The Sleeping Season

by Kelly Creighton

  In the kitchen, dinner dishes from the night before were jammed in the sink and there was a strong scent of sesame oil, soy sauce and stale beer. Linskey was asking the same questions of Raymond we’d already put to Zara. He wasn’t answering but using all his concentration to lower himself onto the sofa with the rigidity of a person who had just undergone an operation. Eventually he sat, his left leg out straight. He took a deep breath from down in his belly.

  ‘Mr Marsh, would you say that River is wearing his pyjamas?’ Linskey tried the question again.

  Raymond straightened himself up, then slouched backwards, his fleshy hand still pressing the rag on the arm of the chair.

  ‘Pyjamas,’ he finally said. ‘Yes, stripy pyjamas. Blue and green.’

  The far end of the kitchen dissolved into something of a dining area containing all the paraphernalia typical of a couple for whom this home was not their first. The rooms were small but cushy, and the house seemed to fold in at the corners to better support all the furniture inside. A square table was pushed flush to the wall and there was an imposing book case shored up against the opposite side. In it was an array of cookbooks with names such as Healthy Eating for Children, and Eat Yourself Happy, Eat Yourself Smart – for Children, umpteen books about Omega oils, and organic, sugar-free, gluten-free and GM-free eating, and parenting self-helpers – Raising Boys, Breastfeeding Now and In the Future, The Good Mother’s Handbook and How to be a Good Mum.

  Another thing I noticed about the house was a distinct lack of toys: not one truck or dinosaur, no puzzle pieces anywhere among the rubble of Raymond and Zara’s lives. I asked if there was a sibling we could speak to; I’d noticed that on the cream leather sofa was a cross-stitched cushion bearing the legend, Excuse the mess, my children are making happy memories. Children. Yet the house wasn’t messy, not with child-mess anyway.

  ‘No, no other children,’ said Zara. ‘Just Riv.’

  She looked affronted and I found myself apologising for what, I wasn’t quite sure.

  There were some things, however: a packet of extra-large nappies on the counter, and on the side of the bookcase, three charts pasted onto primary-coloured sheets of paper. The soothing cornflower blue chart was for sleep; the traffic-light red one was labelled ‘good/bad boy’, and a suitably urinal yellow chart was apparently for the potty. Each sheet was ruled out into lines, with red crayon Xs and little sticky gold stars summing up the success/fail rating of each day.

  Zara’s pacing grew impatient in the living room. She asked Linskey when we would be going, and when we would be coming back, and when she should expect to hear from us again. Raymond told her these things take time.

  ‘Yes,’ Linskey murmured. ‘The moment we have any information.’

  In the sink, among the plates and glasses, were numerous plastic spoons. Little Calpol measures. And on the mini island, its body constructed from wooden pallets, a steel toolbox was opened out, a hammer lying beside it, nose angled against the cold Formica surface. Zara came in, crouched to the bottom shelf of the bookcase, pulled out a huge hardback catalogue, eased it open with both hands onto the island: Next Catalogue, Autumn/Winter 2015 – last year’s.

  ‘I’ve no photo,’ she told me, ‘but what I noticed …’

  She paused, flicked through silky photographs of pleasant-looking children posing in starchy school uniforms.

  ‘His coat.’

  She pressed her fingernail into a photo of a blond boy with a broad white smile, then tore the photo from the catalogue and handed it to me.

  ‘River has taken his coat?’ I asked, somewhat surprised.

  Zara nodded. Her shoulders shuddered, then shrugged. ‘It wasn’t on his hook in the hall,’ she said.

  ‘So, you think …’

  ‘Yes, he must have. I can’t find it anywhere.’

  ‘We’ll ask all the neighbours to look for River too,’ I told her.

  ‘Raymond did that already … I’ve stayed here, in case.’

  ‘Children usually come back pretty quickly.’

  ‘When they get hungry?’

  ‘Zara,’ I said gently, ‘do you have any enemies?’

  ‘Do you?’ she replied.

  When the floorboards chirred above us her eyes darted to the ceiling. She frowned, dashed into the living room, calling Raymond. He sat in stillness. Linskey, however, was gone. Zara strode to the hall, bare feet slapping the tiled floor.

