It had been a long while since I’d sat in Tom Gillespie’s office. The last time I’d seen him, on the day Joe went missing, we’d met informally in the pub to talk about me returning to work. In the years since giving up my job, after having Joe, we nearly always met in this pub, near to the police station, or sometimes at his home where Rosie Gillespie cooked Liam, Joe and I the most amazing Sunday roasts.
Liam was sitting on the corner of Tom’s desk. Tom sat behind, perched on the edge of his chair. Liam had combed his hair but looked tired and agonised.
I walked towards Liam and he held his arms out like a blue-eyed bear. It was the first proper embrace we’d shared for weeks.
‘You should have called me,’ I said.
‘I wanted you to sleep,’ Liam replied.
‘How are you?’ Tom said.
‘Crap,’ I said.
‘I’m sorry, Rachel, but I haven’t got the results back from the lab yet. They’re still working on it. I think that we’ll find something, though,’ Tom said.
‘Something I don’t know about?’
‘Yes – only came to light this afternoon.’ Tom threw a look towards Liam.
‘You can tell me, you know, I am Joe’s mother.’
‘Calm down,’ Tom said, ‘I am going to tell you. Sit down.’ He chewed his thumbnail. Rosie was always telling him off about it. Liam and I used to laugh at her scolding. ‘Someone’s come forwards.’
‘Who?’
‘The day Joe disappeared, Rachel, was he upset? We’ve spoken to Melanie on three occasions and she said Joe was fine when she dropped him at home.’
‘We’ve been arguing a lot recently,’ Liam said, looking at me. ‘Joe heard. He could have been upset.’ Liam’s eyes dropped downwards towards the carpet.
I looked at Tom pleadingly. ‘Liam and I are ... were having a few problems. Tell me what you know about Joe. Please.’
‘The man who’s come forwards, he’s a regular “punter” on the field near your house. There most weekends, trawling for sex. He didn’t come forwards before, for obvious reasons. But, in fairness, he’s been out of the country since this all broke – got back yesterday. He’s a businessman.’ Tom allowed himself a skinny smile. ‘He had a positive sighting of Joe. Described what he was wearing, everything. Petrol blue jumper, jeans, black trainers. He said the boy was upset. The man, Gareth Summers, isn’t normally on the field, or, should I say, in the bushes, on a weekday. But that Wednesday he’d arranged to meet a “newie” in the area. He met the “newie” and they did have sex.’
‘Did Summers speak to Joe? See anyone with Joe?’
‘Yes, as weird as it seems, Summers, our only witness, asked Joe if he was all right. Apparently, so Summers tells us, Joe wasn’t crying then, but it was obvious that he had been. Summers told Joe to go home ... Joe didn’t, and carried on across the field; it would have been getting dark at that time of day. Summers began to follow Joe, to encourage him to go home, but then he saw someone in the distance, and Joe run towards that someone. Joe seemed OK to go with the someone.’ Tom paused. ‘Summers later said the someone was the same man he’d had sex with earlier in the evening.’
‘Do we know the name of the man Summers had sex with?’
Tom nodded. Liam was watching me closely.
‘The guy told Summers, after the sex, that he lives up north. Chester.’
And then my heart plunged downwards.
‘Michael Hemmings?’ I said quietly.
Tom nodded.
‘Have you sent anyone up there?’ The strange hunger returned. Tom knew about my cousin, Michael Hemmings, and his criminal record.
‘Yes, I have.’ Tom put his arm around my shoulder. ‘He’s not at his flat in Chester, hasn’t been seen for over two weeks.’
I tasted sick in the back of my mouth, and felt contractions inside my stomach. I rushed over to where Tom kept his wastepaper bin and emptied the small amount of food that was in my gut into it; and then felt Liam’s hand on my back.
An hour later, and still cocooned inside Tom’s office, the results for the DNA analysis came through.
The evidence was conclusive, placing Hemmings on the field where Joe was last seen.
I didn’t sleep that night. Distorted images travelled in infinite circles inside my head. Mostly, the images were of Michael Hemmings: mosaic, kaleidoscopic-flash depictions of him in our house, always about to leave, when I got home from school.
Sweat saturated my side of the bed. I’d put a T-shirt on to sleep in; it had been freezing in the night. The drop in temperature mirrored the feeling inside my body. Nothing mattered anymore. Only Joe.
When I got up and made my way to the bathroom I saw a razor blade sitting awkwardly on the sink. It would be so easy. I thought about taking the pills that were nestled in the bathroom cabinet, knowing that swallowing the whole packet would stop my breathing. Yet the part of me who was Rachel, the mother, Rachel, the police officer, realised that suicide wasn’t an option. Not yet.
