Dead petals, p.11
Dead Petals, page 11
“What do you want to do?” Lance asked, his voice solid and determined. “Whatever it is, I’m right with you.”
Gary gave the busy room a quick glance. “I’m not hanging around here kicking my heels. Let’s go out and look for her, maybe she’s somewhere close. We can ask if anyone’s seen her.”
“Sure,” Lance agreed. “Let’s do it.”
Gary went to Fiona. “Fee.” The unbridled worry and anguish in her eyes broke his heart. “I’m going out with Lance to look for her.” They just looked at each other for a moment, his fear reflected in her eyes, then he took her in his arms and hugged her tight.
“Find her, Gary,” she whispered in his ear. “Please find her and bring her home.”
“I’ll try,” Gary whispered back to her.
He took a school photo of Charley with them. It had been taken late last year, but she hadn’t changed a great deal. Her face had slimmed a little, but her hair was still straight and mousey, with that little dusting of freckles across her nose. They took Lance’s car and set off for the park.
The day was still bright, but hazy. The smell of barbeque drifted from somewhere nearby. High above them, the buzz of a light aircraft droned. It should have been just another lazy Saturday evening, but it was far from it.
The park was mostly deserted. Gary turned toward the swings where he’d seen her blow that final kiss. His jaw clenched. Not final, he told himself. Not final. There was still hope, still a chance. What did they say about the first twenty-four hours and how crucial they were? She could still be alive somewhere, if only they knew where to look.
“Any idea which way she went?” Lance asked.
“No. The girls didn’t take notice of which way she went, but...” He walked toward the swings, wanting to be near the place where he’d last seen her, as if he might draw the inspiration needed to set him off in the right direction. He stood in the spot and looked around the park.
Lance did likewise, not quite understanding what Gary was looking for.
“This is the place I saw her last,” Gary said. “Right here.”
He thought about how he had driven away and left her here. Messing about with fucking servers while something bad was happening to his daughter. Tears blurred his vision. He didn’t seem to be able to move away from this spot. He felt as if he was standing at the epicentre of a nuclear blast that had laid waste to everything for miles around.
“Gary?”
Gary turned, his expression filled with indecision and agony.
“Where should we look?” Lance asked.
He didn’t know. He didn’t want to move. Didn’t want to lose this delicate, ephemeral link with his beautiful daughter.
“Gary?” Lance placed a hand on Gary’s shoulder.
Gary swallowed hard and looked back across the park to the tree line. “I...I have a feeling about the canal. I did earlier, but let’s just speak to the people here first. Maybe someone has seen her.”
After a fruitless round of questions with the few kids still hanging around the park, he and Lance headed down to the canal. Light still clung to the sky, but the heat of the day was cooling fast. They stood on the stony canal path, looking left and right. Gary tried to think where she might have gone if she’d come this way.
A cold, darkness crept over him. He slowly turned to look behind him where a wide embankment sloped gently up to the trees and bushes enclosing the park grounds. It was gloomy there beneath the trees and the earth was black. He didn’t know why, but it made him shiver.
“What’s up?” Lance asked.
“I don’t know,” Gary replied.
He took a few steps up the embankment, scanning the trees and the ground, not sure what he was looking for, but feeling something about this place. The earth had fallen away from around the base of a tall oak tree, exposing a tangle of knotted roots that you wouldn’t normally see. They twisted together like tortured souls, trying to find a way into the black earth.
“You see something?” Lance asked.
“Not really,” Gary said quietly. It’s just that this place and that tree is creeping me out and I don’t know why.
He gazed up through the branches of the tall oak, right up into its leafy-green canopy, then followed its craggy lines of mossy bark back down to the tangled roots. Finally, he glanced at the earth at the base, sprinkled with dead foliage.
There was nothing to see here.
He tried to shake the weird feeling and returned to the path. “Come on, we’ll head down this way a bit, if we don’t see anything, we’ll head the other way.”
A half hour later they were back where they started. They’d seen a few people walking the path, a group of teenage lads coasting on bikes, the gears clicking agreeably, and a couple of fishermen done for the day and packing away their tackle. But none of them had seen Charley.
As they walked back to the car, Gary noticed a new group of boys hanging around the swings. Lance pulled out his keys, but Gary stopped. “Hang on, Lance, let’s just have a word with these lads before we go. They weren’t here when we arrived.”
The boys eyed them suspiciously as he and Lance approached them. One young lad held a well-kicked football under his arm, the stitching busted, the hexagonal leather patches coming apart at the seams.
“Hey, guys,” Gary said. He held up the photo. “Have any of you seen this girl today?”
The boys leaned in for a closer look in the fading light, most of them shaking their heads right away.
“That’s Charlotte Wright,” the lad with the ball said.
Gary’s heart back-flipped. He stooped a little to bring himself more to the boy’s height. The lad looked a little younger than the others, more Charley’s age.
“You saw her today?” he asked.
“I saw her, yeah.”
“Was she with two other girls?”
“Nah, she was walking off that way.” He pointed toward the road she would have taken if she had been heading home.
“You’re sure?” Gary asked. “You’re sure it was her?”
