Little Boy Found

by LK Fox

Genres: Amateur Sleuth; Police Procedurals; Crime Fiction; Psychological Thrillers

Synopsis

They thought the nightmare was over ... It's only just the beginning It was a morning just like any other: Nick drops off his son at the school gates like he usually does. Then he has a minor collision with another car, and he thinks he sees the impossible... But Gabriel never even made it to school that day, and suddenly Nick begins to question everything he thought he knew, and it has terrifying implications... A psychological thriller with a twist. This is not your average missing child story - the shocking thing is what happens when Nick finds his son... Perfect for fans of John Marrs and C L Taylor. *** What readers are saying about Little Boy Found! 'OMG. What a twister of a read. Didn't want to put it down. 5*. I was shocked with the ending' amazon reviewer 'This book is absolutely amazing. It had me gripped from the start & some of the twists in the story left me totally astounded' amazon reviewer ' Absolutely first class. There is so many twists and turns it is impossible to figure out the final outcome' amazon reviewer

Release date: July 6, 2017

Publisher: Quercus Publishing

Print pages: 269

Sample

I saw his hand pressed against the glass.

I saw my boy. Dressed in blue, his eyes huge, his laughter infectious, his nature too open. So innocent and vulnerable that it stung your heart.

Then his hand was replaced by the face of the alarm clock: 8.17 a.m. It was Tuesday, the temperature a mean-spirited 9°C. My head was cotton, my mouth sand. I thought, 8.17 a.m. At least I don’t have to be anywhere. This was followed by Shit, it’s a school day.

The room looked as if it had been tipped on its side, then righted. In the mirror, I saw a pillow-creased face and matted, mousey hair. It was like The Selfie of Dorian Gray.

‘Gabe – get up!’ I shouted at the bedroom wall. ‘Mrs Arnold is going to slaughter us.’ I glanced back at the clock, thinking, Can I get away without showering? Hammering on the wall produced no answer. ‘Gabriel, you have to get out of bed twenty minutes ago.’

Pushing open the door to Gabriel’s room, I thought for a moment he’d disappeared, but then, as if I had willed him back into existence, one red sock poked out from his Weapons of Mass Destruction fighter-jet duvet.

‘Come on, if we don’t get this together we’re both so dead.’ There was no answer. Gabriel wasn’t a morning person either. I never understood how one kid could sleep so much. He sat up, a tiny, blinking phantom, not awake enough to speak. His fine brown hair winged away from his ears where he had slept on it. Small mouth, big yawn. The best I’m Not Awake look you could ever see on a child, or even on a cat.

Pulling him out of bed by one thin ankle, I shoved him into the bathroom. ‘Here’s the drill. Brush teeth, flannel over face, wet hair – make it look like you’re not totally neglected. I found the snake-belt you said you couldn’t find anywhere in your drawer, exactly where I said it was. You’ve got five minutes to get to the kitchen for inspection. It’s a breakfast chewie today. We’re really up against it, so move.’

‘But I don’t have to go to school today, Dad.’

‘Of course you do. Monday to Friday, right through your best years, that’s the deal. I know it sucks but—’

‘No, I don’t. It’s my birthday. I’m seven today.’

‘I know that: seven going on seventeen,’ I said. ‘What, you think I forgot? You’re not the queen, you still have to put in some hours, and then tonight you get your present, and anything you want to eat.’ I handed him a card. ‘Open it later, we’re motoring.’

Getting a kid ready for school is like testing an aircraft’s avionics. You go through the routine on autopilot: check, check, check. I grabbed as many floor-clothes as I could find and hurled them into the laundry basket. ‘Come on, pal, don’t just stand there looking like you’ve been shot, help me out. If Mrs Arnold checks you in as late, I’ll have to lie and say it was your fault because you broke my alarm clock.’

‘That’s not fair, Dad.’