  ‘Hello? Detective?’ she called. ‘Can I help you?’

  ‘She’s just checking the lad’s bedroom,’ Raymond told her, his hand reaching out for the TV remote control.

  Zara’s feet banged their way up the stairs.

  ‘Doing some work?’ I asked Raymond. He gave me a distrustful look. ‘The toolbox …’ I added with a smile.

  ‘Yeah.’ He set the remote control down and levered himself up. ‘Come here till I show you, Harriet.’

  He walked to the back door; bin lorries beeped in the distance. He pointed. ‘See the fence?’

  My eyes landed on the house behind, hidden behind the fence he was talking about. The slats of the fence were diagonal, all butted together, but there was a patch where a mismatching piece of darker wood overlapped.

  ‘The builders never gave us a fence,’ Raymond said. ‘That belongs to the woman out the back. It’s rightly rotted through. That’ll have to do until we get the money to put up our own. She has these dogs, you see. And there was this gap … River can get through. Has no fear, like.’ He blew out, his tumbling fringe breezing about his eyes.

  He had bad skin, his nose misshapen by crystallised acne. I held the photo of River and the picture of the coat he may have had on when he left. I tried to envisage the boy at the fence. Willed him to appear over it.

  ‘He’s not over there, if that’s what you’re thinking,’ Raymond said. ‘First place I looked. Anyway, River left through the front door.’

  ‘Any signs of forced entry?’

  ‘None.’

  In the hall was a photo of Zara and River on the wall, and the coatrack, just like Zara said there was. I was aware I was being watched from the landing as I looked at Zara’s and Raymond’s winter coats, and the hook that held a little navy-blue gym bag that said strandtown preschool on it in white lettering.

  ‘Just his little gym gutties in there,’ Zara shouted, helium-lunged, pre-empting my question.

  ‘So, River would’ve come down here?’ Linskey asked, walking down the stairs marginally in front of Zara who no longer had her throw; it swathed the bannister instead. A pair of baggy grey pyjama bottoms were wearing her.

  ‘River would’ve taken his coat from this rack,’ Linskey went on. ‘And … where would he have gotten the door key from, Mr Marsh?’

  ‘The keys are in here, Diane,’ Raymond answered. He stooped to open the drawer in a pine telephone table.

  Zara pursed her lips, but Linskey couldn’t see it.

  ‘There’s a little canvas pouch,’ Zara announced. She edged past Linskey and lifted it into her palm – tilted it so we could see into it, as if she was offering us a boiled sweet each from a bag. Only, nothing.

  She tossed the weightless pouch in her hand. ‘The key’s in the door,’ she said, ‘but it’s usually kept in here.’

  Raymond gestured at the top of the door. ‘Got a bolt put up there too,’ he explained.

  ‘And did either of you put the latch on last night?’ Linskey asked.

  Raymond’s jaw hung open slightly, his eyes flickering softly to the side giving the impression he was trying to remember. He leaned against the door jamb in the axis of the hall and the living room, his face grey apart from the white spikes of October morning light that flickered over him through the trees out front, like he was being seen through fluttering eyelashes. He scratched his head.

  ‘I can’t be certain,’ Zara interjected. ‘Maybe … But was it last night that I double-locked? Frig it, the days are rolling into one!’

  ‘River would’ve let himself out easy
enough anyway, Zee,’ said Raymond. ‘He was a wee climber, sure.’

  Was? My interest piqued at his use of the past tense.

  Zara explained. ‘River used to climb something dreadful, especially when he was two and three. Desperate for it!’ She looked out their front door at the woman standing at the end of the gate that twinned theirs. ‘Raymond, she’s still out there,’ she said. ‘Flip sake, get a life, love!’

  ‘Who is that woman?’ I asked.

  ‘Ness.’ Raymond smiled. ‘She’s a neighbour. Ness’d be able to tell you about River’s climbing. He climbed into her tree before – remember, Zee? Couldn’t get him down, wee monkey man.’

  Linskey told them that boys were more likely to hide outside while girls were more likely to stay indoors. Zara ran her hands through her hair; she reached for her throw and slung it over her shoulders.

