by Martyn Ford
‘Well, you buy that?’ Phil said, sitting on the edge of his desk, reading something on his phone. ‘He pass your little test?’
It was inconvenient for Sam to admit that, yes, he had scored high. Francis Clarke, contrary to the evidence, contrary to the vehement certainty riding over the horizon towards them like cavalry at full charge, was telling the truth.
With a single, tired nod, Sam confirmed it.
‘You know what I think?’ Phil said, in that uniquely confrontational tone of his. ‘I think you’ve been searching for an answer all these years, and you simply don’t like the one you’ve found.’
‘Francis is not—’
‘You know what we know. This guy ticks every box.’
Weary, calm and honest, always honest, Sam blinked. ‘I’m not saying he’s a saint. I’m not saying he’s a nice man. I’m just stating a fact. Francis Clarke hasn’t killed either of his children.’
‘Then tell me.’ Phil placed his mobile on his desk, folded his arms and shrugged. ‘Where are they?’
Chapter 3
Across town, comfortably covered by thousands of CCTV cameras, there’s a disused bus stop with a smashed roof and an empty billboard box. Here, a boy, maybe twelve, thirteen years old, drenched and alone, is sitting on the slanted plastic seats. Cars pass, but none of them stop.
After ten minutes, he steps out into the rain, looks to the sky, back down, flicks his hood up on to his head, and begins to walk. A pair of football boots, tied at the laces, dangle, bump and spin from the rear of his rucksack. The lens tracks him almost entirely without a blind spot, right up until Kendell Street, where he unknowingly enjoys almost two minutes out of sight as he travels through the underpass. Rare nowadays. He arrives in the viewfinder of a council CCTV camera erected at the edge of the estate’s play equipment. Now he’s soaked to the skin, the frustration washed away, replaced with bog-standard sadness. At the end of the road, no more than three pixels tall, he pushes open a front-garden gate and steps out of the frame.
Sam pulled up at the house, groaning and weighing options. He had driven slowly along Kendell Street, checking the face of every pedestrian he passed. As he suspected, he was too late.
‘Fuck,’ he whispered to himself, squeezing the steering wheel, pulling at it. Squeaking leather, strong metal. A sigh. He wondered if he should just drive off – but that would look even worse. Calming down and nodding, he decided to face the music.
The rain had stopped now, which seemed somehow unjust – if anyone should get wet, it should be him. He strode over a fresh puddle, black on the tarmac, and clicked the gate open, wiping his damp hand on his jeans as he approached the front step.
Two knocks on the door – the door he himself chose all those years ago. He owned the first key, he planted this flourishing rose bush, he laid the slabs at his feet, he—
A shadow behind the glass. The door swung open and rolled eyes then a turned back greeted him. Marilyn walked away, up the narrow hall – it seemed like apathy, but Sam knew better. This was good old-fashioned anger.
Following her inside, he pushed the door closed and took off his shoes.
‘Is he here?’ Sam asked, arriving in the kitchen. There she was, still with her back to him. The smell of her cooking, just heat, no flavour yet. That smell. Not quite home, but doing the same things to his mind. Like the false tang of aspartame. Empty. Lying on your tongue.
‘Yes, about half an hour ago.’
That too was a lie. The times didn’t tally, but Sam decided not to bite. ‘I’ll go and apologise.’
‘He doesn’t want to see you,’ she said, opening a packet of pasta and checking the hob dial. Normality, look, look at the normality. Look how no one gives a shit about you any more.
Before Sam could call this assumption out, before he could say that Freddie can speak for himself, that he doesn’t need his mother to tell him what to think, a small voice from the doorway repeated the words.
‘She’s right. I don’t want to see you.’
And, with that, tired teenage footsteps in the hall, on the stairs – a door above not quite slammed, but most definitely closed.
Sam sighed and blinked. ‘I got called to the station,’ he explained. ‘You see the news?’
‘Yes, I have,’ she said, still cooking, never looking at him. ‘I wasn’t at all shocked to hear it. If anything, I’m surprised it took them this long to do it again.’
‘Marilyn.’
