Burnt Paper Sky

by Gilly MacMillan

  ‘Jim.’ It was a plea. ‘I thought you would help me.’

  ‘I thought I knew you.’

  She tried to reach out and touch my face, but as her fingers grazed my cheek I said, ‘Don’t,’ and she withdrew her hand quickly, as if I’d scalded her.

  I massaged my temples, and I felt an exhausted, debilitating sadness because I knew that this was the end of us, and that I’d made my own bed on this one. It was my own fucking fault. End of.

  She took another deep breath. ‘I did it because of what happened to my sister,’ she said, and I could hear that there was bravery in her voice, that she was working up courage for what she was about to say, but for me it was too late for that, because she’d betrayed the police force and the investigation, betrayed Benedict Finch, and betrayed me.

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘I’m not interested. I don’t want to hear it.’

  She opened her mouth to reply but something she saw in my face made her close it again, and her features drained of hope.

  ‘Jim…⁠’ was all she managed.

  ‘No.’

  I didn’t want to hear it because Emma wasn’t the person I thought she was, and I wouldn’t lie for her.

  She started working at her phone again, desperately tapping at the screen, and it was too much for me; it was delusional.

  I snatched the phone from her, opened the car window, threw it out and watched it clatter across the pavement and break against the urine-stained wall, pieces of it scattering amongst dark black puddles, fag butts and other unidentifiable scraps of filthy rubbish. A passer-by paused to give me a look and I told him to fuck off.

  ‘Tell Fraser,’ I said to Emma. ‘Or I will.’

  ‘Jim.’

  ‘You need to go and do the right thing or this could hang us all. Now.’

  I started up the car and eased back into the traffic. I couldn’t look at her. In the rear-view mirror I could see a vast mural covering the side of an office building: a mother and child. It was a pure image, made of black lines and a white background, the mother’s lips as sensual as Emma’s. I thumped the dashboard again, felt the pain again, and then I took the car in the direction of Kenneth Steele House. On the way, we didn’t speak at all.

  When we parked at Kenneth Steele House, Emma got out of the car without a word and I watched her walk across the car park, and climb the steps to the entrance, slowly, straight-backed. I gave it a full twenty minutes before I followed her. Twenty minutes of gazing through the windscreen at the sharp-tipped silvered-metal railings that encircled the car park and wondering whether she was doing the right thing in there.

  When I finally got out of the car, my body was protesting with fatigue, and I checked my face in the wing mirror to be sure I wasn’t wearing the whole episode for anybody to read. Inside, I said my normal hello to Lesley who was on Reception, and she smiled at me, and I hoped she didn’t notice that I felt like I was wading through shit.

  RACHEL

  With Zhang not answering her phone, and somebody in the incident room telling me that Clemo and Fraser were unavailable too, I had to turn to John. Or, as the papers would have it, the unimpeachable Mr John Finch, Consultant Paediatric General Surgeon and proud owner of a lovely new wife.

  He answered the phone with the same haste with which I jumped on every call I received. To give him credit he quickly managed the disappointment he obviously felt when I said I didn’t have news, took me seriously when I explained about the pictures in the book and didn’t demur when I asked him to drive me, and the book, to the police station.

  Heading up the steps of Kenneth Steele House, I realised I could barely even remember our arrival nearly a week before. The receptionist told us that if we’d like to leave the book with her then she’d ensure that it was taken up to the incident room.

  I said that I’d like to speak to somebody in person. I mentioned DC Zhang, and DI Clemo.

  She asked us to sit and we perched side by side on the same sofa we’d occupied on Monday morning.

  She made some hushed calls, head down, covering her mouth as if we could lip-read. Then she crossed the foyer, heels clipping the floor noisily, and said, ‘Someone will be down to see you soon. If you wouldn’t mind being patient.’

  She brought us hot tea in plastic cups so thin you could burn your fingers.

  John passed the time by looking through Ben’s book methodically, page by page, over and over again. I could barely sit down; I was pulsating with impatience, and after what felt like an interminable wait I approached the desk again.

