‘We interviewed her,’ I said to Woodley. ‘We should have fucking seen it.’
He didn’t respond.
The paramedics were still working with Ben Finch in the woods. They couldn’t get the ambulance to the site so they’d had to stabilise him and move him in stages.
We parked and I ran. I wanted to be with Ben. I wanted to see his clear blue eyes for myself, see if there was life in them. I wanted to tell him that he would be OK, that his mother was waiting for him. I wanted to do that for him at least.
Rain was falling in a downpour, crashing through the canopy above. The trees lining the path were bowed and streaked from it. They arched over me, a skeletal tunnel of bare branches, urging me onwards, making me feel as if it was impossible to make progress.
My breathing was ragged and fast, my heart thumping, my clumsy feet tripping over sticks, stones, each other, never moving fast enough. With every step I was soaked some more, but with every step I cared less.
I rounded a bend in the path, and ahead I saw the ambulance, and a stretcher being loaded on board.
I pushed myself, tried to reach them in time, tried to shout out, but it was futile, because they slammed the door shut long before I reached them, and by the time I got there the ambulance had begun the tricky process of turning around.
Mark Bennett was guiding it. I stayed back, stood to the side of the path as the ambulance manoeuvred past me, watched him pat the back of it as a farewell.
And Bennett, all dressed up in waterproofs, jaw clenched and wet from rain said, ‘That lad’s not in a good way, Jim. Not at all.’ It had got to him. I could see that.
And I said, ‘I wanted to see him.’ I wiped the rain from my face, felt my sodden clothing cling coldly to me.
‘Nothing we can do for him now. It’s too late for that. It’s in the hands of the medics.’
And I hated him for saying that, and I hated him for being there when it should have been me, and I hated myself for letting harm come to that boy, any harm at all.
RECORD OF EVIDENCE: AVON AND SOMERSET POLICE, CID
OPERATION HUCKLEBERRY – EVIDENCE BAG 2
AUTHORISED COPY OF HOSPITAL ADMISSIONS NOTE FOR BENEDICT FINCH, BRISTOL CHILDREN’S HOSPITAL, MONDAY, 29 NOVEMBER AT 12.07 pm
Description of text:
‘Name: Benedict Jonathan Finch Age: 8 years Sex: Male
Date of birth: to be confirmed
Benedict Finch, male, 8 years, identity confirmed by police officer attending scene in the woods. Awaiting confirmation by family member.
On arrival presented with severe hypothermia caused by overnight exposure in Leigh Woods with no shelter and no clothing. Hypothermia induced coma. Hypotension (BP 78/54); core body temperature 28°C; HR 30 reg. General condition extremely poor. Underweight, dirty and dehydrated. Significant bruising to left upper arm.’
Original stored Item 3, Evidence box 345.112
WEB PAGE
BREAKING NEWS www.up2theminute.co.uk/asithappens
29 October 2012, 14:13
UP TO THE MINUTE brings you a timeline of today’s dramatic developments in the case of missing eight-year-old Benedict Finch.
The significant developments were confirmed by AVON and SOMERSET CONSTABULARY in a hastily arranged press conference this afternoon led by DS Giles Martyn.
10.15 am The body of a young boy is discovered in Leigh Woods near the site where Benedict Finch went missing just over one week ago. The discovery is made by a member of the public who contacted the emergency services. The boy is alive, but barely.
12 noon The search for Benedict Finch is called off, after the boy’s identity is confirmed on arrival at Bristol Children’s Hospital.
12.45 pm A small number of people begin to gather outside the Children’s Hospital. They light candles and pray for Benedict Finch and there’s an outpouring of concern for his safe recovery on Twitter.
1.17 pm An arrest is made at Bristol Airport and police confirm that they’ve detained a person in connection with the investigation.
2.10 pm Police confirm that the person detained in connection with Benedict’s disappearance is a teacher at his school, Joanna May, 27 years old.
In other developments there are unconfirmed reports that Benedict Finch’s mother was treated in an ambulance outside an address in Clifton this morning. It’s thought that the address may be the home of Joanna May.
Keeping You Up To the Minute, Every Minute
Spread the word: Facebook; Twitter
RACHEL
Bristol Children’s Hospital smelled of cleanliness and sickness in equal measure. The only times I’d been there before had been to meet John after work.
We travelled up from the ground floor in a tiny elevator where Wallace and Gromit’s recorded voices told us to ‘Mind the Doors’, over and over again. Shock-eyed and sleep-deprived parents got on and off, checking the sign in the lift for their destinations, fingers running down a list, stopping at ‘Oncology’ or ‘Nephrology’.
Amongst them were a mother and baby boy, she wearing a burqa, even her eyes veiled from the world with mesh. Her baby was in her arms, a tube running up his nose, taped in place, his wide brown eyes staring at the ceiling lights. I wondered how she was able to comfort him when she was confined to that garment, when their eyes couldn’t even meet. Did she rest her uncovered fingers on his cheek? Was that skin-to-skin contact enough for them both here, in this hospital?
My heart, hurting for my own son, ached for her too.
The elevator disgorged DI Bennett and me onto the fourth floor.
The decor was wincingly bright, themed in blue and yellow, and featuring aquatic motifs, but somehow all of that felt hopeful; it made my sense of anticipation swell.
In the vestibule outside the elevator doors, where the floor-to-ceiling windows offered us a tumbling, chaotic cityscape view of Bristol, DI Bennett told me that he’d been in the woods with Ben. He couldn’t quite meet my eye, but he held open a door for me and then guided me along the corridor with a light hand on my elbow that was touching if not welcome.
I was met in the corridor outside Ben’s ward by two doctors, who politely ushered me into a room. A nurse was there. She offered me a cup of tea. The chink of china was the only sound in the room as everybody waited for her to pour it.
Ben had been close to death when they found him, they explained to me, his core body temperature dangerously cold, but they’d warmed him up, and he was stable. Battered and bruised, very weak, but stable.
Relief and happiness that he was alive overwhelmed any trepidation I might have felt. They could scarcely hold me back.
‘He’s still in a dangerous condition,’ they wanted to tell me before they let me see him. ‘Do you understand that?’
I said I did. I left the tea to go cold on the table.
Do you want me to describe our reunion?
I can tell you that a nurse was outside the door of Ben’s room and that her hand reached out to touch mine when I arrived, just brushed it lightly, even though we were strangers. We exchanged no words but she held the door open for me.
JIM
By the time we got back to Kenneth Steele House, Woodley and I mud-stained and soaking wet from the woods, Fraser had just gone into interview with Joanna May. They’d picked her up at Bristol Airport waiting for a flight out.
We heard everything second hand. The incident room was fairly buzzing with the news. Relief had broken out across everybody’s faces, though there was an undercurrent of muttering that Benedict Finch was seriously unwell, that it was a wait and see job. Nobody was celebrating properly because of that, nobody wanted to.