by Martyn Ford
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
Text copyright © 2020 by Martyn Ford
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.
Published by Thomas & Mercer, Seattle
www.apub.com
Amazon, the Amazon logo, and Thomas & Mercer are trademarks of Amazon.com, Inc., or its affiliates.
ISBN-13: 9781542023788
ISBN-10: 1542023785
Cover design by Ghost Design
CONTENTS
PART ONE ROBIN CLARKE
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
PART TWO FRANCIS CLARKE
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
PART THREE ANNA CLARKE
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
PART ONE
ROBIN CLARKE
Chapter 1
She woke to the sound of crickets and movement in the trees. Something snapped out there, made her flinch. A twig, some leaves. Stepping out of her bedroom, she pulled her dressing gown on and went downstairs. Cool tiles on the kitchen floor, the faint white oven timer, flashing slowly on, then off, on, then off – a power cut, all clocks set to midnight zero. Nothing ticks in this house.
Anna Clarke began her ridiculous late-night rituals. These compulsive things that simply had to be done. She made sure the back door was closed, locked, double locked. Made sure Button had enough water – he’s getting old and sometimes spills it. Made sure the TV was off, not hissing on standby. She checked these things three times and, when stressed, three times more – just in case.
Finally, she went to check on Robin, sleeping upstairs in the orange glow of her night light. Anna arrived back on the second floor, stepped across the thick new carpet, along the staircase railing and towards the dim warmth from her daughter’s bedroom. The door was ajar, as it always is, and she pressed it open with a finger, as she always did. Silent, expensive hinges – wood brushing wool. The art box. The closed curtains. The row of stuffed toys on the shelf – all their eyes glistening.
And an empty bed.
Calm and nodding to herself, Anna stood in silence. There was no cause for panic, no sense in searching the house and calling the police. No reason to run into the garden, desperately screaming her daughter’s name, and fall to her knees in the grass and ask an empty sky why, why, why. There was no need for any of that drama. After all, she’d had this nightmare before.
Chapter 2
We see a man walking along the pavement, holding a mobile to his ear. At his side seagulls hop along taut ropes, frayed at the knots, dripping and furred with ocean moss. Boats bob in the dark water, bumping hulls and moving as far as they can from the harbour wall. Men haul crates of fish as they laugh and smoke rolled cigarettes that stay between their lips until they’re finished, only to be flicked into the sea for keen-eyed birds to swoop on, inspect and disregard. They squawk. Zooming out, a cafe’s window and awning comes into view.
The man is a mosaic of shifting squares – tiny pixels making fractured pictures. Even in this digital form, it’s obvious he’s slowing down.
This camera, mounted on the corner, pans over the entire scene, zooms in on faces and scans delivery vans coming and going from the old port. It films the gulls, the fishermen, the wet harbour wall. A cyclist bouncing over cobblestones.
And there, the man stops. He’s standing still in the middle of the pavement, fellow pedestrians weaving paths around him like water around a rock. With a slow breath, he lowers the phone and looks down into the screen. For almost a minute he holds this exact pose. It’s as though he’s a statue – a bronze tribute to someone who, years ago, might have been important.
There were no cameras in the bathroom where Sam Maguire, unseen and alone, splashed his face and stared at himself in the mirror. He rubbed his eyes and checked his watch – 2.30 p.m. It was strange being back here. Not because of all the changes, but the precision of his memories. Almost photographic. The little details – the chip on the corner of the sink, coarse and dirty now, the bent lock on the cubicle door, the shined tiles at his feet, the moving water in the walls, clunking old pipes to fill a cistern or squirt down the face of the steel urinal. These noises, these smells, these familiar things.
He stepped back out into the main office and towards the interview rooms. Number three was occupied. Inside, Francis Clarke sat at the table with his mouth pressed into his palm, his elbow supporting the weight of his heavy head. It seemed insufficient a word, but Sam, watching him through the glass, would have said he looked unhappy.
‘What do you think?’ Sam said.
‘I think blood on the passenger seat.’ Phil passed over a piece of paper. Sam didn’t even glance at it.
‘Robin’s blood?’
Phil Webber – Sam’s replacement – was nodding with tired eyes and a mind made up. Behind him the office was busy, phones and printers and warm lamps on every active desk. The overcast sky outside just wasn’t cutting it. Felt like night.
‘Possibly. Freshly wiped. Right there on the front seat of his shiny new Volvo.’
‘Anywhere else?’
‘Maybe, they’re still swabbing.’
‘So why am I here?’ Sam asked.
‘Are we keeping you from something? Retirement’s meant to be relaxing.’
‘I was looking at a boat.’
‘Really?’ Phil frowned. ‘I’d have you down as more of a midlife-crisis biker.’
‘Oh, I doubt this is the middle of my life.’
‘Is that optimism?’
‘No.’
