The Child Who

22

He had not planned to be here. He had been awake from three and in his car by five and here, from seven, only by an accident of his subconscious. For some time he had sat, in the cinch of his seat belt and with the engine mumbling, until he had overcome his reluctance to test the silence. At first it had been consuming – overwhelming, almost – but it fissured after a moment and the world outside became audible through the cracks: the sleepy groan of the sign on the roadside wall of the pub; gulls or gannets, not yet in full voice but clearing their throats once in a while as they sketched shapes against the pallid blue sky; the river, beyond the bank bordering the car park, bloated from the rain and spilling itself either side. And the cold. Leo could hear it, somehow. Scratching its icy fingers against the windscreen and beckoning him from the waning warmth of the car’s interior.

He released his seat belt, let it slide across his chest. He tugged his woollen hat below his ears and searched the car seat next to him for his gloves. Beneath the maps and the flyers and the half-eaten sandwiches wrapped in foil, he found only the left. The right was not on the floor either, nor tucked down the side of the seat, so Leo settled for wearing one.

The air, unexpectedly, was still. The sign continued to creak and the treetops continued to lurch but where Leo had stopped the car he was sheltered from the wind by the walls of the pub. It was as cold as he had feared, however, and he drew the zip of his anorak tight to his chin. He checked about, as though uncertain in which direction to walk, though he had known what route he would take, really, the moment it had registered where he had arrived. He drove his hands deep into his pockets and crunched across the gravelled car park in the direction of the river.

He suspected he was being watched. Not because he felt it, in the hairs on his neck or otherwise, but because it was inconceivable his presence was not being tracked. He had seen her every day, the landlord had said. Every school day, at least. From his morning spot by the window in the kitchen, he noticed everything that passed his pub between just gone seven until just about nine. Which was not a lot, as it happened. And if he had noticed Felicity on the day she was killed – if he knew, as he did now, that he had been the last person, but one, to see her alive – how could he fail to be watching on every day that followed?

Leo wondered what the landlord – Lodge? Loach? – would be thinking of him if he were watching. Whether he would assume Leo was a journalist, slower or more persistent than all the others, or some morbid breed of tourist, of which he had no doubt also seen plenty. Leo glanced towards the building, to the windows most likely to belong to the kitchen, but he saw only blackness cast back; the glint, on the upper floor, of the freshly dawned sun.

He turned his back to the pub and crossed the footbridge, his heavy winter boots unleashing what felt like a localised earthquake. On the far side he turned south, just as Felicity had, but hesitated when he reached the stile. Beyond, the path tapered and curved out of sight. It was the same mix of mud and grit as the ground on which he stood but somehow the space beyond seemed a different country. It was as though the stile were a border; a crossing into somewhere wild. Although if Leo had learnt anything in the past few weeks it was that such clear delineations, in this world, did not exist.

With his ungloved hand, he grasped the post, in the same place Felicity would have had to grasp. He stepped and hoisted his leg and dropped down onto the other side. He tugged at his coat where it had ridden up and, wincing against the headwind, trudged on.

He was looking for his daughter. It was what he told himself. Because it was logical, in a way, that of all places he should be looking here. He was being punished – Ellie was – for what Daniel had done to Felicity. Was it not reasonable, then, that he should look for parallels, for clues in Felicity’s fate as to Ellie’s? Felicity was found along this stretch of river, not far from where Daniel had caught up with her. She was killed at this time of day and her body discovered almost two weeks after she went missing, just as two weeks had passed since Ellie’s disappearance. There had been a search, for both girls, that at first had yielded nothing. The parents had been through denial, anger, desperation, grief. So it was time. Wasn’t it? According to the rules by which Ellie’s abductor was playing, the game was up and Leo had lost. Ellie had. Leo knew that already and yet he did not – which was why he was here, now, tracking Felicity’s path in search of his daughter.

Not logical, then. Not remotely. But even with such a brittle thread he was able to bind what Daniel had inflicted on Felicity with what was being done to his daughter. And was that not, after all, the real reason he was here? To assuage his guilt. To displace it with anger. To cast Daniel in the same light as the man who had taken Ellie and excuse his failure to face up to the boy he had once considered his ward. Because if Leo had been wrong to feel sorry for the boy – if he accepted that he had been wrong – how much easier would it be to accept that the fate awaiting Daniel was right?

He was looking for his daughter. It was what he told himself. It was true because it would always be true and if there was a chance he would find her then that was all the logic, brittle or otherwise, he needed.

He saw nothing. The riverside, unsurprisingly, was deserted. But it was not quite so cut off as Leo had expected, even this far from the city centre. There was road noise, for instance, faint but incessant. And on the hills to the north, buildings were visible: student dorms, mainly, with only the majority of the windows shrouded. There were dog tracks in the mud; horse prints, too. People used this path, though perhaps less these days than before.