‘Life isn’t fair. Put your trainers on.’ I didn’t want the corpse-faced guy from social services creeping around to the flat again, leaving more leaflets on how to cope as a single parent. He’d been fine about Gabriel having two daddies, but I didn’t want to be here when he found out that one of them had left the family home for good. I could imagine him telling his wife, ‘Well, there you are, two men raising a little boy. It wasn’t ever going to work out, was it?’

Gabriel leaned in and sniffed me. ‘You smell of beer.’

‘Well done, Sherlock. Daddy had a few drinks last night.’

‘Why?’

‘I don’t know, to be sociable, to meet people.’ I hadn’t wanted to meet people. That’s not the way to do it anyway, I know that. If you wanted to meet someone socially you did the proper thing and went on Grindr. I chucked his jeans at him. ‘How was your evening? What did you eat?’

‘Mac-cheese ready-meal. Phoebe can’t cook. I incredibly didn’t like it.’ Lately, Gabriel had taken to inserting the word ‘incredibly’ into a great many sentences.

‘For some unearthly reason, Phoebe adores you, and we should be thankful she lives upstairs.’

Phoebe earned a paltry living selling quilts to a local craft shop. She hardly ever went out and loved minding Gabriel, but she had a tendency to leave her coffee pot on the gas, so I didn’t want to make a habit of leaving Gabriel there. She used to drive Ben crazy; he couldn’t handle even being in the same room with her. I had a sudden thought: maybe that was why Ben left us? It wasn’t anything I’d done, it was the crazy neighbour.

Gabriel was reading my mind, and I willed him not to say it, but he did. ‘Dad, is Ben going to come back?’

‘I don’t know, Gabe. You can’t make people do what they don’t want to do.’

‘So he doesn’t want to be with us.’

‘It’s not that, it’s just—’

It’s just that Ben discovered he didn’t like children after all, I thought uncharitably. He liked the idea of them but not the reality of dealing with their needs ‒ especially having to deal with a kid like Gabriel.

I found a crumpled check shirt in the landing cupboard and dragged it on. ‘We have seventeen minutes before they ring last bell, so can you move it? You really want to wear that?’

Gabriel stood in the doorway, awaiting inspection. He had put on a blue NFL Bears sweatshirt two sizes too large for him, a gift from a friend in Chicago. He looked like a giant blue glove. ‘You haven’t ironed your shirt.’

‘No,’ I confirmed. ‘It’s a look.’

Gabriel inserted his foot into one trainer, froze and stared at the other.

I threw myself into a theatrical stance. ‘Now what?’

‘Unexpected item in bagging area.’ Gabriel pointed to a rolled-up sock still in the other trainer. With a sigh, I snatched it out and threw him the shoe. Gabriel was low-spectrum autistic; he couldn’t always recognise things for what they were, and when he did, he attached the wrong level of significance to them. He found densely populated areas like stations and schoolyards confusing because he couldn’t completely prioritise what he saw. We dealt with it so instinctively that sometimes I forgot it could be a problem. The paediatrician was holding off further evaluation until he was older. We’d been told that his differences could become more pronounced when he reached puberty.

I watched Gabe struggling with his knotted-up laces, then realized I should be helping. ‘Come on, you’re seven now, that means you can fix your own trainers.’

‘The ends are too long. I can’t touch them after they’ve been on the floor.’

‘Oh my God, they’ve been on the floor, call Health & Safety!’ I knelt and double-tied them around the backs of Gabriel’s heels. ‘Now it’s your turn. Help me find my car keys.’

‘Dad, you haven’t got any shoes on.’

‘It doesn’t matter, I’m not getting out of the car.’ I pulled my trainers on to bare feet anyway, leaving the laces undone, much to Gabriel’s horror. ‘Packed your bag?’

‘I did it last night.’ He looked out of the kitchen window and shuddered. ‘Raining.’

‘So what? You’re not going to melt.’ Peering out, I ducked back as a great gout of dirty water sluiced down the glass from a blocked drainpipe. House repairs were on my list.