‘Guess that wraps things up then? Case closed?’
Sam shook his head, but she didn’t see it. ‘Sadly, no.’
Something clinked on the kitchen worktop and, for the first time, she turned to face him. ‘Then maybe we’ll drop this little arrangement? David can pick Freddie up from football next week. You don’t need to worry about it any more.’
‘Marilyn, please.’
‘Look at you,’ she said. ‘You’re still not getting it. You chose your favourite years ago. You know what hurts most? You know what stings? The one who’s actually alive, the boy crying upstairs right now, he understands that he comes second.’
‘They called me in to speak to Francis. Webber and co. think Robin might be—’
‘Ohhh. Sorry, sorry, I spoke too soon,’ Marilyn said, tilting her head – a dramatic of course. ‘Freddie is in third place now, got it.’
Sam blinked. He looked over her shoulder, out the window. Above the still shrubs, the top of the fence, then more leaves and finally a wide strip of sky. A thin, slow covering of clouds passing behind black telegraph wires – maybe ten, fifteen cables, sprawling out from a main mast across the street, every line slack and birdless. Always birdless here.
‘It’s not that simple.’
‘But it is, Sam. You either forgot because you don’t care enough, or you remembered and felt something else was more important. Which one do you think would upset him least?’
He’d become the cliché of a disappointing father – it was just, as she might say, so typical. Would Freddie recall these memories in years to come on the pillow of a girl who says she loves him? Or, more likely, would he shrug and whisper, ‘Not much to tell really . . .’? Is that worse? To fall away into a void so absolute that not even memories can find you?
‘Look,’ Sam sighed. ‘I’m not playing this game. Please can you just tell him I’m sorry and I’ll see him on Friday.’
Marilyn shook her head – it was authentic this time. There was real pity on her face. It wasn’t meant to insult him. This was just how she felt.
‘Oh, Sam,’ she said. ‘What are you going to do when they find out what happened to those Clarke kids? You’ll have nothing left.’
Through the webcam on his desk, we see his entire open-plan apartment. An old TV, a scruffy kitchen and a sofa that’d be better suited outside. This place is sacred, secret and, peering into the rear of the flat, we can see why. The back wall hosts photographs, newspaper clippings, even X-rays and receipts. Photocopied evidence – much of which the man has no business possessing. Another desk filled with folders and files and junk. The hoardings of obsession.
There are just two framed photographs of his son, of young Freddie, taking pride of place on the breakfast bar, behind a pile of unopened mail. One in his football gear, holding up a trophy. The second picture taken when he was younger, maybe three, sitting on the man’s shoulders in a foreign country.
And yet, if we were to count, we would see twenty-six photographs of Ethan Clarke visible from here. How many more he has tucked away in boxes and on hard drives is anyone’s guess.
The man is home now, microwaving some food and searching under his desk for something. Paper spills out as he pulls documents from a container. When the dinner drone stops, with a triumphant beep-beep, he stands and turns. He’s drinking white rum from a tumbler and, having finished eating an indiscernible dish from a flimsy plastic bowl, he drinks two more.
For a while he is out of sight, only to return ten minutes later, wearing just a damp to
wel. He approaches the laptop and leans into it. For the first time, we get a close-up of his face – his hair slicked back, his skull and jawbone visible under worn, stubbled skin. Beneath wet eyelashes, his irises are dark brown, maybe even black. But perhaps it’s the lighting, as the room barely exists behind him, faint blue and white from the glowing screen. He presses a couple of keys, almost looking directly at the camera, and it’s clear that, years ago, many would have considered him handsome. Two tiny squares of light in the centre of his pupils. He blinks. It’s a strange blink, more of a twitch. His arms and chest have that taut sinew which comes from a once-muscular physique left to wither and shrink. He blinks. Standing up straight, exposing his torso. A slight beer belly is beginning to form – visible when he turns side on and checks his phone. Then he walks away. The man’s frame looks most neglected from behind.
Ethan Clarke has cost him many things – a marriage, a career, his relationship with his son. It’d be quite fair to add his body to the bill.
