What She Knew Read online

  “No,” I said. “It’s my son. I’ve lost my son.”

  As I spoke, I felt a bead of blood trickle down my forehead.

  And so it began.

  We hunted for Ben, the lady and I. We scoured the area around the rope swing and then returned to the path, striking out along it in opposite directions with a plan to converge at the main parking lot.

  I wasn’t calm, not a bit. Fear made my insides feel as if they were melting.

  As we searched, the woods were transforming. The sky became darker and overcast and in places the overhanging branches were dense enough to form a solid arch, and the path became a dark burrow.

  Leaves gusted around me like decomposing confetti as the wind began to build, and great masses of foliage shuddered and bent as it whipped through the canopy above.

  I called for Ben over and over again and listened too, straining to decipher the layers of sound the woods produced. A branch cracked. A bird called, a high-pitched sound, like a yelp, and another answered. High overhead was the sound of an airplane.

  Loudest of all was me: my breathing, the sound of my boots slapping through the mud. My panic was audible.

  Nowhere was the sound of Ben’s voice, or of Skittle.

  Nowhere did I see a bright red anorak.

  By the time I reached the parking lot I felt hysterical. It was packed with cars and families, because there were teams of boys and their supporters leaving the adjacent soccer field. A fantasy role-play enactment group loitered in one corner, bizarrely costumed, packing weaponry and picnic coolers into their cars. They were a regular sight in the woods on Sunday afternoons.

  I focused on the boys. Many of them wore red jerseys. I moved among them looking for him, turning shoulders, staring into faces, wondering if he was there, camouflaged by his anorak. I recognized some faces. I called his name, asked them if they’d seen a boy, asked them if they’d seen Ben Finch. A hand on my arm stopped me in my tracks.

  “Rachel!”

  It was Peter Armstrong, single dad of Ben’s best friend, Finn. Finn stood behind him in soccer uniform, mud-streaked, sucking on a piece of orange.

  “What’s happened?”

  Peter listened as I told him.

  “We need to phone the police,” he said. “Right now.” He made the call himself, while I stood beside him, shaking, and couldn’t believe what I was hearing because it meant that this was real now, that it was actually happening to us.

  Then Peter organized people. He rallied the families in the parking lot and got some to stay behind with the children, others to form a search party.

  “Five minutes,” he said to everyone. “Then we leave.”

  As we waited, raindrops began to speckle the front of Peter’s glasses. I trembled and he put his arm around me.

  “It’ll be OK,” he said. “We’ll find him.”

  We were standing like that when the old lady emerged from the woods. She was out of breath and her dog strained at its lead. Her face fell when she saw me.

  “Oh my dear,” she said. “I’m so sorry. I was sure you would have found him by now.” She laid a hand on my arm, for support as much as reassurance.

  “Have you called for help?” she asked. “As it’s getting dark, I think you must.”

  It didn’t take long, but even so, by the time everyone had mustered, the shadows and shapes of the trees around us had lost their definition and merged into indistinct shades of darkness, making the woods seem impenetrable and hostile. Anybody who had one brought a flashlight. We were a motley crew, a mixture of soccer parents, reenactors still in costume, and a Lycra-clad cyclist. Our pinched faces told not just of the deepening chill, but of the darker and growing fear that Ben wasn’t just lost, but that he’d come to harm.

  Peter addressed everybody: “Ben’s wearing a red anorak, blue trainers that flash, jeans, and he’s got brown hair and blue eyes. The dog’s a black-and-white cocker spaniel called Skittle. Any questions?”

  There were none. We broke into two groups and set off in each direction along the path. Peter led one group; I led the other.

  The woods swallowed us up. Before ten minutes had passed the rain worsened and great fists of water broke through the canopy. Within minutes we were wet through, and large spreading puddles appeared on the path. Our progress slowed dramatically, but we carried on calling and listening, the beams of the flashlights swinging wide and low into the woodland around us, eyes straining to see something, anything.

