As I near the corner where the path bends toward the river, I notice a large, round mirror positioned at the junction of the two paths, giving visibility to cyclists or pedestrians approaching from either direction. My eyes are drawn to the reflection of a dark red shape that fills the rust-speckled glass. I squint, trying to understand why it looks familiar, but fog drifts between the hedgerows, clouding my eyes, swallowing everything along the winding path. I hurry around the corner, jumping as a storm light snaps on, its beam stretching out to halo the mystery shape . . . the prone body lying across the path.
His head rests on a cushion of meadowsweet; his feet are hidden beneath a bank of stinging nettles. Outstretched hands tangle in the feathery stems of a rambling hemlock plant, as if he was trying to drag himself away. Blood pools around his body, seeping into the long, wet grass. I open my mouth to scream, and a bright-white flash behind my eyes is the last thing I remember as blinding pain in my head turns daylight to darkness.
CHAPTER FORTY-SIX
Two weeks later
“Here you go, Izzy.” Jo sets down a mug of hot tea in front of me. “How’s your head?”
“Fine. Just needed a few stitches,” I dismiss, taking short, quick sips of tea to avoid saying more. There’s no point mentioning the headaches, night terrors, and constant flashbacks, but I can feel DS Clarke’s gentle brown gaze linger on me as she slips into her seat at the table between Jo and DCI Maxwell. The young detective visited me in the hospital; she knows exactly how I am: heart, body, and soul.
“Sorry to bring you in to the station to do this,” she says. “We wanted to avoid more painful associations at your house. Though Matt said your friend Katie is selling it for you?”
“Yes. I . . .” I take another sip, my throat suddenly dry. “I can’t live there anymore.”
“I’m so sorry, Izzy.” DS Clarke leans across the round table to squeeze my hand. “I know there are happy memories there, too. But I understand how you feel.” She opens a file like the one that held Samir’s statement three weeks ago, only a lot thicker. “Are you ready?”
“No. Never.” I take a deep breath, then nod at the file, silently asking her to begin.
I look around me as she talks, realizing we’re in the same impersonal, stuffy interview room where DCI Maxwell brought me when they first found out that Nick was in the woods. But while I was overflowing with questions then, now it’s all I can do to sit and listen.
I listen without really taking anything in as DS Clarke quietly relays a stream of technical details: about the angle of the knife, the internal organs penetrated, the extent of blood loss. Only when her calm falters, her mouth wobbling as she concludes by stating that the injury caused almost unavoidable cardiac arrest, does meaning at last begin to penetrate.
“Almost unavoidable.” The phrase leaps out at me, tormenting me with the finest thread of possibility that things could have ended differently. If only I’d never gone to stay at the cottage; if only I hadn’t said yes to the sleepover . . . How far back would I need to rewind time to make a difference? In the end, maybe the outcome was always going to be the same; maybe he would always have found a way to get to my son. I can never know.
“Thank you for taking so much care with the investigation,” I say, as DS Clarke finally closes her file. “Thank you all.” I look at each of the three detectives in turn.
“We got him in the end, Izzy.” DCI Maxwell leans forward to smack the file with the flat of his hand. “At least justice will finally be done. You can count on that.”
“Justice. I supposed I’ve been more concerned with finding the truth,” I tell him. Briefly, I shut my eyes and remember every theory I’ve concocted since I first stood at the bottom of Beth’s stairs and heard her tell me that Nick had “vanished into thin air.”
“That too. Justice. Truth. And, most importantly, evidence. Sarah here made sure of that.” He nods at DS Clarke. “Do you want to run Izzy through how you finally nailed him?”
“It was a lucky break, I guess,” she says with typical modesty.
“It was thorough, methodical police work,” her boss corrects her.
“Sure. Well, it all came together pretty fast in the end. I was talking to the guys down at the boatyard. Something about Jason’s death was bugging me, so I asked to review their CCTV. Really just to see if Jason had been caught on camera. But there he was. Our Suspect A.” She sits back, brown eyes wide, as if she still can’t quite believe it. “Standing on the boatyard wharf next to Jason, bold as brass. Knife in one hand, phone in the other.”
“He threatened him with the knife.” I grip the china mug in front of me to stop my hands shaking. “He forced him into the water. Just like he forced Nick into the woodshed.”