‘Yeah?’ he says, his mobile against his cheek. ‘I’m getting it now . . . I know . . . all of it . . . I’m not . . . No, Phil, listen . . . I know . . . yes . . . yes, that too. I’ll bring it all . . .’ He looks back into his laptop. ‘Probably about five.’
The news was outrageous. Sam had seen some hype in his time, but this was something else. It was a parody of itself – the theme of the radio report was how widespread the coverage had become – a house of mirrors, like the media turning inside out. He listened as he drove and, more than once, reached out to switch stations, or even turn it off. But each attempt saw his hand stop at the dial and then return to the steering wheel.
Ethan Clarke’s disappearance was said, again and again, to be the most-reported missing-child case in history – virtually all others, past and present, were set against this benchmark. The idea that, in almost identical circumstances, the same family had suffered the same domestic calamity nearly a decade on seemed too good to be true. It didn’t even occur to the presenter to dwell on the possibility, and the sheer implicit dread, that the Clarkes were in no way to blame. They even pulled some young statistician on to ponder the odds of a child going missing – unlikely was the answer. He said peanut allergies posed a bigger risk. When asked about the chances of losing two children, he sighed and added, ‘We’re in the realms of absolute . . . well . . . other factors are clearly at play.’
Other factors are clearly at play. Sam repeated those words in his shaking head. Despite being meaningless, this guy’s mathematical sound bite did the rounds for most of the day, before suddenly disappearing later that evening – perhaps a qualified statistician phoned in and ruined the fun.
The Hallowfield Criminal Investigation Department operated out of a building called Parkside Heights, which sat at the end of a long straight road – the third exit off a roundabout with signs that prominently said the route went nowhere. And yet, at peak times, a steady stream of cars came down that stretch of pitted tarmac, until the drivers realised they’d made a mistake, turned around and disappeared off into the world again. Sam used to joke that he did something similar, but took twenty years to escape.
He pulled to a stop in the underground car park, climbed out and popped the boot. It hissed open and he lifted a heavy plastic box. His keys slid on the lid as he shuffled inside and up the narrow stairwell to the main room, where he set it down on an empty desk near the doorway to Phil’s office. He was on his feet and stepping forwards – a radio whispered the news behind him. Jutting a thumb over his shoulder, Phil parroted the statistician’s absurd comments.
‘What the fuck are you even saying?’ Sam asked.
‘I’m saying it’s not likely.’
A slow blink gave him time to calm down. ‘It’s happened. You throw a hundred darts at a wall, draw a circle around one and yell bullseye,’ he said. ‘Don’t get lost, Phil, don’t see what you already believe.’
‘Believe what you see.’
A young voice was approaching. Sam turned. ‘Isabelle, Sam, Sam, Isabelle.’
She was maybe thirty, with slender hands and broad shoulders – feminine, but obviously a fan of the gym. Strong and small. Low body fat. Her hair was straight, neat and all the same colour – a dark, dyed brunette. It was tied back in a loose ponytail.
‘This all of it?’ she asked, dragging the plastic container across the desk. Side on, her nose had a slight bump in the bone – perhaps it had been broken in the past. Thick eyebrows, shaded skin around the lashes, Caucasian parents – but possibly some Mediterranean from a prior generation.
Sam took his keys off the lid, then unclipped it. ‘Everything tangible,’ he said. ‘Things that matter most weigh the least.’
‘Things that matter most weigh the least,’ Phil echoed. ‘You’ll hear a lot of that sort of stuff from this one.’ He patted Sam’s biceps. Sam slowly turned, looked at him, then returned to the box.
‘Can you run me through it?’ Isabelle picked up a folder. On her left wrist she wore a thin, weathered leather bracelet.
‘You?’
Laughing, she creased her chin and frowned – as though she’d have been justified to take offence.
‘I mean,’ Sam added, ‘just you?’
‘Remember how tight things were?’ Phil said. ‘Remember how there’s no money? Well, imagine that but twice as bad.’
‘What else are all these people working on?’ Sam gestured into the main office.
