Burnt Paper Sky

by Gilly MacMillan

  Heading down to the foyer, vision blurred still, unsteady down flights of identical stairs, feet slapping on the linoleum treads, feeling things slipping away. In the foyer downstairs I was surprised to see Ben’s teacher.

  A picture of composure in contrast to my wrecked self, Miss May was perched on a sofa in the waiting area, handbag on her knee, hands draped on top of it. She wore very little make-up. Her hair was pulled back neatly and fastened at the nape of her neck. When she saw me, she got up.

  ‘They asked me in for interview,’ she said. ‘About Lucas.’ She whispered the name, eyes wide with disbelief, red-rimmed and bloodshot. I wondered whether that name would be whispered more now, only spoken of in hushed terms, because Lucas Grantham might be a child abductor, a predator, a monster.

  ‘What did they ask you?’

  ‘I’m not allowed to say.’

  That didn’t stop me. ‘Anything? Did you think of anything? Do you think they’re right?’

  ‘I told them absolutely everything I could think of,’ she said.

  ‘Do you think he did it?’

  There was a heightened quality about her, flushed cheeks and quick movements.

  ‘Honestly, I don’t know. Maybe, definitely maybe. I’m trying to think back over everything, in case there were signs, I’m really trying. There was nothing obvious or I’d have said before, but there are some things, little things that—’

  She opened her mouth again as if to say more, and I felt as if she was going to confide something in me, give me a drop of hope, but our conversation was brought to a halt because the officer who had retrieved the books from me and John a few days earlier appeared suddenly beside us, car keys jangling in his hand. ‘DI Bennett,’ he said. ‘OK if I drive you both home together? Apparently you live reasonably close to one another.’

  It was 9 am and the rush hour was abating. Bennett drove us through the city centre, where the roads were hemmed in by smog-drenched modern buildings throwing endless reflections of tinted glass back at each other, OFFICE TO LET signs, boarded shopfronts, student accommodation with jauntily coloured plastic windows, and concrete 60s edifices rotting in the pollution, graffiti-covered and stained. At street level, office workers were arriving for work, trainers on, coffees and briefcases in hand.

  I broke the silence in the car. There was something I wanted to say to Miss May. ‘I’m not sure I’ve ever thanked you properly for all the effort you made with Ben last year, when we were going through our divorce. I really appreciated it. He did too.’

  ‘He did have a hard time.’ She gave me a wan smile.

  ‘Well, you helped him a lot.’

  ‘It was the least I could do,’ she said. ‘They’re such little souls. It’s a privilege to be a part of their lives. You must feel so very empty without him.’

  Bennett cursed at a cyclist who was climbing laboriously up the steep slope of Park Street, wobbling into our path with the effort. I fixed my gaze on the tall Victorian Gothic tower at the top, dominating the skyline, Bristol University’s most recognisable building. Beside it was Bristol Museum. I thought of Ben’s favourite things there: the ichthyosaur skeleton, a case of glowing blue crystals, a stuffed dodo and the painting by Odilon Redon.

  ‘I don’t feel empty,’ I said to Miss May, ‘because I know he’s alive. I know he is. But I do feel very afraid.’

  My words petered away, the last few dregs of sand falling through an hourglass.

  She looked out of the window, and I worried I’d spoken too freely, exposed the depths of my misery without enough filtering. It’s a line I’ve crossed many times since. If you talk too openly about terrible things people shrink from you.

  Her handbag was on the seat between us. It sagged open and in the silence my gaze fell on its contents. A set of keys, phone, plastic-wrapped tissues, A4 papers folded in half, charger cable, hairbrush, a leather document wallet and yet more stuff underneath: the assorted paraphernalia of a life.

  When Miss May turned back towards me, her expression was unreadable.

  ‘I’m so sorry,’ I said. ‘It’s just hard.’

  ‘No, it’s fine. I just can’t imagine how awful it must be for you. I mean I can’t sleep at night, and that’s just me. I think all the time about how difficult he must be finding it to settle without his nunny.’

  My hand went to my mouth, knuckles pressing on it, trying not to let myself break down again.