‘Wait,’ said Gabriel, pulling back. ‘I want my dragoon.’

‘I told you I didn’t want you taking it out of the house.’

‘It’s my birthday. I want to show it to Jamie.’

I picked the red-and-white King’s Dragoon Guard from its little wooden box on the kitchen shelf and handed it to him. The soldier on horseback was charging with his sword raised. It was a commemorative souvenir produced the year after the Battle of Waterloo. Ben had been against letting him carry it around, but it wasn’t sharp and Gabriel had been hanging on to it for so long that I let him keep it. He always got upset if you tried to take it away from him.

‘Couldn’t you take your skateboard instead?’ Gabriel had a red retro Santa Cruz Reaper Deck that was almost longer than he was, now propped against the hall table. The brand-names come easily when you’ve heard the words ‘Why can’t I have a . . .’ attached to them a zillion times. He could hardly lift the thing.

‘Because it’s raining?’

‘Always a smart-mouth.’ Grabbing my black Schott jacket, I dragged the protesting boy outside, setting him on the step while I locked up.

The terraced house on Croftdown Avenue looked like it had been subdivided by Dr Frankenstein. Gabriel and I had the ground floor, the basement and the front garden, which was supposed to be kept in good condition. I had always taken care of the trimming and planting, but in the last year I had let things go. We had a weekend place in the country, and I liked to tend the plants down there.

Shirley next door ran the local Neighbourhood Watch group. She really wasn’t down with the gays. We were okay on TV as camp sidekicks, but she didn’t want them living next door, with their thumpy house music and clothes-lines full of fashionable underwear. I’d laboriously explained to her that Ben and I were legally married, which had given us permission to be as boring as everyone else. I wasn’t about to tell her that we were now also legally divorced.

‘Dad, you didn’t shave,’ Gabriel complained.

‘What are you, my stylist? No one will see me, I promise. I’ll get in, do the job and get out, like the SAS.’

‘What do you know about the SAS?’

‘The Sewing Association Superstars? Quite a lot, as it happens.’

‘There’s such a thing as too smart.’

He’d stolen my catchphrase. The boy was super-super-smart and had my wit and his other father’s sensitivity; he was fastidious and thorough, just like Ben. But it was hard convincing teachers I had a genius on my hands when they turned to him for evidence and found him staring dreamily out of the window.

I briefly entertained the fantasy that we were biological father and son, telling myself that Gabriel had my hazel eyes, my smile, my chin. He called me Dad, but Ben was his real father.

‘Can we go back to the museum at the weekend? I want to see—’

‘The Battle of Waterloo, I know. Why can’t you play on the PS4, like a normal little boy?’

‘I do, Dad, honest.’

‘Not convincing.’

‘Oh, cool! Incredibly videogames!’

‘It still needs work.’

Because we were in a hurry, the traffic was awful. The school wasn’t far, but we had to cross a major bottleneck to reach it. Finally, I lost my temper and overtook a line of stalled vehicles on the inside.

‘Dad, you’re not allowed to do that!’ Gabriel yelled.

I thumped the Peugeot back on the tarmac as a truck blared. The lights ahead were red. I distractedly tapped out a cigarette and went to light it.

‘Dad, no.’

‘Is there anything else you don’t want me to do this morning?’ I said, but I pushed the unlit cigarette back into the pack, secretly horrified at myself.

‘You gave up, remember?’

‘Sorry, my brain’s in the wrong time zone. I don’t even know why I have these. They must be a year old. Take them away from me.’

‘I don’t want to touch them.’ I noticed that Gabriel’s eyes had begun to shine with rising tears. ‘What’s the matter? What’s going on?’

Gabriel huffed and pushed back in his seat. ‘I don’t want to go today.’

‘Why not?’

He gave no answer but sank further down, vanishing into his sweatshirt.

