Every Missing Thing

by Martyn Ford

  ‘I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry,’ she was saying, huddled in the corner.

  But he was shouting. She couldn’t hear exactly what he said – she was holding her ears and apologising and crying and apologising and he loomed over her, yelling that she had done a very bad thing and she would get hurt if she ever did anything like this again.

  ‘I won’t, I won’t, I promise I won’t.’

  And when he grabbed her shoulder, turned her round and she saw his face for the very first time, Robin heard a shriek echo through the house. It sounded like a girl screaming.

  When Robin had stopped crying, she decided once more to be brave. If there was any chance of getting out of this place, she would need to overcome her fear. Like she did on holiday when she jumped off that high diving board and into the sea. She was so worried but, once she walked to the end and looked down into the clear ocean, she ignored all her doubts and just stepped forwards. Her eyes opened at the last moment and saw blue, and then splash – she was cold and deep underwater, her legs kicking her back up to the surface for a breath. And she was laughing – rising bubbles tickling her body.

  ‘See?’ Mum had yelled. ‘Fun, right?’

  ‘I want to do it again,’ Robin said, turning and swimming back to that slippery green ladder.

  The second time she wasn’t scared. And it would be the same when she escaped.

  She felt her foot twitch, waking her up – she must have drifted off to sleep. Somehow, she could tell a long time had passed since he’d brought her back to the room. Her stomach felt empty, so she got out of bed and crouched by the door, where a small pile of marshmallows was waiting for her on the plate. She sat there chewing the squishy sweets, staring at the bathroom door, wondering what her next plan would be. Again, like always, she found boredom overtook the fear. After a while, she lay on the bed and picked up the book.

  Usually, at school, it took her ages to read a whole book, even one with pictures like The All-Seeing Eye. But, later that afternoon, she’d finished it.

  And it was quite good. Her favourite character was called Julius Jacob – a mega-intelligent man with spiky black hair and sunglasses. He was a sort of spy who could hack into any system. In the story, Julius said the human mind is like a computer. A brain is just an ‘information processor’. Sometimes, in school assembly, Mrs Pickford did a breathing exercise to calm everyone down. She said to close your eyes and concentrate on your nose and mouth as you inhale and exhale. The idea, she said, is to notice what thoughts arrive. That was really the only time Robin paid much attention to what was going on in her head. But Julius Jacob knew so much about brains that he invented a gadget that could hack into them, just like with computers. He built a device called a neuro-wire, which, the book said, ‘bridged the gap’ between mind and machine.

  It was called The All-Seeing Eye because, once Julius had connected his brain to the internet, he could see through any camera on earth. And, incredibly, he could remember anything a ‘digital eye’ had ever seen, like with his real eyes. So, he had all the knowledge on the internet in his memory, which made him even more clever. The book was set in the future and, by the end, everyone had a neuro-wire, which meant Julius could see through other people’s eyes as well. If you could really see everything, then you wouldn’t be you any more. The book said your human body would be just one tiny part of yourself, like your little toe.

  The ending was strange though. Julius was fighting an organisation that wanted to take over the neuro-wire and use it to make people love the president, who was a baddie – a kind of demon, with red eyes and hair that looked a bit like horns. It confused Robin because Julius died. But he was still living on all the computer networks and in people’s minds, like a sort of virus. And, in the last chapter, he saved the world by giving everyone his power. Which meant they could see everything and know everything too.

  She read the last paragraph aloud a couple of times, stumbling over some of the unfamiliar words. ‘And so, on the cusp of the grand transition, they saw the world in all its hidden glory. There were no shadows left. An om . . . omnipotent collective descended from the digital sky, a blanket upon a planet that belongs now not to any one soul, but to all. They see. Like Julius. They see.’

  Robin wasn’t sure if it was a happy ending or a sad ending. It was weird, but she kind of liked it. By far her favourite part was the pictures – they made her want to draw and paint. She missed her pencils.

  However, the second she’d finished, she looked up at the camera by the ceiling and felt scared again.

