The Missing

by Jane Casey

  I slip the cup of vodka through the banisters onto an unoccupied step and sit down where the others have made space for me. The second-year sits beside me and puts an arm around my shoulders. I can’t remember his name. I can’t possibly ask what it is. He introduces me to everyone. They are talking about people I don’t know, about parties they went to last year and work they have to do for the following week, while the other first-years swap stories and ask questions. The others seem so bright, so funny. The occasional question comes my way and I answer briefly, smiling until my face hurts. Some of them are very drunk. Others are very drunk indeed. No one except me is sober, and I feel bored and boring.

  I don’t know who starts it, but suddenly the conversation is all about families.

  One of the boys I haven’t met before turns to look at me. ‘How about you? Any little sisters I should know about?’

  Everyone laughs; he has a well-earned reputation for sleeping with visiting younger sisters, I gather.

  ‘Neither little sisters nor big sisters. Sorry.’

  The girl by the window lights another cigarette. ‘How about brothers?’

  It’s just a casual question. She doesn’t mean anything. Before I’ve even thought about it, I hear myself say: ‘No. No brothers either.’

  That’s it. That’s all I have to say. No one asks any further questions. No one suspects a thing. It’s so easy to lie, so easy to be an only child, one without a past, someone to take at face value, someone to like. Just like that, I’ve left the last ten years behind. I feel something click in my mind, something that I think is freedom. It’s only later, much later, that I identify it as loss.

  Chapter 17

  I WAS READY to go long before Blake’s car drew up outside the house. I had passed another restless night, waking up finally at half past four to the sound of soft, relentless drumming on the roof. I pulled back the curtain to see the rain, hypnotised by the sheer volume of water that was swirling in the gutters and coursing down the road. The ground was already saturated; the neighbours’ lawns looked boggy and bloated. I watched for a few seconds before realising with a jolt that if the weather stayed like that, the dig might not go ahead. After all these years, where was the urgency for anyone except Mum and me? I bit my lip; I didn’t think that we could wait any longer.

  It was a distinct relief to see Blake’s car when he turned up. He was better than on time: five minutes early. I had showered and dressed quietly, without disturbing Mum, pulling on an old pair of jeans that were, it transpired, too big for me, sitting low on my hips. I looked in the mirror. My stomach was concave, my ribs sketchily visible under lifeless skin. When was the last time I’d sat down and eaten a proper meal? I couldn’t recall. There was precisely no chance that I would manage a sit-down breakfast that morning; my throat closed up at the prospect of food. I found a belt instead, and covered the join with a long T-shirt and a hooded anorak. High fashion it wasn’t, but it would do.

  Before Blake had time to turn the engine off, I ran out to the car, hood up.

  ‘Nice morning for it,’ he said and peered into the footwell, frowning. ‘Did you remember your boots? Those trainers won’t last long.’

  ‘Why is everyone obsessed with what I’m wearing on my feet?’ I waggled the plastic bag I was holding. ‘My boots are in here.’

  ‘Where we’re going is basically a bog at the moment. The embankment is held together with luck and a few tree roots. Give it another couple of hours of this weather and the whole thing will slide down onto the tracks.’

  ‘Not really,’ I said, nervous again.

  He laughed. ‘Not as far as I know. But we went out and had a quick look yesterday to see what sort of equipment we’d need, and the conditions were horrible. Vickers wrecked his shoes. Poor bloke, he only has two pairs.’

  I smiled, too tense to laugh. I was feeling a strange mixture of emotions – excitement and dread all jumbled together, overlaid with a sense that it was important not to get too excited, that they might not find anything, that Danny Keane might have been lying.

  ‘How’s your mum?’

  ‘Surprisingly OK. She took the news well, actually. I was expecting – well, I wasn’t expecting her to be calm.’

  He shot a glance in my direction. ‘The boss was very taken with her. Not like that usually, is she?’

  ‘No,’ I said candidly. ‘She can be difficult. It’s not much fun sometimes, being around her.’

