Burnt Paper Sky (5 page)

John couldn’t stand the waiting. He wanted to do something, so he spent most of the night driving around, circling the woods, following the routes back into Bristol, just in case.

Each time he returned, he sat in my car and asked me to go over what had happened.

‘I’ve told you,’ I said, when he asked for the third time.

‘Tell me again.’

‘How will it help?’

‘It might.’

‘I’m so scared he’s hurt.’

John winced at my words but I needed to say more.

‘He’ll be so frightened.’

‘I know.’ His reply was tight, tense.

‘He’ll be wondering why we haven’t found him yet.’

‘Stop! Just tell me again. From the beginning.’

I did. I told him everything I could remember, over and over again, but it was simple really. Ben was there, and then he ran ahead, and then he was gone. No sign, except a rope swing, gently swaying.

‘Do you think he’d been on it?’ John asked. ‘How was it swaying?’

‘Backwards and forwards. Gently.’

‘Could the wind have blown it?’

‘It might have.’

‘Have you told the police?’

‘Yes.’

‘And you heard nothing?’

‘No. Just the sounds of the woods.’

‘And you called out to him?’

‘Of course I did.’

And so on. In this way, the hours passed slowly, desperately. We punctuated the time by speaking periodically to the police, getting updates that told us nothing. I rang Nicky more than once, passing on the lack of news, hearing the mounting desperation in my voice echoed in her responses.

Inspector Miller arrived before midnight in full waterproof gear, to oversee the search. The men with dogs changed shift twice. Sodden and tired animals handed over to eager, bright-eyed creatures, straining at their leashes. I gave them Ben’s jumper to sniff, so they knew his scent. The darkness was our greatest enemy, holding back the possibility of a full-scale search.

At 5 am, Inspector Miller called John and me together to tell us what was happening. They were readying themselves for dawn, he said, which would be at 07.37. He ran through a list of the actions that were planned, using police speak that I only partially understood. There were to be more dogs, horses, a sergeant and six; Mountain Rescue were coming, and they’d scrambled the Eye in the Sky.

For the next couple of hours I watched numbly from my car as the scene in the car park transformed. I felt useless, a voyeur.

The ‘sergeant and six’ turned out to be a grilled van, from which seven men appeared, ready to search on foot. Another van brought a generator, lights, a shelter and maps and four Mountain Rescue men. Inspector Miller and WPC Banks worked to organise them. They’d both begun to function with the contained, intense kind of energy of somebody who has a bad secret that they’re not allowed to tell.

Dawn crept in in fits and starts, the pall of total darkness reluctant to retreat. Daylight revealed that the parking area had been churned up by the constant comings and goings during the night. The only blessings were that the rain had ebbed to a persistent drizzle and the wind had died down somewhat, though spiteful, icy little gusts still blew through intermittently.

Four mounted officers congregated at the entrance to the path. Their horses were huge and beautiful, with glossy coats and nostrils that snorted visible puffs into the damp, chilly air. Ben would have loved them. One of them startled as the thud-thud of the search helicopter grew louder overhead. It swooped low over the treetops, before disappearing again.

Katrina arrived soon afterwards. John emerged from his car to greet her and folded his arms around her in a public display of affection the likes of which had never occurred once in our entire relationship. He buried his face into her hair. I lowered my gaze.

She knocked on my car window, startling me. I wound it down.

‘No news yet?’ she said.

I shook my head.

‘I’ve brought these for you, in case you need something.’ She handed me a thermos and a paper bag.

‘It’s just tea, and some pastries. I didn’t know what you like, so I picked for you…⁠’ Her voice trailed away. She was neatly dressed, and she stood there like a prefect at school, well turned out and eager to please. No make-up. That was the first time I’d seen her without it. I didn’t know what to say.

‘Thanks,’ I managed.

‘If there’s anything I can do.’

‘OK. Thanks.’

‘John’s asked me to go back home, in case he turns up there.’

‘OK. Good idea.’

It was awkward and strange. There’s no protocol for meeting your ex-husband’s new wife at the site where your son’s gone missing.

‘Well, I’d best get back there,’ she said, and she turned away, returned to John.

After she’d gone, I looked in the bag of pastries. Two croissants. I tried to nibble one, but it tasted like dust. I managed some sips of tea. It wasn’t sugared, the way I like it, but the heat was welcome.

It was just after Katrina left that Inspector Miller’s radio sprang into life.

