I must leave, I thought. I must go home.
I would have done that, too, but as I turned to leave I noticed the door. It was in a corner, partially obscured by the kitchen units. An apron, oven gloves and tea towels hung from it on a neat row of hooks. Layers of paint had dulled the panelled detail on it. It was probably a larder, I told myself, or a broom cupboard, and I should just go.
But I found that I couldn’t. I felt compelled to walk towards it and, as I did so, I heard someone whimper and I realised it was me.
I stopped in front of the door. My left palm was moulded around the handle of the knife, and I rested the tip of my index finger on the bottom of the blade, and pressed down a little, feeling it bite into me, making me flinch. There was nothing to be heard apart from the slow drip of rain from somewhere outside. Even the hands on the kitchen clock moved soundlessly.
With a feeling of horror uncurling within, I reached my hand out towards the door and clasped the handle. It turned, but something stopped the door opening. It was jamming at the top.
I reached up to a bolt that was drawn at the top of the door. Tremulous, unreliable fingers fumbled but managed to draw it back.
I opened the door, stepped behind it and there was a soft click as I pulled it shut.
I could see nothing. All around me it was pitch black, and I had to use the light from my phone to see that I was at the top of a short staircase, and that there was another door, also bolted, at the bottom of it.
I started to make my way down. The darkness was so dense that I needed my hands to steady me on the narrow walls.
Two more steps and I reached the door at the bottom of the staircase. Once again, trembling fingers pulled the bolt, pushed the door open.
My fingers felt for a light switch, and found one. The hesitant bulb blinked and then glowed the dull orange of a polluted sunset before it brightened, revealing the room to me, making me gasp.
It took me long moments to absorb what I could see.
It was a boy’s bedroom: freshly painted walls, bright yellow, thick blue carpet on the floor. A rugby poster, and rugby club scarf, both pinned up, some reading books, a teddy bear on the bed, wearing a scarf. There was some clothing, a pair of small slippers, a dressing gown in softest white towelling. A wooden-framed bed made up with a cartoon-patterned duvet set on it, a pile of DVDs and a television set on a table in the corner, a chest of drawers with pirate stickers decorating it.
No Ben. No natural light.
I picked up one of the garments: it was a pyjama top, for a boy, bright red cotton, a dinosaur printed on the front of it, grubby marks around the collar. ‘Age 8’ read the label. I held the top to my face, I inhaled the smell of the fabric, and I knew that Ben had worn it.
He had been here.
My fingers dug into the soft cotton and I held on to it as if it were a living, breathing part of my son. ‘Ben,’ I whispered into it, ‘Ben.’
My eyes roved again, looking for more signs of him.
And what struck me was that there was nothing in that room, nothing at all, not one thing, that was right.
If Miss May had made this space for my son, and I was convinced that she had, then she’d got it wrong. Ben didn’t like rugby. He’d never have chosen bright yellow walls, or a babyish duvet set, or the type of reading books she’d left out for him, and he wouldn’t have liked the pirate stickers on the chest of drawers because he preferred dinosaurs. The bear on the bed was a version of Baggy Bear, but wasn’t him. His ear wasn’t sucked.
This was a room made for an imagined boy, not for my boy, who would never have felt at home here.
And then I saw something else.
Scattered all over the bed, beneath a fresh scar on the wall where it looked as though it had made impact, were the components of a smashed laptop: shards of plastic, electrical bits and keyboard keys, all separated from one another by significant force.
Ben would have liked the laptop. He might have played on it.
But he might not have been allowed to go online, to play his favourite game. The laptop might have been snatched from him, and hurled against a wall in anger.
And would that anger have then been directed towards him?
I fumbled for my phone. The reception was poor, but it was enough. I called 999.
And when I’d finished the call I stood in the middle of that space, with the painful wrongness of it in every corner of my vision, and the shattered computer components a glowering hint of violence, and I began to moan, and it was a dreadful, primitive sound, and the moans turned into a shout for him, a final desperate plea, an ululation, like the one I’d made in the woods one week before.
And I fell to my knees, hope shattered.
TRANSCRIPT
EMERGENCY CALL – 29.10.13 at 10 hours 17 minutes 6 seconds
Operator: Ambulance emergency. Hello, caller, what’s the emergency?
Caller: I’ve found a boy.
Operator: OK, where have you found him?
Caller: I’m in the woods, Leigh Woods, just over the Suspension Bridge. My dog found him. He’s lying on the ground. He’s covered in a bin bag.
Operator: Can he talk to you?
Caller: He’s all curled up. He won’t wake up.
Operator: So he’s not conscious then.
Caller: No, he’s not conscious.
Operator: Is he breathing?
Caller: I don’t know.
Operator: OK, do you think you can check for me? If he’s breathing?
Caller: He’s curled in on himself, I can’t see his face properly. Hang on.
Operator: How old is the boy?
Caller: I don’t know, maybe seven or eight. He’s quite little. He’s so white, he’s really white. Oh God you’ve got to send somebody quick.
Operator: They’re already on their way. It doesn’t delay them for me to ask you some questions, so don’t worry about that. I need you to have a look and see if he’s breathing or not, OK?
Caller: He’s freezing cold to touch. And he’s in a state. Oh God. Oh my God. He’s not even wearing anything except underwear. Jesus, oh my God…
Operator: All right, you’re doing really well and help is on its way, they won’t be long now. Can you tell me whereabouts in the woods you are?
Caller: I’m off the main path. By a swing. Help, quickly, help.
Operator: The whole time we’re talking, they’re on their way to you, so don’t worry about that. Have you managed to check if he’s breathing?
Caller: Oh God, it’s him, isn’t it? I think it’s Ben Finch, it’s the missing… [the phone goes dead]
Operator: [Calls back but gets voicemail.]
JIM
Nicky Forbes’s expression was complicated: proud and defiant, but with a touch of something else too that I read as surrender. We were close to getting a breakthrough, I knew we were, but then Woodley’s phone rang.
It was the world’s most stupid, immature ringtone. Of all things it was the Star Wars theme tune, and just like that it destroyed the moment.
Woodley was mortified. I was furious.
Nicky Forbes laughed. ‘You are so fucking incompetent,’ she said.
I felt an ache in my temples as Woodley, instead of turning the phone off, took it out of his pocket and looked at it.
She wasn’t as close to giving up as I’d thought. She was combative. But that was OK. That I knew I could work with, but Woodley wouldn’t shut up, he said, ‘It’s Fraser. I’d better take it.’
Nicky Forbes was watching, not missing a trick. I desperately didn’t want her to get the upper hand. The Reid technique depends on the interviewer keeping control of the process, moving from one stage of the interview to the next. It can be a long process and we’d only just got started. As Woodley slipped out of the room, I tried to regain control. ‘Let’s discuss what you were doing on Sunday, twenty-first October.’