Reported Missing

by Sarah Wray

Genres: Crime Fiction; Psychological Thrillers; Suspense

Synopsis

Four months ago, Becca Pendle's husband disappeared. So did 14-year-old Kayleigh Jackson. Just a coincidence? Becca wants to believe so ... But it's getting harder for her to trust his innocence. Faced with an angry town that believes Chris has abducted the teenager, Becca tries to discover the truth. But what she finds shocks her more than she ever thought. How well does she really know the man she loves?

Release date: July 14, 2017

Publisher: Bookouture

Print pages: 346

Sample

I am suddenly awake and upright, groggy from the red wine and sleeping pill. It’s nothing, I tell myself. Just the wind. I begin to relax, remembering that it’s Bonfire Night. It’s just fireworks in the distance. The banging and explosions must have woken me.

I start to relax again, then my whole body stiffens. There are voices outside, whispers, low murmurs – close to the caravan. I strain to hear. The dread in my chest is like setting concrete. A click against the window, then another... stones.

Not again, please not again.

A thud against the side of the caravan, followed by another. Everything shakes, glasses rattling. They’re going to tip it over. I panic, run to the door and throw it open, a rush of cold air. It’s pitch-dark but I sense people scattering in what seems like all directions.

How many are there?

A hissing, then something screams past my ear. A loud crack to my right and an explosion of light, a smell of burning. A firework. Panicked, I think of the gas bottles. But it whistles back into the sky and arcs away again. My eyes have adjusted to the dark, and I stamp out the embers on the damp grass, smoke catching in my throat. Something sharp whips across my cheek and stings. I raise my hand to my face and it’s wet, blood.

‘That’s for your pervert husband and what he done to Kayleigh!’ a girl’s voice shouts. I can’t tell where she is or how close.

I turn to go back into the caravan, and another pebble smacks against the side of it, bouncing off. Someone is flicking a lighter on and off but I still can’t see who’s there.

They came to the house before I moved out, but how did they find out I’m here?

‘Where’s your husband?’

A voice from the other side. ‘Where’s Kayleigh? Where’s he taken her?’

Rhythmic clapping, a football chant. ‘Where’s your husband, where’s your husband, where’s your husband?’

‘You must be too old for him, love. Heard he prefers them young!’ Sniggers.

‘Oi!’ The girl’s voice appears from around the side of the caravan. Something lit is hurtling towards me. It hits the step just in front of my feet, a sharp bang, a ball of blue light. Speeding streams of coloured light fly past my face, leaving a blurred trail behind them.

I just see limbs and bobbing heads, then dark shapes running away towards the park entrance.

I go back inside and lock the door. Knees puIled up to my chest, I sit in the caravan in the dark, shivering, my heart thumping, for what seems like hours. I can’t calm down. Things have been quieter recently. Why again now, all of a sudden? I think back to earlier this evening; a phone call. Silence, breathing. Wrong number, I tried to tell myself. But it was like before, when it first happened.

I check the doors and windows one last time. I keep the lights out to hide any silhouette and push a chair in front of the door with cups and saucers crowded on the seat. Above each window, I carefully balance knives and spoons. Should anyone come back, I need to know straight away. I am ready.

Finally, after this procedure is complete, I can rest a little easier, at least enough to just lie here in some sort of peace. The world always feels like it’s swimming slightly these days, my eyes are gritty and hot at the rims. Despite its dingy furnishings – the faded, garish cushion coverings and the stark little gas fire, there’s something about life in the caravan that is soothing; it’s like playing shops or post office as a child. The compact space and the dual-purpose furniture are comforting, the smaller versions of chairs and appliances.

I had felt safer here. And it is too painful to be at the house, the credit-card promotions and pizza offers still arriving with his name on, his acoustic guitar propped against the wall.

When I block out for the briefest moments why I ended up here, I have a fleeting feeling of serenity. Then it slams back in, I'm falling asleep, then I'm tripping over and falling off the cliffs, awake.

He is still gone. Chris, my husband. Almost four months now. 112 days.