‘The McBride kid again? If you don’t want to have a fight with him, stay out of his way.’

‘He comes looking for me. I have to hide until he’s gone.’

‘You can’t go through life burying your head in the sand, Gabe. If he has a go at you, have a go back. Have you seen his arms? They’re like pieces of wet string. I bet you could snap them if you tried. I can’t always be there to protect you.’

I made a turn with correct indication, driving-school perfect, just for him. We’d always been very careful about the two-dads thing, to make sure that Gabriel didn’t get any trouble, but kids have a sixth sense. ‘Okay, we’re coming up, get ready to do a stunt roll.’

The high fence around the playground made it look like a prison. Long Lane Elementary was a typical suburban London school. It occupied the end of a narrow backstreet lined on both sides with idling vehicles. Too many over-protective parents dropping off their little darlings in SUVs.

Checking the street as I turned into it, I counted a blue Renault, a silver Nissan, a white Toyota, an old gun-metal-grey BMW, a silver Mercedes . . . no spare spaces anywhere. A couple of mothers were talking in front of the main gate, but the rest of the children had already gone in. There was a Chinese woman in a yellow plastic raincoat, a morbidly obese man trying to light a damp cigarette, a belligerent-looking teenage mum ‒ the usual parental mix. We only just made it. The teacher on duty kept a strict eye on everyone who stepped inside the school perimeter, but by the time we arrived she’d already gone in with the kids.

Overhead, a charcoal-coloured storm cloud had sunk so low that the spire of the school hall seemed about to puncture it. I pulled to a stop, reached across and pushed open the passenger door. Gabriel looked back from the door, then hesitated.

‘Do the thing for me.’ He stared back, implacable, eyes like saucers. That was what he always did, and it was when you started to realise that there was a problem.

‘Which one? There’s no time.’

‘You know. The one your dad taught you.’

I looked into those wide hazel eyes and time stopped. Attempting to clear my throat, I got ready to adopt my ‘haughty’ voice but felt choked up. ‘“There’s been an accident!” they said. “Your servant’s cut in half; he’s dead!” “Indeed!” said Mr Jones, “and please, send me the half that’s got my keys!”’

‘Excellent.’ Gabriel hammered his fist; he had recently decided that he liked the poetry of Harry Graham. I had to virtually shove him out of the door. ‘Go, go. Happy birthday! Do something today to make me proud.’

‘Only if you do, too.’

‘There’s such a thing as too smart.’ I pulled the door shut, threw an arm over the passenger seat, twisted around and went to reverse.

A woman with bright red dreadlocks fidgeting around in a green off-road jeep the size of a small passenger bus was doing the worst three-point turn I had ever seen. I could do nothing but sit there and wait. Everyone was watching her, terrified that she was going to randomly bash their cars. She glared at us all, as if it was everyone else’s fault, then backed up the street.

Angrily swinging the wheel hard and stamping my foot down, I drove straight into the wing of the old grey BMW that had pulled out from the kerb without indicating.

I hurled myself out of the car, then remembered that I might still test positive for alcohol. Walking carefully around the BMW in my sockless, squeaking trainers, I assessed the damage.

The other driver remained behind his wheel with the window insolently closed. His face was lost in shadow. He wore a red Nike Dri-Fit baseball cap with a peak that had probably spent the night in a coffee mug to keep its curve and was now pulled down low to hide his eyes. I could make out a stub nose, a ridiculous-looking black moustache – they’d come back into fashion after the hipster beards thing ‒ and a pointed jaw. He was wearing an old-fashioned pinstripe suit, white collar, blue tie, which struck me as odd because this really wasn’t a smart school, and looked as if he’d come to the wrong place. His suit sleeves were pushed up and there was something on his right arm . . .

‘Hey, open your window!’

He cracked it a couple of inches but didn’t move.

