The Missing Husband (41 page)

There was a hiss and crackle behind her as Mary’s radio burst into life. ‘Two youths running along the path heading back to West Allerton! Somebody grab them!’ she shouted but Jo was determined to get to them first.

The boys immediately deviated away from the path and plunged deeper into the undergrowth. Thorny branches clawed at Jo’s clothes as she followed the sound of the boys’ retreat. She was forced to scramble rather than run after them but her quarry was slowing too. She caught occasional glimpses of darting shadows but clearest in her sights was the impassable silhouette of the eight-foot fence that sectioned off the clearing from the back gardens of the neighbouring houses.

There was a crash as one of the boys hit the wooden fence running. She didn’t realize he had scaled the barricade until she caught sight of a human-sized spider silhouetted against the black sky. A second later the shape disappeared with a thump as the escapee hit the ground on the other side. Jo’s heart thumped too and then it skipped a beat as she heard the second boy begin his ascent.

‘No, please!’ Jo cried as she reached the fence. The white flash of trainers was directly in her eye line, propelling their owner upwards. She lunged at them, grabbing hold of one dangling foot and refusing to let it go even as it kicked and thrashed. There began a desperate tug-of-war and Jo used the fence as leverage, bringing all her weight to bear as she pulled at the trapped leg while fending off kicks from the free one. One kick glanced off her cheek and stars sparked across her vision but she wouldn’t give up. She found purchase on the boy’s clothes and began to prise him off the fence, using up every ounce of strength and pent-up frustration she had harboured for the last five months. She cried out with rage even as her superhuman powers began to fail. He was slipping through her fingers. And then he was up and out of reach, balanced on the top of the fence as effortless as a cat.

Jo fell back against the brambles, caught in its web of thorns, spent and useless. ‘No! Please don’t do this to me!’ she cried.

As Jo forced back the tears she stared up at the silhouette of her last, fading hope. The shadow gazed down at her for a moment and then it was gone. There was the crunch of dried bracken as the boy dropped back down to earth.

The first sob escaped as the boy’s face loomed over her. ‘Are you all right, love?’

Jo put her hand to her mouth and nodded to the boy who was undoubtedly the one who had come up to her all those months earlier. Her heart was hammering and her breath caught the occasional sob as she spoke but she spoke quickly, aware that time was against them. They were still being pursued by others, and the crashing of undergrowth was getting closer. ‘On 16 October last year I was waiting for my husband but he never came home. I was pregnant and I was scared. I didn’t know if he’d left me or if something bad had happened. I still don’t know and those questions have been eating away at me and pretty soon there’ll be nothing left. I can’t be the person I was and I can’t be the person I should be now, the mother to my son, because I don’t know if I’m worth loving. I can’t move on with my life until I get some answers, if not from David then from the last person who saw him that night. Was that you?’

The boy looked as if he was about to speak but the beam of a flashlight cut through the night, snaking its way along the wooden fence towards them, making him tense for flight. Jo could hear her name being called.

‘This is between you and me. I’ll keep them away if you promise to talk to me. Please, will you?’

The boy nodded.

‘I’m over here!’ Jo called out. ‘I’m fine but I’m with someone. Please, let me talk to him. Stay back!’

There was a pause as collective minds tried to decide what to do. ‘Are you in any danger, Jo?’ It was Mary.

‘No, I’m perfectly safe. Please, I just need a few minutes on my own.’

‘OK, five minutes,’ Mary called back.

Jo looked to the boy and waited. Her patience was eventually rewarded.

He crouched down until he was level with Jo who had remained tangled in the undergrowth. ‘We play footie here all the time,’ he said, ‘even when it’s pitch-black and teeming down. There’s nothing else to do around here.’

‘Or there are worse things to do.’

The boy laughed. ‘Well, maybe we do a bit of that too,’ he admitted although Jo preferred to believe it was only false bravado from her reluctant hero. ‘Anyway, that night Reddo kicked the ball right over the railway fence. It was only stuck in some bushes, it hadn’t rolled down the embankment, and everyone said we should leave it. But it was my ball; I’d only had it a few days and I knew I’d be in for all kinds of grief from my mum if I left it.’

