The Missing

by C. L. Taylor

  Mark showed me the search history:

  How to meet young boys

  Chat sites where young boys meet up

  How to groom young boys

  Social media for meeting kids

  The list went on and on.

  “Could it be someone else?” I asked. “Maybe Jake lent the laptop to someone at work?”

  But we could tell by the dates and times that Jake had been home when the searches were made. The majority of them were when he was off work with stress. When he was in his bedroom, me sitting downstairs with no idea what he was up to.

  “Claire,” Mark hisses as a white van pulls up on the street outside, rap music blaring out of the open window. “He’s back.”

  Jake laughs as he strolls up the driveway toward us.

  “What are you two up to? His and hers workout?”

  “Jake—” Mark begins but I interrupt him.

  “Could we have a word?”

  Jake draws to a halt outside the garage. “In there?”

  “Kira’s in the house,” I say. “And this discussion would be better in private.”

  “So let’s go to the pub then?” He inclines his head toward his van. “Unless . . . has this got something to do with Billy? Is there news?”

  “No,” Mark says. “This is about you. Close the garage door please.”

  Jake does as he’s told then turns back to look at us. His eyes are wide and fearful.

  “Dad borrowed your laptop this morning.” I point to the computer on the floor between us. “He found some images.”

  “Photos,” Mark says. “Of young boys.”

  All the color drains from Jake’s face. The garage door clangs as he stumbles back into it. “It’s not what you think.”

  “What do we think, Jake?”

  “That I’m a pedophile. And I’m not. I’m really not.”

  “Jake.” I fight to keep the emotion out of my voice. “Those messages you showed me on your phone. Were they between you and a young boy? Were you arranging to meet him?”

  “What messages?” Mark gives me a sideways look. I asked Jake not to tell him what happened the night of my car park fugue. And he obviously hasn’t.

  “No.” Jake holds out his hands. “You’ve got it wrong. I was going to meet someone, but not a boy. I was the boy.”

  Mark and I exchange a look.

  “I was pretending to be a boy. Fuck.” Jake slaps himself on the side of the head. “Look, I was angry, okay. You told me about that bastard in jail and what he said he’d done to Billy and I couldn’t . . . I couldn’t deal with it. It was fucking with my head. I couldn’t sleep. I kept . . . I had these horrible thoughts, about the things he’d done to my brother and I felt like it was my fault. If I hadn’t hit Billy then he wouldn’t have run away and the pedophile wouldn’t have got him . . . he wouldn’t have . . .” He twists to one side and pounds his clenched fist into the garage door.

  “That doesn’t make sense,” Mark says. “Jason Davies is in prison and inmates don’t have access to computers. Why would you pretend to be a young boy?”

  “To trap one of them. I knew I couldn’t get to Davies but I still wanted to hurt someone. To get revenge for Billy.”

  “But we don’t know if Jason Davies had anything to do with Billy going missing,” I say. “The police are still investigating and—”

  “They’ve been investigating for nearly seven months and found sod all!” Jake rubs his clenched fist. “I had to do something.”

  “You can’t take the law into your own hands, son!” Mark says but if Jake hears him he blocks him out.

  “I thought if I put a photo of me when I was thirteen or fourteen on Tinder then all the pedos would come running but they didn’t. A few older women sent me messages to say that you have to be eighteen to be on Tinder and then suddenly my account was suspended. Someone must have reported me.

  “So I did some research online. And I know how dodgy it looks”—he glares at Mark—“but what was I supposed to do? I’m not a pedo. I don’t know where they hang out or how they do their twisted shit but I had to read about it, didn’t I? To find out, so I could pretend to be a kid.”

  He wipes a hand over his brow. It’s airless and hot in the garage and Jake isn’t the only one sweating. “I got obsessed with it. I kept dangling bait, waiting to see who’d bite, but they’re really nervy. They won’t agree to meet up with you just because you say you’re fourteen. They need photos first, photos in lots of different poses to show you’re who you say you are.”

