The Missing: The gripping psychological thriller that’s got everyone talking... (25 page)

If my husband is surprised to see me sitting at the kitchen table after two nights at Mum’s house he doesn’t let on. He gives me a nod as he steps into the room. He is dressed in a dark blue suit with a white shirt and a grey-and-white striped tie. His black shoes are shiny. His hair is neatly brushed back from his face. The only thing out of place is the position of his laptop bag. Normally he wears it casually slung over one shoulder. Today he is clutching it to his chest.

Liz’s eyes narrow as he walks into the kitchen.

‘All right, Mark?’ she says in a tight voice.

He doesn’t acknowledge her. ‘Claire, could I talk to you? Alone.’

Liz looks at me and raises an eyebrow. So many emotions in one look – irritation, anger, worry – one wrong word from my husband and she’ll go off.

I reach for her hand. ‘I’ll come and see you later? Okay?’

She nods, her lips pressed tightly together and stands up.

She leaves the kitchen, deliberately taking a wide arc around Mark. He barely registers her departure. His eyes are fixed on me as he sits down stiffly at the table, hugging his laptop to his chest. ‘Is he here?’

‘Jake? No, but Kira’s upstairs.’

‘Right.’ He looks from the hallway to the kitchen window. ‘We can’t talk here. Let’s go to the garage.’

I am so stunned, so wrong-footed by the look on his face, that I do as I am told and follow him out of the house and into the garage. He turns on the light and then sits down on Jake’s weight bench. He pats the space beside him and waits for me to sit down. He looks surprised when I shake my head.

‘Claire –’ he places the laptop bag on his knees and presses down on it with the heels of his hands – ‘I don’t know how to tell you this.’

‘You’re having an affair.’ The words sound ridiculous as they come out of my mouth. I feel as though I’m playing the role of the wronged wife in a soap opera.

‘What?’

‘With Edie Christian.’

‘Edie Chr—’ He tips back his head and laughs.

Irritation bubbles inside me. ‘Mark, I know. Stephen told me. Billy saw you kissing her in a pub last year.’

Mark’s laughter stops as quickly as it started. ‘What?’

‘Billy was there. He was outside, waiting for Alfie. He saw you, he heard your phone conversation with your boss outside, he saw the kiss.’

‘He …’

‘He was hiding behind a skip. He heard and saw everything. That’s why he defaced all the photos of you in the album. I checked the dates on the calendar. It happened last summer.’

Mark doesn’t say a word. He stares at me dumbly, his bottom lip wet with spittle. He blinks several times, then looks down at the laptop on his knee.

‘Mark?’

His Adam’s apple bobs up and down as he swallows. ‘I can’t … I can’t take it in. I came home to talk to you about something else. I wasn’t expecting this.’

‘When did the affair start?’

‘Affair?’ He frowns. ‘I haven’t had an affair.’

‘There’s no point denying it. I’ll ask her.’

‘Ask who?’

‘Edie Christian.’

‘Oh God.’ He runs a hand over his hair. ‘Claire, I’m not having an affair with Edie Christian, or anyone else for that matter.’

‘So you’re denying that you kissed her? You’re saying Billy was lying.’

‘No. He wasn’t. But he didn’t see what he thought he saw.’

‘So tell me what happened then?’

‘Oh God, Claire. It wasn’t … it wasn’t as bad as it sounds.’

‘You kissed another woman.’

‘I tried to.’

‘And that’s supposed to make me feel better?’

‘We …’ He puts the laptop down on the bench beside him and stands up so he’s facing me. ‘We hadn’t been getting on for a while and—’

‘So it’s my fault, is it?’

‘No! God, no! It was me, it was all me. I was stressed. Dad had been ringing me up to moan about how unreliable Stephen was but when I tried to ring Stephen he laid into me. He said they were overworked and understaffed and if I gave a shit about Dad I’d do the right thing and join the firm. Then Dad had his heart attack and I was so scared. I thought he was going to die and it was my fault for being ambitious and thinking a builder’s merchants was beneath me. Then there was work – my work – and the pressure I was under to hit my targets. The kids were fighting at home. You and I weren’t getting on. And I couldn’t deal with it, Claire. I didn’t have anyone to talk to.’

‘You’ve got friends.’

‘I know. But no one wants to be the boring bastard bringing the mood down on a night out by complaining about how stressed they are.’

‘You could have talked to me.’

‘Could I? We were jumping down each other’s throats every other day.’

‘And you thought kissing another woman would help?’

