What She Knew

The Prolonged Investigation: This phase in the investigative process occurs when it becomes apparent the child will not be quickly located, most immediate leads have been exhausted… While some observers might view this stage as one of passively waiting for new information to emerge, in reality, it presents an opportunity for law enforcement to restructure a logical, consistent, and tenacious investigative plan eventually leading to the recovery of the child and arrest of the abductor.

Findlay, Preston and Lowery Jr, Robert G (eds.), ‘Missing and Abducted Children: A Law-Enforcement Guide to Case Investigation and Program Management’, Fourth Edition, National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, OJJDP Report, 2011

Researchers reported that abductors seldom ‘stalk’ their victim. However, they are usually very skilled at manipulating and luring children. Those lures commonly involve requests for assistance, to find a lost pet, to claim an emergency, calling the victim by name, posing as an authority figure or soliciting the victim by internet computer chats.

Dalley, Marlene L and Ruscoe, Jenna, ‘The Abduction of Children by Strangers in Canada: Nature and Scope’, National Missing Child Services, National Police Service, Royal Canadian Mounted Police, December 2003

Email

To: Corinne Fraser ‹fraserc@aspol.uk›

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

From: Janie Green ‹greenj@aspol.uk›

28 October 2012 at 08:13

OPERATION HUCKLEBERRY – WIBF BLOG UPDATE

Morning Corinne

Bryan and I have spoken about developments relating to the WIBF blog this morning – much of which he’s asked me not to refer to directly in email – so we’ll speak about that. However, I can say that activity continues on the WIBF blog, in that last night a post appeared suggesting police incompetency. In spite of that we are confident that what we discovered yesterday has taken the sting out of its tail so that while it remains unpleasant and accusatory, no further privileged information was made public.

As of this morning, the blog owner has been contacted by ourselves by email and has been asked to take down the blog. We reminded the blog owner of contempt of court and other legal issues and made it clear that we would take action against them if necessary. We’ve not yet received a response, and we are not overly hopeful of their agreement, because the blog has a rapidly growing number of followers. Best-case scenario might be that the knowledge that we are monitoring extremely closely at least keeps the content somewhat under control, while we look into tracing the identity of the owner from the email address (apparently this could be complicated depending on how smart they’ve been at covering their tracks). However, now that the blog lacks a source of confidential information about the investigation, Bryan, Giles and I all feel that it shouldn’t be a worry to the extent that it was, even if it remains vindictive and aggressive, which, as you’ll see below, seems to be the tone of much of the media this weekend. Anyway, I’ll keep you posted.

Round up of this morning’s press coverage relating to Operation Huckleberry to follow. The supplements are all over it – double spreads etc. – usual mixture of sensible and scurrilous, some editorial and thought pieces too, and Rachel Jenner in particular is still a target.

Looking forward, I’m hopeful that with the blog out of the running or at least under control, we might be able to get some more positive material out there to reinforce our efforts and encourage people to come forward.

Janie Green

Press Officer, Avon and Somerset Constabulary

RACHEL

When dawn came there was no respite from the grip of my night-time fears, because it was Sunday.

One week since Ben went missing.

A lifetime of loss in one week.

And still no news.

I looked at myself in the bathroom mirror, as I brushed my teeth with slow, ineffective strokes, and I didn’t recognise myself.

The police organised a taxi to take me to the hospital. They promised that a squad car would remain outside the house. They promised me that they would protect me.

The police asked the taxi to collect me from the back of my house so the driver didn’t see the press, and work out who I was. The driver was an older man, wearing a Sikh turban, white beard and white eyebrows. I slunk into the back seat behind him.

‘BRI is it?’ he asked.

‘Yes please.’

‘Do you mind which route?’

‘No.’

On the passenger seat beside him was a newspaper, opened out, and I could see a photograph of Ben. He wanted to talk about it.

‘You heard about this little boy then?’

‘Yes,’ I made myself say. I was desperate he shouldn’t recognise me. I pulled my scarf up around my chin, moved my hair so that it obscured my face.

‘Terrible, isn’t it?’

‘Yes it is.’ I pressed myself against the window, staring out as the taxi descended into the city. We were driving through deserted residential streets where the only sign of life was a mangy fox panting sickly in the shelter of an evergreen hedge.

‘My wife, she says the mother’s done it. She can feel it in her bones. That’s what people are saying, you know, the mother’s done it. But you know, I don’t think she did. It’s unnatural, to do that. We had an argument about it last night, you know?’

I could sense he was trying to meet my eye in the mirror, gauge my opinion. I looked away. It was impossible to answer him.

We turned onto Cheltenham Road, abruptly in the city centre now, pubs and bars all shut up on either side of us. A pair of homeless men sat on a stoop together, shrouded in blankets. They were sharing a cigarette. They had bulging red alcoholic faces and broken teeth.

‘The thing is,’ he said, ‘this is what I said to my wife…⁠’

He wanted to give me his wisdom. Perhaps his wife turned away from him at this point last night, wanting to stick to her own view, perhaps he won her over with it.

‘I said to her that if you’ve been called those things, accused like the mother is, you never get over it. That’s the shame of it. If she’s guilty, she deserves it, if she’s innocent, then people have done her wrong.’

We swung around the Bear Pit roundabout, the swift curve of it making my stomach quail, dirty shop windows advertising bridal wear and discount trainers blurring in front of my eyes. Yards ahead, I saw the magistrates’ court, and the hospital buildings.

‘I’ll get out here,’ I said at a red light. ‘Can you stop?’ desperate to escape him, that kind man, before he saw who I was.

‘Are you sure, love?’ Eyes in the mirror again, a frown line above them. ‘Are you OK? Are you sick? You don’t look too well. Sorry, I thought you were visiting somebody, I didn’t know you were sick. Shall I take you to A & E?’

I opened the door while we were at the light, pushed some cash at him, got out. He had to drive on because the light turned green and somebody behind him landed a fist on their horn.

