What She Knew (22 page)

FOOD FOR THOUGHT

Posted at 04:47 by LazyDonkey, on Thursday, October 25, 2012

On Monday, October 22, police discovered a bag of clothing in Leigh Woods near Bristol.

They belonged to Benedict Finch.

According to his mother, they were the clothes he was wearing when he disappeared.

That’s why police haven’t issued a description of what he’s wearing.

Because they don’t know.

Because they’ve got to take the mother’s word for it.

Would you?

RACHEL

I slept the night in Ben’s bed again, inhaling the perfect smell of him, worrying that it was fading away. I couldn’t think of sleeping anywhere else.

When I woke up my body ached, crying out for proper sustenance, which it hadn’t had for days. I could feel my hip bones protruding where they hadn’t before, my stomach concave.

My eyes drank in what they could in the dim light before dawn.

I could see Ben’s posters, his
Doctor Who
figurines, the silhouette of his piled-up boxes of Legos.

I could just make out the dark stain on his carpet where he’d left a felt-tip pen with its cap off and I remembered how cross I’d been with him when he did it.

It had been our first week in the house, one of the first weeks in years when I’d had to wonder how I was going to pay for everything, now that I wasn’t cushioned by John’s salary. I’d shouted at Ben, and he’d cried. Had he thought, I’d raged at him, how many hours somebody would have to work to pay for a carpet like that? Had he? Did he realize what life was like for most people? I’d been so angry.

The memory was a sharp pain. It made me sit up and pull a cushion to myself, hunch over it, and cry with great gulping sobs. It made me detest my previous self-absorption and shallowness. It made me wonder whether I’d been everything I could be to Ben, especially in the past year. Whether I’d let him down terribly, filtering his needs through my own, letting my anger and depression seep between us, where it shouldn’t have been.

I couldn’t forgive myself.

It was a noise from outside that got me out of Ben’s bed to stand at the window. It was the creak of a fence, the thump of a landing. In my back garden was a man; he was standing in the shadows, beside my studio, half concealed by shrubbery, but only half. He wore a dark coat and a beanie hat. A camera obscured his face, its long lens trained on the back windows of my house. Kitchen first, then a slow tilt up toward me. He was scavenging, like the fox. I stepped back, snapped Ben’s bedroom curtains shut. From behind the curtain I pounded on the window.

“Get out!” I shouted. “Go away!”

My sister ran into the room. She moved me aside and peered through the curtains to see the shadow of him disappearing over the fence into my neighbor’s garden. The stairs rumbled as she rushed down and outside to confront him, but he’d gone.

Out front the rest of the press pack feigned ignorance. As I watched, standing back from the window in my own bedroom, shaking from cold, Nicky went out into the street in her rosebud-print nightie, hair greasy and wild, nipples on show, goose bumps on her flesh, and told them what she thought of them.

“You are vandalizing our family!” she shouted and her words echoed up and down the quiet street, interrupted only by the mechanical dawn chorus of the camera motor drives.

JIM

Sometimes on a case you get a bit of information that feels electric, like static under the skin, especially when it’s very unexpected.

I was awake before six a.m., feeling bruised from my dream at first, because it had lingered with me into the morning and gotten mixed up with the tiredness I felt, and the disappointment that we weren’t making as much progress as we’d have liked.

But that didn’t last long, because I checked my phone and saw an email that had just arrived very late the night before from one of the blokes we had digging up background on people.

It was a new bit of information, and it changed what we knew about somebody close to Benedict, and to be sure that I acted on it properly, I knew I had to damp down my feeling of excitement and follow procedure. I had to make sure I did things right.

So in order to do that, I had four conversations before I paid a visit to Rachel Jenner’s house that morning.

6:15 a.m.: FRASER

I paced around my bedroom, waiting for her to answer. She picked up quickly.

“Jim,” she said. “I’m hoping there’s a good reason for this. You do know I bite the heads off orphans before I’ve had my first coffee?”

“Nicola Forbes,” I said.

“What of her?”

“She hasn’t been entirely honest with us. Understatement.”

I gave her a synopsis.

“OK, you’ve got me interested. I’ll see you in my office in an hour.”

“If you don’t mind, boss, I’ll go and talk to John Finch first.”

“Do you think you should talk to Rachel Jenner first?”