‘No!’ He reaches me for but I shift back before he can touch me. ‘I was drunk. I was drinking alone and then Phil Jones called. He said I hadn’t been performing well and my figures were shit and that he’d have to let me go. I begged him. I begged him not to and I told him everything – all the reasons why I’d been struggling – and he said he’d give me one last chance. A written warning and if I put one foot wrong I was out. I was a mess when I went back into the pub. Miss Christian was there with some of her friends and she came over to the bar to see if I was okay. She was so nice to me and I was drunk and I was so stupidly grateful that she gave a shit that I … I …’

‘Tried to kiss her.’

‘Yeah.’ He briefly closes his eyes. ‘She pushed me away. She was so shocked. Really embarrassed. I tried to smooth things over but she ran off to her friends and then someone over by the window stood up and asked if anyone had a Ford Focus because someone had just chucked a rock through the window.’

‘It was Billy.’

‘What?’

‘Stephen told me.’

‘Stephen knew all this and he didn’t say anything?’

‘He was protecting Billy. He’d been confiding in him. You should understand that.’

Mark shakes his head, his cheeks flushed red with anger. ‘Why should I?’

‘Because apparently you had no one to talk to either.’

‘Claire?’ He reaches for my hand. ‘Please don’t cry. Please. I can’t bear it.’

‘I’m not crying because I’m upset. I’m angry. I’m so bloody angry that—’

‘It wasn’t even a kiss, not really.’

‘It’s not that!’ I throw his hand away from me. ‘It’s you. You and Billy and Stephen and Jake. Things go wrong in your lives but instead of talking about them you smash things up and drink and cheat and lie. What’s wrong with you? What the hell is wrong with all of you?’

Mark stares at his feet as I scream in frustration.

‘Why didn’t any of you talk to me? I could have helped.’

‘Could you?’ Mark says softly.

‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

‘There are some things you can’t control, Claire – some things you can’t fix. It might not make sense to you, the way we deal with our shit, but it’s our way of coping.’

‘So Billy was right to throw a rock at your car, was he? Graffitiing his school was a good thing? So was winding up his brother and insulting you?’

‘I don’t know.’ He sinks back down onto the weight bench and rests his head in his hands. ‘I don’t know anything any more. I knew we were going to have a tough conversation tonight but not about this.’

‘What did you want to talk to me about?’

‘This.’ He touches the laptop bag on the bench beside him.

‘What are you talking about?’

‘I found some photos on it,’ he mumbles through his fingers. ‘Photos of little boys. Naked photos.’

A cold chill runs through me. ‘Whose laptop is that, Mark?’

He looks up at me. ‘It’s Jake’s.’

Neither of us speaks as we stare out from the garage. The laptop, resting on top of the bag, is on the floor in front of us. Neither of us want to touch it.

Mark told me he borrowed it from Jake’s room this morning, after his own laptop had failed to boot up when he’d installed an update. Jake had already left for work and Kira was still asleep in bed. She stirred when Mark knocked on the door, then waved a hand towards the desk when he’d asked if he could borrow Jake’s laptop.

Mark didn’t try to log on until he reached a service station on the M4 on his way to Chippenham. We bought the laptops for both boys for Christmas two years ago. Mark set them up. He created their accounts and gave them both the same password – BRISTOLCITY123. Jake hadn’t bothered to change his and Mark was able to log straight in. He downloaded some PowerPoint images he needed from OneDrive. And that’s when he discovered the pictures in Jake’s downloads folder.

Boys. Loads and loads of images of boys in their early teens. Some standing casually in front of the camera with their arms crossed over their chests and erect dicks proudly on display. Others adopting different positions, bent over, on all fours, or else sucking on dildos or the erect penises of men or boys out of shot.

Mark showed me the search history:

How to meet young boys

Chat sites where young boys meet up

How to groom young boys

Social media for meeting kids

The list went on and on.

‘Could it be someone else?’ I asked. ‘Maybe Jake lent the laptop to someone at work?’

But we could tell by the dates and times that Jake had been home when the searches were made. The majority of them were when he was off work with stress. When he was in his bedroom, me sitting downstairs with no idea what he was up to.

‘Claire,’ Mark hisses as a white van pulls up on the street outside, rap music blaring out of the open window. ‘He’s back.’

Jake laughs as he strolls up the driveway towards us.

‘What are you two up to? His and hers workout?’

‘Jake—’ Mark begins but I interrupt him.

‘Could we have a word?’

Jake draws to a halt outside the garage. ‘In there?’

‘Kira’s in the house,’ I say. ‘And this discussion would be better in private.’

‘So let’s go to the pub then?’ He inclines his head towards his van. ‘Unless … has this got something to do with Billy? Is there news?’