“So we thought at first,” DCI Maxwell says, mouth twisting wryly.
“Sorry?” I frown at him in confusion. “When you phoned me at the cottage . . . you told me that Jason had been killed?”
“Yes. And at that point, that’s exactly what I believed. It certainly appeared that way on the raw CCTV footage Sarah showed me. The images were very grainy.” He coughs self-consciously. “On closer examination, however . . .”
“It was an easy mistake to make, Chris.” DS Clarke rests a hand on his shoulder. “The boys were arguing about the phone, Izzy. Violently. It fell into the water. The first time we reviewed the security tapes, it did look like Jason was pushed. The footage skipped around all over the place, you see. The tech guys managed to enhance it for me, though. When I played it back a second time later that day, I found a bit with Jason taking off his coat. He put it on a bench with his own phone.” She pauses, waiting for me to catch her meaning. “It was Jason’s decision to go into the water, in other words.”
“It was an accident, Izzy.” DCI Maxwell shakes his head. “A terrible, freak accident.”
“Jason waded in pretty deep,” DS Clarke continues, “to get the phone. Adrian’s phone. Tragically, he got snagged on some kind of boat winch. It dragged him under the water.”
“He should have just left it,” I say. “Knowing Adrian, the photos were probably already in the cloud. If not, they’d have been lost with the phone.”
“I’m afraid it wasn’t the right one anyway,” DS Clarke says. “After I’d viewed the CCTV footage, I went to see Beth. She told me Adrian has dozens of phones. His dad gets them for him. Adrian took a fake phone to the boatyard to taunt Jason. He kept hold of the real one with the sleepover photos on it.” She nods at the black iPhone next to her file.
“But Jason wouldn’t have known that,” I surmise. “The threat of exposure had already kept him from telling on Adrian. The shame of humiliating images being texted around. Posted online. He knew Adrian would do it.” One click and the world sees, I remember Adrian saying. “Yes, he’d have been distraught. Not thinking straight. Poor Jason.” I bite my lip, hating the tragic pointlessness of his death.
“By the time we realized his death wasn’t murder, I’d already phoned you at the cottage,” DCI Maxwell explains, “to warn you that Adrian was dangerous. The school had called Beth to say he hadn’t shown up for registration. I guessed immediately where he’d gone.”
“To finish what he’d started at the sleepover,” I say bitterly. “Did you find the knife?”
“Both of them,” DS Clarke confirms. “The one he used to intimidate Jason was stashed under a tarpaulin at the boatyard. The other, of course, he dropped on the footpath when Sergeant Rogers arrested him. I recognized the blades immediately. They’re out of the same set as the one we found in the woods. All three are from his dad’s taxidermy tool kit.”
“Adrian wore gloves when he took Nick into the woods,” DCI Maxwell elaborates. “Those have been located now. Along with the muddy sneakers he dumped in a recycling bin near his house. But his fingerprints were on both the other knives. His alone. Conclusive, incontrovertible proof. We might also pick up DNA from the rock he struck you with. In any event, Sergeant Rogers witnessed that. He’s devastated he
didn’t get to you in time.”
“I kept looking and looking for him,” I recall. “I thought there must have been some kind of slipup with the security detail.”
“Rogers did pull a double shift,” DCI Maxwell says. “By his own choice. He’d grown very attached to Nick. When Steve Barnes showed up for his stint, Rogers sent him home.”
“Yes. Mike Atkins saw them talking outside the cottage.” I sigh again at that mix-up. “I don’t blame Sergeant Rogers. Please let him know that.”
“Rogers patrolled the island all night, Izzy,” DS Clarke adds. “Frustratingly, he spoke briefly to Jeremy Kane. The guy who attacked the cottage. He was all kitted out like he’d just enjoyed a day’s fishing. Waders, waterproofs. He had a bunch of angling equipment in his bag, too, which concealed the incendiary device, naturally.”
“And his can of red spray paint,” DCI Maxwell adds meaningfully.
“Why did he do it?” I’m baffled that a complete stranger would deface my home, attack the cottage—that he would want to hurt either me or my son. “I don’t even know him.”
