The Missing Read online

  I can’t tell them what happened yesterday. I don’t want to worry them, not until I know what I’m dealing with.

  Waiting. My life has become one long wait. I’ve never felt more impotent in my life. Mark and Jake wouldn’t let me help with the search after Billy went missing. They said I needed to stay at home. “Someone needs to man the hub,” Mark said. I don’t think that was the real reason he told me to stay behind. I think he was worried I’d break down if we found anything awful. He would have been right but I can’t continue to sit and wait. I need to find Billy.

  “I’m fine, Dad.” I force a smile. “But I could do with some fresh air. Are those fliers up-to-date?” I point at the teetering pile of paper under the windowsill.

  “Yes.” Mum nods.

  “Could we go somewhere and hand them out? Maybe . . . the train station?”

  Last week I went through Billy’s things. I’ve been through them a hundred times since the police searched his room—the familiarity is comforting—and I found an exercise book at the bottom of a pile on his bookshelf. He’d only written in it twice. On the first page he’d half-heartedly attempted some math homework and then crossed it out and written underneath, Math is shit and Mr. Banks is a wanker.

  That made me smile. It was something I could imagine him saying to Mark when he’d ask how Billy was getting on with his coursework. Billy knew it would push his dad’s buttons but he’d say it anyway because he liked winding him up. I’d tell Billy off for swearing but it was always an effort not to laugh. Poor Mark.

  After I’d read what he’d written I found a pen and wrote underneath it, No swearing, Billy. The tightness in my chest eased off, just the tiniest bit. So I kept on writing. I wrote and I wrote until I had a cramp in my hand. It was so cathartic, so freeing to be able to cry, alone, without worrying that my grief might upset Jake and Mark.

  I almost missed the other thing he’d written in the book. I only spotted it when the back cover lifted as I put it down. He’d graffitied the inside and scrawled Tag targets in thick black marker:

  —Bristol T M (train?)

  —The Arches

  —Avonmouth

  I couldn’t believe I hadn’t spotted it before, not when I’d been through Billy’s things so many times, and I immediately rang DS Forbes. He wasn’t as excited as I was. He told me they’d looked at the CCTV at the train station when Billy was first reported missing and they’d checked out Avonmouth and the Arches as they knew he hung out with his friends there. But what if they’d missed something? Something only a mother could spot?

  “Great idea.” Mum snatches the laptop from my knees and slips it behind one of the sofa cushions.

  “Hiding it from burglars,” she says when I give her a questioning look.

  “We’ll have to be quick,” Mum says as she parks the car. “We’ve only got twenty minutes before a traffic warden slaps a ticket on the windscreen.”

  I clutch the fliers to my chest as we cross the road, passing a line of blue hackney cabs and a lone smoker pressed up against the exterior wall of the station.

  Inside Bristol Temple Meads there’s a crowd of people gazing up at the arrivals and departures boards and a stream of traffic in and out of WHSmith’s. It’s not as busy as it would have been if we’d got here at seven or eight o’clock but hopefully we’re less likely to be brushed off by harassed commuters.

  “We’ll get a cheap day return to Bedminster so we can get through the barriers,” Mum says as she heads toward the ticket machines, “then we’ll split up. You do platforms eight to fifteen and I’ll do one to seven. Try and get the shops in the underpass to stick a poster in their window if you have time.”

  “You okay?” she says, looking back at me as the machine spits out two tickets. “You’ve gone very white.”

  It’s as though the earth has just tilted on its axis. That’s the only way to explain how I feel. I was here yesterday. I bought a ticket to Weston. I crossed through the barriers. I got on a train. One of the staff, a man with fair hair and glasses, catches my eye as I glance across at the ticket counter and I look away sharply. Did he recognize me? Is that why he’s staring? Has he been told to keep an eye out for me because of something I said or did?

  “Claire?” Mum touches my arm. “Do you want to go back to the car? I can do the leaflet drop if you’re not feeling well. Or we can do it another day.”

  “No.” I press a hand over hers. There’s no reason to think I did anything strange during my blackout. Even when I’m drunk the worst I’ll do is massacre a song during karaoke or embarrass Mark by firing off the most childish jokes I know. “I’m fine. Honestly, Mum. Let’s get this done.”

