Ben (32 page)

It would have been more cut-and-dry to compare the boy’s DNA against Ben’s, but in the absence of that, police scientists said they could make do with mine and Simon’s. I had no idea how long it took to test such things but the wait was agony.

Some people didn’t bother waiting. Our friend from the
Sun
, Martyn Sharpe, immediately flew out to Haraki and tracked the Blond One down to his family’s taverna. With the prospect of identification via DNA, I was glad not to have to be there this time. I couldn’t help remembering all the innocent people whose lives we’d turned upside down over the years in our hunt: the mothers and fathers convinced we’d come to take their child.

But Martyn had a job to do and, fuelled by his desire to get us the truth, he confronted the boy’s parents, Nico and Panagiota Skyllarakis. While they couldn’t show Martyn a birth certificate for the boy, they did produce a passport in the name of Savvas Skyllarakis, a medical history and dozens of photographs. They also quickly found several neighbours and friends to back up the fact that Savvas was their natural-born son. Several people remembered Panagiota giving birth, and many more recalled the day Savvas came home from hospital.

It looked like another dead end; a few days later, the DNA results confirmed it. Once again I’d allowed my hopes to be raised, and hurt another family in the process. But as the tears streamed down my face I knew, if I was honest, I would happily do it all over again.

Whatever it takes …

In 1999, our lives got that little bit worse with the news that Gordon Bernard was leaving his post as British consul in Greece, after his statutory four years. I was very sad to receive his hand-written letter. So many times he and his wife, Tina, had housed me or my family while we were in Athens. It was always his policy that we would work hard during the day then join his family for dinner and talk nothing of the case for an hour or two.
That was time for us all to relax, he insisted; to recharge our batteries and have a little bit of distance until the following morning’s efforts.

Going to Greece now without Gordon’s assistance was going to be harder in every way. At least we still had good friends like Mariana to call on. Her own pursuit of the truth about Ben was relentless. There wasn’t a television station or politician she hadn’t deluged with information and leads that they needed to be following.

Mariana had also arranged with the Kos police for us to pick up Ben’s case files. I couldn’t wait to get my hands on them, even though they were all in Greek. For eight years, I had been campaigning for the UK police to take over the investigation. Each time I was assured by the likes of John Major and Tony Blair and their staff that the Greek police and Interpol could be trusted to do a proper job. That wasn’t an opinion shared by Mariana or me. With the files in our possession, and with Mariana offering to translate them, we could identify whether Chief Bafounis and his team had missed anything that South Yorkshire Police could actually follow up on.

It was as we were leaving – we were already in the corridor after saying goodbye – that I called out to Bafounis, ‘Did you ever get to the bottom of the white car?’

He looked surprised, then smiled. Bafounis said he had a theory about who may have owned the car.

I was shocked. I hadn’t heard this before but I was excited too.

Finally, we had a lead, or so I thought.

But I should have realised at the time not to get my hopes up. Because nothing ever came of Bafounis’ theory, nothing has ever been proven. The white car, like so much of Ben’s case, would remain a mystery. It was another open-ended question.

The year 1999 was something of a landmark year for our family. Most importantly, of course, Ben turned ten. I marked the day as I always did with a card and a present and chat to him, wherever he is. Leighanna did the same.

This wasn’t like the days of imagining he was with me and putting him to bed. It just didn’t seem right to let his birthday pass without telling him I loved him. I’m not religious, as I’ve said, but part of me thinks if I say it loud enough, he’ll hear me eventually.

Ten years is a milestone in anyone’s life. For Ben, it marked four times as many years away from me as with me. That was a statistic I could have done with not working out. As a result, I needed to come to terms with a very unsavoury truth: wherever Ben was, he had probably forgotten I’d ever existed. Maybe that would change when he was found, and maybe it wouldn’t. I had to face facts.

The boy I was investing so much energy searching for might not even want to come back with me.

