What She Knew

You and law enforcement are partners in pursuit of a common goal – finding your lost or abducted child – and as partners, you need to establish a relationship that is based on mutual respect, trust, and honesty.

‘When Your Child Is Missing: A Family Survival Guide’, Missing Kids USA Parental Guide, US Department of Justice, OJJDP Report

WEB PAGE – www.whereisbenedictfinch.wordpress.com

WHERE IS BENEDICT FINCH? For the curious…

FOOD FOR THOUGHT

Posted at 04.47 by LazyDonkey, on Thursday, 25 October 2012

On Monday, 22 October, police discovered a bag of clothing in Leigh Woods near Bristol.

They belonged to Benedict Finch.

According to his mother, they were the clothes he was wearing when he disappeared.

That’s why police haven’t issued a description of what he’s wearing.

Because they don’t know.

Because they’ve got to take the mother’s word for it.

Would you?

RACHEL

I slept the night in Ben’s bed again, inhaling the perfect smell of him, worrying that it was fading away. I couldn’t think of sleeping anywhere else.

When I woke up my body ached, crying out for proper sustenance, which it hadn’t had for days. I could feel my hip bones protruding where they hadn’t before, my stomach concave.

My eyes drank in what they could in the dim light before dawn.

I could see Ben’s posters, his Dr Who figurines, the silhouette of his piled-up boxes of Lego.

I could just make out the dark stain on his carpet where he’d left a felt tip pen with its lid off and I remembered how cross I’d been with him when he did it.

It had been our first week in the house, one of the first weeks in years when I’d had to wonder how I was going to pay for everything, now that I wasn’t cushioned by John’s salary. I’d shouted at Ben, and he’d cried. Had he thought, I’d raged at him, how many hours somebody would have to work to pay for a carpet like that? Had he? Did he realise what life was like for most people? I’d been so angry.

The memory was a sharp pain. It made me sit up and pull a cushion to myself, hunch over it, and cry with great gulping sobs. It made me detest my previous self-absorption and shallowness. It made me wonder whether I’d been everything I could be to Ben, especially in the past year. Whether I’d let him down terribly, filtering his needs through my own, letting my anger and depression seep between us, where it shouldn’t have been.

I couldn’t forgive myself.

It was a noise from outside that got me out of Ben’s bed to stand at the window. It was the creak of a fence, the thump of a landing. In my back garden was a man; he was standing in the shadows, beside my studio, half concealed by shrubbery, but only half. He wore a dark coat and a beanie hat. A camera obscured his face, its long lens trained on the back windows of my house. Kitchen first then a slow tilt up towards me. He was scavenging, like the fox. I stepped back, snapped Ben’s bedroom curtains shut. From behind the curtain I pounded on the window.

‘Get out!’ I shouted. ‘Go away!’

My sister ran into the room. She moved me aside and peered through the curtains to see the shadow of him disappearing over the fence into my neighbour’s garden. The stairs rumbled as she rushed down and outside to confront him, but he’d gone.

Out the front the rest of the press pack feigned ignorance. As I watched, standing back from the window in my own bedroom, shaking from cold, Nicky went out into the street in her rosebud print nightie, hair greasy and wild, nipples on show, goose bumps on her flesh and told them what she thought of them.

‘You are vandalising our family!’ she shouted and her words echoed up and down the quiet street, interrupted only by the mechanical dawn chorus of the camera motor drives.

JIM

Sometimes on a case you get a bit of information that feels electric, like static under the skin, especially when it’s very unexpected.

I was awake before 6 am, feeling bruised from my dream at first, because it had lingered with me into the morning, and got mixed up with the tiredness I felt, and the disappointment that we weren’t making as much progress as we’d have liked.

But that didn’t last long, because I checked my phone and saw an email that had just arrived very late the night before from one of the blokes we had digging up background on people.

It was a new bit of information, and it changed what we knew about somebody close to Benedict, and to be sure that I acted on it properly, I knew I had to damp down my feeling of excitement and follow procedure. I had to make sure I did things right.

So in order to do that, I had four conversations before I paid a visit to Rachel Jenner’s house that morning.

6.15 am: FRASER

I paced around my bedroom, waiting for her to answer. She picked up quickly.

‘Jim,’ she said. ‘I’m hoping there’s a good reason for this. You do know I bite the heads off orphans before I’ve had my first coffee?’

‘Nicola Forbes,’ I said.

‘What of her?’

‘She hasn’t been entirely honest with us. Understatement.’

I gave her a synopsis.

‘OK, you’ve got me interested. I’ll see you in my office in an hour.’

‘If you don’t mind, boss, I’ll go and talk to John Finch first.’

‘Do you think you should talk to Rachel Jenner first?

