What She Knew (9 page)

I talked to the officers working the scene. They were nice guys, cheerfully pessimistic about their chances of finding anything that might be useful to the investigation.

“If I’m honest it’s not looking good,” one of them said, stepping over the crime scene tape. It was bright yellow and hung limply across the pathway that led to the rope swing. He pulled a plastic glove from his hand so that he could shake mine. “The conditions are atrocious. But if there’s anything to be found we’ll find it.”

I gave him my card. “Will you—”

He interrupted me. “Call you if we find anything? Of course.”

We had our first full team briefing with Fraser at 16:00 back at Kenneth Steele House. We gathered around the table, everybody ready to work, tense and serious, trying not to think about where this case could go. A missing kid is the kind of case you do your job for. Nobody wants a kid to be harmed. You could see it on every face there.

“First things first,” said DCI Fraser. “Codename for this case is Operation Huckleberry. We’re hunting for two people: Ben Finch, eight years old, and whoever has abducted him. They may or may not be together. The abductor may be a member of his family, or he or she may be an acquaintance or indeed a complete stranger. They may be holed up with Ben or they may be living normally on the surface and returning to Ben occasionally. They may already have harmed or murdered Ben. We need to keep open minds.”

She cast her eye around the table. She had everybody’s attention.

“Expertise is on our side,” she continued. “I’m confident that this team of people represents excellence and I expect it of you. Time is not on our side. It’s been twenty-four hours since Ben Finch went missing. Priority is to confirm Mum’s story, and speak to all the people she says she saw in the woods that day.”

She paused, making sure we were taking it all in.

“I personally feel that the members of the fantasy reenactment group who were in the woods during the afternoon are of particular interest, because I suspect that among them there’ll be one or two mummy’s boys who are wielding swords on the weekend to make up for being sad, pimply little bastards who can’t get a life during the week.

“Which brings me on to another matter. I think we’re going to need all the help we can get on this one. The number of actions we’ve identified already is daunting, and it’s certain to get worse before it gets better. I’ve asked for more bodies, and I’ve twisted the Super’s arm so that he’s agreed to fund the services of a forensic psychologist for the short term at least, to help us define our primary suspects. His name is Dr. Christopher Fellowes. He has teaching commitments, and he’s based at Cambridge University, so he’s not going to be with us in person unless we have a very good reason to bring him over here, but he’ll be available to advise remotely.”

I knew him. We’d worked with him when I was with Devon and Cornwall. He was good at his job, when he was sober.

“I was going to get Mum and Dad in front of the cameras tonight, but I think we’ll wait until first thing tomorrow morning. I’ve televised a short appeal for information which will do for now, and we’ll put that out with Ben’s photograph. I’ve had preliminary reports from most of you, but if there’s anything new you want to add, speak now.”

One of the DCs put up her hand.

“We’re not in school. You can keep your hand down.”

“Sorry. It’s just that I’ve got a possible. We’ve tracked down all but one of the men on the sex offenders list.”

“Who’s missing?”

“Name of David Callow. Thirty-one years old. Did time for abusing his stepsisters and posting photographs of himself doing it. His parole officer hasn’t heard from him for a fortnight.”

“Make him a priority. I want to know who he last saw, and when. Talk to his family, his neighbors, his friends, if he has any. Find out what he’s been doing. Anything else?”

Nobody spoke.

“Right. There’s a lot to get on with, so let’s get on with it. Any leads, any worries, anything gets on top of you, speak to me. I want to know everything, as it happens. No exceptions.”

WEB PAGE
—BREAKING NEWS POLICE—www.aspol.uk/whatsnew

October 22, 2012, 13:03

AVON AND SOMERSET CONSTABULARY has activated CHILD RESCUE ALERT to assist in tracing eight-year-old Benedict Finch in Bristol.

A dedicated telephone number has been established for anyone who has seen Benedict or has information about his whereabouts.

This number is 0300 300 3331.

Calls to this number will be answered by dedicated members of staff who will take details of any information provided to assist with the inquiry.