They’d found something. It was hard to hear the detail. The radio crackled and spat, words emerging occasionally from the interference. ‘What is it?’ I mouthed at the inspector as he held up a finger to shush me. He beckoned to WPC Banks to join him and they turned away, conferred. John noticed the action and appeared beside me. I felt electrified by hope and dread. Once again the drone of the helicopter travelled over us, making it even more difficult to hear. The Inspector turned to us:

‘Can you confirm once again what Ben is wearing, please?’

‘Red anorak, white T-shirt with a picture of a guitar on it, blue jeans, ripped at the knee, blue trainers that flash.’

He repeated it all into his radio. The voice crackled back at him, asking what size and brand of trainer.

‘Geox,’ I said. ‘Size thirty.’

The inspector turned away again. It took all my self-control not to grab him, to shake out of him what was going on. John was rigid beside me, arms folded tightly across his chest.

It was the awkward twitch of Inspector Miller’s mouth that gave it away when he turned back to us. Whatever they’d found, it wasn’t making him happy.

‘Right.’ He took a deep breath, drawing strength from some internal reserve. ‘The boys have found something that they believe might be significant. It’s not Ben –’ he’d seen the question on my lips – ‘but it might be an item or items of his clothing.’

‘Where?’ said John.

‘By the pond at Paradise Bottom.’

I knew it. It was nearby. I ran. I heard them shout after me, I was aware of the heavy rhythm of someone running behind me, but I didn’t pause, I sprinted into the woods as fast as I could.

Before I even reached the pond I saw them: a group of three men, huddled together, standing in the middle of the path. They watched me as I approached. One man held a bundle in his hands, a clear plastic bag with something in it.

‘I’ve come to see,’ I said, and the man with the bundle said, ‘It would be good if you could confirm whether any of these items belong to Ben or not, but please don’t take them out of the bag.’

He held it out towards me, an offering.

John arrived beside me, his breathing loud and ragged.

I took the bag. It had a weight to it. Droplets of water smeared the plastic outside and in. The contents were wet. I saw a flash of red, some denim, bundled up white cotton fabric. I turned it upside down, and beneath the fabric items were two shoes: blue Geox trainers. They were scuffed, and on one of them the sole was slightly separated from the shoe at the toe, as I knew it would be. I gave the bag a little shake. Triggered by the movement, blue lights flashed along the sole of the shoes.

‘The shoes are named,’ I said. ‘With his initials, under the tongue.’

Through the plastic I managed to pull up the tongue of the shoe. Underneath it were the letters ‘BF’. The ink had bled into the fabric around it.

‘Thank you,’ said the man. He had white hair and a darker grey moustache and eyebrows, and red, pockmarked skin. He took the bag from me, though I didn’t want to give it back to him.

‘Where’s Ben?’ I said.

‘We’re doing our very best to find him,’ the man replied, and the compassion in his voice robbed me of any shreds of composure that I might have had left.

An ugly fear was growing in me like a tumour; it was an idea that I hadn’t wanted to contemplate. John hugged me, tightly. He knew what I was thinking because he was thinking it too.

‘No!’ I shouted and it was the sound of a wild animal, an ululation, an uttering that a mother might make if she saw her offspring being dragged away by a predator.

The morning after Benedict Finch went missing I woke up early, like I always do. I’ve got a reliable body clock. I never need to set an alarm, although I do, just in case. You don’t want to oversleep. I started the day the way I always do: a cup of good black coffee, made properly in my Bialetti. I drank it standing in my kitchen.

My flat is on the top floor of a tall Georgian building in Clifton. It’s the best area in Bristol, and the flat’s got amazing views because it’s on the side of a steep hill. The front overlooks a big garden, which is nice, but out the back it’s better because I can see a proper slice of the city. I’ve got Brandon Hill opposite, dotted with trees, Cabot Tower on its summit, a couple of Georgian and Victorian terraces below. Just out of sight are modern office buildings and shops, but you can see a bit of Jacob’s Wells Road below, leading steeply downhill to the harbour, where you can go for a night out or a weekend walk. I can’t see the water from my flat, but I can sense it, and gulls often circle and cry out, diving past my windows.

Until I started going out with Emma I didn’t know that this city was built on sea trade that docked there for hundreds of years: sugar, tobacco, paper, slaves. She told me how a lot of human suffering made the wealth that built Bristol, and a lot of men gambled lives and fortunes on that. Emma was an army brat, and the reason she was so well informed was that her dad made her learn a history of every new place they moved her to, and they moved a lot, so she was in the habit of it.

Once she told me about the slavery, I couldn’t get it out of my mind and then I realised how much of the city’s noisy, nervy history is in your face, especially where I live. You’ve got the Wills Memorial Building, pride of the university, towering over the top of Park Street: built on tobacco profits. The Georgian House, perfectly preserved, and a very nice bit of real estate: sugar and slaves. Both of them are less than a quarter of a mile from my flat, and I could name more.

