The Missing

by Jane Casey

  I was struggling to take in the fact that they’d searched the house – searched my room, my things. My face burned at the thought of strangers’ hands turning over my clothes, going through my letters and books. Judging me. And worse than that, what if the hands hadn’t belonged to strangers? An image of Blake sitting on the edge of my bed came into my mind, and the look on his face was contempt mingled with pity. And pity was the last thing I wanted from him.

  I pulled myself back to the small, airless room. ‘If you spoke to Mum, she’ll have told you I couldn’t have been involved. I was with her when Jenny disappeared.’

  Grange didn’t blink. ‘She wasn’t able to be that helpful, I’m afraid. If you were relying on her for an alibi, you’ll have to look somewhere else.’

  I sat back, stymied. Of course she hadn’t been helpful. She’d be useless as a character witness – hostile to the police and vague about dates and times. Why had I thought that might be the way out of this nightmare?

  Grange was back on the hunt. ‘You and Danny Keane – you’re the leftovers. Both of you, you’ve had to survive all your lives. That’s the sort of thing that would bring two people together. Bonnie and Clyde, you know the thing – except robbing banks isn’t in fashion these days, and it’s a lot easier to procure a little girl, turn her head with flattery and false friendship, and abuse her on camera.’

  I shrank back in my chair, intimidated in spite of myself. Grange looked at his notebook, then leaned forward again. ‘We believe that you and Daniel Keane engaged in a conspiracy, first of all to abuse Jennifer Shepherd, then to get rid of her when you discovered that she was pregnant.’

  I shook my head. ‘No. No way.’

  ‘Yes,’ Grange insisted. ‘You saw her in school and realised that she was vulnerable. She was an only child. She trusted adults, didn’t she? She was used to being around them all the time, so it was easy to get her on her own and make friends with her. She didn’t live far away from you, so she could make excuses to come over in the evenings and at weekends. She lied to her parents – you helped her to come up with stories, didn’t you? And Daniel Keane charmed her until she didn’t know right from wrong and before she knew it, she was being used by strangers, over and over again, for your financial gain, and thanking you for the privilege.’

  He turned and without being asked Cooper handed him a folder that Grange flipped through before looking at me again.

  ‘We’ve recovered these images from the computers in the house. There may be more once we’ve completed our examination of the computers, but these are sufficient evidence to bring charges against those involved in abusing this girl.’

  He opened the folder and flicked through the contents again, then selected something. ‘Did you know that we have a system for grading images containing paedophile material? It runs from level one to level five, level one being the least offensive. This is a level one image.’

  He slid the photograph across the table and I looked down to see Jenny smiling at the camera, looking over her shoulder. She was wearing underwear, a vest and pants dotted with pink flowers, kneeling down with one hand on her hip. The material of the vest clung to her chest, showing that it was completely flat and undeveloped. There was a flowery barrette in her hair and she looked very young and very innocent.

  ‘Level one is sexualised posing,’ Grange said, giving each syllable full weight. ‘Not necessarily nude. Nothing else going on. Titillating, you might say.’

  I swallowed, completely repelled. The thought that someone might find the image erotic was beyond me.

  ‘Level two.’ Grange slid another photograph across the table, the shiny paper screaming on the laminated surface. ‘Solo masturbation. Or non-penetrative sexual activity between children. But in this case, solo masturbation.’

  I looked down at the picture for a split second, then looked away, feeling the tears starting in my eyes. ‘Stop,’ I managed to say. I didn’t want to see it. I didn’t want to know that these things existed.

  ‘Level three.’ Another photograph slid across the table. ‘Non-penetrative sexual activity between children and adults.’

  I had closed my eyes and turned away, sobbing hard now.

  ‘The face of the man is pixellated,’ Grange mused, ‘but I think we can tell that’s Daniel Keane. He has a tattoo on his right arm, doesn’t he? One like that? A Celtic design?’

