A curious crowd followed them from the hotel, slouching men and anxious-looking women, drunk-eyed but wary, whispering among themselves, as though they might belong to a deeper part of the mystery surrounding the boy’s disappearance.
‘Who are the McGinns?’ Daly asked.
O’Sullivan glanced back at him and pulled a face. ‘They’re second cousins on my father’s side.’
‘So they’re your guests at the wedding?’
‘Not at all. They’re with the groom’s family. They’re also second cousins.’
‘Is everyone here related to you?’
‘Not everyone. The bar staff are from the town.’
‘What ages are the McGinns?’
‘You’re asking the wrong man, Inspector,’ said O’Sullivan, pushing open a fire door.
A group of boys smoking blocked their way. They wore the familiar stares of teenagers avoiding grown-up supervision, mute and slightly hungry-looking, dazed by whatever alcohol or drugs they had been consuming. O’Sullivan waved his hands at them with a dismissive gesture, his gold cufflinks sparkling in the evening light, but they refused to move.
‘Where are the McGinns?’ O’Sullivan shouted.
One of them began quietly singing a pop song and the others laughed, as though his tune hinted at an obscene joke. Their gaze rested on Daly and his bruised face. He lifted up his chin, trying desperately to maintain his dignity and authority, while feeling that somehow he had come down in the world. He had never been the focus of such insolent attention.
‘I’m looking for this boy,’ said Daly, showing them a picture of Jack. ‘He’s ten years old. He was wearing a hooded top and white trainers when he was last seen.’
‘Are you a social worker?’ They began bombarding him with questions.
‘No, I’m a police officer.’
‘Is he in trouble?’
‘No.’
‘Where are you going to look for him?’
‘You tell me.’
‘It was nothing to do with us, mister.’ The other boys laughed, but the looks on their faces were entirely serious. The tension in their eyes was unconnected to joy or sadness.
‘Any smokes, mister?’
They seemed more interested in needling him than helping, glancing at O’Sullivan with complicit grins. However, O’Sullivan lunged towards them, rage and confusion burning in his cheeks, veins throbbing in his forehead, his fists clenched. He grabbed two of the boys by their collars and lifted them into the air. ‘Show him where the wee fucker went!’ he shouted.
‘He’s not with us, mister. The McGinns had him.’
‘What did they do with him?’
‘They took him in their van. They left about an hour ago.’
Noise and movement began to follow them from the bar, bodies crowding through the fire-exit doors, stirred by the dramatic news of child abduction, alcohol fuelling the hysteria. Gypsy weddings usually imploded in a catastrophe or a brutal row, and Daly could see why: an emotional public ceremony compressed into a hotel room full of drunken people. Keep your patience, stay calm, were the phrases he kept repeating to himself, and he hoped but seriously doubted that the wedding party was thinking the same.
‘I saw him crying,’ said one of the boys.
It had nagged Daly that up until now no one had reported the boy showing any signs of distress.
‘Where did you see him?’ asked Daly.
‘We’ll take you there now.’
They half led, half pushed Daly across the waste ground, as though he were a prize animal they had captured. O’Sullivan trailed behind the search party in the company of two police officers, wiping his sweating face with a hanky.
‘Watch them like a hawk, Inspector,’ he shouted. ‘Or they’ll empty your pockets.’
The boys took every opportunity to jostle against Daly as he tried to navigate the uneven terrain. A teenager manically driving a quad bike wheeled around them. Daly scanned the waste ground. In the distance, half-hidden by piles of rubble and broken tar, he spied what appeared to be an abandoned white van. The light was fading fast and the ground underfoot turned to mud glittering with broken glass and splinters of metal.
‘How long ago did you say you last saw him?’ shouted Daly over the din. They were far from the hotel now, on no man’s land. A fire burned amid heaps of rubbish nearby. He could hear the crackle of wood and plastic igniting.
‘Nearly there, mister.’
‘Are you going to arrest all of us?’
‘Who beat you up? Your wife or your girlfriend?’
Daly searched their expressions for signs of mockery. What did the multitude of their eager faces conceal? They crowded him aggressively, firing more questions, tugging at his coat, disorientating him, while the adults circled in the background, watching his search slowly unravel. Question after question came at him as the rest of the wedding party hung back with knowing looks on their faces, questions that began to sting.
‘What age are you?’
‘Are you married?’
‘How many children do you have?’
Even when he answered truthfully, they kept repeating the same question, unnerving him, picking at the crucial knot of his loneliness, the inner anxieties that had haunted him since his divorce. Part of him wanted to bellow like a bull and scatter them, but they held the key to Jack’s whereabouts, if only he could persuade them to deliver it. However, their faces were unreadable, pinched with the cold and whatever intoxicants they had consumed. He spotted some of the older boys at the margins of the group picking up pieces of wood and stones. He glanced back at the faces pressing around him, trying to connect with one of the boys, but all he saw was the same insolence, the same blank looks, the same eerily empty eyes.
