Found

by Erin Kinsley

  The policeman hooks the crowbar under the lock, leans his weight on it and pops the boot open.

  The boy inside blinks at the light. His mouth is sealed with silver duct-tape. He’s very thin, and red-faced from the heat, and he’s been crying. He’s lying on his side, his knees bent into the only position they can be; his nails are long and dirty, and he needs a haircut and a bath. Sizes too small, his clothes don’t fit him. His feet are bare, his socks knotted together to tie his wrists.

  The policeman is taken aback but keeps his professional demeanour. He reaches out to remove the duct-tape from the boy’s mouth, but the boy cowers away.

  ‘Let me do it, Dave,’ says the policewoman, as she steps forward. Smiling reassurance, she looks into the boy’s eyes. ‘Just keep still a minute, love, and I’ll take this off.’ She picks a corner of the tape to lift it and pulls it from his face as gently as she can. ‘Are you all right, love? You look in a bit of a state. How long have you been in here? Shall I give you a hand? Just sit up slowly.’ She turns to one of the cashiers. ‘Fetch us a bottle of water, will you? And a pair of scissors.’

  Slowly, painfully, the boy sits up.

  ‘Take your time, love. Dave,’ she says quietly to her colleague, ‘I think we’re going to need an ambulance. And someone from Social Services.’ The policeman steps away and speaks into his radio. The cashier comes running back with scissors and water, and the policewoman carefully cuts the boy’s wrists free. He rubs at the welts the bindings have left, then takes the water and drinks down the whole half-litre.

  ‘It doesn’t look very comfortable in there,’ says the policewoman. ‘Do you think you can stand up? Lean on me, and let’s get you out.’

  Stiffly, the boy swings his legs over the boot-sill, and rests his dirty feet on the rear bumper. The policewoman pulls on his arms and raises him up, and he jumps clumsily down from the boot on to the concrete standing, staggering as he lands.

  ‘You don’t look very well, sweetheart,’ says the policewoman. ‘Just sit yourself down there a minute, and put your head between your legs.’

  The boy sits cross-legged on the concrete, hiding his face on his knees, and the policewoman crouches at his side. She puts a caring arm around his skinny shoulders. Through his shirt, she can see the nodules of his spine.

  ‘Can you tell me your name, my love?’ she asks.

  ‘Evan,’ he says. ‘I’m Evan Ferrers.’ He looks up at her, and the scourge of torment is in his face. ‘Do you think you could ring my mum, and ask her to come and take me home?’

  ELEVEN

  It’s something Claire feels inclined never to forgive herself, one of her life’s most perfect ironies, that despite her being almost housebound and a near-recluse all this time – eight months and five days – when they come to bring her the news, she isn’t home. Instead, she’s meandering aimlessly around Sainsbury’s, looking over the English strawberries. She picks up a punnet, and sniffs the red scent through the pierced cellophane, longing for better things, a better place, to go back in time, or forwards, anywhere but here. There’s such nostalgia in the scent of strawberries – expeditions to summer fields, Evan running up and down the rows of the pick-your-own, berry stains covering his shorts. And her mother with them: her mother used to love picking strawberries. Claire feels a pang, a pain in her chest she knows is heartbreak, but for whom she isn’t sure. Her mother was gone before Evan disappeared, and it’s a blessing she was spared.

  On the Maidenhead road the traffic’s bad, and that adds twenty minutes to her journey, so she’s fretting about the chilled stuff in the heat, marvelling at the same time that she can still be bothered by such trivialities as melting butter. When she turns into the cul-de-sac and sees the car, the last green shoot of hope – the one protected with such fierce care against the landslip of probability – dies.

  She knows it’s them, not because she recognises the car but because she’s learned how they operate. There are always two, this time a woman and a man, side by side in the front seats, both in white shirts, and even though they must have heard her coming, they don’t turn to look, but keep facing forwards, like automatons yet to be switched on. She knows it’s them, and she knows they must have something of face-to-face importance to say, or they’d have phoned. A word comes to her mind – remains. Instinct tells her this is going to be about remains.