  ‘I have no idea,’ I said, still not looking at the image. There were things I didn’t need to see, things I could never forget if I did look at them. My nose was running and I sniffed hopelessly. ‘Could I have a tissue?’

  ‘Then there’s level four,’ Grange said, ignoring me. ‘Penetrative sexual activity of all sorts – children with children, children with adults. That includes oral sex, as you can see.’

  Two more photographs skimmed across the table and one slid over the edge, landing on the floor at the edge of my vision. I saw it before I could stop myself from looking and my reaction was instant and visceral. I bent down, turned my head to one side, and was comprehensively sick all over the floor. Grange pushed his chair back with a smothered exclamation and jumped out of range, not quite quickly enough. Splashes of vomit spattered his immaculate trousers and shoes, though I was too miserable to care.

  ‘Stop the tape, Chris,’ Grange snapped, and Cooper muttered a quick ‘Interview suspended at 6.25 p.m.’ before he did so.

  I was vaguely aware of Grange leaving the room and a female police officer in uniform coming in. Between them, Cooper and the other officer guided me into a different interview room and gave me a cup of water. I rinsed my mouth out, feeling lousy. My head was throbbing and my throat was raw from retching. I hadn’t eaten for hours, so what I had thrown up was almost pure stomach acid.

  They waited twenty minutes or so before restarting the interview. I couldn’t help looking at Grange’s trouser cuffs when he came into the room, noting the damp patches where someone had tried to sponge the material. His jaw was tight with tension, but he was civil enough when he spoke to me.

  ‘Do you feel able to continue with this interview?’

  ‘Yes.’ My voice was husky and I cleared my throat, wincing as I did so.

  ‘Would you like another glass of water?’ Cooper asked.

  ‘I’m OK,’ I whispered.

  Grange sat back in his chair. ‘Right, well, we’ll pick up where we stopped.’

  ‘No more photographs,’ I said quickly. ‘You’ve made your point.’

  ‘There’s still level five. Don’t you want to know about level five?’

  I clenched my hands into fists, trying to keep myself under control. The detective clearly suffered from small-man syndrome. Shouting at him – challenging his authority – would achieve nothing. I had to try civility. ‘Please don’t show me any more images.’

  ‘Right. We don’t want to have to change interview rooms again,’ he said, with an attempt at humour. Cooper laughed loudly. I couldn’t quite manage a smile.

  ‘Let’s get back to you and Daniel Keane,’ Grange said, the good humour evaporating. ‘I’m prepared to believe that you weren’t involved with the abuse directly. I’m prepared to believe that you hadn’t seen photographs of that sort before. But I am still quite sure that you were integral to the plot to abuse Jennifer Shepherd for your personal gain.’

  ‘Absolutely not,’ I said with as much force as I could muster.

  Grange’s eyes narrowed. ‘It must have been a disaster when you realised that Jennifer was pregnant. Maybe you didn’t know that she had started her periods. She still looked like a child, but in fact she had been menstruating for a number of months. You knew the whole thing would come out once her parents knew about her pregnancy, and you knew that you would face prosecution. You would receive a very serious sentence for procuring a girl for purposes of abuse, making money off that abuse, and on your eventual release from prison – which would not have been a pleasant experience, as I’m sure you can imagine – you would be prohibited fr
om working with children again. You would have been fairly unemployable, in fact. The stakes were very high for you. High enough for you to feel that a girl who was coming to the end of her usefulness anyway – a girl who you had treated as a commodity to be exploited for your financial gain – was eminently disposable.’

  ‘No,’ I said, shaking my head. ‘None of that is true.’

  ‘No? And it’s not true that you and Daniel Keane had agreed that if you got away with the murder of Jennifer Shepherd undetected, you would look for another victim once the dust had settled? It was a nice moneyspinner for the pair of you, too lucrative to abandon it completely, especially when you had the whole process set up and customers demanding new material.’

  ‘That’s absolutely ridiculous.’

