“You didn’t, though,” he said again, more gently. “You haven’t.” He left a silence, and then he took a risk. “You won’t.”
Getting up off his chair, Billy shivered suddenly and rubbed his arms. He thought he understood why Sue had begged him not to go to work that evening. She was aware of the fragility of things. Their life together. Their foothold in the world. She might feel neglected, undermined as well. She might even suspect him. Not that he was driving down to the Orwell estuary and sitting in a parked car on his own — though that was bad enough, maybe — but simply that there was often an hour in his schedule that wasn’t accounted for. Perhaps she imagined he was seeing someone…And now this job with so much grief and terror surrounding it, and so much rage — the way that could eat into your thoughts without your knowing. Something might give, something might crumple or blow, and then all the horrors would descend. She was afraid for him, for herself — for the whole family. The wall protecting them was so very thin. In fact, it was a miracle that it had held for as long as it had.
17
There was half an inch of coffee in the bottom of his cup, and though he knew it would have gone cold ages ago he drank it down, then leaned back in his chair and stretched, a loud, creaky sigh coming out of him, the kind of sound you don’t make unless you’re alone. It had taken him forty minutes to complete Rebecca’s continuation sheets—Nickname(s)/ Alias(es)… Becky, Becca — and it had only confirmed his anxieties.
When Billy walked into the Williamses’ house on Sunday afternoon, the radiators were icy, and there was dirt everywhere. On his way to the lounge, he glanced into the kitchen. Food had been thrown on the floor, and the sink was piled high with washing-up. Rubbish hung from the door-handles in Asda bags. There was something rotting in the microwave. It looked like part of a pizza.
The mother’s boyfriend, Gary Fletcher, objected when Billy announced that he would have to search all the rooms in the house, but Billy told him that he was required to do so under Section 17 of the Police and Criminal Evidence Act. It wasn’t that he didn’t believe them; it was the law. When children were reported missing, he said, they often turned out to be at home, or else somewhere in the vicinity, at the house of a neighbour, or a friend. He told them the story he always told, how once, a few years ago, a boy of four had been found hiding inside a sofa in his own front room. If Rebecca had really disappeared, though, a search was crucial, since it might offer some clue as to her intentions or her whereabouts. Had she left a note? Were any of her clothes missing? Had she taken a coat with her? Also — and this he didn’t say, for obvious reasons — a search would give the police a picture of the family: what type of people they were, how they lived.
After he had been through every room, Billy had talked to the couple in the lounge. During the interview Fletcher drank three cans of Special Brew. He used to work at B & Q, he said, but he’d been fired. One of the supervisors had stitched him up. Karen Williams was nodding, but Billy didn’t think she had heard a single word; the gesture was just a reflex, a habit, a way of taking part without attracting attention to herself or having to make a real contribution. He wondered if she was on drugs. She had the brittle, washed-out look of someone who was barely coping. There were two other children, a nine-year-old boy called Dwight, and a girl of two. Neither of them was anything to do with Fletcher. Nor, presumably, was Rebecca. The toddler — Chantelle — had a nappy on, and nothing else. In an unheated house. In November.
Sitting in the mortuary, Billy leant over the misper form and studied the school photo that he had glued into the space provided. Rebecca had a plucky air about her, but he saw a certain apprehension too. Her lips were pale-mauve, and her teeth had a greyish cast to them. Her smile was forced and unconvincing; she’d had very little to put into it. Her hair hadn’t been brushed. She was close to being at the end of her resources.
Some of her classmates had been picking on her, Karen revealed, late on in the interview, as if she had only just remembered. Once, Rebecca had been tied to a tree and left there. Another time, two boys had whipped her. They’d used a car aerial, apparently. Marks/Scars/ Tattoos/Body Piercings… Scars on legs and buttocks. Two — three inches long. Billy asked whether they had lodged a formal complaint with the school authorities. They’d gone down there, Fletcher said, but the head teacher wouldn’t see them. Bastard. Fletcher was one of those people who think of themselves as permanently wronged: he took no responsibility for anything, and nothing was ever his fault. The dynamic between him and Karen was tense but lacklustre. There was almost no eye contact, and Karen deferred to Fletcher constantly in a way that made Billy wonder whether Fletcher hit her. On another day, he might have been taking Fletcher down to the station to be charged. Different paperwork in that case, of course. A Domestic Violence/Incident report.
Billy asked if there was anything that Rebecca particularly liked doing. Shrugging, Fletcher reached for another can, opened it and tossed the ring-pull on the table.
“Karen?” Billy said.
“She’s always on at us to take her to the zoo,” Karen said, “but we can’t afford it, can we.” She sent a wary, hunted look in Fletcher’s direction, which he affected not to notice, then she lit a cigarette.
From the back of the house came the sound of glass shattering. Fletcher jerked upright in his chair. “Dwight?” he shouted. “Come here!” Billy looked at the doorway, but the boy didn’t appear.
Ash from the end of Karen’s cigarette landed on the carpet. Fletcher sank back, scowling, and lifted his can towards his mouth. “Little fucker,” he muttered, and then drank.
Back at the station that evening, the phone rang. It was Karen Williams, calling to tell him that she had spoken to Rebecca.
“So, you know,” Karen said in her sloppy, distant voice, “no need to do anything.”
“Where was she?” Billy asked.
“At her cousin’s — I think…”
Leafing through his report again, Billy checked that he had ticked the High Risk box. A few moments later, he took the piece of jet from around his neck and placed it on the photo of Rebecca, just below the V-neck of her school jersey. It will protect you. After work on Sunday he had driven straight home, needing company, distraction, but he had forgotten that Sue was going to the cinema with friends, and that he had agreed to babysit. When he walked in through the front door, she was facing him across the hall, one arm already in her coat, the other bent behind her and searching blindly for the opening.
“Don’t forget that Emma needs a bath,” she said, “and I haven’t given her any supper yet.”
That night, when he had sung Emma to sleep, he poured himself a large vodka and sat down at the table in the kitchen. He kept returning to the section on the form that said Other unlisted factors the officer believes should influence the level at which this assessment is weighted. Rebecca had been missing for most of Saturday, but Karen hadn’t bothered to call the police until late on Sunday morning. She said she thought Rebecca was in her room. She hadn’t checked, though. If a girl Rebecca’s age went missing, and she had wild friends or a history of truancy, the police would start worrying only when she had been gone for two days, but with a quiet girl like Rebecca, you’d start worrying much sooner. In the end, he wasn’t sure he believed what Fletcher and Karen had told him. Who was to say that the abuse they’d described hadn’t taken place at home? Fletcher unemployed, frustrated, drinking; Karen on drugs, or in denial…They could easily have made up that story about the two boys and the aerial. It would be interesting to find out if there was any record of their visit to the school.