I didn’t dare tell anyone what I was thinking. I’d been burnt by the
Express
for my honesty once before. For my own peace of mind, however, I needed to accept it. If anything, it just made me more determined to find my son before he forgot me completely.

I wasn’t the only one suffering, of course. Mum and Dad had always come across in the media pretty well, and it was only their own sense of guilt that persecuted them. Even so, when they had the opportunity to move back up to Lincolnshire, they grabbed it with both hands: after living in the goldfish bowl of Sheffield, where their every move was noted, anywhere seemed like a break.

Like so many of my parents’ moves, it came about due to a conversation struck up by Dad. He and Mum had developed quite an eye for collectables and were students of the
Miller’s
antiques guide. Their scavenger hunts often took them out to the tips and boot sales of Boston and beyond, and obviously they got friendly with the tip owners there. When a lease for a tip in Lincoln came up, Dad was advised to go for it. Not only would he get first choice of any collectables with resale value that came in, but he’d also be paid a wage. It took about two seconds for them to decide. And, having made a success of one tip, when a second came up for tender in Grantham they applied again – and won, with Mum this time at the helm.

With our parents’ businesses booming, it was time for Stephen and Danny to branch out. Danny hadn’t moved to Lincoln with them, opting instead to stay in my parents’ old council property and finish his sixth-form education. Stephen, meanwhile, had been living with his partner, Angela, and two daughters, Sophie and Lisa. However, when they broke up he wanted to run away, but where to go?

Danny had the answer. He’d just finished his A-levels so between them, they bought an old ice-cream van, painted it blue and pink, called it ‘Such’N’Such’ then drove it to Benidorm to sell ice creams by day and party by night. When local police
closed them down for lack of paperwork on the first day, they just shrugged it off and found jobs in bars. Danny in particular thrived. When he was asked to run the karaoke nights at the area’s famous Black Chicken venue, he discovered he had a talent for singing. In fact, there wasn’t a performer around who could cut an Elvis impression the way he did. Before long, Danny was earning decent money on the cabaret circuit doing full-on tributes to The King.

It’s only later that we realised how much Stephen was still affected by his part in Ben’s disappearance. Despite the whispering campaign on Kos, he was the only one of us actually accused by the police of harming Ben. The weight on his shoulders from worrying about whether we thought he was involved was an incredible burden to bear.

In the run-up to the tenth anniversary of Ben’s disappearance, Stephen got the chance to put the record straight once and for all. We regret letting him now. Once again, it was a case of us being desperate to keep the publicity momentum rolling forwards for as long as possible, so when ITV offered a full documentary entitled ‘Somebody Knows’, we agreed – even if it meant Stephen going under hypnosis to see if his subconscious mind remembered anything his conscious memory had forgotten.

I only know what was shown in the broadcast. I wasn’t at the hypnosis session and I haven’t been given the full tapes. Stephen says he remembers everything he said while under the influence but, just in case, we had a solicitor on standby. I can’t remember whose idea it was, but the session sounded like it was going to be more like a police interview than a chat with a journalist. In fact, Stephen later said, it was more terrifying.

The session began well. The hypnotist asked Stephen to describe the moment he left the farmhouse in Iraklis.

‘I’m coming out of the farmhouse, Ben’s playing, I’m walking to the road, I’m getting on my bike, Ben’s still there, he looks up, I say, “Stay there, stay with Granddad,” and I drive off.’ Pretty much verbatim what he’d said ten years earlier.

Then the process seemed to get a bit weird. As Stephen’s virtual self mounted his bike, he was asked if he wanted to pick Ben up.

‘No.’

‘Do you want to pick him up and put him on your bike and ride away with him?’

‘No. He is just playing.’

As he pictured himself driving away from the farmhouse, Stephen was then asked to turn around and describe what he saw.

‘I can’t turn round,’ he replied.

‘Just try.’

‘How can I turn around? I didn’t turn round. How can I remember something I didn’t do?’

