‘I don’t know. It’s just a feeling right now. But I think she could have done.’
‘Trust your instincts. Talk to Fraser about it, and keep your eyes peeled when you’re with the family. If Rachel Jenner’s done something she might well let it slip.’
‘I am already. I will.’
I reached over and ran my hand up and down her arm, then let it rest on her skin, which was always perfectly soft. I felt myself getting drowsy, but after a while Emma got up. ‘Where are you going?’ I asked, and she said, ‘I can’t sleep. I’m going to read for a bit next door. I’m fine. Go back to sleep.’
After she left, I was asleep again in moments, my hand resting on the warm spot on the bed where she’d been.
DAY 5
You and law enforcement are partners in pursuit of a common goal – finding your lost or abducted child – and as partners, you need to establish a relationship that is based on mutual respect, trust, and honesty.
‘When Your Child Is Missing: A Family Survival Guide’, Missing Kids USA Parental Guide, US Department of Justice, OJJDP Report
WEB PAGE – www.whereisbenedictfinch.wordpress.com
WHERE IS BENEDICT FINCH? For the curious…
FOOD FOR THOUGHT
Posted at 04.47 by LazyDonkey, on Thursday, 25 October 2012
On Monday, 22 October, 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 Dr Who figurines, the silhouette of his piled-up boxes of Lego.
I could just make out the dark stain on his carpet where he’d left a felt tip pen with its lid 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 realise 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 towards 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 neighbour’s garden. The stairs rumbled as she rushed down and outside to confront him, but he’d gone.
Out the 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 vandalising 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 6 am, feeling bruised from my dream at first, because it had lingered with me into the morning, and got 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 am: 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 am: EMMA
I was up and dressed by now, one espresso down, and the Bialetti foaming on the hob 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 adrenalin straight into the arm.
7 am: 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 am: JOHN FINCH
The last was John Finch. When he opened the door to his house he was in checked pyjama bottoms and a crumpled T-shirt, a pair of reading glasses pushed up onto his head. His knees buckled and I realised I should have called ahead.