The Maintenance Gate

On Sunday morning, the photograph of Rowan had reached people who had never met him.

It appeared between adverts, holiday pictures and videos of dogs that could apparently count. People shared it with hearts and exclamation marks. Some wrote that they were praying. Some wrote that they had a bad feeling, as if their private dread were information the rest of us needed.

Denise posted a request not to speculate about where he had gone or why. Within ten minutes, someone had replied with a theory.

I put the phone face down.

Mum was taking Sam to speak to the police. She had arranged cover for the first part of her shift, which meant she would work late two evenings the following week. Sam protested that he could go alone. She said she knew he could and put on her shoes.

Before they left, he came to my bedroom.

“I'm telling them where I actually was.”

“I know.”

“That means—”

“I know what it means.”

He stood in the doorway with his car keys looped around one finger, although Mum was driving.

“You can ring them first.”

I looked at the inspector's card on my desk.

“I know.”

He nodded once, as if there were no further useful versions of the conversation, and went downstairs.

I sat for a long time after the front door closed. Then I wrote everything I could remember about the break on a clean page: Sam upstairs before nine; the grey case in the camera frame at nine seven; me downstairs looking for a cable; the band starting at nine seventeen. I wrote that my first account had been wrong. I did not use the word confused.

I called the number on the card and left a message asking to speak to Adebayo about correcting my statement. A different officer called back to say the inspector would be in touch. I could speak to someone sooner if it was urgent or I had information about Rowan's immediate whereabouts.

“I don't know where he is,” I said.

“Then keep your phone with you. And send through a note of what you need to correct.”

I sent a brief message saying that my brother had not been with me throughout the break and that I wanted to explain in person. It was not the full confession I owed. It was enough to make it impossible to pretend I hadn't begun.

Afterwards I felt neither better nor worse. I felt as if I had stepped off a kerb and was waiting to discover whether there was a road beneath it.

Imani rang just before ten.

“Are you busy?”

“Not usefully.”

“I'm taking some prints to the centre. The officer who called said they might help people point out where they were standing. Do you want to walk down?”

I said yes before I could invent a reason not to.

We met by the bus stop outside the library. Imani had a flat cardboard folder under her arm and a packet of mints in her hand. She offered me one. I took it because refusing seemed more intimate than accepting.

“Any news?” she asked.

I shook my head.

“The bag thing's everywhere now.”

“Denise said it's definitely his.”

“Does that mean he was on the coach?”

“No.”

“People keep saying it does.”

“People keep saying a lot.”

She looked at me sideways. “You seem particularly cheerful today.”

“I save my best moods for Sundays.”

We walked past the library garden, where somebody had tied a strip of yellow ribbon around a tree. I hoped it wasn't for Rowan, then felt stupid for having an opinion about how other people tried to help.

The centre entrance was open, but a volunteer stopped us before we went inside. Adebayo was speaking to the staff, she said. We could leave the folder with the constable at the front desk. Imani did, and we were asked to wait outside in case someone needed to check a photograph's location with her.

We went around to the public path beside the old teaching pool.

From there, the building's history was harder to turn into publicity. The main pool hall had new lights and a polished sign. The smaller pool beyond it was a fenced rectangle full of leaves, with weeds growing through the expansion joints. Between the two ran the narrow maintenance yard. At its far end, a concrete bridge crossed the runoff channel before the channel disappeared beneath the road.

You could see the top of the bridge from the public path, but not the drop beneath it. A mesh gate kept people out of the yard. Someone had painted a pale green line along its lower rail, presumably to make it more visible in poor light. The paint was fresh enough to be brighter than everything around it.

A council van stood beyond the fence. Two men in waterproof trousers were talking to a uniformed officer. One held a rolled plan. The other was pointing towards the covered section of channel.

“What are they doing?” Imani asked.

“Checking the drainage, I think.”

A laminated notice on the fence said the maintenance route was closed to visitors. Another, older notice had faded so badly that only the word DANGER remained clear.

I remembered Val on Friday afternoon, holding a paintbrush in one hand and telling anyone who passed not to touch the gate. Finn had laughed and said that was practically an invitation. I had filmed a few seconds of Val's brush moving along the rail, thinking I could use it as an opening shot: the unseen work that made community events possible.

