Burnt Paper Sky

by Gilly MacMillan

  ‘Did you feel that Rachel might not be able to care for Ben properly?’ said Clemo.

  ‘I was worried,’ she said simply, and she turned to face me. ‘You were so feckless, you know, so young?’

  My sister spoke as if she’d rehearsed these words for years. Her speech gathered pace, as if she were confessing something.

  ‘You messed about for years, you never bothered with schoolwork although they said you could have done brilliantly if you’d tried. You never cared about anything, and then all of a sudden you got John. God knows how, because you were pissing your life away, partying all the time, and suddenly everything was so perfect and what had you done to deserve it? Nothing.’

  ‘We fell in love,’ I said, but she took no notice. She couldn’t seem to stop herself now.

  ‘I knew you’d have a boy the minute you told me you were pregnant. And when he was born and I went to see him and I held him, I saw Charlie in him. It was as if he was Charlie, reborn. He was so precious, and I wasn’t sure you’d be able to look after him.’

  ‘So you called John Finch,’ said Clemo.

  ‘Just to check that she was coping, that she was doing the right thing.’

  ‘Mr Finch says that you were rather insistent with your phone calls.’

  ‘Well he wouldn’t give me any information!’

  I interrupted them. ‘John never said anything to me.’

  They ignored me, their eyes were locked, Nicky’s gaze furious, his eyes hard like ice; their terrible dialogue unpicking yet more of the stitches that had held my life together. I was relegated to the role of spectator.

  ‘Nicky,’ he said, ‘did you want to have Ben for yourself? So you could look after him properly?’

  ‘That’s the thing,’ she said, ‘I didn’t. I didn’t want her to have him, but I didn’t want him either. He would just have reminded me every day what I’d lost, and that’s why you’re wrong.’

  ‘Wrong about what?’

  ‘For pity’s sake!’ She laughed. It was a shrill, upsetting sound. ‘Stop playing games with me! What would I do with him? Where do you think I would keep him?’

  ‘I think you might like to have him. I think you’ve always wanted him.’

  The baldness of this, the slow, calm way he said it, made my sister pause and collect herself before she spoke again, as if she realised she couldn’t combat his accusations with emotion alone.

  ‘Well, you’re not sure, are you? If you’d got any actual evidence you’d have arrested me, so this is a pathetic attempt to get me to confess to something I haven’t done.’

  Now she leaned across the table towards him.

  ‘You made me tell my sister about our family. That was low. You’re not getting anything else. I’ve told you that I’ve got nothing to do with Ben’s disappearance and that’s all you need to know. The rest is private. Why don’t you get out there and start looking for him before it’s too late?’

  She got up and went into the garden, slamming the kitchen door behind her. Zhang went after her.

  I was left sitting at the table with Clemo.

  He cleared his throat. ‘I’m sorry to land this on you like this. I hope you understand that we have to follow everything up.’

  I just stared at him, wondering why anybody would ever do a job like his and believing for the first time that he would do anything it took to find Ben.

  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: So if you’re happy to, I’d like to talk about your interview with Ben’s mother and his aunt.

  JC: Fire away.

  His manner is hard for me to decipher today. He seems more willing than usual to talk but he has a professional mask on too, he’s controlling his emotions.

  FM: What an extraordinary revelation. I find it amazing that Nicky Forbes could have kept that information from her sister for all those years.

  JC: It wasn’t just her; it was their aunt as well.

  FM: How did Rachel Jenner react?

  JC: Total shock, obviously. I don’t know what happened just after we left but I can’t imagine it was pretty.

  FM: Am I right in thinking that this was a real moment of triumph for you in the case?

  JC: Fraser was pleased. Yes. Especially because they’d ruled out Edward Fount, the role-play guy, that same morning.

  FM: So you were right about him?

  JC: Yep. When Woodley went to pull Fount in – this was while I was with Nicky Forbes – he found him waiting with a woman, another role-play member, and she gave Fount an alibi. They’d gone back to Fount’s flat together after the afternoon in the woods – shagging basically, if you’ll excuse my language – and in spite of the fact that she was nearly twice his age.

  FM: And neither of them had mentioned this before because?

  JC: Oldest reason in the book: she was married, to the ‘Grand Wizard’ apparently.

  FM: Oh my.

  JC: Yeah. A bit messy. I won’t repeat what Fraser said when she found out.

  He almost smiles.

  FM: So you were able to move on from that line of investigation.

  JC: Absolutely. Fraser was happy with how things had gone, but she had concerns about how we should handle Nicky Forbes going forward, so she felt that the best course of action would be to re-interview her the following day. Give her and Rachel Jenner time to cool off.

  FM: Did Nicky Forbes have an alibi for the Sunday afternoon?

  JC: She’d told us that she was at a food fair. A big event, lots of stalls, very busy. It was research for the blog she writes. We sent out DCs to interview all the people she might have had contact with, but they were scattered far and wide, as you might imagine, so we knew we’d need a little time to put together a picture of her movements.

  FM: Did you speak to her husband?