  ‘I don’t need to hear about what girls do,’ she snapped. ‘It’s not a girl I have.’

  *

  The neighbour backed off as Diane and I proceeded down the short path. Vanessa ‘Ness’ Bermingham, a woman in her sixties, petite with a titanium globe of hair like she was growing out a shorter style, went into her house, easing the front door of her end terrace shut.

  ‘Well done, Harry,’ said Linskey, ‘you didn’t yawn once.’

  I started up the Skoda and looked side-on at the house. Through the window I could make out Raymond who had nestled himself back into the sofa, finally able to turn on the TV to wash away the awful silence. And there were two women, Zara and Ness, who stood looking out of their own living room windows, neither of them pulling away.

  Chapter 2

  When Chief Superintendent Dunne entered the room, I celebrated his presence by getting out of my seat. He perched on the table just to the side of my desk, so I sat down again. Linskey was at the table behind. The Chief took his tie from his suit pocket, lifted the collar of his shirt and snaked the strip of black material around it.

  ‘I’ve sent Simon and Higgins to the Marshes’ street,’ he said, teasing a knot and straightening it.

  ‘Yes, Chief,’ I said. ‘That was the mother on the phone.’

  Zara had phoned the station to let us know that the coat had a hood, in case it hadn’t been obvious from the photo. She’d thought about it and panicked, got on her laptop and checked the website. She thought the photo didn’t look as though there was a hood. She asked if it was too late for me to tell everyone that the coat – already shown on both the BBC and UTV news bulletins – did indeed have a hood. Her voice crept small and meek down the telephone line.

  I tried to reassure her that we would keep updating their information bit by bit, but only until River was found. I had to stay positive that a fruitful find would be the only outcome. I added that we would be back soon to the street he had gone missing from, that officers would work their way along more houses, quiz more people on the street and in local shops. That we’d do everything in our power.

  It was then Zara reported back to me that there was a police car pulling up outside, sounding calmer for seeing it, and she ended the call.

  Chief Dunne recreased his collar. ‘Okay, Sloane,’ he said, ‘you’ll have to update the press office about the hood. But tell them they forgot to mention it. Don’t admit that you forgot to mention it. Doesn’t bode well.’

  I said nothing, wanting to add that I hadn’t forgotten a thing. Zara had forgotten.

  ‘I’m about to do it now, Chief,’ said Linskey. She lifted the phone handset from its cradle.

  The Chief pressed his earpiece tight against his ear and stared through me as he listened. I looked back over my notes.

  ‘You need to go to Shaw’s Bridge right away,’ he said. ‘To the playground. A child’s green coat has been found.’

  ‘Chief?’ I said.

  He turned toward me. ‘Yes, Sloane?’

  One point of his collar was tucked underneath his tie. I tapped my collarbone with my pen but he didn’t take the hint. Instead, I proceeded to tell him what Raymond had said about the fence.

  ‘If River could get through the fence, I think we need to check the house behind theirs, Chief.’

  He frowned deeply. ‘You insisted that our young man left through the front, Sloane.’

  ‘I did. That’s right. Still, I think we need to check it out.’

  ‘You need to get to Shaw’s Bridge is what you need to do, Sloane. And Linskey, with this new information I suggest you hold off contacting the press office just now.’ The Chief did not look at Linskey as he spoke to her; he peered past, out of the window at the brick wall.

  ‘Constable Higgins and Sergeant Simon are the first attending officers. They’re there already. They’re talking to a man walking his dog near the park. It’s a lead. Go with it.’

  He walked away.

  Linskey set the phone down. ‘Let’s get going then, Sloane,’ she said.

  ‘How Jocelyn sticks him is beyond me,’ I said once we were outside.

  Jocelyn Dunne was the Chief’s wife. She and Diane had been friends for years; since school, even. They’d even been on double-familied holidays to the Dunnes’ villa in the Algarve back when Linskey was part of a couple and did that kind of thing.

  ‘You’d know,’ Linskey said, ‘with your dad. They have to be a certain way. We all do, but more so for them. More so for your dad. I’m sure people used to ask how your poor mother stuck Charles. It’s intense at times.’

  Poor Mother indeed. ‘You don’t need to tell me!’ I said.

