Burnt Paper Sky (31 page)

On Sunday night, after dark, I still thought of nothing apart from the fact that Ben had been gone for one week. Seven days, one hundred and sixty-eight hours, thousands of minutes, hundreds of thousands of seconds. And counting.

My thoughts were suddenly full of the woods as if, now that seven days had passed, the memories had swollen, and germinated into a vivid sensory overload.

The bright blue sky and the kaleidoscopic intensity of the backdrop of beautiful, colourful, crisp autumn leaves replayed in my head like a movie reel. I saw Ben’s flushed cheeks, the gauzy mistiness of his breath, floating momentarily, a piece of him, of his warmth, in the air, then evaporating into nothing.

I would have seen more, lost myself in those memories, but my phone rang. It was the police, letting me know that a DC Woodley, my interim FLO, was on his way to call on me. They apologised for the lateness of the call. It was already half past eight at night.

DC Woodley arrived at nine. He was very tall and very skinny with an elongated neck and a large nose. He looked as if he was about seventeen years old.

He introduced himself awkwardly, and then he said that we should probably sit down, and he licked his top lip nervously when he said it.

At my kitchen table we sat under the stark central light. Unlike my sister, I didn’t think to make the room cosy by switching on other lights, or boiling a kettle. I’d lost my social niceties a week ago. I only wanted to hear what he’d come to tell me.

‘We’ve arrested somebody,’ he said. ‘We haven’t charged them yet, but they are at Kenneth Steele House and they are under arrest.’

‘Who?’

‘Lucas Grantham. Ben’s teaching assistant.’

My mind curled around this information and then recoiled at the ghastliness of it. Lucas Grantham spent all day of every weekday with my son. He spent more hours with Ben than I did. And I didn’t know him at all; he was a stranger to me.

For DC Woodley, and his patient, insistent questioning, I tried to remember anything I could, any mention of Grantham that Ben had made, but there was nothing beyond the entirely bland. Ben had hardly ever mentioned him, favouring Miss May, who he had known for longer.

I scraped my mind for my impressions of him. They’d been fleeting. We were only a few weeks into term after all, and Lucas Grantham was new to the school, like the headmaster. I forced my mind to work back through any memories of him when I’d collected Ben’s schoolbooks from school just a few days before, but I had none really, just the vaguest sense of him being there at all. And then those thoughts were interrupted by a question that I had to ask:

‘If Lucas Grantham took Ben, then where is he?’

‘We’re undertaking extensive searches at his property, and at properties he’s associated with. We’re doing everything we can to locate Ben. In the next twenty-four hours we’re going to be questioning everybody around him. I’m afraid I can’t give you any more information than that at present, but we wanted you to hear this from us, and not from anybody else. Please know that we are doing what we think is best in order to return Ben to you safe and well. That’s our priority.’

‘Do you believe that?’

‘That we’re doing our best? Yes. Absolutely. I’d swear on my mother’s life.’

He actually put his hand over his heart when he said that. Then, just as he was readying himself to leave, he said, ‘One more thing, Ms Jenner?’

‘Yes?’

‘Have you heard from your sister?’

‘No,’ and I realised that she’d never phoned me back. ‘Why?’

‘It’s the role of the FLO to make sure that all family members are doing fine so it’s really just a follow-up after the difficult interview she had with DI Clemo.’

‘She’s fine so far as I know.’

When he’d gone I tried to phone Nicky, to tell her, but it went to voicemail. I didn’t leave a message. I’d heard about voicemail hacking. I knew we would be targets. I wasn’t going to give the journalists that advantage.

I tried Nicky’s house in Salisbury but her youngest daughter answered and said that her mummy wasn’t there and her daddy wasn’t either and her sister who was looking after her was on her mobile phone. I gave up, I didn’t even say who it was because Olivia was only nine and leaving a message with a nine-year-old is complicated and unreliable. I knew Nicky would phone me back when she saw my missed call.

