by Martyn Ford
At Hallowfield University the hall doors were swinging open.
Professor Adriana Moretti greeted Isabelle like a mother greets a daughter – warmth and pride beaming from her smile. Speaking in a faint accent Sam couldn’t place – somewhere near Italian, but with an odd American twist – she offered them both a drink.
‘Water’s fine for me,’ Isabelle said.
They hadn’t made it to her office, instead they met at the front of an empty, modern lecture hall. The three of them stood at the lectern, fixed auditorium chairs rising like a staircase at Sam’s side. Once they’d dealt with formalities, he placed his phone on top of the wooden stand – Professor Moretti stepped closer, curious and keen to be of service. Glasses on, she leaned over to inspect the photo. She zoomed in with two fingers and frowned.
‘Huh,’ she whispered.
‘Know what it is?’
‘Well, it looks like a crying Hecate,’ she said. ‘Or what’s left of one at least.’
Sam and Isabelle made brief eye contact. A bit of Adriana’s pride had rubbed off – this visit had been Isabelle’s idea. He gave her nothing.
‘It’s, uh, well, it’s strange.’ Adriana rubbed her earlobe. ‘Of course, Hecate is the Greek goddess of magic, necromancy, the dark arts, among other things. Polytheism at its most malleable – she can be all sorts. Warden between the realm of gods and mortals. We see her in Macbeth, with the witches. Lots of these things popped up in the Nineties. Mostly in the States. Satanic ritual abuse – remember all that? A real culture mash to find her creeping into fringe Christianity. Often depicted holding a torch, sometimes two.’
‘And this one?’
‘It’s . . . The point is, it’s all fake.’
‘Yes,’ Sam said.
‘No, I mean, fake, a hoax. Conspiracy theory peddled by people for, I don’t know, fun. They planted them at day-care centres, politicians’ houses, stuff like that. Also, usually the face is painted white – and has spikes. This one’s been . . . I guess burned? Hard to tell.’
‘So, what, left as a joke?’ Isabelle wondered. ‘A distraction?’
‘Hmmm. Not necessarily. These artefacts, these icons – they might start as a prank, but they tend to take on a life of their own.’
She moved to a table on her left. Two clicks and her laptop woke from standby. She tapped on a keyboard, drawing up a couple of websites. Sam watched as she dismissed a few tabs, then landed on a strange, amateurish page with a border of pixelated GIFs, little burning pentagrams running down each side of the text. Garish backgrounds, an awful cyan font – the kind of cheap internet aesthetic you rarely see nowadays. However, dead centre, right at the top, there was a photo of a similar wooden doll, with its white face intact. In one hand it held a torch, the other was raised and pointing.
‘So, the crying Hecate is said to lure the Devil himself to earth – to recall his demons.’ Professor Moretti then read from the website in an ominous voice. ‘But, be warned, wherever the finger points, the hands of fire shall rise, be that in the forest of men or the kingdom of heaven. The light of her torch exposes all truths, all evils. Even God – I guess we’re talking Abrahamic God now – fears Hecate’s hellful – that’s not a word – gaze.’ Still reading, now silently, she said over her shoulder, ‘Where was the finger pointing?’
‘At the Clarkes’ house.’
‘Well,’ she said, standing straight again, ‘then someone is either having a laugh, or Satan has dragged poor Robin Clarke into the depths of hell.’ She seemed to realise that the fun she’d been having with all this fiction had just collided with reality. Her face was immediately serious, and then sad.
‘No, it was put there a long time ago,’ Sam said. ‘I don’t think it’s for Robin.’
‘I can send you some literature on all this, if it would help.’
‘It would.’
We see him again, in his flat, working away. He trawls through everything, emptying folders, searching his laptop, scanning reports, witness statements, anything he can lay his hands on. This doesn’t stop, or even slow down, until morning is coming through the curtains. Now, after a long night drinking and reading, the first signs of fatigue arrive. He sits cross-legged on the floor in his living room with paper fanned out across the carpet in front of him. His back against his old sofa, holes in the cushions, stitching frayed, padding exposed.