My scarf wound tightly up my face, my hair arranged like a pair of curtains that were mostly shut, in the plate glass outside the hospital entrance my reflection told me I looked like somebody with something to hide.

JIM

Nine o’clock Sunday morning, on Fraser’s instructions, Bennett and I were knocking at a heavy wooden door set in a stone wall on a wide pavement in the posh end of Sea Mills and listening to the sound of birdsong while we waited for a reply.

The woman who opened it had the same flaming red hair as Ben’s teaching assistant. She wore an extravagantly colourful kimono over a pair of pyjamas and had bare legs and feet. Her toes curled in as the cold hit them. She was polite but perturbed. She was Lucas Grantham’s mother.

‘He’s here but he’s still asleep,’ she said, when we asked if we could have a word with him. ‘He got in late last night.’

‘Anybody else at home?’ Bennett asked her.

‘No. Just us. Nobody else lives here.’

The house was unusual, 60s built I’d have guessed, single storey, wrapped in an L-shape around a large garden. Impenetrable looking from the outside, the interior was flooded with light because almost every wall facing the garden was made of glass.

She asked us to wait in a modest-sized sitting room. There was nothing showy about this home apart from the architecture. The furnishings weren’t new and the walls were lined with shelves in cheap brown wood, which carried hundreds of books. Visible across the garden was a room at the end of the house, which looked like an artist’s studio.

In a far corner of the garden was a very large mound, covered in grass, and at one end of it was a corrugated metal door that you reached by walking down a few steps.

‘Do you know what that is?’ Bennett said, in a voice that told me he’d quite like to educate me.

‘It’s an Anderson shelter,’ I said. I wasn’t going to give him the pleasure of engaging in his usual one-upmanship. I’d wanted to do this interview with Fraser but she was still firefighting back at HQ after Emma’s confession. We’d only been out together for half an hour but already I was tolerating Bennett at best.

When Lucas Grantham appeared, his pale skin was whiter than I remembered, freckles running over it like a nasty rash. He wore a crumpled T-shirt, which looked like he’d slept in it, and a pair of tracksuit bottoms.

His mother had dressed herself and Bennett said, ‘Make us a cup of coffee would you, love? While we have a chat with Lucas.’

I winced as I saw pride flicker in her face before she made a calculation and quelled it in the face of our authority. She left us with her son.

The three of us sat down around a low coffee table, and I pulled a photograph from my file and put it down in front of Grantham. It showed his car, crossing the suspension bridge, at 14.30 on Sunday, 21 October, time and date clearly printed on the photograph.

‘Fuck,’ he said. ‘Oh fuck. I told Sal we shouldn’t have done this, I told her.’

‘Done what, son?’ said Bennett.

‘Now you’re going to think that I’ve done something to Ben Finch. Truth is, I don’t even know him very well! I don’t. He’s a nice kid, he’s good at art, but that’s all I know!’

‘Reel it back in, son,’ said Bennett. ‘Reel it back in. Let’s start at the beginning.’

Grantham’s panic was palpable now, hands rubbing up and down along his thighs, clawing at his knees. Eyes darting from Bennett, to me, to the photograph, to the doorway where his mother might reappear.

‘Who’s Sal?’ I asked him.

‘That’s my girlfriend.’

‘The one who gave you the alibi?’

‘Yeah.’

‘The alibi that said that the two of you were at Sal’s flat on the afternoon of Sunday, the twenty-first of October?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Is that true?’

‘No.’ His face twists.

‘Why did you lie, Mr Grantham?’ Bennett again.

‘Because I knew what you’d think.’

‘What would we think?’

‘That it was me that took Ben. Of course you’d think that! I would, anybody would. That’s why Sal helped me get an alibi.’

‘And did you? Did you take Ben Finch?’ I took back the questioning.

‘No!’ He shook his head violently.

‘Did you hurt Ben Finch?’

‘No.’

‘Did you see Ben Finch?’

‘No! I swear it. I wasn’t even in the same bit of the woods as him.’

‘So what were you doing?’

‘I was cycling the trails at Ashton Court.’

‘With anybody?’

‘On my own.’

‘What time did you get home?’

‘About five o’clock. Sal can confirm that.’

‘Sal who helped you fabricate an alibi?’

‘Sorry. I’m sorry.’

‘Do you know we could charge both of you for this?’ I was so angry I could have throttled him.

‘Do you mind, Mr Grantham,’ Bennett said, standing up, moving to the window, ‘if we take a look in your Anderson shelter?’

‘Why? Why would you do that? I was cycling, that’s the truth, it’s the truth I swear it.’

His mother was in the doorway now, as he knew she would be, and she had a tray of mugs in her hands. It wobbled.

‘Oh my God, Lucas,’ she said. ‘What have you done?’

‘Mum, I’ve not done anything. I promise.’

‘God help us,’ she said. ‘You’ve always been secretive, God knows you have, but please tell me you’ve nothing to do with this.’

It wasn’t the display of loyalty you might have expected from a mother. Bennett and I exchanged a glance.

‘Do you think you might be willing to come to the station with us for a bit more of a chat?’ I asked Lucas.

He nodded, his pale eyes cast down, his cheeks flaming.

RACHEL

The hospital receptionist sent me to a ward in the old part of the building. I walked down a corridor that was long and square, an exercise in perspective, with a pair of double doors at the end. Rectangular strips of lighting hung from the ceiling at regular intervals, each one emitting a pale bloom of fluorescence, as if it were undernourished.

Old linoleum that was the colour of ripe cherries covered the floor, and on each side there were private rooms where patients lay. Some were propped upright, reading, or watching TV. Others were just contours under the sheets, still as a landscape, in rooms that seemed more dimly lit, as if they were advertising their role as a potential place of transition, a conduit between illness and health, or between life and death.

I saw Katrina emerge from a room at the far end of the corridor. She stepped out, then turned and closed the door gently behind her. She stood for a second or two, looking back into the room, her hand against the window. She wasn’t aware of me.