  JC: Again Fraser felt we should wait on that just a short while. Her strategy was to look into the alibi first, and give the family space while we worked out whether Nicky Forbes could actually be good for it or not.

  FM: Did you agree?

  JC: Absolutely. You’ve got to fit the pieces into the jigsaw in the right order. Gathering evidence is the single most important objective when you have a suspect. That, and not being sued by your victim’s family. You can’t just apply continual pressure without evidence.

  FM: Or you could alienate the family?

  JC: Exactly, and they could talk to the press, and so on. You can imagine it and it wouldn’t look good for us. The press had jumped all over the case by then and they’d have been only too ready to have a go at us as well. And, on a practical level, we were nowhere near understanding how the mechanics of an abduction could have worked if Nicky Forbes had carried it out. She had a family in Salisbury so her set-up didn’t look like the perfect profile for a child abduction.

  FM: Unless she didn’t want her sister to have Ben, and she’d killed him.

  JC: That was one of my hypotheses, and abductors don’t always kill on purpose, sometimes things go wrong and it happens then, but we had to build a proper case before we could act further. I asked Chris Fellowes, the forensic psychologist, to send me his thoughts on Nicky Forbes.

  FM: But the profile that your forensic psychologist made for you, the one that fitted Fount so perfectly, hadn’t been much use.

  JC: I disagree – we were still considering the non-family abduction as a strong possibility, and that profile could have fitted any number of suspects for that scenario. The thing about the profiles is that you shouldn’t just attach them to one suspect. They’re a resource that you have to use as part of your armoury as a detective. Profiles never solve cases on their own but they can make you think in different ways sometim
es, or look at people in a new light. And it’s always good to have another pair of eyes on the case, especially when everyone closely involved is getting tired. You can be in danger of losing perspective.

  FM: What was Emma’s view on Nicky Forbes?

  JC: To be honest, I didn’t see much of Emma that afternoon. I was too busy holed up with Fraser making a plan.

  FM: Did you see her that night?

  JC: She said she was knackered. She wanted to go back to her place to get a proper night’s rest and I didn’t blame her for that. I was feeling that way myself. I could have slept on my desk.

  FM: But I get the sense you were fired up too.

  JC: I was, yes. We all were. Without a doubt. It felt like things were starting to happen.

  RACHEL

  The immediate aftermath was the first in a series of new body blows.

  Nicky swept everything up from the table, all her hard work, gathered it hastily and tried to push it into her bag. Her movements were rough and clumsy.

  ‘Don’t,’ I said. ‘Please don’t.’

  I felt as though she was falling apart right in front of my eyes. I wondered if that’s what it had been like when she first went to Esther’s, to live in the cottage, right after it happened, when I was a baby, when her grief must have been unbearable.

  And I realised that in the future I would wonder about everything.

  From now on it would be impossible to unpick every detail of my history, every assumption that had led to me building a sense of my own identity, and of Ben’s identity. My past had been crumpled up and thrown into the fire, and I would have to sort through the ashes, with only Nicky as my guide. Nicky, who had lied to me for a very long time; Nicky, who said that she’d lied to protect me; Nicky, who I needed.

  ‘I should leave,’ she said. ‘You’re better off without me. You know, I would never, ever hurt Ben. Can I just say that? I would never hurt Ben.’

  Her distress pushed her voice to an acute pitch, and I went to comfort her.

  ‘I know you wouldn’t.’

  She let her bag slide down her shoulder and onto the table, and the papers spilled back out of it. Her head fell onto my shoulder and her body shook.

  Are you surprised at my reaction to her? At my willingness to accept what I’d heard and offer her comfort?

  It wasn’t the end of it. Of course it wasn’t. If I think back to that day I can remember the stages I went through. I suppose it was like the stages of grief, although this was different. This was the processing of what felt like a betrayal, this was the seeping away of trust.

  After the door had clicked shut behind an adrenalin-pumped Clemo and a Zhang who couldn’t meet my eye for the first time, that first interaction Nicky and I had was of course a reflex, an urge to keep Nicky by me, to deny that anything had changed. She’d been my rock, always, and I couldn’t contemplate any other existence. It wasn’t in my DNA. Or I’d thought it wasn’t.

  After that exchange we separated. Nicky unpacking her bag robotically, calling on those massive reserves of strength to anchor her to my table, to keep her going as she delved deeper and deeper into whatever the web had to offer her.

  I went to my safe place, to Ben’s room, and I immersed myself in him, as was my habit. It was the only place I felt secure. His bedroom had become my womb.

  This was my second stage.

  I sank onto the beanbag on the floor of his room and I felt as if I was cast adrift in a small wooden boat, shrouded by a watery grey mist. And suspended within each of the millions of fine droplets that made up the mist, was the news, the bombshell that I’d just heard. And in this stage it simply surrounded me, existing, but not yet understood. And within it I felt baseless, disorientated and lost.

  The third state was the inevitable churning of my mind, the processing of what I’d learned, and of its implications, the moment the droplets of mist began to settle on my skin and permeate it. It was when the knowledge became part of me and it was irreversible. I had to face up to it.

  It led swiftly to the fourth state.