  ‘Sorry.’ This time the word caught in my throat.

  ‘Please don’t be sorry. I totally understand. I’m the one who should be sorry. I didn’t mean to upset you any more than you are already.’

  I took deep breaths that shuddered and ached, got control of myself eventually.

  ‘I’m fine,’ I said. ‘And you’re right. I don’t think he’s ever slept without his nunny before.’

  She nodded. The light was murky in the back of the car and her face looked drab and shadowed. Behind her, through the window, prettier streets flashed past now, houses painted in pastels or mellow in Bath stone, attractive even under the flat grey sky.

  When I think of it now, that moment has a filmic quality, as if time was stilling.

  ‘Poor little soul,’ she said.

  The parting and closing of her lips was mesmerising. An unsettled feeling prickled at the back of my neck.

  I glanced at DI Bennett. He was oblivious to us, concentrating on a turn he was waiting to make, indicator light thudding, his lips slightly parted in concentration.

  ‘Are you all right?’ said Miss May. ‘Really?’ She was peering at me.

  ‘I…⁠’ I started to say something, but lost my train of thought. I was trying to deal with the unease I suddenly felt, the sense that something didn’t fit.

  ‘Ms Jenner?’

  Her neck looked long and white as she leaned towards me. I turned away from her and towards the window as I tried to concentrate, to pinpoint the source of my edginess. I replayed our conversation in my head, and the unease crystallised into a thought, a moment of perfect certainty, a bright white light that was terrifying for its clarity.

  My throat went dry.

  ‘Is this it?’ said DI Bennett.

  The road was narrow, with cars parked on either side, and we were blocking it. We’d pulled up outside a four-storey Georgian townhouse, fronted by a broad pavement constructed from huge slabs of stone, uneven and worn. The house was part of a long, elegant crescent, which had leafy gardens opposite enclosed by wrought iron railings. The crescent had far-ranging views across the city and the floating harbour, towards the countryside beyond: trees and rooftops in the foreground, then more buildings falling away below, the glint of the river, and beyond, distant fields and hills under rolling grey skies, and on that morning sheets of rain approaching relentlessly, one after another.

  And I knew then that I had only seconds to act.

  What I did next, I did on sheer impulse.

  JIM

  I woke up with my head in a vice, mouth dried out and the urge to vomit, which turned out to be unproductive. I was still in my clothes.

  Woodley picked me up at quarter past seven. It was still dark, and freezing cold. Woodley had the heaters in the car turned up full, pumping warm air around. I’d just finished fumbling with the seat belt when he tapped the dashboard with the flat of his hand. ‘Ready, boss?’ he said.

  ‘Are you going to put the address in the satnav then?’ I asked. ‘Or will we guess how to get there?’

  He got going. Tucked into the footwell by my feet was a newspaper. I picked it up. The first page headline had moved on from Ben Finch:

  SUPER STORM SANDY

  Hurricane heads towards New York

  Sixty million Americans could be affected by high winds, rain and flooding as super storm expected to make landfall on the East Coast on Tuesday.

  I flicked through, found him on page four:

  HIT A WALL?

  Police investigating missing Benedict Finch still ‘pursuing multiple lines o
f inquiry’.

  I didn’t bother to read on. It wasn’t good, but at least it wasn’t nothing, and they didn’t have news of the arrest yet. The blog was bad, negative publicity was bad, but no publicity was worse.

  I dropped the paper back into the footwell.

  It was dark and shiny wet on the road, taillights ahead of us blurring when the wipers swiped intermittently. We left the motorway and were immediately on country roads which twisted and turned so that oncoming headlights loomed out of nowhere, blindingly, and forced us into the side where our wheels hit deep puddles, sending spray clattering up onto the windows.

  As dawn broke, the landscape around us began to emerge: low rounded hills in washes of black ink against a blue-black sky. The sky finally lightened as we made a steep descent into Pewsey Vale, showing us that it lay flat and wide below us, a dense white mist lingering at its lowest points so that it resembled an inland lake. It was a freezing mist and once we were down into the valley it settled firmly around us so that our headlights were muted and reflected back at us in the whiteness.