I thought again about the TA and thought about what he might have done.

In one sense it allowed me to feel a surge of relief. It allowed me to let go of the germ of suspicion I’d been guiltily harbouring about my sister. That was a release of pressure I was grateful for, definitely. I gave silent thanks for the fact that I hadn’t accosted her with my suspicions about her, or accused her outright. That might help us repair.

On the other hand, the news threw up a scenario which made my guts clench, because the question that lurched around my head was: What would a man like Lucas Grantham want with a boy like Ben?

There was no answer I could come up with that wasn’t somehow horrific. And so I didn’t feel a complete sense of relief, as I might have done at the news of the arrest, of course I didn’t, because that would be impossible until Ben was back in my arms again.

I went online again later, curious to see if the arrest had been made public. Not yet.

Instead, some members of the online community were marking the week’s anniversary of Ben’s disappearance by saying that he was probably dead. That he had to be.

As if to underscore this theory, one or two of them had posted photographs of lit candles to mark the anniversary. Online shrines, the flickering flame a public display of emotion, which I found sanctimonious, ugly and cruel.

Others took a more cerebral tack, including one who caught my eye because he was quoting the same websites that Nicky had been looking at before she left, to prove his hypothesis. I clicked on the link he provided, and instantly I wished I hadn’t, because right in front of my eyes was one of the research documents that Nicky had tried to stop me reading in the first few days after Ben disappeared:

It sickened me. I closed the window on the computer, stabbing the mouse with sweaty, shaking fingers. I was ready to shut the machine down, unplug it, retreat from it, but behind the window I was looking at was another, left there by Ben.

It was the login page for Furry Football, the online game that Ben and his friends loved to play. It was like Club Penguin, or Moshi Monsters, a child-friendly online forum where you could play games and interact with other people’s avatars. The difference was that it was football themed and if you won points you could buy players for a Furry Football team. Ben loved it. All his friends did.

I clicked on it. The page refreshed and invited me to log in. Ben was the manager of two separate virtual teams and I had a choice of which one to log in as: ‘Owl Goal’ or ‘Turtle Rangers’. I chose ‘Owl Goal’ and I typed in Ben’s password. A message appeared: ‘YOU ARE ALREADY LOGGED IN’.

I tried again. Same message.

I leaned back in my chair, confused. Somebody was logged in as Ben. I remembered him saying that he couldn’t log in if he’d already done so on another machine, but his iPad was at his dad’s house, and I had no other computer.

I clicked on ‘Turtle Rangers’ instead, entered his password again, and this time it worked. I was in. I was Turtle0751, the captain of the Turtle Rangers, and my avatar appeared on screen: a plump turtle in football boots holding a clipboard.

‘WHICH SERVER WOULD YOU LIKE TO JOIN?’ the computer asked me, and then my stomach roiled as an idea took hold. What if Ben was logged in somewhere else, playing the game as his owl avatar?

I selected the server that I knew Ben always chose to play on: ‘Savannah League’.

A cartoon-like scene popped up – the African savannah. A meerkat invited me to choose a game I’d like to play. I selected ‘Baobab Bonus’, Ben’s favourite game.

On screen a glade of cartoon baobab trees appeared. About twenty avatars cruised amongst them, little speech bubbles coming from their heads now and then. It didn’t take me long to see Ben’s other team captain: Owlie689.

‘It’s you,’ I said. ‘It’s you.’

My fingers gripped the mouse so hard that its edges dug into them and I stared at the screen as Owlie689 moved around it.

I navigated my avatar so that it stood by Ben’s. I was clumsy with the mouse. I wanted to talk to him. It was hard to work out how to make a speech bubble. I wasn’t practised at this like Ben; I’d never paid attention to the detail of the game.

After numerous failed attempts, I finally clicked on the right tab. A list of possible phrases appeared, but it was safe chat. Of course it was. I hadn’t allowed Ben to do anything other than communicate with phrases that were provided by the game. For his safety.