By launching Child Rescue Alert, which is supported by all UK Police Forces, it is hoped that the public and media can assist Avon and Somerset Constabulary in safely tracing Benedict.

Police are seeking information specifically from anyone who has seen Benedict or anyone matching his description in the last twenty-four hours.

Benedict is described as being of Caucasian appearance, of slim build, and just over four feet tall. He has brown hair and blue eyes and freckles across the bridge of his nose. It is not known what he is wearing.

A recent photograph of Benedict has been widely circulated. It can be seen on the Avon and Somerset Constabulary website.

He was last seen on the main path around Leigh Woods, just outside Bristol, at around 16:30 on Sunday, October 21, when he and his mother were walking their dog. His mother raised the alarm at 17:00 after extensive searching in the woods did not locate him.

Intensive searches led by trained search officers, and including police dogs and mounted police, are taking place in and around Leigh Woods and the surrounding area, and members of the public have been assisting.

Benedict is described as bright and clever, a fluent communicator, and English is his first language. He is known to his family as Ben.

Spread the word: Facebook; Twitter

RACHEL

My sister, Nicky, was waiting for me in the foyer at Kenneth Steele House. She was panda-eyed with strain. I fell into her arms. Her clothing smelled of damp cottage and wood smoke and washing powder.

She looks a lot like me. You could tell we’re sisters if you saw us together. She’s got the same green eyes and more or less the same face, and a similar figure, though she’s heavier. She’s not quite as tall as me either, and her hair is cut short and always carefully highlighted, so instead of being curly it settles in brushed golden waves around her face, which makes her look more sensible than me.

Nicky told me she’d driven straight from Aunt Esther’s cottage. She held me tightly.

The hug felt awkward. We probably hadn’t been in each other’s arms since I was a child. I wasn’t used to the padded curves of her body, the cotton wool softness of the skin on her cheek. It made me acutely aware of my own frame, its angularity, as if I were constructed from a more brittle material than her.

“Let’s get you home,” she said, and she brushed a strand of my hair back behind my ear.

Arriving home was my first taste of how it feels to live life in a goldfish bowl.

Journalists had gathered outside my little two-up, two-down cottage. Ben and I lived on a pretty narrow street of small Victorian terraces in Bishopston, an area that has yellow Neighborhood Watch stickers in many house windows and loves recycling and having street parties in the summer. Our neighbors were a mix of elderly people, young families, and some students. Ours was a quiet street. The biggest drama we’d collectively experienced since I’d lived there was waking up to find that drunk students had put traffic cones on top of the car roofs during the night.

The journalists were impossible to avoid. There was a group of them, big enough to spill off the pavement. They called my name, thrust microphones toward us, photographed us as we entered the house, pushed and shoved and tripped up as they ran around one another trying to get in front of us. Their voices were cajoling, and urgent, and to me they had the menace of a mob.

When we got inside, black dots danced at the edges of my vision, the aftereffects of the bright white of their flashbulbs, and I could still hear them calling from behind the door. My heart rate didn’t slow until I moved into the kitchen at the back of the house, where it was silent, and I was able to sit, and breathe, and focus on the placid ticking of my kitchen clock.

Zhang stayed with us for a short while. The scenes of crime officers had visited the house while I was being interviewed. She wanted to check that they’d left everything in order upstairs, in Ben’s room.

She pulled the curtains in the sitting room tightly shut, so that the journalists couldn’t see in. She advised us not to answer the door without checking who was there, and not to speak directly to the press.

“It’s good that they’re here, though,” she said. “It’s all good publicity because it means that as many people as possible will be aware of Ben and will be looking out for him.”

She made sure we had her card with her number on it and then she left us alone. Part of me didn’t really want her to leave. She was more approachable than Clemo by miles. I felt nervous of him, of the authority he exuded, of his matter-of-factness, and of the power he suddenly held in our lives. But Zhang was different, more of a kindly guide who might be able to help me navigate this horrendous new reality, and I felt grateful for her.

