The Boy in the Park: A gripping psychological thriller with a shocking twist

‘That’s standard procedure.’

‘So … what’s in it?’

‘There are records from the trial. From your previous escape attempts. But mostly it’s notes from conversations like these. From talks you’ve had with other people. Some from talks with me.’

‘Fat lot of good they do, any of them.’ Joseph’s voice is disgusted.

‘There’s also biographical data about your life.’

Four seconds of silence. Joseph’s voice is vaguely confused, vaguely annoyed when it returns. Pauline now leans towards the recorder again, eager to relive every sound from the tensest moment of that interview.

‘It can’t be complete,’ he says. ‘My file, my details. I haven’t told them everything. I thought that’s why we were here. You want to drag the rest out of me.’

‘It is. But some things aren’t buried away inside.’ There is a soothing compassion to her voice, now. The balance between firmness and tenderness at this moment was critical. ‘Some things can be checked on externally.’

The cassette almost manages to capture her slow draw of breath before her next words.

‘Joseph, I know you don’t want to hear this. Especially after all you’ve just recounted, I know it’s going to be hard to hear it again.’

His breathing audibly deepens on the recording, as if he’s steeling himself for something.

‘You didn’t kill your wife,’ Pauline repeats.

‘Screw you! This again! How would you know?’ Pure rage is captured in the magnetic reverberations. ‘I’ve never told anyone what I did! I’ve always passed it off as someone else’s crime. But you told me you wanted me to be honest!’

‘And I do.’

‘Then – dammit. I just opened up to you! It’s you who’s the liar. A liar and a hypocrite.’

The sound of another chair bending under a repositioning of body weight. It comes from the right speaker, the one on the side of Pauline’s voice.

‘I want you to be honest with me, Joseph. Honest enough to admit that you did not kill your wife.’

‘Damn you! I told you yesterday that I di—’

‘I want you to be honest enough’, her voice breaks through his, ‘to admit that you’ve never been married, Joseph. That you never had a wife at all.’

9 (#ulink_faafd346-681b-559f-9d41-6e019fc7afe1)

Friday (#ulink_faafd346-681b-559f-9d41-6e019fc7afe1)

I am racing towards the boy’s spot by the pond as fast as I can run. The pathway is narrow, but I’ve walked it plenty of times – enough to know where the large roots jut out from the ground, where there are protruding stones and dips in the soil. My footing is sure.

It can’t be more than thirty yards, but it’s thirty yards blind, where I can’t see his position through the thick of green overgrowth and artfully planted forestry. To my left the whole time, as I circle anticlockwise around its circumference, is the pond. It glistens and sparkles through the branches at the edge of my vision.

I’m out of breath when I arrive at the spot. It’s more to do with adrenalin than with the run itself, surely, but I’m panting heavily.

There is no one here. I step over to the water’s edge. The stick is lying on the muddy shore, half in the water, half out. His stick. I pick it up, as if it presents some tangible connection to the boy – and I’m not surprised that it does. I’ve always been a deeply tactile person. My grandmother’s crocheted shawl brings back more memories of her than any photographs, because when I fold my fingers through its loops and draws, I can feel her. I can feel the warmth of her wrapping me up in it, rocking me on her knees. ‘Little Dyl, little Dyl,’ falling out from between false teeth whenever I needed a little boost. Rocking and humming a tune I never quite remember, though I can almost hear its music, surrounding me in that wonderful, loving, protective cocoon.

I curl my fingers around the stick. It doesn’t have bark so much as it has skin, leathery and dry, knobbed and creased. The pads of my fingers trace its stalk a few inches, taking in its unique texture. There is a patch, a little over halfway up its length, where the roughness becomes smooth. The echoes of a tight, repeated grip. The boy and I are momentarily connected: this is something he touched, and I can feel the imprint of his little hands.

It’s while I’m crouched down, senses taken up in this tactile encounter, that I notice the two parallel tracks in the mud. They’re there, just beside where the stick had lain. Lines scraped into the earth; and suddenly I realize what they must be. Trails left by small sneakers, heels dragged at an angle as the feet that wore them were pulled in reverse. These are the concrete evidence of whatever it was I had witnessed from across the pond.

The lines, I notice, are perfectly parallel. No wiggling. No remnants of protesting squirms. The boy hadn’t resisted when he was pulled.

I lurch upwards. The tracks lead straight back into the branches, and I thrust myself in after them. The boy must be here, he and whoever grabbed him. It’s an emotional thought, but I entertain it. I want to entertain it. They can’t have gone far. I can still find them.

Yet there is no one in the trees. The shoe trails stop as the ground turns from pond-side mud to vegetation-covered earth, and I feel myself growing frantic as my only clues to his whereabouts fade away into the mix of ground cover and rotting leaves. I scan around me for any signs of his presence.

‘Kid!’ I cry out again, and I’m aware of the strange sound of panic in my voice. ‘Kid!’

No one answers, and I’m not surprised. Somewhere inside, I think I know the boy is gone, but I can’t simply stop looking for him. I take a few steps further into the trees, knowing that after five yards a major, paved pathway bisects this part of the park. Within a few seconds the soles of my shoes touch the black tarmac.

There is movement now – bodies strolling this way and that, taking in the sights. My glance flits from one to the next. Be him, be the boy and whoever took him. But there are no small children. Only happy couples, a few loners. A druggie. More college students on lunch breaks, necking.

I’m frantic now. I start to jog along the path, glancing at each group of people I pass. They look at me with puzzled expressions, and I can’t blame them. I feel foolish, flustered like this over someone else’s child, running around like a madman with a stick in his hand.

But that arm shouldn’t have appeared from the trees. The boy shouldn’t have been pulled away.

‘Have you seen a small boy, about this high?’ I ask an elderly couple dressed in matching cardigans, who until that point had been entirely captivated by the knuckled, crevassed bark of an enormous Monterey Cypress. I hold my hand slightly above waist-height. The boy is small.

They shake their heads. The woman has wrinkled skin and a compassionate, grand-maternal smile. ‘Your boy run off, son? Don’t worry. They do that. Probably just playing hide and seek. This is a great place for it.’

I think about smiling back, but my feet are already moving me away.

Why do I need to find this child? I quiz myself, my breathing growing shallower, faster. Let him be. There’s probably a perfectly good explanation. A concerned parent pulling a child back from perceived danger at the water’s edge. A family spat that looked worse than it was without context. (What parent doesn’t occasionally grab his child by the clothes and pull him back into line? And what child wouldn’t go limp in resignation as he’s hauled to a punishment for a rock fight with his sister, or a toy stolen from his brother?)

I start to calm myself down – to force the matter with a slower pace and deep, controlling breaths. But I keep walking, keep scanning the surroundings.

Little boy, little boy

Little boy in the park …

The words of one of my poems come back to me in my search. I don’t know where they come from, why they hit just now; but this is a routine experience for a poet. Poetry emerges from memories into moments, generally uninvited and unannounced. And these stanzas are familiar, though suddenly tainted with new meaning.

Little boy standing, lost …

I strain to see him, the verses repeating in my mind. My pace gradually slows to a stop. I stand beneath an overhanging elm. The vastness of the park stretches out before me.

I’ve reached the last couplet of my poem. I don’t want to say the words.

Little boy weeping …

Little boy weeping …

10 (#ulink_9159eaf4-45cb-595f-8a45-69e95ff592b2)

Saturday Office of Lieutenant Brian Delvay (#ulink_9159eaf4-45cb-595f-8a45-69e95ff592b2)