by Alex Walters
'Oh, God, the worst possible place for a bored adolescent. It was a church thing. My dad’s idea, obviously. I don’t think he could face the idea of just taking me away on his own. A bit too up close and personal. This was supposed to dilute it. Probably worked for him.'
'And for you?'
'Not so much. It was some sort of youth centre. The kind of place they use for retreats. I’d been there once before with school. It was okay if you were there with a bunch of mates your own age. Less fun for a summer holiday.'
'What sort of people were there?' She was looking for any signs he was about to pull down the mental blinds as he’d done so often before. For the moment, he looked relaxed, or as relaxed as he ever did.
'Families. People looking for a cheap break, I suppose. It was a nice spot. Close to the sea. Sand-dunes. Woodland. Sounds idyllic now after spending my life in these places. But there was hardly anybody my age. It was mostly families with young children. There were a couple of older teenagers who were too cool to hang out with the likes of me. Spent their time smoking and necking illicit booze. There was nobody I could really spend time with.'
'So what did you do?'
'Mooched mainly. I had a Walkman with some tapes and a few books I’d brought with me. If the weather was okay, I went off into the woods and sat reading and listening to music. When it was raining, I tried to find a corner of the Centre to do the same thing.'
'What sort of kid were you? I mean, were you the solitary type?'
He paused, as if the question had never occurred to him before. She recalled the personality assessments she’d read in his file. In prison, he’d been seen as a loner, but that was unsurprising.
'I don’t think I saw myself that way,' he said, at last. 'I was a fairly sociable type at school. Had a few friends, though no-one I was really close to. It’s another thing that’s difficult to remember. I don’t mean it’s a blank. But it’s hard to put myself back into the head of that child at school. He seems like a different person.'
'Do you remember how you felt on the holiday?'
'Like I say, bored. Unhappy. Isolated. I was pissed off with my dad for insisting we went, and he was pissed off with me for not being happy about it.'
'Why do you think he was keen to go?'
'I don’t know. Maybe there was a woman involved. Someone he had his eye on, I mean. I remember him leaving me alone at night while he went out drinking in some local pub.'
'You didn’t mind?'
'It wasn’t every night. A couple of times he took me along to get something to eat. There was a crowd in there, some locals, some from the site, that he’d obviously got to know.'
She decided it was time to push her luck. He might shut down, but he might do that at any minute in any case. She wasn’t likely to get this close again. 'What do you remember about it? The day it happened, I mean.'
She was certain he’d find some excuse to change the subject or end the conversation. But he surprised her. 'Not much,' he said, finally. 'I remember the morning. There was nothing special about it. My dad had been out to the pub the night before. We’d been sharing a twin room, so he’d woken me when he came back in. It probably wasn’t all that late. Half eleven or so. But I remember feeling angry and resentful that he’d left me alone for so long. When he came in, I could smell the beer on him. I could tell he was a bit drunk.'
'He wasn’t violent?'
'No. He had a bit of a temper sometimes, but he wasn’t really the violent type at all, even after a few drinks.'
She gazed back at him, wondering if that was really true, but decided not to press the point. 'But you were angry with him that night?'
'I suppose. It wasn’t even that I minded being left. I enjoyed being able to read by myself. It was just that he took it for granted that it was okay.'
'Did you say anything?'
'You don’t at that age, do you? I just enjoyed stewing in my own resentment.'
'You said it was just another morning? The next day, I mean.'
'Well, yes. The morning after the night before as far as my dad was concerned. He wasn’t great the next morning. A bit surly and taciturn. But we were up in time for breakfast.'
He still sounded resentful, even after all these years. Perhaps more than he’d allowed himself to believe. 'You had breakfast together?'
'Yes, but I skipped off as soon as I could, and he was probably glad to see me go.'
'Where did you go?' She phrased the question carefully. Not 'do you remember?' She wanted him distracted, carried away on the tide of his recollections, not stopping to think about what he might or might not actually recall.