I think about it sometimes because I don’t think cities change their character too much; even after hundreds of years it’s still there as an undercurrent. Now, when I look out of the window each morning, and watch Bristol wake up beneath me, its messy, complicated past is right there as a little bit of a jittery feeling in my bones.

I’d slept well the night before even though it was obvious that there’d been some serious weather overnight. It was still dark when I finished my coffee, and the flat felt cold and draughty. Outside, rain was pelting down and the tips of the trees were getting pushed and pulled in all sorts of directions. A plastic shopping bag was blown up from the street below and went on a crazy dance over the treetops before it got snagged.

Before I got out the board to iron my shirt, I brought Emma a cup of tea. She was still in bed. She always got up a bit later than me.

She was lying in a mess of bedding and hair. She wasn’t a neat sleeper. It was a contrast to the controlled and purposeful way she lived the rest of her life, and one of the rare occasions I was able to glimpse her with her guard down. I felt privileged to be close enough to her to see it.

‘Hello,’ she said when I put the tea down.

‘Did you sleep well?’ I asked her.

‘Mmm. How about you?’ She blinked softly, sleepily. Then she stretched and rubbed her eyes, her movements languid. Emma didn’t rush things. She was watchful and clever, and poised, a cocktail of characteristics that I found addictive, especially when mixed with her beauty. Emma turned heads. I was a lucky man.

‘Solid eight hours,’ I said. I got back into bed beside her. It was warm and comfortable and I couldn’t resist it. Monday morning could wait a few minutes. Emma nestled into my shoulder.

‘I could stay here all day,’ she said.

‘Me too.’

She draped an arm across my chest and I watched her tea going cold and saw the face of my clock count nine minutes before I forced myself to leave the gentle rise and fall of her sleepy breathing. As I pulled the cover away, she roused herself and pulled my face to hers and we kissed. ‘I’ve got to get up,’ I said.

‘Boring,’ she replied, but I knew that if I hadn’t said it, she would have. Emma was always punctual. She smiled, as if to acknowledge my thought, and then she sat up and reached for her tea, grimacing at the first tepid gulp.

I put the ironing board up in front of the kitchen window and watched the red and white lights of the commuter cars coming into the city as I did my shirt.

‘You cycling in?’ Emma asked when she appeared in her work clothes, hair smoothed and tamed into a thick ponytail.

‘Yep.’

‘Trying to build up your celery legs?’ she said. She loved to tease. This wasn’t a side of her she readily showed people either. It made me smile.

‘You love my celery legs,’ I said. ‘You should just admit it. You driving in then?’

She was wearing a business suit, fitted and shapely, and a pair of low heels. She had bright eyes, and a quick smile that morning. She was ready to take on her day.

‘That’s correct, Detective Inspector Clemo, an excellent deduction. See you later.’

Emma and I travelled separately to work. Police officers are allowed to have relationships with each other, it’s not forbidden, but the reality is that it can be frowned upon, because it could complicate things if you end up on a case together. It was my suggestion that we keep our relationship secret for now. We’d only been together for a few months, and I figured what we did in our spare time was our business. Emma agreed. She said she wasn’t bothered if it was secret or not. She was easy like that.

First I heard of Benedict Finch was when I was cycling in. I have a portable digital radio that I listen to when I ride. By the time I left the flat the wind and rain had eased up and, as I dropped down Jacob’s Wells Road towards the waterfront, I enjoyed the feel of the acceleration on the steep downhill and skirted round the water that had pooled around the backed-up drains.

I barely had to pedal when I hit the flat beside the harbour, and, as I was cruising past the cathedral, I caught a 07.30 news update on Radio Bristol. It said that an eight-year-old boy called Benedict Finch had gone missing in Leigh Woods. It happened the previous afternoon while he was out on a dog walk with his mum. Police and mountain teams were looking for him. They were worried.

The city centre proper was starting to get sticky with early Monday morning traffic, but I made good time, and I hit Feeder Road at 07.40 and cycled alongside the canal. The water level was high, the surface pocked with drizzle. A fisherman sat hunched on the bank beside the road, shrouded in waterproofs.

Overhead, traffic roared across the stained concrete flyover, oppressively low, a grubby landmark that greeted me every day on my arrival at work. Behind it daylight was emerging, a slate grey sky with low, racing clouds that were purple above and yellow below. It was a poisonous sky: the death throes of last night’s weather. I remember thinking that it wasn’t a good night for a small boy to be missing. Not a good night at all.