And finally, at dawn, he rests. His head bows slowly as he closes his eyes. But, instead of dreams, a harsh, loud buzz on the floor at his thigh snatches him from any fleeting peace – real or imagined.
‘Yeah.’ Sam was wide awake now, still seated like Buddha on his living-room floor.
‘The blood.’ Isabelle’s voice was quiet, tired. ‘Hospital mucked around, but it’s definitely Robin’s.’
‘Fuck . . . It’s all the same,’ he said. ‘Just . . . faster.’
It had taken three years before they found anything of value with Ethan. But there it was, his coat, thirty-eight months after his disappearance. Torn and worn and stripped to threads on a rock on a beach. The endless sea beyond. Sam remembered that night. Glossed sand still and black. And it had scared him more than anything to think that Ethan might be in the water. The darkest place there is.
Standing right there on that beach, next to that rust-touched fishing boat, he saw how quickly a discovery like this changes everything.
‘With Ethan it was the blood, traces of blood on the fabric,’ he said. ‘That’s when they stopped looking for a missing child. And started looking for blame.’
‘Well, they’ve certainly found that.’
‘Any update from them?’
‘Last night Francis refused to answer questions, asked to leave.’
‘And?’
She sighed. ‘They talked him round – Phil’s on the cusp of an arrest. They’re buying time. I think they’re going to go with murder.’
Sam’s eyes closed all by themselves. He grabbed the bridge of his nose.
‘You there?’
‘Yeah.’ He took a breath. Eyes open again. Back to it.
‘It’s inevitable. It’s the best we’ve got.’
‘What about the—’
‘Phil said he could have planted that doll himself.’
‘Left it there for almost a decade, then decided to try and move it on Wednesday evening?’
‘The wind could have broken that branch. You found it because you were looking.’
‘Francis is not—’
‘I know, I know what you believe,’ Isabelle said. ‘But it’s possible you’re wrong.’
Sam shook his head, but didn’t actually say, ‘No it isn’t.’
‘Any luck your end?’ she asked.
‘Nothing.’
He had found no mention of Satanism, the occult, Christianity or sensible permutations on those themes. It was as though Ethan and Robin Clarke were, aside from blood, fame and absence, totally unrelated.
‘You read the full search history?’
‘Yes,’ Sam said. He had thought, if anything, that data helped his theory, despite Phil’s glee. When Isabelle had handed him the paper listing the sites visited, she remarked that it was almost too good to be true. Sam had no qualms scratching the word ‘almost’ from the record.
Yesterday, Phil had spoken deliberately, as though to a child, when Sam suggested again that Francis was innocent.
‘So, the alternative is that he’s being set up?’
‘That is the implication, yes,’ Sam had murmured.
‘You’re suggesting someone managed to break silently into their house, take Robin, leave without a trace and have the foresight to visit a week prior, hack into their Wi-Fi and plant false evidence? Which is to say nothing of the blood. Have you any idea how insane you sound? Do you honestly, in your heart, believe that’s more likely?’
Sam had nodded.
‘Why, Sam, why would someone do that?’
‘I don’t know.’
He replayed the conversati
on all night. It did sound far-fetched, but so did every other explanation. Every single scenario, even those coloured in his most outlandish bouts of imagination, seemed implausible. And so they should. The things that could have happened to the children were almost infinite. The truth was a solitary creature, small and alone in the chaotic haze, hiding out there, isolated in the wilderness. He would know when he found it. But now, startled, it knew it was being hunted. And it was getting away. There wouldn’t be another chance. Not for Sam.
‘Look,’ Isabelle said, ‘I’m on my way to see Anna now. A few things to go over in her statement. She’s at a hotel just out of town.’
There was a familiar, hopeless futility in the centre of Sam’s chest. A bleak sense of detachment he’d felt before. He’d delivered everything they wanted. His job, as far as they were concerned, was done.
‘Phil said you are, or used to be, pretty close with Anna,’ Isabelle added.
He knew what was coming next. But Sam couldn’t decide whether it was out of pity or a legitimate desire to have him there. Either way, he agreed. What else could he do?