‘My feeling is that she doesn’t know about this.’

‘OK. Keep me posted.’

6.45 am: EMMA

I was up and dressed by now, one espresso down, and the Bialetti foaming on the hob again already, because although I was more fired up than I had been for days I’ll admit I was feeling my lack of sleep just a touch, and I needed to drive that feeling back, so I could stay on the ball completely.

Emma was on the sofa and groggy as hell, her forehead all scrunched up as she tried to fight her way back to consciousness from a deep sleep. I knelt down beside her, whispered that I’d made her a cup of coffee, and held it near her face so she could smell it. When she’d managed to open her eyes, I filled her in on what I’d learned. That woke her up properly, like a shot of adrenalin straight into the arm.

7 am: Ex-DI TALBOT

Ex-DI Talbot was the man who’d sent me the information. Officially, he was retired, but now and then he came in to work on cases as a civilian when extra bodies were needed. We always wanted him on a case because he was a proper bloodhound. He’d been digging into background on the individuals closest to Ben, and he’d stumbled on this information about Nicola Forbes. I wanted every detail from him. I wanted to hear it from him directly; to be sure I hadn’t misinterpreted his email.

8.30 am: JOHN FINCH

The last was John Finch. When he opened the door to his house he was in checked pyjama bottoms and a crumpled T-shirt, a pair of reading glasses pushed up onto his head. His knees buckled and I realised I should have called ahead.

‘I’m sorry, sir,’ I said. ‘There’s no news on Benedict’s whereabouts just yet, but if you wouldn’t mind, I would like to have a word with you about Nicola Forbes.’

He regained his composure impressively well. The man had nerves of steel. By the time his wife had reached the bottom of the stairs in the hallway behind him, wrapping a white dressing gown around herself, he had pulled the door open further and invited me in graciously.

RACHEL

Nicky opened the door. It was mid-morning, and DI Clemo was standing on the doorstep with Zhang.

‘Is there news?’ Nicky asked. It was all any of us ever seemed to say to each other. It was starting to sound pathetic to me, as if we would be punished just a little bit more each time we asked it, as if there were a vengeful God somewhere up there, counting each display of misplaced optimism.

There wasn’t any news. Clemo said that they were here to ‘have a chat’, though something in his tone of voice suggested otherwise. It made me feel wary, but Nicky seemed oblivious to it.

‘I could have used a little bit of notice,’ she said, ‘to get properly prepared for you, but I’m delighted you’ve made time to talk. We’re so very grateful. We’ve got so much to ask.’

She pulled some papers together, and tapped at her laptop, looking for a document.

‘Here it is,’ she said. ‘I’ve got a list here. It’s roughly broken into two categories: questions we have about the investigation, and suggested actions to help in the search for Ben. Do you have a preference for which we should start with? And how would you like your tea? Or would you prefer coffee?’

I was watching Clemo and Zhang. He was waiting for Nicky to finish. Zhang looked at her notebook, which she’d laid neatly on the table in front of her, then glanced sideways at Clemo. Whatever they were here to say, he was going to be the one to say it, and I was becoming certain that it wasn’t to discuss Nicky’s wish list.

‘Coffee, please,’ he said. Zhang wanted some too.

As Nicky filled a cafetière with boiling water and set it down in front of us, Clemo watched her in a way that made frost settle on my skin.

‘From our point of view,’ she said, ‘this is so valuable. I’ve been doing some research, as you can see -’ she smiled at them – ‘and everywhere it says that there’s a much higher chance of success in finding the child if there’s a close relationship between law enforcement and the family. So – thank you. So much. Help yourselves to milk and sugar.’ She set down a sugar bowl and a small china jug. Steam rose from its contents. She’d warmed the milk.

DI Clemo opened his notebook and had a quick look inside it. He closed it again. Nicky finally heard the silence.

‘I’m so sorry,’ she said. ‘I’m gabbling, aren’t I? Sorry.’ She pulled out a chair, sat down and looked attentively at Clemo and Zhang.

Clemo cleared his throat before he spoke. ‘Do either of you know of a couple called Andrew and Naomi Bowness?’

I shook my head. ‘No.’

‘Nicky?’ he asked my sister.

Her face had emptied of colour, instantly. It was extraordinary.

‘Oh God no,’ she said, and the tendons on her neck appeared stretched and odd as she looked first at me and then back at Clemo, searching our faces for something. She stood up abruptly but didn’t seem to know what to do then.

‘This will be easier if you can sit down and talk it through with us,’ said Clemo.

‘No,’ said Nicky. ‘Don’t do this.’ Her hands were clasped together, the edges of her fingers white from the pressure of her grasp.

‘Please sit,’ Clemo insisted.