'Into the woods,' he said. 'Grabbed the Walkman and a book and went off to hide. That’s what I usually did anyway.'
'You were on your own?' She wasn’t sure what made her ask the question.
He paused again, longer this time, and she was certain now that she’d lost him.
'I wasn’t.'
She was startled that he’d responded at all, not even beginning to think about what his words might mean. 'Go on.'
'I wasn’t alone.' He hesitated again, as if unsure what he was saying. 'I mean—I don’t think I was—' Suddenly he sounded less sure of himself.
'Tell me what you remember.'
'There was a kid,' Carl said at last. 'Younger than me. He’d latched on to me. You know how it is. At that age, we all want to be older. I’d have latched on to the two cool teens if they’d let me but they were too interested in getting to know each other. I guess this kid saw me as a cooler older brother. Christ, if only he’d known.'
'This was just that morning? Or before?'
Carl paused, thinking. 'I knew him before. He’d been pestering me. He was just a kid, not that much younger than me, though it didn’t feel like that at the time.' He was clearly thinking hard, clutching on to memories in danger of fading away before he could properly grasp them. 'He had a Gameboy. I’d never seen one before. I couldn’t quite believe it. That you could play games on something you could hold in your hand.'
She’d been through his file countless times. She could recite some of his statements almost by rote. There was mention of the victim owning a Gameboy, but Carl had never previously acknowledged knowing him before that morning.
'You liked him?'
'I don’t know. Not really, probably, if I’m honest. You’re ruthless at that age, aren’t you? You’re happy to take advantage of the access to the Gameboy or whatever it is. But you’re still embarrassed by kids younger than you.'
'And you think he went with you that morning?'
'It’s like trying to remember a dream. When I've been asked before, I've always felt sure I’d left on my own that morning. I was sure I’d spent that morning on my own in the woods. Reading. Listening to the Walkman. Just by myself.' His face was as blank as ever. 'But I didn’t. At some point, there were two of us. I don’t know where I ran into him. Maybe over breakfast. Maybe as I was leaving. There were two of us, heading into the woods—' He stopped, as if only just beginning to realise the significance of what he was saying.
'What did you do? In the woods?'
He closed his eyes, trying to will himself back to that day. 'I can’t remember. I've just a memory now—an image, really, just something in my head—of the two of us heading into the wood. I don’t know if it’s even real, or if I’m just imagining it. After that. Nothing. Still nothing.' He sounded almost desolate.
Her mind was still running through what she remembered of Carl’s file. She was sure none of the other witnesses had made any mention of Carl associating with other children at the holiday site.
'Who was this boy, Carl? Can you remember?'
'It was him,' he said at last, eyes still fixed on the blank tabletop. 'It was him. It was the boy I killed.'
CHAPTER SIX
Now
'How you doing?' DI Joe Milton slid himself into the chair opposite Marie Donovan's desk.
'Knackered, but otherwise okay.'
It had been a tough few days. Endless door-to-door interviews, fingertip searches of the area around where the body had been found, long hours writing up notes and collating intelligence. Exhausting, but exactly what she'd been wanting when she'd joined the team. 'Not much sense of us getting anywhere, though, is there?'
'Not obviously,' he agreed. 'It's looking more and more like we're in for the long haul.'
'With the chances of a result receding by the day?'
'Who knows? It's like always. We just need one breakthrough.'
'Is that a quote from Joe Milton's little book of motivation?'
He laughed. 'More Kenny Murrain than Joe Milton. He'll keep us going. This sort of case, though, you expect there'll be an obvious suspect.'
'The father, you mean?'
'Often enough. Or some close relative. The funny uncle. The creepy cousin. Someone who jumps out at you from day one. You tell yourself not to jump to conclusions. But it usually turns out you were right.'
'You don't reckon the father's in the frame, then?'
'There doesn't seem any reason to think so, except that he's the father. He can account for his time. We've found nothing suspicious in the house. Everything stacks up.'