  ‘Somebody’s coming, they’re rather busy up there this morning,’ I was told.

  ‘Can we interrupt them, this is very important?’

  ‘They know you’re here, they’re just in a meeting.’

  ‘Can I just speak to DC Zhang?’

  ‘Please be patient, Mrs Finch.’

  ‘My name is Jenner.’

  ‘Sorry, Ms Jenner. DC Zhang and DI Clemo have only recently arrived themselves and I’ve rung the incident room but they’re both tied up just at the moment. If you can try to be patient one of them will be down before long, I assure you.’

  ‘Please.’

  ‘I would ask you to sit down again if possible.’

  I sat, my knees jigging, hands wringing.

  John said, ‘Perhaps it’s best if we just leave the books here.’

  ‘What if they can’t read Ben’s writing?’

  ‘Rachel…⁠’

  ‘No. I want to hand them over myself, explain them.’

  After another ten minutes I felt my patience snap. I took the book from John and said, ‘If they’re not coming down here I’m bloody well going to go up there.’

  ‘No, don’t do that,’ John said, but he was too slow to stop me. I marched to reception, propelled forward by my certainty, and my outrage that nobody had come to listen to us.

  ‘Where are they?’ I said to the receptionist.

  ‘Mrs Jenner, if you can just be a bit more patient—’

  ‘Stop asking me to be patient. How can I be patient? My son is missing and if they can’t be bothered to come down here I’m going to go to them. What’s more important than a piece of new evidence that they don’t know about? How is it that I can get the immediate attention of any journalist in the country but not of a single officer investigating my son’s case? Should I take this to the press? Should I?’

  I was waving the book at her, brandishing it in her face.

  ‘Please don’t raise your voice, Ms Jenner.’

  ‘I will raise my voice if I fucking well feel like it. I will raise my voice until SOMEBODY COMES DOWN AND LOOKS AT THIS BOOK!’ I slammed it down on the desk in front of her. ‘THEY NEED TO KNOW ABOUT THIS BECAUSE I WANT MY SON BACK. I WANT BEN AND IF YOU DON’T WANT ME HERE THEN YOU CAN FUCKING WELL ARREST ME.’

  She was no pushover, the receptionist. She spoke to me in a voice that was steel-reinforced. ‘If you take a seat, I shall phone the incident room once more. If you continue to make a scene I shall ask one of my colleagues to escort you from the building.’

  Up close to the desk, I saw that her handbag was tucked into a corner behind her desk. It had a newspaper folded on it, and I realised that even here, in this environment, I was probably being judged through the filter of what was written about me; that the receptionist was seeing, in front of her own eyes, the Rachel Jenner from the press conference.

  John was at my side, and he coaxed me away then, back to the sofa, and I stared at the few people coming and going through the foyer in front of us with an empty gaze that made many of them take a second look at me.

  Within minutes, a man stood in front of us.

  ‘DI Bennett,’ he said, sticking a hand out to John first, and then to me. His handshake was painfully strong, and I didn’t recognise him. ‘Is this it then?’

  John stood up and handed him the book and DI Bennett’s big hand seemed to dwarf it. He had a neck that sat in rolls on his collar, narrow wide-set eyes, and the
shiny crown of his head took on the glow of the ceiling lights.

  ‘Right,’ he said. ‘Do you want to show me what’s worrying you?’

  I showed him the pages that haunted me, and he pored over them, brow hunched.

  ‘I see what you mean,’ he said, and then, ‘He’s a good artist your lad, isn’t he?’

  ‘Will you show it to DI Clemo, or DCI Fraser?’

  ‘Of course I will. I’ll do that right away.’

  ‘Should we stay, in case you have questions?’

  ‘Honestly, the best place for you right now is at home. We know where to find you, and we’ll be in touch with any questions or any information we have, I promise you. And if you phone us with any concerns, at any point, we will always send somebody to talk to you at home about it, there’s no need for you to come here.’

  ‘I tried to phone DC Zhang,’ I said.

  ‘Ah well, she’s a bit busy in a meeting right now.’