Jo was nodding as if she understood, but all the time she was urging him to say something that would end her misery.

‘There’s this massive tree just on the other side of the fence and if someone can give you a bunk up, you can use it to get over and then back again when you’re done. I was halfway up the fence when this bloke came along.’

Jo shuddered. She suspected the tree he was referring to was the oak that had creaked and groaned as she called out to her husband and begged him not to leave her. And there was no doubt in her mind who the man was. ‘David.’

The boy shrugged. ‘He was carrying a John Lewis bag full of baby stuff.’

The explosion of pain in Jo’s chest took her breath away. She hadn’t thought her heart could break any more. ‘Baby stuff? Really?’

‘He started off by telling us how dangerous it was. He wasn’t having a go at us or anything, it was just a bit of banter and he gave as good as he got,’ the boy said with a hint of admiration. ‘That’s when he started telling us how he used to do the same thing when he was a kid and we gave him a bit of a challenge.’

‘David went over the fence?’

‘He was pretty nifty for his age. It was Reddo who gave him a bunk up and he was up and over in no time and got us our ball back.’ It was here the boy stopped as if his story had come to its end and he began to straighten up.

‘Wait, what happened next? Did he get back over?’ The question hung in the air and with a sickening twist of her stomach that felt like she had been punched, she had her answer. ‘You left him?’

‘He’d left his shopping bag on this side of the fence and Reddo decided to pinch it. We took the bag and ran.’

‘You left him,’ Jo repeated in a whisper but this time there was no question and she didn’t even try to stop the boy as he scrambled over the fence and out of sight.

When the beam of Mary’s torch eventually found her, the tears were slipping silently down Jo’s face. ‘Are you OK?’

Jo nodded even though she had barely heard the question. She was listening to the silence. For the first time since she could remember, there was no background noise inside her head, no questions waiting to be answered. ‘He’s still there,’ she said.

31

The sky was about to fall, weighed down by dark grey clouds that were ocean deep. There were dirty smears of rain on the horizon but for the moment at least, the regiment of graves looking out across Childwall Valley were bone dry.

Hoping there was still time before the cloudburst, Jo pulled back the rain cover on Archie’s pram. Her son had been sleeping but his eyes flickered in confusion as he was lifted from his safe haven. He frowned only briefly before returning to his slumber in his mother’s arms. Jo retrieved a small posy of flowers next and then took a step nearer the weathered headstone.

‘David Taylor,’ she read out loud, before turning to her son. ‘That’s your daddy’s name, sweetheart, and you’re going to grow up hearing it an awful lot. I only wish he’d had the chance to know yours – and not only your name, but the whole of you. Everything you are, Archie Taylor, and everything you’re going to be. It breaks my heart that all I can do is tell you about him and oh, how I want to tell you. You’re missing out on so much, Archie.’

Jo looked up to the skies and felt the wetness on her cheeks although the rain was yet to fall. ‘What did you want for your son, David? Did you ever think about that? I’m trying to forget about that note you wrote to your dad. I read your last texts instead and play your voicemail message over and over again, trying to find the meaning behind your words. Was the baby I was carrying ever in the plans you wanted to tell me about? Is that why you bought some baby things? Were you ready to love him? Did you still love me?’

The only response to her questions came from the mournful cry of a seagull sailing across the ocean above her. She dropped her head and crouching down, placed the posy of purple and yellow spring flowers at the base of the headstone, which was leaning lazily to one side. She was tugging at one of the dandelions growing out of a crack in the base when she felt her phone vibrating in her pocket.

When Jo stood up her legs felt wobbly and she thought she would faint but she held on tightly to Archie and allowed him to ground her. She inhaled deeply before answering the call.

‘Hello?’ she asked.

‘Hi, Jo, it’s Martin. Where are you?’

‘Why?’

‘I’m at your house and you’re not there.’

As Jo explained where she was she could feel the air being wrung out of her lungs. She didn’t ask again why Martin wanted to speak to her but agreed to wait where she was. He would be there in five minutes.

