by Simon Lelic
“Twisted is right,” said Lara. “Poor Sadie,” she added, shaking her head.
“For the last time, Cora,” said Luke, “what’s she talking about? Tell me what people are saying!”
Lara answered before I could. “The theory is, your dad loved Sadie a bit more . . . intimately than was strictly legal. And, well. That your mum helped.”
“Shut the fuck up, Lara!” I shouted.
She took a step back, raising her hands in the air. I looked at Luke, who was basically frozen in place, like a computer when you give it too much to think about.
“I’m not saying I believe it,” said Lara, all innocent. “Although you have to say it makes a certain amount of sense. You know, in terms of motive. And opportunity. And the fact that your little brother is so . . . well, weird.” She shook her head. “The things he must have seen . . .”
Luke came out of his trance. His jaw snapped shut, and his fingers curled into fists.
“But no,” Lara went on. “Personally, I don’t quite buy it. I’m not saying it didn’t happen. But I’ve got my own theory about who killed Sadie.”
This time she looked directly at Mason, then slowly at the rest of us, one by one.
“You know what, Lara?” I said. “Maybe you killed her. You could never stand the fact that Sadie was more popular than you. That she chose to hang out with the likes of us.”
“Yeah,” said Abi. “And unlike you, Sadie didn’t have to go shagging her way round the entire school just to make a few friends.”
Lara laughed. “You see?” she said. “You are out of touch. Because again, that’s not what I heard.”
Mason went red.
“Guys,” said Fash. “Everyone! Let’s just go. OK? Why are we even standing here listening to this?”
“You’re not going anywhere, Paki,” came a voice, and Ian Nolan stepped up and gave him a shove. And I didn’t know this until afterward, but apparently Ian was one of the kids who always gave Fash a hard time at school. Or after school mostly, in fact. Whenever him and his mates could catch Fash on his own.
But fair play to Fash. He didn’t back away. Instead he turned around and shoved Ian right back. I guess he must have been more angry than I realized. “I’m not a Paki, dickhead,” he said. “I’m English, and my parents were born in fucking Qatar.”
Ian made to retaliate, but Mason stepped into his path.
“Back off,” he said. Not loud, just sort of quiet. But if you know Mason, and you’ve seen him lose his shit, you would have known to do what he said.
But Ian didn’t. Instead, he said, “What are you gonna do about it, murderer?”
And that’s when Mason finally flipped. Seriously, he just . . . he lost it. And I don’t know if he’d made some sort of mental connection—if he’d decided it must have been Ian who’d graffitied his house—or whether it was just what Lara had said before, but he grabbed Ian by his T-shirt and he smashed his fist right into his nose.
It was just . . . it was horrible. I mean, I’ve seen boys fight loads of times, but usually it’s like watching some stupid dance. Lots of shoving, and name-calling, and then maybe someone gets someone else in a headlock, and everyone ends up on the floor. But this . . . it was like Mason didn’t care. Like all the things that would have usually held him back just . . . just didn’t count anymore. And after he hit him, he hit him again—once, twice, three times. And Lara started screaming, and Sam, the other sixth former, was standing there openmouthed, just gawping at what was happening like the rest of us.
And I remember thinking, We should have gone around. Just that, over and over: we should have gone around. Not that there was another bridge within half a mile—nothing but the old pipeline bridge on the edge of the woods, which we wouldn’t have been able to cross, even if we’d been stupid enough to try. But from teasing Lara about her nose, I couldn’t believe what was suddenly happening. I guess none of us could. That’s why nobody moved to stop it, until Mason made to throw Ian into the river.
Ian was fighting back by this point, landing some punches of his own. But you could see that first punch had left him dazed, and even though he was bigger than Mason, Mason was stronger. Or maybe not stronger. It was his rage that was letting him win, that was all. And as Ian was swinging his arms, Mason ducked his head and started driving Ian toward the railing. And suddenly the water down below didn’t seem to be flowing so slowly after all.
“Mason, don’t!”