  She pulls up on the driveway and turns off the engine, but she doesn’t get out of the car. She’s savouring these last few moments, the final moments when she isn’t formally bereaved, when her son might still – an outside chance, bleak odds but odds nonetheless – come home. In the rear-view mirror she watches them climb from their car. She knows the woman; her last name’s Naylor, and she always said, Call me Rachel, but Claire never did. The other one was here that very first night, a younger man, lean in his tight suit-trousers, walking two steps behind the woman.

  She wishes Matt were here, but Matt might be anywhere. He might be coming home tonight or he might be away; these days she barely notices and doesn’t really care. Over time, there have been reversals. In the early days, she clung to him, hated him to leave. Now she’s glad to have an empty house: no need to cook, no reason not to collapse on the sofa with a bottle of Sauvignon Blanc and banal TV.

  When the officers reach her car, there’s an awkward moment when the driver’s window is closed between them and the policewoman’s looking in at her expectantly. Claire thinks she would like to freeze time right here and never know what’s coming next, but the scene is too ridiculous to be borne for more than seconds. She turns the key a notch in the ignition, and the dashboard lights flash on. She presses the button in the door armrest, and the window slides open.

  Naylor is almost smiling, and Claire’s wondering how she dare.

  ‘How are you, Claire?’ The question’s unnecessary, answered in Claire’s pale, unmade-up face and careless clothes. Her hand on the steering wheel is bony and blue-veined. Naylor remembers the woman she met on that first night, sleekly coiffured, her nails recently done. In the space of the next few hours, that well-groomed woman disappeared, and Naylor has never seen her since. Those once-glossy fingernails are marred with white spots, which Naylor has read is a sign of zinc deficiency. Claire has the same washed-out, malnourished sallowness as women on prison diets of white bread and margarine, the result of being institutionalised, of never breathing fresh air.

  Claire thinks fleetingly about politeness and preamble but instead she asks, ‘What’s going on?’ She’s hoping Naylor will say, Only a routine visit, or Just keeping in touch, but she doesn’t.

  ‘Matt’s not here?’ she asks, and Claire shakes her head. ‘What time will he be home?’

  Claire half-remembers him saying something about Oxford, but can think of no reason why he should go there. At the time, she didn’t bother to ask.

  ‘I think he might be away tonight,’ she says. ‘What’s this about?’

  ‘I’ll get my colleague to ring him,’ says Naylor. She opens the car door for Claire. ‘Shall we go inside?’

  Claire puts her handbag on the hall table alongside one of the Sainsbury’s carrier bags – a top-of-their-range fish pie, a bottle of New Zealand white, a packet of Mr Kipling cakes. In the end, the strawberries had seemed too emotionally charged.

  ‘Shall we have a cup of tea?’ asks Naylor, doing that thing they tend to do, taking over your house, making you feel inept, controlled and taken care of, all at the same time. ‘Put the kettle on, Brad.’

  The young man in the tight suit doesn’t balk, but goes immediately to do as he’s told, and Claire is momentarily embarrassed as she remembers the state of the kitchen, the unwashed plates she ought to have put in the dishwasher, the rubbish she should have taken out days ago, the surfaces she should have wiped down.

  As Naylor ushers Claire into the lounge, she notices how things have changed. Dust has settled everywhere, and
there’s a stillness to the room which is unnerving. The photographs of Evan she remembers are no longer here. In their place are dirty cups and glasses, and a half-eaten sandwich going stale on a plate.

  Claire doesn’t apologise for the mess. In the kitchen, the young man is speaking into a phone, and she hears him saying Mr Ferrers, introducing himself as DS Hagen and leaving a lengthy message on Matt’s switched-off phone.

  ‘If there’s any chance of Matt getting here, I’d like to talk to you both together,’ says Naylor. She takes a seat in an armchair. Claire’s grateful for the sofa, in case she might have to lie down. She’s feeling a touch light-headed, a little shaky in her hands.

  Vehemently, she shakes her head.

  ‘Tell me now,’ she says. ‘You have to tell me now.’

  Naylor senses the dread in Claire’s voice, but with the apprehension is the desperate need to know, even though the woman’s expecting the worst of all bad news. How, after all this time, could she be expecting anything else?

  In the kitchen, Hagen’s finishing his call.

  ‘It’s good news,’ says Naylor, knowing that’s only half the story. ‘Evan’s been found.’

  ‘I knew it!’ The grief on Claire’s face is as fresh as that first night. ‘Where? Where did they find him?’