  Later, he came to the door. When she heard it open, she turned on to her side and pretended to be asleep. He told her he was sorry for yelling and sorry if he frightened her. But Robin had to understand, he insisted, that something very bad would happen to her if she tried to escape. Soon, if she behaved herself, she would be able to come out of her room. Maybe, one day, he would even take her into the garden. She was allowed anything. Anything. But she could never, ever, ever leave. All these wishes, besides the only one she actually wanted to come true.

  Robin could tell from the light that the door was now completely open. Maybe she could make a dash, slam it shut, trap him inside and then run away. But she was just too scared to move.

  ‘Did my face upset you?’ he asked. Robin pretended she hadn’t heard. ‘What’s your favourite subject at school?’

  The mattress springs creaked and she felt him near her legs. When he touched her foot, she flinched away and bundled herself near the pillow. There was a long silence.

  ‘Thank you for the marshmallows,’ she whispered. ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘It’s fine.’

  She blinked and fiddled with the corner of her duvet cover, brushing it over her fingers. ‘Art,’ she said.

  ‘I’ll get you some paints and sketchbooks . . . Do you like clay?’

  ‘I like plasticine.’

  ‘I’ll buy one of everything in the craft shop, OK? But, Robin, if I leave, you have to promise to stay indoors.’

  ‘I . . .’ She thought for a few seconds. ‘I promise,’ she lied.

  ‘I know this must be scary for you, but it’s really a good thing you’re here.’

  She didn’t respond.

  ‘Soon, you’ll be able to have the run of the whole house. I’ll clean everything up downstairs, you weren’t meant to see that.’

  ‘What’s your name?’ she asked.

  ‘Julius.’

  ‘Like Julius from the book.’

  ‘Yes, just like Julius from the book. Remember that. I see everything.’

  ‘You like cameras.’

  ‘I do.’

  ‘How . . . how old are you?’

  ‘How old do you think I am?’

  ‘I . . . I don’t know. Maybe forty?’

  He laughed through his nose. ‘Well, that’s good to hear. I’m fifty-one. How old are you?’

  ‘Eight.’

  A gentle pressure on top of the covers, his hand on her knee. This time she didn’t move. ‘Please don’t be frightened, Robin,’ he said. ‘I swear, I swear that as long as you do what I say, you won’t get hurt.’

  ‘OK.’

  ‘Do you believe me?’

  She looked at the wall. ‘Yes.’ Frowning, she felt her bottom lip tremble and turned her head into the pillow so he couldn’t see her face. Because, if he did, he would notice her tears. He would realise that, once again, Robin was lying.

  Chapter 16

  Hallowfield Criminal Investigation Department is quiet. We see just three officers in here, two at the window, drinking coffee. The third is at her desk. She’s sitting up straight, typing on her keyboard.

  ‘Isabelle, can I have a word?’ Phil asks, off camera.

  Turning her head, she rises from her swivel chair and enters his office. The door closes. Only they hear what is said inside.

  Diane Marston, as Joey warned, was proving difficult to track down. There still exists, in the modern world, a certain type of
person who makes a concerted effort to cast no digital shadow, to leave as small a mark as possible on the humming servers that document our lives.

  At a pedestrian level, this might be a reluctance to engage in social media, an inbuilt aversion to store cards, a belief that abstinence from online banking somehow protects those gold bars your bank doesn’t even have or – and this was Sam’s favourite – that turning location data off makes a difference.

  But he soon discovered the Marstons were well beyond this banal child’s play. These were individuals without bank accounts, passports, addresses. People who were, in the starkest way possible, not taking part in society. And, on the rare occasions they did, they seemed to trade only in concrete things like cash and harm.

  ‘I’ve got it down to one,’ Isabelle said, passing Sam a printed sheet of paper in her car. ‘Henry Marston. Works for Green-Mac.’

  ‘As in the road company?’

