Sixteen Horses by Greg Buchanan (readict TXT) 📕

The inspector scratched his arm. ‘And you know as well as I do . . . he had nothing to do with this. Nothing to do with any of this.’ There was a faint grimace upon his face. ‘That’s what you’re focusing on, isn’t it? That’s why you’ve been round his home. That’s why . . .’ He began, and then stopped, seemingly thinking better of it.

‘Did you ever meet Simon, Harry?’

The inspector seemed surprised at the question. ‘A few times.’ He paused. ‘Did you?’

Cooper shook her head. ‘I didn’t know Alec for very long.’

The sun continued to rise over the bay.

‘Neither did I,’ the inspector said, turning to the sea.

The water, vast and grey, had long since lost its magic. Cooper and her sister used to compete to be the first one to see the sea from their car. They would swim out to rocks, they would find every pool and every cave they could. Her little sister had done these things for Cooper, to be like Cooper, to be liked by her. And the big sister would pretend to herself that she’d only realized these things growing up, but that wasn’t true, was it? People liked to be admired, to be copied. Even children aren’t so innocent of wanting stuff like that. Everyone tried to lose themselves in greater things.

After vet school, whenever Cooper came to the seaside some of the old nostalgia would hit, like re-watching an ancient film, but you’d remind yourself who you’d been when you’d liked it, and you’d move on.

She didn’t like being in the water. That was all.

She didn’t remember when she’d last been on holiday.

‘Please be kind to him,’ the inspector said, ‘when you see him. He’s not himself.’

‘Who is he, then?’

They parted ways without saying goodbye.

Search parties for the missing eighteen-year-old Simon Nichols have been called off on their fourteenth night.

The boy, son of local police officer Detective Sergeant Alec Nichols, was first reported absent after his father’s car crash in what has become known as the ‘Sixteen Horses’ incident.

‘Although this phase of the investigation has ended, we are pursuing multiple active leads,’ Inspector Harry Morgan told assembled press.

‘We appeal to anyone who may have information about Simon’s whereabouts to please—’

CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO

Alec watched the television coverage. He watched all the clips he could find from the weeks past. Videos from news reports, the horrors of Ilmarsh, of quarantine authorities, of roadblocks and face masks. He saw the boats going out to sea.

The air in his hospital room didn’t feel like air at all. He kept watching.

At the press conference, journalists had asked about the rapidity of the victims’ decline, the unusual progression of symptoms. They asked if this was some new form of the infection – if people were in danger.

Mentions of his son had faded through the terror, through the times.

The doctors had told Alec that he’d woken multiple times over the past weeks. Each time they’d attempted to explain his situation, each time he had forgotten once more.

He sat up in his bed, out of the quarantine ward now for days. The other four beds were empty beneath the beeping, unnatural light. He was still feeble from weeks in this place, from the sickness that had ravaged his body, the barely faded bruising of the crash. Alec did not walk much, not yet, insisting only on going to the toilet by himself. They’d helped him with his steps.

They had given him a laptop on a tray. At the time it had not felt unusual.

‘When we tried to find friends we could chase up with . . . we found something sad, you understand. Your son didn’t appear to have any, did he? At least not that we could find. Popular, but no one actually close to him.’

The detectives had sat around Alec’s bed. It was their third attempt to talk to him, apparently. Even moving his lips felt like an effort.

‘Your son wouldn’t have had any reason to run away, would he?’

‘What?’ Alec had tried rising in his bed, but—

‘We found glass mirror fragments in your back garden bin. We—’

‘What has that got to do with anything?’

They’d stared at him. ‘How did the mirror break?’

‘Who gives a shit about a fucking mirror? Who—’

‘We found blood on the mirror. Why did we find it?’

Alec’s nostrils had flared, his breathing harder. He’d tried to control his words. He tried to— ‘Who is in charge of the investigation?’ he’d asked.

‘You’ll have to be more specific.’

‘Who is looking for my son?’

Alec found the answer, soon. No one was looking for him; not successfully, anyway.

A quarantine of two weeks had provided no answers. No trail from the car.

No body.

When he eventually managed to get a photo of the crash, he saw Simon’s airbag had inflated. He read the report: based on where the stag had been found, he’d lost control after hitting the animal, exacerbated by a growing delirium from his infection. It had been a perfect storm.

Though a small trace was found, there was not enough blood in the car to suggest that Simon had suffered any fatal lacerations in the crash itself.

There had been no trail into the woods, though it was possible the boy had wandered there.

The only other way out would have been the road itself, just a few dozen yards behind them.

There was not enough time for a boy on foot – an injured boy at that – to clear the long road to town before the police had tracked Alec’s car. Someone would have seen him.

Why wouldn’t he have remained and searched for his father? It did not make sense that he would leave.

So what, then?

Before emergency services had arrived, someone must have picked Simon up.

That was all Alec could see. All Alec could think about.

He wondered why no one else seemed to join him in believing this, in knowing this.

He found no reference to abduction in any report, in any document, in any news clip, at least none that was available to him.