My Husband's Son: A dark and gripping psychological thriller (5 page)

While an increasingly befuddled Mrs McCallum looked on, half her scalp in rollers, Vicky had sprinted back and forwards across the walkway, checking the nearby lifts and stairwells. When there was no sign of him there, she lunged for the stairs, taking them three at a time. It was at that point the thunderstorm finally broke, the heavy rain saturating the dry ground.

‘Somebody help me. I can’t find my son. Please help me. My son is gone.’ Although she wanted to scream this out loud, Vicky had tried not to let the words crystallise in her mouth. She felt as though if only she could keep those terrible sentences at bay she’d prevent what seemed to be happening from ever becoming a reality, ensuring this would all be nothing more than a horrible scare: that day where for a few awful minutes she thought she had lost her beautiful boy.

I looked at the thin black lines demarcating the car park on the architect’s drawing and imagined Vicky standing there in the rain. Desperately trying to spot the red dash of Barney’s T-shirt in amongst the wet cars and motorbikes, she would be praying that his face would suddenly appear and that, within minutes, she would be scolding and cuddling him for giving her such a fright.

The drawings contained floor plans for every storey of the building and Jason had written in the people thought to be living in each flat at the time. Where possible, he had also listed any other salient information pertaining to them. I did a quick scan of the names and details listed. I knew it was unlikely, but I wanted to make sure that a Mr Keith Veitch, the guy from the off-licence, hadn’t been a resident. As I searched for his name I was struck, as always, by the insalubrious nature of Ashbrook House. There was no Keith Veitch, but among the 154 people Jason had noted, there were three prostitutes, one drug dealer and two registered sex-offenders. One of the flats was derelict and regularly used as a doss-house by local drunks and addicts.

The question of whether or not someone from the flats had been involved in Barney’s disappearance was something Jason obsessed over endlessly. Since we’d got together, he must have talked through dozens of different potential scenarios. Had Barney wandered off and been taken on the spur of the moment by someone who wanted a child of their own? Had a nearby paedophile noticed Barney’s regular visits to Mrs McCallum’s flat and, when he’d appeared at the door that day, managed to lure him away to who knows where? Had he been taken, used and then killed? Or was he still alive, suffering God knows what kind of abuse?

Another possibility the police had considered was that someone who had been visiting the flats had taken Barney. The police thought it significant that he disappeared the same week the fair had been in town. The fair was based on the grassland a mile or so from Ashbrook House, and kids belonging to the fair families had been seen hanging out in the playground at the bottom of the flats on more than one occasion. The one thing no one could figure out was why, if Barney had been taken, he hadn’t screamed or put up a fight, and an explanation for this was that he had gone with the children from the fair. In awe of any kid who was older or bigger, he would have happily followed them wherever. However, intense questioning of everyone involved revealed nothing, and they were soon allowed to travel onto their next pitch.

Mrs McCallum, meanwhile, had proved to be an unreliable witness. Often confused, she couldn’t remember Barney being in her flat that day. This was not unusual. Her reality was a shifting one. As far as she was concerned, the Vicky that came to do her hair was the Vicky from five years previously, a lively young thing who had yet to have a child or a husband.

Once Mrs McCallum’s inability to corroborate Vicky’s statement got out, it added fuel to the conspiracy theory that Vicky, or Jason, had been involved in Barney’s disappearance. Some in the press, along with an army of armchair internet detectives, liked to speculate that the reason Mrs McCallum was unable to remember Barney was not because of her dementia but because he was genuinely never there. In carefully worded articles and cruel, uncensored forum posts they posited scenarios in which Vicky had done something, accidentally or intentionally, to hurt Barney before she arrived at Ashbrook House and had then conjured the whole unlikely wandering-out-of-the-flat story as a way of exempting herself from blame.

I returned the architect’s drawing to the file and flicked ahead. The next page in the folder was a plastic wallet containing four photo composites. These were the people reported as being seen in or near Ashbrook House in the days before Barney went missing. Individuals who, despite repeated appeals, the police had been unable to identify. I pulled them out and set them next to each other. The first showed a bald man with bulging cheeks and a mean line for a mouth. The other two, also men, looked to be in their forties and early twenties, respectively. The middle-aged guy had a long, thin face with a goatee beard while the younger one had a pierced eyebrow and hair shaved close to his head. The fourth photofit, meanwhile, was of a woman. Sporting a large mop of frizzy hair, she had small, round eyes that seemed to disappear into the depths of her face and a snub nose.