“My feeling is that she doesn’t know about this.”

“OK. Keep me posted.”

6:45 a.m.: EMMA

I was up and dressed by now, one espresso down, and the Bialetti foaming on the stove again already, because although I was more fired up than I had been for days, I’ll admit I was feeling my lack of sleep just a touch, and I needed to drive that feeling back, so I could stay on the ball completely.

Emma was on the sofa and groggy as hell, her forehead all scrunched up as she tried to fight her way back to consciousness from a deep sleep. I knelt down beside her, whispered that I’d made her a cup of coffee, and held it near her face so she could smell it. When she’d managed to open her eyes, I filled her in on what I’d learned. That woke her up properly, like a shot of adrenaline straight into the arm.

7 a.m.: Ex-DI TALBOT

Ex-DI Talbot was the man who’d sent me the information. Officially, he was retired, but now and then he came in to work on cases as a civilian when extra bodies were needed. We always wanted him on a case because he was a proper bloodhound. He’d been digging into background on the individuals closest to Ben, and he’d stumbled on this information about Nicola Forbes. I wanted every detail from him. I wanted to hear it from him directly; to be sure I hadn’t misinterpreted his email.

8:30 a.m.: JOHN FINCH

The last was John Finch. When he opened the door to his house he was in checked pajama bottoms and a crumpled T-shirt, a pair of reading glasses pushed up onto his head. His knees buckled and I realized I should have called ahead.

“I’m sorry, sir,” I said. “There’s no news on Benedict’s whereabouts just yet, but if you wouldn’t mind, I would like to have a word with you about Nicola Forbes.”

He regained his composure impressively well. The man had nerves of steel. By the time his wife had reached the bottom of the stairs in the hallway behind him, wrapping a white dressing gown around herself, he had pulled the door open farther and invited me in graciously.

RACHEL

Nicky opened the door. It was midmorning, and DI Clemo was standing on the doorstep with Zhang.

“Is there news?” Nicky asked. It was all any of us ever seemed to say to each other. It was starting to sound pathetic to me, as if we would be punished just a little bit more each time we asked it, as if there were a vengeful God somewhere up there, counting each display of misplaced optimism.

There wasn’t any news. Clemo said that they were here to “have a chat,” though something in his tone of voice suggested otherwise. It made me feel wary, but Nicky seemed oblivious to it.

“I could have used a little bit of notice,” she said, “to get properly prepared for you, but I’m delighted you’ve made time to talk. We’re so very grateful. We’ve got so much to ask.”

She pulled some papers together, and tapped at her laptop, looking for a document.

“Here it is,” she said. “I’ve got a list here. It’s roughly broken into two categories: questions we have about the investigation and suggested actions to help in the search for Ben. Do you have a preference for which we should start with? And how would you like your tea? Or would you prefer coffee?”

I was watching Clemo and Zhang. He was waiting for Nicky to finish. Zhang looked at her notebook, which she’d laid neatly on the table in front of her, then glanced sideways at Clemo. Whatever they were here to say, he was going to be the one to say it, and I was becoming certain that it wasn’t to discuss Nicky’s wish list.

“Coffee, please,” he said. Zhang wanted some too.

As Nicky filled a French press with boiling water and set it down in front of us, Clemo watched her in a way that made frost settle on my skin.

“From our point of view,” she said, “this is so valuable. I’ve been doing some research, as you can see”—she smiled at them—“and everywhere it says that there’s a much higher chance of success in finding the child if there’s a close relationship between law enforcement and the family. So—thank you. So much. Help yourselves to milk and sugar.” She set down a sugar bowl and a small china jug. Steam rose from its contents. She’d warmed the milk.

DI Clemo opened his notebook and had a quick look inside it. He closed it again. Nicky finally heard the silence.

“I’m so sorry,” she said. “I’m gabbling, aren’t I? Sorry.” She pulled out a chair, sat down, and looked attentively at Clemo and Zhang.

Clemo cleared his throat before he spoke. “Do either of you know of a couple called Andrew and Naomi Bowness?”

I shook my head. “No.”

“Nicky?” he asked my sister.

Her face had emptied of color, instantly. It was extraordinary.

“Oh God, no,” she said, and the tendons on her neck appeared stretched and odd as she looked first at me and then back at Clemo, searching our faces for something. She stood up abruptly but didn’t seem to know what to do then.

