Search Party

Mum arrived home before I did.

I could tell from the silence in the kitchen that Sam had told her something. Not everything, because her first question was whether I'd had a proper lunch, but enough that he was sitting with both feet flat on the floor and his hands between his knees.

“Your brother has something to say,” she told me.

Sam looked up.

“I told her about the money.”

“And the camera?” I asked.

Mum's expression changed.

Sam shut his eyes.

It took another twenty minutes. The story came out in pieces, each one requiring Mum to ask a question she plainly couldn't believe needed asking. How much? Whose camera? What shop? Why hadn't he come to her?

At that last question, Sam looked towards the cupboard where we kept the bills under a fruit bowl that rarely contained fruit.

Mum saw him look.

“Don't,” she said.

“I didn't mean—”

“Do not make this something you did to help me.”

He looked down.

I stood by the counter with Imani's photograph inside my notebook, pressed between two pages of editing notes. I had meant to tell Mum about the police statement as soon as I got home. Now every sentence Sam said made another sentence seem impossible.

“You will go and tell Judith,” Mum said. “You will tell the police, because that camera may have something on it they need. And you are not meeting this Dex person alone to try to fix it with another arrangement.”

“It was the backup camera,” I said. “It wasn't recording last night.”

Mum turned to me.

“That is not the important part, Bea.”

“I know. I just meant it isn't missing evidence.”

“It's missing property.”

“I know.”

She rubbed the side of her face. Her sleeve smelled faintly of the pharmacy: paper, hand cream, the sharp cleanliness of the counter spray.

For a moment she looked so tired that I wanted to take everything back, including things that weren't mine to take back.

“I can pay it,” I said.

“No.”

“I've got some saved.”

“For your course.”

“It isn't enough for the course anyway.”

“That doesn't make it available for this.”

Sam looked at me then. He was embarrassed, and I wished he hadn't been, because it made it harder to stay angry.

My phone buzzed. Finn had sent a message to the volunteer group. The police were coordinating a search of the public paths around the centre and coach stop. Adults only on the riverbank; younger volunteers could work in pairs putting up posters and checking with shopkeepers. Nobody was to enter closed buildings, approach the water or go off alone.

I showed Mum.

“I'll come,” she said.

Sam started to get up.

“Not you. You need to make some phone calls.”

“I can help.”

“You can begin here.”

She went upstairs to change her shoes.

Sam and I sat without speaking. Then he said, “Have you told her?”

“No.”

“Bea.”

“I know.”

“This is getting worse.”

“I know that too.”

He looked towards the stairs. “I didn't ask you to lie to them.”

“No,” I said. “You just asked me to cover for you and left me to choose the words.”

He didn't answer.

At the Lantern Rooms, someone had found a box of high-visibility vests. Most were too large. Mine reached nearly to my knees, and the hook-and-loop strip at the front stuck to my jumper whenever I tried to straighten it.

A uniformed officer explained the routes. He was calm and specific. We were not detectives. We were not to search people's property. Anything that might belong to Rowan was to be left where it was and reported. A bag on a bus did not mean the search here was pointless; they were checking several possibilities at once.

I was grateful to him for that last part. People had begun talking about the coach as if it had taken Rowan neatly out of our responsibility.

Mum was paired with a woman from the church she recognised but couldn't name. I ended up with Finn and a man who ran the hardware shop. We were to walk through the shopping streets, ask whether anyone had seen Rowan after the fundraiser, and record contact details for the police rather than conducting interviews ourselves.

It was painfully ordinary work. Some shops were already closing. Some people had seen the posts online and wanted to tell us what they thought had happened. A woman in a nail salon said teenagers needed space, then looked at the photograph and apologised without explaining which part she was apologising for.

At the takeaway, the owner took three posters and put one in the window at once. He didn't offer a theory. I liked him for that.

Finn spoke to everyone easily. He said please, remembered names, thanked people even when they had nothing useful. At school, this quality had sometimes irritated me. He could make a request sound like an opportunity to be a better version of yourself. Now I was glad of it. I could barely manage to hold out a poster.

Outside the off-licence, a man said he thought he'd seen Rowan with another boy around nine thirty.

“Do you remember what the other boy looked like?” Finn began.

The hardware-shop man interrupted gently. “Best give that to the officer, mate. There's a number here.”

The man frowned at the photograph again.

“Might've been Thursday.”

“That’s all right,” I said, although I had no idea whether it was.

We gave him the number.

By six, I had acquired a headache and a new understanding of how many people remembered very little about the previous evening. I couldn't blame them. Until this morning, Friday had been just Friday.