She didn’t sit; she crumpled back into her chair, as if he’d sunk his fist into her stomach.

‘What about their son, Charlie Bowness?’ asked Clemo in a tone that seemed carefully controlled to sound light. He adjusted his chair, moving it just a little closer to Nicky. She wouldn’t look at him.

‘Nicky?’ he asked. ‘You know who they are, don’t you?’

‘You know I do,’ she whispered.

‘And you?’ he asked me. ‘Do you know?’

‘I’ve never heard of them,’ I said.

I was transfixed at the sight of my sister so vulnerable and defenceless. I was aware that I should probably move, and go to her, but there was a ghastly momentum in the room now, and it felt unstoppable.

‘She doesn’t know,’ said my sister. ‘She hasn’t got a clue and that’s the way it should be.’ Hatred had crept into her voice, and it was directed at Clemo.

He persisted. ‘And what about Alice and Katy Bowness? Do you know who they are?’

Nicky began to shake her head violently.

‘Alice and Katy Bowness,’ he repeated. ‘Do you know who they are?’ He spoke slowly, giving each word space and a weight, as if it were a rock being dropped into water.

She looked right at him, and it seemed to cost her an enormous effort to do that. Defiance and defeat waged war in her expression. She spoke her next words quietly. ‘I know who they are.’

‘Have you heard of them?’ he asked me.

‘No!’ I said. ‘Who the hell are they? Have they got Ben?’

‘Are you sure you haven’t heard of them?’

‘No! She hasn’t! She’s telling the truth,’ said my sister.

Clemo remained impassive. He contemplated me, and then my sister, in turn. I felt my chest tighten.

‘Will you tell her, or will I?’ he said to Nicky.

‘You bastard.’

Zhang started to speak but Clemo held a hand up to silence her.

‘Careful,’ he said to Nicky.

‘You’re frightening me,’ I said. ‘I don’t understand.’

Nicky turned towards me. I was sitting at right angles to her, at the head of the table. She wanted to take my hand and I let her.

‘Who are these people?’ I said.

‘Andrew and Naomi Bowness…⁠’ said Nicky. It was hard for her to go on. A sob escaped her. ‘I’m sorry, Rachel,’ she said. Her gaze flicked back to Clemo and he nodded at her, willing her to continue. She placed one trembling hand upon the other, so that my hand was buried beneath both of hers. I saw in her eyes that some kind of battle was lost.

‘Rachel,’ she said, ‘Andrew and Naomi Bowness are our parents. Our mum and dad.’

‘What do you mean? No they’re not. That’s not what our parents are called.’ I tried to pull my hand away but Nicky was gripping it now.

‘It is. Those are the real names of our parents,’ my sister said. Her eyes were begging me to understand but I didn’t, not really, not yet.

‘And Charlie Bowness?’ I said.

‘He…⁠’ She was welling up again, but she got herself under control. ‘He was our brother.’

‘Brother?’ I’d never had a brother. ‘And the others? I suppose they’re our sisters are they?’

‘Tell her everything,’ said Clemo.

He’d broken Nicky, drained the fight out of her. In her expression I saw terrible suffering, terrible vulnerability and, most frightening of all, what looked like a plea for forgiveness.

‘Alice and Katy Bowness are us. Those were our names before they were changed. We were, we are, Alice and Katy Bowness.’

Clemo briskly pulled something from between the pages of his notebook. It was a newspaper cutting.

If he hadn’t showed it to me there and then I’m not sure that I’d have believed any of them. I’d always been told that my parents died in a car accident. You could tell the story in an instant and I’d been doing that for years: our parents died in a head-on collision with a lorry. It had been nobody’s fault, just a tragic accident. The steering on the lorry was proved to be faulty. My parents were cremated and their ashes scattered. There was no headstone. End of story.

Except that apparently it wasn’t.

I wasn’t who I thought I was, and nor was Nicky.

Clemo handed me a photocopy of a newspaper article from 30 March 1982, thirty years ago. There was a photograph of a couple that I recognised as my parents. My Aunt Esther had had one photograph of them on her mantelpiece and this grainy image showed the same two people. The difference was that in this image they were with three children.

I recognised my sister. She stood beside our mother. I could see a baby, a chubby little thing of about one year old in a smocked dress, and I supposed that she could be me. I didn’t recognise the boy who sat in the middle of the picture. Around four years old, he was so like Ben it took my breath away. He had the same messy hair and balanced features, the same posture and the same grin, the one that could light up your day, and the same smattering of freckles across his nose. He was nestled between my parents. It was a lovely image, a perfect family.