“Yeah,” the boy replied. “I know her, she’s in my class.”
“Was she with anyone?”
“Nah, she was on her own. She looked like she was mad at somethin’, kinda stomping along and swinging her arms.”
Gary looked at Lance. Charley had left because the girls had argued. Gary imagined her marching away, legs and arms swinging stiffly. That was Charley alright. The boy was sharp to have picked that up.
“Is there anything else you can tell me? Did you see anything more?”
The boy shrugged. “Not really. We were in the middle of a game, losing 3-1, so I only saw her for a second before I got back into the game.”
It wasn’t much, but at least they had a positive sighting, the direction she was heading, and that she hadn’t left with anyone.
“What’s up then?” the boy asked. “Is she lost or somethin’?”
“Yes,” Gary replied, and it felt so unreal to admit that. “She’s missing. I’m her dad. Would you mind giving me your name and address?”
“Sure,” the boy replied. “I’m Kevin.”
Gary wrote down his details, in case the police wanted to interview the boy further. As he put away the pen, he noticed its lustrous green barrel and shining gold plate. He recalled Charley’s happy expression when she’d handed him the box with its red bow. He caressed the pen with his finger, the intimate touch seeming to split the moment and highlight the fact that Charley was missing. Not just missing, but taken. Someone had taken her. It was surreal. It was a scene from a movie.
“I hope you find her,” Kevin called. “She’s nice.”
The boy’s words brought tears pricking into Gary’s eyes. “Yes she is,” he agreed huskily, and they headed back to the car.
The house was an ant’s nest of activity. As well as the police, more friends had arrived. He looked around for Fiona but couldn’t see her anywhere. Someone touched his arm and he turned to find it was Trixie.
“Gary, I can’t believe this.” Her eyes were wide and frightened. “We’ve been trying to organise search parties, but the police don’t seem to know what they’re doing yet.”
Gary took her arm and moved her to the side of the room. “Did you know something like this was going to happen?”
She shook her head and looked shocked. “No I didn’t, Gary, honestly.”
“But what you said...”
“I just felt something wasn’t right.”
“Trixie, I know I’ve always made fun of these flashes of yours, these perceptions, but can you help us now? Do you have any idea where she might be?”
Trixie’s eyes filled with tears and she shook her head. “I’m sorry, Gary, I can’t do that, I only wish I could. I’m not a medium. I’m just sensitive to some things.”
Gary nodded and touched her shoulder with affection.
“I’m sorry,” she said again, wiping away tears.
“It’s okay.” He looked around again. “Have you seen Fiona?”
“She’s in the dining room with her mother.”
“Is Frank there?”
“Not last I saw.”
He found her sitting at the dining table with Audrey at her side. She looked wrung out, but when she noticed him, she raised her head hopefully. Gary crouched beside her and took her hands.
“A boy from her class saw her leaving the park this afternoon, heading toward home. He said she was on her own.”
Fiona explored his eyes, hoping for more, as if trying to fathom some hidden secret in his words, some further clue to where Charley was now.
“It’s not much, I know, but at least we know she was alone and which direction she was heading. I’m going to tell the police.”
He squeezed her hands and she nodded.
Gary found a detective and gave him the information about the boy. The detective wrote down the name and address and said that they’d get an officer over there to interview him. He went on to tell Gary that they were preparing to release a statement and a public appeal for information on TV and radio. Gary was thankful to hear some sort of positive action, but he still didn’t believe that Charley was with someone, unless it was against her will. At least an appeal might bring people forward who had seen her somewhere on her way home, maybe even saw what happened to her.
“We’re going to escalate this to the Missing Persons Bureau. It’s normally seventy-two hours, but with Charlotte being so young we can expedite it.”
“Missing Persons Bureau? What can they do?”
“They have a database of missing persons. They can sometimes help us find someone based on previous cases.”
Gary didn’t understand how they could do that, but he nodded all the same. It was another step in the right direction.
“If we don’t get much from the appeal, we’d like to arrange a press conference for tomorrow. Would you be willing to go in front of the media?”
Gary nodded numbly. Panicky dread crawled up inside him as it dawned that night was falling and, inconceivable as it was, Charley might not be coming home tonight.
The detective seemed to see these thoughts in Gary’s stricken face. “Missing children usually turn up within twenty-four hours. Try not to worry too much.”
Tell that to my wife, Gary thought.
He tried to focus on the faint glimmer that she could just be with someone, somewhere, maybe a friend who they didn’t know about. An appeal might make them realise what was going on.
And if she was being held against her will…then perhaps seeing it on the news would frighten her captor into releasing her.
Now they knew which direction she had taken, the detective told Gary they would send out officers to look for CCTV cameras along the route. Maybe she’d been picked up on one or more of them.
“In the meantime,” the detective said, “allow me to introduce you to Chloe Taylor.”
A young woman stepped forward, late twenties, blonde bobbed hair. She wore little makeup and was smartly dressed, but not in police uniform. She smiled and took his hand, shaking it firmly.