Standing in the cold bathroom, I knew. I felt it. A visceral knowledge to which only a mother has access.
It was the first time I’d smelt toffee popcorn since my son had gone. And I knew Joe was dead.
As I opened the cabinet, a silent scream came from my lips; I emptied several of the pills into the palm of my hand, hoping they would quieten the deadened howl that would not leave me.
––––––––
The day after: 7.30 a.m.
I saw the tall form of Tom Gillespie passing my kitchen window. A female PC followed closely behind. I heard the quiet knock on the door, and like the falling suns from the fridge my heart fell in my chest as if it was escaping my body. My throat constricted and, for too long, I didn’t take a breath.
‘Rachel...’
Liam’s haggard face hovered centimetres from mine. Tom’s haunted countenance wasn’t far away.
‘I don’t want to know,’ I said. Although I already knew.
‘I’ll call the doctor. She needs something to calm her down.’ I heard the policewoman whisper.
I closed my eyes. They thought I couldn’t cope with the news, and I could not. Only the thought of a far-off retribution stopped me from trying to join my son and take care of him at his last destination. Be with him through the end.
Tom Gillespie told me about my beautiful Joe, how he died. I didn’t want to hear, but I had to know. And I listened.
––––––––
13th March 2000
What could I have done to change Joe’s destiny? My eyes were closed, but that did nothing to shut off the voices that rattled ceaselessly inside my head. What if Liam and I had told Tom immediately about our violent arguments and their effects on our son? This was my driving thought, but then other variables came to mind – like the very real and disturbed history of my cousin, Michael Hemmings. I’d done everything possible to ensure Joe had little contact with him.
When Michael Hemmings moved away to Chester, I’d been relieved. The only time I’d set eyes on him since then was more than three years ago, on a visit to see my uncle Sam and aunt Bridget. If I’d known Hemmings would be there I’d have stayed away. In the end Joe and I stayed less than an hour.
My mind made its way down the narrow and convoluted lanes of memory, trying to work out if anything had happened that I might have missed during that visit. Nothing came to mind. Hemmings had practically ignored Joe.
I heard the shower start upstairs and then heavy footsteps as Liam moved around the bathroom. I don’t think he had slept either, but I wasn’t sure as I’d given up pretending to sleep and made my prison on the sofa.
Tom was picking us up at eight-thirty. I looked at Joe’s suns. He should be sitting here with me, discussing his favourite ride. Gently, I took the painting down and began rolling it up.
‘That’s quick.’
I hadn’t heard Liam. His deep voice held a new edge.
‘For now, Liam. I have to.’
He nodded and pulled the towel tighter across his hips.
‘You don’t have to come. Why don’t you let me go ... alone?’ He moved closer and took the rolled-up painting from hands that would not stop shaking. ‘It would be better.’
‘I have to go.’
He stared at me. ‘I know.’
So, instead of sitting at the kitchen table and talking to Joe about our trip to the theme park, at nine-fifteen, surrounded by too many policemen, I stood outside the room that held Joe.
I still didn’t believe it. The body lying inside couldn’t be Joe’s. But I was lying to myself. I knew, and this knowledge took away my breath, seemed to take away my senses. I didn’t feel the coolness of the wind, I didn’t smell the antiseptic aroma that lurked outside the building; I didn’t register the pitying expressions of those around me. I took my hand from my pocket and wasn’t surprised at the blood on my palm, smearing onto the lining of my coat. My nails were pressing so hard into numb skin.
How many times in the faraway past had I stood in this same spot with a distraught and desolate parent? Dreading their reactions, watching their faces as they entered the disinfectant-smelling room to identify the body of their loved one, sometimes a child; the reality hit so hard they would freeze, unable to utter a word. I was the officer who accompanied those relatives and my empathy, I’d thought, was real and strong. I’d told myself that I understood their pain; the corkscrew of grief as it burrowed deep beneath their skin, unasked for and unwanted.
I realised now that I had not. And if I had, the job I’d once done would have been impossible.
As Liam and I waited for the mortuary assistant to pull away the plastic, I realised how worthless the empathy I’d tried to show had been. The assistant revealed Joe’s face. His skin was pale and white like Pentelic marble. As I looked at my son, Joe, my angel, my beautiful boy, I acknowledged of all those past parents: I had understood nothing.
What had they done to make Joe look so peaceful?
Then again, I didn’t know what the rest of Joe’s body looked like.
As I kissed my dead son my own torment was raw, yet outside the morgue I could feel the grief of all those other parents. It multiplied and overtook me. I felt my insides contracting, as if my gut were desiccating.
I was engulfed in grief, inhabiting my own personal purgatory.