  “But those photos. Fucking hell, son.” Mark shakes his head as though he’s trying to clear his brain of the images on Jake’s hard drive.

  “I know, I know. I couldn’t look at them either but I had to do it. I had to reel one in.”

  “But that’s the police’s job, Jake! Not yours!” I look to my husband for support. He rubs his hands over his face and peers at me over his fingertips. He looks as shocked, exasperated and exhausted as I feel.

  “Yeah? Well, the police did a fucking great job with Jason Davies, didn’t they, Mum? They let him get Billy.”

  “We don’t know that!” Mark says. “We don’t know what happened to Billy. No one does.”

  “But what if he did do it, Dad? He said he did. He’s abused other kids. That’s why he’s in jail. I looked him up on the Internet. I read about his court cases. I couldn’t get to Davies but I thought that if I took one out—one pedophile—if I fucked him up badly enough he’d be too scared to try it again. And I’d have saved a kid. I’d have saved someone else’s child, someone else’s brother but then . . .” He rubs a hand over his eyes and takes several deep breaths.

  “What is it, Jake?”

  “You followed me.”

  “What?” Mark looks at me.

  “To the car park?” I say. “I followed you to the car park?”

  “Claire?” Mark says. “What are you talking about? What car park? What happened?”

  “Mum followed me. I went to meet this guy, someone I’d reeled in, in the men’s toilets in a car park in town and Mum turned up.”

  All the hairs on my arms go up. He was there. Jake was there. And he ran off and left me.

  “Oh God, Mum. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.” Jake stalks from one side of the garage to the other, breathing heavily through his nose and staring at the ceiling.

  “Tell us what happened!” Mark barks and Jake stops pacing and looks me in the eye.

  “This guy, Graham, I met him in a chat room for teens. I called myself Jamie and said I was fourteen. We started chatting about football at first but it didn’t take him long to ask me whether I had a girlfriend. I said no, I wasn’t very interested in girls and I was feeling quite depressed because my family didn’t understand me and—”

  “Oh God.” Mark slumps forward, head in his hands again.

  “Carry on, Jake,” I say.

  “Graham said he understood. He said he hadn’t got on with his parents either and he knew what it felt like to be a black sheep and blah, blah, blah. Anyway, he tried to groom me. He asked for photos so I sent him some of some kid I’d found on the Internet. He said I was a good-looking boy and that he really wished he could give me a hug to make me feel better about my life and”—he makes a winding motion with his hand—“to cut a long story short, he asked if he could email me so I set up a fake email account. And that’s when things started getting sexual.”

  “He asked for naked photos?”

  “Yeah. So I had to find some.”

  Mark points at the laptop. “You know you could go to prison for what’s on there, don’t you?”

  “Yeah, but I was using them to catch pedophiles, not to jerk off to.”

  “And you think the police would buy that, do you?”

  “Enough!” I hold up a hand. “Tell us what happened next, Jake.”

  Mark sighs but says nothing. Jake looks relieved.

  “So I sent the photos and he asked for my mobile number. That�
�s when he suggested that we meet. He said he’d bring poppers and vodka. The plan was to meet in the restroom at the car park and then go to the Downs in his car and have a little party, just the two of us. I took the van. I had no idea you were following me. I thought you were in the bathroom when I slipped out. You must have been watching through the window or something.”

  “And then what happened? When you got to the car park.”

  “I went into the men’s toilets, where I was supposed to meet him. And there he was, this scrawny little scrote with gray hair and a potbelly. He had a plastic bag with him. I could see there was a bottle of vodka in it. He pretended he was washing his hands when I went in but then I said, “Graham?” and he looked up. That’s when I went for him.”

  The image of the knife, bloodied and skidding across the tiles, flashes before my eyes. “You stabbed him?”

  “I hit him. The knife was in my back pocket. Just in case he was a psycho.”

  “Jesus Christ,” Mark says under his breath.