  As each second passed and the weather pressed in around us, my fear built into a hot, urgent thing that threatened to explode inside me.

  After twenty minutes I felt my phone vibrate. It was a text from Peter.

  “Meet parking lot,” it said, and that was all.

  Hope surged. I began to run, faster and faster, and when I emerged from the path and into the lot I had to stop abruptly. I was in the full glare of a pair of headlights. I shielded my eyes.

  “Rachel Jenner?” A figure stepped into the beam, silhouetted.

  “Yes?”

  “I’m WPC Sarah Banks. I’m a police constable, from Nailsea Police Station. I understand your son is lost. Any sign of him?”

  “No.”

  “Nothing at all?”

  I shook my head.

  A shout went up from behind us. It was Peter. He had Skittle cradled in his arms. He gently laid the dog down. One of Skittle’s delicate hind legs was at a painful, unnatural angle. He whimpered when he saw me, and buried his nose into my hand.

  “Ben?” I asked.

  Peter shook his head. “The dog hobbled onto the path right in front of us. We’ve no idea where he came from.”

  My memories of that moment are mostly of sound, and sensation. The rain wet on my face, soaking my knees as I knelt on the ground; grim murmurs from the people gathered around; the soft whimpering of my dog; the wild gusting of the wind; and the faint sound of pop music coming from one of the cars that the kids had sheltered in, its windows all steamed up.

  Cutting through everything was the crackle of the police radio just behind me, and the voice of WPC Banks calling for assistance.

  Peter took the dog away, to the vet. WPC Banks refused to let me go back into the woods. With her sharp young features and neat, white little teeth she looked too immature to be authoritative, but she was adamant.

  We sat in my car together. She questioned me closely about what Ben and I had been doing, where I’d last seen him. She took slow, careful notes in bulbous handwriting, which looked like fat caterpillars crawling across the page.

  I rang John. When he answered I began to cry and WPC Banks gently took my mobile from me and asked him to confirm that he was Ben’s dad. Then she told him that Ben was lost and that he should come right away to the woods.

  I rang my sister, Nicky. She didn’t answer at first, but she called me back quickly.

  “Ben’s lost,” I said. It was a bad line. I had to raise my voice.

  “What?”

  “Ben’s lost.”

  “Lost? Where?”

  I told her everything. I confessed that I’d let him run ahead of me, that it was my fault. She took a no-nonsense approach.

  “Have you called the police? Have you organized people to search? Can I speak to the police?”

  “They’re bringing dogs, but it’s dark, so they say they can’t do anything more until morning.”

  “Can I speak to them?”

  “There’s no point.”

  “I’d like to.”

  “They’re doing everything they can.”

  “Shall I come?”

  I appreciated the offer. I knew my sister hated driving in the dark. She was a nervous driver at the best of times, cautious and conservative on the road, as in life. The routes around our childhood cottage, where she was staying for the night, were treacherous even in daylight. In the depths of rural Wiltshire, on the edge of a large forested estate, the cottage was accessible only via a network of narrow, winding lanes edged w
ith deep ditches and tall hedges.

  “No, it’s OK. John’s on his way.”

  “You must ring me if there’s any news, anything.”

  “I will.”

  “I’ll stay up by my phone.”

  “OK.”

  “Is it raining there?”

  “Yes. It’s so cold. He’s only wearing an anorak and a cotton top.”

  Ben hated to wear sweaters. I’d got him into one that afternoon before we left for the woods, but he’d wriggled out of it once we were in the car.

  “I’m hot, Mum,” he’d said. “So hot.”

  The sweater, red, knitted, lay on the backseat of my car, and I leaned back and pulled it onto my lap, held it tight, smelled him in its fabric.

  Nicky was still talking, reassuring, as she usually did, even when her own anxiety was building.

  “It’s OK. It won’t take them long to find him. He can’t have gone far. Children are very resilient.”