I rearrange the crockery on the chair once more, making sure it clatters if I nudge the chair even slightly. I pour myself half a mug of vodka, pull on my woolly hat and crawl under the covers, shivering. I have to remove a glove; the phone requires a human touch. Then there he is, warm and alive, lying out on a picnic rug, squinting from the sun, pushing the camera away with mock coyness. I play the video again.

After what feels like just a few short hours’ fitful sleep, I wake and push the curtain back, wiping condensation away with the bottom of my fist. My mouth is dry and foisty. I didn’t mean to drink so much again last night.

It’s a blustery, wet day, the windows lashed with rain as I look across the deserted caravan park, the pavements darkened and the grass sodden. A figure in a raincoat dashes past, holding their hood up.

I am glad I don’t have to go into work anymore, but especially on days like this. In recent weeks I have barely left the cocoon of the caravan, living on toast and powdered soup. Until the booze runs out. Then I am lured out again.

As I make coffee, I flick on the TV to break the silence. The weather report, an advert for a kitchen chopping-and-blending device, trying to be too American, breakfast TV. A flicky-haired woman, blank-faced and waxy with foundation, stares, forced sincerity, into the camera. She’ll be back after the break to talk about the rise in testicular cancer and to meet Tim, diagnosed with an aggressive strain of the disease. She’ll also be looking at a preview of spring fashion.

The TV clock says it’s 8 a.m. and the familiar lilting newsreader announces, even-voiced, there’s been another suicide bombing at a market in Iraq. There could be snow this week, probably in Scotland. The pound has fallen against the dollar. What does that even mean anyway?

I used to find daytime TV depressing – all the payday loan adverts and property shows. How many people who are at home all day are in a position to be inspired by a property development programme? Unemployed people, new mums, elderly people like Mum? I used to moan to Chris about the staff at the home putting Mum and the other residents in front of the TV all day. ‘Corrosive,’ I think I called it. So self-righteous.

But now I find it kind of soothing myself, the blandness. I avoid music these days; I just search for voices on the radio, background noise, like I used to hate Dad doing when I was young. I don’t focus on anything – films, TV, books. I used to love all that stuff: murdered women, missing kids, mysteries. But now I’m living it, I’m like the thinnest glass. The panic is never far from the surface.

When the newsreader says the name, I stop still, my chest freezes. I should have expected this. Deep down, I did. Images cascade in all at once. Close your eyes, breathe in through the nose, out through the mouth, like the therapist said. I’m still loath to admit that this does actually work sometimes. I gulp the lukewarm instant coffee, feeling queasy, and force my attention to the TV.

Seeing Shawmouth on the national news is still a strange kind of novelty. The reporter stands on the seafront, umbrella straining in the wind, with the beach and a row of shops in the background: a grotty café, a closed newsagent, a fake shop made to look like a homely, welcoming bakery, but it’s just a sticker – a council initiative aimed at getting investors to see the potential in abandoned buildings. It’s a gift to the news lot; they’ll love this gloomy setting. They always tried to make it look like hell on earth here; the kind of place teenage girls disappear.

The kind of place grown men flee from the first chance they get?

But the truth is, we aren’t used to national attention here. People keel over with strokes and heart attacks. They die peacefully at a grand old age in their favourite chair. Occasionally there’s a stabbing or a domestic murder – but reporters don’t travel north for those people. I wonder why my thoughts have automatically turned to the way people die? Would Chris being dead be better than him and Kayleigh being alive together somewhere?

They probably wouldn’t have filmed if it had been a bright, beautiful day – people, especially when they’ve moved away to live in some overpriced beige box in the suburbs down south, love to be smug about what a shithole it is round here, but it can really have the charm of an old Technicolor photo on sunny days.

‘Kayleigh Jackson is still missing,’ the newsreader announces. Kayleigh’s young face is up on the screen, a photo she took herself with her phone from a high angle to flatter, pouty. But you can see she’s pretty anyway. Badly back-combed hair with dark roots, floury foundation and too much mascara making spidery lashes that spike out, but the fresh-facedness shines through. The school uniform gets me all over again, my stomach twisting.