‘Katrina,’ I said. I hardly dared to look into the room, and when I did I saw that John looked barely alive. He lay on his back, his head was heavily bandaged, an oxygen mask was over his mouth and what I could see of his face was swollen and disfigured by bruising. He was connected to tubes everywhere. Two nurses were tending to him.

‘Hello,’ Katrina said softly and I was disarmed by her humility and vulnerability. Her face was taut with exhaustion and shock. She looked very, very young, just as she had at her house a few days earlier.

‘They want to do some checks,’ she said. ‘I was in the way.’

‘How is he?’

‘He has bleeding and swelling on the brain,’ she said. ‘They hope the swelling will reduce. They say he’s stable.’

‘How long will that take?’

‘Nobody can say. And nobody can say what damage it’ll leave.’

I put my hand on the glass, palm pressed against it.

‘Did you see what happened?’ she asked me.

‘Somebody threw a brick through the window and he ran out onto the street after them. He was chasing them. I didn’t see what happened after that. We found him just round the corner. He was already hurt, he was lying on the ground.’

‘The doctor said it looks as though he was kicked in the head repeatedly.’ Her voice cracked. ‘Who would do a thing like that?’

‘I don’t know,’ I said.

We stood side by side like sentries, watching him, and it was long moments before we were interrupted by brisk footsteps. It was a nurse, and the soles of her shoes squeaked on the linoleum.

She gave some leaflets to Katrina. ‘I grabbed what I could,’ she said. ‘The ward’s miles away and I got paged as soon as I got there so I hope they’re what you need.’

‘Thank you,’ said Katrina. She took the leaflets hastily, held them against her stomach. She was trying to hide them from me, but there was no point. I’d already seen enough. ‘Folic Acid’ I’d read as they were handed over, ‘An essential ingredient for making healthy babies’.

‘You need rest,’ said the nurse, ‘and you need to keep your strength up. Would you consider going home and getting some sleep? We don’t expect to see any change in him today.’

Katrina nodded, and it satisfied the nurse. ‘I’ll see you later no doubt,’ she said. She disappeared the way she’d come, still squeaking.

‘You’re pregnant,’ I said. My words sounded soft, and distant, as if they’d drifted in from elsewhere, but she heard me.

‘I didn’t want you to find out like this. I’m sorry.’

I turned away from her, and looked at John. The nurses were in conference, standing at the end of the bed, annotating his notes. He was motionless, apart from the almost imperceptible rise and fall of his chest under the sheet.

‘Does he know?’ I said.

‘No.’

Now I let my forehead fall gently onto the glass of the window. I wanted the cool, hard surface to counteract a spreading numbness in my head.

‘Congratulations.’ I said it flatly, and I didn’t mean it to sound hurtful, though it might have done.

‘He hasn’t coped,’ she said, indicating John. ‘This. Ben. Everything. It’s destroying him. He thinks this wouldn’t have happened if you and he had stayed together.’

I had to try very hard. The numbness was everywhere, threatening to make me callous. Something about her touched me though. It could have been her vulnerability, or perhaps the fact that she was carrying a new life.

‘John’s a good father,’ I said.

I put my hand out to touch her but the impulse died before I made contact and my arm dropped.

I turned and walked away and, as I did so, I noticed that my shoes weren’t squeaking on the floor, they were tapping, in a beat that was painfully slow. I counted my steps as I walked.

It was all I could do.

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: I’m very interested in something you wrote when you described your childhood memory.

JC: Don’t put too much store in that.

FM: Do you mind if we discuss it?

JC: If you like.

FM: You said, and I’m just going to refer to it directly here, because the way you phrased it interested me. You said, ‘It was telling me that people aren’t always what they seem.’

JC: Yes.

FM: So does that mean that your father wasn’t who people thought he was?

JC: He was everything they thought he was, people respected him, you should have seen the turnout at his funeral, but he had another side too. People do.

FM: Was your father violent?

JC: He was a different generation.

FM: Meaning?

JC: They did things differently then.

FM: Including hurting his children?

JC: It was just a slap here and there. Did nobody give you a slap when you were growing up?

FM: I’d rather not comment on my upbringing.

JC: I bet they did. Everybody did it, before the internet started policing our lives. My dad was just part of his generation.

FM: What your sister saw, do you think what he was doing was legal?

JC: I don’t know.

FM: Did you ever speak to your sister about that incident?

JC: No. We weren’t close. She left home soon after that anyway.

FM: What do you think she witnessed?

JC: I’ve no idea. She was a hysterical teenage girl. She was always kicking off. You’re putting too much significance on this. I shouldn’t have written it. I only wrote it because it’s what you look for when you’re working, that person who’s not who you think they are. That was a stupid example, I’m not even sure I remember it right anyway. I was a kid.

I’m not sure I believe this, I think he’s obfuscating. I wait for him to continue, to fill in the silence.

JC: Look, I admired my dad. He had people’s respect because he’d earned it. He was one of the best detectives of his generation. Can we move on?

FM: How did he earn respect?

JC: He had a saying: ‘You can’t put the shit back in the donkey.’

FM: Meaning?

JC: Meaning you try not to fuck up, you don’t let things get out of your control.

FM: Was it hard to grow up in his shadow?

JC: It made me want to be a detective, and to do well, if that’s what you mean.

FM: Was that a good thing?

JC: It was better than dossing, or pimping, or boozing, or raping old ladies for kicks, or getting so shitfaced that you think it’s OK to smash your wife’s head against a wall until she loses her teeth as well as her self-respect. What do you mean ‘Was that a good thing?’

FM: I’m interested that my question is making you feel angry.

JC: Because it’s a joke! It’s actually insulting.

FM: I think it might mean that being a successful detective was a matter of honour for you?

JC: Yes! Yes, it was, it is, and I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that.

He’s displaying a level of anger that I feel is excessive, though he’s trying to disguise it.

FM: Would it be fair to say that at this point in the case you were under almost intolerable personal pressure in addition to the pressure the case was putting on you?

JC: You’re totally missing the point.