  ‘That’s what I thought.’ Of course, Blake had met her when he searched the house. I squirmed.

  ‘So what happens now?’ He was watching the road and I couldn’t see enough of his face to be able to read his expression.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I mean—’ He broke off, then tried again. ‘Correct me if I’m wrong, but I get the impression that you’ve stayed with your mother to make up for what happened when Charlie disappeared. Now, assuming we find him today, that’s all over. This is the end. You’ve got to start thinking about where you go next, what you do. You don’t strike me as the most committed teacher in the world.’

  ‘Is it that obvious?’

  ‘It’s no way to live, Sarah. You’ve got to do what’s right for you, not for anyone else. You’re young enough to change your life, however you want to. You just have to decide what you want to do.’

  ‘It’s not that easy.’

  ‘No, it is that easy. It’s exactly that easy.’ The car purred to a stop at traffic lights and he turned to look at me. ‘It’s not something to be scared of, you know. You’ll be happier.’

  ‘Maybe.’ I couldn’t imagine it. Mum’s problems had started with Charlie’s disappearance, but that didn’t mean they would evaporate once he was found. She might need me more, not less, now that she knew what had happened. We would go on for as long as we had to. It was all I knew how to do.

  The windscreen wipers hissed back and forth eight or nine times before I spoke again. ‘Is Danny going to be here this morning?’

  Blake’s eyelids flickered as he registered the change of subject. ‘Yes, and stay away from him. He’ll be cuffed and escorted by police officers, under our control, but I still don’t want you near him.’ Without looking at me, he said, ‘He’s totally obsessed with you, you know.’

  ‘It seems so strange. He doesn’t even know me.’

  ‘That’s even worse. He’s in love with the idea of you. He can make you into anything he wants,’ Blake said soberly. ‘And don’t be fooled – he is dangerous.’

  The word clicked in my mind like a key turning in a lock. ‘Has he confessed yet? To Jenny’s murder?’

  ‘Not to hers, no. We got a confession from him about Geoff Turnbull, though, in the middle of the night. They pushed him pretty hard and eventually he admitted it. The physical evidence was overwhelming. That iron bar we found at the house was the weapon. He said he was watching Geoff, he’d seen him coming and going and didn’t like the way he was behaving towards you. On the night in question, Danny just snapped.’ Blake frowned a little, concentrating on the road. ‘I don’t know exactly what happened that night, but whatever Danny saw from across the road, he decided to intervene. Geoff was a sitting target. Danny couldn’t even claim it was a fair fight, not that that’s any kind of defence. Basically, his only excuse is that he wanted to protect you.’ Blake looked at me swiftly. ‘But don’t take that to mean it was your fault, do you hear me? It’s not like you asked him to do it.’

  But I had wished Geoff gone, and I hadn’t cared, not really, when I found out he was in hospital, and I couldn’t go back and relive it so I needn’t feel ashamed. That would stay with me, whatever Blake said.

  ‘We can’t shift him on Jenny. He’s not going to go for it, for whatever reason. He’s happy to talk about everything else – proud, nearly; you can’t shut him up once he gets going on how clever he was to make money off it. But when it comes to how she died, he clams up. Denies everything. We haven’t made any progress yet, but we will.’

&nbs
p; ‘Good,’ I said with feeling. I wanted him to confess to everything – to own up to all of his crimes. He’d had to help his father to dispose of Charlie’s body, and I could see why he had attacked Geoff, even if I deplored it. It was his treatment of Jenny that made me feel he was truly evil. To use her like that and throw her away when he was finished with her … I turned my head away from Blake and swallowed, fighting for composure.

  The car turned into a narrow lane lined with buddleias that had found footholds in neglected yards and outhouses. Their leathery leaves swept the flank of the car as Blake crept past parked cars on the right.

  ‘Is this it?’ I asked, feeling my palms becoming clammy. ‘I wouldn’t even have known this was here.’ I had had no clear picture in my mind of the place Vickers had described and it surprised me to see it and realise how close it was to where I lived.

