leaning toward me, “so I don’t have access to your medical files but, from what you’ve told me about your visits to the doctor, it seems that the episodes of amnesia you’ve suffered are probably psychological in origin, rather than physical.”

  “Dr. Evans thinks they were caused by stress.”

  “Yes,” she nods. “Although I think what you’ve been through is more akin to trauma which has resulted in two episodes of psychogenic amnesia.”

  “Psychogenic? Does that mean I was drugged?”

  “No. It means the condition has a psychological origin rather than a physical one. It’s also known as dissociative amnesia.”

  Dissociative amnesia? I repeat the phrase over and over in my head but the words mean nothing to me. I thought I’d feel reassured, to finally receive a diagnosis, but all I feel is panic.

  “Amnesia? But I didn’t hit my head. Oh God, is it”—a thought occurs to me—“is it early onset Alzheimer’s?”

  Sonia shakes her head. “No, it’s got nothing to do with Alzheimer’s. It’s a psychological condition that typically occurs as a result of a traumatic event—war, abuse or a highly stressful situation.”

  “Can I stop it from happening again? Are there drugs I can get?”

  “Not drugs, no. Although hopefully we’ll be able to prevent you from having any more episodes by treating the root cause. The source of your trauma,” she adds.

  “Dissociative amnesia.” I repeat the phrase back at her but it still sounds strange and foreign. “I’ve never heard of it.”

  “That’s because it only affects a tiny proportion of the population. There is one well-known sufferer, though. It’s commonly believed that Agatha Christie developed psychogenic amnesia as a result of her mother’s death and her husband’s infidelity. She traveled to a spa hotel in Harrogate and checked in under a different name. She said she was a bereaved mother from South Africa called Teresa Neele.”

  “What happened to her?”

  “Several of the guests at the spa recognized her so the police brought her husband up to Yorkshire to identify her. She returned home and never spoke o
f it again.”

  “God. How long was she missing for?”

  “Eleven days.”

  Eleven days.

  Sonia reads the fear on my face and holds up a hand. “It’s okay. Don’t be scared. These periods of temporary amnesia, or fugues as they’re often called, can last anything from hours to days to months. Sometimes people build whole new lives for themselves, just like Agatha did. And they have no idea who they used to be. That’s why it’s so disorientating when you come out of a fugue—your sense of identity completely changes.”

  I clutch the ball of damp tissue in my hand. “It was like waking up in a nightmare. I didn’t know if I was awake or asleep. I was terrified.”

  “Of course you were. Typically, someone who suffers from a fugue will feel distressed and confused and will develop feelings of shame, guilt, depression and anger after it ends. You mentioned briefly that you spoke to the receptionist at the B&B after you came around from your first episode. What kind of emotions did you experience then?”

  I don’t have to try very hard to conjure up his ginger mustache, straining shirt and the clipboard he kept just out of reach.

  “It’s okay, Claire.” Sonia stares at my hand, the skin stretched tight over the knuckles. “I know it’s hard, reliving those memories, but there’s nothing you can’t share with me.”

  “I felt angry,” I say. “Violent. I wanted to snatch his clipboard and beat him over the head with it because he was being so slow. I felt like he was doing it deliberately to stop me from finding Billy.” I pause. “See, I knew you’d be shocked.”

  Sonia’s earrings sway from side to side as she shakes her head. “I’m not the slightest bit shocked, Claire. Have you felt violent toward anyone else since?”

  I look her straight in the eye. “Yes.”

  “Have you acted on those feelings?”

  “I kicked the cyclist, the one I opened the door onto. I thought he was going to hurt me.”