FM: What was the point then? Tell me.

JC: Benedict Finch was the fucking point. Finding Benedict Finch. Giving him safely back to his mother. That was the only thing that mattered. Why can’t you see that?

His fists are clenched, his teeth gritted. I thank him for coming and say that I’ll see him next week. I don’t wish to be cold with him but he is challenging, and I need him to understand how important it is for him to open up completely during our discussions. Our time together is running out.

RACHEL

My cab driver on the way home didn’t want to talk any more than I did and I was grateful for that. I sat noiseless and motionless in a corner of the back seat, seeing John’s still body and his disfigured face, thinking about his new child.

The cabbie dropped me off around the front and a uniformed police officer clambered stiffly out of his squad car to ensure that I got in safely.

Inside the house, a silence deeper than any I’d ever experienced before. A void where everything that I’d ever lived for should have been.

A buzz from my phone was a pull back to reality. A text from Laura:

Love, I’m so sorry about being pissed yesterday when John called and I’m so so sorry about what I said to you. I’m not supporting you well and I’m being a shit friend, it’s just such a big thing and I’m frightened too, but I’m here now if you need me, I promise, and I hope you’re not too angry with me.

I deleted it, appalled by it, by her self-absorption.

There was another text, which I hadn’t seen earlier, from Nicky:

How are you doing today? Fine here, and I should be able to head back to you in a day or two, I’ll call later today. Thinking of you ALL the time xxx

How to reply? Faced with a decision about what to tell her, and how to tell her, I bottled. Trust is like that. Once you lose it, you begin to adjust your attitudes towards people, you put up guards, and filter the information you want them to know.

I wasn’t prepared to actively hide things from Nicky, or to be completely open with her, as I might have been three days ago. So I didn’t reply. She’d said she would call me, and I decided I would tell her everything then.

There was nothing from the police. Not a word. Part of me wanted to phone them, to ask what they’d thought of the schoolbooks, but the night’s events seemed to have raked out of me any last bits of fight that I might have had left.

They’ll phone me if there’s news, I thought, but as I thought it, it felt somehow defeatist, as if I was letting hope ebb away.

I went to Skittle, who was in his bed. I sank to the floor beside him and sat there, my hand in his fur. I shut my eyes, and let my head fall back against the wall behind me and I allowed myself to imagine a reunion with Ben. The feel of him in my arms, the expression in his eyes, the scent of his hair, the sound of his voice, the silky perfection of the moment I’d been longing for all week, and as I imagined it I wept quiet hot tears that felt as though they’d never stop.

JIM

We had the TA in an interview room at Kenneth Steele House.

His mother, her face drained of colour, had spoken to him quietly and fiercely in the hallway of their home, telling him that she’d call their family solicitor, while he shouted at her that she always thought the worst of him, that he hadn’t done anything wrong, that he wasn’t being arrested.

‘Not yet,’ Bennett had muttered under his breath. ‘But it won’t be long, sonny boy.’

He’d come with us voluntarily, but odds were that we weren’t going to let him leave. We knew that, but he didn’t yet. He sat slumped in a chair looking like a bad boy. His chin was at a defiant tilt, and his pupils were pinpricks swimming in irises that were the palest blue.

We had enough to arrest him, but we were debating when to do that, because, as soon as we did, the clock would start ticking until the deadline to release him, unless we could come up with evidence or a confession.

Fraser’s view was simple: ‘I think we should caution him now.’

‘He’s come in of his own volition.’

‘I don’t want him talking when he’s not under caution and us not being able to use it in court later.’

‘Solicitor will tell him to keep schtum.’

‘It’s a risk that I think we’re going to have to take. Otherwise he could walk out of here and do a disappearing act. What’s this I hear about an Anderson shelter in the garden?’

‘Empty, boss, apart from a lawnmower and some bags of compost.’

‘What do you reckon?’

‘He was near the scene, he’s lied to us, he knows Ben well, and we’ve got the schoolbooks.’

‘Motive?’

‘Don’t know enough about him yet.’

‘What’s the mother like?’

‘Angry with him.’

‘Get Bennett to caution him, and get her in for an interview while we’re waiting for his brief. And is somebody getting hold of his lying girlfriend?’

‘Yes, boss.’

‘Good work, Jim.’

I had a spring in my step as I went back to the incident room. It might have been adrenalin fuelled, but that was good enough for me. I wanted to be thoroughly prepared for the interview, not one little pebble left unturned. I knew the real work started now because we only had twenty-four hours to charge him.

I sat down at my desk and got on with reading all the background we had on Lucas Grantham. I thought back to when I’d first met him at the school, the way he’d seemed gormless, a bit pathetic. I’d had no inkling then that he’d been lying to us, though Woodley had thought he was a bit shifty. I didn’t want to think I’d missed something I should have noticed.

But I never got to finish my research, because we had another turn-up. Nicky Forbes’s husband arrived. Unexpectedly. Asking for me.

Simon Forbes was as posh as I might have expected. I’d Googled his wine company the day before. It was high end, the website slick and impressive, and he was obviously very well connected. He was a tall bear of a man, with very dark hair that was greying at the temples and red veins on his nose, which probably came from years of wine tasting. He was dressed in corduroy trousers, a checked shirt and a tweed jacket, the kind of thing that people wore at the country shows my mum used to take us to when we were growing up.

‘It’s very kind of you to come in,’ I said. ‘It wasn’t necessary.’

I’d found somewhere to take him and we’d just sat down opposite one another.

‘What I have to tell you might be best said face to face,’ he said. ‘It’s about my wife, but it’s a very delicate situation because I have four daughters to consider.’

There was a quality of warmth about him that I hadn’t anticipated. He had a kind, patient manner that was appealing, even under the circumstances.

‘I believe,’ he said, ‘that you might have been under the impression that my wife was living at our family home in Salisbury?’

‘Entirely under that impression, because that’s what Mrs Forbes informed us.’

‘I’m afraid that she hasn’t been living at that address for just over a month. She moved out at the end of September.’