  ‘Alive, Claire. He’s been found alive.’

  Claire covers her face with her hands. From the kitchen comes the sound of the kettle boiling, of cupboards opening as Hagen searches for clean mugs.

  ‘Claire?’ Naylor asks gently. She leans forwards and touches Claire’s knee.

  Claire jumps up from the sofa and runs to the downstairs cloakroom, where Naylor can’t help but hear her throwing up.

  Glorious mid-summer, mid-afternoon. Curlews are wheeling and calling across the fell, and the breeze bending the cotton grass carries the peaty scent of bracken, and the bleating of the ewes and lambs in the home field. When Jack reaches the house, Dora’s fallen asleep in the deckchair on the lawn, her reading glasses and newspaper folded in her lap. He thinks that he should wake her or she’ll never sleep tonight, but as he’s about to touch her shoulder, through the French doors he hears the phone ring.

  Drowsy flies are buzzing in the hall. Out of recent habit, before he answers the phone Jack touches the photograph of himself and Evan, a talismanic gesture and a small prayer.

  He picks up the receiver and says hello.

  ‘Dad.’ Jack becomes very still. Every time Matt phones, Jack fears bad news, the final snuffing of his fading hope. But this evening Matt’s voice is different, lighter and brighter than it’s been in a long time. ‘Are you there, Dad?’

  Jack clears his throat.

  ‘Yes, I’m here,’ he says, all bluff. ‘You’re lucky to catch me. I’ve only just come in.’

  ‘You might want to sit down, Dad,’ says Matt. ‘I’ve got some news. Good news, though. Brilliant news, actually. It’s Evan, Dad. Evan’s been found.’

  Jack isn’t sure whether the buzzing he can hear is the flies, or if it’s only in his ears. He looks down at the photograph by the phone, at the little boy beaming at his jar of sticklebacks, at a younger, carefree version of himself.

  And he dare not ask the question that leaps to mind: dead or alive?

  ‘They had him in a car, in Ferrybridge. Where the power station is,’ Matt is saying. ‘Christ knows why there. They’ve taken him to hospital, but they say he’s fine.’ There’s a beat of silence between them, unwanted acknowledgement of the unlikelihood of Evan being fine. ‘The police are driving Claire up, and I’m meeting her there. We just wanted you to be the first to know. Dad? Are you there, Dad?’

  Warm tears are running down Jack’s face.

  ‘I’m here,’ he manages to say. ‘Thank God.’

  ‘I know it’s a shock, Dad. When I got the message . . . Well, to be honest I thought they were going to say something different. You’ll tell Mum for me, will you?’

  ‘She’ll be beside herself,’ says Jack, wiping away tears. ‘She’ll be absolutely over the moon. That’s the best news we could ever have had, and I thank God for it. It’s the answer to all our prayers. Thank God he’s safe.’

  ‘I must go,’ says Matt. ‘I just wanted you to know. I’ll ring you from the hospital, let you know how he is.’

  ‘You give him our best love, and a big hug from both of us.’ Jack reaches out and touches the photo frame. ‘And ring as soon as you can. And Matt, promise me you’ll tell that boy how his grandma and grandpa missed him. Tell him his grandma’s baking a cake, and we can hardly wait to see him.’

  Claire is riding in the back of a police car, no siren going but blue lights flashing. They’re moving pretty fast, or maybe it’s that other drivers slow down when they see them in the rear-view mirror, start behaving and driving at seventy. Naylor’s in the front passenger seat, next to the uniformed driver. For the first few miles, she tries to keep the conversation going, but by the time they reach the M25, they’ve all lapsed into silence, and Naylor has laid her head back on the rest, maybe to doze. Claire sits silent in the back, fizzing with excitement, overwhelmed with apprehension about how Evan will be, hoping for reasons she can’t quite define that she’ll be there before Matt, wondering how long it will take him to drive from Colchester.

  Colchester. She doesn’t remember him mentioning Colchester.

  She wonders if Evan will recognise her, if she’s changed very much, whether she’ll recognise him, how much he’s grown. When she spoke to him on the phone – tears in his voice, surrounded by strangers and trying to be brave – he sounded like himself but different, an Evan she fears she won’t know. Out of the side window, she watches the traffic, people going about their everyday business, and marks off in her mind their northern progress. Luton, Milton Keynes, Northampton. They pass Leicester and Derby, and beyond Derby, cross the South Yorkshire border into what she’s always thought of as true north: Rotherham, Doncaster. Near Doncaster, they see the first signs for Pontefract, where Evan is waiting.