'What about the mother?'
He hesitated. 'Not sure, to be honest. I mean, no, I can't see it. But there's something a bit odd there.'
'Is this one of Kenny's feelings?' she asked.
'Not really. He said there was something that left him feeling uneasy, but, to be honest, I'd don't think you'd need any special sensitivity to feel that.'
'How'd you mean?'
'It was the house, partly,' Milton said. 'You know what family houses are like. A bit chaotic. Informal. It didn't have that feel. Everything was too neat. Fussy. She'd obviously spent time tidying up even that morning.'
'She could just be house-proud,' Donovan said. 'I've heard rumours of people like that. Or it was displacement activity. Stop herself thinking about what's happened. It's difficult to know what sort of psychological state she might be in under the circumstances. Anyway, who's to say she's the one who tidies the house?'
He smiled. 'Yeah, fair cop. I shouldn't make assumptions. But it felt like her domain. More than the father's. Like I say, I can't really see her being in the frame. There's a period notionally unaccounted for between the time when Ethan got off the bus and when she started phoning round after she got worried, but it's only a matter of minutes. We've checked the records of her outgoing calls and her story stacks up. And we've found nothing untoward in the house. I was just left with an odd sense that there's something she's not saying.'
'Something significant?'
'Who knows? People have all kinds of secrets.'
'So we're back where we started, with someone outside the family?'
'Looks like it. There are no relatives living nearby, and the Dunns don't seem to have any particularly close friends in the neighbourhood. So far we've drawn a blank with all that kind of stuff. Still, you never know what might crawl out of the woodwork.' He shuffled awkwardly on the hard wooden chair. 'Anyway, you're surviving, are you? Not changed your mind about joining us?'
'Too late for that now, isn't it? Think I've burned my bridges.'
'I suppose,' he agreed. Donovan had originally joined Murrain's team in a civilian post on a secondment from the National Crime Agency. Somehow, though, after a few months, Murrain had managed to wangle a permanent appointment for her at her former police rank of Detective Sergeant. Milton still wasn't sure how Murrain had managed this, particularly as the whole force was supposedly facing a recruitment freeze. But that was Kenny Murrain. Unworldly as he might sometimes seem, it never paid to underestimate him.
'But the answer is no,' she added, 'in case you were wondering. Even despite the challenging induction.' It was almost a year since that first case had resulted in an almost fatal outcome for her. But, then, as it had turned out, she'd brought most of that with her. Murrain, endorsed by the force's occupational health advisor, had insisted she take some time off to recover but she'd resisted the offer of extended compassionate leave. She'd been down that route before and it had seemed only to exacerbate the issues. This time she been glad to get back to work and had thrown herself into the routine with enthusiasm.
'That's good,' he said. 'We're delighted to have you. Even Paul, though he might do his best to conceal it sometimes.' He gestured towards DS Wanstead, who was bustling about at the far end of the room, doing his best to hold back the chaos that continually threatened to overwhelm the Major Incident Room. Wanstead had been welcoming enough but she'd sensed he'd been uncomfortable at the prospect of another DS, especially a female one, joining the team. It wasn't so much that he resented her or regarded her as competition, she thought, more just that she'd walked into his territory and he wasn't sure how to deal with it.
'He's been fine,' she said. 'And he's doing his usual bloody good job with this place.' They'd set up the MIR in the old police station up in the larger town that lay above and adjacent to the riverside village where Ethan had lived. It was a 1960s built building, still notionally the base for a police enquiry centre that opened two mornings per week but no longer used as an operational station. The word was that the force had been looking to offload it but had so far failed to find an interested buyer. In the meantime, the building contained a large, mostly unused meeting room which had housed the local control centre in the days before support services had been centralised. Quite how Wanstead had been aware of this was one of those mysteries to which only he knew the answer, but the room was perfect for their purposes. Spacious, close to the crime scene, and—once Wanstead had completed his wheeling and dealing—well-appointed with networking and other facilities. In an organisation where accommodation was in short support, it was a smart find.