The headline beside it told another story:

BATTEN DISEASE FAMILY IN FATAL DEATH LEAP

I scanned the article, snippets of it jumping out at me: ‘Local couple Andrew and Naomi Bowness leaped to their deaths… driven to the act by lack of support for their terminally ill son… no grandparents surviving… friends and neighbours expressed surprise… had coped so well… feel sorry for their two surviving daughters… wanted to end his suffering.’

I looked at Nicky who was watching me, stricken.

‘They killed themselves?’

‘And Charlie.’

The way she said his name, the tenderness in those two words, the loss, told me that it was Charlie who she mourned above all.

‘But what about us?’

Nicky looked away.

‘Why did they leave us?’

‘Don’t you think I’ve been asking myself that all my life?’

‘And why didn’t you tell me?’

She didn’t answer.

I looked at the article again, and stared at the photograph.

Clemo cleared his throat. ‘There was a report from the coroner. Would you like to know what it said?’

‘I’ve read it,’ said Nicky.

‘I want to know,’ I said.

He took another sheet of paper from his notebook, ran his eyes down it.

‘It says that your brother Charlie was diagnosed with Batten disease at the age of five and that his condition began to deteriorate rapidly after that. His diagnosis came about a year after you were born, Rachel, at around the time that this picture was taken, but he was already experiencing some of the symptoms.’

‘He looks OK in the photo,’ I said. He did. He was lovely: sunny-looking, vibrant, snug in his family’s embrace.

‘He’s not,’ said Nicky. ‘He was beginning to lose his sight. Look at the photo. You’ll see that he’s not looking at the camera properly. He’s looking above it. It’s because he only had peripheral vision when that was taken. He had to look out of the bottom of his eye to see anything.’

She was right. The little boy was staring at a point that was above the camera.

‘He was totally blind soon after that,’ Nicky said. ‘And then he stopped being able to walk and stopped being able to talk, and he had to be fed with a tube because he couldn’t swallow and he had epileptic fits. The disease took him away from us piece by piece.’

‘You loved him.’

‘I worshipped him.’

Her words seemed to hang for a moment between us, and when she spoke again it was hushed.

‘He didn’t deserve it. I would’ve helped them. I would’ve helped them to look after him until the end, but they couldn’t stand his suffering. Mum blamed herself.’

‘Why?’

‘It’s an inherited condition.’

‘But we don’t have it.’ I was struggling to understand.

‘Not every child gets it. It’s a matter of luck.’

‘So they jumped off a cliff with him? That’s so extreme.’

Nicky simply nodded. She’d turned her head away now, and I could only see her profile, as she looked fixedly towards the dim winter light that filtered through the kitchen window, washing her features with grey.

‘But why would you do that if you had two other children?’ I asked.

Clemo replied, ‘The coroner’s report does shed a bit of light on that. Apparently, because the condition was inheritable, they had had you tested. They were waiting for the results when they took their lives.’

‘But I’m fine,’ I said. ‘Why didn’t they wait for the results?’

‘Your mother had convinced herself, and your father, that you would not be fine. By then she was, as far as we can gather, extremely depressed and unstable. She told her sister, your aunt Esther, that she would not be able to cope any longer if you were also diagnosed with Batten disease, and your father had never coped well. The report mentions that she spoke of feeling very isolated. There was a stigma to mental and physical disability in those days and your mother was not very emotionally strong. The coroner concluded that the strain of caring for Charlie had affected your parents profoundly. They felt that they had no option.’

‘It makes no sense.’

‘Things don’t always make sense,’ said Clemo, ‘especially when people are under duress. We see things you wouldn’t believe.’

I resented the way he was trying to reassure me, as if he hadn’t just turned my world upside down, and I didn’t want his words to distract me, because there was something else I needed to ask.

‘Why did our names get changed?’

Nicky said, ‘Aunt Esther thought it would be better. She didn’t want it to be hanging over us, or herself either. She thought people would judge us, that they’d say it was a shameful thing. Luckily, for us anyway, the Falklands War started four days later, so that article was all the press attention our little family story got. The papers were full of battleships and submarines after that. Better to be safe than sorry, though, Esther said, and social services approved the idea of having new names. I chose them, you know! I renamed us!’

She forced a sarcastic enthusiasm into her voice but there was nothing in her expression to suggest that this fact actually gave her any pleasure.

I picked up the article and studied the photograph. I’d never seen an image of myself as a baby before. I was chubby-faced with a curl in my hair that I never knew I’d had. I was balanced on my father’s knee, with fat little arms protruding from my dress. My hands were blurry, as though I might have been clapping. My sister stood beside my mother in the photograph. She wore shorts and a T-shirt and her hand rested casually on my mother’s shoulder. Her feet were bare and she had the skinny coltish legs of a prepubescent child. She was smiling widely. When I studied the faces of my parents I felt a new emotion: a stab of betrayal. They’d been willing to leave me. Whether I was healthy or ill, they’d relinquished care of me at just one year old. They weren’t taken from me by chance. They’d abandoned me and they’d abandoned Nicky too, in the most final way possible.

