The Sleeping Season

by Kelly Creighton

  I lifted my mobile phone from the patio table. I’d been ignoring it. There were three missed calls from Charlotte when I only wanted to hear from Greg. I wiped the calls from my phone and looked in the window at the TV. I had a habit of keeping it permanently on, with the volume low or off and the subtitles displayed. I’d gotten like that – aware of the silence of my own life; not wanting to disturb the peace.

  Chief Dunne was on the news, talking about River. There he was, collar all straight and correct as he solemnly told reporters there was now a hunt for a missing child. There had been a Child Rescue Alert out since early that afternoon. The forensic teams were concentrating all their efforts on Shaw’s Bridge, combing and sweeping the playground and car park, but the ground was too cold for imprints.

  After I ate, I drove back to the station through Short Strand, stopping at the lights near the yellow painted wall with the word HOPE spelled out in clays dots with faces pinched into them.

  ‘Yeah, hope,’ I muttered.

  At the station I picked up Linskey and we drove on to Witham Street. Outside Zara’s, a blue sign glared from the stone-clad hut of Tamar Street Baptist Mission Hall: Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved. Acts 16:31.

  New faces peered into the back of the car, people who were now part of the party, searching for River on our backseat. We passed a wheelie bin, a stack of red, black and green recycling containers on the road from every door in the street except Zara’s. Some neighbours had dumped the contents of their bins onto the pavement, while others were giving their bins a rattle and a meaningful peak inside.

  By this time Zara’s house was boiling with people, busy with inactivity. Initially she didn’t notice us enter, what with all the commotion. She had changed into a purple mohair cardigan and white leggings, brushed her hair into smooth red curtains. She looked completely different; now she was bright, stylish, spirited.

  ‘He’s not with you then?’ she asked.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘Not just yet. But we have some news. There is something.’

  She didn’t look ecstatic. If it wasn’t River, River in person, then it wasn’t enough.

  ‘There’s Harriet and Diane back,’ said Raymond, tucked into the corner of the room in a twittering huddle of people tied like a knot around him. In stark contrast to Zara, he looked to me like a bit of a layabout – unkempt and unshakeable.

  He was speaking to a lady who stood holding a sandwich platter in front of him while he scoured it thoughtfully. He took a sandwich and smiled at her with the kind of thankful smile you would give a caterer at a party.

  East Belfast has the type of neighbours you would want in a crisis, the type that gravitate towards you and bring egg and onion sandwiches. The room smelled positively sulphuric.

  ‘The neighbours have been brilliant,’ Raymond said, aimed more at Diane.

  ‘It’s great to see you have lots of support,’ Linskey replied.

  The woman with the platter smiled sympathetically, her eyes dipping, her chin becoming lumpy.

  ‘Zara, Raymond, can we speak to you in another room?’ I said.

  ‘Well, yes,’ Zara answered.

  She viewed her mobile phone and then the kitchen where people were smoking, drinking a flood of tea, scoffing yet more sandwiches and buns, turning to look at Linskey and I before going back to their conversations. Unlike Raymond, Zara seemed imposed upon by all the people.

  ‘Upstairs,’ she said. ‘That’s off limits to everyone.’ She walked ahead of us.

  ‘I’ll be up in a minute,’ Raymond said as I looked back for him. He was chewing his crust, caught up in conversation that sounded like it was nothing – certainly not about River. More like avoidance speak. Wake speak.

  Upstairs, a dressing-gown belt was draped over the bannister. Brian Quinn, a member of forensics, was in River’s room. Quinn held an evidence bag with River’s toothbrush inside and another with his hairbrush. He nodded at me and got back to finding DNA samples.

  There was a wooden rocking horse on the landing, the scent of aftershave wafting from the bathroom. Zara went into her room, the walls white enough to nip your eyes, especially since it was after nine and she had turned on the bright ceiling light. She sat on the bed, creasing the taut crisp lines of her white linens. Linskey sat beside her, starch-spined, the end of the bed dinting.

  ‘We’ve found River’s coat,’ I said.

