The Curfew Page 2

  ‘Are you OK for milk and bread, tea bags?’ I ask, gesturing towards his kitchen. ‘I can pick some up on the way back if you need anything.’

  ‘No, I think I’m fine for everything, thank you, Andrew.’

  ‘And how are you doing for whisky?’ I give him a grin.

  ‘Enough to last me until the apocalypse.’ He winks. ‘Or until Southend United win the Premier League, whichever comes first.’

  He turns stiffly, whistles, and immediately I hear the soft click of paws on the parquet floor. A moment later a black and white Collie trots down the hallway, tail wagging. Chester is bigger and older than Toffee, the two dogs as delighted as ever to see each other.

  ‘All right, Chester.’ The dog sits obediently as his owner clips the lead to his collar with liver-spotted hands. ‘Be a good boy now and don’t give Dr Boyd any trouble.’

  ‘It’s Toffee who’s the troublemaker.’ I take Chester’s lead from him. ‘It’s a good thing he’s too slow to catch anything.’

  Arthur squints up at the sky, one hand at the small of his back.

  ‘Going to be another hot one again today.’

  ‘Got to break soon, hasn’t it?’

  ‘Always does,’ he says. ‘But it’ll get hotter before then I should imagine.’

  ‘See you in a bit, then.’ Both dogs are now sitting and looking up at me expectantly. ‘Come on, you pair.’

  I’m about to turn away when Arthur’s papery voice reaches me again.

  ‘How’s that boy of yours?’

  ‘Connor? Very well, thanks. Glad school’s over.’

  ‘Bet he’ll be having a lie-in today, won’t he?’ He says it casually, as if he’s still just making small talk. ‘After such a late night, I mean?’

  There’s no malice in it, no snark, but something in his tone makes me stop. As if he knows something that I don’t.

  Relax. You’re being ridiculous.

  ‘Start of his summer holidays, Arthur,’ I say, summoning another smile. ‘Exams are over and every day is a lie-in.’

  He stands framed in the doorway as I open the boot of my car for the dogs, raising a hand to wave as we pull away from his house.

  I’m halfway to the park when my phone rings, my brother’s number showing on the car’s hands-free display.

  ‘Hey Rob, how’s it going?’

  He doesn’t waste time with pleasantries. ‘Is Zac there?’

  ‘Zac? No. Has he not—’

  ‘He didn’t sleep over at yours?’

  ‘No. What’s up?’

  Our sons have always been close, have grown up going to the same schools and playing for the same football teams. Connor the dependable right back, solid and serious and unafraid of putting in the big tackles; his cousin Zac the mercurial striker up front, fast and skilful, a poacher’s instinct for goal. As different as they could be on the pitch, but they had always clicked together like two halves of the same person. As close as siblings – they even looked like brothers – without the fighting.

  ‘Have you seen him at all this morning?’ my brother says. ‘He didn’t come round?’

  ‘He and Connor were out together last night but I’ve not seen Zac today, no.’

  ‘Shit,’ he says quietly.

  A pulse of unease touches the base of my spine. ‘What’s going on?’

  I hear the intake of breath at the other end of the line, the shaky exhalation that follows.

  ‘He didn’t come home last night.’

  3

  It takes me a moment to digest what my brother is saying. There are less than two years between us and I’ve always looked up to him, always been able to rely on him, Rob, my calm older sibling, steady as a rock whenever I’ve needed him. But now his voice is flat and toneless, the words coming so fast they’re almost falling over each other.

  ‘You’ve tried his mobile?’

  ‘Of course,’ he snaps, tension crackling down the phone line. ‘I had a message last night to say he might be going to Beacon Hill but now his phone just rings out. I got up this morning and his trainers weren’t in the hall. Then checked his room and his bed was empty, hadn’t been slept in. What time did Connor get back?’

  I think back to what my wife said.

  ‘Twelve.’ I clear my throat. ‘His curfew.’

  ‘Did he mention Zac?’

