The Search Party

by Simon Lelic

  Fash looked at me. He didn’t say anything. He let his arm fall away.

  “Oh God,” said Abi. “That’s not . . . Please don’t tell me that’s . . .”

  “We don’t know what it is,” I said, because I swear to God she was practically hyperventilating.

  “It is, though, isn’t it?” said Abi. “It’s blood. It’s Sadie’s blood.” She looked like she was about to cry.

  “We don’t know what it is!” I said again. “Just like we can’t be certain the phone is even hers!”

  “Oh, for fuck’s sake!” said Mason. “Who else apart from one of us would have that photo on their lock screen? And it’s Sadie’s passcode! That’s pretty fucking conclusive if you ask me.”

  Luke was still sitting on the ground, his thumbs tucked under his chin and his fingers steepled across his mouth. I sat down next to him, and wrapped my arm around his shoulders.

  “Mase,” I said, quietly. Just like a warning, you know? And I tipped my head slightly in Luke’s direction.

  But Mason either didn’t hear, or he wasn’t in the mood to listen.

  “I told you,” he said. “I fucking told you. And you lot all wanted to go back! You were dying to go back.”

  “Mason!” I said again, practically shouting this time. “Shut up, will you! Just stop! Just for a minute!”

  Luke had started muttering to himself, saying something I couldn’t make out.

  Mason was shaking his head, ignoring me the way he had before. “Now we have to stay out here,” he said. “Nobody’s going home now.”

  “Mase . . .” said Fash. “Let’s just . . . let’s think about this for a second. Let’s try to work out what it means.”

  Mason spun. “It means Sadie was out here. That’s what it means. It means she’s probably still out here.”

  “But why would Sadie have a second phone?” I said, as much to myself as anyone. “It doesn’t make any sense.”

  Mason opened his mouth to answer, but it was obvious he didn’t know what to say. “I don’t know,” he said eventually. “I don’t fucking know, OK? But that’s not the point. You know as well as I do, that’s not the point.”

  Luke got to his feet. “I need to go home,” he said, and I realized that’s what he’d been muttering before. “I need to get back.”

  “What?” said Mason, as Luke swung his rucksack over his shoulder. “No, Luke, wait. We can’t go back. Not now. You see that, don’t you?”

  Luke shook his head. “Dylan,” he said. “Dylan needs me. I need to get back. I’m sorry, Mase, but I do.”

  Mason took hold of his arm. “Luke, wait. Listen. Maybe Dylan needs you, but what if your sister needs you more? What if she’s out here and she’s hurt? Just like we said before?”

  Luke opened his mouth again, but this time nothing came out.

  “Guys?” said Fash. “Don’t you think . . . I mean, if it is Sadie’s phone, shouldn’t we . . . I don’t know. Tell the police or something? Especially if that’s . . .” He gestured to the phone in Mason’s hand. “If what’s on it isn’t mud.”

  “The police?” said Mason, incredulous. “What are the police going to do?”

  “They’ll run, like, tests or something,” said Abi. “Won’t they? They’ll be able to find out for sure.”

  “Find what out?” Mason scoffed. “It’s Sadie’s phone. We know that. All that forensic shit takes days, and anyway, the cops have already made up their minds. They think Sadie’s dead, and they think I killed her. If we turn up with this,” he said, waggling the phone, “and they discover I was there when we found it, it would be like handing them a written confession. And I know none of you lot gives two shits about what happens to me, and it’s not like I give much of a fuck anymore either. But personally, I’m not ready to give up on Sadie. Not yet.”

  “Come on, Mase,” I said. “You know that’s not true. You know we care. And you know none of us are giving up on Sadie either.”

  “So prove it,” said Mason.

  I glanced around at the others, and it was obvious no one knew what to say. Abi was looking like she was about to be sick. Fash was staring into space. And Luke . . . Luke looked about as lost as I’d ever seen him. I mean, I could only imagine what he was going through. What he was imagining the phone might mean.