‘You want to step out and see this?’ I walked around to the contact point of the two cars. The Peugeot had lost its nearside headlight and the wing was crumpled. The BMW sported a furrow that had torn up the paintwork.

Rain pattered on fragments of orange plastic in the kerb. A couple of the mothers stopped to watch. My head was getting wet and starting to throb very badly. I had the strangest feeling, as if I had somehow become unmoored from reality. The hangover was back with a vengeance.

I looked back at the road, feeling nauseous. Some workmen had fenced off a hole at the kerb with a yellow metal sign explaining that a water main was being replaced. The red-and-white plastic tape surrounding it flapped in the billowing rain. I looked around slowly and took everything in. An Indian girl in a pink coat stood talking on her mobile. The mother in tight jeans and the hooded puffa jacket slowly turned to watch the argument. The scene felt dreamlike and artificial.

Turning back to the BMW, I saw the driver reversing, preparing to move around my stalled Peugeot. ‘Hey, wait a minute!’ I called, walking fast towards the vehicle. ‘I need your insurance details.’

He continued turning the steering wheel. I tentatively placed my hand on the wing but was ignored. Great, I thought, I give Gabriel a hard time about asserting himself and I’m just as hopeless as he is.

My alcohol-damaged brain splintered any clear thought. The wet roadway pixelated into migraine-cells. I stood squarely in front of the BMW, knowing that I couldn’t afford to have the Peugeot repaired without making an insurance claim. The driver twisted the wheel and the car swung around – that’s the BMW wheelbase, I caught myself thinking with admiration – and then, Shit, he’s running out on me!

At the last moment, I dragged my phone from my jeans pocket, nearly dropping it, and flicked open the camera. I grabbed a shot of the rear plate as the car receded. There was a furry yellow tiger attached to the retreating rear window. It swung backwards and forwards, its tongue out, taunting me.

I arrived back at the flat with a strange sensation in my gut. Gabriel’s toys were scattered across the floor of his bedroom. His abandoned art-swirl kit had left dried spatters of paint on the walls, and Star Wars characters no-one could recall from the boring middle films were stuck in unlikely locations; I could usually locate missing Lego pieces by standing on them in my bare feet.

I missed having a partner who was fastidiously neat, but it was too early to think about dating again. I dreaded the idea of someone smiling awkwardly while they patted Gabriel on the head before deciding they weren’t ready to become a second parent.

In the hall was Gabriel’s birthday gift: an old-fashioned compendium of board games, with dice cups and counters, notepads and markers. He preferred them to online games because they were tactile, and he responded better to things he could touch.

I brewed coffee and tried to put my thoughts in order. I had the day off, and planned to put out the last of Ben’s stuff. For the past three months, I had been stumbling over the boxes in the dark. Despite his tidy fetish, Ben had been addicted to back issues of GQ, bicycle parts and useless kitchen gadgets. When he moved out, he took only the stuff he needed for work. We were very polite about the whole thing.

Dumping my coffee mug in the sink, I listened to out-of-date voicemails: Mrs Arnold requesting the pleasure of my company at the school for a very serious word. Gabriel on a classmate’s phone, complaining that he couldn’t get into the flat because I had forgotten to leave the keys out . . . Parenting. I got the broad strokes right, but in Gabriel’s case it meant putting in a lot of extra work, making him feel special but not different. It was a balancing act, but I could handle it.

Even so, it was time to pull things together. An out-of-shape 34-year-old workaholic with thinning hair and an exhausting child to look after wasn’t much of a catch. I should rejoin the gym, shed a few pounds, get a haircut, meet someone nice and not spend the evening discussing my ex-husband.

After showering and putting on clean jeans, I found a relatively uncreased navy-blue shirt. Then I recalled the damage to the car. I sat down in front of my MacBook and logged on to my insurance company’s website, filling in the online claim form. I checked the licence-plate shot I’d taken on my phone. A seven-year-old BMW sedan, red leather seats, gun-metal finish, still a smooth ride in spite of its condition.

