The Burning Air (23 page)

46

H
E SUDDENLY HAD the sharp hearing of a man half his age, oversensitive to everything, from the knocking of steely branches to the rustle of dead ferns and puff of heather under his boots, and a soft but persistent crackle that sounded every time he swung his arm. Something had burrowed its way between the waxed linen of his jacket and the polyester lining. The same impulse that had made him undertake a frantic search of the house the morning after his binge now led him to frisk himself all over, until he finally located the source of the crackle. He was almost relieved to see the driver’s license. He hadn’t even been aware of putting it in his pocket, but tucked it back in and continued his search.

He was astonished to find that he now took a perverse comfort in thinking about Lydia and what he had read. It helped him to cope with the intolerable crisis, the way digging one’s fingernails into one’s palm can stop one crying over a bigger pain.

Someone somewhere cleared his throat. Rowan swung his torch around and found its beam intersected with another, faint shafts scoring a misty
X.
Felix was on the other end of it. As Rowan stepped in closer, he saw that his son had been crying. Even in the half-light Rowan could see the livid blotches on his face. Tears always seemed worse coming from Felix. Of course they were awful coming from a man anyway but on the rare occasions Felix cried he did so harder than anyone else, as though his left eye were overcompensating for its dead twin. They stood opposed for a moment, frozen in the makeshift searchlights.

“What did the police say?” asked Felix with a catch in his voice.

“Still no sign of them.”

“Maybe they’ve got her already, or maybe Will’s found them, or Matt. I should have brought my own phone out here. You can get a signal on the other side of the wood. I didn’t think.”

The only way they could see each other’s faces was to shine the light into the other’s eyes, adding to the interrogatory nature of their conversation.

“Felix, something’s come up that makes me . . .” He was lost for words, feeling his authority diminish with every second’s hesitation. “This isn’t easy for me to ask. . . . What’s Kerry’s last name?”

“What? It’s Stone,” said Felix, his eyebrows meeting.

“Not according to this,” said Rowan. Slowly he panned his torch across the document. Felix’s face changed from pain to confusion and back again. “How do you explain this, Felix?”

There was a pause and Rowan saw that it wasn’t just the name that was bewildering. “I didn’t even know she could drive. This must be someone else’s. It hasn’t got a photograph on it or anything, has it?”

“Sophie found it in Kerry’s bag,” said Rowan.

Felix looked again. “Kell-a-way,” he said, sounding it out as would someone who had never heard it before. Rowan felt a stab of disloyalty for suspecting his son, but had he not learned this weekend that we do not know anyone else, no matter how much we love them?

“Her name’s Kerry Stone. This must belong to some other Kerry, mustn’t it? What else could it be? And why would she lie about . . . and what would it have to do with what’s happened with Edie? Dad, what’s going on? I don’t understand!” Felix’s voice jumped an octave. “Dad, where is she?”

“Which one?” said Rowan before he could help himself.

Felix looked as if the blow would fell him.

“Edie, of course! How can you ask me that?” he said, and in that second Rowan knew he trusted his son entirely. “If anything bad happens to Edie because of me, or whatever, I will never, ever forgive myself.”

Rowan opened his mouth, prepared to tell Felix who Kellaway was, but held back. Until he could connect the fragments of logic that were swirling around his mind and pin them down into something that made sense, anything he said to Felix would raise more questions than it answered.

“Look, where had you searched before you found me?” said Felix, wiping his nose on his sleeve.

“Nowhere,” said Rowan, glad to be back on the surer terrain of planning and action. “I came straight to you. Jake’s doing the trenches and the wood house and the drive.” Although now that Rowan voiced it, he wasn’t sure that Jake had agreed to undertake all these, or if he had just presumed it.

“I don’t know whether we should stick together or go off separately.”

Rowan closed his eyes, the better to map the territory. “Let’s do the outhouses, then go back to the house. Surely the police will be there by then, and they’ll be able to tell us how to search more effectively.”

“If we haven’t already found them by then,” said Felix with unconvincing certainty.