  And not just the phone.

  The blood.

  “So what are you suggesting we should do?” I asked Mason. “I mean, if we did stay out here.”

  “We search the area, obviously,” he answered. “And we follow the stream deeper inland.”

  “Inland?” said Fash. “But we just came from that way.”

  “We did,” said Mason. “But was anyone actually looking? Or thinking about anything other than a drink of water since we left the clearing? You and Cora walked past that phone without even batting an eyelid.”

  I felt myself flush. Fash looked the way he would have had his mum just caught him searching for porn on his computer.

  “And anyway,” Mason went on, “there’s no point carrying on the way we were going. The police already came this far, before they decided to concentrate on the river.” He shook his head. “I knew they were looking in the wrong place.”

  “And the water situation?” I said, when no one else spoke. “If we stay out here—if we do as you say—what exactly are we supposed to drink?” I looked at the sky, which at some point had turned from white to gray. “I mean, sun or no sun, it’s got to be the hottest day of the year. And the air’s so thick I can barely breathe.”

  Abi nodded vigorously. “Right,” she said, and she held her throat. “I’m not kidding, guys. I’m seriously about to die here.”

  But I swear, it was as though Mason had an answer prepared for that, too. Or someone did, anyway. Because right then, right on cue, that’s when it started to rain.

  THIS TIME FLEET didn’t bother with the satnav. The longer he spent in this place, the more the lie of the land came back to him. And not just that: other memories had come bubbling back, too. Memories of growing up here, of school—of a prevailing boredom, and the stupidity he and his friends had resorted to in order to keep themselves entertained. Drink, drugs, fucking, fighting. He looked back on the person he had been and shuddered at the thought of who he might have become. If he hadn’t left. If his sister hadn’t died.

  Jeannie.

  His beautiful, broken little sister. Who had probably saved Fleet’s life, just as he had failed to save hers.

  He rolled the Insignia to a halt in the same spot he’d parked the last time he’d been out here, past the news vans and just short of the cluster of police vehicles. Nicky was in the passenger seat beside him, a finger to one ear and her mobile to the other, straining to hear the voice at the other end of the line. Fleet had been lost in his thoughts, hypnotized by the sound of the rain and the steady sweep of the wiper blades, and he tuned back in to what was being said.

  “Sorry, Liv, can you repeat that? I lost you when we left the main road. Liv? Are you—”

  Nicky pulled the handset from her ear and frowned at the screen. Fleet could hear the beeps signaling a disconnect sounding faintly from the earpiece.

  “Who’s Liv?” he said.

  “Olivia. PC Brightman. She’s the one who was following up on the phone the kids say they found in the woods. The one they decided must have been Sadie’s.”

  “And? Any joy?”

  “We’ve got confirmation that the emergency call Cora made at the start of all of this came from a number that was registered to a pay-as-you-go. All the search party kids had contracts, so we know it almost certainly wasn’t one of theirs. And given that their phones all apparently went missing . . .”

  “But is there anything definitively linking it to Sadie?”

  “Well, for starters, the number was assigned three days before she disappeared.” />
  Fleet felt a tightening in his stomach, a sense of something clicking into place.

  “And we found the shop the pay-as-you-go was bought from,” Nicky went on. “The bad news is that the CCTV footage has already been deleted. Plus, the phone was paid for in cash, so there’s no record there either. But Liv has been down there talking to the employees. Apparently the kid who sold the phone near shat himself when Liv showed him Sadie’s picture. He’d seen her on the news, obviously, and he was terrified he was going to end up in handcuffs.”

  “For what exactly?” said Fleet.

  “Obstruction of justice, I suppose. Failing to respond to our requests for information. Although Liv said the kid also stank of weed. Hence the memory loss, perhaps.”

  “So he ID’d her? He confirmed he sold the phone to Sadie?”

  “He gave a tentative ID. He said it might have been Sadie who bought the phone. That was as far as he was prepared to go. But if it was her, he said, she didn’t look anything like she does in the picture we’ve been circulating to the press.”