  ‘Not seen him yet this morning.’ I try to think of anything I may have missed from last night, this morning, any clues as to my nephew’s whereabouts. ‘I’ll get Laura to wake Connor up, ask him. I’m sure he’ll turn up, Rob, he’s probably just crashed at someone’s house and forgot to tell you.’

  ‘I’ve tried a couple of his friends’ parents, but no one’s seen him. Have you got numbers for Isaac’s dad? Will’s mum?’

  I indicate and pull over into a bus stop, checking behind me for a gap in traffic.

  ‘Laura will probably have them,’ I say. ‘I’ll get her to text them to you.’

  ‘I’m heading up to Beacon Hill now to have a look around.’

  ‘I’ll meet you there, I’m just—’

  But he’s already rung off.

  I call my wife’s mobile and listen as it rings six times, then goes to voicemail. I hang up and try again.

  ‘Pick up!’ I say to the ringtone. As it clicks into voicemail again, I belatedly remember what she’d said about going for a shower. I leave a message, asking her to call around to any parents who might know anything and send over the numbers Rob asked for.

  ‘I’m going up to Beacon Hill to meet him, give him a hand. Call me when you get this. And wake Connor up,’ I say. ‘He might know something.’

  I hang up and swing the car across the full width of the road in a quick U-turn.

  Five minutes later, I’m pulling off the main road and up the potholed track beside the cemetery, climbing higher all the way. I park up in the little turnaround near the top, next to my brother’s mud-spattered Mazda, and let the dogs out of the boot. I keep them on a long lead on the sunken path and after a couple of hundred metres we leave the tarmac and turn left, up the bank and out into the open of a farmer’s field, a well-trodden path through waist-high wheat swaying in the gentle morning breeze. At the other end of the field is the entrance to Beacon Hill Woods, a few hundred acres of mature oaks, ash and beech trees, standing tall and full-green against the azure summer sky.

  At the entrance to the woods there are two paths, one leading straight on and the other angling around to the left. I head straight, the dogs scampering ahead of me from tree to tree. It’s cool and quiet up here, the only sound the echoing chatter of a thrush somewhere in the canopy of branches high above. The path is a strip of trodden earth through the trees, reddish-brown clay baked hard by the summer sun; twenty paces in and it’s almost like being in a completely different environment, a world away from the city, from roads and houses, from normality. I assume that’s why teenagers like it so much.

  I’m already deep into the woods before I find my brother.

  He’s crouching down just off the path. Picking at the still-smoking ashes of a fire, a thick tree branch dumped in the middle that has not burned down to the end. As I approach, a twig cracks beneath my shoe and he stands abruptly, his head snapping around.

  ‘Hey, Rob,’ I say. ‘Have you heard from Zac yet?’

  He shakes his head. ‘Not yet. Did you talk to Connor?’

  ‘He was dead to the world when I left but Laura’s waking him up and calling around some other parents. Have you tried the Cruickshanks or some of the other lads from football?’

  ‘I’ve tried everyone I can think of.’

  He looks away from me, his jaw tight, and I can tell that he’s trying to put a brave face on it. Lines of worry on his brow, his eyes hidden behind sunglasses, dark stubble thick across his jaw. We’ve never been big huggers in our family but I put a hand on his shoulder, give it a squeeze.

  ‘It’s going to be all right, Rob,’ I say. ‘Before you know it he’ll be back home with you, devouring everything in the fridge. And you’ve got to promise not to give him too much of a bollocking, OK?’

  ‘OK,’ he says, his voice thick. I try to give him a reassuring pat, the muscles of his shoulder taut with tension. ‘He’s probably sleeping it off at a friend’s house and his phone’s out of charge. Maybe with a girl?’

  ‘Has Connor mentioned anything about Zac having a girlfriend?’

  ‘I’d be the last person he’d talk to on that subject.’

  ‘Same here, just shuts me down whenever I ask about anything like that.’ He squints into the trees. ‘He ever mention Emily Ruskin?’

  I turn to follow his gaze. ‘The name sounds vaguely familiar. Why do you ask?’

  ‘I’m sure he’s mentioned her recently but I can’t remember the context. Have you got a number for her parents?’