‘You and Francis . . . you . . . He asked for you.’
‘What were his exact words?’
‘He said, “I want to talk to Sam.”’
‘And you said yes? Why?’
‘We’re bordering on a charge and he’s saying nothing to us. What’s the harm in giving him what he wants?’
Sam sighed. ‘You’re bordering on what?’
There was a pause.
‘I’m glad you’re here.’ Phil turned, took a step backwards. ‘Do you think I look fat?’
Sam had already noticed, so didn’t make a show of inspecting him. ‘You appear to have gained some weight, yes,’ he said. ‘It’d benefit your health if you lost a few pounds.’
Laughing, Phil clapped once. ‘Oh,
Sam, I’ve missed you so much . . . and in there? Tempting, isn’t it? Just a quick one. A white lie. Hell of a lever.’
Sam nodded. ‘Does he know you’ve found blood?’
‘No.’
‘Can he know?’
‘Sure, why not. Tried everything else. He’s glued to his story – he wakes up, Robin’s gone, that’s all he knows.’
‘How old is she now?’
‘Eight.’
‘So, you’re thinking what? He’ll confess to me?’
Leaning close, Phil whispered, ‘What if she’s still alive? Shit. What if we find Ethan too?’
Sam felt a surge of something else familiar – anxiety, excitement: pure cortisol, which needed some meaning. Ethan. He found plenty for that name – more than most.
‘Look, do your best,’ Phil said. ‘If nothing else, you’ve always had a keen eye for a lie.’
Then, with a breath, Sam approached the interview room and opened the door.
The film starts with a blank screen – a choir humming in the background. Words fade in over the black. A name. Ethan Clarke. No further prompts are needed – we know Ethan Clarke. We can already see these pictures, hear these words. The documentary could end right here, just three seconds in. Ten-year-old Ethan Clarke, a name synonymous with whatever happened to him. Just as dates soon inhabit their most noted tragedies. Things we see again, on screens, on calendars, real and imagined.
Cut to a TV studio – the voices continue haunting the footage, though their tune is buried now by the thump, thump, thump of the ten o’clock news.
‘Police are tonight appealing for information following the disappearance of ten-year-old Ethan Clarke, who hasn’t been seen—’
The image jumps and flashes to another newsreader.
‘. . . in an emotional press conference earlier today, the parents of Ethan Clarke—’
Another – the picture fragments to double vision, jarring colours and fast zooms. The drums continue.
‘. . . acres of woodland in the search for any evidence that might—’
More.
‘Assisting officers in their search for Ethan Clarke—’
‘—a community effort—’
‘Ten-year-old Ethan Clarke—’
A fast, flickering montage – the name drummed out with beats, on the right side of cheap, but only just. News, papers, hashtags snowing down the screen. The name read in different accents, in different places, at different times. It’s all here now, edited and crafted and streamlined in the name of entertainment.
‘A week on, and a reward for information on the whereabouts of—’
‘Ethan Clarke—’
‘The disappearance of Ethan Clarke—’
‘. . . a photo of Ethan Clarke—’
‘. . . six months down the line, but family and friends remain—’
‘—hopeful that Ethan Clarke—’
‘—could still be found alive, despite vanishing a year ago today—’
‘Asking again, have you seen—’
‘—Ethan Clarke – a renewed appeal on the five-year anniversary—’
‘—in a now dwindling search for Ethan Clarke—’
‘Ethan Clarke—’
‘Ethan Clarke—’
The montage moves now to a quiet street at night – the background pulse of the news jingle falls as the choir comes into shot. Hundreds of people, holding candles at their chests, swaying and singing hymns over a glowing shrine of framed photographs and flowers. Fading transitions. Tears. Strangers cry in firelight for a child they’ve never met. Now about three minutes of previews – snippets of talking heads, detectives, members of the public, the Clarkes on a stage, speaking to the camera, speaking to us – and then a final, single beat thuds, echoing through a long silence as the screen turns black again.
The voiceover is stern. Direct. Serious.
‘On August the twelfth, two thousand and ten, a ten-year-old boy disappeared from his family home. To this day, his whereabouts remain a mystery. In this film, I will explore how the investigation unfolded, showing unseen footage and shedding light on the question we’ve spent almost a decade asking: whatever happened to Ethan Clarke?’
Renowned journalist and filmmaker Daniel Aiden is of Welsh descent, but speaks the Queen’s English – his amiable voice carries authority, conviction. He stands in front of a house on a quiet street with nothing but leaves and parked cars for company. This award-winning, feature-length documentary leaps through time, it drifts forwards and backwards to show us everything we’ve seen before. Everything we already know.