I swallowed and just that small physical reflex felt like an effort. I felt as if the blood had drained from me, just as it had from my sister minutes earlier, and with it any strength that I might have had left, any fight. I was a husk, robbed of all the things that had made me who I am, all the things that had made me vital.

‘Am I Alice or Katy?’ I asked.

‘Katy.’ It was a whisper and Nicky’s face contorted tearfully around it, mirroring mine.

In the photo, my parents’ expressions were impossible to read. They were both smiling for the camera and I tried in vain to imagine what was actually going through their minds. I looked at my brother. He sat in the centre, cocooned by their bodies: a terminally ill little boy who was never going to get to live a proper life. I wondered whether they’d had the diagnosis before this photograph was taken, or were they just worried about his eyesight at this stage, thinking that was bad enough and having no idea what horrors lay just around the corner for their little boy. A boy who looked just like Ben.

I said to Clemo, ‘Why are you telling me this now?’

He addressed Nicky. ‘We spoke to your sister’s ex-husband this morning.’

She looked at him warily and raised her chin slightly, with a touch of defiance. She let go of my hand. The light in the room fluctuated, growing darker and more riddled with shadows as the clouds lowered outside.

‘I know what you’re going to say, and it’s bullshit,’ she said.

‘What makes you say that?’

‘I know what you’re trying to do, but you’re wrong.’

‘What am I trying to do?’

‘I don’t have to listen to this.’

‘I think we both know that you do.’

She crossed her arms, stared down at the table.

I sat in a state of pure, simple shock. I knew well enough by now that you could lose your child in just a few minutes, but I was shocked into silence by the new knowledge that in a similar space of time you could also gain and lose a brother who was the image of that child, and parents who were more imperfect than any version of them that I’d ever imagined.

Clemo spoke to Nicky: ‘John Finch told us that when Ben was born, he was concerned that you might have what could be described as an unhealthy interest in Ben. Would you like to comment on that?’

‘You revolting man,’ said my sister. ‘You haven’t got a clue who’s got Ben so you’ve decided to pick on me. Easier to get to someone close to home, is it? Stops you having to do so much work?’

Clemo’s gaze never left her face. ‘Would you care to comment?’ he asked her. ‘I’d be very interested to hear what your response might be.’

‘I’m sure you would,’ she replied.

‘I expect your sister would as well,’ he said.

Nicky looked at me. ‘I’ve tried so hard, and for so long, to protect you. I just wanted you to have a life where you didn’t feel rejected. I wanted it to be straightforward for you. But you were so…⁠’ She searched for a word, frustrated.

‘What?’

‘Difficult, and ungrateful.’

‘For what? Ungrateful for what?’

‘And irresponsible! You never understood anything. You just took it all for granted. You did what you wanted to do, when you wanted to do it. You had no burden. You had no loss to bear.’

‘I had the loss of my parents to bear.’ I said this quietly, because I understood that she’d had more to cope with, but she was angry now, and so was I.

‘You were clueless! Totally clueless!’

‘How could I have been any other way, if you didn’t tell me anything? That’s not my fault.’

She didn’t respond to that, she had more to get off her chest. ‘You never thanked me.’

‘For what?’

‘For protecting you.’

‘How could I have known?’

‘They never thanked me either.’

Suddenly she lost her momentum, as if that statement summed up the hopelessness of it all.

Clemo leaned in towards her. ‘Who never thanked you?’

‘Mum and Dad.’

‘What did they never thank you for?’ he asked.

‘For loving Charlie, for watching him when they’d had enough, for making him smile when they were too tired, when they couldn’t cope any longer.’

Her eyes were glassy with loss. His were intent.

‘Nicky. Were you jealous when Rachel had Ben?’

She snapped an answer at him as if he were running through a questionnaire.

‘Yes, I was jealous, yes.’

‘But you had the girls,’ I said.

‘I wouldn’t expect you to understand,’ she said.

‘Why were you jealous?’ said Clemo.

‘Because he looked like Charlie, right from the start. All I could see when I looked at him was Charlie.’

‘Did you feel that Rachel might not be able to care for Ben properly?’ said Clemo.

‘I was worried,’ she said simply, and she turned to face me. ‘You were so feckless, you know, so young?’

My sister spoke as if she’d rehearsed these words for years. Her speech gathered pace, as if she were confessing something.