  ‘So that isn’t the reason it was necessary for Daniel Keane to attack Geoff Turnbull?’ Grange’s eyes were sharp, watching for a reaction from me at the mention of Geoff’s name. ‘Because Geoff was hanging around, wasn’t he? And you had people who wanted to be able to come and go, if you’ll pardon the expression, regulars for the little club that you had set up. We’ve found images of four different men engaging in the abuse so far, most of them older than you and Daniel Keane by some way, as it happens, so we aren’t sure where he recruited them – maybe you’d be able to help us with that? No? They would have been very unhappy about a teacher turning up at all hours of the day and night, someone who might be able to work out what was going on, who might recognise the victim as she arrived at or left the property.’

  ‘What makes you think Danny attacked Geoff?’ I asked, stuck on the first part of what Grange had said.

  ‘We found an iron bar in the property when it was searched, shoved under one of the beds in a black bin bag. It was stained with blood and other matter. There were hairs on it that we have visually matched to Geoff Turnbull, though they will be doing DNA testing to confirm it. We’re very confident that this is the weapon that was used to attack Mr Turnbull.’

  I sat back, bemused. Geoff would have been in the way if Danny was up to no good across the road from my house. But it was a fairly extreme way of getting rid of him. And, as Vickers had said, it looked personal. I filed it away under ‘to be thought about later’ and concentrated on what Grange was saying. The tone of his voice had softened.

  ‘Look, Sarah, we understand that you’ve had a lot of bad experiences in your life, with your brother’s disappearance and your father’s death. We understand why you might be drawn to Daniel Keane – he’s one of the only people in the world who might understand what it was like for you, growing up. Maybe all of this was his idea. Maybe he took advantage of you too. You might have thought things would work out differently. You might not have understood what you were getting yourself into until it was too late.’

  Grange was looking sincere. I didn’t believe him for a second.

  ‘You’re in a lot of trouble at the moment, but we can help you if you help us. If you can tell us what really happened with Jennifer – if you can fill in the blanks for us – we can do a deal for you. Come up with a lesser charge. Make sure you do less time in prison – maybe make it possible for you to go to an open prison.’

  I wasn’t stupid enough to believe what Grange was saying, but I could work out what it meant. They had a lot of ideas, but no real evidence. They needed me to implicate myself and help to tie up the case against Danny at the same time. I had no problem with Danny going to prison for a long time – for ever, preferably – after seeing the images of Jenny being abused. But I had to make them understand that far from being the brains behind the outfit, I hadn’t even noticed what was going on right across the road.

  ‘What this comes down to,’ I said, choosing my words with care, ‘is a combination of coincidence and circumstance. I can understand why you were suspicious of me. It was strange that I kept coming to your attention; I can see that now. But the only reason I involved myself in the investigation was because I thought I could help. No one helped when my brother disappeared. I wanted whoever did this to be caught, and I hope you do catch Danny Keane, I really do. But I didn’t have anything to do with the abuse. I didn’t even know that Jenny knew Danny.’

  I paused for a second, working through what I needed to say. ‘You say that my things were in the house. That’s correct. But as I told DCI Vickers, I was the victim of a mugging this week. I now believe it was Danny Keane who attacked me.’

  I stood and turned so my back was to the policemen, then pulled my T-shirt up. The bruising across my shoulder had gone from black to yellow-green over the previous days, but it was still there. I turned to face them again, rolling the leg of my jeans up far enough to show them my knee. It was puffy and discoloured, and I heard Cooper give a little sympathetic hiss.

  ‘My bag was stolen. That’s why I haven’t been driving – I didn’t have my keys.’ I sat down. ‘If I had had access to the house, I would certainly have wanted my car keys. DS Blake saw me at the memorial service for Jenny. He can confirm that I had to walk there, even though it was a very wet evening, and that I needed a lift home afterwards.

  ‘I don’t know how Jenny came to Danny’s attention as a potential victim, but I do know that she and Paul Keane were in primary school together. I don’t know why Geoff was attacked. I don’t know why I was mugged. I think those are questions that only Danny can answer. I promise you, I haven’t spoken to him since I was a teenager.’