Zeroing in on the rear plate, I just about managed to make out the letters and numbers. After typing the registration into the online form, I was going to delete the shot when something drew me back to the picture.

I panned across the frozen frame, examining the car in sections, then realised what I was seeing.

Something impossible.

Pushed against the rain-spattered window, below the furry yellow tiger, a blue Chicago Bears sweatshirt and a hand pressed against the glass.

I panned up and enlarged the shot as far as the granulation would allow. A head came into view. There was a child looking back out of the rear of the car.

I felt my stomach dropping as I realised I was looking at Gabriel being driven away by a stranger.

‘There’s no one there.’

My mother talking, shaking out the folds of the blue dressing gown hanging from the hook on the back of my bedroom door. ‘See? All gone now.’

I had screamed and brought her running. ‘I thought there was somebody else in the room!’ Not a hunchbacked witch or a clawing monster, just a man.

After she had smoothed the dressing gown flat, I could no longer see the figure on the wall. ‘It’s thrown by the street light,’ she explained. ‘Not a man, just a shadow. I can get you heavier curtains if you like.’

That was typical of Jean. Where my father would have said, Don’t be silly, Ella, how would a man get in your room at night? Show some sense, my mother came up with a practical solution. She didn’t believe in spoiling her children, but liked to solve our problems. When my sister Lesley was teased at school, Jean taught her how to befriend her tormentors. When I saw a man made of shadows, she showed me there was nothing inside the darkness.

But Jean wasn’t there for ever. Soon after that, she died and, since my sister had already left home, I found myself fighting my terrors alone. The shadow man haunted my childhood. My father once told me he was real and had taken my mother away. I wasn’t stupid; I knew how sick Jean had been, but knowing didn’t make me any less scared. And that was how it stayed for years, the two of us forced to share the same melancholy house: resentful father and fearful daughter.

There are girls who are remembered by everyone they meet. They’re beautiful, funny, carefree, charming. Cameras pick them out in crowds. Boys swarm around them, unable to look anywhere else. They cast a golden glow, and when they speak everyone listens. Sometimes there’s another girl standing nearby who’s lost in the shadow they cast. That was me.

I was too shy to make friends, too smart to be popular. By the time I was fourteen, there had been three memorable days in my life. The first was when Jean sat me down in the kitchen to explain why she had to go into hospital. The second was when my dance teacher told me to go home and give away my ballet shoes because I would never be a ballerina. And the third was when I checked out Fanz4Ever.com and found the boy I knew I was destined to be with for the rest of my life.

Which is why I cut school one day and ran all the way home. I flew like a demon. There was only one thought on my mind: If I miss him, I’m going to burn the house down, then kill myself. Or worse, cut off all my hair. I could never get rid of my energy fast enough, which was why I ran that day.

My father Harry owned one of the biggest houses on The Avenue. Wide double-front, huge garden, everything trimmed and painted. Just me, him and Karen (Wife Two) rattling around in there. Harry was so old-fashioned it was sometimes hard to remember that he was still alive. When I was young, he wore suits to the beach.

My older sister Lesley had got out as soon as she could, fleeing to the suburbs to have a couple of fat little babies. She sent Christmas and birthday cards with photos and money she couldn’t afford tucked inside, and even though she told me to call on her, I knew I never would, unless I was desperate. She had her hands full.

As I slowed down outside the house, breathless, I saw it was less than five minutes to the start of the live vlog. I fired a curse, wishing for an electronic glitch to delay the start of Chartbustaz. I’ve always fired curses at people. Girls are good at curses.

I kicked open the door and hammered up the stairs to my very pink, teddy-filled room. Karen shouted up from downstairs, but I ignored her. I dumped my bag and threw myself down in front of my laptop.

I’d missed the beginning. The Inspectors were already performing. They were standing on a tinselly platform that looked as if it had been used for a thousand tacky cable . . .