  I take out my phone and send a message to my wife, asking the question. She’s much better connected than me where school networks are concerned. I unclip both dogs’ leads and Toffee bounds off into the undergrowth, sniffing busily, tail wagging furiously. Chester stays close to me, the way he always does, padding more slowly from tree to tree, following scents, alert for squirrels. My brother and I rejoin the path and walk in single file further into the woods, looking for any signs of teenagers having been here, discarded bottles or cans or anything else left behind from an end-of-exams party.

  ‘Do you really think,’ I say, ‘that Zac might have stayed out here all night?’

  Rob shrugs. ‘It’s warm, the nights are short and school’s finished for the summer.’

  ‘All the same, wouldn’t he at least tell you where he was going to be?’

  My brother takes his sunglasses off, rubbing distractedly at a lens with the hem of his shirt, and I
notice for the first time how tired he looks. Dark half-circles under bloodshot eyes, his skin a pasty shade of white in the summer sunshine. He looks as if he’s barely slept at all; as if he’s been up most of the night.

  He puts the sunglasses back on, looks away into the trees.

  ‘He came up here before,’ he says. ‘In April.’ He seems about to say more but trails off. He doesn’t need to finish the sentence; I know what he means.

  In April. After the funeral.

  ‘Overnight?’ I say quietly.

  My brother nods, grim-faced.

  ‘Made himself a little hideout of branches, like a den. Brought his knife and his sleeping bag and some food. Came back at four in the morning, soaked and half frozen. I gave him hell for it, and we just ended up shouting at each other. He said he’d wanted to be on his own, where no one could find him. I thought maybe . . .’ He swallows hard, fists by his sides. ‘He’s not the same boy anymore, Andy. Since he lost his mum. He’s changed, he doesn’t talk to me, just pretends nothing can touch him now, like he’s built this hard shell around himself that nothing can penetrate. I don’t know what to do, how to reach him.’

  ‘That place he went before, where he built the den, have you checked there?’

  My brother nods slowly. ‘Nothing.’

  ‘We’ll find him. I promise you.’

  ‘What if he doesn’t want to be found?’ His voice drops lower, as if he’s afraid of even saying the words out loud. ‘He could be anywhere.’

  ‘Have you tried Find My iPhone? You can track the location of a device; I’ve used it once or twice on Connor.’ Once or twice. Only a small lie.

  ‘He disabled it. Said it was freaky and weird that I could see where he was. Like I was some sort of stalker.’

  I want to give him more reassurance, to provide some small scrap of comfort, but I know he’s not really interested in that. He just wants his son back; I’d be exactly the same, in his position.

  We walk on, both of us calling Zac’s name.

  ‘This place must be pitch-black at night,’ I say. ‘How do they even see anything?’

  ‘I think that’s kind of the point.’ He gestures to another blackened log near the path, a circle of stones laid as a makeshift fire pit. ‘But they’ve had a few fires. And lights on their phones, I guess.’

  Toffee trots out of the undergrowth dragging a tree branch in his mouth that is twice as long as him, a mass of leaves and twigs trailing in its wake. He drops it at my brother’s feet and sits, panting hard. Rob snaps off a smaller stick and throws it, watching as Toffee bounds off to fetch it.

  ‘I’m worried, Andy. What if he’s done something stupid?’

  I take my phone out of my pocket.

  ‘We could . . . get the police involved?’

  ‘No,’ he says quickly. ‘Not that. Not yet.’

  ‘Let’s cover some more of the woods first,’ I say. ‘Since we’re here. Then we’ll figure out what to do next, OK?’ I point into the trees, the ground sloping gently away from us before rising again. ‘You head up to the next crest then loop around to the right. If I follow the path up here and across to the left, we’ll meet on the high ground there.’

  ‘Sounds like a plan.’

  He sets off striding down the hill, but he’s only gone a few paces when he begins shouting his son’s name again.

  ‘ZAC!’

  His deep voice echoes and bounces, until it fades to nothing among the trees.

  It’s not long afterwards that I find the keys.