‘You messed about for years, you never bothered with schoolwork although they said you could have done brilliantly if you’d tried. You never cared about anything, and then all of a sudden you got John. God knows how, because you were pissing your life away, partying all the time, and suddenly everything was so perfect and what had you done to deserve it? Nothing.’

‘We fell in love,’ I said, but she took no notice. She couldn’t seem to stop herself now.

‘I knew you’d have a boy the minute you told me you were pregnant. And when he was born and I went to see him and I held him, I saw Charlie in him. It was as if he was Charlie, reborn. He was so precious, and I wasn’t sure you’d be able to look after him.’

‘So you called John Finch,’ said Clemo.

‘Just to check that she was coping, that she was doing the right thing.’

‘Mr Finch says that you were rather insistent with your phone calls.’

‘Well he wouldn’t give me any information!’

I interrupted them. ‘John never said anything to me.’

They ignored me, their eyes were locked, Nicky’s gaze furious, his eyes hard like ice; their terrible dialogue unpicking yet more of the stitches that had held my life together. I was relegated to the role of spectator.

‘Nicky,’ he said, ‘did you want to have Ben for yourself? So you could look after him properly?’

‘That’s the thing,’ she said, ‘I didn’t. I didn’t want her to have him, but I didn’t want him either. He would just have reminded me every day what I’d lost, and that’s why you’re wrong.’

‘Wrong about what?’

‘For pity’s sake!’ She laughed. It was a shrill, upsetting sound. ‘Stop playing games with me! What would I do with him? Where do you think I would keep him?’

‘I think you might like to have him. I think you’ve always wanted him.’

The baldness of this, the slow, calm way he said it, made my sister pause and collect herself before she spoke again, as if she realised she couldn’t combat his accusations with emotion alone.

‘Well, you’re not sure, are you? If you’d got any actual evidence you’d have arrested me, so this is a pathetic attempt to get me to confess to something I haven’t done.’

Now she leaned across the table towards him.

‘You made me tell my sister about our family. That was low. You’re not getting anything else. I’ve told you that I’ve got nothing to do with Ben’s disappearance and that’s all you need to know. The rest is private. Why don’t you get out there and start looking for him before it’s too late?’

She got up and went into the garden, slamming the kitchen door behind her. Zhang went after her.

I was left sitting at the table with Clemo.

He cleared his throat. ‘I’m sorry to land this on you like this. I hope you understand that we have to follow everything up.’

I just stared at him, wondering why anybody would ever do a job like his and believing for the first time that he would do anything it took to find Ben.

JIM

Addendum to DI James Clemo’s report for Dr Francesca Manelli.

Transcript recorded by Dr Francesca Manelli.

DI James Clemo and Dr Francesca Manelli in attendance.

Notes to indicate observations on DI Clemo’s state of mind or behaviour, where his remarks alone do not convey this, are in italics.

FM: So if you’re happy to, I’d like to talk about your interview with Ben’s mother and his aunt.

JC: Fire away.

His manner is hard for me to decipher today. He seems more willing than usual to talk but he has a professional mask on too, he’s controlling his emotions.

FM: What an extraordinary revelation. I find it amazing that Nicky Forbes could have kept that information from her sister for all those years.

JC: It wasn’t just her; it was their aunt as well.

FM: How did Rachel Jenner react?

JC: Total shock, obviously. I don’t know what happened just after we left but I can’t imagine it was pretty.

FM: Am I right in thinking that this was a real moment of triumph for you in the case?

JC: Fraser was pleased. Yes. Especially because they’d ruled out Edward Fount, the role-play guy, that same morning.

FM: So you were right about him?

JC: Yep. When Woodley went to pull Fount in – this was while I was with Nicky Forbes – he found him waiting with a woman, another role-play member, and she gave Fount an alibi. They’d gone back to Fount’s flat together after the afternoon in the woods – shagging basically, if you’ll excuse my language – and in spite of the fact that she was nearly twice his age.

FM: And neither of them had mentioned this before because?

JC: Oldest reason in the book: she was married, to the ‘Grand Wizard’ apparently.

FM: Oh my.

JC: Yeah. A bit messy. I won’t repeat what Fraser said when she found out.

He almost smiles.

FM: So you were able to move on from that line of investigation.

JC: Absolutely. Fraser was happy with how things had gone, but she had concerns about how we should handle Nicky Forbes going forward, so she felt that the best course of action would be to re-interview her the following day. Give her and Rachel Jenner time to cool off.

FM: Did Nicky Forbes have an alibi for the Sunday afternoon?

JC: She’d told us that she was at a food fair. A big event, lots of stalls, very busy. It was research for the blog she writes. We sent out DCs to interview all the people she might have had contact with, but they were scattered far and wide, as you might imagine, so we knew we’d need a little time to put together a picture of her movements.