  “Meaning she disguised herself?”

  “Possibly,” agreed Nicky. “Or possibly he was just trying to cover his back.”

  Fleet considered for a moment. He reached to open the car door. “Either way,” he said, “and given what Sadie’s friends have told us, we need to work on the basis the phone was hers. I assume it was bagged with everything else the kids had on them when we caught up with them?”

  “It was. I’ve checked in with Forensics, and they’re bumping it to the top of the queue. It looks like the phone got wet in the rain, so there was no obvious sign of the blood Cora mentioned, and the fingerprint situation is a mess. But if there’s something there, they’ll find it.”

  Fleet nodded his approval and unfolded himself into the weather. He’d come prepared this time. As well as a waterproof jacket, he was wearing a pair of boots he’d bought from one of the fishing supply stores near the harbor, and they sank into the ground the moment he took a step from the gravel onto the grass.

  He strode heavily toward the woods, as Nicky checked her mobile again at his side.

  “Nothing,” she said. “Not even a single bar. It’s a miracle those kids got reception out here at all.”

  They passed several police officers returning from the woods, and Fleet mirrored their salutes.

  “You know,” said Nicky, “that might actually make sense. A disguise, I mean, even if it was just sunglasses and a ponytail. If Sadie bought the phone, but didn’t want to be recognized. And the money. The fact she’d stopped paying her wages into her account. It means she would have had cash—money to spend that couldn’t be traced. Plus, there’s the fact she bought a second phone in the first place . . .”

  “You think she ran away after all,” said Fleet, who’d been mulling over the same thoughts himself.

  “Maybe she was planning to,” Nicky replied. “I mean, everyone’s been saying it would have been totally out of character, right? That Sadie was prepping for her A levels after getting straight nines on her GCSEs, had already drawn up a short list of universities. But those memes, the stuff online . . . maybe they bothered her more than people realized.”

  “Because . . .” Fleet prompted.

  “Because . . .” Nicky frowned. She shook her head. And then she stopped walking. “Because the rumors that she was sleeping around were true. Just like Lara said.”

  Fleet stopped walking himself. He raised his eyebrows, then turned and continued on.

  “So is that the theory now?” said Nicky, her voice betraying her excitement. “That Sadie ran away? Does that mean . . . Do you think she might actually be alive? Except . . .” She slowed again. “How does that tally with us finding her bag? And her coat, more importantly. The blood . . .”

  It was the very question Fleet had been wrestling with, and he didn’t like any of the answers he’d come up with. The only one that made sense was barely an answer at all, just the same meaningless phrase that had been going around and around in his head. It sounds like there’s more than one thing going on . . .

  They entered the forest, and this time they ran into a group of at least a dozen officers heading back toward the Land Rovers. Instead of saluting this time, Fleet frowned. “Shit,” he muttered.

  And then, with a glance at Nicky, he picked up the pace.

  * * *

  * * *

  Superintendent Burton was standing under a canopy that had been erected in the vicinity of the old farm buildings. Fleet noted the place in the dilapidated barn he recalled first seeing Sadie’s friends—looking like partied-out festivalgoers, he remembered thinking. A group of trauma survivors might have been a better description—yet Fleet wondered now what each of them had been contemplating behind their hollowed-out eyes. How they’d managed to get themselves into such a mess? Or how they might get themselves out of it?

  “Sir,” said Fleet, as he approached. Nicky dropped back a pace, but lingered just behind Fleet’s shoulder.

  “Ah,” said Burton, turning. “Detective Inspector. I understand you wanted to speak with me. It must have been important for you to have driven out all this way.”

  Detective Inspector, Fleet noted, not Rob. “I believe it is, sir.”

  Fleet had tried several times to contact the superintendent over the phone, only to be told each time that he was unavailable. When he’d finally learned where Burton was, he’d decided to corner the superintendent in person. Yet now that he had the man’s attention, Fleet couldn’t help but be distracted by the activity around him. All about there were signs of precisely what he’d feared was happening when he’d seen the uniformed officers trooping from the woods. Here, as by the river, the search was being wound up.