  ‘It’s the sort of place you only know about if you’re from around here or you work on the railways. There aren’t usually cars parked here; this is all to do with us.’

  So it was a big operation, I realised, and felt a prickling rush of embarrassment. This had been my private sorrow for so long, it seemed selfish to have dragged all of these people – thirty, maybe? – into a bleak back alley. ‘Thank you for this,’ I said, in the end.

  Blake grunted. ‘No need for that. This is the job.’

  ‘Mm. But thank you for everything else, too.’

  That earned me a sidelong look before he turned back to concentrate on the narrow lane ahead of us. A young officer was moving cones, allowing Blake’s car through so he could park near the end of the alley. I recognised Vickers’ car and Blake pulled in behind it. He turned the engine off and we sat for a second, the only sound the rain rattling on the roof of the car.

  ‘When this is over –’ he started.

  ‘I was wondering–’I said at the same time, then laughed. ‘You go first.’

  ‘I was just thinking, we’ve done this backwards, haven’t we? When this is all over, I’d like to get to know you, Sarah. Find out what you’re really like.’

  The rain was sliding down the windscreen in rivulets. I watched the shadows move across his face and felt so happy that it almost hurt. ‘I’d like that,’ I said eventually.

  Blake leaned across, drawing me towards him. I kissed him with commitment and gratitude, almost forgetting why we were there for a few breathless moments, aware only of him, feeling, for once, completely safe. His mouth curved against mine and I pulled away to see him grinning at me.

  ‘Right, then. Glad we’ve got that sorted. Now get your boots on.’

  As he got out of the car, swearing at the rain, I slid my feet into my wellies and shuddered at the dank chill that struck up through my soles. With legs that didn’t feel like my own, I got out of the car and waited, hood up, for Blake to finish getting ready. The air was thick with the scent of saturated grass and leaves. From where I stood, I could see steps leading down to a tall metal gate, and behind it, trees.

  ‘This way,’ Blake said, motioning towards the gate. Half of me wanted to run away. The other half wanted to rush through it without waiting for Blake, who was fussing with his mobile phone. He came eventually, guiding me through the gate with, ‘Watch your step.’

  Thick nettles had grown up around the gate, but someone had trodden them down, making a narrow path through the trees. The nettles were slick with rain and slippery underfoot and I followed along in Blake’s footsteps, focusing on the ground. The path led to the right, parallel to the railway line that was just visible through the trees. To my left, the ground fell away sharply, and I struggled to keep my footing in places, keeping my balance by grabbing on to convenient tree trunks. After a couple of hundred yards, Blake turned left and began to work his way down the slope, looking back to check I was following. I edged down carefully, afraid of falling and slithering to the bottom of the embankment in a flurry of wet leaves and mud. I could hear voices up ahead, and as we rounded a stand of juvenile beech trees the dig came into view. It was well under way, with a white canvas tent pitched over the spot where the officers were working, shovelling earth and sifting carefully through it, watched by, among others, DCI Vickers.

  Blake had stopped at the edge of the clearing. Now he turned to me. ‘Do you want to get a bit closer?’

  ‘I’m all right here.’ There was a heavy, rich smell of turned earth in the air and, in the distance, the mournful two-note hoot of a train’s whistle sounded. It was a peaceful place, but lonely, and I didn’t feel at ease.

  ‘Why do you think he left Jenny in the woods?’

  ‘What, Danny?’ Blake shrugged. ‘Who knows.’

  ‘This would have been a better place, wouldn’t it? And he remembered it well enough; he should have thought of it. She’d never have been found if he’d left her here. Like Charlie. And he’d have got away with it.’

  ‘Lucky for us that he didn’t, then.’ Blake touched my arm. ‘Are you OK?’

  I was seeing the clearing in the woods again. ‘He didn’t even bury her. He didn’t even try to hide her – not really. The way she was laid out – it was as if he wanted someone to find her.’

  ‘Maybe he was proud of what he’d done.’

  ‘Maybe.’

  Vickers had spotted us and was making his way across to us. ‘Morning. Everything OK?’

