Gilly MacMillan - What She Knew

‘If Lucas Grantham took Ben, then where is he?’

‘We’re undertaking extensive searches at his property, and at properties he’s associated with. We’re doing everything we can to locate Ben. In the next twenty-four hours we’re going to be questioning everybody around him. I’m afraid I can’t give you any more information than that at present, but we wanted you to hear this from us, and not from anybody else. Please know that we are doing what we think is best in order to return Ben to you safe and well. That’s our priority.’

‘Do you believe that?’

‘That we’re doing our best? Yes. Absolutely. I’d swear on my mother’s life.’

He actually put his hand over his heart when he said that. Then, just as he was readying himself to leave, he said, ‘One more thing, Ms Jenner?’

‘Yes?’

‘Have you heard from your sister?’

‘No,’ and I realised that she’d never phoned me back. ‘Why?’

‘It’s the role of the FLO to make sure that all family members are doing fine so it’s really just a follow-up after the difficult interview she had with DI Clemo.’

‘She’s fine so far as I know.’

When he’d gone I tried to phone Nicky, to tell her, but it went to voicemail. I didn’t leave a message. I’d heard about voicemail hacking. I knew we would be targets. I wasn’t going to give the journalists that advantage.

I tried Nicky’s house in Salisbury but her youngest daughter answered and said that her mummy wasn’t there and her daddy wasn’t either and her sister who was looking after her was on her mobile phone. I gave up, I didn’t even say who it was because Olivia was only nine and leaving a message with a nine-year-old is complicated and unreliable. I knew Nicky would phone me back when she saw my missed call.

I thought again about the TA and thought about what he might have done.

In one sense it allowed me to feel a surge of relief. It allowed me to let go of the germ of suspicion I’d been guiltily harbouring about my sister. That was a release of pressure I was grateful for, definitely. I gave silent thanks for the fact that I hadn’t accosted her with my suspicions about her, or accused her outright. That might help us repair.

On the other hand, the news threw up a scenario which made my guts clench, because the question that lurched around my head was: What would a man like Lucas Grantham want with a boy like Ben?

There was no answer I could come up with that wasn’t somehow horrific. And so I didn’t feel a complete sense of relief, as I might have done at the news of the arrest, of course I didn’t, because that would be impossible until Ben was back in my arms again.

I went online again later, curious to see if the arrest had been made public. Not yet.

Instead, some members of the online community were marking the week’s anniversary of Ben’s disappearance by saying that he was probably dead. That he had to be.

As if to underscore this theory, one or two of them had posted photographs of lit candles to mark the anniversary. Online shrines, the flickering flame a public display of emotion, which I found sanctimonious, ugly and cruel.

Others took a more cerebral tack, including one who caught my eye because he was quoting the same websites that Nicky had been looking at before she left, to prove his hypothesis. I clicked on the link he provided, and instantly I wished I hadn’t, because right in front of my eyes was one of the research documents that Nicky had tried to stop me reading in the first few days after Ben disappeared:

Abduction Homicide… victims were more likely to be killed immediately or kept alive for less than 24 hours, with a few victims being kept alive for 24 to 48 hours or more than three days (Boudreaux et al, 1999). Hanfland, 1997 reported even more shocking findings. He stated that 44% were dead in less than an hour, 74% of the victims were dead within the first 3 hours, and 91% within the first 24 hours.

It sickened me. I closed the window on the computer, stabbing the mouse with sweaty, shaking fingers. I was ready to shut the machine down, unplug it, retreat from it, but behind the window I was looking at was another, left there by Ben.

It was the login page for Furry Football, the online game that Ben and his friends loved to play. It was like Club Penguin, or Moshi Monsters, a child-friendly online forum where you could play games and interact with other people’s avatars. The difference was that it was football themed and if you won points you could buy players for a Furry Football team. Ben loved it. All his friends did.

I clicked on it. The page refreshed and invited me to log in. Ben was the manager of two separate virtual teams and I had a choice of which one to log in as: ‘Owl Goal’ or ‘Turtle Rangers’. I chose ‘Owl Goal’ and I typed in Ben’s password. A message appeared: ‘YOU ARE ALREADY LOGGED IN’.

I tried again. Same message.

I leaned back in my chair, confused. Somebody was logged in as Ben. I remembered him saying that he couldn’t log in if he’d already done so on another machine, but his iPad was at his dad’s house, and I had no other computer.

I clicked on ‘Turtle Rangers’ instead, entered his password again, and this time it worked. I was in. I was Turtle0751, the captain of the Turtle Rangers, and my avatar appeared on screen: a plump turtle in football boots holding a clipboard.

‘WHICH SERVER WOULD YOU LIKE TO JOIN?’ the computer asked me, and then my stomach roiled as an idea took hold. What if Ben was logged in somewhere else, playing the game as his owl avatar?

I selected the server that I knew Ben always chose to play on: ‘Savannah League’.

A cartoon-like scene popped up – the African savannah. A meerkat invited me to choose a game I’d like to play. I selected ‘Baobab Bonus’, Ben’s favourite game.

On screen a glade of cartoon baobab trees appeared. About twenty avatars cruised amongst them, little speech bubbles coming from their heads now and then. It didn’t take me long to see Ben’s other team captain: Owlie689.

‘It’s you,’ I said. ‘It’s you.’

My fingers gripped the mouse so hard that its edges dug into them and I stared at the screen as Owlie689 moved around it.

I navigated my avatar so that it stood by Ben’s. I was clumsy with the mouse. I wanted to talk to him. It was hard to work out how to make a speech bubble. I wasn’t practised at this like Ben; I’d never paid attention to the detail of the game.

After numerous failed attempts, I finally clicked on the right tab. A list of possible phrases appeared, but it was safe chat. Of course it was. I hadn’t allowed Ben to do anything other than communicate with phrases that were provided by the game. For his safety.

I scrolled down the list of phrases available, desperate to say something meaningful, but they were entirely bland, designed to stop children upsetting or offending each other.

I clicked on ‘Hello’. After a few seconds Ben’s avatar said ‘Hello.’

‘How was your day?’ my avatar asked.

Owlie689 displayed an emoticon. It was a frowning face. I scrolled down the list of phrases I could use.

‘Sorry,’ my avatar said.

Owlie689 began to move. I followed. It stopped underneath a baobab tree.

‘Want to visit my team?’ it said to me.

‘Yes,’ my avatar replied and the screen dissolved and reformed and we found ourselves in a training area. The positions of players were laid out around the edges of the screen and above four of them were animals that Ben had earned enough points to buy.

‘Cool,’ my avatar said.

‘New player,’ said Ben’s avatar. He moved toward his centre forward. It was a giraffe. He hadn’t had it last Sunday because he’d talked about it, about wanting to get a giraffe because they were good at doing headers. In fact he’d gone on and on about it in the car on the way to the woods until I made him change the subject.