“Jeremy Kane knew you, though. Or thought he did,” DS Clarke says. “He’d been following your story on the news. I guess you could call it a case of transference. His wife ran off with his best friend, you see. And she took their son. It all got tangled up in Kane’s head with what he’d read about you. He wanted to punish his wife. He punished you instead.”
“We found newspaper clippings at his house. And Internet searches about Craig in his browsing history,” DCI Maxwell adds. “He knew where you lived. He knew about the cottage on Eel Pie Island. It’s listed in Craig’s name with various leasing agents.”
“As soon as he approached the cottage, Sergeant Rogers intercepted him,” DS Clarke says, eager to defend her colleague. “But Kane was prepared. Rogers never even saw what hit him. It was a fishing reel, incidentally.” She winces. “He was out cold long enough for Kane to carry out his attack. Came round just in time to see Adrian launch himself at you on the footpath. Unfortunately, by then it was too late to grab the knife off him.”
“That’s when we arrived.” DCI Maxwell shakes his head as if remembering the scene. “Luckily, with backup. Two officers were required to assist Rogers in subduing Adrian. Another three to apprehend Kane. Mike Atkins came with us of his own volition.”
“He’s devastated, Izzy,” Jo interjects. “And ashamed of what he’s done. Or, rather, didn’t do. Step in when he saw the boys in the street and realized the sleepover had turned nasty. Call the police when Nick didn’t come home.” She shakes her head, too.
“He’ll have time enough to ponder his mistakes behind bars,” DCI Maxwell says. “Perverting the course of justice warrants a custodial sentence. Ignorance is no defense.”
“He believed he was protecting his child.” I’m shocked to hear myself defending Mike. Yes, he did the wrong thing, but in his mind it was for the right reasons. He’s a scorned husband, a frustrated absent father, and in his desperation to gain favor with his son, he lost all common sense, even his moral compass. Mike believed every devious word Adrian said to him, and he realized his mistake far too late. Adrian, after all, is an extremely plausible liar.
I didn’t need the police psychologist’s report to tell me that; I’ve witnessed it for myself. It did come as a shock, however, to discover that he’s been seeing a psychotherapist for months—the “head doctor” he’d scathingly referred to. Beth called her son a “good boy”; I realize now she was burying her head in the sand. And when I remember her nervousness about fibers and DNA being found at her house, and recall the lost brand-new sneakers she neglected to mention to the police, I wonder if she guessed at Adrian’s guilt all along.
According to DS Clarke, his therapist had already flagged up concerns about a paranoid personality disorder, citing in her report that it was “both illustrated and exacerbated by Adrian’s extreme social media fixation.” In her opinion, that addiction not only fed his narcissism and fueled his need for affirmation, it had also compromised his sense of identity.
Nick called Adrian “evil”; I think it’s closer to the truth to say that he’s a lost soul. Disassociated from reality, disconnected from his family, and resentful of his seemingly more talented friends, he created his own avatar: a clever, popular daredevil. And he believed it so much, he became it. The sleepover might have been Nick’s idea, but it gave Adrian the stage he craved. There was no accomplice hiding in the wings, helping him carry out some grand scheme; there was only ever one star in his show: Adrian Atkins.
CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN
“He won’t bother you again, Izzy.” Jo rests a hand on my arm. “His defense will put forward extenuating circumstances, of course. His troubled family background. The possibility of a personality disorder. But DS Clarke is prepared. She won’t let you down.”
“Adrian’s twelve,” DCI Maxwell adds. “Two years above the age of criminal responsibility. He’ll be in secure detention for a long time. The youth court will see to that.”
“He needs help as much as punishment,” I acknowledge, and we all sit quietly for a moment, reflecting on Adrian’s crimes and his fate. “I guess that just leaves one last thing,” I say finally, staring at his phone. It sits like a ticking bomb next to DS Clarke’s file; I marvel at the devastation such a small, shiny device can wreak.
“Are you sure you want to do this?” She looks concerned. “You don’t have to, Izzy. We’ve reviewed everything on it. It’s all been documented for the court case.”
“Maybe it’s better to see than to imagine,” DCI Maxwell says knowingly.
