Ben (18 page)

I only had coffee in front of me but I couldn’t drink it. I couldn’t even face water. Nothing would stay down. My stomach, like my mind, was in turmoil.

I stared out over the harbour, at the day-trippers hopping between islands and fishing boats returning with their overnight hauls. Even if the police had checked the main port, there were so many other vessels leaving from smaller harbours like this one or inlets all around the island. I watched every boat depart and wondered,
Is Ben on that one?

Eventually, we made our way back to the caravan. On the way we called into the hotel bar opposite. A couple of Mum and Dad’s friends were there. It didn’t take much prompting for them to repeat what they’d already told Dad. He hadn’t been exaggerating. Everyone we met seemed to know the rumours that children were snatched to order. Yes, sometimes it was for organ theft. Other times it was because a couple couldn’t have a child for whatever reason and so bought one from the gypsies. The way I understood it, the kidnappers presented a menu of options and prices. Apparently blond, European-looking boys and girls fetched the premium prices. They could be passed off as American, Australian, Scandinavian, northern European. But not Greek. That in itself told a story.

After the hideous suggestion that children were being taken to have their kidneys removed, the idea of a couple so desperate for a child that they were willing to break the law to get one didn’t seem so terrifying. The purchasers would have to be rich and they’d have to want a child more than anything. When the police finally tracked Ben down, he would at least have been cared for by people rich enough and wilful enough to look after him.

But there was so much about the abduction theory that didn’t stack up. Ben couldn’t have been taken to order because no one knew he was going to be up at the farmhouse that day. Even I didn’t know that was Mum’s plan that morning. What’s more, the farmhouse was in such an out-of-the-way location that nobody could have just been passing. It’s a dead end. If you were cruising around looking for targets, you wouldn’t go up there, not with the beach and the busy back roads elsewhere.

And where did this leave the white car? Was it gypsies in the car? Dad didn’t think so.

‘They’d have a truck, probably a flat-bed with a tarpaulin over the rear.’

‘So where does that leave us?’

‘I don’t know. But, first thing tomorrow, I’m going back to Bafounis.’

The next morning Dad presented the villagers’ consensus about the gypsies. Bafounis and his English-speaking officer listened then, of course, shrugged.

‘It is not gypsies,’ the officer translated Bafounis’s words matter-of-factly. ‘Kos gypsies do not cause trouble.’

According to him, anyone from Kos was incapable of committing a crime. We knew that was the official view from the way the
Swedish rape victim at the station had been treated. If you believed the locals, Kos inhabitants never even got a parking ticket.

Dad wouldn’t let them get away with that as an answer. Too many people were suggesting it as a genuine possibility. They wouldn’t have just made it up to hurt us. Bafounis said that he would speak to the leader of the largest gypsy camp on the island.

‘But it is not them. They steal livestock, maybe, but not babies.’

Looking back, one thing was still clear. The police didn’t have a clue what to do. If Kos had never suffered a single crime then obviously they had no experience of solving one. Certainly not a case of child abduction. Even so, they were still experienced officers. Why didn’t they ask for assistance? The Athens police could have advised. Even the UK police would have sent bodies over if requested. I don’t know if it was Bafounis or his boss Dakouras or someone more senior dragging their heels, but they were wrong. They should have made the call.

Knowing the police were groping in the dark made everyone a potential suspect. I found myself studying every adult with a blond child, thinking,
Is that him? Have you got my Ben?
I lost track of the times I saw a little toddler turn around and felt my heart hit my boots.

It wasn’t just children. I couldn’t see a little white car without my neck spinning like an owl’s. I think we all did it, sitting in the café, watching the traffic like a tennis audience. Left, right, left, right.

We weren’t the only ones chasing shadows. Michaelis had a theory of his own (a theory we did not for one minute believe). He rented some of his land out to a farmer to raise cattle and goats.
After he’d suggested Dad move his caravan to the farmhouse, Michaelis had informed the farmer that he’d have to find somewhere else for his animals. The man hadn’t taken it very well. Maybe he had snatched Ben to get back at who he perceived had stolen his property.