By the time I yelled, Mason had Ian up against the handrail. Ian was still swinging his arms, but Mason had a hand up under his chin, and was forcing him over the side.
I rushed forward. We all did. And for a minute it was one big scuffle, all of us trying to pull the two of them apart. Luke took an elbow to the face, and someone’s heel came down on my foot, so hard I figured they must have broken my toe.
But in the end we managed to get between them. Luke and Fash dragged Mason off. Lara was clucking over Ian, who’d dropped to his knees. There was blood all dripping from his nose, and he looked as angry as Mason did. About the fact he’d just been beaten up by a kid a year younger than him, probably, and about what his mates would say when word got around.
“Are you crazy?” Abi yelled at Mason. “You could have killed him! He could have drowned!”
Which was the moment Mason finally stopped struggling, as though it had dawned on him what he’d been trying to do. Because Abi was right. If Mason had managed to throw Ian into the water, Ian would have gone under. No question. He was dazed from that punch, like I said, and it was a three-meter drop to the water’s surface.
“I wasn’t going to do it,” Mason growled. “I was just trying to scare him, that’s all.” He wriggled until Fash and Luke let him go.
Ian was staggering to his feet. “You . . . you psycho. That’s what you are. A fucking psycho!” He kept touching the top of his lip, looking at the blood that came away on his hands.
“Come on,” said Luke, pulling Mason away, toward the other side of the bridge. “Mason, come on. Let’s just go.”
Mason allowed himself to be led. Ian was yelling all sorts of stuff by this point, but Mason didn’t even look back.
I did, though. Me, Fash and Abi had fallen into step behind Mason and Luke, sort of on autopilot. We were in shock, I guess—stunned—but even so I couldn’t help turning around. And that’s when I caught Lara’s eye. She was crying, but by now she looked almost as angry as Ian did.
“You’ll pay for that!” she yelled. “All of you! Just you wait and see!”
FLEET SAT IN his car staring at the familiar green door. It was long overdue a fresh coat of paint. It clearly hadn’t been touched in the time since Fleet had last seen it, other than by the abrasive sea air. Not a lot about the rest of the house appeared to have changed either. It was a bungalow much like the others in the close—roomier inside than it appeared, with a heavy, concrete-tile roof that made the building look like a neckless man wearing a hat made of lead. The only real change was that the weathered paintwork suggested the man had developed a skin condition. It was no wonder he didn’t look happy.
Fleet had parked his Insignia at the entrance to the street: close enough that he could see the building clearly; far enough—he hoped—that he wouldn’t be spotted from one of the windows. He adjusted his seat to create space between him and the steering wheel, and for a moment he reclined and closed his eyes, listening to the sound of the rain. Then he reached to gather the folders that were piled in the passenger-side footwell.
What have we got? he’d asked Nicky, and though she hadn’t given him the answer he’d been hoping for, she’d summed it up neatly enough. In short, they had nothing. Or not nothing. What they had was worse than nothing, because everything they did have seemed to point in different directions, to the extent that they still didn’t know what kind of case they were working, at least in terms of Sadie. A
lthough perhaps, as of this morning, that had changed. From a missing-persons inquiry, there seemed no question they’d progressed now to murder.
In truth there’d never really been any doubt—not in Fleet’s mind, anyway. He’d hoped with all his heart that Sadie had simply run away, and for a while he’d almost allowed himself to believe it. Everyone who’d known her had claimed it would have been out of character, but Fleet knew all too well what growing up in this place could do to you. The small-town atmosphere was so oppressive, the distant horizons felt like walls, the open skies like a ceiling that was pressing in. And that Sadie was such an overachiever—grade-A student, top billing in the school productions, and what must have felt like the expectations of an entire town on her shoulders—would in Fleet’s estimation only have made things more intolerable for her, particularly as she’d got older. Plus, throughout the summer there had been rumors flying around about Sadie online, focusing mainly on her alleged promiscuity. None that Fleet or his colleagues had been able to verify—it was innuendo mainly, verbal winks and knowing nudges, which Sadie’s friends had claimed were flat-out lies—but the SadieSlut hashtag couldn’t have failed to have taken its toll on her mental well-being.