‘The family of missing schoolgirl Kayleigh Jackson will hold a candlelight vigil next Sunday, on what will be Kayleigh’s fifteenth birthday. The St Augustine’s pupil vanished after 17 July and has not been seen since. Kayleigh’s family has repeatedly appealed to their daughter or anyone who might know anything about her disappearance to get in touch.’

They’re going to play the video again, I know they are. Shot around a week after Kayleigh went missing. I grip the worktop. I can’t bear to watch it again but it feels cruel to look away.

Kayleigh’s mum, Janice. I think about her a lot. I’ve never actually met her. Not really. I saw her through the glass once. In the early days, I didn’t know what I was doing, nothing had sunk in. Strung out, I found myself outside Kayleigh’s house, standing at the fence, looking in through the window. I think I wanted to tell her that I was sorry but that it wasn’t true about Chris. It couldn’t be true. Selfish, really. When she saw me, she banged on the window. She burst out of the front door. She was shouting something at me, her face red and twisted like a wrecked car, but all I could hear was white noise. Someone restrained her, an officer came out and shooed me along, shaking his head.

We don’t know each other, but our lives – mine and Janice’s, mine and Kayleigh’s – have become so intertwined somehow.

Janice looks tired and drawn, grey-faced. The ends of her sleeves are twisted into the palms of her hands, along with a screwed-up tissue. She shakes with grief, barely able to get her words out and look into the camera. A police officer places a useless, non-committal hand on her forearm as she sobs, the press cameras clicking and flashing.

‘We’re not angry,’ she pleads into the camera. ‘Just come home, Kayleigh. We just want you home with us again where you belong,’ she says, before collapsing into sobs again.

It didn’t take long, a couple of weeks after Kayleigh went missing, for the papers to stick the boot in with Janice too, perhaps growing bored of trying to wring column inches based on nothing out of Chris. All they have is that Chris and Kayleigh both disappeared on the same day. Just that one day, this invisible line linking them together.

They mentioned Kayleigh’s ‘absent father’, her home in ‘one of Shawmouth’s toughest estates’, and described Janice, completely irrelevantly, as ‘unemployed’. I was ashamed to feel gratitude creeping in, that the heat was off me for a bit.

The newsreader’s voice pulls me back. ‘Police say they are pursuing multiple lines of enquiry and they’re calling for members of the public with any information about the teen to come forward,’ she says before moving on to the next news item. A row over fracking.

Multiple lines of enquiry. I roll the term around in my head. It doesn’t give you much hope, does it? That was the term they used then, too, just before Detective Fisher took Chris’s laptop away, and his toothbrush.

‘It’s routine for a missing person,’ Fisher had said. They had to investigate all possibilities to find Kayleigh. ‘And your husband, of course,’ she added, as an afterthought.

Someone must have seen the visit to the house; them taking the items away in sealed, clear bags. Because things got much worse after that – the word was out, the mood had shifted.

As I walk along the seafront, the neon of the arcades is inviting against the grey sky – the childhood excitement of seeing the coloured lights and the cartoonish primary shades of the seaside has never left me. The green fields of Yorkshire, the slick glass city buildings of London don’t make my heart swell in the same way. The slot machines bleep and shimmer as I pass the open fronts of the arcades. I always look in to check, just in case. It’s habit.

I see Chris everywhere – at night when I sleep, although increasingly the details of his face are slipping away from me. When I quickly dig out a photograph to refresh the image, it feels distant; the features have somehow changed, yet I can’t put my finger on what is different. I see him in the street, lost in a crowd; in the back of a taxi whizzing by; at the supermarket, disappearing around the corner of the next aisle. It’s the shade of his hair, a similar balance of height and weight, a fur-hooded parka coat that he used to wear. Each time, there’s an involuntary surge in me – it’s him, he’s back. Decisions I’ve been unsure I could ever face are resolved in a second: it was all a mistake, there’s an explanation, we can work something out. I still love him and I want to reach out and touch him. But the person always morphs back into themself and I am left bereft all over again, kicking myself for getting swept up once more in what couldn’t be real.