  “You sure?”

  “Yes.” I let go of her hand and pass a leaflet to the man waiting patiently for us to vacate the ticket machine. “My son Billy is missing. Have you seen him? Do you recognize his face?”

  We’ve barely passed through the ticket barriers when Mum’s phone rings.

  “Oh, bugger,” she says under her breath as she fishes it out of her handbag. “It’s Ben, the journalist from the Bristol News that I was telling you about. I’m going to have to take this, Claire. You okay to go by yourself?”

  “Of course.”

  Mum turns left toward the coffee shop while I continue down the stairs to the subway that gives access to the platforms. I approach a lady who’s waiting for an elderly man to use the cashpoint and show her Billy’s flier.

  “This is my son, Billy Wilkinson. He’s fifteen. Have you seen him?”

  She looks down at his photo and, as her eyes dart from left to right, scanning his face, my heart flickers with hope. There are nearly half a million people in Bristol but all I need is for one person, just one, to say, “I saw a boy who looks like him sleeping rough,” or “I think I was served coffee by this boy yesterday.”

  “Sorry.” The woman shakes her head.

  I rush away before she can offer me any words of sympathy and thrust a leaflet at a man in a suit.

  He raises a hand. “No, thank you.”

  “It’s not a charity leaflet.” I rush after him. “And I’m not selling anything—”

  I’m cut off as he takes a sudden left and disappears into the men’s toilets.

  Undeterred, I approach a gang of foreign students, gabbling away to each other in Spanish outside the juice bar. “Have you seen this boy? He’s my son. He’s missing.”

  They exchange glances, then an attractive girl, with glossy black hair that reaches almost to her waist, steps forward and peers at the leaflet in my hands.

  “Nice,” she says, looking back up at me. “Nice boy. Handsome.”

  “Have you seen him? You or any of your friends?”

  She takes the leaflet from my hand, shows it to her friends and says something in Spanish. I can’t understand a word they say in reply but I know what a head shake, a shrug and a pouting mouth signify.

  “Could you put it up where you’re studying?” I ask the black-haired girl. “In your school? There’s a contact telephone number and an email address at the bottom if anyone has seen him.”

  She nods enthusiastically but I’m not sure she understands me. I don’t have time to double-check. I need to move on. I need to get Billy’s face in front of as many people as possible.

  The barista behind the counter of the coffee shop in the middle of the subway tells me she can’t put up Billy’s poster without consulting her manager, and he’s not in until 5 p.m. The queue at the sit-down coffee shop just yards away is too long to even contemplate talking to a member of the staff, so I drop a pile of leaflets on the table nearest the door instead. As I hurry through the subway toward platforms thirteen and fifteen I scan everything I see—posters, free newspaper racks, walls, doors—but they’re graffiti-free. If Billy did tag the train station he didn’t do it down here.

  I stop short when I reach the top of the stairs to the platforms. There’s a wreck of a building on the opposite side of the tracks. It’s the
derelict sorting office, now little more than a rectangular slab of concrete with gaping holes where the windows used to be. As I watch, pigeons flutter in and out but it’s not the birds that catch my eye. It’s the graffiti daubed all over the building. There are high walls, topped with barbed wire, surrounding it but that wouldn’t stop Billy, not if he was determined to put his mark on it.

  “Excuse me, madam.” A hand grips my shoulder and I spin around to find myself face-to-face with a tall man in a luminous yellow waistcoat and a black peaked cap.

  “British Transport Police,” he says, glancing at the bundle of paper in my hands. “It’s been reported that you’ve been distributing material to members of the public. Can I see your license or badge, please?”

  “License?” I step away from the yellow line on the platform edge as a train pulls into the station and the overhead announcer reports that the 11:30 a.m. train to Paddington is standing at platform thirteen. “What license?”

  “You need a license from the council to distribute leaflets at this station. There’s a fixed penality of eighty pounds or a court-imposed fine of up to two thousand five hundred if you haven’t got one.”

  “But . . . I . . . I don’t know. I came with my mum. She’s the one who got the leaflets printed and I’m sure she’s got permission for us to—”

  The doors to the carriages open and, as the passengers disembark, I’m distracted by a fracas further up the platform. There’s a small crowd of people around one of the doors and a man is shouting at someone to stop pushing in.