“Chloe is a Family Liaison Officer, or a FLO, as we like to call them. She’s here to work closely with you and help you through this. She will also relay information from you to us and vice-versa. I think Chloe has some questions for you, so I’ll leave you to it.”
Chloe drew him to one side and took out her note pad and pen. There wasn’t anywhere to sit.
“Chlo the FLO, huh?” Gary said.
She smiled. “I know, unfortunate, right? Is it okay if I call you, Gary?”
He nodded.
“Gary, I understand how distressing this must be for you, but most missing children are back home in twenty-four to forty-eight hours, so try not to worry too much.”
Gary offered a tight smile.
“Charlotte is twelve, is that right?”
“Yeah, she just turned twelve a few months ago. We call her Charley.”
“Oh,” Chloe said. “I like those boy/girl type names. So how has Charley been lately?”
“Been? She’s been fine. We had a big birthday party for her in March, lots of guests, we got her a kitten...she loves animals...she...” He caught the hitch in his voice and controlled it.
Chloe gave him a moment to recompose. “Has Charley been in trouble for anything lately? Anything that would make her reluctant to come home?”
Gary closed his eyes and touched his brow with his fingers. “Look, she hasn’t run away,” he said patiently. “You can forget that, right now.”
“Gary, I understand how this-”
“No, you don’t seem to understand at all. Charley doesn’t wander off without telling anyone. She doesn’t stay out beyond the time we’ve told her to come home. She doesn’t ignore the instructions we’ve given her. Something has happened to her! That’s what you to need understand.”
“I know it might seem that way, but you need to just take a step back and think carefully for a moment...”
“I don’t need to think carefully,” Gary said evenly. “I don’t need to think at all. She was perfectly happy. There wasn’t anything wrong, there wasn’t anything bothering her, we hadn’t argued! We were going to play Mario Kart, for Christ’s sake!” His voice broke and he rubbed his skull with the knuckles of his fist. “There is absolutely no reason at all why she wouldn’t want to come home. What else do I need to say to get that through to you?”
Chloe said nothing while she waited for Gary to regain his composure.
“I’m sorry,” he said, his anger dropping off the boil.
“That’s okay,” Chloe said softly.
“Look, I get it, I understand you have a process that you’re supposed to follow, but in this case, it doesn’t apply. We’re just wasting time.”
“Gary...”
“You know about the phone call, don’t you?”
“Yes, I know about the phone call.”
“Then why are you asking all these pointless questions?”
“Because we have to be thorough.”
Gary made a dismissive gesture.
“Gary, just think for one minute. Because of the phone call, it could be easy to assume that she’s been abducted, but the fact is we don’t know who has her phone. She could have lost it, or it could have been stolen, or she could have given it to someone.”
Gary closed his eyes and sighed at the same old line being strung out again. No one was listening to him.
“Let us do our job.”
“And while you’re doing your ‘job’, my daughter’s... somewhere, with God knows who.”
Someone grabbed his shoulder and spun him around. It was Frank. Audrey was right behind him trying to pull him back. Frank shrugged her off, but she kept grabbing at him.
“I warned you about this, didn’t I?” Frank shouted. “What did I say? I told you to keep her close, didn’t I? And what do you do? You abandoned her on the park!”
“I didn’t abandon her!” Gary shouted back. “She was with her friends.”
Audrey pawed at her husband. “Frank, come back. Come back, please.”
“You left her there,” Frank said. “I warned you to look after her, but you are so cocky with your clever words and your clever ideas. Think you know better than everyone else. Now look where we are!”
Fiona came over and tried to push between them. “Dad, stop it! We all need to calm down! This isn’t helping anything!”
Frank aggressively stepped closer, his face just inches from Gary’s. “Calm? Some people around here have been too calm.”
Gary thrust his fist into Frank’s chest. “Back off, Frank.”
“This is all your fault! If you’d taken notice of what I said, our granddaughter would be home and safe now.”
The accusation stabbed Gary hard. “I’m warning you, Frank!”
Frank turned his body and limbered his shoulders. “Think you’re good enough to have a go? I might be an old man, but I’ll still put you on your arse.”
“It’s always a fight with you, isn’t it, Frank?” Gary yelled. “You can't solve everything by putting someone on their arse.”
Frank half punched, half shoved Gary in the face. Gary retaliated, grabbing at him.
“MY GOD!” Fiona screamed. “STOP IT! Just stop it! Stop it! STOP IT!”
The distress in Fiona’s face and voice dropped the wind right out of Gary’s sails. Frank stopped struggling, but his chin still jutted out in defiance.
Fiona looked from one to the other. “Charley’s missing and all you want to do is fight each other?” Gary touched his mouth and checked his fingers for blood. “What are you thinking? What are you...?” She shook her head and walked away.
“Fiona!” Frank called. He tried to follow her, but Audrey held him back.
“Let me,” she said firmly.
Frank began to protest but something in his wife’s face told him now wasn’t the time. He gave one last smouldering look at Gary, straightened his shirt, and walked away.
Audrey held Gary’s gaze for a moment, then went in search of Fiona.
Gary turned to Chloe. “I’m sorry. I can’t do this now.”