But if Sadie had run, why hadn’t she taken anything with her? Clothes, photographs, her favorite soft toy? And why hadn’t she been picked up on CCTV anywhere? Why had nobody come forward with any credible information, despite a nationwide appeal? People didn’t just disappear, not in this day and age, and not when the net that had been cast to find them extended so far and so wide—not unless they were already dead.
Suicide, as such, was a plausible explanation as well. There’d been no note, no message, but a couple of the investigators on Fleet’s team had argued strongly that Sadie had thrown herself in the river. But that, to Fleet, did seem out of character. Perhaps teenage suicides often did, but Fleet still didn’t buy it. Didn’t? Or couldn’t? Had he simply refused to face the possibility? The reality was he’d never had to answer that, because on the second day after Sadie had been reported missing, they’d discovered her rucksack.
It had been found by a dog walker on the bank of the river, two miles from the estuary. And right away Fleet had felt certain that something wasn’t right. On the face of it, the discovery of Sadie’s bag—containing her wallet, her mobile, her house keys: everything she would have carried on her person—suggested she may have suffered an accident. Perhaps she’d slipped, fallen, and been caught by the current. The tides in the river here were vicious, something Fleet knew all too well.
Except he didn’t buy that explanation either.
The dog walker who’d found the bag had showed Fleet the exact spot in which it had been located, and to Fleet’s mind it had been too high on the bank, too close to the bridleway, for it to have genuinely been washed up by the water. Perhaps Sadie had dropped the bag before she’d suffered her accident, but if that were the case, why had the contents been soaking wet?
No, Fleet had decided, something about the rucksack was definitely off. Rather than a clue to Sadie’s disappearance, it felt more like a red herring, as though someone had tried to make it look like Sadie had suffered an accident. And the discovery of Sadie’s blood-soaked jacket that very morning all but confirmed his initial instincts had been right. Sadie wasn’t responsible for her disappearance. Someone else was. Someone who, between the hours of midnight and 11 a.m. on Friday 31 August, had managed to either entice Sadie from her house or force her from it, and then taken her to some secret location. There, they’d either killed Sadie or held her captive, and kept her hidden from a search team that at its peak had matched the size of a small army. Further, they’d left behind no evidence, beyond what had turned up in the river. It was no mean feat. In fact, it would have been nigh on impossible without some degree of cooperation from Sadie herself. Which is why, after everything, Fleet had come to the conclusion that Sadie had been murdered by someone she’d known.
* * *
* * *
Sitting in his car with his case notes on his lap, Fleet flicked through the transcripts of the interviews he’d conducted with Sadie’s friends.
Abigail Marshall.
Cora Briggs.
Fareed Hussein.
And finally, of course, Mason Payne.
You’ve always liked him for Sadie’s murder, the superintendent had said, and it was true Fleet had been leaning Mason’s way. He’d had his suspicions about the rest of them, too, mainly because he’d been convinced right from the start that Sadie’s friends were hiding something. Collectively or individually, he wasn’t sure. Was that enough, though? Had his focus on Sadie’s boyfriend in particular really been justified?
The only alibi Mason had been able to offer for the period during which Sadie had disappeared—which Fleet and his team had established as being somewhere between the point Sadie’s parents and her oldest brother had gone to bed, and the time the next morning the mother had checked Sadie’s room to find her daughter gone—was that he’d been at home, asleep. Then again, that was the only alibi almost everyone had been able to offer, from the neighbors, to Sadie’s teachers, to Sadie’s parents themselves.