But Sam tried to put the sensationalism out of his mind. The urge to blame Francis Clarke had been difficult for the world’s media to resist. Tomorrow, when they hear it’s happened again – when they know the Clarkes have been struck by familiar tragedy once more, what sort of conclusions will the papers splash? The past eight years had seen accusations of culpability swatted with swift, expensive legal action and the voice of reason. What would that voice say now? He was not looking forward to the coverage.
As he stepped inside the interview room and made eye contact with Francis, Sam hid his adrenaline behind calm movement – beneath the steady weight and heavy gait of feigned routine. Was he about to learn the truth? Was this the day he’d been imagining?
‘Sam.’ Francis, half standing, returned to his seat when shown a hand and a nod.
‘It’s been a while,’ Sam said, sitting opposite.
The room had a substantial recording device on the table against the wall, and a CCTV camera in the top-right corner at the back. It smelled like stationery, school-desk wood, dust. Years ago, when this was Sam’s place of work, he would have had a pen, a notepad, a sense of duty anchored to the law – instead of the quiet mania that drove him here today.
‘They told me you’d retired,’ Francis said. ‘I just . . . the other detective. He’s speaking as though . . . as though I’ve done something.’ There was fear in his eyes. It was real.
‘Have you?’ Sam asked.
Leaning forwards in his chair, Francis whispered, ‘Look at me, look.’ He turned his hands, showed his palms. His slight Canadian accent had survived – certain words lured it out.
Sam stayed silent.
‘What exactly are you asking here?’
Still, Sam just blinked.
‘No,’ Francis said, his voice teetering on a precipice, tears there, waiting below. ‘I haven’t done anything. I haven’t hurt Robin. I have no idea where she is . . .’
‘You know what they’re going to say,’ Sam said. ‘You know what this looks like.’
‘I do, yes.’
‘You and Anna, you are now the common denominator.’
‘But I haven’t . . . I promise you . . . I swear . . .’
Wincing, Francis touched his cheek with shaking fingers. He seemed older than he was – grey hairs above his ears, crow’s feet and a broader face than Sam remembered. Age had filled him out, tanned his skin like leather. But those pale canine eyes, that husky-blue stare – it hadn’t changed at all.
‘They found blood,’ Sam said.
‘What?’
‘In the boot of your car.’ He watched him closely.
Pupils darted, searching the room for an explanation – for an answer, a word, a sound, anything. ‘I . . . please. Just, for a moment, think what this is like for me. Can you imagine the pain we’re going through? Can you imagine what it feels like to lose Robin as well? For this to happen to us again? Just . . . please . . . even if you don’t believe me, please just imagine the horror if I am telling the truth.’
Sam stared at him for a long, long time. In any other scenario, such sustained eye contact could only end in conflict or love. And then he sighed. ‘That was a lie,’ Sam added. ‘I said they’d found blood in the boot of your car, but it was on the passenger seat. You know how I feel about lying. I am sorry.’
Rolling his head back, Francis let out a single, desperate whimper. ‘Y
ou’re testing me, fine. Good. Did I pass?’
‘Let’s move to the other option. Whoever took Ethan has come back for Robin. And they want it to look like you’re to blame.’
‘Well . . .’ Francis shrugged – hopeless jitters. ‘Yeah, I mean . . . I guess?’
‘Listen to me, I think they want to charge you with murder.’
Francis covered his mouth and tears finally trickled down his cheeks, as though he’d been holding them back for the sharpest cut. ‘Does that mean they’re going to stop looking for her?’
‘No, of course not. But they will push you for a confession. They will try and make the Ethan case fit too. Plenty who want that to be true.’
‘You know I didn’t kill Ethan.’
Nodding, Sam echoed those words. ‘I know.’
There was no one on earth who knew more about the disappearance of Ethan Clarke than Sam Maguire. The tabloids, the comment sections, the supermarket queues – they all had their theories, ranging from plausible to downright supernatural. But they were all wrong. Sam didn’t know what had happened to Ethan Clarke, but he had a long list of things that didn’t happen to him. Murdered by his parents was one of them.
But the list for Robin was short – options constrained by physics and little else.
‘Tell me everything you can remember about the last week,’ he said. ‘Every interaction with her. Tell me where she has been, what she has done, every single banal question she has asked you.’
This account took another thirty minutes or so – he did his best to furnish Sam with an enormous amount of information. When it was over, Francis gestured around the interview room and said, ‘And now I’m childless, and I’m here.’
‘I’d advise you not to watch the news or read any papers,’ Sam said. ‘They won’t be kind.’
For a while, Francis couldn’t do anything but look at the floor. He held his fist to his lips – maybe vomit was the next port of call for his body. It was, after all, dealing with a calibre of psychological trauma you only find in textbooks, in test cases you’d scarcely believe.
Then he glanced back up. ‘Please,’ he whispered. ‘Please help me. Please find Robin.’
Outside in the corridor, Sam filled a plastic cup with chilled water, which bubbled and glugged out of the cooler. He went to Phil’s office.