  That was the erosion of my trust, where the droplets on my skin turned to acid and began to burn, producing a feeling that was intense and painful, a pins and needles of the mind and the body, and it was so creepy and unsettling that I couldn’t remain still any longer.

  I got out of Ben’s bed and looked out of the window, and I saw Nicky below in my garden with the dog, petting him, encouraging him to pee. They stood on the soggy, tatty lawn by the abandoned relic of Ben’s football goal, the net broken from the frame in places, the grass in front of it worn from where he’d played. I backed away from the window, not so that the press wouldn’t see me, but so that my sister wouldn’t.

  And as dusk fell again, wrapping itself around the edges of the day, I ran back through events, until I thought about how I had started the day: the photographer in my garden, Nicky’s anger with him, her outburst on the street, her loyalty.

  And then I thought about the previous day, and how it had started with an internet search, and with a laptop that belonged to Nicky, that needed a password, and how that password was the name of my son.

  And each intake of breath felt sharp in my lungs and my mind roved further and I thought of Nicky’s discontent with her daughters, and what Clemo said about her wanting a son. And then I thought of her words: ‘It was as if he was Charlie, reborn.’

  I began to cry hot, silent tears, and they had sharp edges just like my breath did, and they ran down my cheeks and soaked into Ben’s nunny which I held tightly to my face.

  When I heard Nicky’s footsteps on the stairs I got into Ben’s bed, covered myself up, turned away from the door and tried to breathe slowly so she would think I was asleep.

  When she put her head around the door of the room and asked if I wanted any food I didn’t answer her.

  When she reappeared some minutes later with a tray of supper I still couldn’t look at her, couldn’t speak to her.

  ‘I just wanted to protect you,’ she said.

  She shut the door quietly behind her, respecting my privacy, and all I could feel was a throbbing. It was the pulse of the time since Ben had been missing. And it felt as if it had begun to beat faster.

  JIM

  Email

  From: Christopher Fellowes

  To: James Clemo

  25 October 2012 at 21:37

  Re: Nicola Forbes

  Jim

  Good to speak. Fascinating development!

  I’ll send you a full report tomorrow but, as agreed, here is a précis:

  Psychological markers for predisposition to sociopathic behaviour in Nicola Forbes might include any of the following: tendency to control; affective instability (which could include jealousy and identity diffusion); unnatural interest in Ben – you’ve already mentioned this as a possible, if father is to be believed. Other generalised signs might include obsessive-compulsive spectrum behaviour (OCSD) and/or delusional beliefs (though these can be well hidden).

  She’s certainly been quick to be on the scene, which could indicate that she enjoys the attention that the case is bringing the family (just speculation, but maybe an unresolved desire from her earlier experience which was handled so discreetly by the aunt?).

  There’s more – I’ll follow up asap with a full report. It’ll be with you end of tomorrow, latest.

  Best, Chris

  Dr Christopher J Fellowes

  Senior Lecturer in Psychology

  University of Cambridge

  Fellow of Jesus College

  Email

  From: Corinne Fraser

  To: Alan Hayward

  Cc: James Clemo ; Giles Martyn ; Bryan Doughty

  25 October 2012 at 23:06

  Blog Warfare

  Alan

  We’re in need of your services, as the weird and wonderful worldwid
e web is once again involving itself in our police work. Could you cast your keen legal eye over this blog please: www.whereisbenedictfinch.wordpress.com

  You’ll see that it relates to the Benedict Finch case (Operation Huckleberry).

  I’ve got two primary concerns.

  Firstly, there could be Contempt of Court issues, should we ever get to trial.

  Secondly, there’s stuff appearing on there that’s making me nervous because it shouldn’t be in the public domain. We’re concerned that somebody within the investigation (either family or within our organisation) could be authoring the blog or leaking information to it.

  What I want to know is can we find out who the author of the blog is, the self-styled ‘LazyDonkey’, and what do we need to do to get it shut down? Is that even possible?

  I’m copying this to DS Martyn and Inspector Bryan Doughty from Internal Affairs.

  Quick response appreciated, obviously.

  Cheers, Corinne

  DAY 6

  FRIDAY, 26 OCTOBER 2012

  Cases involving child victims are not only burdensome from an investigative standpoint, but are also emotionally exhausting. Law enforcement agencies are commonly tasked with the simultaneous pursuit of multiple, time-sensitive avenues of investigation, often with inadequate resources (i.e., financial, logistical, manpower).

  Boudreaux M C, Lord W D, Dutra R L, ‘Child Abduction: Aged-based Analyses of Offender, Victim, and Offense Characteristics in 550 Cases of Alleged Child Disappearance’. J Forensic Sci, 44(3), 1999

  WEB PAGE – www.whereisbenedictfinch.wordpress.com

  WHERE IS BENEDICT FINCH? For the curious…

  NOTHING TO WATCH?

  Posted at 05.03 by LazyDonkey, on Friday, 26 October 2012

  This blog wants to recommend a television programme to you:

  Go to: http://www.itv.com/jeremykyle

  You could try:

  Episode 198