  “They won’t let me search for him. They’re making me stay in the parking lot.”

  “That makes sense. You could injure yourself in the dark.”

  “It’s nearly his bedtime.”

  She exhaled. I could imagine the creases of worry on her face, and the way she’d be gnawing at her little-finger nail. I knew what Nicky’s anxiety looked like. It had been our constant companion as children. “It’ll be OK,” she said, but we both knew they were only words and that she didn’t know that for sure.

  When John arrived WPC Banks spoke to him first. They stood in the beam of John’s headlights. The rain was relentless still, heavy and driving. Above them a huge beech tree provided some shelter. It had hung on to enough of its leaves that its underside, illuminated by the lights from the car, looked like a golden corona.

  John was intently focused on what WPC Banks was saying. He exuded a jumpy, fearful energy. His hair, usually the color of wet sand, was plastered blackly around the contours of his face, which were pallid, as if they’d been sculpted from stone.

  “I’ve spoken to my inspector,” WPC Banks was telling him. “He’s on his way.”

  John nodded. He glanced at me, but moved his eyes quickly away. The tendons in his neck were taut.

  “That’s good news,” she said. “It means they’re taking it seriously.”

  Why wouldn’t they? I wondered. Why wouldn’t they take a missing child seriously? I stepped toward John. I wanted to touch him, just his hand. Actually, I wanted him to hold me. Instead, I got a look of disbelief.

  “You let him run ahead?” he said, and his voice was stretched thin with tension. “What were you thinking?”

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “I’m so sorry.”

  There was no point in trying to give him an explanation. It was done. I would regret it forever.

  WPC Banks said, “I think for now it would be best if all of our focus is on the search for Ben. It won’t do him any good if you cast blame.”

  She was right. John understood that. He was blinking back tears. He looked distraught and incredulous. I watched him cycle through everything I’d been feeling since Ben had gone. He had question after question, each of which WPC Banks answered patiently until he was satisfied that he knew everything there was to know, and that everything possible was being done.

  As I stood beside him, and let WPC Banks reassure him, I realized that it had been more than ten months since I’d seen him smile, and I wondered if I ever would again.

  JIM

  Addendum to DI James Clemo’s report for Dr. Francesca Manelli

  Transcript recorded by Dr. Francesca Manelli

  DI James Clemo and Dr. Francesca Manelli in attendance

  Notes to indicate observations on DI Clemo’s state of mind or behavior, where his remarks alone do not convey this, are in italics.

  This transcript is from the first full psychotherapy session that DI Clemo attended. Previous to this we had only a short preliminary meeting in which I took a history from DI Clemo and we discussed the report that I had asked him to write.

  Predictably, given his resistant attitude to therapy, the report that DI Clemo submitted at this stage was lacking in comment on areas of his personal and emotional experience at the time of the Benedict Finch case. The transcripts fill in the gaps somewhat. My priority in this first session was to begin to establish DI Clemo’s trust in me.

  DI Clemo elected to see me at my private consultation rooms based in Clifton, rather than at the facility provided at police HQ.

  Dr. Francesca Manelli (FM): Good to see you again. Thank you for making a start on your report.

  DI James Clemo (JC) acknowledges this comment with a terse nod. He hasn’t yet spoken.

  FM: I’ve noted your objection to continuing to attend these sessions with me.

  JC makes no comment. He is also avoiding eye contact.

  FM: So, I’d like to start by asking whether there have been any more incidents?

  JC: Incidents?

  FM: Panic attacks, of the sort that led to your referral to me.

  JC: No.

  FM: Can you describe to me what happened on the two occasions that you experienced the panic attacks?

  JC: I can’t just come in here and talk about stuff like that.

  FM: It would be helpful to have more detail, just to get us started. What triggered the feelings of panic, how they grew into a full-blown attack, what you were feeling while it happened.