  4

  The path splits and widens into a clearing, a pair of logs facing each other on the ground, empty cans and bottles between them. Chester trots over to have a good sniff at the remains of another fire, white ashes heaped inside a circle of stones, blackened fragments of dark fabric scattered around the edges. It was an unofficial tradition at the Comp, a rite of passage, that some Year 11 kids finishing their GCSEs would come up here on the last day of school and burn their blazers. Sit and watch as the navy polyester and viscose were consumed by flames.

  It was a miracle they hadn’t set the woods on fire years ago.

  Off in the distance I can hear my brother still shouting for his son, his voice an incongruous echo amid the trees. I leave the clearing and cut into the woods, heading for the sound of Rob’s voice. Echoing his calls.

  Toffee bursts through a tangle of bushes to my left, tail wagging, panting, and drops a stick at my feet. He looks up at me, down at the stick and then back again.

  ‘Where’s the ball?’ I say. ‘What have you done with the ball?’

  He pants up at me, tongue lolling from his mouth.

  Picking up the stick, my eye is caught by something red lying at the base of a tree, partially obscured by a tangle of nettles and thick purple wildflowers. A key ring in the shape of a football shirt, the crest of Manchester United on one side and a name and number on the other. Rashford 10. Four keys attached, two normal sized and two smaller, like keys to a padlock or a desk drawer.

  I pick up the keys, study the ground around them in case there is anything else discarded here. Throw the stick for Toffee and resume walking towards the sound of my brother’s voice, turning the keys over in my hand. Connor has a Man Utd key ring. He’s always losing his keys. But how can they be out here? How the hell did he get in last night?

  My brother is on the far side of the hill, in another small clearing circled by mature oaks. He’s squatting on the ground, his back to me. At the sound of my approach he stands up quickly.

  ‘Anything?’ His voice weighted with hope. ‘Any sign of him?’

  I hold out the keys in the palm of my hand. ‘These were on the ground back there, just off the path.’

  Rob’s breath catches as he takes them from me.

  ‘I think they’re Connor’s,’ I say, ‘but I can’t work out how he’d have got in last—’

  His voice is flat, toneless. ‘They’re Zac’s keys.’

  ‘You sure?’

  He nods, turning the Man Utd key ring over with its player name and shirt number on the back. ‘Connor has Bruno Fernandes. Zac has Rashford, remember? They’re always arguing about which one is best.’

  Every so often I’m reminded of the weird family parallels between me and my brother; between Connor and Zac. My older brother always more naturally gifted at sport, more confident and outgoing, more popular with girls than me when we were growing up. Our perennial argument about whether Bryan Robson was better than Mark Hughes. It was the same with Zac and Connor; the age gap between them only a month rather than two years but so much that was familiar in their relationship. The same dynamic, somehow passed down to our sons.

  Rob wipes a smear of dirt off the key ring, his thumb moving reflexively up and down the red plastic. Up and down.

  ‘How can he get home if he doesn’t have his keys?’ he says quietly.

  ‘Has your neighbour got a key?’

  He nods, his jaw tight. ‘I already texted him to keep an eye out. No reply yet.’

  ‘Connor’s always losing his keys,’ I say. ‘On the bus, at school, in the wash.’

  Then I notice something in his other hand, something soft and white, fabric of some kind. I gesture towards it.

  ‘What have you found?’

  Almost reluctantly, he opens his fist and holds it up by the shoulders: a thin white cotton top, a kind of cropped cardigan. Insubstantial and impractical, something a teenage girl might wear. Once it was white but now it’s grubby and creased, dried reddish-brown smears on the sleeve, another on the back.

  ‘Found it just over there.’

  He indicates a thick log laid on the ground, bark worn smooth by time, on the edge of the clearing.

  ‘Could have been here weeks, Rob,’ I say. ‘Months, even.’

  ‘Smell it,’ he says quietly.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Go on.’

  Hesitating for a moment, I lower my face to the fabric and inhale, my nose instantly filled with an intense burst of fresh scent like berries and vanilla and white musk. Both brand new and somehow familiar.

  ‘Recent, right?’ he says. ‘Must be from last night. Maybe you were right about Zac going off with a girl.’