The room was already filling up with the detritus that tends to accompany a major investigation. The piles of paperwork that never seemed to reduce however paperless the office was supposed to be. The unwashed coffee cups and discarded takeaway cartons. The coats and jackets left here pending a change in the weather. Most of the team were out conducting interviews, though a couple of officers were pounding away at their laptop keyboards. Murrain's desk, at the far end of the room, was as always pristine.
'Where is Kenny, anyway?' she asked.
'Back at the ranch giving an update to the powers-that-be,' Milton said. 'They've got a press conference with the parents this afternoon. Usual stuff. Anyone with any information. Someone out there must know or have suspicions. After which, we'll no doubt get a call from every nutter and attention-seeker in the region.'
'You never know,' she said. 'We're not exactly drowning in leads at the moment.'
'True enough. We're still trying to track down this van that was supposedly blocking the pull-in for the bus. None of the CCTV on the street catches it. Nobody we've interviewed, other than the bus-driver and Mrs Dunn, has any recollection of it. Doesn't seem to have been visiting any of the local shops.'
'What about the CCTV cameras on the main roads?'
'Those just give us endless possible candidates. We've been checking on the most likely ones in terms of timing, but nothing useful so far.'
'You'd think someone would have seen something,' Donovan said. 'A kid getting snatched. Broad daylight. Mid-afternoon.'
'You'd think,' Milton agreed. 'Though we don't know it was necessarily like that. Maybe Ethan wandered away by himself first. Anyway, it only takes a moment.' He stared gloomily into space as if contemplating where that moment had led in this instance. Then he blinked and looked back at her. 'Actually, I was wondering if you fancied grabbing a beer once we'd finished tonight?'
It took her a moment to process what he'd said. There'd been a period during the few weeks after she'd returned to work when she'd half-expected him to ask her out. He'd seemed more solicitous about her welfare than she'd expected, and she'd suspected his interest amounted to more than simple comradely support. For her part, she
hadn't been entirely averse to the idea. She wasn't sure she was ready for anything serious after everything that had happened, but Joe Milton was pleasant and good company. If he'd asked her, she'd probably have accepted and been content to see where it led.
But either she'd been wrong, or he'd never plucked up the courage to ask. The moment seemed to have passed and their relationship had stayed at the purely professional level. She'd heard from others that there was still a girlfriend somewhere in Milton's life, but he'd never mentioned her and everything he said suggested he was living alone. However pleasant he might be, she'd concluded, she might be better steering clear.
'Tonight?' she said, in a tone that emerged more negatively than she'd intended.
He looked around the MIR. 'No, you're right. Not really the moment, is it? I just felt in need of a break.'
She decided to take pity on him. 'No, go on. Why not? It's been a hellish few days. And it is Friday, even if we're going to be back in tomorrow anyway. Better make it just the one, though. I've got to drive home.'
'Don't imagine we'll be away early, anyway,' Milton said. He looked back at her with the air of a small boy seeking permission to go out to play.
She resisted the urge to laugh at his expression. 'Yeah, why not?' she said. 'What time do you reckon you'll be done?'
Milton peered at the pile of paperwork on his desk. 'Be as quick as I can. You okay to hang on for a bit.'
'I've plenty to be getting on with.'
'Great,' he said, pushing himself to his feet. 'So it's a date—' He stopped. 'Oh, God, sorry. I didn't mean—'
This time, she really did burst out laughing. 'I know what you meant. And I'm looking forward to it.' And as she spoke the words, she realised, with a slight internal start of surprise, that she really was.
***
'You survived the press conference, then?' Eloise's voice said from the car's hands-free speaker.
Murrain saw the lights ahead turning red and slowed to pull up at the junction. 'Just about,' he said. 'Not the most enjoyable hour's work.'