Simon Lelic - The Child Who

It went on all day. Into the night, too, with a helicopter borrowed from the Met tracking its spotlights along the line search. Leo and Megan asked what they could do to help but the answer, inevitably, was drink more tea. They obliged, grudgingly, but only because they were invited to do so in the trailer that became the central command post. From their seats in a dimly lit corner they heard everything they needed to and several things, unredacted, they almost certainly were not supposed to. That the girl had been found, for instance. That her name was Caitlyn. That she had been out the night before arguing with a boyfriend her mother did not know she had. That she were the spitting image, Sarge, but that it weren’t her. That the only thing left, the sarge supposed, was to drag the river.

It did not get any worse. Surely. Feet yielding to the mud, skin scored by the wind and rain, convinced every diver was about to emerge with your daughter’s body. Not that the mud mattered. Not that the weather mattered. And he was forgetting how much worse, in an instant, things might be.

They spoke about currents. They said it might look calm but down below, at this time of year, and shook their heads. Someone glanced over at Leo, not having realised he was standing so close. Leo, shivering, turned his gaze towards the sea.

The fingerprints surrounding the letter box belonged to the postman. The footprints around the window were barely footprints at all. There was a thumbprint on one of the notes but a thumbprint, without a thumb, was about as much use as… well…

The sentence hung.

On day five, in the kitchen, he broke the mugs. Every one of them, starting with the one in his hand that was full of tea. He did not ask for it. He did not want it. So he carried it into the kitchen and looked for somewhere to put it down but he did not want to put it down, he wanted to throw it.

He hurled it at the hearth. He opened the cupboard and reached past the saucers and one by one hurled the other mugs too.

Every.

Last.

One.

The noise was exhilarating. The action of it, too. When the mugs were done he considered the saucers but by that point there were people in the room.

What happened? What’s going on? Are you all right, Mr Curtice? The moment passed. The madness. Leo breathed and almost laughed. He said it’s fine, everything’s fine, and then crunched across the china to fetch the broom.

They decided, in the end, to release the sketch.

Leo watched his wife consider the picture and could tell she did not think it right. But this was, what? The fifth version? It looked like the first, which in turn looked nothing like the man Leo had imagined. Not that it should. It was Megan who had seen the face at their window: the man, they assumed, who had kidnapped their daughter. In spite of Leo’s instincts, they had no choice but to trust Megan’s.

‘The beard is right,’ Megan said, exactly as she had said the previous five times. ‘But the rest…’ She closed her eyes, as though to summon the face. She opened them, glowered at the sketch. ‘Maybe the first version,’ she said. ‘Or…’ She glanced at the policemen, seated side by side at the kitchen table. They in turn shared a look.

‘Take your time, Mrs Curtice.’

Again she stared. ‘No,’ she said at last. She slid the sheet of paper towards them. ‘This is the one. I… It’s as close as I can get.’

The policemen, once more, caught each other’s eye. DS Bromley, the more senior, blinked a nod.

‘It’s two eyes and a beard,’ Leo overheard the junior detective whispering later. ‘Take away the beard and we’d be looking for an egg.’

Whomever he was talking to laughed. ‘Let’s just hope he doesn’t shave.’

Megan’s brother had the couch. Her mother took the spare room. Megan slept, if that was the word, in Ellie’s room. She would have anyway, Leo told himself.

A week passed.

There were phone calls but none that counted. There were letters but none like before. It was baseless but today, somehow, was the day they had been working towards. It was the day, more accurately, they had been working against.

It felt no different. It felt like yesterday, like tomorrow. It felt like it would always feel like this and Leo wondered, as he rose in the still-dark and fumbled for the bed sheets he had tossed onto the floor in the night, whether that were true. What would change, and when. How long it would be until Annie stopped coming, until Peter returned home, until Megan’s mother left and took Megan with her. What he would do when Megan went. Whether he even deserved to care.

He wondered, most of all, about Ellie – about how long he would be able to keep wondering. Because beyond the press of some arbitrary deadline, Leo sensed the imminence of something greater. It was like a beast, stalking him, that he knew would not be kept at bay forever. He could not yet see it but he could smell it and imagine its grip around his throat. It was acceptance. It was certainty. It was knowing, not just suspecting, that his daughter was already dead.

The room, when Leo entered,fell silent. He hesitated at the threshold and considered, briefly, turning around. There were people in their seats but none of them – not John, nor Alan, nor Stacie – seemed able to hold Leo’s eye. There was a temp, though – Amy, Leo thought her name was – and when Leo noticed her she smiled, just barely, and it was enough to draw Leo in. He nodded and smiled back and ventured, through a snag in his throat, a good morning. He dropped his chin and aimed himself towards his desk.

John twitched a greeting as Leo passed. Alan, likewise, dipped his head and even managed Leo’s name. Leo uttered Alan’s back. He set down his briefcase beside his desk and fumbled frozen-fingered with the buttons of his overcoat and managed, after a struggle, to free his arms. He shook the coat straight and held it up as he turned, meaning to arrange it on the back of his chair. His chair, though, was gone. In its place was something older, limbless, with a wound deep into the sponge of the seat. The upright segment appeared flimsy and Leo was unsure whether it would withstand the weight of his coat.

‘Um.’

Leo turned.

‘I think, um,’ said Alan, on his feet now and standing close by. ‘I think maybe Terry… er… borrowed your chair.’

Leo looked across the aisle towards Terry’s desk. Leo’s chair, unoccupied, was alongside it, set low and adorned with matching coccyx cushion and lumbar roll.

‘Oh.’ Leo considered the chair he had been allotted in exchange. He sat, gingerly, and placed his coat in a bundle on the floor. The chair squawked as he moved.

‘I’m sure he was only… That he wouldn’t mind if… I’ll wheel it across for you, shall I?’

‘Sorry?’ Leo looked up from his desk, which had become home in his absence to nothing he recognised. ‘No, really. It’s fine.’ He lifted a ream of copy paper from his mouse pad.

‘Here. Let me take that at least. And these.’ Alan used the block of paper as a tray, stacking it with junk mail and discarded folders and uncovering, as he cleared the surface, a picture of Ellie.

They both saw it. They both stared. Alan made a noise like something in his throat had slipped sideways.

The external line rang and Alan turned but John was quicker.

‘Corker and Copeland,’ he chimed, hunching as he spoke as though the atmosphere in the office were a squall. Leo, involuntarily, tensed. He watched for John to turn, to say, Leo, you need to take this, and for a smile to displace his discomfort. But, instead, ‘He’s in a meeting,’ John said, not even looking Leo’s way, and he offered, quite cheerfully, to take a message.