I tried to compare the three men against my memory of the manager from the off-licence but, apart from his sovereign rings and football shirt, he was a blur. I should have paid more attention, but at the time my focus had been on the boy.

I was about to move on to the next entry when I heard the front door click.

‘Heidi?’ panted Jason. ‘Are you home?’

My stomach clenched. Shoving everything back into the files, I heard the jingle-clunk of him putting his keys on the hall table followed by the tile-patter that meant he was in the kitchen.

‘Heidi?’ he shouted again, out of breath.

I’d almost got everything put back in what I hoped was the order I’d found it when his trainers thumped up the stairs.

I was halfway across the room, about to make my escape, when I remembered the four suspect photofits. They could be useful. I ran back to the cabinet, got out the file, removed the sketches, folded them into quarters and shoved them into my jeans pocket. Replacing the file, I slid the metal drawer shut and was ready to go.

My ear against the door, I waited for Jason to clear the landing and slipped out of the spare room. Tip-toeing into the bathroom, I flushed the toilet and appeared drying my hands.

‘There you are,’ said Jason, re-emerging from the bedroom.

I was all ready to feed him some line about my having only just got back from Carla’s when I realised his hair was dark with sweat. He’d been running, at this hour. Reaching his thumbs into the neck of his T-shirt, he hunched and hooked it over his head.

‘How far?’ I asked, trying to disguise my concern.

He got down on the floor, unlaced his trainers and removed his socks.

‘Fifteen miles,’ he said, wincing as he peeled the soaked fabric from his reddening toes. He held out his wrist and nodded at his watch. ‘I did a personal best.’

I looked at the door to the spare room and the files contained inside. Finding something in there to connect Barney’s disappearance with the off-licence was going to be a long-drawn-out process. I’d return to it soon but, in the meanwhile, the boy’s face would continue to gnaw at me.

Jason stretched his arms and yawned.

‘I need a shower.’ He pulled down his shorts and stepped out of them, towards the bathroom. His body was lithe and strong. Clean lines of muscle pulled tight over caramel skin, it seemed to pulse with the after-effects of his run.

‘Wait.’ I took a step forward and cupped my hands around his face. ‘How about some company?’ I brought his mouth to mine. His lips were salty with dried sweat. He returned the kiss but then, seeming to think better of it, he pulled away. Reaching down to the floor for his abandoned shorts and T-shirt, he screwed them into a ball and held them in front of his chest.

‘You go on and get into bed and I’ll join you when I’m done.’

‘Promise?’

‘I promise,’ he said, backing towards the shower, and with that he closed the door.

The next morning, I was up and dressed before first light. In the end, Jason had taken so long in the shower that I’d fallen asleep. I hadn’t heard him come to bed. Now, while he slept on, his arms surrendered high above his head, I took the alarm clock from the bedside table, perched on the old nursing chair we kept by the window and pulled the curtain to one side. Leaning forward, I placed the clock on the sill and waited for it to reach 6.07 a.m.

6.07 a.m. The time twelve years ago that Lauren, vernix-waxed and mewling, had made her way into this world.

In my hand was an old silver pocket-compass. Lauren’s compass.

A few boxes of books, clothes and pictures aside, as time had gone on I’d gradually come to part with most of her things. Everything except this compass. A small heavy weight at the bottom of my bag, I tended to carry it around with me always, its presence a comfort I couldn’t do without.

While I waited for the minutes to pass, I popped the catch and ran my thumb over the disc’s bevelled glass. Her favourite thing by far – none of her teddies, dolls or gadgets came even close – Lauren had acquired it on one of our weekends at Mum and Dad’s caravan in Whitstable. Trailing us around the town’s junk shops, that day she’d been pouty and restless, impatient to return to the arcades and bags of pink candyfloss that ballooned onto the streets. But then, mooching through a tray of old coins and mariner tat, she’d come across what she’d thought was a watch. Engraved with an elaborate thistle design, it had a flat back, smooth except for a miniscule indented hallmark, and was topped with a metal ring loop that, when spun, gave out an ear-piercing ratchet-and-pawl burr. Clicking open its pull-fit catch, she’d brought it over to show me, fascinated by the mother-of-pearl dial, elaborate wind-rose and triangular degree markings. After I’d explained how it worked and what it was for, she’d stalked off into the far corner of the shop and, pretending to be lost, had flipped it open, her eyes widening as the needle pivoted north.