‘You can’t see the twenty officers out there combing the woods,’ he said. ‘Or the thermal cameras flying overhead. We have divers at the bottom of the fucking quarry, Sam.’
‘What are you hoping to find down there?’
Phil took a long breath. ‘If you were me, would you do it all again? I know it’s an inconvenience, but if you can step outside of your little bubble for just five minutes and at least consider reality.’
Sam almost smiled.
‘We’ll go over everything,’ Isabelle said, in a gentle voice – as though he was in need of comforting. Like a child who’s convinced there’s a monster in the room. ‘We’re not just ticking boxes.’
‘You are just ticking boxes. You’re literally looking for a corpse.’
‘Sam.’
‘Just say it. What do you think has happened to Robin?’
Phil stepped closer. ‘Honestly? Francis killed her and hid the body,’ he whispered. ‘Is that direct enough? Maybe he did the same to Ethan. Or maybe the stress of the last eight years pushed him over the edge. Maybe not. I don’t know. But we’re not wasting another decade pissing about with your theories – this is coming to an end soon.’
‘Francis called it in,’ Sam said. ‘He reported Ethan and he reported Robin. He kickstarted the coverage – the whole campaign was because of him. If I’d just killed my kid, you know who I wouldn’t welcome on board? The world’s media.’
‘Because someone who kills their children wouldn’t do something irrational?’
‘Again, why am I here?’ Sam said. ‘What do you want with all this shit if you’re sure?’
‘Contingency. Hard to build a case without a body.’
Looking out of the window, Sam let this image settle. But it wouldn’t.
Eight years old, curly blonde hair, as photogenic as her brother. Somewhere now, somewhere scared or dead, but somewhere. Although wary of certainty, Sam felt sure their fates were aligned – that whatever had happened to Ethan had now happened to her. It had been years since he imagined finding him alive – but Robin’s survival was still on this side of plausible. And if their fates were aligned . . . a strange optimism. It lasted less than a second but, in his mind, young Robin Clarke raised her brother from the dead. Would he be that ten-year-old from all the pictures – the child he’d never met, yet thought about more than any other? Or would he be . . . what . . . still a teenager? For all his thinking on the topic, it struck Sam that, despite the easy sum, he had lost track of Ethan’s precise age. Reason had stripped him of all the ear
ly fantasies that he was more than charred bones. Even the digital artist’s impressions hadn’t ventured beyond fourteen years old. Ethan Clarke would be eighteen. Eighteen or dust.
‘I’m going to swing by the house,’ Isabelle said. ‘Have you got a number I can get you on, if I’ve got any questions?’
All of Sam’s attention seemed to be on the window – his eyes wide, staring, staring and—
He blinked. ‘Yeah, sure.’
‘Fuck it, go with her.’ Phil flicked his arm again. ‘It might even do you good.’
The house. That large detached property – visible from above, from below, even from an opposite window in a neighbour’s bedroom, commandeered by an affable photographer who charmed his way into possibly the best vantage point on the street. It’s a mansion. The shallow, zoomed picture he takes of it is good – the entire building is in the frame, set perfectly between trees with a backdrop of clear afternoon sky and a media circus hazed out in the foreground. The Clarke residence will become a familiar sight once again. We should get used to seeing it.
Chapter 4
That underground car park, camera A, camera B, camera A, camera B – switching feeds every five seconds. The man strides next to Isabelle and follows her round to an unmarked vehicle. He tries to open the passenger door, but can’t. Then two yellow flashes from the indicator lights, and the clunk of the lock, silent for us.
‘Better safe than sorry, hey,’ Sam said, climbing in.
‘You never know – some of these PCs.’ Isabelle started the engine and lowered the handbrake. ‘My headphones went missing last year. And the milk situation in the office is a pint away from all-out war.’
As they drove up the ramp and out into the light, Sam clicked in his seat belt and glanced through the window, instinctively checking the road was clear. When he turned back to his right, he looked down at Isabelle’s lap. ‘You lock the car in a police station but you don’t wear a seat belt? You know what a dead stop does to a human body? Want to run through some physics before we talk about Ethan?’