Local police are keen to emphasize that Nathaniel’s disappearance remains a missing persons inquiry for now, but sources indicate that hopes of finding the missing child alive now are dwindling. Many are privately preparing themselves for the worst.
“We’re determined to keep looking,” another volunteer commented. “I think at this point we’re all afraid of what we might find, but no child should be out there regardless. I know Nate’s father. If nothing else, I want to find him for his sake.”
It is a view that has echoed throughout this tight-knit community ever since Nathaniel disappeared from his family home on Monday. Nathaniel was left in the care of a babysitter, Peter Leighton, who is also missing. A tent believed to belong to Leighton was located in dense woodland nearby. As of today, his cottage remains sealed off while officers and forensic teams perform a fingertip search of the property.
And in the meantime, a shaken community continues to search.
Katie kept hold of the photograph but put the newspaper clipping down on the dusty carpet beside her. She was shaken by what she’d just read. Not by the contents, as such, but by the questions they raised. And by the implications she could feel gathering from her mother’s choice of words.
One of your father’s fancies.
What the hell could she have meant by that?
She turned her attention to the other news clippings in the box. There were several, and she took them out one by one—carefully at first, then more quickly—spreading them out on the carpet and then moving them round in an attempt to create an order—a narrative—from them.
Only part of one emerged.
It appeared that Peter Leighton had been a trusted babysitter who had regularly been left in charge of Nathaniel Leland. But one evening, Nathaniel’s parents had returned home to find both Leighton and their infant son missing. An extensive search had ensued. While searching Leighton’s cottage, police discovered a collection of violent pornography that suggested he had long harbored a fantasy of killing and dismembering a child. The assumption was that he had finally done so. But—at least as far as these clippings went—no further trace of Leighton or the child appeared to have been found.
Katie sat back on her heels.
The crime had taken place three decades ago and a hundred miles from here. And yet for some reason her father had collected and kept these newspaper cuttings. This child’s disappearance had captured his attention. And then Chris had given a photograph of Nathaniel Leland to James Alderson to incorporate into his painting, which suggested her brother also believed the little boy’s death was entwined with their lives somehow.
Who’s Nathaniel Leland?
So she had the answer to that question now.
But she still had no idea about his connection to her family.
Katie felt a presence behind her. Still kneeling, she shifted around to see her mother standing in the doorway, wrapped in a dressing gown and leaning on her cane. The expression on her face was tinged with sadness, as though something she had been dreading for a long time had finally arrived.
“Why?” Katie said. “Why did Dad keep all of this?”
“He shouldn’t have done, God rest his soul. It was a mistake. But then we all make mistakes, don’t we? I shouldn’t have let Chris look through the box—I’d forgotten all the things that were in there.”
Katie stood up.
“Why did he keep this, Mom?”
She started to answer but then stopped. She looked conflicted.
“It’s not my story to tell,” she said.
“Please, Mom.”
But the conflict had been resolved and her expression had hardened.
The sadness remained though.
“You need to find your brother,” she said softly. “And ask him.”
Twenty-three
Early afternoon and they still had nothing.
Or at least, that was the way Pettifer was choosing to see it. They had spent the morning working in their office, taking separate calls and following up with the small handful of leads they had. None were going anywhere, and Pettifer was making her displeasure felt. Laurence had no idea how ending a call or flicking through paperwork could be accomplished with such violence, but his partner managed it well. Every knock at the door was met with a look so angry it threatened to flay skin. Word had spread on the floor outside. Every officer delivering an action or an update to the office did so with the manner of a nervous zookeeper approaching a lion’s cage.
Even Laurence had yet to tease her today.
He shared some of her frustration. They were now on the third day of their investigation—and the fourth since Alan Hobbes had been murdered—and seemed little further along than they had at the beginning.
Fingerprint results from the apartment had come in first thing—a predictable smorgasbord from Hobbes’s staff. They were still attempting to trace a couple of those, but most had been accounted for and interviewed, their whereabouts on the evening in question established. A number of Hobbes’s business associates had also been investigated. To a man—and they were all men, Pettifer had made a point of noting—they had expressed shock at what had happened. All had alibis for the time of the murder. None appeared to have any motive whatsoever for harming Alan Hobbes.
Which left them with Christopher Shaw.
Or rather very much without him, because the boy had, for all intents and purposes, vanished off the face of the earth. There had been no further sightings of him. An analysis of his bank account had revealed money had been transferred there on a weekly basis by Alan Hobbes, but there were no outgoing payments that suggested rent or a mortgage. He appeared to have no social media accounts or internet footprint. And his fellow traveler—the young man spotted with him on the security footage—remained unidentified.
This all bothered Laurence greatly.
At the same time, it occurred to him that Christopher Shaw had lived a destitute life for a long time—that he had been a man without a safety net when he needed one—and so the fact he couldn’t be netted so easily now might be considered a case of chickens coming home to roost. Regardless, they were at sea here. For all they knew, Shaw might be too.
His email pinged.
A message from Professor Robin Nelson, who had managed to compile a list of the handful of threatening messages received by Alan Hobbes that had been filed. Laurence resisted the urge to yawn as he read through the six notes—but then found his attention caught by the final one. According to the records, it had been hand-delivered to the office of the philosophy department on October 26, 1984.
“Look at this,” he said.
Pettifer walked over and stood beside him, leaning down on the desk.
You have committed blasphemy, and it will be corrected.
—Edward
“What the fuck is that supposed to mean?” she said.
Laurence wasn’t sure. The other notes on file were more obviously from angry students, but while this letter was quieter and less aggressive, there was still something about it that bothered him.
It will be corrected.
“I don’t know,” he said. “But Hobbes must have kept it for a reason.”
“This was over thirty years ago.”
“Even so.”
“Well, I mean, that’s brilliant. Yeah—I vote we take this very seriously indeed. Get out the champagne—we have the first name of a suspect.”