On the other hand, the circumstantial evidence against Mason was more compelling than it was against anyone. The local sex offenders register had been checked and rechecked. Everyone had been checked and rechecked, Sadie’s parents most thoroughly of all. In the end, it was Mason who’d emerged as having both the means to kill Sadie and the most credible motive. Fleet didn’t pay much attention to rumors, not when rumors were all they were. Take the instance of Sadie’s parents, for example, and the inference of sexual abuse. The rumors might have counted for something, if Fleet or anyone else had been able to come up with the slightest evidence that they were true. But what Fleet was interested in was the effect any rumors might have had, and the stories that were flying around about Sadie’s promiscuity could well have tipped Mason over the edge. He had a volatile personality anyway. He had a history of getting into trouble at school, and instances throughout his childhood of low-level violence. If Mason had allowed the rumors to influence him, if he’d come to suspect Sadie really was cheating on him—how might he have reacted?
And there was one other piece of evidence implicating Mason—the thing they’d found in Sadie’s bedroom. Again, it was hardly conclusive, but it certainly didn’t help Mason’s case.
At the end of the day, though, hadn’t it all been mainly supposition? A degree of desperation as well, to tie someone—anyone—to Sadie’s disappearance? Was it true what people were now saying, that Fleet had allowed past events to influence the present—that he’d been driven by some misguided compulsion to right an injustice, twenty years too late?
The ringtone of his mobile jolted Fleet from his thoughts.
When he saw who was calling, he hesitated, contemplating letting the call ring out. But really there was no question about him answering.
“Are you fucking kidding me, Rob?”
The voice of his wife—soon to be ex—came blaring through the earpiece the moment Fleet swiped the screen.
“Hello, Holly.”
“Don’t fucking ‘hello, Holly’ me. After all the shit you’ve put me through. You’re there. You’re part of it.”
“Calm down, would you? What are you talking about?”
“You know full well what I’m talking about. I spotted you last night on the news. I’m talking about you, and the girl, and whatever the fuck happened with her friends. Have you been there all this time? Since the beginning? Skulking around in the background, letting your boss cover for you in front of the cameras?”
Fleet sighed. He was careful to do so away from the microphone. He had an urge to light a cigarette, but Holly would have heard that, too.
“I’ve been here since the beginning, yes,” he said. “But I haven’t been . . . how did you put it?”
“Skulking,” his wife spat.
“Right. That. I’ve just been getting on with the job. I haven’t been trying to hide, from you or anyone else.”
The lie came easily, perhaps because he’d half managed to convince even himself. He looked again at the green door.
“The job,” Holly echoed. “Jesus Christ, Rob. Since when was self-flagellation part of the job?”
Holly lectured on English literature at the university. She used these words to rile him.
“Self-what? Remember I don’t speak Chaucer, Professor.”
Holly sniffed. “Self-flagellation. It’s a Catholic thing. Which I know you claim you’re not, but you aren’t half good at it sometimes.”
It was another attempt to get a rise from him. Fleet stayed quiet, conceding the point, and eventually the silence softened.
“Seriously, Rob. What are you playing at?”
Fleet pictured his wife pacing the kitchen at home. Her home now, he reminded himself. Fleet’s home, if you could call it that, was a shitty little bedsit in a block he remembered being called to more than once when he’d been a PC working the night shift. He could afford better, a bit. He just didn’t want to commit to anything longer than a week-by-week contract. Not yet, he told himself. The same thing he’d been telling himself for the past eleven months.
“I’m not playing, Holly. They asked me. That’s all. What could I say?”
“You could have said no.”
“I could have. I suppose. But . . . you know.” A bloodhound, the superintendent had called Fleet, and like it or not, that was his reputation. He found people. He didn’t always himself know how. Holly’s theory, meant more as a criticism than a compliment, was that it had something to do with Fleet knowing so intimately what it felt like to be lost. But whatever it was, finding those who’d gone missing had become Fleet’s main remit now on the force, to the extent that he no longer really fitted into the central command structure. He went wherever he was needed: from being seconded to a remote Scottish island, where a trail of lies and cover-ups in the local community had led Fleet to discover a priest’s body buried under a cairn, to—most recently—an investigation run by the Met into the identity of a torso found floating in the Thames.