  Zara covered her face with her hands. Aren’t you going to ask where we found it? I felt like asking her. She took a deep breath, then stood to throw the window open, her hand upsetting the venetian blind that had sliced the sky into strips; it tinkled and shook. A lone cacti on the sill shielded itself against the bumps with a terracotta pot.

  ‘I feel a bit sick,’ she said. ‘It’s coming.’

  She balled her fist and covered her mouth again; she breathed in through her nose, out through her mouth. She threw her mobile phone down and jumped up off the bed, leaving her wrinkles in the sheets, and shot along the landing to the bathroom. We could hear her dry wretches.

  ‘Are you okay?’ Linskey called out once Zara had stopped spitting.

  ‘Yes,’ she called back.

  When she returned her eyes were watering, both hands clutching her right side. She sat on the bed again, further back than before, and pulled her legs to her chest. Her expression showed a degree of self-awareness.

  ‘Do you need anything?’ I asked.

  ‘I’m fine,’ she said. She lifted her phone again and looked at a spot on the wall in front of her.

  To the side was a chair with a pile of clean laundry on it. I lifted it carefully onto the bed and sat down.

  ‘The neighbours have been good,’ she said. ‘But it’s weird hearing a local MP saying River’s name. Though he goes by Reede. Anyway, they are talking about our River. That’s the main thing.’

  Zara had not corrected us when we gave out ‘Marsh’ as his surname. A boy lost was a boy lost. Still, we needed to work together. This was important.

  ‘We’ll update the press,’ said Linskey.

  ‘You said that River had his coat, Zara,’ I said, ‘that the night before it had been on the coatrack. But it was found in a park.’

  Zara’s eyes drank me in. She looked hopeful – or was trying to look hopeful.

  ‘A park a good distance from here,’ I added.

  ‘Did you take River there? Maybe he left his coat there yesterday perhaps,’ Linskey said.

  ‘No,’ said Zara. ‘River had his coat when his dad brought him back yesterday at tea time.’

  The landline rumbled. Zara ran downstairs to the hall table and snatched the mouthpiece from the cradle.

  ‘Hello?’ she said, then again, more frantically. ‘Will you speak!’ She hung up. ‘No one there,’ she said, hesitant to re-join us, but she did, carrying the phone with her. Back in her room she set it beside her mobile.

  ‘River’s dad, you were saying …’

  ‘Yes.’ Zara tapped her fingertips to her forehead.

  ‘I’m sorry, I must have misunderstood,’ I said. ‘I thought that Raymond was …’

  ‘No. No.’ Zara shook her head. ‘Raymond’s my partner. Sure I told you that.’

  I felt like saying that just because she had called him her partner didn’t mean the man wasn’t River’s father.

  ‘Would River have gone to the park with his dad?’ Linskey stepped in to ask while I rearranged my thoughts.

  ‘His dad wouldn’t have brought him to a park,’ Zara answered.

  ‘Where did they go?’

  ‘You’d have to ask him that.’

  ‘How do you know they didn’t go to the park?’

  ‘I don’t see the importance of this line of questioning,’ Zara said. She sighed and looked at the phones by her side.

  ‘It’s important,’ I said, ‘because lots of officers are going to start combing the woodlands there in the next while looking for River. But if he was in the park, then they may be wasti
ng— ’

  Finally, Zara interrupted me to ask which park.

  ‘Shaw’s Bridge,’ I said.

  ‘But that’s miles away! He couldn’t walk there,’ Zara stated as she realised the seriousness of this new find.

  ‘Exactly,’ I said. ‘So if he was there and his coat was just left, then we’d be better changing the search area.’

  Zara shuddered. ‘Search area?’ she asked. ‘Like on the news? When you hear that phrase your heart nosedives. The next thing you hear is the word body, isn’t it?’

  She fell against Linskey and started to cry, pressing her face into Linskey’s shoulder.

  Linskey wrapped her arms around her. ‘It’s just procedure, Zara. It’s best to be safe,’ she said.

  I tried to get more out of Zara: could she be certain the coat came back from River’s dad’s house? Who was his dad? What time had he brought River home on Sunday? How long had he had him, and so on. But Zara was inconsolable. She had to go and be sick again, this time sounding more convincing.