  “Sir, if I may, I was hoping to convince you—”

  “Superintendent? Superintendent Burton? Harry Boxall from the Sun. Any chance of a quick word?”

  Fleet turned to see a man in a shabby raincoat blundering across the clearing. There was a photographer behind him who was much better prepared for the weather, from the hood on his mountain-grade jacket right down to the rain cover on his camera.

  “How the hell did they get through the cordon?” Fleet muttered. Then, raising his voice, he started to wave the two men back. “For Christ’s sake, Boxall. You know better than to—”

  Burton laid a hand on Fleet’s shoulder, and indicated to a uniform who’d intercepted the men to allow them to approach.

  “Superintendent Burton,” said Boxall, as he drew near, “is the search for Sadie Saunders being called off? And what about the investigation out here?”

  “Our inquiries on both fronts remain ongoing,” replied Burton, smoothly. “The activity you are witnessing is simply a case of resources being redirected in the most appropriate way. The combined investigation is already the most extensive, and most expensive, in the county’s history, and we are satisfied that the commitment in terms of manpower will soon be seen to have paid off.”

  Fleet turned to his superior. Had Burton really just said what Fleet thought he had?

  “Does that mean an arrest is imminent, Superintendent?” said the journalist, who’d obviously interpreted Burton’s words in the same way Fleet had.

  “It does indeed,” Burton replied. “And it means we are confident justice will be served. Now, if you’ll excuse me, there is still important work to be done.” He signaled to Nicky, who spread her arms and started forward, herding the journalist and his photographer back the way they’d come.

  “Detective Inspector Fleet!” Boxall pressed, resisting Nicky’s attempts to move him. “How do you respond to accusations that the police are responsible for the death of a minor? That the course of the investigation before the superintendent’s intervention led directly to events out here in the woods?”

  Fleet noticed Nicky glance toward him, and he heard
the photographer capture the expression that fell like a shadow across his face. It was . . . It was a fucking ambush. Burton had set the whole thing up. He’d done exactly what Fleet had accused him of wanting to do the day they’d spoken at the Overlook. He was walking away, opting to protect his precious budget rather than waste any more money searching for the truth. And he was using a tabloid hack to convey the threat he’d implied before: either Fleet made an arrest that justified their focus on Sadie’s friends, and in doing so spared the force its blushes, or he’d be hung out to dry himself.

  Dimly, Fleet heard Nicky’s voice filtering through the rain. “You heard the superintendent,” she was saying. “You got what you came for. Now, seeing as we’re out here in the woods, let’s make like a tree, shall we? That means leave in case there’s any confusion.”

  The superintendent was walking away in the opposite direction, toward the barns. Fleet hurried after him. He caught up with Burton halfway across the clearing.

  “Sir. Sir.” Fleet failed to keep the anger from his tone, and Burton turned to him sharply. The superintendent was in full uniform beneath his yellow waterproof jacket, and the rain trickled from the peak of his cap. In contrast, the water was running straight from Fleet’s hair into his eyes.

  “I know what you’re going to ask, Detective Inspector, and the answer is no.”

  “But we have evidence, sir. The kids—Sadie’s friends—found a phone that places Sadie in the woods not fifteen miles from where we’re—”

  “I know all about the phone,” said Burton. Then, taking in Fleet’s reaction, “Don’t look so surprised, Detective Inspector. Forensics notified me the moment your DS asked them to shift their priorities. As I instructed them to. And from what I understand, all you have is a mobile without an owner. There is nothing to specifically connect the phone to—”

  “There’s a photograph, one only Sadie and her friends were likely to—”

  “Don’t interrupt me, Detective Inspector,” said Burton, cutting in himself.

  “Yes, sir. Sorry, sir. But if you’ll just hear me out . . .”