  As we got closer to the cottage, the lanes got narrower, and the mist thicker still until we could see only yards ahead, and the car decelerated until we were crawling. Tall, dense hedges reared up oppressively on either side of us, and Woodley had to drive carefully to avoid the potholed verges.

  We pulled into a lay-by that was about half a mile from the cottage according to the satnav. We were too early to call on Nicky Forbes. It was only 8.30 and we needed to kill a bit of time. Fraser didn’t want her complaining that we were harassing her.

  I got out of the car, and lit a cigarette. I went to stand beside Woodley’s window. He wound it down a touch.

  ‘Did you notice if we passed any houses on the way here?’ I asked.

  ‘Closest one I saw was about half a mile down the road.’

  ‘Same here.’

  I felt uneasy. The mist was impenetrable, limitless and disorientating, and inhabited by a deep cold so that my toes were already numb. The cigarette was doing me no favours, so I stubbed it out when it was half smoked, carried the butt back into the car with me and saw Woodley’s nose wrinkle when I stuffed it into the ashtray. I felt a curl of nausea in my gut and I rubbed my eyes hard and Woodley said, ‘Are you all right, boss?’

  ‘Yeah. Why do you ask?’

  He went silent, small shake of his head. He looked nervous. He had his phone in his hand and he started to polish the screen with his sleeve. I felt like I should give him some sort of advice, but it was difficult to think what to say.

  ‘It’s not a normal life this, having this job. You’re outside society.’

  I wasn’t saying it well. I wanted him to understand what I meant, but he wasn’t looking at me, and the motion of his hand polishing the phone continued, round and round.

  ‘Some cases make you grow up fast.’ As soon as I said it, I thought it sounded patronising, but he didn’t seem to care.

  ‘Have you ever worked on something that’s remained unsolved?’ he asked me.

  ‘This case will be solved,’ I said. ‘We’re close now. I swear it.’

  ‘I know,’ he said. ‘I just wondered.’

  I thought about it. There were always things that you never got to the bottom of in cases. A dog walker who was never identified, a random white car supposed to have been at a scene, which nobody ever confessed to driving past. That was normal, though sometimes it drove police officers mad, seeking answers that they never got. They couldn’t let it go. I’d seen that happen once or twice, but I’d never worked on anything where we hadn’t got our perpetrator, and I didn’t want this to be the one. Not with a young boy’s life in the balance. Not with the worst of crimes a possibility.

  ‘Not yet,’ I said.

  ‘Do you think she’ll cough?’ Woodley asked.

  ‘A woman like Nicola Forbes won’t hand us a confession on a plate. We’ve got our work cut out.’

  We moved on cautiously through the mist and found the cottage half a mile further along the lane. Above us you could sense the weight of huge trees looming, although only their lower branches were visible as suggestions of their might.

  We parked beside a red Volkswagen Golf in front of a wooden fence that was warped and green grey with lichen. I knew from the car’s registration that it belonged to Nicky Forbes.

  We approached the cottage through a white wooden gate, and up a short garden path paved in uneven stone. Wet leaves were banked against the threshold and the path was lined with rose bushes, pruned back to their bare bones. The cottage was pretty, cream painted with a silvery thatched roof and small windows set into thick walls. It wasn’t a large place. I guessed it had maybe three bedrooms, one bathroom. Some of the curtains were drawn upstairs, but through a window beside the door I could see into a compact sitting room. The furnishings were plain and tidy. There were books lining the walls and an open fireplace. Yesterday’s papers were open on the coffee table.

  As far as I could see, there were no outbuildings at all, but with the mist reducing visibility severely, it was hard to tell.

  I pulled hard on the doorbell and we heard it clanging inside.

  RACHEL

  Miss May peered out of the car window at a house with a glossy black door.

  ‘This is it. Perfect. Thank you,’ she said.

  ‘Thank you for helping us with our inquiries,’ Bennett said.

  ‘It was the least I could do.’

  She got out, taking a moment to straighten her coat. Her bag was still on the seat beside me. I could see her keys, but before I could move she leaned down and peered into the back of the car.