FM: Did you speak to her husband?

JC: Again Fraser felt we should wait on that just a short while. Her strategy was to look into the alibi first, and give the family space while we worked out whether Nicky Forbes could actually be good for it or not.

FM: Did you agree?

JC: Absolutely. You’ve got to fit the pieces into the jigsaw in the right order. Gathering evidence is the single most important objective when you have a suspect. That, and not being sued by your victim’s family. You can’t just apply continual pressure without evidence.

FM: Or you could alienate the family?

JC: Exactly, and they could talk to the press, and so on. You can imagine it and it wouldn’t look good for us. The press had jumped all over the case by then and they’d have been only too ready to have a go at us as well. And, on a practical level, we were nowhere near understanding how the mechanics of an abduction could have worked if Nicky Forbes had carried it out. She had a family in Salisbury so her set-up didn’t look like the perfect profile for a child abduction.

FM: Unless she didn’t want her sister to have Ben, and she’d killed him.

JC: That was one of my hypotheses, and abductors don’t always kill on purpose, sometimes things go wrong and it happens then, but we had to build a proper case before we could act further. I asked Chris Fellowes, the forensic psychologist, to send me his thoughts on Nicky Forbes.

FM: But the profile that your forensic psychologist made for you, the one that fitted Fount so perfectly, hadn’t been much use.

JC: I disagree – we were still considering the non-family abduction as a strong possibility, and that profile could have fitted any number of suspects for that scenario. The thing about the profiles is that you shouldn’t just attach them to one suspect. They’re a resource that you have to use as part of your armoury as a detective. Profiles never solve cases on their own but they can make you think in different ways sometimes, or look at people in a new light. And it’s always good to have another pair of eyes on the case, especially when everyone closely involved is getting tired. You can be in danger of losing perspective.

FM: What was Emma’s view on Nicky Forbes?

JC: To be honest, I didn’t see much of Emma that afternoon. I was too busy holed up with Fraser making a plan.

FM: Did you see her that night?

JC: She said she was knackered. She wanted to go back to her place to get a proper night’s rest and I didn’t blame her for that. I was feeling that way myself. I could have slept on my desk.

FM: But I get the sense you were fired up too.

JC: I was, yes. We all were. Without a doubt. It felt like things were starting to happen.

RACHEL

The immediate aftermath was the first in a series of new body blows.

Nicky swept everything up from the table, all her hard work, gathered it hastily and tried to push it into her bag. Her movements were rough and clumsy.

‘Don’t,’ I said. ‘Please don’t.’

I felt as though she was falling apart right in front of my eyes. I wondered if that’s what it had been like when she first went to Esther’s, to live in the cottage, right after it happened, when I was a baby, when her grief must have been unbearable.

And I realised that in the future I would wonder about everything.

From now on it would be impossible to unpick every detail of my history, every assumption that had led to me building a sense of my own identity, and of Ben’s identity. My past had been crumpled up and thrown into the fire, and I would have to sort through the ashes, with only Nicky as my guide. Nicky, who had lied to me for a very long time; Nicky, who said that she’d lied to protect me; Nicky, who I needed.

‘I should leave,’ she said. ‘You’re better off without me. You know, I would never, ever hurt Ben. Can I just say that? I would never hurt Ben.’

Her distress pushed her voice to an acute pitch, and I went to comfort her.

‘I know you wouldn’t.’

She let her bag slide down her shoulder and onto the table, and the papers spilled back out of it. Her head fell onto my shoulder and her body shook.

Are you surprised at my reaction to her? At my willingness to accept what I’d heard and offer her comfort?

It wasn’t the end of it. Of course it wasn’t. If I think back to that day I can remember the stages I went through. I suppose it was like the stages of grief, although this was different. This was the processing of what felt like a betrayal, this was the seeping away of trust.

After the door had clicked shut behind an adrenalin-pumped Clemo and a Zhang who couldn’t meet my eye for the first time, that first interaction Nicky and I had was of course a reflex, an urge to keep Nicky by me, to deny that anything had changed. She’d been my rock, always, and I couldn’t contemplate any other existence. It wasn’t in my DNA. Or I’d thought it wasn’t.

After that exchange we separated. Nicky unpacking her bag robotically, calling on those massive reserves of strength to anchor her to my table, to keep her going as she delved deeper and deeper into whatever the web had to offer her.

I went to my safe place, to Ben’s room, and I immersed myself in him, as was my habit. It was the only place I felt secure. His bedroom had become my womb.

This was my second stage.