  Jake eyes his dad warily and then continues. “I heard someone scream, while I was beating the shit out of Graham, and saw Mum standing by the door with the knife in her hand. It must have fallen out of my back pocket. I was so shocked to see her I just kind of froze. Graham tried to escape. He started shouting that he was going to call the police and he ran right at Mum, knocking her out of the way so he could get out the door. She hit one of the cubicles and dropped the knife. I picked it up and said I was going to get him but Mum wouldn’t let me. She said she was scared the police were going to show up and I’d end up in prison. She told me to get myself home and she’d meet me there so I dropped the knife and ran.”

  “It was you.” I stare at him incredulously. “You were the person Malcolm and Mandy saw running away? The man in the hoodie?”

  “I didn’t want to run. I swear. You were screaming at me that you’d lost one son and you weren’t about to lose another. You seemed normal, Mum. If I’d known you were having one of your blackouts I never would have left you. Never.”

  He is so big, so incredibly broad and strong, but I can see flashes of Jake as a child in his eyes. Jake who would cry the second I raised my voice because he was so desperate not to disappoint me or let me down. I’ve never seen him look so fearful.

  “Why was there blood on the knife,” I ask, “if it just fell out of your pocket?”

  Jake doesn’t meet my gaze. “It was his,” he mumbles. “I gave him a proper going over. Pretty sure I broke his nose and split his lip. His blood was all over my hands.”

  I stare at him in horror. “Do you have any idea how scared I was when I came around? I didn’t know where I was or what had happened. When I saw the knife I thought I’d stabbed someone. And you knew. You knew what had happened but you didn’t say a word when I got home. You pretended you’d been here the whole time. You even put the dishwasher on!”

  “I didn’t know what to do.” He wipes the back of his hand across his eyes. “I was going to say something, I swear. But when I realized you couldn’t remember anything I . . . I thought it would be better to keep quiet. I’m so sorry. I’m so, so sorry.”

  As Jake sobs I look across at Mark. He is shaking with anger.

  “Mark,” I say softly. “Go back to the house for a bit. Let me deal with this.”

  “No.” He shakes his head. “I’m staying. We’re a family. No more secrets, Claire. No more.”

  Chapter 51

  The light bulb above our heads flickers and buzzes as Mark, Jake and I continue to talk. It is dark outside, a sliver of black beneath the garage door where just an hour ago there was daylight.

  “Where’s the knife now?” Mark asks.

  “In a tote bag, underneath the passenger seat in my car.”

  “What are you going to do with it?” Jake asks.

  None of us has moved in over an hour and a half. Mark and I are still sitting side by side on the weights bench. Jake is sitting on the floor. The laptop separates us. “If you want to take it to the police I’ll understand. You’ve got to do what you’ve got to do.”

  Jake looks deflated, as though every last drop of anger has been wrung out of him. Mark looks old. Tired and old. He hasn’t raised his voice once since Jake started crying. It is as though his son’s tears have disarmed him.

  And me? I feel calmer than I have in a long time. Calm and empty. I’ve got answers but they aren’t the ones I was hoping for. I thought they’d lead me to Billy but he’s still as far away as he’s ever been.

  “What do you want to do?” Mark asks and I shake my head.

  “I don’t know. If this Graham person presses charges against Jake then we need to keep the knife, the laptop and the messages on Jake’s phone. He’ll need them to form his defense.”

  “But the knife’s probably got my blood on it too,” Jake says. “My hands were pretty fucked up when I got home.”

  “But I would have noticed if you’d hurt them . . .” I say and then stop. When I got home he was wearing a sweater that covered his hands and then he’d tucked them under his armpits when I went into his room. And then he’d punched the wall. Did he deliberately do that so I wouldn’t question his torn knuckles or was he genuinely upset about Billy?

  “I’m sorry, Mum,” he says again. “I’m so, so sorry.”

  Mark runs a hand over his jaw. His stubble makes a scritch-scritch-scritch sound against his palm. “It’s still a weapon. It could look like intent to kill.

  “The chances are he won’t press charges,” Mark continues. “It’s been, what, a few days since it happened? He knows Jake has copies of the emails and messages. It would be a hell of a risk on his part.”