At a bench, Leo paused. He did not sit but read: that Tom had ‘fucked Natasha’, that ‘exstacy’ ruled, that Exeter was a ‘shitwhole’, that Plymouth FC played like ‘flids’. The bench was a noticeboard, though most of what was written, to Leo’s eye, was undecipherable. He imagined Daniel seated sideways, scratching some remark on the plasticised wood. Although, given the boy’s state of mind, a comment seemed somehow too constructive. There were gouges – chiselled scores that seemed estimable only by their depth – and these were more likely to have been Daniel’s work. Perhaps that was what he had been doing, here, until Felicity passed, the day that had cost them their lives.

He was a killer. His life be damned. Would Leo wish to spare the man who had taken Ellie should the choice ever – please, God – be his to make? Would Leo urge mercy, understanding, compassion when the victim was his daughter and not a stranger’s? Would he care about why then?

Maybe not.

Certainly not.

But it was different. Wasn’t it?

It was different because Daniel was a child. Not old enough, in the eyes of a government he was too young to choose, to buy cigarettes, have sex, get a tattoo: to make any mistake but the most heinous. And, more than a child, he was a victim. He had been failed and failed again. That he had killed had been not just his crime but his parents’, his schoolteachers’, his social workers’, his peers’. To greater and lesser degrees, of course, but was condemnation, in this context, anything other than self-exoneration? Why should Daniel pay the price, exclusively, without understanding, when he had pulled the trigger on a gun someone else had placed in his hand?

And yet.

And yet, this man who had Ellie: what was he but a child grown up? A victim himself, probably, but one who had managed to survive in the world a little longer. Not sane, clearly, but not in care, not cared for. Someone else who has fallen through the gaps but further, harder. Should it therefore have been his parents who were held to account? Or his parents’ parents? At some point, surely, there was a line to be drawn.

Maybe the victims should decide. Felicity’s parents, in the girl’s case; Leo, Megan in Ellie’s. That seemed right. It seemed just. Except Leo knew what he would choose were he ever to be placed in that position. He knew what he would have done to the man, would do to him himself were he afforded the opportunity. Everything society wished on Daniel – what the crowds outside the courtroom were clamouring for; what the newspapers in their columnising sought to incite – he would visit tenfold on this man, whoever he was, whatever his story, however he might seek to explain why. And such would be Leo’s right. It would be right. Given how good it would surely feel, how could it be anything but?

From the bench, Leo edged closer to the bank. The water, below him, was as grey and impenetrable as stone. It did not seem to be moving but Leo knew enough by now not to be fooled. He knew what the river might swallow, how reluctant it was to discharge what it caught.

He continued his walk, careful of his footing on the uneven ground but not as careful, perhaps, as he might have been. He did not want to fall. It would not matter, particularly, if he did.

There was the sound of something flapping, cracking, in the wind. Leo turned, spooked, but there was nothing behind him but where he had come from. The sound came again and this time he caught its bearing. There: the tree. An ash, ashen and cankered, its only foliage a strip of blue and white barrier tape left behind by the police. It leapt, then wilted, then leapt again.

He had arrived.

The place – the scene – was as empty of life as any other he had passed that morning. Of life, or otherwise. Everything except the remnant of tape had been swept aside by the wind, washed down by the rain. It was clearer here than it perhaps should have been. No litter or junk as further up the river; nothing that had not already been bagged and consigned to an evidence room.

Leo wiped at his eyes. It was this wind, he told himself. He turned against it and wiped his eyes once more.

Back then. Or head on? It was hard to decide when there were no pros, no cons, nothing on which to balance reason. And anyway his reason felt used up. Worse, it felt useless. Left, right, this way, that. He was floundering, whichever way he turned. He had been floundering, in truth, since his father had died. Looking back when he should have been looking forwards. Looking in when he should have been looking out. Doubting what he had accomplished and ensuring, in doing so, that the one thing he had achieved would crumble, soon enough, into nothing.

What was he doing here – really? What, in his search, did he actually expect to find?

A way out.

Escape.

The freedom to cast Daniel aside.

There was the hope, of course, that the boy’s life would be the price of his daughter’s. That it would be enough for him – whoever he was, this faceless stranger with a beard. That Daniel pleading guilty would be the key to his daughter’s chains.

But he did not believe it. If he did, he would have made the exchange in an instant. Take him. Take my limbs too if that’s the price, just give me back my heart.

Not hope, then. It was, he realised, fear that was driving his search – his flight, rather, from a truth he had carried with him all along.

Ellie was lost. Daniel was too. In failing one, Leo had sacrificed them both.