He spoke quietly and clearly while my mind frantically tried to process what this meant.

‘Do you know where your wife moved to?’

‘She’s living in the cottage where she grew up. It’s in the Pewsey Vale, about a forty-five-minute drive north of Salisbury.’

‘Did your daughters go with her?’

I wondered if this had been an acrimonious separation, if he was here to cast blame on a wife he loathed, to muddy the waters around her in advance of a custody dispute.

‘No. Nicky didn’t just leave me; she left all of us.’

‘Can I ask why?’

‘The specific occasion was -’ he cleared this throat – ‘the specific catalyst for her to actually pack her bags and leave was an argument we had.’

‘What did you argue about?’

‘It’s a bit complicated, but we had recently talked about having another child.’

‘A fifth child?’

His reply bounced off my surprise.

‘Yes. I’m aware that some people might think that five children is an excessive number, but Nicky wanted to try again, and I’d previously agreed to support her wish, happily I might say, because of something she’d suffered. I felt I should support her. Do I need to explain about her background?’

‘We know about that.’

‘So you understand she has a longing for a son. To replace Charlie.’

Those words felt solid to me, like a remnant jettisoned from an explosion, a twisted shard of metal, turning in mid-air, glinting.

‘I understand,’ I said. ‘You said you’d previously agreed to having another child, so had something changed? Did you no longer feel that way?’

He looked like a man who was having to haul up strength from a great depth.

‘My wife gives the appearance of coping, always coping, she makes a career of it, but it takes its toll. She’s become very controlling of our time. That was the source of the argument. I was trying to ask her to relax, to give us space to breathe in the house. This scheduling of the girls’ time down to the last minute affects them, and affects us too. In my view, life had become a bit joyless. We had no time to do things together as a couple, or a family, ever, and I told her that I’d begun to wonder if another baby would be too much, for both of us.’

‘How did she react?’

‘Badly. Very badly. She felt that I’d betrayed her.’

‘Did she say that?’

‘She did. She freaked out, for want of a better expression. I’ve never seen her so angry, or distraught. And I’m afraid I lost my temper, I was at the end of my tether, and I told her that I thought we might need some space from each other.’

‘And how did she react?’

‘She stormed out of the room, the expression on her face was awful, and I didn’t follow her, I let her go. Grace, our second daughter, was waiting in the hall, ready to go to a riding lesson. That’s how scheduled our lives were – we barely had time for an argument! Anyway, I didn’t want to make any more of a scene in front of Grace so I called out to Nicky that I was driving Grace to her lesson, and I cooled off a bit while I was there, and I regretted some of the things I’d said, and I hoped Nicky had too, that we might discuss things more calmly that evening. But when Grace and I got home, she’d gone.’

‘Gone?’

‘Completely. She’d packed a case, and driven away. She’d told our eldest daughter to look after the two little ones until I got home but didn’t tell her why. And, unfortunately, the girls saw Nicky put her suitcase in the car, and they could see that she was very upset, so when I got back they were in a bit of a state, to put it mildly. It was a terrible shock for all of us.’

‘Have you spoken to her since?’

‘We speak a lot, but it’s very frustrating. She won’t discuss the future with me. She won’t plan or meet up to talk. She just says she needs more time. I’m trying to be patient, but I’m angry about the effect it’s having on the girls. We all love her, that’s the thing, of course we do, but we can’t always be what she wants us to be.’

If I’d judged Simon Forbes harshly at first, on the basis of his website, his profession and his appearance, then I’d been a fool. This was a sensitive, intelligent man, with apparently extraordinary reserves of patience, and he’d been hurt.

I drew breath. ‘Do you think your wife is unstable?’ I asked him.

‘She’s walked away from her children. That’s not the behaviour of somebody who’s stable.’

‘Are you here because you believe that she might be responsible for what’s happened to Ben?’

The question was painful for him, he’d had to put aside his pride to come here, and tell me this stuff, and as he struggled to formulate an answer, I watched him try to put aside his love for his wife too, but he didn’t quite manage it.

‘I wouldn’t go that far, I just thought you ought to be aware of our situation. She hasn’t even told her sister.’

‘Thank you, Mr Forbes. I can’t tell you how grateful I am.’

I walked him to the main entrance; it felt like the least I could do.

Outside, on the top of the steps, waxed coat done up and leather driving gloves pulled onto thick, strong-looking fingers, he spoke again.

‘I don’t know what my wife has or hasn’t done, Inspector. I can’t guess at that. I’m just telling you what I think you should know. And in return I ask that you respect our family’s dignity as much as you possibly can. I want to avoid inflicting any further pain on our daughters. Ben’s disappearance has been extremely difficult for them as it is.’

‘Have you told your sister-in-law about this?’

‘To be honest, I assumed Nicky would have told Rachel, but when I realised that wasn’t the case, I thought I would spare her this, which is why I’m here, telling you. Rachel must be going through a living hell already.’

As soon as he’d turned his back on me, I bolted back into the building and took the stairs up to the incident room three at a time.

RACHEL

On Sunday night, after dark, I still thought of nothing apart from the fact that Ben had been gone for one week. Seven days, one hundred and sixty-eight hours, thousands of minutes, hundreds of thousands of seconds. And counting.

My thoughts were suddenly full of the woods as if, now that seven days had passed, the memories had swollen, and germinated into a vivid sensory overload.

The bright blue sky and the kaleidoscopic intensity of the backdrop of beautiful, colourful, crisp autumn leaves replayed in my head like a movie reel. I saw Ben’s flushed cheeks, the gauzy mistiness of his breath, floating momentarily, a piece of him, of his warmth, in the air, then evaporating into nothing.

I would have seen more, lost myself in those memories, but my phone rang. It was the police, letting me know that a DC Woodley, my interim FLO, was on his way to call on me. They apologised for the lateness of the call. It was already half past eight at night.

DC Woodley arrived at nine. He was very tall and very skinny with an elongated neck and a large nose. He looked as if he was about seventeen years old.

