C.L. Taylor - The Missing

I almost missed the other thing he’d written in the book. I only spotted it when the back cover lifted as I put it down. He’d graffitied the inside and scrawled Tag targets in thick black marker pen:

– Bristol T M (train?)

– The Arches

– Avonmouth

I couldn’t believe I hadn’t spotted it before, not when I’d been through Billy’s things so many times, and I immediately rang DS Forbes. He wasn’t as excited as I was. He told me they’d looked at the CCTV at the train station when Billy was first reported missing and they’d checked out Avonmouth and the Arches as they knew he hung out with his friends there. But what if they’d missed something? Something only a mother could spot?

‘Great idea.’ Mum snatches the laptop from my knees and slips it behind one of the sofa cushions.

‘Hiding it from burglars,’ she says when I give her a questioning look.

‘We’ll have to be quick,’ Mum says as she parks the car. ‘We’ve only got twenty minutes before a traffic warden slaps a ticket on the windscreen.’

I clutch the fliers to my chest as we cross the road, passing a line of blue hackney cabs and a lone smoker pressed up against the exterior wall of the station.

Inside Bristol Temple Meads there’s a crowd of people gazing up at the arrivals and departures boards and a stream of traffic in and out of WHSmith’s. It’s not as busy as it would have been if we’d got here at seven or eight o’clock but hopefully we’re less likely to be brushed off by harassed commuters.

‘We’ll get a cheap-day return to Bedminster so we can get through the barriers,’ Mum says as she heads towards the ticket machines, ‘then we’ll split up. You do platforms eight to fifteen and I’ll do one to seven. Try and get the shops in the underpass to stick a poster in their window if you have time.’

‘You okay?’ she says, looking back at me as the machine spits out two tickets. ‘You’ve gone very white.’

It’s as though the earth has just tilted on its axis. That’s the only way to explain how I feel. I was here yesterday. I bought a ticket to Weston. I crossed through the barriers. I got on a train. One of the staff, a man with fair hair and glasses, catches my eye as I glance across at the ticket counter and I look away sharply. Did he recognize me? Is that why he’s staring? Has he been told to keep an eye out for me because of something I said or did?

‘Claire?’ Mum touches my arm. ‘Do you want to go back to the car? I can do the leaflet drop if you’re not feeling well. Or we can do it another day.’

‘No.’ I press a hand over hers. There’s no reason to think I did anything strange during my blackout. Even when I’m drunk the worst I’ll do is massacre a song during karaoke or embarrass Mark by firing off the most childish jokes I know. ‘I’m fine. Honestly, Mum. Let’s get this done.’

‘You sure?’

‘Yes.’ I let go of her hand and pass a leaflet to the man waiting patiently for us to vacate the ticket machine. ‘My son Billy is missing. Have you seen him? Do you recognize his face?’

We’ve barely passed through the ticket barriers when Mum’s phone rings.

‘Oh, bugger,’ she says under her breath as she fishes it out of her handbag. ‘It’s Ben, the journalist from the Bristol News that I was telling you about. I’m going to have to take this, Claire. You okay to go by yourself?’

‘Of course.’

Mum turns left towards the coffee shop while I continue down the stairs to the subway that gives access to the platforms. I approach a lady who’s waiting for an elderly man to use the cashpoint and show her Billy’s flier.

‘This is my son, Billy Wilkinson. He’s fifteen. Have you seen him?’

She looks down at his photo and, as her eyes dart from left to right, scanning his face, my heart flickers with hope. There are nearly half a million people in Bristol but all I need is for one person, just one, to say, ‘I saw a boy who looks like him sleeping rough, or ‘I think I was served coffee by this boy yesterday.’

‘Sorry.’ The woman shakes her head.

I rush away before she can offer me any words of sympathy and thrust a leaflet at a man in a suit.

He raises a hand. ‘No, thank you.’

‘It’s not a charity leaflet.’ I rush after him. ‘And I’m not selling anything—’

I’m cut off as he takes a sudden left and disappears into the men’s toilets.

Undeterred, I approach a gang of foreign students, gabbling away to each other in Spanish outside the juice bar. ‘Have you seen this boy? He’s my son. He’s missing.’

They exchange glances, then an attractive girl, with glossy black hair that reaches almost to her waist, steps forward and peers at the leaflet in my hands.

‘Nice,’ she says, looking back up at me. ‘Nice boy. Handsome.’

‘Have you seen him? You or any of your friends?’

She takes the leaflet from my hand, shows it to her friends and says something in Spanish. I can’t understand a word they say in reply but I know what a head shake, a shrug and a pouting mouth signify.

‘Could you put it up where you’re studying?’ I ask the black-haired girl. ‘In your school? There’s a contact telephone number and an email address at the bottom if anyone has seen him.’

She nods enthusiastically but I’m not sure she understands me. I don’t have time to double-check. I need to move on. I need to get Billy’s face in front of as many people as possible.

The barista behind the counter of the coffee shop in the middle of the subway tells me she can’t put up Billy’s poster without consulting her manager, and he’s not in until 5 p.m. The queue at the sit-down coffee shop just yards away is too long to even contemplate talking to a member of staff, so I drop a pile of leaflets on the table nearest the door instead. As I hurry through the subway towards platforms thirteen and fifteen I scan everything I see – posters, free newspaper racks, walls, doors – but they’re graffiti-free. If Billy did tag the train station he didn’t do it down here.

I stop short when I reach the top of the stairs to the platforms. There’s a wreck of a building on the opposite side of the tracks. It’s the derelict sorting office, now little more than a rectangular slab of concrete with gaping holes where the windows used to be. As I watch, pigeons flutter in and out but it’s not the birds that catch my eye. It’s the graffiti daubed all over the building. There are high walls, topped with barbed wire, surrounding it but that wouldn’t stop Billy, not if he was determined to put his mark on it.

‘Excuse me, madam.’ A hand grips my shoulder and I spin round to find myself face to face with a tall man in a luminous yellow waistcoat and a black peaked cap.

‘British Transport Police,’ he says, glancing at the bundle of paper in my hands. ‘It’s been reported that you’ve been distributing material to members of the public. Can I see your licence or badge, please?’

‘Licence?’ I step away from the yellow line on the platform edge as a train pulls into the station and the overhead announcer reports that the 11.30 a.m. train to Paddington is standing at platform thirteen. ‘What licence?’

‘You need a licence from the council to distribute leaflets at this station. There’s a fixed penality of eighty pounds or a court-imposed fine of up to two thousand five hundred if you haven’t got one.’

‘But … I … I don’t know. I came with my mum. She’s the one who got the leaflets printed and I’m sure she’s got permission for us to—’

The doors to the carriages open and, as the passengers disembark, I’m distracted by a fracas further up the platform. There’s a small crowd of people around one of the doors and a man is shouting at someone to stop pushing in.