Everything on the kitchen table was as Ben and I had left it: a snapshot of our last few minutes in the house together.

There was a hat that Ben had refused to wear, a packet of Bourbon biscuits that he’d raided just before we left, a much-loved Tintin book, and a Lego car that I’d helped him build.

His school report, received in the post the day before, lay on the table too. It had been a pleasure to read, full of effusive praise from his teacher about how hard Ben tried, how pleased she was that he was finding the courage to speak up more in class, and how he was gaining confidence in his schoolwork.

And it wasn’t just the kitchen. There was nowhere in this house that wasn’t imprinted with traces of my son, of course there wasn’t. It was his home.

Even outside, down the short, uneven garden path, I knew that there would be signs of him too: in my garden office my computer would be sleeping, its light blinking unhurriedly. If I went out there and brought it to life I knew the Internet history would show a game that Ben had been playing online on Sunday morning. It was called Furry Football and the aim was to play games and earn points to buy different animals, which would form a football team. Ben loved it. I had a daily battle to limit his time on it.

I looked at everything, took it all in, but felt only blankness. All of it was meaningless without Ben. Without him, my home had no soul.

Nicky got busy, typically.

She’d always been like this. She was never still. If there was nothing to do, she would organize an outing, or make an elaborate meal. Activity was her way of relaxing.

When I was younger I could happily spend an afternoon in Esther’s cottage doing nothing more than sitting on the window seat in my little bedroom. I would trace outlines in the condensation on the glass, gaze at the frosty trees outside and the shapes they carved against the open sky behind them, and watch the birds on my aunt’s feeders fighting for seed. The sharp yellow flash of a goldfinch’s wing was a sight I longed for in the monochrome of a snowy rural winter.

Eventually, driven by the cold, I might make my way downstairs to seek the heat of the fire. Nicky would be there with Aunt Esther. Their cheeks would be flushed from the warmth of the oven and the exertions of whatever activity they’d been engaged in. I would admire the freshly baked cake they’d made or smell the stew that was simmering.

Aunt Esther would take my hands and say, “Rachel, you’re so cold. Have a cup of tea, darling,” and she would rub them, and I would feel rough gardening calluses on her palms. Nicky would say, “Where are your fingerless gloves, Rachel? The ones I gave you for Christmas?” Then I would slip away from them, their cozy domesticity, and slink into a chair by the fire, pull a blanket over myself, and lose myself in a book, or the dancing of the flames.

In those early days after Ben disappeared, when I was practically catatonic with shock, it was natural for Nicky to become the functioning part of me, just as she always had. She returned the increasingly frantic messages that my best friend, Laura, had been leaving on my phone throughout the day, and asked her to come over. She spoke to Peter Armstrong, who told her that the dog’s leg had been broken, but he was comfortable at the vet’s after having it set. She put her laptop on the kitchen table and spent hours online.

On that first day, she found a missing kids website, based in the United States. On its advice, she made a list of questions for the police. She threw facts out into the room as she learned them. They were ghastly, notes from a world that I didn’t want to be a part of. They made me feel queasy, but she was unstoppable.

She told me that the website advised that bloodhounds are essential for a proper search. That they can follow the scent of a child even if their abductor has picked them up and carried them away. She asked me what dogs the police had used in the woods. I said they’d been German shepherds. She continued to read quietly, scratching notes out on a pad, keeping it shielded from me, her mouth set in a grim line.

After a time she said, “Did you see John after your interview?”

“No, they took him somewhere else.”

“You should ring him. It would be good to know what they asked him.”

“He blames me.”

“This is not your fault.”

I knew it was.

“What did they ask you? Can you talk about it?”

“They asked me everything, they wanted so much detail: family history, everything to do with Ben since he was born; anything you could think of basically.”

I didn’t mention that they wanted to know what Ben had had for lunch on Sunday.

“Did they ask about our family?”

“They wanted to know everything.”

“What did you tell them?” Her eyes lifted from the screen and they were red-rimmed.