At first I would often retrace my steps around the town, the same route I took when he first went missing. It’s been a while, though, and now it feels familiar yet strange at the same time, a half-remembered dream. After last night’s firework attack, now the vigil, I almost got back into bed. I’d have stayed there all day again, like before. But something propelled me to get up. Who’s going to stand up for Chris if I don’t?

This time, though, I no longer have the expectation that I’ll run into him, see him coming towards me from a distance, sheepish, loving, sorry. I clung on to that hope at first, but it started to fade then evaporated altogether. I couldn’t hold on to it. The shock of his absence, the gaping hole; it doesn’t subside.

17 July – the last time Chris was seen, the last time Kayleigh was seen. Once a completely meaningless day. Now forever marked on the mental calendar. Will the people of Shawmouth always remember the date, or will it fade and disappear for everyone but Janice and me?

I drift into the first arcade and look for the attendant. It’s still early, not even 9 a.m., so it’s fairly quiet, although some people are already here playing the machines. Two boys, their school ties taken off, jab and wrench at a blaring game.

An old woman perches on a stool in front of one of the fruit machines, slurping out of a polystyrene cup and grabbing coins from an old margarine tub without averting her eyes from the rolling fruit. The lights cast coloured shadows across her face. There’s a man in a striped jumper, cheering his horse on in the Grand National game, tiny plastic horses racing against each other in the encased glass, the winner fixed, pre-programmed. There’s a plastic badge on his jacket; his name is Matty, it tells me. I wait near the machine but he doesn’t look away from the latest race. He shouts and jeers the horses on as if at a real race, but it doesn’t look like his has won, as he kicks the side of the machine and punches his fist against the glass.

He’s about to put more coins in when he notices me standing there. He looks me up and down, one eyebrow raised. ‘There’s a change machine over there, love.’ His hair is greasy, white flecks of dandruff at the temples.

‘I don’t need change. I—’

‘Has that new machine swallowed the money again? I’m sorry, love, but it’s not my—’

‘It’s not that.’

‘Well, I hope you’re not looking for a job as you are seriously out of luck!’ He gives a small laugh to himself.

I rummage in my bag. ‘I… I… Have you seen this man?’ It always sounds ridiculous when I say that, like something from a cheesy TV show.

He looks at me strangely. ‘What man?’

I finally retrieve the leaflets from my bag.

‘He’s my husband,’ I say, pointing to the picture. ‘We live round here. He’s missing.’

‘Missing? Really? Not another one. That’s three people in a year! Fuck me, that’s awful.’

I have his full attention now.

‘How long’s this one been gone? Sorry, love, how long has your husband been missing?’ He puts a protective hand on my arm but I wriggle away. His nails are dirty.

I hear the boys celebrating again behind me and the machine plays a louder jingle. ‘Get in, you little bastard! Yesssss!’

‘He’s been missing since July. The last day of the school term?’ I think this detail might help since so many kids come in here. ‘You, er, you might remember? I… I was hoping I could leave some of these leaflets in here. I think he might have been in here, that’s all.’

I tried to keep the leaflet simple, to the point. It reads: Missing. Have you seen this man? There’s a picture of Chris, wearing his jogging gear and grinning. There are strips with my mobile number at the bottom to tear off. Jeannie – my best friend – said I should change it, that I shouldn’t give it out. But I have to keep it the same, in case he tries to call.

I see the recognition fall across his face. ‘Oh. So it’s not another missing person, is it? It’s him.’ A grimace of anger is spreading now. ‘Listen, love, don’t come in here and try and pull the wool over my eyes. Are you taking the piss?’

The old woman is staring, listening in, one hand in the box of coins but gawping over, the lights dancing on her face.

‘I’m not trying to trick you.’ I try to sound assertive and direct.

He’s edging closer to me, invading my personal space.

‘I told you he’s my husband!’

‘Look.’ There’s a sneer across his face.

‘Hey!’ the woman shouts over. ‘I’m watching you, matey.’

