by Alex North
The local scary house.
The kids would dare each other to go near it.
Take photographs and things.
That was why the house had leaped out at Jake when he had seen it. Because he’d seen it before, with his mother standing in front of it.
And then I looked properly at Rebecca in the photograph. She appeared to be about seven or eight years old, and was wearing a blue-and-white-checked dress with a hem high enough that you could see a graze on her knee. And it must have been a breezy day when it was taken, because her hair was swept out to one side.
She was the same girl Jake had drawn in the window with him in his picture.
I fought back tears as I finally understood.
As ridiculous as it was, I’d almost begun to believe there was more to my son’s invisible friend than his imagination alone. And I supposed that there was. Except he wasn’t seeing ghosts or spirits. His imaginary friend was simply the mother he missed so much, conjured up as a little girl his own age. Someone who would play with him the way she always used to. Someone who could help him through the terrible new world he’d found himself in.
I turned the photograph over.
June 1, 1991, it said. Being brave.
I remembered how, when we’d first moved in, he had been running from room to room as though looking for someone, and my heart broke for him. I’d let him down so badly. It would have been hard for him regardless, but I could and should have done more to help him through it. Been more attentive, more present, less wrapped up in my own suffering. But I hadn’t. And so he’d been forced to find solace with a memory instead.
I put the photograph down.
I’m so sorry, Jake.
And then, for what it was even worth, I searched through the rest of the material he’d kept. Each piece hurt to look at. Because I was certain now that I had lost my son forever, and that this was as close as I would ever be to him again, for whatever was left of my life.
But then I unfolded the last piece of paper he’d kept, and when I saw what was there, I went still again. It took a moment to understand what I was seeing and what it meant.
And then I grabbed my phone, already on my way to the front door.
Fifty-nine
“Slow down,” Amanda said. “What have you found?”
She had been working nonstop through the night, and now—approaching nine o’clock in the morning—she could feel every minute of it. Her body was beyond weary. Her bones were aching and her thoughts were skittish and distracted. The last thing she really needed was Tom Kennedy gabbling down the phone at her, especially when he sounded as disjointed and out of it as she felt.
“I told you,” he said. “A picture.”
“A picture of a butterfly.”
“Yes.”
“Can you please slow down and explain to me what that means?”
“It was in Jake’s Packet of Special Things.”
“His what?”
“He collects things—keeps them. Things that have some kind of meaning for him. This picture was in there. It’s one of the butterflies that were in the garage.”
“Okay.”
Amanda looked around the heaving operations room. It seemed as chaotic right now as the contents of her head. Focus. There was a picture of a butterfly. It clearly meant something to Tom Kennedy, but she still had no idea why.
“Jake drew this picture?”
“No! That’s the point. It’s too elaborate. It looks like something that a grown-up’s done. He was drawing them, though, the evening after his first day at school. I think someone gave it to him to copy. Because how could he have seen them otherwise? They were in the garage, right?”
“The garage.”
“So he had to have seen them somewhere else. And this must be where. Someone drew it for him. Someone who had seen them.”
“Someone who’d been in your garage?”
“Or the house. That’s what you said, isn’t it—that there were more people like Norman Collins who knew the body was there? That the man you think took Jake is one of these people?”
Amanda was silent for a moment, considering that. Yes, that was what they were thinking. And while Kennedy’s discovery probably meant nothing, the night hadn’t brought much else to go on either.
“Who drew the picture?” she said.
“I don’t know. It looks recent, so I think maybe it was someone at the school. It’s on that thick paper they use at school. Jake brought it home after his first day, and that’s why he was copying it.”
The school.
In the days following Neil Spencer’s disappearance, they’d talked to everyone who’d had any degree of regular contact with the boy, and that had included the teaching staff for the whole school. But there had been nothing suspicious about any of them. And, of course, Jake had only been at the school for a few days. This picture, assuming it had any relevance at all, could have come from anywhere.
“But you’re not sure?”
“No,” Tom said. “But there’s something else too. That evening, Jake was talking to someone who wasn’t there. He does that, right? He has imaginary friends. Only this time he said it was the boy in the floor. So how can he have known about that, along with the butterflies, unless someone talked to him about it?”
“I don’t know.”
She resisted the urge to point out that it could simply be a coincidence, and that even if it wasn’t, there was still no reason to focus on the school. Instead, she turned to what seemed to her a far more fucking pertinent issue right now.
“You didn’t think to mention this before?”
The phone went silent. Maybe it was a low blow to have delivered: the man’s son was missing, after all, and some things only made sense in hindsight. Pictures and imaginary friends. Monsters whispering outside windows. Adults didn’t always listen hard enough to children. But if Tom Kennedy had told them about this earlier, and if she had listened to him, then things might be different right now. She wouldn’t be sitting here exhausted, with Pete in hospital and Jake Kennedy missing. It was impossible to keep the accusation out of her voice.