Even in his dream-like state, Stephen was getting agitated. Tears filled his eyes – and mine later, as I struggled to watch the broadcast. He obviously felt uncomfortable with what he was being asked to say and at one point, the solicitor demanded the cameras be switched off. She said the TV crew were in danger of implanting false memories in Stephen. I’m not saying that is what was happening. In fact, in my opinion, it would have been impossible because Stephen’s recollection of the truth was so strong. Even so, he said later that one of the psychologists had asked him, ‘If you were to bury a child, where would you bury it?’ If that isn’t a leading question, then I don’t know what is.

No one in the family had expected Stephen to suddenly confess to being involved in Ben’s disappearance. That was never the point of the hypnosis as far as I was concerned. At best we’d hoped he’d remember seeing a face or a vehicle that had slipped his mind in the confusion. Just something to aid the investigation. But the only thing that came of Stephen’s ordeal was even greater self-doubt about his own innocence and a return to the nightmares about being accused by the Kos police – nightmares he thought had ended years ago.

‘What if I did do it, Kerry?’ he asked me soon after. ‘What if Ben was on the back of my bike. What if he did fall off? What if …’

‘Stop right there. You’re my brother, you’re Ben’s uncle and you did nothing wrong that day. Do you understand me?’

‘What about the tears, though?’ he said. ‘I was crying on TV. I look guilty, don’t I?’

‘You look like a devastated uncle.’

He wouldn’t be told and so I was glad when he went back to Spain. If anything could cheer him up, it would be time spent with his brother in the sunshine. Unfortunately, it wasn’t the long-term tonic Stephen needed. Without a career in showbiz to look forward to like Danny, he returned to England, in the grip of depression, and moved in with Mum and Dad in Legsby.

Already broken and confused, Stephen became a virtual recluse, never venturing from his room unless the coast was clear. Every morning, Mum and Dad would find evidence that he’d been up and about, but he didn’t want to see or speak to anyone. Not yet. Not till he’d worked through things on his own.

Ten years after Ben’s disappearance the suffering continued, and not just for me.

On the plus side, when ‘Somebody Knows’ was broadcast there was another spike in sightings, although most turned out to be nothing. Our new police liaison, DS Malcolm Silk, visited with dozens of tourist pictures but as usual they were either too blurred or too vague. I love people for taking the time to contact us, but saying they saw a blond boy on a bus or in a shop and not giving an address makes it very frustrating sometimes.

Still, as I always say, we only need to be right once – and there was one sighting that caught my eye.

Once again I am indebted to an eagle-eyed holidaymaker, Ken Bywater, who witnessed a blond lad in Kefalonia arguing with a gypsy couple before boarding a ferry. Ken said he had no doubts it was Ben so he filmed the whole scene, even zooming in on the gypsies’ truck’s number plate. I was in pieces when I looked at the film. The ears, eyes, hair, the manner – they all bore a remarkable resemblance, not only to the latest computerised updated picture, but to how I felt in my heart that Ben would look today. I needed to know more. But I would have to wait.

As soon as Ken had arrived home from Kefalonia he’d delivered the tape to South Yorkshire Police. After verifying it with me, they’d passed it on via Interpol to the Greek authorities. Six months later, we still hadn’t heard a thing. How long does it take to open a message from Interpol? How many seconds would it take to check a number plate? Yet again, it felt like the Greeks were doing as much as possible
not
to help find Ben.

I wasn’t surprised it took so long to report – eventually – that the boy was not Ben. I had been bashing my head against a wall trying to get action for ten years. All I wanted was for South Yorkshire Police to be allowed to investigate Ben’s case, but official after
official, from the prime minister to my local MP, kept telling me the same thing: British officers are not allowed to investigate in another sovereign state without an invitation. Why not, when it’s a British citizen that’s missing? We’re all meant to be part of the big European family. Why couldn’t South Yorkshire officers, who know about the case, enquire about the sightings? Why did we have to pass everything via Interpol into the black hole of Greek bureaucracy? We needed detectives on the case, not paper pushers.