The questions became unanswerable and rude. Daly was less a human being and more a ball shoved into the air during a rugby scrum, an object of sport to be dragged into the mud as they pitched and swayed around him. He gritted his teeth and cursed. Perhaps taking him out here was a form of misdirection, a chance for O’Sullivan to make his exit and escape. He craned his neck, squinting anxiously for the traveller, and was relieved to see that he was still lumbering after them, several paces behind, with a look of fury and betrayal etched on his reddened face.
Afterwards, it was hard to pinpoint the exact moment Daly and his colleagues lost control of the situation. He thought he glimpsed the face of Jack Hewson breasting the flow of surging, agitated faces, his arms flailing for help. Was it really the boy or his despairing idea of what he was searching for projected spookily upon the sea of anonymous faces? Jack’s features loomed before him again, and this time he reached out and grabbed him, but instantly the boy struggled to get away. He felt the panic in the child’s breathing, his heart pounding in his narrow chest.
‘What do you want, mister?’ the boy shouted at Daly, flashing him a look of hate. The detective held on, feeling his confidence ebb; the boy’s wild eyes shone with scorn. It wasn’t Jack at all. The other children noticed Daly’s confusion and took a cruel delight in it.
‘He’s too young for you, mister,’ they chanted. ‘He’s too young for you.’
They surged around him, carrying him farther along the uneven waste ground with a momentum that made it difficult for him to stay on his feet. Ahead, the door of the white van swung and banged as the crowd enveloped it. When he was almost upon it, the door flapped open and Daly glimpsed the empty space through which Jack Hewson had vanished. A jolt threw him to the ground but he managed to scramble to his feet. He turned. O’Sullivan and O’Neill were just a few feet away, her hair disarrayed, her blouse and jacket tugged out of place. She moved her lips. She might have been shouting but her voice was lost amid the heavy breathing and cursing. O’Sullivan heaved into view, pop-eyed with anger, his arms swinging uselessly in the air, his gold cufflinks still glittering in the middle of the dark turmoil. Daly felt fists, nails and feet as his body slammed against the van. It creaked upon its axles as though it mi
ght overturn at any moment.
A male officer waded to the detective’s assistance and pinned a boy against the van in an attempt to handcuff him, but another one jumped on to the policeman’s back and knocked off his cap. The officer’s face grew red as he clung on to his quarry, wheeling in circles in an effort to shake off his tormentor, while the crowd of youths swarmed around them, the waste ground filling with drunken delirium. More teenagers appeared, fortified by the strength of their numbers. Daly felt a sense of wider social struggle, a doomed tribe of young people targeting him and the other officers with their restlessness. Where were their parents, the adults who might call them to order? Daly saw O’Sullivan’s angry face up close, hair wet with sweat, roaring for calm, before he was pushed to the ground.
Holding out her pepper spray, Detective O’Neill advanced towards the mob, but a child pushed through the crowd and grabbed the spray from her. The officer trying to arrest the youth fell to the ground and the boy wriggled free, dangling the handcuffs triumphantly from his hands. The crowd cheered him on, and Daly caught the sight of a red splash against pale skin. Someone was bleeding. The crowd lunged back towards Daly, squeezing him against the van again, their gloating faces shutting him in. He had no idea what they were shouting at him. His mind felt dull and brutish, unable to understand fully the curses and insults hurled at him, the emptiness of the teenagers’ facial expressions, and the black nothings of their eyes. Perhaps it was a mark of how removed he was from their community that he did not know their terms of abuse, their words for sex acts and other bodily functions.
He reached for his phone but, in the mêlée, it had slipped from his pocket. He felt the throbbing pain of every bruise on his body. He pushed against the throng, sweat soaking his forehead. He felt an urge to vomit but held on. Hands gripped his coat, pulling him down, while more hands grabbed his collar, jerking him deeper into the crowd, twisting him round and round, like a drunk, through a trajectory of grinning faces, the vertigo adding to his nausea. He was free-floating now, as far from normal society as he could be. Sirens sounded in the distance and, in a detached way, he wondered would they arrive in time before he was seriously injured. He tried to wipe away the spit and blood from his face, but a blinding sheet of pain filled his eyes. He no longer heard the mob’s taunts and shouts.
Nor did he hear the arrival of his rescuers. Half crouching on the ground, he became aware of the crowd slackening and their blows diminishing. He looked up and saw a traveller woman moving through the throng, strong and purposeful, pushing the teenagers to one side, grunting and roaring at them as though she had known them since they were babies, rows of gold bracelets jangling like armour on her plump arms. Another woman followed her with the same heavy maternal presence, grabbing one of the ringleaders by the scruff of his neck and shoving her ample bosom into his face. The mob shifted its energy, lost its momentum, and the pair of marauding women became the point of interest.
The women redirected their efforts towards Daly, cutting a swathe through the crowd, intent on flushing out his tormentors. They slapped the bigger youths about their heads, while the younger boys danced and cheered around them, delighted to see the older members of their gang punished in such an humiliating fashion. In a moment, Daly understood the greater influence of the chastising mothers: in spite of O’Sullivan’s gold cufflinks and swagger, this was a severely matriarchal society. The women made it look so simple that his jaw hung open, the urgent action of their arms, the fury of their scolding words, and the absolute authority in their eyes.