  ‘If there’s anything I can do for you. Truly. Please let me know.’

  ‘Thank you,’ I said.

  A car had pulled up behind ours, and the driver sounded the horn sharply, wanting us to move on.

  ‘They’d better mind their manners,’ said DI Bennett. I could see his narrowed eyes in the rear-view mirror, watching the car behind.

  I had one chance. Miss May reached for her bag but before she could get to it I picked it up.

  ‘Here you go,’ I said. I held it out to her, but as I did so I let it tilt and then fall, so that its contents tipped out onto my lap, and down into the footwells.

  ‘Oh, I’m so sorry!’ I said.

  I leaned down and scooped up her belongings from the dark recesses, blocking her view. I stuffed most of them back into her bag. Half-eaten granola bar, purse, phone, charger, tissues, packet of painkillers, document wallet.

  The keys I kept for myself. I slid them between the seat and my thigh.

  Behind us, the car horn sounded again.

  ‘Come on, ladies,’ said DI Bennett.

  I handed the bag back to her, careful to hold it by the top, so that it didn’t gape.

  ‘It’s all there,’ I said.

  ‘Are you sure?’ she asked.

  The car behind flashed its headlights.

  ‘All there,’ I said. ‘Bye.’

  ‘Take care,’ she said, and shut the car door.

  DI Bennett accelerated away. In the side mirror, I could see her standing on the side of the road.

  Her keys were digging into the underside of my thigh and I moved them into my coat pocket, careful not to let them make a sound.

  It was a ten-minute drive from Clifton Village to my house. We drove along the edge of the Downs, flat, muddy and green, dog walkers and joggers ploughing around its perimeters, trees dotted across the parkland like abandoned livestock, water tower looming.

  I listened closely to the police radio. I was terrified that Miss May would contact the police as soon as she tried to get into her house and realised the keys weren’t in her bag. She’d ask for DI Bennett to drive straight back there. I wished I’d taken her phone too.

  We skirted around the edge of suburbia, 1930s semis mostly, John and Katrina’s house just round the corner. A few minutes to my place. The radio was spitting out little bits of noise. Not
hing about the keys so far, but panic was making me swallow, my mouth awash with warm saliva, which had a bitter, tannic edge from the police station tea.

  ‘DI Bennett,’ I said.

  ‘What’s up, love?’

  ‘It’s what Miss May said, about Ben’s nunny.’

  ‘What did she say?’ His eyes met mine in the rear-view mirror.

  ‘Well, it’s just that she wouldn’t know about his nunny.’

  ‘I’m not sure I’m following you.’

  ‘He’s embarrassed about his nunny, that’s the thing. It’s an old cot blanket, a ragged thing. He’s had it since he was a baby. He uses it to get to sleep. He would never have told her about it.’

  Silence, as he negotiated a roundabout. ‘Couldn’t he have told her about it?’ he asked. Victorian terraces now, narrow streets climbing up and down hillsides.

  I leaned forward, between the front seats. ‘He would never tell her, that’s what I’m telling you.’

  The radio sputtered again and I raised my voice to drown it out. DI Bennett parked on my street, a few doors away from my house, and turned to face me.

  ‘Right,’ he said, stringing out the word out, scepticism the subtext. ‘Are you sure about that?’

  ‘I’ve never been so sure of anything in my life.’

  ‘I’ll tell you what I’ll do then.’ His careful tone of voice made me think he wasn’t taking me seriously, that he was just humouring me. ‘I’ll pass that information onto the boss. Would you like me to do that?’

  ‘Could we call it in now? I think it’s important.’

  ‘I’m heading straight back now and I’ll let them know and that’s a promise.’

  ‘DI Bennett, I don’t think you understand…⁠’

  ‘I’ve promised, haven’t I? Can’t do more than that. They’ll ring you if they think there’s something in it. You’d better get out, love. Don’t worry about that lot. Come on. I mean it.’

  A few journalists were in front of the house, watching us. He wound down the window. ‘Clear off out of her way,’ he shouted. ‘Go on. Get away.’