Either the mist was beginning to disperse or their eyes were getting used to this strange white inversion of darkness that was not light. The odd distant firework penetrated the tension but of the longed-for sirens and blue flashing lights there was no sign.

They looked in every tiny, roofless, crumbling outbuilding, each double-checking the other’s surveillance out of desperation rather than doubt. When he found himself lifting a sheet of corrugated iron that Felix had examined only seconds before, Rowan was reminded of Sophie pulling the sofa cushions apart. A sense of absolute impotence almost caused him to abandon the search, while another part of him knew that he would continue for as long as it took, that if Edie did not turn up then the following springtime might find him here, bearded and ragged, still searching the places that never could have held her in the first place.

Rowan squatted on his haunches and shone his torch into a waist-high, dry-stone outhouse originally intended to store coal. Its door was too narrow even for Kerry’s slight frame.

“Don’t bother with that,” said Felix. “No way could they both fit in there . . .” His voice trailed off, and Rowan wondered if it had occurred to him, too, that they might not be looking for both of them.

They checked the old cottage last because they were so sure that Kerry could not have breached it. Rowan himself had made it a fortress to exclude the small and weak. He shone his torch from a distance of ten yards. The grilles at the windows and doors were all secured.

“We’ll check it close up anyway,” he whispered to Felix, but before they could approach the crumbling structure, they saw a third beam from somewhere on the far side of the cottage. Rowan leaped back and extinguished his torch. Felix, at his side, did the same. In addition to their own heavy breath was the definite sound of someone else puffing, as though after exercise. Abruptly, the panting stopped; they had been seen, or heard. Without verbal agreement, father and son bypassed the cottage and approached the beam. The third light remained on.

“Kerry?” said Felix, his voice rather more tender than Rowan would have liked. “Is that you? It’s OK, it’s me. We’re not angry, just come out.”

A dark shape shifted. Rowan knew from the footfall alone that it wasn’t Kerry. Loss dropped through him like a pebble thrown into a well at the sight of Matt, whose torch was pointed up at his chin as though unambiguously to declare his identity.

Matt’s first attempt at speech didn’t work; his tongue made a strange clicking noise against his palate, as though he had gone for days without water.

“It’s only me,” he said eventually. “Sorry I was quiet, I thought you might be her.
Them.
”

His face was creased, as though the full horror of it had only just struck him.

“I thought you were going off in the car,” said Felix.

“I am,” croaked Matt, gesturing with his torch. The silver paintwork of his BMW, fifty yards or so away, caught the light and sparkled. He must have driven off-road to get here. “I mean, I
was
. But I didn’t really know where I was going, and you can’t see much anyway, so I thought I’d be more helpful if I just came back here.” He shone his torch in the direction of the cottage, tracked by Felix’s beam. “I’ve checked that place out, head to toe. There’s no way anyone can get in there.” He coughed and made a strange clicking noise somewhere in the back of his throat, triggering a half-formed memory that Rowan swept aside. No more irrelevant, distracting thoughts,
please
. He forced his focus back where it was needed.

Felix scratched his head. “I don’t know, I still think we should be covering the roads. If you couldn’t get very far maybe that means they haven’t either. Maybe I should go with Matt, so that if we find them, I can talk to Kerry.”

Was Rowan reading too much into Felix’s choice of words, or was his son suggesting that he was coming round to Kerry in terms of an active kidnapper rather than passive victim? Whatever the case, Rowan reflected that Felix might well be the last person Kerry wanted to talk to. It was Felix she had deceived. She might actually find it easier to deal with a relative stranger, a comparatively neutral party like Matt.

“Felix, you know this land like the back of your hand. I’d rather have you on foot, at least until the police get here. We need to
find
them in the short term, and talk later.” Rowan turned to Matt. “If you do see anything, just get the baby. Nothing else matters. Just get the child and bring her home safely.”

“Of course,” said Matt, evidently kicking himself for his misjudgment. He returned to his car, inched it across the uneven ground carefully, his engine so soft that he seemed to dissolve into the night.

