Gilly MacMillan - What She Knew

‘She’s not making much sense. She says to tell you she’s sorry. That the thing is too big for her, whatever that means. That she just wanted to support you. She’s not in a fit state to be coherent. What happened?’

‘It’s my fault,’ I said, but it was a whisper and he didn’t hear. He asked me again.

‘I don’t know if I trust her,’ I told him. ‘I don’t know who I trust.’

‘I’ve never trusted her.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘I don’t know, I’ve just never liked her. I thought she used you.’

‘You never told me.’

‘You never asked.’

I was absorbing this when my phone rang.

‘Can you answer it?’ I said. It was still in his hand.

The phone call was short, it furrowed his brow, but I couldn’t decipher it from hearing his responses.

After he’d ended the call with a thank you, he said, ‘That was a DC Justin Woodley calling to say that DC Zhang isn’t our family liaison officer any more.’

‘What? Why not?’

‘He just said she’s had to step away from the post, didn’t give a specific reason, and that they’d appoint somebody new as soon as they could, Monday at the latest, but in the meantime we should speak to him. Have you met him?’

‘I don’t think so. What could possibly have happened? Did you ask?’

‘It’s very odd,’ said John, ‘because I thought they said she was in the office this morning.’

‘They did.’ I curled my legs up onto the sofa, wrapped my arms around myself and felt the disappointment keenly. I minded very much that DC Zhang was gone because I’d got used to her, started to trust her, and I knew I would miss her. I didn’t like the idea of having a man as our liaison officer, however temporary. It wouldn’t be the same.

‘I really liked her,’ I said.

‘I’m sure DC Woodley or whoever they appoint will be fine.’ John wasn’t as perturbed as me; he had Katrina to lean on. He looked at his watch.

‘Look, I can stay here a bit longer, but I have to go home later tonight. You could come to our house.’

‘I can’t leave here again. I shouldn’t have left this morning.’

‘Are you sure?’

‘Yes.’ And I knew I’d be up all night, fearing for Ben and fearing for myself too, but that I had no choice.

‘If that’s what you want.’

Later John and I warmed up some of the food that Nicky had left in the fridge: wholesome, beautifully cooked food. It should have sustained us, given us strength, but both of us could only pick at it.

It was at the precise moment that we were getting up to clear the table that we heard a powerful crash, high-pitched and violent. It came from the front room and seemed to make the air cave in around us. It was the sound of shattering glass, and it made us motionless for a moment and the dog barked and then whimpered and then all was quiet again except for the noise of footfall, somebody running away.

John was up on his feet in an instant. He ran outside.

I followed him, but by the time I got to the front door it was swinging wide open and he was gone.

A bitter wind blew into the room, not just through the door but also through a gaping jagged hole where the front window had been. The curtains, drawn to shield us from the press, were dancing, flapping and turning in the wind like dervishes. Pieces of glass littered the floor, sharp edges everywhere, and in the centre of the room lay a brick.

There were letters painted on it. It took me a moment to realise that there were two words on its side, the same two that had screamed at me from the back fence: ‘BAD’ and ‘MOTHER’. Small, printed carefully. It couldn’t be easy to paint on brick.

‘John!’ I screamed.

I ran to the door. Glass crunched underfoot. From one end of the street footfall rang out, the sound echoing. I saw John and, just ahead of him, another figure, both running as fast as they could. They were moving shadows and, in an instant, they’d disappeared around the corner.

The street stretched away from me, dark and wet, the glow from the streetlamps looking three-dimensional in the rain, orbs of orange fluorescence. I stood in a shard of white light that spilled out of my house and fell around me, making the slick wet surface of the pavement gleam blackly. Opposite, a neighbour opened their front door just a crack.

‘Help,’ I said. ‘Help us.’

From the corner the men had disappeared around, I heard a scuffle, a thud, a cry of pain, and then I began to run too.

Addendum to DI James Clemo’s report for Dr Francesca Manelli.

Transcript recorded by Dr Francesca Manelli.

DI James Clemo and Dr Francesca Manelli in attendance.

Notes to indicate observations on DI Clemo’s state of mind or behaviour, where his remarks alone do not convey this, are in italics.

We’re getting to the point in our process where I would like to see some real progress from DI Clemo. He’s still very closed emotionally, and our time is running out.

FM:I’m so sorry about Emma.

JC:Don’t be.

FM: That must have been an extremely difficult situation for you.

JC: It didn’t help.

FM: Do we know why she did it?

JC: I know now, but I didn’t then. It was partly because she just couldn’t cope with the role. That was my fault, I know it was, I fucked up. But that wasn’t the only reason. It was because of something that happened to her…

FM: Take your time.

JC: Sorry.

FM: There’s no need to be sorry. You don’t need to tell me now. I’m curious about whether either of you tried to contact each other that night?

JC: No. We didn’t. I made a choice – my loyalty was to the investigation.

FM: That’s a very selfless choice.

JC: Is it?

FM: I think so. Others might have protected their own interests more.

JC: I protected my position in the investigation.

FM: But the personal cost to you was extremely high.

He tries to answer this, but he can’t seem to find the words. He’s done well so far today and I don’t want this subject to become taboo, so I change tack.

FM: Tell me what happened that afternoon once you turned your mind back to the investigation.

JC: Well that’s the thing. First thing was, I called Simon Forbes, Nicky Forbes’s husband, and asked him to contact me to arrange an interview. But after I did that, we got a break that we didn’t expect. That evening the boys got to the end of the CCTV checks and turned up something significant.

FM: Which was?

JC: They traced one of the cars that crossed the bridge about an hour before Ben’s abduction. It was registered to Lucas Grantham, Ben’s teaching assistant.

FM: I understood that he had an alibi.

JC: He did, but a piece of evidence like that is enough to make you take a much closer look at an alibi.

FM: And Nicola Forbes?

JC: Still a person of interest, but you don’t argue with CCTV. And we had the schoolbook evidence too.

FM: I felt as if you didn’t put much store in the schoolbook.

JC: Not on its own. I thought we needed to be careful to understand that they only widened an already considerable pool of people who could have known about the dog walks. But in the context of the CCTV discovery they were much more significant.

It gives him satisfaction to say that. He is born for this job, I think. But I have another question.

FM: DI Clemo, did you rest at all that night?

JC: I did go home, yes. I knew I couldn’t pull another all-nighter.

FM: And did you get some sleep?

This question makes him edgy.

FM: Were you able to sleep?

He doesn’t answer.