“Tom? Why?”
“I didn’t know what it meant,” he said.
“Well, maybe it doesn’t mean anything, but … oh, for fuck’s sake, hang on a second.”
An alert had come through on her screen. Amanda opened the message. Sharon Bamber, the family liaison officer, had arrived at Karen Shaw’s home but nobody was answering the door. Amanda frowned and pushed the phone against her ear. Now that Tom had stopped talking, she could hear traffic in the background.
“Where are you?” she asked him.
“I’m on my way to the school.”
Christ. She leaned forward urgently.
“Don’t do that, please.”
“But—”
“But nothing. It won’t help.”
She closed her eyes and rubbed her forehead. What the hell was he thinking? Except, of course, his son was missing and so he wasn’t thinking properly at all.
“Listen to me,” she said. “Listen right now. I need you to go back to Karen Shaw’s house. There’s an officer—Sergeant Bamber—waiting for you there. I’m going to ask her to bring you to the department. We can discuss this picture then. Okay?”
He didn’t reply. She could imagine him thinking it over. Torn between his determination to help Jake and the authority in her voice.
“Tom? Let’s not make this any worse.”
“Okay.”
He hung up.
Damn it. She wasn’t sure whether she believed him or not, but she supposed there was nothing she could do about it for now. In the meantime, she pinged a message back to Sharon, relaying her instructions, and then leaned back in her chair and tried to rub some life into her face.
Another report was delivered to her desk. She opened her eyes again to find more useless witness statements. None of the neighbors had seen or heard anything. Somehow, Francis Carter—or
David Parker, or whatever he was calling himself—had walked into a house, committed the attempted murder of an experienced officer, abducted a child, and disappeared without attracting any attention whatsoever. The luck of the devil. Literally.
But not just luck, of course. Twenty years ago, he might have been a fragile, vulnerable little boy, but it was clear that the years since had seen him grow into a disturbed and dangerous man. One who was good at moving unnoticed and undetected.
She sighed.
The school, then, for what it was worth.
Let’s take another look.
Sixty
Go back to Karen Shaw’s house.
For a moment, it had felt like I might. DI Beck was police, after all, and my instinct was to do what the police told me. And her words had stung me. On top of every other way I’d failed, there was too much that I hadn’t told the police, and the fact I’d held back on information at the time to protect Jake didn’t change the fact that I could have prevented this.
Which meant he was missing because of me.
I couldn’t blame Beck for not taking me seriously in light of that, but she hadn’t seen what Jake had drawn. Someone had made that picture for him to copy, and they had done so recently.
And why had Jake kept it?
What was so special about it?
I remembered what had happened after that first day. The argument we’d had. The words he’d read on my computer screen. The distance between us. I could only think of one explanation for why that picture had ended up in his Packet of Special Things, and it was that Jake had decided to keep it because someone had shown him the kindness and support that I hadn’t.
And it was that thought that made my decision for me.
* * *
I made it to the school just in time. The doors were still open, and there were a few parents and children milling around in the playground. I’d been considering going to the office—and would have, if necessary—but the office had a security door that separated it from the rest of the school. Here, I could get straight in if I needed to.
I ran through the gates, my heart pounding, straight past Karen, who was just leaving.
“Tom—”
“A minute.”
Mrs. Shelley was standing by the open door, the last of the children trailing in past her. She looked alarmed at the sight of me. I imagined I looked as frantic as I felt.
“Mr. Kennedy—”
“Who drew this?” I unfolded the sheet of paper and showed her the picture of the butterfly. “Who drew it?”
“I don’t—”
“Jake is missing,” I said. “Do you understand? Someone has taken my son. Jake came home with this picture after his first day of school. I need to know who drew it.”
She shook her head. I was babbling too much information for her to process, and I fought down the urge to grab her and shake her and try to make her understand how important this was, and then I realized Karen was standing beside me, gently resting her hand on my arm.
“Tom. Try to calm down.”
“I am calm.” My gaze didn’t leave Mrs. Shelley as I tapped the picture of the butterfly. “Who drew this for Jake? Was it another child? A teacher? Was it you?”
“I don’t know!” She was flustered. I was scaring her. “I’m not sure. It might have been George.”
My grip tightened on the paper.
“George?”
“He’s one of our teaching assistants. But—”
“Is he here now?”
“He should be.”
She glanced back, and that was all the time it took for me to move past her into the corridor beyond.
“Mr. Kennedy!”
“Tom—”
I ignored them both, glancing sideways into the cloakroom, where the children from Jake’s class were hanging up their things—where Jake should have been—and then I started running, rounding the corner ahead and entering the main hall, which was filled with children traipsing toward the classrooms on all sides. I dodged between them, then stopped in the middle, the hall spinning around me as I looked here and there, not knowing which room might be Jake’s, and where George might be. I was in trouble here, I knew that deep down, but it didn’t matter because if I didn’t find Jake my life was over anyway, and if George was here, then he couldn’t be hurting—
Adam.