  JC: I’m not talking about my feelings! It’s not what I do. I’m sick of the way feelings are all anybody wants to talk about. Watching any sport on TV these days, that’s all the commentators ask people. Sue Barker talking to a guy who’s played tennis for four hours or collaring someone who’s just lost the most important football game of his life. “How are you feeling?” What about “How did you do it? How hard have you worked to get here?”

  FM: Do you think that expressing feelings is a weakness?

  JC: Yes, I do.

  FM: Is that why you don’t like talking about the panic attacks? Because they might have been prompted by some very strong feelings that you had?

  He doesn’t reply.

  FM: Everything you say in here will remain confidential.

  JC: But you’ll make a decision about whether I’m fit to work.

  FM: I’ll report back to your DCI and make a recommendation, but nobody else will see the contents of your report, or the transcripts of our conversations. Those are for my use only. They’ll form the basis of our ongoing conversations. This is going to be a long process, and if you can work toward being open with me, we have a much greater chance of success, and we can hopefully get you back out there doing the work you want to do.

  JC: I’m a detective. It’s in my blood. It’s what I live for.

  FM: You need to be aware, also, that the number of psychotherapy sessions that your DCI is prepared to fund is limited.

  JC: I know that.

  FM: Then talk to me.

  He takes his time.

  JC: At first it was like being winded, I couldn’t get a proper breath in. I kept yawning, and breathing, trying to get air, trying to stop the dizziness, because I thought I was going to pass out. Then my heart was pounding really fast, and I stopped being able to think, I couldn’t get my mind to do anything, and then there was panic all over, gripping me, and all I wanted to do was to get out of there, and punch a wall.

  FM: Which you did.

  JC: I’m not proud of that.

  He covers the knuckles on his right hand with his left hand, but not before I’ve noticed that they’re still scabbed and sore.

  FM: And you also experienced some bouts of crying in the days after this?

  JC: I don’t know why.

  FM: It’s nothing to be ashamed of. It’s another symptom of anxiety, just like the panic attacks.

  JC: I’m stronger than that.

  FM: Strong people experience anxiety.

  JC: What I hate most of all is the crying starts anytime, anywhere. I can’t
stop it. I’m like a baby.

  Tears have begun to fall down JC’s face.

  FM: No. You’re not. It’s just a symptom. Take some time. We’ll come back to this.

  He takes a tissue from the box by his chair, wipes his face roughly, tries to compose himself. I make a few notes, to give him some time, and after a minute or two he engages with me.

  JC: What are you writing?

  FM: I take a few handwritten notes with every patient. It helps me to remember our sessions afterward. Would you like to see what I’ve written?

  JC shakes his head.

  FM: I’d like to ask you what kind of support network you might have around you. A partner?

  JC: No partner currently.

  FM: Family or friends then?

  JC: My mum lives in Exeter; I don’t see her much. My sister too. My friends in Bristol are mostly colleagues so we don’t talk about stuff outside work.

  FM: I see from your notes that your father passed away a little before the Benedict Finch case started.

  JC: That’s correct. About a month before.

  FM: And he was a detective too?

  JC: He was Deputy Chief Super in Devon and Cornwall.

  FM: Was he the reason you joined the force?

  JC: A big part of it, yeah.

  FM: And you started your career in Devon and Cornwall?

  JC: I did.

  FM: Was that hard? Did you feel you had a lot to live up to, in your dad?

  JC: Of course, because I did.

  FM: Did that feel like pressure?

  JC: I’m not afraid of pressure.

  FM: When you were with Devon and Cornwall was it well known that you were your father’s son?

  JC: When I started I was known as “Mick Clemo’s boy,” but it’s the same for anyone who’s got a relative in the force.

  FM: And when you moved to Bristol, to the Avon and Somerset force, did that change?

  JC: It changed completely. Only one or two of the older guys in Bristol knew my dad personally.

  FM: So it was a chance for a fresh start?