It’s hard to tell but I assume she is addressing him. He steps back a little.

‘And what makes you think he’s been in here? We don’t allow nonces in here, love. I am personally very careful about that.’ He jabs at his chest, puffing it out slightly.

‘I’m not just asking in here, I’m asking everywhere in town,’ I say, as if it will make any difference.

‘Alright then. Give me some of your leaflets.’ He is already yanking them from my hand.

I try to hold on and a few tear.

‘Sure, I’ll put these out for you, my love.’ He makes a theatrical show of walking to a nearby bin and dropping the leaflets in before pouring his cup of coffee in on top of them, holding his arm higher than he needs to for dramatic effect, not looking away from me the whole time.

I see the old woman shake her head. At me or him? But she is already putting coins into the slot again.

Matty is teeing up his money for the next race. I think about appealing to him, tearing a strip off him, using his name, but I know it would be pointless. I give up and leave.

The wind is getting up outside, a freezing gale pushing my breath back into my mouth. The waves are crashing high, close to the railings above the beach, sometimes sloshing across the road. It’s dangerous but people still walk close by. The boys from the arcade are over there now, standing near the edge, leaning over then running away when a wave comes. One of them gets drenched and screeches, the sound mingling in with the cries of the seagulls. People have been pulled in this way before, dragged into the sea, drowned. I worried that the sea had taken Chris, but the helicopters, the lifeboat searches brought up nothing. Not Chris and not Kayleigh either.

I carry on up one of The Parades, stopping every now and then to attach a leaflet to a lamp post. It will get damaged in the wind and rain but not immediately. You never know when the right person will walk past.

From a certain vantage point in Shawmouth, at the top of The Parades, by the train station, there’s an angle from which you can’t see the road or the promenade. It looks like the whole town, all these houses and people, shops and cars, just float on the sea. That’s why in the neighbouring towns they call people from Shawmouth ‘floaters’. The name has always given me the creeps. Shadowy shapes in the eye. Dead bodies, drifters, people who can’t commit or decide. Pennywise the Clown: ‘They all float down here.’

The Parades are a set of parallel streets between the top of town and the sea. Mostly streets of houses, giving way to a street full of bars, and on the next one a couple of restaurants and B&Bs. Close together, these streets, but occupying different worlds.

As you get nearer the sea, down the sweeping avenues, the houses get more expensive.

Old, three-storey, candy-coloured terraces, faded yellows, pinks and blues, with white detailing like the icing on Christmas gingerbread houses. I used to imagine we’d live in one of these one day. We’d be tidy then, when we had one of these houses. We’d have solid wood floors, classy chandeliers, fancy serving bowls. We’d lounge around barefoot – a carefree, magazine life. God knows how we’d ever have the money, though. What do you need to do to own one? Be a doctor, an old-school academic, the lucky recipient of an inheritance, the beneficiary of someone’s death? I like to study the families as they come and go from these houses. The fragrant wives gleam: lean, healthy, ‘lit from within’, as they say in the magazines; dressed in expensive casuals. Slim thighs in well-cut jeans, a tasteful white shirt that doesn’t crease or pull. They walk pedigree dogs, bundle babies into 4x4s. The men are clean-shaven, tight-torsoed, like catalogue models; the catalogues I spent hours poring over as a kid – I was thinking ahead to my life about now with someone like Chris, what it was going to be like.

I try to look into the houses as I pass, imagining my alternate life, being careful to make it look like a casual glance in case anyone should notice me. The houses all look pristine; have cleaners, no doubt. Wood floors, high ceilings, white paintwork. They look welcoming, calming.

I’m out of breath and too hot in my coat now, after walking up the hill. I used to go swimming, jogged sometimes with Jeannie. I barely do any exercise now.

Up near the river and the train station, they call this area ‘The Fields’, the wild area surrounding the river and a few playing fields. Chris used to play football there sometimes on Sundays.