  ‘We wanted to get it to you quickly.’

  ‘We appreciate that, Ms Jenner, we really do, and we’ll deal with it immediately. I’m going to personally hand-deliver this to DCI Fraser as soon as I leave you.’

  ‘Thank you,’ John said.

  Bennett tucked the book under his arm. ‘I suggest you both go home and get some rest now. The more you rest, the better you’ll cope. Thank you for bringing it in.’

  He offered each of us his hand again and then disappeared through a set of double doors that swung dully on their hinges in his wake.

  In spite of his politeness, and of the care he took looking at the book, he left me overwhelmed by my own impotence, feeling it in great shuddering waves. John looked at me with fright, as if he was terrified of another scene that he didn’t have the resources to handle, and it was the receptionist who came to my rescue. She emerged from the desk and came to me, and sat beside me on the sofa, and put her arms around me. She smelled of perfume and hairspray and she had liver-spotted hands.

  ‘I know,’ she said over and over again. ‘I know.’

  And that act of kindness surprised me, and then upset me more, and finally calmed me down, until I was ready for John to take me home.

  JIM

  In the incident room the blinds on the windows of Fraser’s office were drawn but I could glimpse her silhouette and Emma’s through the slats. Nobody else might have noticed it, but to me their body language spoke volumes: Emma had come clean.

  I thought I’d feel relieved but instead it was the final straw, and I couldn’t stand to witness it.

  I took myself down to the canteen, tucked myself in a corner to try to write up a report on the morning’s raid with a cup of coffee that would have made British Rail ashamed, but I just got wound up, thinking about it all, and it was hard to concentrate with every nosy parker who walked past my table asking me how the case was going.

  I went to the men’s room, locked myself in a stall, and tried to get control of myself.

  I sat in there on the closed lid of the toilet bowl, my head resting against the partition wall, eyes shut, breathing through my mouth and trying to pull myself together. I don’t know how long I stayed, but at some point somebody else came in and the shame of it made me get to my feet.

  It was Mark Bennett, undoing his fly at the urinals. He was hyped up; his cheeks flushed red with excitement.

  ‘The proverbial’s hit the fan,’ he said, not caring that his piss was going everywhere. ‘Something’s going on. Benedict Finch’s parents came into reception and his mum made a massive scene and brought in one of Ben’s school books they want us to look at. They asked for you and Zhang, but we couldn’t find you and Zhang was holed up with Fraser “not to be disturbed”. Where the fuck have you been? Got the runs or something?’

  I started to answer but he said, ‘So I went and got the book myself, calmed the mother down, but that’s not the fucking end of it. I took the books straight into Fraser’s office, potential new evidence, thought that was worth disturbing them for, only now she’s got Internal Affairs in there with her and Zhang. I gave her the book, but got my head bitten off for interrupting. Something massive is going on, definitely.’

  I washed my hands for show, and he joined me at the sink and then stayed on my heels like a pesky younger sibling as we went back to the incident room, full of ignorant speculation that made my jaw clench.

  As we entered the incident room, the door of Fraser’s office swung open at the other end and Emma walked out, flanked by two men. Fraser was hovering behind, but shut the door before I could read her face. I recognised one of the men: Bryan Doughty, the biggest cheese in Internal Affairs. Bennett and I stood aside as they approached.

  ‘Clemo,’ he said, as he passed me.

  ‘Sir,’ I replied. He was a shark of a man, intellectually and physically well equipped to take a bite of you. Perfect for the job. He didn’t slow his pace. Emma’s gaze was fixed front and forward.

  Even though it was Saturday, about fifteen faces watched them walk the length of the incident room, Emma’s small frame dwarfed by the men beside her. When they exited and disappeared from sight, I realised I’d been biting the inside of my cheek so hard I’d drawn blood.

  ‘I think she’s been a naughty girl,’ said Bennett. ‘Tut, tut, tut. And Doughty’s not going to be happy about being called in on a weekend either.’ He was buoyant: the sight of someone else’s career ending in a car crash was actually bolstering his self-esteem.