  Naylor hasn’t spoken for a while, but now she turns round in her seat and smiles at Claire.

  ‘Not far now,’ she says. ‘It’ll be a big story again, when it breaks. We’re going to try and get you in and out of there before that happens.’

  Claire remembers how it was to be besieged, how she hated the press camped outside; then she remembers her resentment when they drifted away, when other people’s dramas became more interesting. She doesn’t want them back again. She looks out at the passing landscape, and wonders how her son has ended up here, in this part of the country which is unknown to her. Is this where he’s been all this time? She’s curious, but fearful of what he’ll tell her; she wants to know, but isn’t sure she can bear what he might say. Instead she focuses her mind on their reunion, on how wonderful it will be to have him home.

  At Pontefract General Infirmary, they pull up at a barrier across the entrance to a Staff Only car park. Matt’s car’s there, double-parked and blocking someone in, and he’s at the wheel with the driver’s door open, a uniformed policeman crouched beside him, chatting as if they were passing the time of day. As Claire climbs from the car, Matt gets out too, switching off his phone and slipping it into his pocket, handing his keys to the policeman in case his car has to be moved. Seeing him brings home the enormity of why they’re there, and suddenly she wants to be close to him in a way she thought she never would again. Who else but he could understand how she’s feeling, how it’s possible to be elated and terrified at the same time? Already she wants to cry, and as he holds out his hand to her – she’s surprised at that, he’s not normally one for PDAs – she grasps it, and finds herself wiping away tears. When he puts his arm round her shoulder and pulls her close, she’s grateful for the support.

  ‘OK?’ he asks, and she shakes her head, and he says, ‘It’ll be fine. Let’s go get him, and take him home.’
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  ‘Will they let us?’ Claire asks. ‘Just like that?’

  Matt doesn’t answer, because he knows, as does she, that’s unlikely to happen. As they walk towards the hospital building, Naylor’s following close behind.

  On the ward, more police are waiting, two men in plain-clothes suits incongruous amongst blue nurses’ tunics and patients’ dressing gowns. At the nurses’ station, Naylor speaks to the sister, who pages the doctor in charge of Evan’s care.

  But a sixth sense has opened up in Claire, a kind of radar she didn’t know she had. Leaving all of them standing at the station, she walks, then runs along the corridor. No one tries to stop her. Patients and staff stand back, out of her way.

  Somehow she knows which way to go. At the end of the ward, there’s a private room. On the bed lies a thin boy, his back to the door.

  She’d know him anywhere. When she says his name, he turns to her with desolate eyes, and both their tears begin.

  TWELVE

  19 June

  At Ashridge police station, the third-floor incident room has reappeared fully formed: whiteboards and monitors, keyboards and phones and the miles of cabling to go with them. The paperwork is taking over the desktops, and the waste bins are already filling up with the greasy wrappings of all-day-breakfast sandwiches. There’s an undercurrent of muskiness, of male sweat held in check by deodorant, and an overtone of coffee from Ron Perdue’s percolator steaming away in its corner. Hagen’s got his jacket on, talking to Campbell, but it’s not clear if he’s just arrived, or is on his way out.

  Campbell spots Naylor as she comes into the room and beckons her over. He’s sitting on the corner of Hagen’s desk, affecting his casual down-with-the-boys pose. His tie’s off to one side, and there’s a shirt button missing over his sternum. Since he’s no longer married, the standard of his grooming’s taken a dive.

  Naylor detours via her own temporary desk, dumps her handbag, glances at a couple of messages on yellow Post-it notes but sees nothing of interest. There’s a burst of laughter over by the coffee machine, and she sees Leon Dallabrida, built like a super-hero and towering over a couple of their colleagues. Dallabrida’s not the brains of the outfit, but he’s straight down the line and he tells some brilliant jokes. On days when it’s nothing but wall-to-wall bad news, he can be relied on to come up with a real cracker and burst any bubble of incident room gloom. Naylor’s sorry she’s missed the gag he’s just told.