Burnt Paper Sky (6 page)

Inspector Miller said that because they’d found the clothing the ‘game had changed’ and they needed to ‘intensify their operation’. He described the woods as ‘a scene’ and said it was a CID case now. What he avoided saying explicitly was what we all knew. Ben wasn’t lost; he’d been taken.

A stolen child is every parent’s worst nightmare, because the first thing you ask yourself is, ‘Who would take a child?’ The answers are all profoundly disturbing. I slipped into a state of shock. John did too. The faces of the uniformed police around us were grim and some averted their eyes, a show of respect that was especially unnerving.

WPC Banks guided John and me into her car and drove us to the CID headquarters. At the end of the long lane that led from the car park to the main road, photographers and journalists had already gathered, and they thrust their faces and their camera lenses up against the car windows, trying to talk to us, take photographs of us. We recoiled from the noise, and the flashlights. We drew away from the windows and into each other. John clutched my hand.

It was a terrible journey. Coming away from the woods felt like an admission that we wouldn’t find Ben; that we were prepared to leave him behind. Within minutes we’d entered the outskirts of the city, and were sucked into its road systems. Busy dual carriageways carried us past new and old industrial buildings, into dense traffic. In the centre the River Avon appeared, parallel to the road, murky water flowing strongly while we lurched to a stop at every light. Plant life clung to its banks, tough and grubby.

My thoughts refused to work coherently and I was gripped by terror, which felt as if it was hollowing me out. My mind couldn’t face the present, so it burrowed into the past, looking for distraction, or perhaps solace, looking for anything that wasn’t this reality. I felt John’s cold fingers clutching mine and I remembered the first time he’d held my hand, as if that would somehow make things right.

It happened the week after we’d met for the first time at a hospital function. John was an exhausted junior doctor, wearing their standard uniform of oxford shirt and chinos, complete with tired sags in the fabric after a long shift. I was a nursing student, there for the free sandwiches and glass of warm white wine. His dark sandy hair fell over his forehead rakishly, and he had a lovely symmetrical, fine-featured face that was handsome in an old-fashioned way. His eyes were a piercing blue, intense and captivating. Ben was lucky enough to inherit those eyes.

Our first conversation was about music, and on that evening, when I was tired of socialising and a little tired of life, it was a tonic. John spoke in a way that was earnest, but gentle too. He asked me if I knew that Bristol had one of the finest concert halls in the country. It was small, he said, in a beautiful neo-classical nineteenth-century church building, and the acoustics were spectacularly good.

He had a lack of pretension when he spoke that I liked instantly. His inbuilt, unquestioning respect for culture transported me back to conversations overheard at my Aunt Esther’s cottage, the place I grew up in, and suddenly I felt as if my life had been drifting for too long, and that it was time to stop.

A week later, we sat in St George’s concert hall, waiting for the concert to begin. It’s a fine, elegant building, built on the side of lovely, leafy Brandon Hill, just a stone’s throw from the shops on Park Street. It’s opposite the Georgian House, which Ben has since visited on a school trip, but at the time I hadn’t known either place existed.

It was a full house. Tickets had been hard to come by. John was animated, full of information. He pointed out the place where a German firebomb fell through the roof one night in 1942, when the building was still in use as a church, and landed on the altar unexploded.

He talked about himself too. He told me that he used to play the violin, that his mother had been a concert-class performer, and his home had been full of music as a child. He told me that work was going well, and that he’d just decided to specialise in general paediatric surgery. I got a sense that his interest in all things was intense, thoughtful and absorbing, whether it was music, architecture, or the small bodies and lives of his patients. He had a rare sensitivity.

The concert began. A violinist, dressed in black, stood centre stage and, with utmost care, he freed the first few notes from his instrument, and they hung crisply in the air around us. He played with an elegance that captivated and seduced, and I felt John relax beside me. When his hand brushed mine and he didn’t move it away, it seemed to give me balance. When he gently held my fingers in his, it felt like a counterpoint to the emotional intensity of the music, and also an encouragement to let myself feel it, become absorbed by it.

This memory: the music, the feelings, flashed through my mind in the car. It was as if I wanted to rewind my life back to that point, and start it over again, to hold on to that perfect moment, so that what came afterwards wouldn’t turn to crap, wouldn’t lead us to now. Which was impossible, of course, because the memory was gone as soon as it arrived. The reality was that instead of comforting me, the cold grip of John’s fingers felt desperate and futile, just as mine must have done to him.

The traffic stayed slow as we travelled through the city centre: taillights and signposts, concrete shapes and scud clouds under a granite sky. The River Avon disappeared and then reappeared on the other side of the road, brown and choppy still, a shopping trolley abandoned on the far bank. I kept my eye on the water, tracking its progress into the city, because I couldn’t stand to look at the people outside the car, all the people who were having an ordinary Monday at the start of an ordinary week, the people who knew where their children were.