I wonder if he’s thinking about his own children. I was impatient with the senior detective at first, convinced he wasn’t taking Nick’s disappearance seriously. Now I realize he was trying to save me from my worst fears. He’s a family man, after all, and as he said himself: delivering bad news about a child is the worst part of any police officer’s job. I know he still only wants to protect me, but I came here determined to find out everything that happened to my son, and truth has no half measures; reality should need no filter.
“Yes. I need to see . . . everything,” I tell him.
“I understand. And there’s plenty to see.” He shakes his head. “It would be easier to list what Adrian didn’t photograph or film.”
“We were all bit parts in the drama of his life. Don’t you think?” I say sadly.
At some point in the future, maybe I’ll feel more sympathy for the young boy who has changed my life forever. But that day is a long way off. Right now, all I can think of is what he did to my boy. Nick was so brave; he fought so hard for life. I owe it to him to walk through that tragic night in his shoes one last time. I hold out my hand.
* * *
Pizza crusts. Pajamas on the pillow. Molly’s half-empty milk bottle. Snow piling high on the windowsill, condensation rolling in fat drops down the glass. The opening shots to Adrian’s sleepover movie are strikingly banal. They give no hint of the horror that follows . . .
A pillow fight that turns nasty when Adrian yanks down Jason’s jeans. Jason again, half-naked in the bathroom, swearing as his privacy is invaded. Samir in his pajamas, bingeing on nachos, eyes glued to the computer as electronic missiles blast across the screen. Scenes deliberately filmed with blackmail in mind—the threat of humiliating public exposure enough to silence Jason and Samir, to keep them from revealing Adrian’s guilt.
I scroll forward to see Nick curled up in the woodshed, arms wrapped around his trembling body. He’s rocking, and I catch a faint whisper: “Mummy, help me.” His terror rips through me. I can’t bear it and I press fast-forward: to grinning gnomes outside Craig’s cottage, Marzipan innocently devouring a dish of poisoned food, Nick’s clenched fists as he defends himself against Adrian in the living room. The footage shakes as Adrian chases Nick along the footpath, his red hoodie disappearing into the distance. Once again I hear the scream I will never be able to unhear. Then the screen goes b
lack.
* * *
He really believed he was directing a movie. I’m certain Adrian was planning to compile each clip into a full-length film; I can’t bear to think how many have already found their way online. DS Clarke promised she will remove everything she finds. I hope she can, before the world gets to see the worst night of my son’s life—of his friends’ lives—of mine.
Mr. Newton assured me that he’s stamping down on school gossip. He’s a good teacher; I know that. I’ve always known it, which is what made the allegations against him so shocking. Adrian, of course, continues to maintain his story about abuse in the book group; the transcript of his statement read like a soap opera, DS Clarke said. Whatever questions I still have about why he did what he did, I feel certain I won’t find the answers from him.
I slide the phone back across the table. “It’s over. I want to let it go.”
“I think it’s the right decision, Izzy.” DCI Maxwell picks it up, tucking it into his pocket. “It’s enough that you’re both alive. Leave the rest to us. You and Nick need to move on now. Get well. Live your lives. Adrian has stolen a big enough slice already.”
“Of Craig’s life, too.” I’m gripped again by the horrible image of his big body lying prone across the footpath on the island, blood pooling around him. Shock had transfixed me, blinding me to the rock Adrian impulsively wielded toward my head. My last two thoughts as I lost consciousness were: Thank God Nick is alive . . . and I can’t believe Craig is dead.
He’d only meant to calm Adrian down; he had no idea that the mixed-up young boy had gone way beyond listening to reason, or that underneath the coat he’d refused to take off was another of his dad’s taxidermy knives. Like a cornered animal, Adrian had lashed out; the knife wound he inflicted was so severe, Craig will be in the hospital for some considerable time.
Maybe when he recovers we’ll talk—if only to keep Craig from feeling he has to fight to be Nick’s dad again. That’s never going to happen, but I loved Craig once, and I’ll never forget that he almost lost his life trying to protect my son. He’s always been meticulous, fastidiously punctual; it’s a bitter irony that this, the one time he’s been late for anything, could have been his last. He arrived back at the island just as Adrian was chasing Nick across it. It breaks my heart a little that, after texting to say he was “coming over,” Craig was only delayed because he’d stopped to buy Nick’s favorite pizza, as a peace offering to us both.
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