We returned to the centre to report the places we'd covered. Mum was still out. Finn went to find water, and I sat on the low wall beside the old pool entrance.

Val Dacre came out of the service yard carrying a ring of keys. He walked with a limp that worsened when he was tired. Last year he'd hurt his knee moving staging equipment. Judith said he needed to stop doing everything himself. Val said she needed to employ someone else. Both of them were right, and nothing changed.

“Any news?” he asked.

I shook my head.

He stood beside the wall, looking at the poster in the entrance window.

“Good lad,” he said.

I waited.

“Bossy little sod, mind.”

I laughed, then felt disloyal. Val didn't seem to notice.

“He used to come in with lists. Things we ought to do. Better signs, better bins, all that. Most of it was sensible. That's the annoying part.”

Rowan had believed a bad system could be improved by telling the person in charge exactly why it was bad. He had not always chosen a tactful time to do this.

“Have you told the police when you last saw him?” I asked.

“Course I have.”

“Sorry. I didn't mean—”

“I know.”

He shifted his weight off his bad knee.

“I thought I saw him by the maintenance passage. During the break. Can't be certain. There were people everywhere.”

My headache sharpened.

“Alone?”

Val frowned. “Someone in a work jacket was near him. A reflective strip. Like your brother wears.”

“Sam?”

“I said like. Didn't see a face.”

“But you told them that?”

“I told them what I saw.”

The distinction was clear enough. I didn't like it anyway.

“Sam was helping with equipment,” I said.

Val looked at me.

“Was he?”

I could not tell whether he knew about the camera. Perhaps Mum had already rung Judith. Perhaps Sam had done what he'd said he would. Perhaps everyone knew more than I did, which was becoming an increasingly reasonable explanation for most of the day.

“He was supposed to be,” I said.

Val nodded. “Well. They’ll sort it out.”

He went down the steps slowly, one hand on the rail.

Finn came back with two bottles of water. He gave me one and sat at the other end of the wall.

“What did Val want?”

“Nothing.”

He waited. Finn was sometimes better at waiting than asking.

“He thinks he saw Rowan near the maintenance passage,” I said. “With someone in a jacket like Sam's.”

Finn unscrewed his bottle.

“There were loads of us moving things. I wore a work jacket for a bit. Val kept making everyone put something on because of the dust in the store.”

“You did?”

“Yeah. One from the hook by the office. It was enormous.”

I tried to remember. I had seen Finn carrying chairs. I had seen him with a roll of tape. His clothes hadn't seemed important enough to store accurately.

“Was it Sam's?”

“No idea. They all look the same.”

He took a drink and looked towards the car park.

“You can't turn every detail into something bad.”

“I wasn't.”

“Bee.”

I held the bottle between my knees. It was cold enough to make my fingers ache.

“Do you think he'd go without telling anyone?” I asked.

“Rowan?”

I nodded.

Finn thought about it for a while.

“I think people do things we don't expect.”

It sounded sensible. Almost everything Finn said did.

Across the car park, a little boy in an oversized vest was walking beside his father. He was carrying one poster with both hands, concentrating on keeping it flat. His father bent to say something, and the boy nodded seriously.

I wanted Rowan to be somewhere safe, looking at his phone, annoyed that we'd made such a fuss. I wanted to be angry with him for frightening Denise. I wanted the luxury of an explanation that let all of us go back to our own problems.

My phone rang.

Sam.

I got off the wall and moved a few steps away before answering.

“I told Judith,” he said.

“Okay.”

“She said she has to report it.”

“She does.”

“I know.” He breathed out. “I gave her the shop name. And Dex's number. I told her I'd talk to the police.”

“Good.”

“It's not good, Bea.”

“No. But it’s the right thing.”

He was quiet for a moment.

“You should try it,” he said.

Then he hung up.

When I turned, Finn was watching me from the wall. He looked away as soon as I noticed.

Mum came across the car park, tired and windswept, her vest folded over one arm. She asked whether I was ready to go home.

I said yes.

On the walk, she told me about the people she'd met. A shopkeeper who had driven his own son to Northbridge years ago after an argument. A woman who kept checking a photograph of her grandson while she spoke. Everybody seemed to have a story that made them either more hopeful or more afraid.

At the crossing, Mum took my hand.

She hadn't done that in public for years. I almost pulled away out of habit, then didn't.

“Whatever else happens,” she said, “you don't have to manage your brother for me.”

The green man appeared. We crossed.

On the other side, I let go to press the inspector's card flat through my pocket.

I still didn't tell her.