“This will be easier if you can sit down and talk it through with us,” said Clemo.

“No,” said Nicky. “Don’t do this.” Her hands were clasped together, the edges of her fingers white from the pressure of her grasp.

“Please sit,” Clemo insisted.

She didn’t sit; she crumpled back into her chair, as if he’d sunk his fist into her stomach.

“What about their son, Charlie Bowness?” asked Clemo, in a tone that seemed carefully controlled to sound light. He adjusted his chair, moving it just a little closer to Nicky. She wouldn’t look at him.

“Nicky?” he asked. “You know who they are, don’t you?”

“You know I do,” she whispered.

“And you?” he asked me. “Do you know?”

“I’ve never heard of them,” I said.

I was transfixed at the sight of my sister so vulnerable and defenseless. I was aware that I should probably move, and go to her, but there was a ghastly momentum in the room now, and it felt unstoppable.

“She doesn’t know,” said my sister. “She hasn’t got a clue and that’s the way it should be.” Hatred had crept into her voice, and it was directed at Clemo.

He persisted. “And what about Alice and Katy Bowness? Do you know who they are?”

Nicky began to shake her head violently.

“Alice and Katy Bowness,” he repeated. “Do you know who they are?” He spoke slowly, giving each word space and a weight, as if it were a rock being dropped into water.

She looked right at him, and it seemed to cost her an enormous effort to do that. Defiance and defeat waged war in her expression. She spoke her next words quietly. “I know who they are.”

“Have you heard of them?” he asked me.

“No!” I said. “Who the hell are they? Have they got Ben?”

“Are you sure you haven’t heard of them?”

“No! She hasn’t! She’s telling the truth,” said my sister.

Clemo remained impassive. He contemplated me, and then my sister, in turn. I felt my chest tighten.

“Will you tell her, or will I?” he said to Nicky.

“You bastard.”

Zhang started to speak, but Clemo held a hand up to silence her.

“Careful,” he said to Nicky.

“You’re frightening me,” I said. “I don’t understand.”

Nicky turned toward me. I was sitting at right angles to her, at the head of the table. She wanted to take my hand and I let her.

“Who are these people?” I said.

“Andrew and Naomi Bowness… ,” said Nicky. It was hard for her to go on. A sob escaped her. “I’m sorry, Rachel,” she said. Her gaze flicked back to Clemo and he nodded at her, willing her to continue. She placed one trembling hand upon the other, so that my hand was buried beneath both of hers. I saw in her eyes that some kind of battle was lost.

“Rachel,” she said, “Andrew and Naomi Bowness are our parents. Our mum and dad.”

“What do you mean? No, they’re not. That’s not what our parents are called.” I tried to pull my hand away but Nicky was gripping it now.

“It is. Those are the real names of our parents,” my sister said. Her eyes were begging me to understand but I didn’t, not really, not yet.

“And Charlie Bowness?” I said.

“He…” She was welling up again, but she got herself under control. “He was our brother.”

“Brother?” I’d never had a brother. “And the others? I suppose they’re our sisters are they?”

“Tell her everything,” said Clemo.

He’d broken Nicky, drained the fight out of her. In her expression I saw terrible suffering, terrible vulnerability, and, most frightening of all, what looked like a plea for forgiveness.

“Alice and Katy Bowness are us. Those were our names before they were changed. We were, we are, Alice and Katy Bowness.”

Clemo briskly pulled something from between the pages of his notebook. It was a newspaper clipping.

If he hadn’t showed it to me there and then I’m not sure that I’d have believed any of them. I’d always been told that my parents died in a car accident. You could tell the story in an instant and I’d been doing that for years: our parents died in a head-on collision with a lorry. It had been nobody’s fault, just a tragic accident. The steering on the lorry was proved to be faulty. My parents were cremated and their ashes scattered. There was no headstone. End of story.

Except that apparently it wasn’t.

I wasn’t who I thought I was, nor was Nicky.

Clemo handed me a photocopy of a newspaper article from March 30, 1982, thirty years ago. There was a photograph of a couple that I recognized as my parents. My aunt Esther had had one photograph of them on her mantelpiece and this grainy image showed the same two people. The difference was that in this image they were with three children.