Before Rowan and Felix had a chance to talk further there was the sound of a new engine. Someone was coming down the lane, not tentatively but very fast, deliberately announcing their presence.

“The police!” said Felix. They abandoned their amateurish search and ran back to the barn, to hand over their horror to the experts.

47

R
OWAN AND FELIX reached the house as the distressingly familiar car pulled up. Tara and Sophie were standing in its path, their silhouettes like matchstick figures. Will leaped out without bothering to kill the lights or the engine. He was mud-spattered from head to toe, presumably from the effort of pushing Matt’s car out of the ditch. A wiped letterbox of flesh framed his eyes.

“Where are the police?”

“We thought you
were
the police,” said Tara thickly.

“What are you doing back here? Why aren’t you
looking
for her?” cried Sophie. “Get back out there! Or I’ll go! Give me the car keys, you’re useless. I’ll do it myself.” She made for the car, but Will held her by the shoulders. He spoke into her hair, but his words were audible to all.

“Soph, the police have been called, don’t worry. But I can’t drive like this. I can’t see a thing, I lost control of the car twice. Matt’s still on the lookout, or at least I hope he is.”

“He is,” confirmed Felix.

“This is a job for the professionals. They’ll be here any second now. They should be here already.”

“What, we’re supposed to just
sit tight
?” said Sophie. “I’m not having that.”

“They’ll be here any second,” said Will. “They’ll need to know everything that we know, won’t they?” He strode into the kitchen and went at his face with soap and water. The others sat around the kitchen table. Tara retrieved the baby monitor from the sitting room and placed it before her. Felix and Sophie circled the table. Rowan slumped uselessly at its head.

“What do we know, though?” said Felix. “We don’t know anything, we don’t know what’s happened, whether they went off on their own or someone came and got them or what. We don’t know anything. Unless Kerry’s name has something to do with it.”

Will dried his hands, blackening the tea towel. “What do you mean, Kerry’s name?”

Sophie’s eyes passed the responsibility to Rowan. He had to clear his throat twice before he could speak.

“Sit down,” he said to his children.

“I couldn’t possibly—” Tara began.

“Tara, this won’t take long. Sit
down,
” said Rowan. Tara sat. Will dropped onto the bench beside her. They looked like children in detention. Outside, Will’s car continued its patient purr.

“It’ll all come out when the police get here anyway,” he began. “Better you hear it from me, first, now.”

“Dad, you’re scaring me,” said Felix. He looked to his sisters for reassurance but neither of them would meet his eye.

Rowan took the diver’s license from his pocket and spread it on the kitchen table. Everyone craned to read it.

“This is Kerry’s,” he said. “Sophie found it in her bag. Her last name isn’t Stone, as Felix thought, but Kellaway. It’s a name I knew a long time ago. Darcy Kellaway was a boy who applied for the Mawson-Luxmore about seventeen years ago. He didn’t make the grade, but somehow developed a conviction that you were awarded the scholarship in his stead, Felix.” Rowan walled up the memories associated with the word “scholarship” and pulled his focus back into the moment.

“Me?”
said Felix. “This has all got something to do with
me
?”

“Let me finish, please, Felix. Kellaway was a . . . strange boy, given to delusion and paranoia and, I’m afraid, eruptions of violence. He’s the one who attacked you, Felix.”

“
Christ,
” said Will.

“I thought no one knew who attacked me?” said Felix.

“We
knew
, they just couldn’t make the charges stick, and I’m afraid we kept it from you. You needed to concentrate on getting better . . .”

Felix clapped his hand over his missing eye as though registering its absence for the first time. “Did you know about this, Sophie?”

Sophie, who had been looking out the door, turned her face back to the table and gave a curt nod.

“Tara?” Tara carried on with the slow head-shaking movement she had been making for the last minute or so.

“Sophie told me just now,” she said. “I had no idea.”

“So what’s this got to do with Kerry?” said Felix at the same time that Will said, “Rowan, how does this relate to what’s happened to Edie?”