He introduced himself awkwardly, and then he said that we should probably sit down, and he licked his top lip nervously when he said it.

At my kitchen table we sat under the stark central light. Unlike my sister, I didn’t think to make the room cosy by switching on other lights, or boiling a kettle. I’d lost my social niceties a week ago. I only wanted to hear what he’d come to tell me.

‘We’ve arrested somebody,’ he said. ‘We haven’t charged them yet, but they are at Kenneth Steele House and they are under arrest.’

‘Who?’

‘Lucas Grantham. Ben’s teaching assistant.’

My mind curled around this information and then recoiled at the ghastliness of it. Lucas Grantham spent all day of every weekday with my son. He spent more hours with Ben than I did. And I didn’t know him at all; he was a stranger to me.

For DC Woodley, and his patient, insistent questioning, I tried to remember anything I could, any mention of Grantham that Ben had made, but there was nothing beyond the entirely bland. Ben had hardly ever mentioned him, favouring Miss May, who he had known for longer.

I scraped my mind for my impressions of him. They’d been fleeting. We were only a few weeks into term after all, and Lucas Grantham was new to the school, like the headmaster. I forced my mind to work back through any memories of him when I’d collected Ben’s schoolbooks from school just a few days before, but I had none really, just the vaguest sense of him being there at all. And then those thoughts were interrupted by a question that I had to ask:

‘If Lucas Grantham took Ben, then where is he?’

‘We’re undertaking extensive searches at his property, and at properties he’s associated with. We’re doing everything we can to locate Ben. In the next twenty-four hours we’re going to be questioning everybody around him. I’m afraid I can’t give you any more information than that at present, but we wanted you to hear this from us, and not from anybody else. Please know that we are doing what we think is best in order to return Ben to you safe and well. That’s our priority.’

‘Do you believe that?’

‘That we’re doing our best? Yes. Absolutely. I’d swear on my mother’s life.’

He actually put his hand over his heart when he said that. Then, just as he was readying himself to leave, he said, ‘One more thing, Ms Jenner?’

‘Yes?’

‘Have you heard from your sister?’

‘No,’ and I realised that she’d never phoned me back. ‘Why?’

‘It’s the role of the FLO to make sure that all family members are doing fine so it’s really just a follow-up after the difficult interview she had with DI Clemo.’

‘She’s fine so far as I know.’

When he’d gone I tried to phone Nicky, to tell her, but it went to voicemail. I didn’t leave a message. I’d heard about voicemail hacking. I knew we would be targets. I wasn’t going to give the journalists that advantage.

I tried Nicky’s house in Salisbury but her youngest daughter answered and said that her mummy wasn’t there and her daddy wasn’t either and her sister who was looking after her was on her mobile phone. I gave up, I didn’t even say who it was because Olivia was only nine and leaving a message with a nine-year-old is complicated and unreliable. I knew Nicky would phone me back when she saw my missed call.

I thought again about the TA and thought about what he might have done.

In one sense it allowed me to feel a surge of relief. It allowed me to let go of the germ of suspicion I’d been guiltily harbouring about my sister. That was a release of pressure I was grateful for, definitely. I gave silent thanks for the fact that I hadn’t accosted her with my suspicions about her, or accused her outright. That might help us repair.

On the other hand, the news threw up a scenario which made my guts clench, because the question that lurched around my head was: What would a man like Lucas Grantham want with a boy like Ben?

There was no answer I could come up with that wasn’t somehow horrific. And so I didn’t feel a complete sense of relief, as I might have done at the news of the arrest, of course I didn’t, because that would be impossible until Ben was back in my arms again.

I went online again later, curious to see if the arrest had been made public. Not yet.

Instead, some members of the online community were marking the week’s anniversary of Ben’s disappearance by saying that he was probably dead. That he had to be.

As if to underscore this theory, one or two of them had posted photographs of lit candles to mark the anniversary. Online shrines, the flickering flame a public display of emotion, which I found sanctimonious, ugly and cruel.

Others took a more cerebral tack, including one who caught my eye because he was quoting the same websites that Nicky had been looking at before she left, to prove his hypothesis. I clicked on the link he provided, and instantly I wished I hadn’t, because right in front of my eyes was one of the research documents that Nicky had tried to stop me reading in the first few days after Ben disappeared:

Abduction Homicide… victims were more likely to be killed immediately or kept alive for less than 24 hours, with a few victims being kept alive for 24 to 48 hours or more than three days (Boudreaux et al, 1999). Hanfland, 1997 reported even more shocking findings. He stated that 44% were dead in less than an hour, 74% of the victims were dead within the first 3 hours, and 91% within the first 24 hours.

It sickened me. I closed the window on the computer, stabbing the mouse with sweaty, shaking fingers. I was ready to shut the machine down, unplug it, retreat from it, but behind the window I was looking at was another, left there by Ben.

It was the login page for Furry Football, the online game that Ben and his friends loved to play. It was like Club Penguin, or Moshi Monsters, a child-friendly online forum where you could play games and interact with other people’s avatars. The difference was that it was football themed and if you won points you could buy players for a Furry Football team. Ben loved it. All his friends did.

I clicked on it. The page refreshed and invited me to log in. Ben was the manager of two separate virtual teams and I had a choice of which one to log in as: ‘Owl Goal’ or ‘Turtle Rangers’. I chose ‘Owl Goal’ and I typed in Ben’s password. A message appeared: ‘YOU ARE ALREADY LOGGED IN’.

I tried again. Same message.

I leaned back in my chair, confused. Somebody was logged in as Ben. I remembered him saying that he couldn’t log in if he’d already done so on another machine, but his iPad was at his dad’s house, and I had no other computer.

I clicked on ‘Turtle Rangers’ instead, entered his password again, and this time it worked. I was in. I was Turtle0751, the captain of the Turtle Rangers, and my avatar appeared on screen: a plump turtle in football boots holding a clipboard.