  ‘Do me a favour and keep your fucking opinion to yourself,’ I said.

  ‘What’s the matter with you? Anybody would think you wanted to get into her knickers.’ Brave words, but as he said them he was wiping my spittle off his face with an injured expression.

  I walked away. I don’t know what I would have done to him otherwise. I knocked on the door of Fraser’s office.

  ‘What’s going on?’ I said. I tried to keep my face steady, put my hands in my pockets so the shake didn’t show.

  Her expression was grim, her eyes were bloodshot and she had that pallor you get after days on a case, when your skin’s sagging and you can’t remember what it felt like not to have your shoulders in tight knots.

  ‘Take a seat,’ she said. ‘We found our leak.’

  ‘Emma?’

  ‘Yes, I’m very sorry to say.’

  ‘Fuck me,’ I said. ‘I didn’t have her down as a Judas.’

  My head felt tight around the lie. I hoped my voice wasn’t giving me away.

  Fraser looked at me hard. ‘My sentiments exactly,’ she said. ‘And I expect this to be especially hard for you because I know you two were working closely together.’ She let her words hang there for a moment, between us, before she went on. ‘Emma’s confessed to leaking confidential information to the blog. Personal motivations. That’s all I can say at this time. Apart from the bleeding obvious which is that she’s thrown a promising career down the pan and the press will have all of our guts for garters if they get hold of it.’

  ‘I feel responsible,’ I said. ‘I recommended Emma for the role. I’m sorry.’

  ‘I’m a big girl. I don’t do things just because one of my DIs has a bright idea. You’ve no need to take this all on yourself.’

  She looked at me intently and I still couldn’t work out what the subtext was, whether she knew about Emma and me or not.

  She said, ‘You don’t seem too shocked.’

  ‘I’m shocked, boss, trust me. I just… don’t really know what to say. I feel like we can’t let this hold us back.’

  She gave me a brisk nod in agreement. ‘We’re in the shit. There’s no doubt about that. We don’t have time to waste on this, and we can ill afford to be a man down. We need to regroup quickly, figure out how to fill the gap Emma’s left us, and somebody’s going to have to go through all the work she did.’

  ‘I can do that.’

  ‘But before anything is done, I want you to have a look at this. Bennett’s just brought it up. Hand-delivered by Benedict’s parents
. With some drama.’

  ‘Bennett told me,’ I said.

  ‘They asked specifically to see you or Emma but we couldn’t find you. Where the hell were you by the way?’

  On the bog, shaking like a school kid hiding from bullies. I didn’t say that. ‘I went to the canteen to get on with the report on this morning.’

  ‘Without your phone? Ah, never mind. Take a look at this.’

  She handed me a child’s exercise book. On the cover, in uneven handwriting: ‘Benedict Finch. Oak Class. News Book’. I flicked through it. Seeing Ben Finch’s clumsy handwriting gave me a bit of a start, it was such a vivid trace of him. Page after page seemed to be filled with pictures from the woods. It made him very real, very present, disturbingly so.

  He’d written descriptions of their regular dog walks and drawn pictures of them too, including the swing.

  ‘So what are we thinking?’ I said.

  ‘Well, Ben’s parents are thinking that this means that anybody at school might have known about the regular walks they took, and the route they took, and they’re thinking that there might be something in that.’

  ‘But anybody they knew could have known about the walks. People with dogs walk them regularly and mostly to the same places. There’s only so many routes you can take in the woods.’

  ‘Point taken, but we do have an obligation to look into this, and I think we should. We’re not overrun with options at this point and I am not going to miss anything, Jim. I’ll not have that on my conscience.’

  ‘So what this actually means is that we can include school staff, or anybody else who might have had access to this book, in the circle of people who might have known about the dog walks. So what do we do? Re-interview school staff?’

  Fraser was scribbling a note. ‘That’s exactly what we do.’

  ‘Start with the teacher and teaching assistant?’

  ‘Yep. And the headmaster. And don’t forget the school secretary too. They always know everything.’