‘No,’ Mark says. ‘This is about you. Close the garage door please.’

Jake does as he’s told then turns back to look at us. His eyes are wide and fearful.

‘Dad borrowed your laptop this morning.’ I point to the computer on the floor between us. ‘He found some images.’

‘Photos,’ Mark says. ‘Of young boys.’

All the colour drains from Jake’s face. The garage door clangs as he stumbles back into it. ‘It’s not what you think.’

‘What do we think, Jake?’

‘That I’m a paedophile. And I’m not. I’m really not.’

‘Jake.’ I fight to keep the emotion out of my voice. ‘Those messages you showed me on your phone. Were they between you and a young boy? Were you arranging to meet him?’

‘What messages?’ Mark gives me a sideways look. I asked Jake not to tell him what happened the night of my car-park fugue. And he obviously hasn’t.

‘No.’ Jake holds out his hands. ‘You’ve got it wrong. I was going to meet someone, but not a boy. I was the boy.’

Mark and I exchange a look.

‘I was pretending to be a boy. Fuck.’ Jake slaps himself on the side of the head. ‘Look, I was angry, okay. You told me about that bastard in jail and what he said he’d done to Billy and I couldn’t … I couldn’t deal with it. It was fucking with my head. I couldn’t sleep. I kept … I had these horrible thoughts, about the things he’d done to my brother and I felt like it was my fault. If I hadn’t hit Billy then he wouldn’t have run away and the paedophile wouldn’t have got him … he wouldn’t have …’ He twists to one side and pounds his clenched fist into the garage door.

‘That doesn’t make sense,’ Mark says. ‘Jason Davies is in prison and inmates don’t have access to computers. Why would you pretend to be a young boy?’

‘To trap one of them. I knew I couldn’t get to Davies but I still wanted to hurt someone. To get revenge for Billy.’

‘But we don’t know if Jason Davies had anything to do with Billy going missing,’ I say. ‘The police are still investigating and—’

‘They’ve been investigating for nearly seven months and found sod all!’ Jake rubs his clenched fist. ‘I had to do something.’

‘You can’t take the law into your own hands, son!’ Mark says but if Jake hears him he blocks him out.

‘I thought if I put a photo of me when I was thirteen or fourteen on Tinder then all the paedos would come running but they didn’t. A few older women sent me messages to say that you have to be eighteen to be on Tinder and then suddenly my account was suspended. Someone must have reported me.

‘So I did some research online. And I know how dodgy it looks –’ he glares at Mark – ‘but what was I supposed to do? I’m not a paedo. I don’t know where they hang out or how they do their twisted shit but I had to read about it, didn’t I? To find out, so I could pretend to be a kid.’

He wipes a hand over his brow. It’s airless and hot in the garage and Jake isn’t the only one sweating. ‘I got obsessed with it. I kept dangling bait, waiting to see who’d bite, but they’re really nervy. They won’t agree to meet up with you just because you say you’re fourteen. They need photos first, photos in lots of different poses to show you’re who you say you are.’

‘But those photos. Fucking hell, son.’ Mark shakes his head as though he’s trying to clear his brain of the images on Jake’s hard drive.

‘I know, I know. I couldn’t look at them either but I had to do it. I had to reel one in.’

‘But that’s the police’s job, Jake! Not yours!’ I look to my husband for support. He rubs his hands over his face and peers at me over his fingertips. He looks as shocked, exasperated and exhausted as I feel.

‘Yeah? Well, the police did a fucking great job with Jason Davies, didn’t they, Mum? They let him get Billy.’

‘We don’t know that!’ Mark says. ‘We don’t know what happened to Billy. No one does.’

‘But what if he did do it, Dad? He said he did. He’s abused other kids. That’s why he’s in jail. I looked him up on the Internet. I read about his court cases. I couldn’t get to Davies but I thought that if I took one out – one paedophile – if I fucked him up badly enough he’d be too scared to try it again. And I’d have saved a kid. I’d have saved someone else’s child, someone else’s brother but then …’ He rubs a hand over his eyes and takes several deep breaths.

‘What is it, Jake?’

‘You followed me.’

‘What?’ Mark looks at me.

‘To the car park?’ I say. ‘I followed you to the car park?’

‘Claire?’ Mark says. ‘What are you talking about? What car park? What happened?’

‘Mum followed me. I went to meet this guy, someone I’d reeled in, in the men’s toilets in a car park in town and Mum turned up.’

All the hairs on my arms go up. He was there. Jake was there. And he ran off and left me.

