The Bones of You (21 page)

I was back on my knees when the police came, dry-heaving again, but this time into a plastic bucket. I wished that all this would just go away, leave me alone. I’m a strong man. I pride myself on my strength, both physical and mental, but that moment almost broke me: walking into Jess’s room and seeing an empty bed, an empty space that should have been occupied by the person who meant most to me in the world.

It almost shattered me.

I got the impression that I was under suspicion, but once I was questioned—by a DS Thomson—my paranoia receded. They were doing their job, being thorough and professional. With my history of violence and the recent events concerning Holly’s overdose, they had to be careful. I kept telling myself that as I answered question after question, trying to keep my cool.

DS Thomson was a small man, but he was broad and carried himself like someone who could take care of himself in a tight spot. He had massive hands—fists like shovels, as the saying goes. He looked like a bruiser, but he came on like a sensitive soul. He was cautious and thoughtful. I was glad that he was on the case; his solid presence reassured me.

They made me stay inside when they searched the house next door. I stood in the kitchen doorway and watched. They hung around for a few minutes waiting for backup—which arrived quickly and quietly—and used a battering ram on the door to gain entry.

Five or six of them went in through the front door. Another three uniformed officers went around the back. They were in there for quite some time. I’m not sure exactly how long it was, but to me it felt like hours. I didn’t speak to any of the officers prowling around my house. I didn’t speak at all until Adele, my favorite social worker, arrived.

“I’m so sorry…” She stood beside me, watching through the kitchen window. Tonight her hair looked even worse. “We couldn’t have predicted anything like this.”

“I know. We don’t even know it’s him.”

“Benjamin Kyle?”

I nodded.

She shuddered. She actually shuddered, as if the very thought of him sent her into spasms of terror.

“Have the police tracked down William Pace?”

I was drawing a blank. Shock had crippled my brain. “Who?”

“Pace. William Pace. Holly’s boyfriend…”

“Oh, that junkie scumbag. No. They’re still looking for him. It’s my guess he’s gone underground, probably hiding out in some grubby little shooting gallery.”

“Unless…”

“Unless what?” I turned to face her. She didn’t have on any makeup. She was probably settling down for a quiet evening at home when she got the call.

“Unless he came here… It’s entirely feasible that he’s the one who took Jessica. He’s bound to have formed a bond with her. He might even see her as his own child and have formed a psychological connection. And she could have gone with him of her own free will. That’s how you didn’t hear anything. Have you thought of that?” She placed a hand on my arm, squeezed.

No, I hadn’t thought of that. I hadn’t thought of it at all. But she was right. This theory about Benjamin Kyle was something of a flight of fancy. The occult-obsessed lover of a dead serial killer returns to the scene of their crimes, starts up an abusive relationship with the dead woman’s sister, and then kidnaps my child for some unspecified satanic ritual.

When I thought about it in those terms, it sounded stupid. This was the twenty-first century; that kind of shit didn’t happen. Maybe in the seventies; certainly in the sixties, when all kinds of weird cults sprung up and started getting interested in black magic and weirdness, but not now, not here.

It was all too far-fetched to be true. And yet…and yet, the police were taking it seriously. Serious enough to go charging in there ready to roust whoever the hell they found inside that house of horrors and drag them out into the street.

Pace…William Pace. It sounded more plausible. That the fucked-up mess of a man would come here, looking for my daughter—perhaps coming in search of a life that he’d been given a glimpse of and then had cruelly taken away from him when Holly slipped into a coma. What if the overdose had been accidental rather than by design? What if he’d genuinely made an error, got his measurements wrong and given her too much?

Surely this was more believable than demon-raising in a suburban house where kids had once been murdered?

As I watched, the police teams came out of the house. They walked slowly, heads down. They were empty-handed. They’d found nobody inside; Kyle was no longer on the premises, even if he’d been there in the first place.

DS Thomson came back inside. He stood in the doorway, his arms wide, hands open. “I’m sorry. There was nobody in there. We found an old sleeping bag, a few old clothes, some kiddie porn—a bunch of faded photos, taken a long time ago. There was nothing else. The place doesn’t look like it’s been lived in for ages. What made you think she’d be in there?”

“I didn’t. If I did, I would’ve gone in myself to get her.”

“Okay…then why did you think Benjamin Kyle had been in there?”

I walked to the dining table and sat down, staring at my hands. Adele stayed where she was, near the door. Thomson sat down opposite me.

“I had a visitor this evening, a friend. She told me that Kyle had moved back to the area. That he was living over there for a while.” I looked up, into his eyes. “He has moved back here, hasn’t he? You can confirm that, at least.”

Thomson sighed. “All we know is that Benjamin Kyle went off our radar a couple of months ago. He walked out of his job, left his flat, and walked away from the new life we’d set up for him. Nobody’s seen him since.”

I clenched my hands on the table, making fists. The knuckles turned white.

“Is there anyone else? Any enemies you might have?”

I shook my head. “There’s only that idiot Pace, Holly’s ex. Have you found him yet?”

“No. We’re still looking. We’ve sent a couple of men round to your wife’s—sorry, your
ex-
wife’s place, and there’s nobody there. They called in when we were inside that house. We didn’t expect there to be anyone, but…well. No stone unturned, and all that.” He shrugged. “You need to help us out here. Tell us anything and everything. No matter what it is, however small a piece of information, it could prove vital in our finding your daughter. Just tell us…tell us whatever you think you know, and whatever you think you don’t know. Tell us everything.”

So I did.