The police station was a large concrete cuboid building, Brutalist in style. It was three storeys high, with tall rectangular windows set into each level at regular intervals, like enlarged arrow slits in a castle wall. In typography from around half a century ago, the sign announcing where we’d arrived sat on a thin concrete rectangle above the doors and stated simply:
KENNETH
STEELE
HOUSE
.

The inside of the building was startlingly different. It was state of the art, open plan, busy and slick. We were asked to wait on a set of low-slung sofas by a reception area. Nobody gave us a second glance. I went to the loo. I barely recognised myself in the mirror. I was gaunt, white, a spectre. There was mud on my face, and the gash across my forehead was livid and crusty with blood that had strands of my hair caught in it. I looked dirty and unkempt. I tried to clean myself up but it wasn’t very effective.

When I got back to reception, John was still on the sofa, elbows on his knees, head hanging. I took my place beside him. A uniformed officer with a pink face and thinning grey hair came out from behind the front desk and approached us across the wide foyer.

‘It won’t be long,’ he said. ‘There’s somebody on their way down to fetch you just now.’

‘Thank you,’ John said.

Kenneth Steele House is where I work. It’s the CID headquarters for Avon and Somerset Constabulary. It’s not a pretty building from the outside, and neither is its location. It’s on a strip of trade and industrial estates behind Temple Meads Station in St Philip’s Marsh. It’s a flat inner city area with an isolated, wasteland feel because there’s no housing in the vicinity, and its boundaries are the canal and the River Avon. There’s CCTV everywhere and a fair bit of barbed wire.

I was at my desk by 08.05. I noticed the atmosphere straight away. There was none of the usual Monday morning chatter, only a tension about the place that you get when a big case is in. Mark Bennett – same rank as me but about a hundred years older – popped up from behind the partition that separated his desk from mine before I’d even turned on my PC. ‘Scotch Bonnet wants to see you,’ he said. ‘Soon as.’

Bennett had a bald shiny head, a thick fleshy neck and the eyes of a bull terrier. He looked like a bruiser. Truth was, he was anything but. We’d gone out for a drink once, when I first arrived in Avon and Somerset, and he told me that he’d never gone as far or as fast as he’d wanted to in CID. Then he told me that he thought his wife didn’t love him any more. I’d got out of there as fast as I could. You don’t want that mindset to infect you. ‘Scotch Bonnet’ was Bennett’s nickname for our DCI, Corinne Fraser. It was because she was Scottish, and female, and could be fiery. It wasn’t especially clever or funny. Nobody else used it.

Fraser was in her office. ‘Jim,’ she said. ‘Close the door. Take a seat.’

She was immaculately turned out as usual in a sharp business suit. She was eccentric looking, with frizzy grey hair that didn’t suit her short fringe and puffed out over her ears, but she also had an attractive, delicate face, and implacable grey eyes that could look right through you, or pin you to a wall. I sat down opposite her. She didn’t waste time:

‘As of zero eight hundred hours this morning I’ve got an eight-year-old boy who has almost certainly been abducted from Leigh Woods. We’ve got multiple scenes already, the weather’s been against us, and we’ve lost more than twelve hours since he first disappeared. We’re going to have the press trying to crawl up our arses before lunchtime. I’m going to need a deputy SIO to take on a lot of responsibility. Are you up to it?’

‘Yes, boss.’

I felt blood rush into my cheeks. It was what I’d hoped for: a high-profile case, a senior position. I’d been in CID in Avon and Somerset for three years, putting in the hours, proving myself, waiting for this moment. There were DIs above me in the pecking order, older, just as ambitious. Mark Bennett a case in point. They could have got the role, but it was my time, my chance. Did I think of turning it down? No. Did I think it was going to be a minefield? Maybe. But the words that were doing cartwheels in my head were these: bring it on. Bring. It. On.

A big part of the thrill was getting to work with Fraser. She was tough and clever, one of the best. It was well known that she’d grown up on a shitty council estate in Glasgow. As soon as she could leave home, she’d moved as far away as possible so that she could train as a police officer and start a new life. Problem was, while she was a young DC she’d ended up married to a DCI from Scotland Yard who reeked so badly of corruption that even the Met had to get rid of him eventually. In his spare time he’d knocked her about. She’d ended up in the hospital once but her old man was never charged. The police looked after their own in those days, so long as they were white males.