  Raymond came up the stairs. He got near the top and stopped, putting his cheek against the mahogany bollard carved into an acorn. He knelt slightly on the top stair, studying the boot tips under his corduroys that were never zipped up.

  ‘Is Zara unwell?’ I asked.

  He was sipping glances of her around the wall as she threw up. He tapped his rounded stomach.

  Linskey slipped into the bathroom. ‘Any chance you’re in the early stages of pregnancy?’ she asked Zara in a gentle voice.

  Zara insisted she wasn’t, then she got up, washed her hands and came back into the bedroom. She glared at Raymond.

  Brian Quinn popped his head around the door to let us know he was getting back to the station. I went out of the room to speak privately to him. He held his kit in one hand.

  ‘I powdered both doors,’ he said, ‘seeing there was no obvious break-in, but they are covered with prints, which could be family. There have been all sorts coming and going.’

  ‘I noticed.’

  ‘What can you do?’ Quinn asked. ‘I’ll see myself out.’

  I glanced into River’s bedroom. His sheets were tangled; there were a few teddy bears and a blue circular plush rug in the centre of everything, parted in the middle like a sea from a fairy tale. There were no books on his bedside table. No lamp. There wasn’t even a lightbulb in the ceiling. A stuffed Thomas the Tank Engine lay on his pillow.

  ‘I want you both to come to the station with us,’ I said to Raymond and Zara.

  ‘Why?’ Zara asked.

  ‘It might be easier to talk there.’

  ‘I don’t want to go anywhere in case River comes back.’

  Linskey explained that someone would come to the house and wait for him.

  ‘It is procedure,’ Raymond said.

  I followed him downstairs while Linskey helped Zara get herself together. People were still there, chatting in low, doughy voices.

  ‘I am going to need the contact details of River’s father,’ I told Raymond in the kitchen.

  He fetched his phone and gave me a mobile number. He told me that River’s father was called Shane Reede, that he had no landline and that he had recently moved into Brandon Terrace.

  ‘Very close to here,’ I said, glancing at Raymond’s mobile screen, picking up certain wounding words in a stream of texts.

  ‘That’s right,’ Raymond said, turning off his phone. He had a stain that looked like gravy down the centre of his pullover. He pushed the platter of sandwiches across the kitchen island to me.

  ‘No thanks,’ I said.

  He took another egg sandwich himself. I got the details of Shane’s car: he drove a black Ford Focus. ‘But he drives all sorts with his job – sometimes a van, sometimes a jeep,’ said Raymond, crumbs falling on his belly. ‘Sorry I can’t be any more help. I’m not a car man. Shane chops and changes vehicles all the time.’

  ‘Do you drive, Raymond?’

  ‘I have a car on the DLA, a Renault Megane, but I don’t drive it. Zara does, as my carer.’

  He went to a cupboard full of bottles and blister packs, and popped two pills into his hand and shook out three or four of something else from a bottle.

  ‘But Zara and you are … together?’

  ‘You tell me what together means and I’ll tell you if that’s what we are.’ Raymond smiled and put the tablets into his mouth. He cupped his hand under a running tap, drank the water and, with a backward flick of his head, swallowed the lot.

  ‘We’re a family. That’s what counts, isn’t it?’

  ‘Do you mind me asking what your disability is?’ I said.

  ‘Meet Peg.’ Raymond knocked his knee.

  ‘And do you mind me asking …?’

  ‘Not at all. I had an infection. There was no accident, no diabetes, no long-term anything. It was over quick. Can’t work now, though.’

  ‘You’ve a lot of tablets.’

  ‘Get me through. A to B.’

  Zara was standing behind Raymond with her bag; behind her the house was emptying out.

  ‘I don’t want people here, milling about when we’re not here to see them. I don’t want people upsetting things any more than they have already,’ she said.

  ‘Good thinking, Zee,’ Raymond said, wiping his mouth on his sleeve.

  *

  Much was made of them getting into the Skoda, a bit of a show in front of the house for the burgeoning crowd. They were going to give details; they were helping the PSNI find young River. There had been the hand-holding with locals and a multitude of kisses on cheeks, pats on the backs, backs of their hands.