  And then I see him. Tall, slim, in a baseball cap and a black Superdry jacket, shoving his way to the front of the queue.

  “Billy!” I fling the leaflets away from me and sprint up the platform. “Billy! Billy, wait!”

  The policeman shouts. A pigeon, pecking at crumbs beneath a bench, is startled and flies into the air. A woman gasps, the crowd parts and my lungs burn as I launch myself through the open door and sprint down the carriage.

  “Billy!” I shout as he reaches an empty seat at the end and pauses. “Billy, it’s—”

  The words dry in my mouth as he turns and I see his profile.

  It’s not Billy. It’s not him.

  Tuesday, August 26, 2014

  Jackdaw44: Sorry.

  ICE9: What for?

  Jackdaw44: Telling you to go fuck yourself last week.

  ICE9: No, you’re not. You want something.

  Jackdaw44: Ha. Ha. Spot on.

  ICE9: So?

  Jackdaw44: Just wanted to talk to you.

  ICE9: You know where I live.

  Jackdaw44: Ha. Ha. Am at school. Need advice.

  ICE9: What about?

  Jackdaw44: Girls. Why are they such bitches?

  ICE9: What makes you think I know?

  Jackdaw44: I fucking hate Liv. She dumped me so why is she trying to put Jess off me?

  ICE9: Jealous? Maybe she still fancies you.

  Jackdaw44: Yeah, right. She’s fucking Ethan Thomas.

  ICE9: Revenge?

  Jackdaw44: What for?

  ICE9: Did you cheat on her?

  Jackdaw44: *confused face*

  ICE9: That’s a yes then.

  Jackdaw44: I was drunk.

  ICE9: Dick.

  Jackdaw44: That’s Mr. Big Dick to you.

  ICE9: Not according to Liv.

  Jackdaw44: Fuck off. (Not sorry.)

  Chapter 12

  “I’m not sure this is a good idea,” Mum says as I turn the key in the lock. “I don’t feel right leaving you here alone. Not after what happened. He was decent though, wasn’t he, that policeman? In the end. I knew he wouldn’t fine us, not when we told him about Billy. You saw the look on his face when he told us he had a son of about the same age. Kind of him to say he’d keep an eye out and help spread the word.”

  She follows me into the kitchen, hovering in the middle of the room as I drop my handbag onto a chair and open the fridge.

  “Are you okay?” Mum asks. “I know you feel embarrassed about what happened on the train but you mustn’t let it get to you. Imagine if it had been Billy and you hadn’t gone after him. You’d never have forgiven yourself.”

  “I thought I’d do a casserole for tea,” I say. “I know it’s the summer but everyone likes a sausage casserole, don’t they?” I drop two onions, five carrots and two packs of sausages onto the counter. “Twelve sausages—that’ll be enough, won’t it, although God only knows Jake could probably finish off the lot himself.”

  “Claire, talk to me, sweetheart. You haven’t said a word since we left the station.”

  I take a knife from the block on the counter. “The onions haven’t had long enough in the fridge to chill the juices. I always cry if they’re too fresh.”

  “Claire.”

  “I’m going to need swimming goggles. I think Billy’s got some in his room. I’ll just go up and—”

  “CLAIRE!”

  Mum slips around me, blocking my exit from the kitchen.

  “Claire, sit down.”

  “I can’t. I need to put the dinner on. I need to—”

  “Claire, please. Please sit down, love.” She gazes up at me, pain etched into her soft, lined skin. “Talk to me.”

  “I can’t. If I do I’ll cry.”

  “And?” Mum rubs her hand up and down my upper arm.

  “And I don’t know if I’ll ever stop.”

  “Oh, sweetheart.”

  “I thought I’d found Billy,” I say as she wraps me in her arms and I slump against her. “I thought the nightmare was over. But it’s not. It just carries on.”

  She squeezes me tightly. “We’ll find him, Claire. We’ll bring him back home.”

  Mum left an hour ago. She was going to stay until Mark or one of the kids got back but then Dad rang to say that his car battery had died and he was stuck at B&Q and could she collect him. She told him to get a taxi and they’d sort out the car later but I insisted she go to his rescue. I reassured her that I could go over to Liz’s if I was feeling wobbly. She left, begrudgingly, and gave me an extra-long squeeze at the door.