  I nodded. ‘Have they found anything yet?’

  ‘Not yet,’ the chief inspector said briskly, ‘but that’s just because they’re taking their time. We’re pretty sure we’re digging in the right place. Danny’s indicated the place that he remembers the burial taking place, though he wasn’t altogether sure if it was here or one other spot. The forensic team have done some probes and they think he’s there,’ he said, gesturing over his shoulder to the dig in progress, ‘and the cadaver dog went for that spot too.’

  ‘Cadaver dog?’

  ‘They’re trained to sniff out bodies. You can train a dog to look for anything – drugs, food, explosives, money, anything that gives off an odour they can identify,’ Blake explained.

  ‘But surely after all these years there’d be no trace of a smell.’

  Vickers smiled. ‘Not to us, maybe, but dogs are a lot more sensitive to smell than we are. And this one is quite sure there’s something worth investigating back there, between those trees. We’re just taking it slowly so as not to damage the body. We want to get him out in one piece.’

  ‘How long do you think it will take?’ I asked, but someone in the tent called Vickers and he left without answering me.

  ‘It might be a while,’ Blake said. ‘Are you OK here or do you want to wait up there?’

  He pointed past me to where a big blue tarpaulin was stretched between a few trees, some way up the slope. A couple of people were standing under the makeshift shelter, watching the proceedings, including the dog handler and his liver-and-white spaniel. It looked appealing. Being under the trees should have provided some protection from the rain, but the leaves were overloaded, dumping great gouts of water onto the ground now and then. My anorak was heavy and cold across my shoulders as the rain soaked into it rather than running off. I turned back to Blake.

  ‘I’ll go up there. Let me know if anything happens.’

  ‘You’ll know. There’s always quite a fuss when they find what they’re looking for. But I’ll keep in touch.’

  He headed off to join the group under the white tent and I trudged up the embankment, my feet slipping inside my boots. They were heavy with mud by now and dragged as I walked. Arriving at the blue tarpaulin, I felt self-conscious as the others made room for me. I pushed back my hood and crouched by the spaniel. He was sitting bolt upright, alert to every sound and movement around him, his chocolate-brown eyes alight with interest.

  ‘Is it OK if I stroke him?’ I asked his handler, who assented, and I ran my hand over the dog’s sloping skull, stroking his ears gently. He stuck his nose in the air, enjoying the attention. It was easy to forget the grim job he
did.

  I didn’t look up as a few more people crowded in under the tarpaulin, just moved over a bit, making space. There was some conversation but I wasn’t listening; my mind was down the slope, under the white canvas, and when a voice said, ‘Hello, Sarah,’ I turned without thinking to look up at Danny Keane.

  He was two feet away, no more than that, and I froze where I was crouching, unable to move. His eyes were fixed on me, unblinking, and all I could do was think of the expression that had been on Blake’s face in the car when he’d spoken about him. He’s totally obsessed with you … don’t be fooled, he is dangerous …

  It was a couple of seconds before I realised that Danny was flanked by two policemen, that there were more around us and down the slope within earshot if I screamed, that Danny, for all that I knew of him and all that he had done, was not actually a threat to me at that moment. I stood up, moving slowly, and stepped back a little. His clothes were soaking wet and clung to his body, which was whippet-thin and lean like a long-distance runner’s. His hair was plastered down over his forehead and as I watched he raised both hands to push it back. His wrists, I saw, were joined with handcuffs. He was holding a cigarette, and he dragged on it greedily as he watched me straighten up.

  ‘Are you OK?’

  I stared at him. ‘What did you say?’

  ‘Just – this must be really weird for you.’ He motioned towards the dig. ‘After all this time, to be here, looking for Charlie.’

  ‘Yeah, it’s … strange.’ Not as strange as talking to a man who I knew to be a violent, unprincipled murderer, but strange nonetheless. I was starting to wonder if Danny Keane wasn’t nervous. He passed his tongue over his lips, as if they were dry, and he kept his head turned slightly away from me, looking at me sideways. It was unnerving.