‘Oh God, Mum. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.’ Jake stalks from one side of the garage to the other, breathing heavily through his nose and staring at the ceiling.

‘Tell us what happened!’ Mark barks and Jake stops pacing and looks me in the eye.

‘This guy, Graham, I met him in a chat room for teens. I called myself Jamie and said I was fourteen. We started chatting about football at first but it didn’t take him long to ask me whether I had a girlfriend. I said no, I wasn’t very interested in girls and I was feeling quite depressed because my family didn’t understand me and—’

‘Oh God.’ Mark slumps forward, head in his hands again.

‘Carry on, Jake,’ I say.

‘Graham said he understood. He said he hadn’t got on with his parents either and he knew what it felt like to be a black sheep and blah, blah, blah. Anyway, he tried to groom me. He asked for photos so I sent him some of some kid I’d found on the Internet. He said I was a good-looking boy and that he really wished he could give me a hug to make me feel better about my life and –’ he makes a winding motion with his hand – ‘to cut a long story short, he asked if he could email me so I set up a fake email account. And that’s when things started getting sexual.’

‘He asked for naked photos?’

‘Yeah. So I had to find some.’

Mark points at the laptop. ‘You know you could go to prison for what’s on there, don’t you?’

‘Yeah, but I was using them to catch paedophiles, not to jerk off to.’

‘And you think the police would buy that, do you?’

‘Enough!’ I hold up a hand. ‘Tell us what happened next, Jake.’

Mark sighs but says nothing. Jake looks relieved.

‘So I sent the photos and he asked for my mobile number. That’s when he suggested that we meet. He said he’d bring poppers and vodka. The plan was to meet in the loos at the car park and then go to the Downs in his car and have a little party, just the two of us. I took the van. I had no idea you were following me. I thought you were in the loo when I slipped out. You must have been watching through the window or something.’

‘And then what happened? When you got to the car park.’

‘I went into the men’s toilets, where I was supposed to meet him. And there he was, this scrawny little scrote with grey hair and a potbelly. He had a plastic bag with him. I could see there was a bottle of vodka in it. He pretended he was washing his hands when I went in but then I said, “Graham?” and he looked up. That’s when I went for him.’

The image of the knife, bloodied and skidding across the tiles, flashes before my eyes. ‘You stabbed him?’

‘I hit him. The knife was in my back pocket. Just in case he was a psycho.’

‘Jesus Christ,’ Mark says under his breath.

Jake eyes his dad warily and then continues. ‘I heard someone scream, while I was beating the shit out of Graham, and saw Mum standing by the door with the knife in her hand. It must have fallen out of my back pocket. I was so shocked to see her I just kind of froze. Graham tried to escape. He started shouting that he was going to call the police and he ran right at Mum, knocking her out of the way so he could get out the door. She hit one of the cubicles and dropped the knife. I picked it up and said I was going to get him but Mum wouldn’t let me. She said she was scared the police were going to show up and I’d end up in prison. She told me to get myself home and she’d meet me there so I dropped the knife and ran.’

‘It was you.’ I stare at him incredulously. ‘You were the person Malcolm and Mandy saw running away? The man in the hoody?’

‘I didn’t want to run. I swear. You were screaming at me that you’d lost one son and you weren’t about to lose another. You seemed normal, Mum. If I’d known you were having one of your blackouts I never would have left you. Never.’

He is so big, so incredibly broad and strong, but I can see flashes of Jake as a child in his eyes. Jake who would cry the second I raised my voice because he was so desperate not to disappoint me or let me down. I’ve never seen him look so fearful.

‘Why was there blood on the knife,’ I ask, ‘if it just fell out of your pocket?’

Jake doesn’t meet my gaze. ‘It was his,’ he mumbles. ‘I gave him a proper going over. Pretty sure I broke his nose and split his lip. His blood was all over my hands.’

I stare at him in horror. ‘Do you have any idea how scared I was when I came round? I didn’t know where I was or what had happened. When I saw the knife I thought I’d stabbed someone. And you knew. You knew what had happened but you didn’t say a word when I got home. You pretended you’d been here the whole time. You even put the dishwasher on!’

‘I didn’t know what to do.’ He wipes the back of his hand across his eyes. ‘I was going to say something, I swear. But when I realized you couldn’t remember anything I … I thought it would be better to keep quiet. I’m so sorry. I’m so, so sorry.’

As Jake sobs I look across at Mark. He is shaking with anger.

‘Mark,’ I say softly. ‘Go back to the house for a bit. Let me deal with this.’

‘No.’ He shakes his head. ‘I’m staying. We’re a family. No more secrets, Claire. No more.’