  My phone bleeps. It’s a text message from Mark.

  Are you still at your mum’s? How are you feeling? I’m going to try and get home a bit earlier than normal. Text me if you feel unwell.

  I text back.

  Just got home. I went to the train station to hand out some fliers.

  My phone bleeps almost immediately.

  With your mum?

  Yes.

  Who’s with you now?

  No one. I’m fine though.

  Don’t go anywhere. Jake or Kira should be back soon and I’m on my way.

  There’s no need to hurry, I type back. The last thing we need is for him to put his foot down and end up having an accident. Honestly. I’ll be fine.

  I met Mark in a nightclub in town. I was eighteen, he was nineteen and he crossed the dance floor to talk to me, shoulders back, all South Bristol swagger with an attitude to match. He told me he was going to become a policeman. “I’ve passed the competency tests, the fitness test and the medical. I’ve just got the second interview to go and I’m in.”

  For months, joining the police was all he could talk about. He’d turn up the radio whenever there was talk of an assault outside a nightclub or a drug bust out in a disused barn in the countryside. He read true-crime book after true-crime book, piling them up on his bedside table like badges of honor. And then he had his second interview and I didn’t hear from him for a week. My calls went unanswered. When I went to Halfords where he’d been working while he completed the application process he took one look at me, then turned on his heel and headed straight for the nearest staff-only door.

  I thought it was me. I thought that now he was a big-shot policeman he didn’t want anything more to do with me. He was going places while I was a receptionist at the Holiday Inn. He’d probably met some fit, ambitious policewoman during celebration drinks and didn’t have the guts to tell me we
were over. I went to his house. Twice. The lights were on both times and I could see the TV flickering through the thin curtains but Mark didn’t come to the door, even when I kept my finger glued to the doorbell and screamed at him through the letterbox.

  The truth came out three weeks later when I ran into one of his mates in a pub in town.

  “Mark not with you?” I said, two large glasses of wine and the encouragement of a friend giving me the nerve to approach him. “Teetotal now he’s a copper, is he?”

  “Mark’s not a copper.” He raised his hand and waved at a group of lads over by the bar.

  “What?” I grabbed his arm as he turned to go. “What did you say?”

  “He didn’t get in, did he? He wouldn’t say why, secretive little bastard. I reckon it’s because his uncles have done time. Anyway, Mark’s at home sulking.” He shrugged me off. “Why don’t you go and give him a blow job? Cheer him up a bit.”

  I swore at him under my breath as he made his way through the crowded bar but relief flooded through me. Mark hadn’t dumped me for someone else. He was hiding and licking his wounds. All the plans he’d made, all the hopes he had. Gone. I couldn’t help but feel sorry for him but I was angry too. How dare he cut off all contact with me just because he’d failed to get into the police? I deserved more than that.

  Two weeks later I found a note on the doormat when I got home from work.

  I’ve been a twat and I’m sorry. Meet me for a drink so I can explain. Please.

  I didn’t reply. Six weeks he’d kept me hanging. Let’s see how he liked it.

  I told Mum to tell Mark I was out if he rang, which he did—the next day. He didn’t leave a message.

  Ignoring his calls was torture. I nearly caved in several times but I ripped up the letters I’d spent forever composing before I could send them. Then he turned up at my door.

  “I thought about bringing flowers or wine or something but you’re worth more than that, Claire. Please,” he added before I could respond, “just hear me out. You can tell me to fuck off after I’ve said what I need to say. Can we go to the pub? We can sit outside if you want.”

  I listened for an hour as he explained how he’d struggled academically at school after his mum died, going in during the holidays for extra help with his coursework and scraping five low-grade GCSEs. He told me how his dad had said he’d never amount to anything and his best bet was to join him in the family’s building-supplies firm so he could learn about running a business. His dad had laughed when he’d told him he didn’t want to do that—he wanted to be a policeman—and had called him an informer. Two of Mark’s uncles were in prison, one for aggravated assault and one for fraud, and he knew his own dad wasn’t beyond taking a few payments under the table and passing on stolen goods.