“I wish I knew,” said Rowan. The clock struck half past midnight. Surely it would literally be seconds now before the police arrived. Time enough to tell his family the rest of what he knew.

“A few years after your attack, Kellaway had another run-in with your mother.”

“With
Mum
?” said Tara disbelievingly. Rowan spoke fast, hoping that his tone was enough to preempt questions about Lydia.

“I told you, the boy was delusional. It turned out that he was still harboring a grudge and he made some ugly threats against the family. But then he disappeared, for years he disappeared, and I never dreamed he’d come back, I never dreamed . . . but it seems as though Kerry’s some kind of relative. It’s an unusual enough name that coincidence seems unlikely. It makes this all seem premeditated, planned even.”

“How can it be planned?” said Will. “Kerry wasn’t even going to look after Edie until this afternoon, when we all persuaded Sophie to come out.”

“Unless she targeted me from the very beginning,” said Felix slowly. “Unless she knew who I was from day one.”

“Oh,
bollocks,
” cried Tara. “What, you think she seduced you just so that one day on a weekend she didn’t even know she was coming on she could steal a baby that isn’t even yours? Don’t be ridiculous, Fee. People don’t do things like that, fake entire relationships. It’s a coincidence, this name thing, it must be.”

“I’m just telling you what I know,” said Rowan. “If Kellaway is involved it means that . . . I mean, we don’t know what their relationship is. We thought he was an only child . . .” He trailed off, unable to give his children answers to the questions he had raised himself.

Sophie’s fist came down on the table, making everything shake. Everyone turned to glance at the baby monitor; it remained blank.

“Where
are
they?” she said. It was clear that she meant the police as well as Kerry and Edie.

Rowan’s brain was beginning to flag. He felt as though he was having to maintain a sprint velocity over the course of a marathon. “Exactly what did the police say, Will?” he asked. “It’s been forty-five minutes. What exactly did they give as their arrival time?”

“I don’t know, I didn’t have the actual conversation,” said Will. “I mean, it was my phone, but Matt had to make the call.”

Somewhere deep inside Rowan, a connection was made. A current traveled, agonizingly slowly, between knowledge and understanding. If only he could hear himself think. A sixty-second silence would do it, but Sophie punched the table again with a force that threatened to shatter her frail fists.

“You didn’t even
talk
to them yourself? Jesus
Christ
, Will.”

“What does it matter, so long as the information gets through?” said Will. “Matt gave them a good description and everything, he gave them the postcode . . .”

“You’re her
father
. It was your responsibility.”

“I was trying to save time! I was on my way to get the car out of the
ditch
you drove it into!”

“So this is
my
fault?”

Jake appeared in the doorway, silhouetted by the fog lights of Will’s car.

“Anything?” Tara asked him. He shook his head.

“I went everywhere,” he said. “All ’round the trenches, orchard, the wood house, everywhere you said. I’d have stayed out, but the batteries went.”

“Oh, Jakey, go to bed, darling,” said Tara. “I don’t want you getting mixed up in this. It’ll all be all right in the morning.”

“Are you serious? How can I sleep, knowing Edie’s in trouble?”

“Don’t argue. Bed.”

“No. I want to
help,
” said Jake. He looked at Rowan. “I tried to go to the cottage but it had already died by then,” he said, pressing down the switch to illustrate the torch’s uselessness.

“We did the cottage,” said Rowan.

Cottage.

The word was the trigger his subconscious mind needed to make contact with his lucid thoughts. Rowan recalled that strange alien choking noise Matt had made and knew exactly where he had heard it before. Suddenly, vividly, he was superimposing the man’s face over that of the boy, and for all the differences, the fit was perfect.

Oh God no.

Oh God, no no no.

Not this close to home. Not for this long.

“Will, did Matt use your phone?” said Rowan. And in response to the uncomprehending nod, “Give it to me, please.” The handset was identical to his own and it was easy to scroll through the most recently dialed numbers. The last call made had been to 999, but the conversation had only been two seconds long.