Now I looked at the paint and remembered the mark on Finn's cuff.

“What?” Imani asked.

“Nothing. I filmed them doing that.”

“The paint?”

“Yeah. Before the event.”

She studied the gate.

“You really do film everything.”

“Not everything.”

It came out more sharply than I'd intended.

She shifted the empty folder to her other arm. “I wasn't criticising.”

“I know. Sorry.”

A man on the other side of the road slowed his dog to look through the fence. Then he took out his phone and began filming the council workers.

Imani watched him for a moment.

“Do you think he'll put music on that?” she asked quietly.

I looked at her.

“Sorry,” she said. “That was mean.”

“No.”

We stood without speaking until the man moved on.

The geometry of the place began to bother me. From the balcony, my camera had looked across the stage towards the service passage. The door that moved at nine twelve must have opened into this yard. I had been imagining it as another interior room because the strip beyond it was dark. But outside the back of the stage there was only the yard, the gate and the bridge.

I told Imani.

“Have you told the police?”

“They have the file and the time.”

“But did you tell them you weren't sure where the door went?”

“No. I only just realised.”

“Then tell them that.”

I took out my phone and added a short message to the one I'd sent earlier. I described the angle without attaching a theory to it.

One of the council workers came back through the gate. He was old enough to have a daughter my age and young enough that I resented myself for thinking of adults mainly in relation to their children.

“Best not hang about here,” he said. “They'll need the path clear when the other van comes.”

“Are you searching the channel?” I asked.

He looked towards the officer, then back at me.

“We're helping with access. That's all I can tell you.”

“Was it checked yesterday?”

“The safe bits were. Some of the covers need equipment. Please move back towards the entrance.”

We did.

Imani didn't tell me off. She didn't have to. I could hear myself asking questions as if enough answers would transform me into somebody entitled to be there.

At the front of the centre, Val was sitting on the steps with a mug of tea balanced on his good knee. He looked exhausted.

“Morning,” he said.

“Do you need anything?” Imani asked.

“A new left leg. Failing that, another tea.”

“I'll ask inside.”

She went to the door. I sat two steps below him, leaving enough room that it didn't feel like an interview.

“Did you paint the gate on Friday?” I asked.

Val looked down at his hands. There was still green under one fingernail.

“Trying to stop people walking into it. That yard's too dark.”

“Were people going out there during the event?”

“Shouldn't have been.”

“But were they?”

He looked at me. “Bea.”

“Sorry.”

“Tell the police what you know. Let them ask the rest.”

I nodded.

After a moment he said, “I know it's hard, having nothing to do.”

“I have loads to do.”

“Not what you want to do.”

He was right. I had homework, a college application, a shift I'd cancelled, a brother who had stolen a camera and a mother whose face I was trying not to imagine when she heard what I'd said. None of those things was Rowan answering his phone.

Imani came back with another mug. She handed it to Val, who thanked her as if she had repaired something significant.

“They want me to point out where I stood for a couple of pictures,” she told me. “You don't have to wait.”

“I can.”

“I might be a while.”

“I can still.”

She looked at me for a second, then nodded.

I waited on the steps. Cars arrived and left. Judith came outside to take a call, saw me and moved farther away. Clare Sayer brought a bag of sandwiches. Finn appeared briefly in the doorway, lifted a hand when he saw me, then disappeared back inside.

After ten minutes, my phone rang.

Adebayo.

“I've received your message, Bea,” she said. “We need to discuss it properly. Is your mother with you?”

“She's with Sam.”

“I understand. We'll arrange a time with you both. Until then, don't discuss what other witnesses have said with them. Do you understand?”

“Yes.”

“And thank you for clarifying the camera position. The team here is looking at the routes through the building.”

I gripped the phone more tightly.

“Is Sam in trouble?”

There was a brief pause.

“I'm not going to discuss another person's interview with you. What matters now is that you give us an accurate account of your own.”

“Okay.”

“Not the account you wish you had given. The accurate one.”

I looked towards the maintenance yard, hidden beyond the corner of the building.

“Yes,” I said.

After she hung up, I sat with the phone in my lap until Imani came out.

She asked whether I was all right.

This time I didn't say yes.