Chris was last seen on CCTV on the wide road that runs along the top of The Parades, separating the town from the river and the fields: 9.37 a.m. Shirt on, loosened at the neck, work rucksack on his back. He wasn’t picked up anywhere else on camera. An article in the paper said the surveillance cameras in the town had been ‘prioritised’ due to budget cuts. Up to a third of them shut off to save money, they said.

On the film, he just crosses the street and then vanishes. I found myself craning my head, trying to catch the last glimpse, to see round the corner, beyond the screen. Did he meet someone? Kayleigh? Jump on a train to start a new life somewhere else? He always talked about going to America, said they needed teachers there. But his passport is still at home.

Detective Fisher had me watch the video to confirm it was Chris, and I made her play it over and over. It was him. And at the same time, it wasn’t. I don’t want that to be the latest memory I have of him, a grey figure drifting past. Glowing white eyes, supernatural.

There were a couple of other reported sightings too, but Detective Fisher was cagey; she shared what she wanted to. Probably only what she was allowed to.

The CCTV is why I often come here, though this is the first time in a while. Chris and I used to come here too, when we first moved back. I run the tape again in my mind. Stand on the same spot, the last place I know he was. Was it here? Or here? I close my eyes, but I can’t feel anything.

I go further along, towards the water. People sometimes sit here by the river in summer, walk their dogs. Mum and Dad sometimes brought me for picnics when I was little. Chris and I would walk here on Sundays or after tea on summer evenings, watching the last sun of the day fade. He’s into nature, the beach, bike rides – more so than me. That’s why I thought he’d like it in Shawmouth after the shock of leaving London subsided.

I’ve always been fascinated by this place. It’s quite deserted now. The weather, the time of day. I get closer; the ground is already sodden and slippery underfoot.

‘DANGER,’ the red sign blares. ‘The Cut is DANGEROUS and has claimed lives in the past. Please stand back and beware all slippery rocks.’

They call this section of the river ‘The Cut’. Chris liked it here too. It has a certain beauty, something ethereal and fairy-taley, I’ve always thought. The water is higher than usual at the moment, fast-flowing and playful, skittering over rocks, but not violent like it can be. The narrow gap and stepping stones inviting you to stride across. But it’s a cruel mirage. The water here runs faster and deeper than the rest of the river. No one knows how deep it goes. There’s a network of caverns and tunnels underneath – they hold all the unseen water.

Dogs, a young couple, even a child – they’ve all been sucked in over the decades, gone for good. As a child, this place was a bogeyman drummed into us.

I stand at the edge now, letting the rushing water hypnotise me, like watching road markings whizz by on a car journey. I am woozy, as if my head is rolling back and forth. I’d have kept back before, obeyed the sign and my mother; I wouldn’t have dared get this close or let Chris either. The muddied edge is ragged and uncertain. It could collapse; I could slip.

I notice the cold after a while, feel like I am breaking out of a trance. I check around, shake myself out of it and head back into town. I am tired. But I have to complete the circuit or I feel superstitious.

Roaming the glut of bars and pubs near The Parades, I peer through windows, occasionally stopping and watching to see who’s entering and leaving. By day, the bars and pubs look stark and grubby, unrecognisable from the dark, thronging evenings.

There’s a cleaner in one of them, wiping down the bar and putting upturned stools onto the tables.

‘We’re closed,’ she says when I go in, without looking towards the door.

‘I don’t want a drink. I was wondering if…’

She looks up now and I can see she recognises me, she knows who I am. It’s often women who do.

‘Something of a local celebrity,’ Jeannie said once, a misplaced tentative joke.

From the picture they kept using in the paper, I assume. Taken on our wedding day, swiped off my Facebook before I changed the settings.

I consider just leaving, especially after the incident at the arcade, but my feet are rooted to the spot. If people are going to start pushing again, I have to push too. Jeannie always said I’m like a Weeble; I bounce back up.

‘I was wondering if I could leave some leaflets. I’m... erm… looking for my husband. He’s missing.’

The woman doesn’t look surprised or ask for any more details, but she glances behind, seemingly checking if anyone else is there. She bites her lip.

‘So can I? Leave. . .