Which shut everyone up for a second. Because that was the thing. You could tell yourself that Sadie was just lying hurt somewhere, just like Fash had said. Or that maybe she was on a plane to Goa, or diving at the Great Barrier Reef. But then you remembered about her bag, the one you lot found down by the riverbank. Her rucksack, with her phone in, her wallet.
Everything.
‘Come on, guys,’ said Abi. ‘He’s said he can’t. We shouldn’t force him.’ And she gave Fash a little tug.
‘Come on, man,’ Fash said, still looking at Luke. ‘Come with us. Last time I’m gonna ask, I promise.’
Luke stared back at him, sort of frowning. ‘You’re really gonna go?’
Me, Fash and Abi all looked at each other. We shrugged.
‘And you really think … I mean, you reckon there’s an actual chance? That we might find her?’
Fash smiled with one corner of his mouth. ‘There’s always a chance, mate.’
Luke looked over his shoulder at Dylan, who was still staring at the TV.
‘Aw, sod it. Wait there.’
Luke shut the door in our faces. Six minutes later he opened it again, his school rucksack hooked across his shoulder. ‘I’ve told Dylan I’m going to the shops. And I’m not his babysitter, right?’
‘Right,’ said Fash, grinning his grin, which got the rest of us all smiling and that, too. We weren’t happy. It wasn’t that. For me it was mainly relief, I suppose. I felt anxious as well, but in a good way, like we’d finally taken back control. And we were doing it together. You know? After days of never feeling so alone.
It lasted as far as the footbridge. The buzz or whatever you want to call it. The sense we were setting off on an adventure. Because that’s when Abi said what we were all thinking, even if it was only at the back of our minds.
‘What about Mason?’ she said, and that was the point it basically turned to shit.
DI Robin Fleet
‘A search party?’
‘That’s what they’re claiming, sir,’ said Fleet. ‘We started interviewing them at the station first thing.’
Fleet was with Superintendent Roger Burton on the banks of the river, watching the divers as they surfaced amid the reeds. They were only half a mile or so from the estuary now, already within the ragged fringes of the town. They’d started further upriver, close to the point Sadie’s rucksack had been discovered, and the going had been slow. As the river emerged from the woods, the undergrowth along its banks was thick and wide, and the tides were among the most treacherous on and around the entire south coast. Initially they’d been lucky with the weather, but now even that had turned against them. The rain was one thing, churning up the water and washing away any clues that might otherwise have been picked up by the line searches. But it was the light that hampered them most of all. It was barely September. Three days ago there had been sunbathers on the beach. Yet with the cloud cover and the fog of rain, it was now perennially 4 p.m. in deep December. Literally, metaphorically, they were floundering in the dark.
‘At the station?’ said Burton. ‘You’re treading carefully, I hope?’
‘The doctors have given the four that made it out the all-clear. Abigail Marshall, Cora Briggs, Fareed Hussein and Mason Payne. They had a few cuts, some bruises, in one case a badly damaged knee. Only two of them had to stay in the hospital overnight, but they’re coming in later this morning. And we’ve got appropriate adults lined up.’
‘Not the parents?’
‘We’re trying to discourage it. In light of events … Well. There are potential conflicts of interest.’
They’d interviewed Sadie’s friends before, of course, several times over, but since their excursion into the woods, the situation in terms of Sadie’s disappearance had moved on. Quite how, Fleet was yet to decide. The stories the kids had so far told about what had happened out there were garbled, just as Nicky had said. Though when Fleet had spoken to them in the woods, it was entirely probable they’d been in shock.
‘A search party,’ Burton muttered, shaking his head. ‘Did they not stop to think about how it would look?’
Burton was a tall man, prim, wearing pristine wellingtons and waterproofs. He was a politician policeman, with a wife he was probably fond of, but kids Fleet had a feeling his boss would struggle to identify in a line-up. Maybe that was unfair, and it wasn’t as though Fleet was one to judge. But it was family men who went furthest in the force these days, and everything with Burton was about how things might look.
‘With respect, sir, they’re teenagers. I don’t imagine they cared. And anyway, it turned out to be something else entirely.’
Burton sniffed. ‘You’re not kidding. A funeral procession, is what it turned into. How the hell does one of them end up dead?’
‘That’s what we’re trying to find out. But they’re all claiming they either didn’t see or they can’t remember.’
‘Can’t remember?’
‘I know how it sounds. But when it happened, it would have happened fast. And if there was a tussle, it’s entirely possible there was a lot of confusion. Maybe no one actually meant for it to happen.’
‘You mean it was an accident?’ said the superintendent.
‘I didn’t say that. All I’m really saying is, it doesn’t look to be as straightforward as we first thought.’
‘Christ, Rob. The last thing I need right now is complications.’
Fleet bit his tongue. A missing girl. Her brother dead. The search continuing along the river, and – what? A new search out in the woods? At what point during recent events had the superintendent assumed there wouldn’t be complications?
‘We’ll get to the bottom of it, sir. It will take a bit of time,
