The Murder House. Michael Wood

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       Chapter Two

      Monday, 15 January 2018

       09.30

      Sally Meagan stood in the middle of the living room and looked around her. She couldn’t remember the last time she had used this room, sat on the sofa, snuggled up to her husband and watched television with her feet up. The family room. That was a joke. They were no longer a family. How could they be when their only child was still missing?

      The life had been drained out of Sally when Carl was taken on the 25th of March 2015. She no longer lived, she could merely exist, until the fate of her son was known. After that … who knew?

      The house was empty. As usual, Philip was at one of their restaurants. He’d left before she’d even woken up. He seemed to be leaving the house earlier and getting home later each day. He only used the house to shower, change his clothes and sleep. She hardly saw him anymore. A few weeks before Christmas, when the restaurants were at their busiest, she followed him to one and stood outside, watching him, seeing how he was at work. It was like looking at a total stranger. He was laughing and joking, schmoozing with the customers, smiling, engaging in pointless small talk, dealing with any issues that cropped up, getting on with life as if everything was peaches and cream. Sally couldn’t do that. She tried, but every time she found herself smiling, having fun, or living a seemingly normal life, she remembered Carl was missing, and she hated herself even more for trying to live while goodness knows what was happening to her child.

      How could Philip continue with life as if nothing had happened? On that spring day almost three years ago, someone had broken into their home, killed her mother, who was babysitting, and stolen their seven-year-old son. It was a parents’ worse nightmare, and while Sally was still suffering, her husband had returned to normal life.

      Maybe it was different for a father. A mother has a stronger bond with her child, as she’s carried him inside her for nine months. Was that it? Was that the reason? Maybe Philip was looking at the bigger picture; without the restaurants, they wouldn’t be able to pay the bills and the mortgage, and they’d have to sell their home. Sally couldn’t allow that to happen. This was Carl’s home.

      She went into the kitchen, took out a bottle of vodka from the freezer, and poured herself a large glass. She slugged it back in one and poured another. She didn’t care it wasn’t even ten o’clock in the morning yet. She looked down at the golden Labrador who was permanently at her heels.

      ‘Don’t judge me, Woody,’ she said.

      Woody had been bought for Carl’s sixth birthday. He’d been asking for a puppy for years, and they’d finally relented. They loved each other on sight and were inseparable. Woody even slept in Carl’s bedroom. He accompanied them on the walk to school and pulled Sally on the way to pick him up. When he disappeared, Woody felt the effect of the loss. He stopped barking, he lost his bounce, and spent every night on Carl’s bed, pining, sighing, aching for his best friend to return.

      Now Sally was home all the time, Woody had latched himself on to her. He didn’t want to lose another member of the household. He followed Sally everywhere. While she was working on the computer in the study to find her son, he sat on the floor by her feet. When she left the room to go to the toilet, he followed, and sat outside the bathroom door until she was finished. At first, it annoyed her, but as time went on, it was comforting. She spoke to Woody all the time, told him her feelings, and fears. She’d sit on the floor with him, his head on her lap, and she cried buckets as she poured her heart out to him. He seemed to understand. She told him things she couldn’t tell anyone, not Philip, not Matilda, and he never judged her. Even now, when she drank to dull the pain, he still looked at her with those big brown eyes and he seemed to sympathize with her.

      ‘Come on, Woody, let’s check the emails. Fingers and paws crossed, eh?’

      The study at the back of the ground floor was the nerve centre for Sally’s campaign in finding her son. She connected with people all over the world who were missing children to offer a shoulder to cry on. She had a website where people could message her with possible sightings, though they were getting fewer and further between. The room was full of files, missing persons posters, copies of the book she had written. Sally spent more time in this room than anywhere else in the house.

      She sat down and powered up the computer. Woody assumed the position at her feet, circling a few times before he found the right spot for him.

      On the desk were several framed photographs of Carl. She often looked at them, remembered the exact moment when the picture was taken, what they were doing, what she said, what Carl said, and shed a little tear. Why was this happening to them?

      Her first job was to check the emails. There were none. This was the ninth day in a row without a new email. Several people had contacted her from Sweden in the past few months with a possible sighting. She wondered if it would be worth going out there, maybe visiting a few schools. Philip and Matilda didn’t think it was such a good idea, and she didn’t fancy going to a strange country on her own.

      Last year, a former detective with South Yorkshire Police had done some digging of his own. He had an ulterior motive, of course. He wanted to solve the case DCI Darke couldn’t. What he’d uncovered made no sense to her, but Matilda was working hard to salvage order out of the chaos of paperwork. If only she didn’t have her day-to-day police work getting in the way of finding Carl. It was a selfish thought, Sally knew that, but …

      Her mobile rang, making her jump. She didn’t look at the display. She knew it would probably be Philip asking her if she’d made the changes to the menu she had been promising to do for the past week.

      ‘Hello,’ she answered. Her voice was tired and lacked emotion.

      ‘Mummy?’

      ‘Carl?’ Sally shot up out of her seat, frightening Woody. ‘Carl? Is that you?’

      ‘Mummy?’