He listened in silence, a trained observer. He didn’t ask any questions as I spoke, just sat there, resting his hands on the table. He didn’t even take any notes. I told him about Pru’s nighttime visits and the fact that I hadn’t seen her for a while, and I told him about the book her father had written. I told him about Carole and our relationship, and the night when I saw a man she now claimed was Benjamin Kyle intimidating her in her own flat.

It didn’t take long. I’d thought it might sound more complicated than it actually was, like a heavily plotted mystery novel. But it didn’t sound complicated at all; it sounded rather banal. I left out the stranger elements, of course—the books with the blank pages, the spectral children I’d glimpsed (or not glimpsed), and the dead girl Jess had spoken of. I even left out the stuff about Magic the cat. I didn’t want him to think I was crazy.

Thomson called over a uniformed officer from the other room and told him to start tracking down Prudence Shingley. The officer nodded and left quickly.

“I don’t even know where to start with all this.” He ran a hand through his hair. It was so thin I could see the scalp. He would probably go bald in a couple of years.

“I know…it sounds insane, doesn’t it?” I stood, feeling energy buzzing through me. I wanted to run five miles or to fight someone bigger and stronger than me. I needed action; I needed to burn off what was rising inside me. “But none of this is finding my daughter. Either that junkie Pace has her, or she’s been taken by Kyle. One of them has her. She isn’t out there alone.” I raised my hand and then slammed it down hard on the tabletop. The sound was like a gunshot. I did it again, but this time it hurt the side of my hand. When I looked down, I saw that I’d cracked the thin, cheap wood. I turned away, walked to the open door, closed my eyes, and wished for rain—anything to cleanse me, to wash off the shit that was clinging to me through all of this.

“We’ll find her.” Thomson moved around the table and came up behind me. I could smell his aftershave: some cheap, generic brand bought from a chemist or a market stall. It failed to hide the odor of dried sweat. I pictured him working late at the station every night, putting in the hours, toiling until the cases were solved, his hair getting thinner and thinner, an ulcer growing in his stomach. He was a good man, a good cop. He would do everything to get back my daughter.

“Please…” I turned to face him. We were standing so close I could see the pores in his skin, the blackheads in the channels at the side of his nose. “Just get her back for me.” I was powerless; I felt like the world’s biggest loser. There was nothing I could do. These men—these officers of a law in which I had little faith, a law I had shown contempt for when I’d helped murder a man—were my only hope.

“Trust me,” said Thomson. And I tried, I really did. I tried my hardest.

The officer he’d sent to check on Prudence Shingley came back into the kitchen.

“Sir…”

“Don’t tell me you’ve found her already?”

The officer looked worried. He glanced from Thomson to me and then back again. “Sort of, sir…it’s complicated.”

“Just tell me, son. We don’t have time to mess about.”

“I recognized the name. Shingley. He wrote that book, didn’t he? The one about Little Miss Moffat…I read a lot of true crime.” He gave a nervous smile, and then dropped it immediately.

“
Little Miss Moffat and the Radiant Children
, yes. That’s right. You’ll make detective in a year at this rate.” Thomson could do nothing to keep the impatience out of his voice.

“Sorry, sir. But because I remembered the name, I ran a check on him and…well. This is where it gets weird.”

“Just tell me, for Christ’s sake!”

The officer looked at me again. There was a strange look in his eyes, one I couldn’t quite place. It might have been fear, or it might not have been. I’m still not sure.

“Well?” Thomson took a step toward the officer; the young man flinched, as if he were about to be struck.

“Well, sir. Prudence Shingley was his daughter.”

“We fucking know that, son. Are you trying to ruin your career before it’s even started?” He took another step forward.

The officer said the next part quickly, breathlessly: “He had two daughters, Prudence and Hope. Hope Shingley is living in Los Angeles, America, with her husband and child.”

The officer paused and took a deep breath before he continued. “The other one, Prudence…she’s dead.”

Thomson stiffened. “What?”

“Prudence Shingley hanged herself six months ago. Her body was found in a squat several miles from here, on Ashdown Road. No foul play suspected. Drug paraphernalia was found near the corpse, and there were toxins in her bloodstream. She killed herself. There was even a suicide note…I can’t remember exactly, but it said something about her father, how she missed him, how she didn’t want to go on without him.”

“Fuck,” said Thomson.

“Sorry, sir.” The officer walked out of the room.

I felt as if the floor had turned to water; an ocean had opened up beneath and around me, ready to carry me away. Perhaps I’d drift for weeks, or I might reach land before long—an isolated island; a deserted little land mass where I could forget about all this.

TWENTY

Numb

Grief is a tangible thing. Like a weight inside your chest, it hangs there, dragging you down. No matter how hard you try, you are unable to shake it off. It beds itself deep inside you, under your skin, burrowing into the very meat of you, and settles there.

In the space of a day, I’d lost my ex-wife and my daughter. There was nothing I could do to put this right, nothing I could say, and nowhere I could go. I was forced to put my faith in other people, which was something I’d never been able to do. Other people let you down; they always fail you, most of the time without even realizing it.

But there was nothing I could do. Nobody I could hurt. Everything I loved had been taken from me.

I spent all the following day walking the streets, calling her name. I saw her ghost on every corner; her shadow crossed my path at each busy intersection. She was nowhere and she was everywhere. She was deep inside me, but she wasn’t anywhere that I could reach. I glimpsed her holding hands with a skinny, naked black man whose head had been caved in. The man was smiling. He knew me and I knew him: our paths were crossed forever.

They turned a corner and I followed, but then I lost them in the crowds. There was blood on the pavement. His blood. Her blood. My blood. All of our blood, staining the concrete.

I wanted her back. My daughter, my baby…my Jess…

I’d have given anything just to have her back in my arms.