  ‘He’s probably out wandering, Zara,’ someone said.

  ‘River’ll turn up the minute he’s hungry,’ said another.

  I suddenly understood Zara’s earlier quip; she must have been sick of hearing those positive remarks. It wasn’t other people’s sons who were missing. The crowd spluttered their reassuring, almost dismissive comments. Zara explained that she was too upset to drive and the detectives were kindly giving them a lift.

  She sat in the backseat, her thumb in her mouth. It was quiet on the way to the station.

  *

  The news is usually dank and damp; rarely does a glimmer of hope come through. But news of River’s disappearance was both, both a nightmare and something that could be rectified, something that might come good. It put that old ‘no news’ axiom to the test.

  River Marsh, the four-year-old from East Belfast is still missing. He was not in his bed this morning.

  The photo beside the story let everyone know who to look out for, what made him different. What also made him different was that he was missing when it was time for other little boys his age to be at home.

  River Marsh. I admit that Linskey and I had scoffed at his name a bit. But we were wrong about it. River Reede wasn’t much better, but now we didn’t scoff at all.

  Belfast, this city that had been destroyed and rebuilt, was shocked by the news; it was a city easily outraged but not easily shocked. This news felt wrong, this headline. It was a front page from another country. There were plenty of men in vans, attempted abductions, kids approached, kids asked to get into stranger’s cars. These things were rife in other places. But in Belfast it was never this – a boy missing and not found within an hour or two, part of a custodial battle perhaps. Kids did not just disappear here.

  River was different all right. That’s what I realised as I watched the Chief’s speech on the telly for the third time. Locals were being urged to check their sheds, garages and – because of River’s history of climbing – their trees. It had been repeated so often it was old news now. People had already done these things, repeatedly. Hope disappeared fast. You could feel it slipping away through the airwaves.

  That night the search team went through the boat house on the upstream side of Shaw’s Bridge and the periphery of the woods. There was talk that the next morning, as soon as it was light again, the search would move int
o the water.

  Chapter 6

  Zara waited for Raymond to be done. Across the room the fingerprint expert, Stuart Thomas, a Welsh man in his late forties with generous eyes and broad shoulders, lined Raymond up in front of the LiveScan machine. He told him to put one hand in, then the other, finger after finger. He watched Raymond as he swayed slightly and put a hand behind him as if, even if Raymond were to fall, he was catchable. I offered Raymond a seat but he refused.

  Zara kept a close watch on the process too. I told her it would help us eliminate people. Anything I did or proposed doing she asked if it was necessary, even down to taking a statement from her. Raymond didn’t question a thing; he cordially obliged when I mentioned the scans. He seemed almost excited to stand in front of the machine.

  ‘We’re all reduced to numbers,’ he said over his shoulder, pressing his index finger against the screen, Stuart holding it in place.

  I stepped forward to watch Raymond – his face, his tongue, how it folded on his lower teeth and protruded out of his mouth giving him the profile of a bullfrog. Really, there was nothing remotely handsome you could find in that face. What in the world had Zara seen in him?

  Chief Dunne walked through the room holding a cup of coffee, doing that thing where he seems like he is not paying attention. But believe me, nothing escapes that man. Simon was sitting at a desk flicking through the pages of a document, his pink skull shining through his hair; beside him Higgins was bent over, one hand on the desk, the other thrumming his pen on a pile of paper, his face up close to the computer monitor. I noted his ‘hat hair’, a little tuft sticking up.

  Dunne stopped to talk quietly to them, standing at such an angle that Zara, Raymond, Stuart and I were just to one side of him. He was in to see what the parents of our young man looked like, no doubt, and get a read on them. It was what he did, not that you’d necessarily notice. Everything about the Chief was alert and not about to switch off anytime soon.

  When Raymond’s scans were done he stepped back and sat down. Then it was Zara’s turn. She forgot about the cluster of keys she had set on her lap and they dropped to the floor as she got up. Raymond stooped to get them, but I got in there first, dropped them into his hand.