I sank onto the beanbag on the floor of his room and I felt as if I was cast adrift in a small wooden boat, shrouded by a watery grey mist. And suspended within each of the millions of fine droplets that made up the mist, was the news, the bombshell that I’d just heard. And in this stage it simply surrounded me, existing, but not yet understood. And within it I felt baseless, disorientated and lost.

The third state was the inevitable churning of my mind, the processing of what I’d learned, and of its implications, the moment the droplets of mist began to settle on my skin and permeate it. It was when the knowledge became part of me and it was irreversible. I had to face up to it.

It led swiftly to the fourth state.

That was the erosion of my trust, where the droplets on my skin turned to acid and began to burn, producing a feeling that was intense and painful, a pins and needles of the mind and the body, and it was so creepy and unsettling that I couldn’t remain still any longer.

I got out of Ben’s bed and looked out of the window, and I saw Nicky below in my garden with the dog, petting him, encouraging him to pee. They stood on the soggy, tatty lawn by the abandoned relic of Ben’s football goal, the net broken from the frame in places, the grass in front of it worn from where he’d played. I backed away from the window, not so that the press wouldn’t see me, but so that my sister wouldn’t.

And as dusk fell again, wrapping itself around the edges of the day, I ran back through events, until I thought about how I had started the day: the photographer in my garden, Nicky’s anger with him, her outburst on the street, her loyalty.

And then I thought about the previous day, and how it had started with an internet search, and with a laptop that belonged to Nicky, that needed a password, and how that password was the name of my son.

And each intake of breath felt sharp in my lungs and my mind roved further and I thought of Nicky’s discontent with her daughters, and what Clemo said about her wanting a son. And then I thought of her words: ‘It was as if he was Charlie, reborn.’

I began to cry hot, silent tears, and they had sharp edges just like my breath did, and they ran down my cheeks and soaked into Ben’s nunny which I held tightly to my face.

When I heard Nicky’s footsteps on the stairs I got into Ben’s bed, covered myself up, turned away from the door and tried to breathe slowly so she would think I was asleep.

When she put her head around the door of the room and asked if I wanted any food I didn’t answer her.

When she reappeared some minutes later with a tray of supper I still couldn’t look at her, couldn’t speak to her.

‘I just wanted to protect you,’ she said.

She shut the door quietly behind her, respecting my privacy, and all I could feel was a throbbing. It was the pulse of the time since Ben had been missing. And it felt as if it had begun to beat faster.

JIM

Email

From: Christopher Fellowes ‹cjfellowes@gmail.com›

To: James Clemo ‹clemoj@aspol.uk›

25 October 2012 at 21:37

Re: Nicola Forbes

Jim

Good to speak. Fascinating development!

I’ll send you a full report tomorrow but, as agreed, here is a précis:

Psychological markers for predisposition to sociopathic behaviour in Nicola Forbes might include any of the following: tendency to control; affective instability (which could include jealousy and identity diffusion); unnatural interest in Ben – you’ve already mentioned this as a possible, if father is to be believed. Other generalised signs might include obsessive-compulsive spectrum behaviour (OCSD) and/or delusional beliefs (though these can be well hidden).

She’s certainly been quick to be on the scene, which could indicate that she enjoys the attention that the case is bringing the family (just speculation, but maybe an unresolved desire from her earlier experience which was handled so discreetly by the aunt?).

There’s more – I’ll follow up asap with a full report. It’ll be with you end of tomorrow, latest.

Best, Chris

Dr Christopher J Fellowes

Senior Lecturer in Psychology

University of Cambridge

Fellow of Jesus College

Email

From: Corinne Fraser ‹fraserc@aspol.uk›

To: Alan Hayward ‹alan.hayward@haywardmorganlaw.co.uk›

Cc: James Clemo ‹clemoj@aspol.uk›; Giles Martyn ‹martyng@aspol.uk›; Bryan Doughty ‹doughtyb@aspol.uk›

25 October 2012 at 23:06

Blog Warfare

Alan

We’re in need of your services, as the weird and wonderful worldwide web is once again involving itself in our police work. Could you cast your keen legal eye over this blog please: www.whereisbenedictfinch.wordpress.com

You’ll see that it relates to the Benedict Finch case (Operation Huckleberry).

I’ve got two primary concerns.

Firstly, there could be Contempt of Court issues, should we ever get to trial.

Secondly, there’s stuff appearing on there that’s making me nervous because it shouldn’t be in the public domain. We’re concerned that somebody within the investigation (either family or within our organisation) could be authoring the blog or leaking information to it.

What I want to know is can we find out who the author of the blog is, the self-styled ‘LazyDonkey’, and what do we need to do to get it shut down? Is that even possible?

I’m copying this to DS Martyn and Inspector Bryan Doughty from Internal Affairs.

Quick response appreciated, obviously.

Cheers, Corinne