‘Lucky!’ the women shouted at Daly. ‘Lucky they haven’t torn you apart. Go now, while you have the chance.’
Daly tried to speak to their competence and authority. ‘I’m searching for a missing boy.’
They threw their arms up at him. ‘Well get on with it!’
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
The family suite at police headquarters was one of the loneliest places imaginable at this time of the night. Daly grabbed three coffees and for a second paused at the door, surveying the bleak room within, its blank walls and fluorescent lighting, and the huddled figures of Rebecca and Harry Hewson sitting at a little table, looking unbearably tense and ready to leave, if only someone would give them the word.
After he left the hotel with no further clues about Jack, the family liaison officers briefed him with what they had gleaned from the couple. The officers had kept them company all evening, attentive witnesses to their anxiety, helping them talk through and remember the odd little events of the past few days, the suspicious signs, the ironies and innocent-seeming omens that might have presaged their son’s disappearance, but nothing of note had emerged.
As soon as Daly entered the room, he noticed their mood had changed. A different tension hung in the air between them. Instinctively, he felt it was something other than parental fear, more like the moody, haphazard tension of a couple on the verge of breaking up. Rebecca looked emotionally spent, while her husband managed to give Daly a nod and a brief smile.
A dangerous light shone in her eyes when she saw him. What did Daly see there? Anger that he had not done enough to find their son or hope that Daly was their saviour? Whatever it was, it dazzled him. The opening lines he had prepared while getting the coffees slipped from his mind. He gave a little smile that felt forced, and to his surprise she returned it with an odd look of sympathy and concern, her lips mouthing a surprised ‘oh’ while her husband’s expression turned to suspicion, his jaw sticking out in the form of an unasked question.
My face, Daly remembered. The bruised visage of a man who had been in a drunken fight. He touched his features self-consciously.
‘Just a few war wounds,’ he murmured. He explained that the search for their son had precipitated a near riot at the traveller wedding.
‘No sign of your son, I’m afraid, but we do have some leads.’
He told them that CCTV footage at the hotel had picked up images of two older boys escorting their son into a camper van belonging to a clan of travellers called the McGinns. There had been a report that their son was crying. Immediately, Rebecca grabbed on to the edge of the table to steady herself. She was about to speak but pressed her lips together.
‘Earlier you told me no one else knew you were taking Jack to the courthouse,’ said Daly. ‘That the camper van was already parked when you arrived, which leads me to believe that your son’s disappearance must have resulted from a chance encounter. Do you follow me?’
The couple nodded.
‘Unless, of course, we factor in another possibility,’ added Daly.
The two of them said nothing. Daly could sense the gears of their minds spinning into motion, trying to formulate what he might be hinting at.
‘What are you suggesting?’ asked Harry.
‘This sort of thing happens much more frequently than is reported in the press. Boys of Jack’s age sometimes develop a taste for adventure.’
‘You mean he might have deliberately run away with these… people?’ said Rebecca.
‘Something like that. Perhaps he only meant to be gone for a short while, but then he lost control of the situation.’
She shook her head emphatically. ‘Why would he run away from us?’
Daly shrugged. ‘The same reason why boys usually break rules. To see if they can get away with it.’ He paused and continued delicately: ‘And if there are problems at home, that might be another motivating factor.’
The couple were immediately on their guard. Rebecca’s eyes flicked from left to right, but the journalist fixed Daly with a steely gaze. The detective stayed firm, not even blinking. He tried to convey patience, kindness even, coupled with an air of knowledge, a sense that he had already measured the depths of the difficulties in their relationship. He wanted them to be as candid as possible. A frosty smile appeared on Harry’s lips, but it was Rebecca who spoke first.
‘Things at home might not be satisfactory right now, but that’s not enough to make our son throw hims
elf into the arms of strangers, especially a camper van full of travellers.’
‘What about at school?’
Daly could see that she had not factored in the possibility that he might be unhappy at school.
‘Has he talked to you about his feelings?’
‘He’s more interested in reading books.’
‘But does he talk to you?’
‘No.’ She clasped her hands on the table, her knuckles turning white.
‘Then how do you know what’s going on inside his head?’
‘I don’t.’ She looked at Daly as though he were piling more cruelty on to her.
‘Has this ever happened before?’
‘Disappearing like this? Never.’
Harry leaned out of his seat. ‘I think you’re on the wrong track, Inspector. If Jack went off on purpose, why was he taken away in tears at the hotel?’
‘I don’t doubt that he’s in danger. All I’m saying is that we might be starting off with a mistaken assumption. That he was deliberately abducted by the O’Sullivans. That implies some degree of organization from the travellers and from what I’ve seen I doubt that.’
‘But I left him safe and sound in the car. Why would the notion to run away suddenly spring into his head? Why would he want to hurt us like this?’
‘There are other things we cannot yet explain. For instance, why did Jack not try to raise the alarm or escape at the hotel?’
‘You only have the travellers’ word for that.’
‘Of course, it’s possible that none of them are telling the truth. In that case, the entire wedding party might be an accessory to kidnapping. But I don’t believe that is the case. The O’Sullivans are cooperating and helping us trace his movements.’
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