  ‘That’s them. Diane Marston, former Anglican priest, property developer – apparently lots of family money. She established North Serpent about fifteen years ago – there’s a couple of old videos of her sermons online. Troubling stuff. She thinks our culture is infected with impure blood, says homosexuals are demons, the government is run by paedophiles – judgement day is looming. And so on. Since then it seems she’s distanced herself from it all and gone into hiding. The group is now essentially a prison gang. Still Christian Identity, they call themselves knights, lots of crusades imagery on the literature, but the religious side of things has taken a back seat. There’s a petition to get it banned under the Terrorism Act, for promoting hatred.’

  They were parked outside Sam’s flat. He’d clocked her car from his bedroom window, and rushed down the stairs to meet her before she even had time to undo her seat belt. Better she didn’t see inside.

  ‘Not much else on the system,’ she said. ‘Saying that, an arrest warrant was issued for Max Marston in relation to the disappearance of a Swedish student, Luke Johansson. A Scottish case, which was later dropped.’

  ‘How come?’

  ‘I don’t know – it’s strange,’ she said, half turning her key so the ignition came on. Cool air hissed from the plastic slats. ‘If I didn’t know better, I’d say someone made a conscious decision to stop investigating him. He’s also wanted for a number of other misdemeanours, but, like his siblings, he seems quite adept at laying low. As I say, Henry’s the only real lead. I’m guessing, at twenty, he’s the youngest.’

  ‘Let’s go.’

  ‘No, Sam. We’re bringing him in properly.’

  Inevitable that this was going to happen. Phil had no doubt caught wind of their impromptu visit to Bronzegate. The look on Isabelle’s face was familiar – that disapproval he would get at school, from the smart girls, the good girls, the prefects. You know smoking kills you. You know assembly has started. What exactly is wrong with you, Sam?

  ‘Why?’ he asked.

  ‘What do you mean why? What’s the alternative? We go and rough him up? There’s a process for a reason. I’m sorry you can’t be a part of this, but it isn’t . . .’

  ‘My job any more?’

  ‘Yes, exactly.’

  ‘It’s your job.’

  She nodded.

  ‘Do you know what the Coriolis effect is?’ Sam said, holding his hand out to the cold breeze coming from the air conditioner.

  A near-silent groan from Isabelle. ‘Yes, I do.’ She watched him like he was crazy, although her face stayed perfectly still.

  ‘Why do you do it?’ he said. ‘Your job.’

  ‘Look, Sam, I’m tired, all right.’

  There was conflict here – he could see it. For the first time Isabelle seemed unsettled. Still cool, still collected, still peaceful. But now he was asking her to do something she’d been explicitly told not to do. Just entertain the guy. Occupy that blinking wreck who, years ago, may have been a colleague. But no more than that. She’d already taken this too far.

  Isabelle was compelled to do the right thing, maybe at any cost. Even if that cost was bringing Henry Marston in, sitting him on a chair, posing the vaguest questions imaginable and learning nothing. Do you recognise this doll? No comment. What do you know about North Serpent? No comment. Where’s your sister? No comment. Their suspicion was tenuous. It’d be futile and, above all, a slow process. But it was the right thing to do.

  ‘I see that.’ He looked at her like her fatigue was irrelevant.

  She turned in her seat. ‘You want to analyse me,’ she said. ‘OK. Growing up, I always wanted to be an actor, a movie star.’

  ‘So, what was the degree for?’

  ‘I know the history factory isn’t employing – education is not all about getting a job.’

  ‘Good answer. Why ditch acting?’

  Isabelle, spine straight, formal mannerisms, calculated body language, seemed to take even longer than usual to formulate an answer.

  ‘I had . . . a negative experience in my early twenties, and it made me value the rule of law more than the arts.’

  ‘What could possibly do that to a young mind?’

  Another moment of hesitation. Isabelle glanced at the steering wheel, then seemed to consider her options.

  ‘I know why you lost your job, Sam,’ she said. ‘I know what you did. I’ve been to countries where laws mean nothing. Where you dial nine-nine-nine and no one comes. These are not good places.’

  She knew about George Hinds. He wondered then if her account had come from a report or from Phil, with all his poetic licence. True, it wasn’t a pleasant story, but Sam had heard plenty of embellishments that made it sound much worse.

