Gilly MacMillan - What She Knew

I kept my reply neutral. ‘We’re hoping to bring you good news, Mr Finch.’

‘Do you know how they know?’ he said. ‘The smart ones, the clever families? They see the china teapot and the china cups with saucers, and the door closing behind them, and the unusual number of staff all together in one room, and they ask themselves why all this fuss, just for us? It doesn’t take them long to work it out. They read the situation before we’ve even started talking. They start to grieve before the milk goes into the cups.’

‘Well, you’re safe on that count,’ I said.

In front of us was a tray of four polystyrene cups with grey coffee remains swimming in the base of them. Torn and half-emptied sachets of sugar littered the table like doll-sized body bags.

He understood why I’d given such a shallow response. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘Of course you don’t want to have this conversation because to do so would be unprofessional. That was stupid of me. I’d do the same in your situation.’ He barked out a noise that was supposed to be a laugh, but instead was a noise that crept sullenly around the edges of the room, mocking his attempt at forced jollity.

I wondered then if all the pain and difficulty of his profession, the hopelessness and the encounters with death, had become toxic for John Finch, too toxic to bear any longer.

I let my guard down then, just for a moment, because I was curious.

‘Do you get emotional when you lose a patient?’ I asked him. I wanted to know how much failure hurt him; I wanted to know if he was like me.

‘Very occasionally there’s one that gets to you, no matter how hard you try. It’s very rare. You learn early on, when you’re training, that you have to keep your distance emotionally, because if you don’t, you can’t do your job.’

‘What makes that one stand out?’

‘Sometimes you don’t even know. Once I operated on a boy who reminded me a little of Ben, and I met his mother, she wasn’t unlike Rachel. They reminded me of us, of our family. It wasn’t that long ago, Ben was about seven at the time. The boy’s operation was quite a simple one, but there was bleeding, and he died. His heart failed. There was nothing we could do. It was an unexpected death and when I went to tell his mother, I… I’m afraid I broke down.’

Distress swam deep in his eyes but John Finch had obviously learned to be stoic too. He didn’t lose control, he said, ‘It was unprofessional of me.’

‘It’s understandable.’

‘Do you think so, Detective? Has it ever happened to you?’

I looked at my watch. It was late. I was in danger of confiding. I had to get things back on track. ‘I think we could do with something to eat,’ I said. ‘Chances are, it’s going to be a long night.’

We took John Finch home at ten that night. By midnight, we’d narrowed things down based on the information he’d given us, and we had a standout suspect for the letter. By the early hours of the morning we’d disturbed countless colleagues and we were as certain as you can be. We’d checked and double-checked the details, gone into background, and triple-checked that we had the correct address for our suspect.

Fraser, on what must have been her fiftieth cup of coffee, tasked me with leading a dawn raid. We wanted the element of surprise, and that’s the best time to get it. I chose my men, and we went through our preparations carefully.

We were due to go in at 5 am.

An abduction may occur for many reasons, including a desire to possess a child, sexual gratification, financial gain, retribution, and the desire to kill. Research findings indicate that when a child is killed, the motivation may be either emotion-based, where the abductor seeks revenge on the family; sexual-based, where the offender seeks sexual gratification from the victim; or profit-based, which involves most often ransom for money (Boudreaux et al, 2000 & 2001). Moreover, child homicide usually follows an abduction and is not the reason for the abduction.

Dalley , Marlene L and Ruscoe, Jenna, ‘The Abduction of Children by Strangers in Canada: Nature and Scope’, National Missing Children Services, National Police Service, Royal Canadian Mounted Police, December 2003

WEB PAGE– www.twentyfour7news.co.uk/bristol – 7.22 AM BST 27 Oct 2012

Where is Benedict Finch?

The Blogosphere Rises – People power or vigilante justice?

By Danny Deal

Officers working on the Benedict Finch case have been frustrated by the emergence of a blog, which has stirred up the media frenzy.

Apparently written by somebody close to the case, the blog has been blamed for leaking details of the case and stirring up suspicion against the family of Benedict Finch.

DCI Corinne Fraser said last night, ‘We don’t know who is writing this blog, but it is a vindictive piece of work. At this time we are very concerned for the well-being of the family of Benedict Finch, as well as for the lad himself, and we would ask people to remain calm, and respect this family’s situation, and not pay heed to this blog, which is the work of an uninformed and unreliable individual. Our efforts at this time are all concentrated on finding this lad.’

She also added that police are still ‘pursuing multiple lines of inquiry’ and are ‘hopeful of a significant development soon’. She declined to comment on what that might be.

James Leon QC stated that ‘anybody, either a media organisation or an individual, can be prosecuted under contempt of court laws if their comments published online are found to be prejudicial at trial’.

3 people are discussing this article

Donna Faulkes

People should be able to say what they like

Shaun Campbell

If the police cant find him then at least somebody’s saying what everybody’s thinking

Amelie Jones

Its stupid to write this and not say what it is that people cant say

In the early hours of the morning I woke to find myself drenched in sweat again, consumed by that scooped-out feeling of loss that was brutal and all-consuming and was no longer tempered by having people close to me.

I began to consider the thought that Ben might not come home.

I began to consider the reality that I might have to exist in, should that happen.

It would be intolerable.

My obsessive, jumpy thoughts drove me downstairs, and out of the back door into the night. The wind was still sharp and it sent me running across the garden to my studio, and in that short distance made its way coldly between the folds of my nightwear so that by the time I let myself in I was shivering so violently that I felt like a shaken bag of bones.

I didn’t dare turn on the lights, in case of being seen through the glass doors, top-lit in all my falling-apart glory. My neighbours, like my friends, felt like adversaries now, potential spies. Instead I just turned on my computer, and sat in its frigid blue glow. Then, compulsively, slowly, knowing I shouldn’t, feeling unable to stop, I began to look online.

I found myself castigated further. In the absence of news about the case, editorial pieces had emerged, primarily in the broadsheets. And if I’d ever hoped before reading them that they might provide a more balanced view of our family’s situation, then I was wrong, delusional. They were as brutally judgemental as the red tops.

Almost without exception they discussed the case, and my performance at the press conference, in the context of my single motherhood, and they used it as a stick to beat me with, or a label with which to stigmatise me.