I recognized Karen’s son putting his water bottle on a table at the far end of the hall, then walking through a door. I ran across, noticing one of the receptionists and an older man, the groundskeeper, heading down a far corridor toward the hall. Mrs. Shelley must have called ahead. An intruder in the school would warrant that, I guessed.
“Mr. Kennedy,” the receptionist shouted.
But I reached the classroom before they did, moving quickly inside, still just about self-aware enough not to push the children in front of me out of the way. The room was a cacophony of color, the walls painted yellow and adorned with what seemed like hundreds of laminated sheets: multiplication tables; pictures of fruit and numbers; small, cartoonish figures performing tasks with their occupations written beside them. I looked across the sea of tiny tables and chairs, searching for an adult. An older woman was standing at the far end of the room, staring at me in confusion, clutching a register on a clipboard, but she was the only grown-up I could see.
And then I felt a hand on my arm.
I turned to find the old groundskeeper standing beside me, a firm expression on his face.
“You can’t be in here.”
“All right.”
I fought the urge to shake his hand off me. There was no point—whoever George was, he wasn’t here. But the frustration at that made me shake his hand off anyway.
“All right.”
Outside the classroom, the groundskeeper pointedly closed the door. Mrs. Shelley was walking toward me, her phone in her hand. I wondered if she’d already used it to call the police. If so, maybe they’d start taking me seriously now.
“Mr. Kennedy—”
“I know. I shouldn’t be in here.”
“You’re trespassing.”
“Put me on yellow, then.”
She started to say something, but then stopped herself. More than anything else, she looked concerned.
“You said Jake is missing?”
“Yes,” I said. “Someone took him last night.”
“I’m sorry. I can’t imagine what … obviously I understand that you’re upset.”
I wasn’t sure she could. The panic was like a live wire inside me now.
“I need to find George,” I said.
“He’s not here.”
The receptionist. She was standing with her arms folded, and she looked considerably less forgiving than Mrs. Shelley.
“Where is he?” I said.
“Well, I imagine he’s at home. He called in sick a little while ago.”
The alarm went up a notch. That couldn’t be a coincidence. And it meant he was with Jake right now.
“Where does he live?”
“I’m not at liberty to reveal staff details.”
I thought about marching straight past her and getting into the main office. The groundskeeper was standing there, blocking the way, but the man was in his sixties and I could win that fight if I tried. There would be police and charges to answer then, but it would be worth it if I had enough time in the office to search the cabinets and find the information I wanted. But not much use to me if I couldn’t. And not much use to Jake if I ended up in custody.
“You’ll give it to the police?” I said.
“Of course.”
I turned and walked across the hall, back the way I’d come. They followed me, making sure I left. After I stepped outside, the door was closed and locked behind me. The playground was almost entirely empty now, but Karen was waiting for me by the gate, an anxious look on her face.
“Thank fuck,” she said. “You know you could have got arrested for that?”
“I
need to find him.”
“This George? Who is he?”
“Classroom assistant. He drew something for Jake to copy—a butterfly. One of the ones they found with the body in the garage.”
Karen looked skeptical. And hearing myself say it out loud again, I didn’t blame her. But just as with Beck, it was impossible to make other people understand. The person who had taken Jake had known about the remains, I was sure of it, so they would know about the butterflies and the boy in the floor. My son wasn’t psychic. He was vulnerable and lonely, and he had to have learned about those things from someone. Someone with access to him.
Someone with access to him right now.
“The police?” Karen said.
“They don’t believe me either.”
She sighed.
“I know,” I said. “But I’m right, Karen. And I need to find Jake. I can’t bear the thought of him being hurt. Of him not being with me. Of it all being my fault. I need to find him.”
She was silent for a moment, considering that. And then she sighed again.
“George Saunders,” she said. “He’s the only George listed on the school website. I got his address while you were inside.”
“Christ.”
“I told you,” she said. “I’m good at finding things out.”
Sixty-one
“I don’t think you should be drawing that.”
The little girl sounded nervous. She was pacing back and forth across the small attic bedroom. Every now and then she’d stop and look down at his work. Before now, she hadn’t said anything, but that was when he’d been drawing the house and its elaborate garden, the way he was supposed to, copying the intricate scene George had drawn for him. Before he’d given up and started drawing a battle scene instead.
Around and around the circles went.
Force fields. Or portals. He couldn’t decide which, and maybe it didn’t matter. Something for protection or something for escape: either would do. Anything that would make him safe or take him away from here, from George, from the awful presence he could feel throbbing just out of sight at the bottom of the stairs. He wasn’t sure George had even locked the door when he left earlier, and he thought the little girl wanted him to sneak down and try it. No way. Even with a clear path to the front door, there was no—