  George Hinds owned the strip of beach. He was loitering around the day after they found Ethan’s coat. Sam had been on his knees scouring through the sharp grass on high mounds near the scene, the dry sand stinging his face in the blasting gusts of sudden wind. Upright fence poles stood like driftwood at odd angles, all the wire long since gone. The waves were small, each capped with whipped mist lost in the white glare of sun on the ocean beyond. A shadow of a man, and Sam looked up.

  ‘The sea is cold today,’ the man had said. ‘You can tell because the water is dark. You should never go into the water on days like this. You might not come out.’

  He asked what the police were looking for and then offered to help. By that evening, he was in custody, telling lies for all the wrong reasons.

  ‘Hinds was a publicity-hungry madman,’ Sam explained. ‘He pretended to know where Ethan was – and I believed he was telling the truth. So, when he refused to cooperate, I hurt him. And I regret it. I didn’t know the extent of his mental illness at the time.’

  ‘Maybe you were angry, because of what you’d found? Because of what it meant?’

  ‘Maybe.’

  ‘Sam. Look.’ She spoke so softly, so quietly. The way you talk to someone young, someone young who’s just shared their most intimate fear from a pillow, late at night. ‘Ethan’s dead. He’s dead. You know that. You know it.’ She lowered her face for eye contact and made sure he saw her nodding. ‘You’ve known that since the coat. It was washed up on a beach. He’s gone. But . . . Robin . . .’

  ‘It wasn’t washed up.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘It was too high on the rocks, above the tideline. It was left there. Put there.’

  She took a deep breath. ‘And what does that justify?’

  ‘Nothing at all.’

  ‘We’ll do it properly, OK. The lawless path leads only to trouble.’

  ‘Is that Shakespeare?’

  ‘No,’ she said, ‘that’s me.’

  We see the man in his flat, drinking again, alone and with nothing to do. For a long while he just sits on his sofa, his quiet TV flooding him with flickering colours. He stares at a spot on the wall, just above the screen. Fading slowly, the apartment moves from dusk to dark as the earth turns away from the sun.

  And then, with sudden urgency, he downs his drink, stands and grabs a hooded
jumper from the kitchen counter. When he presses the button on his remote, the room disappears completely. A glimmer of yellow from the door as he leaves and, again, black silence prevails.

  A quiet pavement, damp grey and glowing under street lights. Sam, dressed in a brown hoodie and jeans, walking to the edge of town. Too drunk to drive. Not merely over the limit, but swaying so much he believed he would crash if he tried.

  A dog grumbled somewhere nearby, a chain clinking as it tugged on its restraints. Sam passed a long parade of front gardens, one of which looked abandoned – a caravan sat on broken, shingled concrete, with thick tufts of grass protruding where they could. A truck was still attached to the tow bar and moss had rendered its windows opaque.

  Down an alleyway and towards a track that would take him—

  The dog lurched hard against its tied leash, behind a metal fence, roaring into the alley – deep, rhythmic barks. Sam didn’t flinch. The animal was furious, enraged that he wasn’t scared – its idle threats echoed out behind him. At the end, the path split in two with a route on the left opening up to a wide cul-de-sac.

  The night was hot and humid, the streets long and empty. These industrial outskirts of Hallowfield, hidden between the graffiti bins and derelict factories, had a sense of menace that no statistic can temper. He stepped along the narrow footway, his shoes crunching on rocks and glass. Through dark lands made of concrete, corrugated iron potted with rust holes and pipes that seem to lead nowhere. Among the brown rats that scurry from every gap, every hole, every lightless place. Only poverty can build neighbourhoods like this.

  Or maybe Sam was being melodramatic again. Grand, drunk thoughts. Vodka writing bleak poems about an impending apocalypse, about how there was no need to fear any of this because, no matter how far he strayed, he would never find something worse than himself.

  On the right, he saw the dual carriageway, running behind these homes and industrial parks. Partially closed, as he knew it would be. He clambered up a steep bank and out on to the open tarmac.