‘WHICH SERVER WOULD YOU LIKE TO JOIN?’ the computer asked me, and then my stomach roiled as an idea took hold. What if Ben was logged in somewhere else, playing the game as his owl avatar?

I selected the server that I knew Ben always chose to play on: ‘Savannah League’.

A cartoon-like scene popped up – the African savannah. A meerkat invited me to choose a game I’d like to play. I selected ‘Baobab Bonus’, Ben’s favourite game.

On screen a glade of cartoon baobab trees appeared. About twenty avatars cruised amongst them, little speech bubbles coming from their heads now and then. It didn’t take me long to see Ben’s other team captain: Owlie689.

‘It’s you,’ I said. ‘It’s you.’

My fingers gripped the mouse so hard that its edges dug into them and I stared at the screen as Owlie689 moved around it.

I navigated my avatar so that it stood by Ben’s. I was clumsy with the mouse. I wanted to talk to him. It was hard to work out how to make a speech bubble. I wasn’t practised at this like Ben; I’d never paid attention to the detail of the game.

After numerous failed attempts, I finally clicked on the right tab. A list of possible phrases appeared, but it was safe chat. Of course it was. I hadn’t allowed Ben to do anything other than communicate with phrases that were provided by the game. For his safety.

I scrolled down the list of phrases available, desperate to say something meaningful, but they were entirely bland, designed to stop children upsetting or offending each other.

I clicked on ‘Hello’. After a few seconds Ben’s avatar said ‘Hello.’

‘How was your day?’ my avatar asked.

Owlie689 displayed an emoticon. It was a frowning face. I scrolled down the list of phrases I could use.

‘Sorry,’ my avatar said.

Owlie689 began to move. I followed. It stopped underneath a baobab tree.

‘Want to visit my team?’ it said to me.

‘Yes,’ my avatar replied and the screen dissolved and reformed and we found ourselves in a training area. The positions of players were laid out around the edges of the screen and above four of them were animals that Ben had earned enough points to buy.

‘Cool,’ my avatar said.

‘New player,’ said Ben’s avatar. He moved toward his centre forward. It was a giraffe. He hadn’t had it last Sunday because he’d talked about it, about wanting to get a giraffe because they were good at doing headers. In fact he’d gone on and on about it in the car on the way to the woods until I made him change the subject.

‘It’s you,’ I said. ‘It’s definitely you.’

I searched the list of phrases for something else to say, something that would tell Ben who I was, that it was me communicating with him. He must suspect it, I thought, because who else would use his other avatar? He had to know it was me.

But I was too slow. Before I selected a phrase Owlie689 had gone, just disappeared. My avatar was alone on-screen.

I reached for my phone.

JIM

Fraser and I were huddled in the meeting room we used for briefings. Lists and interview notes littered the table between us. We were planning.

Woodley put his head around the door. ‘Rachel Jenner’s just phoned, she says she’s seen Ben playing an online game.’

‘What game?’ Fraser asked.

‘Furry Football. She says he’s logged on as one of his avatars.’

‘What in God’s name does that mean?’

‘You have characters that you become when you play the game. Ben has two. She logged on as one of them and met the other in the game. She thinks that means that Ben was logged on.’

‘And does it? You’re the IT expert.’

‘It could do, obviously, if he has access to the internet, which would seem unlikely. Equally, anybody who had access to his login details could have done it.’

‘How likely do you think that is?’

‘It’s impossible to say, but people often know their friends’ passwords etc., it could be one of his mates or anybody who knew him.’

‘Does Rachel Jenner have a view on that?’

‘She doesn’t know. It’s hard to get sense out of her to be honest, boss. She’s pretty hysterical.’

‘We need to find out who might have known. Can you contact that man who was in the woods, the father of Ben’s best friend? Ask him if he knows about this stuff, and ask him if we can interview his boy in the morning. He might know.’

‘Will do.’

Once he’d gone, Fraser turned back to me. ‘What’s your feeling, Jim?’

‘Could be something, could be nothing. Just like the schoolbooks.’

‘I’ll get the IT folks onto it. Now, Lucas Grantham versus Nicola Forbes. I want a plan of action tonight, so that we don’t waste a minute tomorrow morning. Not one second. What’s your feeling about resource allocation?’

I took my time before answering. We had a very strong suspect in custody, and I knew he looked good for it, but there was something about Nicky Forbes that I just couldn’t let go.

‘In my view, Nicky Forbes is very intelligent and potentially very manipulative,’ I said to Fraser. ‘Chris was certainly very clear that the sort of trauma Nicky’s suffered could cause all kinds of psychosis or delusions. If her own husband is coming in to warn us about her, I think we need to take it very seriously.’

‘You favour her for it?’

‘If I have to stick my neck out, I do.’

And, as I said it out loud, I felt my conviction build. I said, ‘I think there’s a danger that Lucas Grantham might be another Edward Fount. Looks good for it because he’s a lying little git who lives with his mother, but he could be telling the truth about why he went to the woods.’

‘Telling the truth about his lie?’

‘Yes.’

‘If that’s the case I’m going to have him on wasting police time.’

‘Agreed.’

Fraser sighed, massaged her forehead. She looked old suddenly. ‘But I’m not sure it is, and part of me wants you here to run the investigation into Grantham. Clock’s ticking.’

I knew that. I kept quiet, let her think, and watched her massage her forehead as she did so. I knew there was no point pushing her. She came to a decision quickly.

‘Right. I’m going to let you go and interview her, Jim, tomorrow morning, not tonight. It’s far too late.’

I felt a surge of adrenalin, as if I’d had a shot of it into my arm.

‘Thank you, boss.’ I stood up. ‘I’m going to get familiar with everything in her file.’

I wanted to know every detail off by heart; I wanted to pull off the interview of my life. Nicky Forbes had got to me right from the start.

‘Now listen to me, Jim. You do no such thing. You go home and you sleep. You look like shit.’ She paused, let me absorb the insult, and then she asked, ‘How are you feeling about Emma?’

That blindsided me. Totally. It took me a moment to pull together a reply.