I scrolled down the list of phrases available, desperate to say something meaningful, but they were entirely bland, designed to stop children upsetting or offending each other.

I clicked on ‘Hello’. After a few seconds Ben’s avatar said ‘Hello.’

‘How was your day?’ my avatar asked.

Owlie689 displayed an emoticon. It was a frowning face. I scrolled down the list of phrases I could use.

‘Sorry,’ my avatar said.

Owlie689 began to move. I followed. It stopped underneath a baobab tree.

‘Want to visit my team?’ it said to me.

‘Yes,’ my avatar replied and the screen dissolved and reformed and we found ourselves in a training area. The positions of players were laid out around the edges of the screen and above four of them were animals that Ben had earned enough points to buy.

‘Cool,’ my avatar said.

‘New player,’ said Ben’s avatar. He moved toward his centre forward. It was a giraffe. He hadn’t had it last Sunday because he’d talked about it, about wanting to get a giraffe because they were good at doing headers. In fact he’d gone on and on about it in the car on the way to the woods until I made him change the subject.

‘It’s you,’ I said. ‘It’s definitely you.’

I searched the list of phrases for something else to say, something that would tell Ben who I was, that it was me communicating with him. He must suspect it, I thought, because who else would use his other avatar? He had to know it was me.

But I was too slow. Before I selected a phrase Owlie689 had gone, just disappeared. My avatar was alone on-screen.

I reached for my phone.

Fraser and I were huddled in the meeting room we used for briefings. Lists and interview notes littered the table between us. We were planning.

Woodley put his head around the door. ‘Rachel Jenner’s just phoned, she says she’s seen Ben playing an online game.’

‘What game?’ Fraser asked.

‘Furry Football. She says he’s logged on as one of his avatars.’

‘What in God’s name does that mean?’

‘You have characters that you become when you play the game. Ben has two. She logged on as one of them and met the other in the game. She thinks that means that Ben was logged on.’

‘And does it? You’re the IT expert.’

‘It could do, obviously, if he has access to the internet, which would seem unlikely. Equally, anybody who had access to his login details could have done it.’

‘How likely do you think that is?’

‘It’s impossible to say, but people often know their friends’ passwords etc., it could be one of his mates or anybody who knew him.’

‘Does Rachel Jenner have a view on that?’

‘She doesn’t know. It’s hard to get sense out of her to be honest, boss. She’s pretty hysterical.’

‘We need to find out who might have known. Can you contact that man who was in the woods, the father of Ben’s best friend? Ask him if he knows about this stuff, and ask him if we can interview his boy in the morning. He might know.’

‘Will do.’

Once he’d gone, Fraser turned back to me. ‘What’s your feeling, Jim?’

‘Could be something, could be nothing. Just like the schoolbooks.’

‘I’ll get the IT folks onto it. Now, Lucas Grantham versus Nicola Forbes. I want a plan of action tonight, so that we don’t waste a minute tomorrow morning. Not one second. What’s your feeling about resource allocation?’

I took my time before answering. We had a very strong suspect in custody, and I knew he looked good for it, but there was something about Nicky Forbes that I just couldn’t let go.

‘In my view, Nicky Forbes is very intelligent and potentially very manipulative,’ I said to Fraser. ‘Chris was certainly very clear that the sort of trauma Nicky’s suffered could cause all kinds of psychosis or delusions. If her own husband is coming in to warn us about her, I think we need to take it very seriously.’

‘You favour her for it?’

‘If I have to stick my neck out, I do.’

And, as I said it out loud, I felt my conviction build. I said, ‘I think there’s a danger that Lucas Grantham might be another Edward Fount. Looks good for it because he’s a lying little git who lives with his mother, but he could be telling the truth about why he went to the woods.’

‘Telling the truth about his lie?’

‘Yes.’

‘If that’s the case I’m going to have him on wasting police time.’

‘Agreed.’