Drunk and exhausted, he got dressed and waited on the street outside his flat. Staring nowhere with blurred vision and a cold headache – blinking helped as much as it hurt. But he blinked. And blinked.
Phil was right, he thought. After all these years, he’d arrived at an answer. And it was, put simply, one he did not like. As Sam listened to the silence above, heard the birdless day plough on around him, swift logic appeared in his mind and almost knocked him from his feet.
They’re both dead. They’re both dead and you’ll never know why.
His total inability to picture an answer he did like made him feel utterly lost – the kind of desperation reserved only for the nightmares of the terminally ill. Doctors rarely mentioned this symptom – perhaps because it has no name.
Marilyn was right as well. This irrational, maddening obsession couldn’t save him. As she said: when it was over, he really would have nothing left. So eloquent, so succinct, so fucking true.
He lit a cigarette and drew as much smoke into his lungs as he could, wishing they’d burn, wishing that sudden catastrophe would cut through his mind and fix it. End it. Drop him into whatever oblivion awaits. Wishing he was back there, overlooking the invisible sea. Wishing he had slipped.
Chapter 7
We hear rustling. A microphone struggles against the sound of cloth and movement. Muffled distortion in absolute darkness. A bump. But then, light. We see a grey ceiling, a narrow room. The camera pans down and a shelf comes into view – bottles of cleaning products, a broom, two mops and, to the left, a pile of folded bed linen on top of drawers. A shadow moves past and a woman, a hotel chambermaid, steps into frame. She’s holding an object in her hands – something plastic. An alarm clock, or the bottom half of one at least. Exposed circuit board and a dangling plug. She walks over and crouches. Up close now: blonde hair and a gaunt face – we can tell, even from here, that she is tall. Perhaps six feet or more. She’s working fast, frantic. Wiping her hair away and checking things – darting eyes. The dissected alarm clock is placed next to us and the woman’s thin hands block the lens. More muffled interference and darkness and then a strange clicking sound. We see again, from a different angle.
The chambermaid’s uniform, a brown tunic with a white apron tied at her waist, fills the entire picture. Some motion and then another noise, this time above. Translucence covers our narrow world. Clunk. A glaring red light on the right-hand side of the frame, close and electronic. Again, we’re lifted and the chambermaid is looking at us, inspecting us. She seems satisfied, but nervous. Another clunk and the red light is gone. A bang startles her and we’re dropped, a wire and a white object fall quickly and we’re in the dark again.
‘Yeah, two secs,’ she says.
Movement. A door. Wheels below, one is squeaking. We hear inane conversation, small talk, two colleagues chatting about television, their boss, ordering more pillowcases following an incident that occurred over the weekend.
‘Are you all right?’ one of the female voices asks. ‘You seem . . . distracted?’
‘Just tired.’
‘Well, an hour left and you’re out of here. By the way, what’s happening with you and— where are you going? Room twenty-one’s done.’
‘Alarm clock is busted.’
‘So? You do know who’s in there, right?’
‘They’re outside.’
‘Quick then.’
That squeaky trolley wheel and the towel is lifted away. The lens strains as it adjusts to the new light. Her apron and a hip, then the side of her face. A familiar clunk and the electronic red glare is back. We slide away from her and see the bed, a chair in the corner and the long blue curtains.
We hear a door close. And we wait, watching and listening.
Chapter 8
A three-star hotel at the edge of town. Squared-off Georgian windows with black iron grilles across the front – each metal upright ending in an arrowhead. Faded brickwork, sandy and fawn, broken at random intervals by dark slate blocks.
Upstairs, in room twenty-one, Sam sat on the bed in silence and watched Anna Clarke cry. He breathed it in like smoke – poisonous but necessary. Let Robin join Ethan in your mind, he thought. Sam hadn’t committed much imagination to the family’s domestic intimacy in recent years. His approximations were getting dated now, all of them featuring Ethan and the old version of their house.
