The phone call came while they were travelling back home on the M1. ‘Isaac West is missing, boss. Nobody is panicking too much except his dad who’s a bit fragile anyway. Isaac could have gone walkabout, but he’s got a maths exam he’s currently missing, and his dad and his brother both say he would never do that voluntarily.’
18
Tom and Holly called in briefly at headquarters, hoping the young lad had turned up. They were told that Adele and Lucy had gone to be with Kenny until the boss and Holly arrived from Leicester to give them further instructions.
With no further news having come in, they drove straight to the West home to find Kenny standing in the front garden, smoking. ‘I’ve never smoked so much in my life as I have this past two or three weeks,’ he said to the two officers as they walked up the path.
‘No news?’ Holly asked.
Kenny shook his head. ‘He wouldn’t have missed that maths exam, that’s what he’s basing his entire future on. For fuck’s sake, find him.’ Kenny ground out the cigarette underfoot, and headed back inside. ‘Your officers are making some tea. That’s all I’ve done since Jack told me, drink tea and smoke. Where the hell can he be? And when did he disappear?’
‘Let’s start at the beginning,’ Holly said, and after sending Lucy back to the station and sending Adele in the lounge to watch for front door activity, the three of them sat around the kitchen table. Holly took out her notebook.
‘Where’s Jack?’ Tom asked.
‘At school, taking this bloody exam. He’ll not be able to concentrate knowing Isaac’s not there taking it with him. I swear, if Isaac’s playing silly buggers…’
‘What do you mean?’ Holly asked.
‘I don’t know what I mean, truth be told. Isaac doesn’t play silly buggers, any more than Jack would.’ Kenny looked defeated. ‘I’ve no idea where my son is, I know this is so not like him and I’m scared. After Lorraine and Carla…’
Holly reached across and squeezed his hand. ‘Hey, Kenny, come on. This is probably Isaac reacting to the pressure of GCSEs, needing time out. My impression of your lads is that they’re good kids, been brought up well and wouldn’t hurt anybody. He’ll probably try sneaking in later and hope you’ve not noticed he’s been missing. And he can resit the exam, so even that’s not a problem.’
‘Do you know when Isaac went missing?’ Tom asked.
Kenny shook his head. ‘No, he said goodnight about nine last night, said he was going to have one more look at his revision notes before the exam today, and that was it. Jack had already gone up to revise, so by ten past nine it was pretty quiet here. I watched TV till about ten, then called it a night. I didn’t disturb either of them, simply went to bed. I think they must have been in their rooms at that point because I think I would have heard if Isaac had gone out.’
‘And this morning?’
‘Jack got up around half past seven, had his breakfast then shouted for Isaac to get his lazy arse downstairs. Isaac was always the last one down. There was no response, so Jack went up to wake him. His bed had been slept in, but Isaac wasn’t there. Jack rang Leo to see if he was with him, and then I started to panic. I’ve no idea where he is. This is definitely not like Isaac, he’s the quieter of the two lads, and wouldn’t worry me like this, especially not now.’
‘So you made Jack go to school?’
‘Yes, but thinking about it, maybe I was wrong. If he didn’t go at all he could do a resit. Now he’s gone, the result will stand, and he probably won’t be able to concentrate, not with that empty seat right across from him. I should have thought it through, and kept him here with me.’
‘Do you have any relatives Isaac might have headed towards?’
‘Mum and Dad, but we have little to do with them. It wasn’t a good childhood for me…’
Holly nodded. ‘And Lorraine’s parents?’
‘Both dead. We don’t really have friends either. There’s Janice of course, the boys loved her, but if he’d gone there she would have rung me straight away. They’ve also been known to go to Carla or Graham when they were in trouble, but even that’s been taken away. Where the hell can Isaac be? I felt sure he would be with Leo, the three of them are like brothers, but Leo was as worried as us as to his whereabouts.’
Tom hesitated for a moment. ‘Under normal circumstances, with sixteen-year-old lads, we’d work on a give-it-time process, because they’re unpredictable at the best of times, but having got to know the family, and seeing how your lads are, I’m fast forwarding this. I’m going to arrange for a search of the area, and I’ll need to know if there’s anywhere Isaac is likely to go. What time will Jack be home?’
Kenny checked his watch. ‘About half an hour. He’s bringing Leo with him; said they were going out to look for Isaac if he hadn’t come home. They checked the tree on the way to school.’
‘Tree?’
‘The three lads have a tree they can climb. Used it for a few years now. We used to laugh about it because they thought they were hidden from us there, and if we called them they didn’t need to answer. We explained to them one day that we could actually see them from Jack’s bedroom window, so it deflated them a bit, but they still use it when they need time out. Since Lorraine… went… Isaac’s been there a few times. That’s where I thought he was this morning, but we checked through the bedroom window straight away. He wasn’t there.’
‘Okay, Holly and I are going back to the station, and we’ll leave Adele here. If Isaac comes home, she’ll contact us immediately. Meanwhile I’ll get a team together to go house to house, and search every nook and cranny of that playing field.’
Kenny nodded. ‘Thank you. I don’t know what to do. I didn’t want to go out looking in case he came home and I wasn’t in…’
‘Stay here, please, Kenny,’ Holly said with a smile. ‘That’s exactly the right thing to do.’
Adele escorted them to the door, and Tom paused. ‘Anything, Adele, any little snippet he says, I want to know immediately. Text it, don’t let him hear you reporting back to me.’
Adele nodded. ‘Consider it done, boss.’
Jack and Leo made a list of close school friends and their addresses, before handing it to the search co-ordinator. They then disappeared to conduct their own hunt, trying to imagine where Isaac might have decided was a safe place.
In the distance they could see officers surrounding the playing fields, in the deeper grass and wooded area off to the north, and the small overgrown pond area in the dip at the south side of the field.
‘Okay, where do we start?’ Leo asked. ‘Crystal Peaks?’
Jack shrugged. ‘Maybe. It’s a starting point anyway. Shall we split up when we get there? We ring each other if we spot him.’
‘He’s got money?’
‘He’ll have his bank card with him. He’s got access to money even if he’s no actual cash on him.’