Her good fortune was that her husband had died before going to trial for corruption. He had a heart attack at the pub. He was dead before he hit the floor. She’d responded by moving to Avon and Somerset as a DS and shooting up the ranks with a combination of astute political play and detective work that was respected for its thoroughness. She was the first woman ever to be made a DCI in Avon and Somerset, and must have been one of the first in England. She wasted no words and her authority was natural. It was the right of someone who’d survived her wilderness years and come out tougher and wiser. She didn’t tolerate whingeing and she didn’t tolerate bullying.

‘First job: interview the parents,’ Fraser said.

‘Yes, boss. Where are they?’

‘At the scene.’

‘Is uniform taking them home?’

‘Not yet.’ She thought about it, tapped her pen on the desk. ‘We need to be sensitive, that’s paramount, Jim, but I’m inclined to bring them in here. Teas and coffees on our terms.’

I knew what she meant. When you interview people in their own homes they feel more relaxed, because it’s familiar, but they are also in control.

‘Use a rape suite,’ she said. It was a concession to sensitivity. Rape suites are nicer than interview rooms. ‘And anyway,’ she added, ‘we’ll need forensics to visit Mum’s home at least, assuming that’s where the kid spends most of his time, and Dad’s home if we think it’s worth it. They’re both potential scenes.’

She picked up the phone. It was my cue to leave. But then she put it down again.

‘One more thing,’ she said. ‘I was going to ask Annie Rookes to be FLO but she’s tied up. Any ideas?’

I don’t really know what made me say it so reflexively, but I did, and before I’d had a chance to think. ‘What about Emma Zhang?’

Fraser looked surprised. ‘Is she experienced enough? This one’s going to be tough whichever way it plays out.’

‘I think so, boss. She’s very bright, and she’s done the training.’ It was too late to back down now, and anyway, I thought Emma deserved the chance, and I thought she’d be good at the job. It would be a real step up for her, and there was so much to learn from working with Fraser.

‘Zhang it is then,’ Fraser said, picking up the phone again.

It was only once I’d left her office that I hoped I’d done the right thing, for Emma, and for the case too. The family liaison officer role is a crucial one. They’re there to look after the welfare of the victim’s family, but they’re detectives first and foremost. They watch, they listen, they offer support, but above all they keep an eye out for evidence and then they report back to the investigation. It’s a delicate line to tread. The FLO can make the difference between our success and our failure.

We got an incident room set up, quick sharp. Kenneth Steele House is spot on because it’s been refurbished with CID needs in mind, so we’ve got the facilities we need to run as slick an operation as possible, as quickly as possible. The room we were allocated was spacious: two runs of tables down each side with monitors on them, room for the Receiver, Statement Reader and Action Allocator. There was an office set up for DCI Fraser just off the main area, so she could run the show from there, as well as an ‘intel’ room, a CCTV room, an exhibits office and a store. It was an arrangement that meant we could keep everything close; it was proven to work well.

Straight off, we allocated actions to the officers we already had working, to confirm whereabouts of all the local sex offenders who were already known to us and to look through records for previous incidents relating to missing children or any peepers, flashers or attempted abductions in the area. We had four pairs of officers in place and Fraser was adamant that she was going to need ten pairs at least.

At 10 am we got a call to say the parents had been brought in. Fraser said, ‘You should get down there and get straight on with the interviews. Do it by the book, Jim. I want every “i” dotted and every “t” crossed. I’m also going to speak to the Super because I think we’ve got grounds to get a CRA out already. The criteria are met. You need to ask the parents for a photograph ASAP.’

CRA stood for Child Rescue Alert. I knew the criteria, you learn them by rote: if the missing child is under sixteen, if a police officer of superintendent rank or higher feels that serious harm or death might come to the child, if the child has been kidnapped and there are sufficient details about the child or abductor to make it useful, then you can issue one. The point of it is to inform police, press and public nationwide that a child is missing. A news flash interrupts TV and radio programmes to alert the public, and border agencies and police forces around the country will be primed to be on the lookout. It’s as serious as it gets.

I took a last look through the questions I’d been preparing for the parents, made myself take a deep breath. This was it. I was as ready as I was going to be. As detectives, we’re trained to know that what you do in the first few hours after a child has disappeared is crucial. Ben Finch had already been missing for more than twelve hours and our investigation was only just launching. I didn’t need Fraser to tell me that operationally speaking we were on the back foot already, or that every step we took from now on would be under scrutiny.

‘Woodley,’ I said to a rookie DC who Fraser had attached to the case. He was a tall, skinny lad with a face only a mother could love. ‘Get me a tea tray ready. Enough for three. And biscuits. Take it down to the rape suite but don’t take it in. Wait for me outside.’

If a female officer in plain clothes brings a tray of tea into a room, everyone assumes she’s from catering. If a male officer does the same, it makes him seem like a nice guy, puts people at ease. Just a little tip I learned from my dad.