Listening to Anna recalibrated this. Images arrived all at once – a montage of unfilmed home movies, memories he didn’t have, but sketched as best he could. The bedtime story. Amber night light glowing at the plug. The polite eight-year-old at the foot of the stairs, wearing her school uniform, holding her book bag. Patient. The child humming made-up songs in the garden, in the evening, in the lens-flare sunshine. Catching a beetle and asking for his name. Naming him. Losing him. Rehearsing grief. Using her fork to stab peas instead of scooping. Drawing with her tongue out, tilting her head, holding the pencil at an awkward angle. Asking to stay up later than usual. A hug. A quick kiss on the cheek when Mummy is sleeping. Sshhh. I love you, Mummy. A smile and a squeeze. Hysterical laughter coming from the bath. Dancing. That split second of realisation after a fall. The calm before the storm. The decision to cry or not to cry no longer a choice at all. And peace. Sleeping on the sofa, rosy cheeks and shallow breathing. No story tonight. Carried to bed. The empty bed. Now silent. Gone. Simply gone. Gone for too long now to be unharmed. Scared. Alone. Alone in the birdless void, wishing the low white dots were boats on the horizon. Old enough to realise they’re just stars.
All fables for Sam. But as real as anything could ever be for Anna. You are here. You are here.
You are here again.
Her room was neat, chambermaid fresh. Anna’s suitcase was on the floor, unopened, and she was sitting on the chair in the corner, elbows leaning on her knees, clutching a well-used tissue. It looked as though she couldn’t settle, couldn’t even take her coat off.
‘Can you think of anyone he might have upset?’ Isabelle was asking. ‘Anyone who could might have a . . . a reason to dislike Francis?’
Anna sniffed and glanced around the sparse hotel room, swaying her head and opening her mouth to speak, but no words came out. The gesture clearly meant: I don’t know.
‘Were there any visitors to your house last week, Wednesday evening in particular?’
Sam let Isabelle handle these obvious lines of questioning. After all, it wasn’t his job to ask.
This time, she managed sound. ‘No. No one. We’re . . . we’re very private.’
‘How about your neighbours? What’s Jasper like?’
‘Who?’
‘Mr Parker.’
Hesitating again, Anna sighed. ‘I don’t think I’ve ever had a conversation with him. His daughter seems friendly though . . .’
The one piece of mess she had allowed herself was her phone, face down on the carpet, against
the skirting board. It seemed like she’d thrown it.
Anna’s natural, curly hair was tied back in a messy bunch. It was thick and, from time to time, she grabbed strands at the front and pulled on them – three tugs. The signs of physical discomfort, of nausea. Acute withdrawal from a substance that warns you about such side effects. Seek immediate medical attention if you experience any of the following . . .
Prescription. Anna was on drugs, Sam remembered.
‘You’ve been prescribed anti-anxiety medication in the past,’ he said. ‘Had you taken anything on Wednesday evening?’
She nodded. ‘But I would have . . . I would have heard if . . .’
‘Who else knows you’re here?’ Isabelle asked.
‘My father. Francis. And Daniel. No one else.’
‘Aiden?’
‘Yes.’
Daniel Aiden was an acquaintance of Anna’s from university – a journalist and filmmaker whose career had benefited from all this in a big way, proving that it really isn’t what you know. He had been instrumental in turning Ethan’s disappearance into the extraordinary global story it had become. Without his influence, it would have been a mere statistic – the media usually preferring its missing children younger. However, considering there wasn’t a press mob outside yet, it seemed he was a friend first and a reporter second. Still, Sam found Daniel a strange somewhat risky person to confide in now. Anna must trust him.
‘They’ll find me soon enough,’ she said. ‘The things they’re saying . . . about Francis . . . They’ve been doing it for years. Accusing him, accusing me. For what? For attention? Publicity? Money? What the fuck do these people think?’
‘It’s comforting to assume someone is in control,’ Sam said. ‘People prefer to believe there’s a conspiracy. The alternative is chaos, and it’s terrifying.’
‘They say . . . they say I burned Robin’s body.’ Anna looked at the floor, at her phone. ‘There’s a fucking forum, Sam, where they speculate. They say I killed my own daughter.’