  Linskey had been RUC for a time. Father was only ever RUC; he’d retired when the constabulary became the PSNI (or when he was sacrificed for the PSNI, as he put it). Linskey knew him as her ex-Chief Constable; she also remembered my mother when she fully functioning: the renowned judge, Adelinde Brooks, Justice of the Peace, then Judge Sloane, serene and strong. But I could barely recall Mother before she became a vegetable.

  ‘What was he like – Dunne – when you were in Portugal?’ I asked Linskey. ‘Go on, spill!’

  She looked at me over the roof of the car. ‘Well, he’s kept himself in shape,’ she said. ‘I like a good pair of legs on a man. My dad ran too. The smell of sweat always gets me going.’

  ‘You’re gross,’ I said. ‘So that’s why Jocelyn puts up, you reckon? The calves?’

  ‘You’d need to ask her. I’ve given up trying to work out relationships.’

  ‘You and me both,’ I said, starting the engine.

  The car heater came on, blowing out what smelled like Irish Cream on a drunk’s breath. While Linskey contacted Simon and Higgins, my thoughts turned again to young River.

  ‘Are you still with your fella?’ Linskey asked them.

  Chapter 3

  The coat was the thing that struck a chord: River’s little green puffa jacket. It was padded, snug for the October weather. It gave the appearance that the boy model was much larger than he could possibly have been; it gave him a bulky outline, plump with muscles. River, by Zara’s account, was slight, like her. Light brown hair, like neither her nor Raymond.

  I turned the car into the car park at Shaw’s Bridge and came back on myself where I could already see the coat. A man was there with his dog, a mink-coloured Weimaraner, beautiful and aloof. They were standing before the short black iron gate. A marked Mitsubishi Shogun was beside the hedge; Higgins and Simon were nodding as the man spoke. When we reached them on foot, Linskey greeted the dog with a stroke.

  ‘It was me that phoned into the station,’ the man said. He was in his late fifties, owner of an aquiline nose and bright auburn hair pulled low in a ponytail at the nape of his neck.

  ‘It does look like the photo,’ Simon told me in an aside.

  The man said, ‘Couldn’t believe it … well, I walk her away from home when she’s in season. And I’d just heard on the car radio about the missing boy, about this green coat they’re looking for … I mean, you’re looking for. Then look …’ He marched over to the entrance of the playgro
und, the dog trotting alongside.

  ‘Please, sir, we need you to stay out here so there’s no contamination of evidence,’ said Linskey.

  ‘Oh, I haven’t touched the coat at all. I’ve learnt not to disrupt evidence, you know, from watching a glut of crime movies.’

  ‘Of course,’ I said. ‘You did the right thing, sir.’

  The coat hugged the top floor of a climbing frame with yellow and green plastic compartments between the rope ladder and the slide. Its arms were tied around the bars, hood upright. If glanced at from a distance, it looked like a child playing hide and seek, huddled in against the frame as though counting, anticipating turning around and giving chase. I took the photocopy from my pocket. The levitating coat certainly looked a lot like it.

  I crossed the playground, the surface giving under my boots. Under the dripping trees, roots knitted out of the ground. Dry leaves were lifting and falling onto beds of rotted ones. Some had crumbled like stale bread; like old bone. But the coat itself had the look of being carefully positioned by an adult, considerate of the child without it.

  River might have been there – at Shaw’s Bridge, in the park – and left it. Alternatively, it might have been taken from a bench or from the woods and set in the playground by someone thinking the child was more likely to go there next, rather than return to the place where he or she had lost their coat.

  Traffic made its deafening lap of the road; birds glugged in the trees. I couldn’t hear what the man was telling Linskey; Linskey took her pad from her inside jacket pocket and made some notes. They remained at the gate.

  The swings swung, though they were empty, their chains soundless, without the screech I remembered them giving under me. It had been years since I had been there.

  I was about to glove up, mask up, when a gust of wind lifted the coat’s hem away from the frame, giving me a peek of the personalised, iron-on nametag. ‘River’, it read, tailed by an inky frogspawn of a football. I used my personal radio to contact the station to let them know we needed forensics on the scene right away. Simon and Higgins stayed where they were so as not to leave their footwear impressions.