When it came time to leave, I’d asked her to return the compass to its tray, but she’d refused. Clutching it to her chest, she had pleaded with me to buy it. It wasn’t expensive, maybe £10 or so, but, careful not to give in to her every whim, I’d said no. Still she’d continued to beg. Getting down on her knees, hands clasped, she’d promised me her pocket money, her favourite teddy, the birthday bike she’d set her heart on, anything so long as she could leave the shop with this old compass in her possession. Lauren Maisie Brogden. Aged four and three-quarters, curly of hair, bruised of knee and now, with the compass I of course eventually agreed to purchase, amateur explorer extraordinaire. A child with a chuckle so throaty she sounded like an old man; a child who insisted she read
Father Christmas Needs a Wee
three times a night every night (regardless of the time of year), once with me, once with Grandma and once with Grandad. Lauren Maisie Brogden. Proud owner of a fish called Bob and awkward teller of jokes. ‘What did the fish say when it hit the wall?’ she’d ask, pointing to Bob shimmying around his tank. ‘Damn.’ And then, before the punchline had time to settle, ‘Do you get it Mummy? Damn. The fish is swimming underwater and so it hits a dam, which is this thing that keeps water in one place. But when you say it out loud it’s the same as the swear word. Do you see?’

I checked the alarm clock: 5.56 a.m. Not long now.

Lauren Maisie Brogden.

It had taken me some time to realise I was pregnant. My periods had always been a bit all over the place and so, at first, hidden by the extra three stone I carried then, Lauren had stayed like a secret inside me, growing and swimming and making herself at home for my entire first trimester before she’d decided to show herself. Five months later and hours into a feral labour, she’d made up for those meek beginnings in spectacular style. With Mum at my side, cheering me on as best she knew how, I’d spent the night in hospital mooing and growling until finally, just as dawn was breaking, I’d roared Lauren out of my battered body and onto the bed.

Whenever Jason saw pictures from that time he would struggle to recognise me. I was so much bigger. But then, with Lauren gone, food became like dust. Unnecessary, unpalatable, forgotten.

The weight loss changed my face in ways I could never have predicted. Suddenly my eyes seemed bigger, my chin pointed, my cheekbones pronounced. In the first year without Lauren I couldn’t walk down the street without people stopping to offer their condolences. Nowadays, apart from the odd puzzled glance, I can go about my daily life in relative peace and for this I am grateful.

I looked out at the row of Victorian terraces opposite. Identical in every way to our side of the road, there were no front gardens. Instead, a single stone step acted as the tiny boundary between house and pavement. We’d bought the house just before we got married and, although it and the surrounding area were nothing like the orchards, fields and coastline of my youth, I’d grown to think of it as home. Built on a hill, our house was situated at the very point where the incline began to steep down to the town below. A river town – ‘the steel river’ Jason said they called it – its communities had been raised and fed around its ability to forge, smelt and temper. Nowadays, the steel industry existed here only in small, tentative pockets, pockets that Jason used to work, just like his dad and his dad’s dad before him.

I angled Lauren’s compass up and tilted it into the silty morning light. The needle wobbled for a moment and then lodestoned north, towards the iron-gored Eston Hills and beyond. North to where, right now, the boy from the off-licence was probably fast asleep. I wondered if he had a bedroom to call his own or if he was being kept locked up somewhere dark and out of the way. I tried to remember how the shop had looked from the outside. Did it have an obvious cellar or a basement?

On the bed behind me I heard Jason stir, and for a brief, ridiculous, second I worried he was somehow able to listen in on my thoughts. There was another rustle of duvet and then the bed-frame gave a loud, telltale creak. He was getting up. Padding across the room to where I sat, he reached his arms around my shoulders and leant his head against mine. I breathed in his sour sleep smell and for a moment I let my eyes close. We stayed like that a while and then, as he came back up to standing, I felt him tense. He’d registered the time on the alarm clock. I worried he might say something. That, despite his better instincts, he might try and find the words. Instead he stretched across to the dressing table, picked up my round brush and set about slowly pulling its bristles through my hair. And then he did it again and again, so gently, over and over, the repetition like some silent morning prayer.

I looked at the alarm clock: 6.03 a.m.

Lauren had disappeared while playing on her bike outside Mum and Dad’s caravan. I had chosen that precise moment, the wrong moment, to pop back inside and start preparing lunch. She was out of my sight for less than two minutes.

Where had the boy from the off-licence spent last night?

I realised that Jason had stopped brushing my hair and again I worried he could hear my thoughts. Then I saw the clock.

As the final digit changed from a six to a seven I made a decision.

I had to go back and check on the boy. I needed to get a second look. I needed to be sure. Next chance I got, I was going back.