Fraser sighed, massaged her forehead. She looked old suddenly. ‘But I’m not sure it is, and part of me wants you here to run the investigation into Grantham. Clock’s ticking.’

I knew that. I kept quiet, let her think, and watched her massage her forehead as she did so. I knew there was no point pushing her. She came to a decision quickly.

‘Right. I’m going to let you go and interview her, Jim, tomorrow morning, not tonight. It’s far too late.’

I felt a surge of adrenalin, as if I’d had a shot of it into my arm.

‘Thank you, boss.’ I stood up. ‘I’m going to get familiar with everything in her file.’

I wanted to know every detail off by heart; I wanted to pull off the interview of my life. Nicky Forbes had got to me right from the start.

‘Now listen to me, Jim. You do no such thing. You go home and you sleep. You look like shit.’ She paused, let me absorb the insult, and then she asked, ‘How are you feeling about Emma?’

That blindsided me. Totally. It took me a moment to pull together a reply.

‘Disappointed, of course. But I’m focused on moving forward, boss.’

‘Don’t fuck about with me; you know what I’m asking. I’m not blind.’

‘Honest truth, boss, I am focused on moving forward, but I’m gutted too. Of course I am.’

‘I’m only going to ask you this once, do you think it’s affecting your judgement?’

‘Not at all. Not one bit.’

She leaned back in her chair, her mind working it through, before she replied. ‘OK. So you go first thing to interview Nicky Forbes, because I don’t want to leave any stone unturned. Get back here as quickly as you can afterwards. We couldn’t be more stretched for resources so I shouldn’t really be letting my deputy go.’

‘Boss—’

‘I’m indulging you here, Jim, so don’t push it. I’ve got a list of interviews as long as my arm that relate to Lucas Grantham.’

‘I just wanted to know if I would go alone or not.’

‘I can’t send anybody else. I need every body I can get.’

She took off her glasses, which made her look suddenly vulnerable, and she rubbed her eyes, which were reddened around the rims. As it was late, and her guard seemed to be down just a little, I asked her something: ‘Boss, do you think he’s still alive?’

‘You know the statistics as well I do. We just have to do what we can.’

Back at my flat, I looked through the case files, poring over every detail, memorising the events that took place when Nicky Forbes was a girl, rereading all the notes I took after Simon Forbes came in.

It was a jubilant phone call to Fraser that I made at midnight.

‘I found a hole in Nicola Forbes’s alibi. Last Sunday she said she was attending a food festival. She was definitely there in the morning, but nobody can confirm that they saw her between 13.30 and 22.00 when her husband maintains that she Skyped him from the cottage.’

‘I thought we’d confirmed her alibi?’

‘People said they thought they’d seen her, but it’s a really big event. Tons of stalls selling produce, cookery demonstrations, that kind of thing, hundreds of folks attending and although she’s quite well known nobody can actually guarantee that they saw her during the afternoon. They all say she was definitely there that day, and a friend says that they had lunch together, but after 13.30 none of it’s reliable.’

‘Good work, Jim,’ she said. ‘Take Woodley with you in the morning.’

‘I thought you couldn’t spare anybody.’

‘I’ve changed my mind.’

I didn’t have the energy to go to my bed. I lay on my sofa, the window cracked open even though it was freezing outside, and I smoked and tried to fight away the memories of Emma that could upset the perfect balance I felt: the poised moment when a case is about to come together one way or another, and when you’re right in it.

I checked my phone. Woodley and I had been texting and mailing, finalising directions and details for the morning.

What I didn’t expect to find in my inbox was an email from Emma. Its title: ‘Sorry’.

When I finished reading I hit ‘delete’. But then I went into my trash folder and moved the email back into my inbox.

In one of my kitchen cupboards I found a bottle of whisky, a gift from my parents when I moved in, so far untouched. Normally, I’m not much of a drinker, but that night I opened it. I didn’t bother with mixers. I drank a large quantity of it, much more quickly than I should have done. It was enough to make the room tilt before I passed out.