Time slowed to a deathly pace as Jo returned Archie to his pram and said goodbye to the old man lying six feet below as if he was an old friend. Her feet waded through an invisible mire as she made her way towards the church gate. Her mind had slowed too as she stood at the side of the road with Archie, waiting for life to catch up with her and then knock her down one last time.

The first heavy drop of rain exploded on the dry pavement as the policeman’s car pulled up in front of her. Martin didn’t meet Jo’s eyes as he took the pram and, with surprising ease, unhooked the baby carrier from the frame and secured it in the backseat of the car. Next he collapsed the frame itself and put it in the boot.

Jo watched without a word. She realized she knew absolutely nothing about this man who was so familiar with the intimate details of her life. The questions that suddenly came to her mind were easier to voice than the more pertinent ones she refused to confront. ‘Do you have children?’ she asked.

‘Two,’ he said as he guided her to the passenger seat. ‘They live with my ex-wife, but I see them every other weekend.’ He closed the door and then went around to the driver’s side where he took hold of the handle but didn’t immediately pull open the door. He didn’t want to do this either.

When the policeman finally slipped behind the driving wheel, his waterproof coat was glistening with raindrops. Somewhere in the distance, there was a rumble of thunder. Still she didn’t ask.

Martin took hold of her hand in a futile attempt to halt the tremors that weren’t only confined to Jo.

‘We’ve found him.’

There was a gulp of air but no other sound as Jo swallowed back the tears that had blurred her vision, blocked her nose and closed her throat. The dark clouds she had watched approaching from the horizon had fallen with the weight of an ocean and she was drowning in it.

She had been expecting the news and so the shock slamming into her body took her by surprise. The police search had begun at first light and she had intended on staying at home, waiting for the knock on the door that wouldn’t be David, not this time and not ever.

It was ironic, then, that after spending so long yearning for answers, Jo would be so eager to flee from them when the sun had risen that morning. Steph had been on her way over when Jo made her bid for freedom and it had taken some considerable effort to convince her sister that she would be all right once she was in the fresh air; another irony. Eventually, she had persuaded Steph to go over and keep Irene company; Jo wanted to be on her own with her son and her thoughts.

Foolishly, Jo had expected some kind of relief, but as she tried to breathe through the pressure that was not only constricting her chest, but had closed her ears and blackened her vision, she felt only grief. Heavy waves of it that made the sound of the policeman’s voice seem further away than it should.

‘There’ll have to be a formal identification of the body,’ Martin was saying, ‘but unofficially, there’s no doubt. It’s him, Jo.’

Jo pulled her hand free from Martin’s grasp and held on to the edges of the car seat to keep her steady. ‘Do you know what happened yet?’ Even her own words sounded far away.

‘We still have officers at the scene gathering evidence and there’s a long way to go before we put it all together, but so far everything seems to substantiate Daniel Jones’s statement.’

‘Daniel Jones?’

‘The kid you talked to last night. It didn’t take long to identify the group of lads who hang out around that path. We took him and his mates in for questioning and they all said pretty much the same thing that Daniel told you. David climbed over the fence to get their football back and then they left him stranded there. From what we’ve uncovered at the scene, it looks like he tried to climb a tree to get back over. It was blowing a gale that night—’

‘Yes, I remember,’ Jo said.

‘Sorry, of course you do. There’s a large broken branch close by so I’d say he fell from the tree. He landed in shrubbery, which stopped him rolling down the embankment. The debris from the storm accumulated around him, concealing his body perfectly.’

‘Did he … Do you think …?’

‘Did he suffer? There’ll be an autopsy and I know my opinion counts for nothing but you’ve waited long enough so I’m going to give it anyway. There’s a significant head injury and no indication that he even tried to get back up so my guess is he sustained it in the fall, probably on another branch. Are you OK?’ he asked when he noticed heavy drops of tears falling unchecked from Jo’s bowed head and on to her lap. She nodded. ‘I don’t think it was foul play, Jo. I think he was knocked unconscious and didn’t wake up again. So no, I don’t think he suffered.’

Jo hung on to those words as if they were a life raft but her mind was still trying to pull her under, weighed down by an image of David lying on the ground all alone while Jo had been at home staring at the starburst clock and watching the last minutes of his life slip away.