‘Disappointed, of course. But I’m focused on moving forward, boss.’

‘Don’t fuck about with me; you know what I’m asking. I’m not blind.’

‘Honest truth, boss, I am focused on moving forward, but I’m gutted too. Of course I am.’

‘I’m only going to ask you this once, do you think it’s affecting your judgement?’

‘Not at all. Not one bit.’

She leaned back in her chair, her mind working it through, before she replied. ‘OK. So you go first thing to interview Nicky Forbes, because I don’t want to leave any stone unturned. Get back here as quickly as you can afterwards. We couldn’t be more stretched for resources so I shouldn’t really be letting my deputy go.’

‘Boss-’

‘I’m indulging you here, Jim, so don’t push it. I’ve got a list of interviews as long as my arm that relate to Lucas Grantham.’

‘I just wanted to know if I would go alone or not.’

‘I can’t send anybody else. I need every body I can get.’

She took off her glasses, which made her look suddenly vulnerable, and she rubbed her eyes, which were reddened around the rims. As it was late, and her guard seemed to be down just a little, I asked her something: ‘Boss, do you think he’s still alive?’

‘You know the statistics as well I do. We just have to do what we can.’

Back at my flat, I looked through the case files, poring over every detail, memorising the events that took place when Nicky Forbes was a girl, rereading all the notes I took after Simon Forbes came in.

It was a jubilant phone call to Fraser that I made at midnight.

‘I found a hole in Nicola Forbes’s alibi. Last Sunday she said she was attending a food festival. She was definitely there in the morning, but nobody can confirm that they saw her between 13.30 and 22.00 when her husband maintains that she Skyped him from the cottage.’

‘I thought we’d confirmed her alibi?’

‘People said they thought they’d seen her, but it’s a really big event. Tons of stalls selling produce, cookery demonstrations, that kind of thing, hundreds of folks attending and although she’s quite well known nobody can actually guarantee that they saw her during the afternoon. They all say she was definitely there that day, and a friend says that they had lunch together, but after 13.30 none of it’s reliable.’

‘Good work, Jim,’ she said. ‘Take Woodley with you in the morning.’

‘I thought you couldn’t spare anybody.’

‘I’ve changed my mind.’

I didn’t have the energy to go to my bed. I lay on my sofa, the window cracked open even though it was freezing outside, and I smoked and tried to fight away the memories of Emma that could upset the perfect balance I felt: the poised moment when a case is about to come together one way or another, and when you’re right in it.

I checked my phone. Woodley and I had been texting and mailing, finalising directions and details for the morning.

What I didn’t expect to find in my inbox was an email from Emma. Its title: ‘Sorry’.

Email

To: Jim Clemo ‹jimclemo1@gmail.com›

From: Emma Zhang ‹emzhang21@hotmail.co.uk›

28 October 2012 at 23.39

SORRY

Dear Jim

I hope you read this because I owe you an explanation. If you are reading it: thank you.

I should never have done what I did. It was unforgivable. I should never have contributed to the blog and I should never have expected you to help me. It was a terrible position to put you in.

When I walked past you in the incident room this morning it was the hardest moment of my life because all I wanted to do was rewind the clock, and not do what I did, so we could still be together. When I was with you I felt happy, and protected, and I threw all that away for the worst and most stupid of reasons.

I owe you an explanation for why I did it, and here it is. It’s not an excuse:

When I was six years old my dad went outside to mow the lawn and asked me to look after my little sister. She was two. Her name was Celia. We were playing in my bedroom. I left her for just a few minutes to go to the loo. When I came back I couldn’t find her. I called my dad. He found her wedged down the side of my bed. She’d got stuck, and suffocated. She died before we got her out.

My dad blamed me for her death, but I was just a child too. What he did wasn’t responsible because he was the adult in charge, he shouldn’t have left her in my care. I didn’t know you could die like that.

But he was tough like that, always, you’ve no idea how tough he was. He never let me be a child. I miss Celia every day.

When I heard what Rachel Jenner did to Ben, how she let him run ahead, I wanted to punish her, because you shouldn’t leave kids unsupervised. They can come to harm. I thought it meant that she was a person who didn’t deserve to have a child, that she didn’t love him properly. I thought she was like my dad. I realised I was wrong when I saw the photographs she’d taken of him. They were so beautiful, I felt as though they would break my heart there and then.

I didn’t mean to do what I did. The blog sucked me in. It was a kind of compulsion, so hard to resist.

I don’t know if that’s because the FLO role was too much for me. Perhaps I’m not good at bearing other people’s problems. It freaks me out. I should have been stronger, more professional, and I should have pulled out of the investigation, but I didn’t, and then it got so hard to fight the urge to contribute to the blog because I felt so angry. I try hard to quell it, but I carry a lot of rage with me about what happened to Celia and to me, and I confused my history, and my anger at my dad, with Rachel’s present, and I wanted to punish her for his sins.

I try not to let it show, because I’m usually very good at pleasing people, and making everything right, but I’m not always a well person, and even when I work hard to keep it under control, my past messes with my mind sometimes.

I behaved in an arrogant and disgusting way, and that’s something I’ll have to live with, just like I’ll have to live with losing my career, and I deserve that.

I know we can’t be together any more, but I hope you can find it in your heart to forgive me just a little, or try to understand.

I’ve told all of this to Internal Affairs. I’m in the process now. They’ve suspended me and I’m under investigation. I’m not allowed to communicate with you so please delete this after you’ve read it.

Know this though, Jim. I love you. Our times together were amazing and I’ll miss you always. So thank you.

Emma x

When I finished reading I hit ‘delete’. But then I went into my trash folder and moved the email back into my inbox.

In one of my kitchen cupboards I found a bottle of whisky, a gift from my parents when I moved in, so far untouched. Normally, I’m not much of a drinker, but that night I opened it. I didn’t bother with mixers. I drank a large quantity of it, much more quickly than I should have done. It was enough to make the room tilt before I passed out.