It made as much sense as anything else. But one theory I could not contemplate was that Ben had died on that farmland on 24 July. Sadly, following the release of the ‘Wanted’ poster, that seemed to be the only theory anyone could come up with. Mum’s friend Monika came straight out with it and said Ben must have had an accident at the farmhouse and died up there. Other people were more tactful, but their surmising of the situation was just as offensive.

‘He climbed into the bucket of the digger and fell asleep,’ one so-called friend of Dad’s said. ‘Then Dino started work again without realising.’

‘He slipped and fell under the rubble,’ another pessimist guessed.

For the most part these were people who hadn’t seen the farmhouse and based most their information on the news reports, gossip or the poster itself. I shouldn’t have let them get to me. After all, we’d searched that farmhouse and its grounds day and night. Even so, the following morning at the police station, I planned to ask Bafounis what he thought. I knew I could rely on him not to pull punches. I had also had a proposition from Malcolm Brabant.

In the end we actually saw Bafounis’s boss, Mr Dakouras. At least he spoke English. I asked him outright if he felt, honestly, that Ben had died on that hillside in Iraklis. When he shrugged, I explained that Malcolm had offered, via the BBC, to organise specialist equipment to search the area. This time Dakouras shook his head and tutted.

‘No need, no need,’ he assured me. ‘If the baby is there, the birds will come.’

As macabre as it was to hear, it made sense. That’s how farmers know if one of their livestock dies in the field: the birds begin to circle, like vultures, overhead. They never had. We would have noticed.

Which is why I was surprised one morning when Dad and I called in at the police station for our usual non-update and sensed there was something we weren’t being told. Eventually an officer admitted, rather matter-of-factly, that the army had been to Iraklis and searched the farmhouse site.

‘Why weren’t we told?’ I said. ‘We could have helped.’

A shrug.

‘Well, did you find anything?’ At that moment, I wasn’t confident of being informed even if Ben was found.

‘The army searched every inch. Fire brigade divers even searched the well. No sign of the baby.’

We learnt later that the army involvement had come about after pressure from the British Consulate in Athens. Perhaps they weren’t as unhelpful as they’d seemed on the phone. They certainly hadn’t been too impressed by Dakouras’s theory. Either way, someone should have told us it was going on. Dad put aside his personal investigation for the day and drove straight up there.

The idea of the army scouring the area filled us with hope. We pictured the way the UK police conducted countryside searches, dozens of officers in a line, walking in unison, beating the earth and bramble with sticks, combing every square inch of the target site. We didn’t want Ben to be found there, obviously. A child could not have survived on his own for that long. But the fact they
were applying such resources was a massive confidence boost. Finally, the authorities were acting.

When Dad reached the site, he spoke to the neighbours who’d seen the search and he knew we were back where we’d started.

According to the couple who lived across the lane, there had been army troops at the site. Some, but not a battalion. No more than half a dozen, Dad was told. Worse than the number had been the attitude. Our witnesses said the troops sat in the shade the entire time. Unless Ben had been hiding underneath one of the deckchairs by the farmhouse, those soldiers were not going to find him.

It’s hard to hear information like that and not blame the messenger. Dad was furious. More lies. More laziness. More Greek behaviour.

He forced his way over to the well, down the field from the farmhouse. The amount of prickly bracken meant there was no way Ben, who was timid even about the harsher grass, would have dared wander that way. He certainly could not have scaled the three foot needed to climb over the wall of the well. Later that night Dad returned with Stephen. Stephen was a fully qualified diver. He took one look at the narrowness of the well, pictured himself squeezing down there with his air tanks and diving apparatus, and said, ‘Dad, there’s no way a fire brigade diver has been down there. Anyone who says they have is lying.’

We called the Consulate and also spoke to Dakouras and Bafounis. They all gave the same response. The search had been thorough and conducted to the best possible standards by the highest qualified experts. That told us everything.

In the immediate aftermath of Ben’s disappearance, I was strong for Mum and Dad. They needed me. Then, as Mum recovered
some of her strength, I began to withdraw. By the time the whole town was offering an opinion on my son’s whereabouts I knew I was going mad. Every hour I spent staring into the distance at the caravan or watching the waves at the harbour, I just had the same phrases echoing around in my head: ‘he’s kidnapped’, ‘it’s gypsies’, ‘he’s dead’, ‘sold for organs’ … I couldn’t make them stop.