  Grange stirred. ‘That just isn’t credible, I’m afraid. You live yards from him.’

  ‘It’s true. We had a falling out.’ I could remember the circumstances very clearly; I hoped to God the policemen wouldn’t ask me to explain what had happened. ‘I went to his house this week so I could ask him about what happened to my brother, and that’s how I met Paul. I’d forgotten he even existed, to be honest with you. I hadn’t seen him for years.’

  ‘Why ask him about your brother now?’

  I moved restlessly in the chair, trying to think how I could explain it. ‘What happened with Jenny … it just brought it all back. I started to think about how the Shepherds must be feeling, and then I thought about my parents – about my dad in particular. No one cares about Charlie any more – no one except my mum, and it’s broken her. I spent years trying to pretend that Charlie had never existed. I tried to run away from what happened to my family, but I couldn’t go on ignoring it for ever. I thought I might find something. I thought that maybe no one had asked the right questions, or spoken to the right people. I thought – I thought I could make everything right again.’ It sounded stupid once I’d said it out loud and I sat and looked at my hands, not wanting to see the detectives’ faces.

  There was a muffled knock at the door and Cooper stopped the tape as Grange went to answer it. He went into the corridor and closed the door behind him. I sat in silence, not attempting to engage with Cooper while I waited for Grange to return. I had done all I could. I had said all I had to say. There was nothing to do but wait, so that’s what I did.

  1997

  Five years missing

  The phone is ringing. I am lying on the sofa, cutting my split ends with nail scissors, and I make no attempt to answer it, even though it is just a few feet away.

  Mum comes out of the kitchen and I can hear she is annoyed when she lifts the receiver; her voice is sharp.

  Her side of the conversation is brief, barely polite. After a minute, she leans in from the hall. ‘Sarah, it’s your father on the phone. Come and speak to him, please.’

  I don’t move immediately. I am concentrating on one last curl, angling the scissors carefully to trim a single hair with three separate ends that spiral away from the main shaft like spurs.

  ‘That’s disgusting,’ Mum says. ‘Stop that immediately. Your father is waiting for you.’

  I get off the sofa and go to where she is standing, taking the phone from her without speaking to her or even looking at her.

  ‘Hello.’

  ‘Hi, monkey. How are
you?’

  ‘OK.’

  Dad sounds cheerful – too cheerful.

  ‘How’s school?’

  ‘OK.’

  ‘Are you working hard?’

  Instead of answering, I sigh into the phone. I wish he could see the expression on my face. It’s hard to convey ‘I don’t give a shit’ over the phone without saying the words, and I don’t quite dare to.

  ‘Listen, Sarah, I know things are hard, but you have to try, sweetheart. School is important.’

  ‘Right,’ I say, kicking the skirting board slowly, deliberately. I have heavy boots on, black Caterpillar boots with thick soles and steel toecaps that I persuaded Dad to buy me. I can’t even feel the impact as my toe connects with the wall.

  ‘Stop that,’ Mum says from behind me. She is standing in the kitchen doorway, listening in. I turn away from her more, tucking the phone between my shoulder and my ear, hunching over. ‘Dad, when can I come to see you?’

  ‘Soon. The flat is nearly ready. I’ve just been painting the second bedroom, actually. As soon as I get it set up, you can come and stay.’

  ‘It’s been ages,’ I mutter into the phone.

  ‘I know. But I’m trying, Sarah. You have to be patient.’

  ‘I have been patient,’ I say. ‘I’m tired of being patient.’ I give the skirting board another vicious kick and some paint flakes off it. ‘Dad, I have to go.’

  ‘Oh, OK.’ He sounds surprised, a little deflated. ‘Have you got plans?’

  ‘No. I just don’t really have anything else to say to you.’ It feels good to be mean to him. It feels like what he deserves.

  There’s a little pause. ‘Right, then.’

  ‘Bye,’ I say, and I put the phone down quickly, so I can’t hear him reply.