  What do we do? Tell the police or keep it to ourselves? Mark said no more secrets but at what cost? If DS Forbes finds out what happened Jake could go to jail and all because he couldn’t deal with his own guilt about Billy’s disappearance. Is that fair? The man he punched had hurt children, or was planning to hurt a child. Should my son be the one punished for that?

  There’s a tapping sound on the door and a soft voice drifts into the garage.

  “Hello? Jake? Are you in there? Can I come in?”

  Jake jumps to his feet as a pair of hands appears at the bottom of the door and Kira lifts it above her head.

  “Oh!” She looks in surprise from her boyfriend to Mark and me. “Sorry, I didn’t realize—”

  “It’s okay.” Jake wraps an arm around her shoulders and pulls her in to him. “We were just . . .”

  “Having a chat,” I say. “It’s okay. You two go in. It’s cold out here. We’ll be in in a second.”

  My son looks unsure but I wave him away. “I’ll come and say goodbye before I go back to Gran’s.”

  Jake’s lips part but he doesn’t say anything. Instead he angles Kira out to the driveway and back toward the house.

  “Do you think he’ll tell her?” Mark asks when they’re out of earshot.

  “No, their relationship’s not stable enough to take something like that.”

  “She’s more resilient than you think.”

  “In what way?”

  “She’s had a tough life. Her mum beat her up. Her dad killed himself.”

  “I didn’t know you knew about him.”

  He shrugs. “She told me after my dad’s heart attack. I assumed you knew.”

  He looks so different in the half-light of the garage. His hair looks thinner, his eyes darker and more beady, and there are lines that stretch from his nose to the edges of his mouth. I thought I knew every inch of my husband after twenty years but there’s still so much of him that is a mystery to me.

  “Mark,” I say. “How many more lies are there?”

  He shakes his head. “I don’t understand.”

  “When were you going to tell me the real reason you didn’t get into the police?”

  “Oh God.” He slumps forward. “Who told you?”

  “It doesn’t matter who told me. Is it true? Are you a sex
offender?”

  “No!” His eyes search mine, then he looks away. “Technically, yes. But not like you’re thinking. I didn’t hurt anyone. I didn’t force myself on someone. I was sixteen. I was going out with a girl in the year below. She was fifteen. Her mum was a religious nut job and when she found out she reported me to the police. And yes, I was cautioned. I didn’t disclose it when I applied to the force and they found out. Of course they bloody found out. They terminated my application. I couldn’t tell you that. You would have left me.”

  “What else have you lied about, Mark?”

  “Nothing. I swear.”

  I sit in the gloom beside him, a hundred thoughts running through my head, and force myself to stand up. “I should go and see Jake and say goodbye.”

  “You’re going back to your mum’s then?”

  “Yes. I think that’s for the best, don’t you?”

  “Because of Jake?” he asks softly. “Or because of me?”

  “A bit of both.”

  He doesn’t say a word as I cross the garage but I can feel his eyes boring into my back. The weight of sadness in the air is more than I can bear.

  When I turn back around Mark has his head in his hands.

  “I need to talk to her,” I say. “To Edie Christian. You understand why, don’t you?”

  “Yes.” He nods. “Yes, I do.”

  Chapter 52

  Are you sure this is a good idea?

  Yes, Mark knows. I told him.

  Do you believe him?

  I unwind the car window and reread Liz’s text. Do I believe that nothing happened between my husband and Edie Christian?

  My heart says yes, my head says I need to be sure.

  That’s fair enough. I’m here if you need to talk afterward. You know that, don’t you?

  I do. Thanks, Liz. Xx

  “Mrs. Wilkinson!” Edie Christian raises a hand and waves. Her long blond hair is tied back in a ponytail and she’s wearing a red flowery dress with black leggings and sensible shoes. Her lanyard swings from left to right as she bounces across reception toward me.

  “Miss Christian.” I shake her outstretched hand and force a smile, aware that the receptionist is watching.