Mum saw what was happening to me and tried to fix it. Ben had been missing for almost three weeks, Derek and Nancy had left and Dad was scouring another part of the island. It was down to us to help each other once again. She said to me one morning, ‘You’re not going to Kos Town, we’re going out.’

I didn’t fight her. I didn’t have the energy. I barely had the strength to get into the Land Rover. We drove about eight miles outside Kos Town, then Mum parked and led me down a pretty steep walkway to a rocky beach. I could see the steam coming off the water pools even before I reached the bottom. We were at the island’s famous Thermal Beach, where the water is heated by volcanic action deep below.

‘Just for today,’ Mum said, ‘you are going to let your hair down. You’re not helping Ben by getting ill.’

I know I had an amazing day because Mum took pictures and tells me I dived into the hot spa pool then the cold sea, then back into the steamy pool. The problem is I don’t remember a minute of it. The second we returned to the caravan I think I must have switched back onto autopilot. I love Mum for trying to help but it was going to take more than a paddle and a splash to stop my descent into inertia.

We were all suffering, and not just mentally. Ben had been missing for almost a month and money was running out. We weren’t
eating, although Mum was still making small meals, and we tried to force ourselves to have lunch somewhere so that cost a bit. Then there was caravan rent and petrol for our daily ping-ponging journeys to Kos Town. Without money, we faced the very real possibility of having to leave Kos – there was no social security safety net like we’d get in Britain. No money, no home, no food. It was as simple as that.

Dad saw a way to kill two birds with one stone. He decided to go back to work.

‘We need an income.’

He was worried we would judge him. Nothing could have been further from our minds. In fact, the following day I ended up back in my old job as well.

I hadn’t made a conscious decision to return. I’d gone to use the phone at Palm Beach to update my grandma; if I could face it, I would call Simon as well. He’d been back home more than a week. As soon as I stepped inside reception, Manos took one look at what I’d become and said, ‘Why don’t you come back to work? Take your mind off things? You’re around friends. It might just make it a little bit easier for you.’

‘I can’t. I need to be contactable in case there’s news.’

‘Here you have the telephone,’ Manos said. ‘The police can reach you in seconds.’

He had a point. What was I achieving rotting away outside a café or the caravan all day, every day? So I said yes. Manos couldn’t have been nicer. I got a choice of shifts and I think he even told Jorgas not to give me any grief during dinner service. Everything was set up for me.

And I still hated it.

It started okay. Knowing that tourists don’t want to be served by a physical wreck gave me a reason to get washed, change my clothes and put make-up on. Even my hair, which hadn’t seen a brush in a month, soon looked the part. As soon as I set off on the walk to work, however, no amount of personal grooming could stop the pain rushing back, at least for those fifteen minutes I was on my own. I didn’t have to worry about keeping my feelings in check in case I upset Mum or Danny. It was a time of contemplation, an opportunity for my own thoughts to come to the fore.

I’m not religious, but on my first day I looked at the beautiful blue sky and heard myself say, ‘If there is a someone up there, why are You doing this to me?’ I couldn’t understand what I was doing and I couldn’t stop either. It sounds stupid now. I was trying to reason with fresh air, begging for help from an entity I didn’t believe in.

‘Please, God, please, stop this pain. By the time I’ve finished this shift, please let him be back at the caravan. Please let Ben come back.’

It was the same story on the way home. Luckily, I straightened myself out and wiped away the tears before I reached the caravan. Then, the next morning, I looked back at the sky again and said, ‘Okay, today then. Make it today. Please let somebody come to the hotel today to say they’ve found him.’

In between my rants at the Almighty I somehow managed to fry a few chips, serve burgers and pizzas and I even made an effort to engage with the customers. But it was all an act, a front, a smokescreen. The guilt came after every shift. What right did I have to distract myself from thinking about my missing son? What did that say about me as a mother if I wanted to forget what had happened, even if only for a few hours?