The Missing: The gripping psychological thriller that’s got everyone talking...

C.L. TAYLOR

The Missing

Copyright

Published by Avon

An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

First published in Great Britain by HarperCollins 2016

Copyright © C.L. Taylor 2016

Cover illustration © Henry Steadman 2016

C.L. Taylor asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

Source ISBN: 9780008118051

Ebook Edition © April 2016 ISBN: 9780008118068

Version: 2018-06-21

Praise for The Missing

‘Black Narcissus for the Facebook generation, a clever exploration of how petty jealousies and misunderstandings can unravel even the tightest of friendships. Claustrophobic, tense and thrilling, a thrill-ride of a novel that keeps you guessing.’

Elizabeth Haynes

‘A gripping and disturbing psychological thriller: every bit as good as The Accident.’

Clare Mackintosh

‘Fast-paced, tense and atmospheric, a guaranteed bestseller.’

Mark Edwards

‘Haunting and heart-stoppingly creepy, The Lie is a gripping roller coaster of suspense.’

Sunday Express

‘5/5 stars – Spine-chilling!’

Woman magazine

‘An excellent psychological thriller.’

Heat magazine

‘Packed with twists and turns, this brilliantly tense thriller will get your blood pumping.’

Claire Frost, Fabulous magazine

‘A real page-turner, with two story lines: one of growing menace in the present, and a past narrative of a girls-only holiday that goes horrifically wrong. Creepy, horrifying and twisty. C.L. Taylor is extremely good at writing stories in which you have no idea which characters you can trust, and the result is intriguing and scary and extremely gripping.’

Julie Cohen, 2014 Richard and Judy Summer Book Club Pick

‘The Lie is absolutely brilliant – The Beach, only darker, more thrilling and more tense. It’s the story of a twisted, distorted friendship. It’s a compelling, addictive and wonderfully written tale. Can’t recommend it enough.’

Louise Douglas

‘C.L. Taylor delivers another compelling read that’ll keep you turning pages way too late into the night. Warning: may cause drowsiness the following day.’

Tamar Cohen

‘My heart was racing after I finished C.L. Taylor’s brilliant new book The Lie. Dark, creepy and full of twists. I loved it.’

Rowan Coleman

‘C.L. Taylor is fast becoming the queen of psychological suspense. Read this: you won’t be disappointed.’

Victoria Fox

Dedication

To my late grandmothers Milbrough Griffiths and Olivia Bella Taylor.

Table of Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Praise for The Missing

Dedication

Thursday 5th February 2015

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Monday 11th August 2014

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Friday 22nd August 2014

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Tuesday 26th August 2014

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Thursday 25th September 2014

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Tuesday 7th October 2014

Chapter 19

Wednesday 8th October 2014

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Friday 10th October 2014

Chapter 23

Friday 24th October 2014

Chapter 24

Monday 3rd November 2014

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Tuesday 4th November 2014

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Saturday 8th November 2014

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Tuesday 25th November 2014

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Chapter 37

Chapter 38

Chapter 39

Chapter 40

Thursday 27th November 2014

Chapter 41

Chapter 42

Chapter 43

Friday 19th December 2014

Chapter 44

Chapter 45

Friday 2nd January 2015

Chapter 46

Chapter 47

Chapter 48

Chapter 49

Chapter 50

Chapter 51

Chapter 52

Saturday 3rd January 2015

Chapter 53

Chapter 54

Friday 16th January 2015

Chapter 55

Tuesday 27th January 2015

Chapter 56

Tuesday 27th January 2015

Chapter 57

Wednesday 28th January 2015

Chapter 58

Chapter 59

Chapter 60

Chapter 61

Chapter 62

Chapter 63

Chapter 64

Chapter 65

Chapter 66

Chapter 67

Chapter 68

Chapter 69

A conversation with C.L. Taylor

Book club questions for The Missing by C.L. Taylor

Acknowledgements

Author Note

About the Author

Also by C.L. Taylor

About the Publisher

Thursday 5th February 2015

Jackdaw44: Do you want to play a game?

ICE9: No.

Jackdaw44: Not sex.

ICE9: What then?

Jackdaw44: Questions. I’m bored. It’s just a bit of fun.

ICE9: …

Jackdaw44: I take it that’s a yes. OK. First question. Would you rather go deaf or blind?

ICE9: You really are bored, aren’t you? Deaf.

Jackdaw44: Would you rather drown in a river or burn in a fire?

ICE9: Neither.

Jackdaw44: You have to choose.

ICE9: Drown in a river.

Jackdaw44: Be buried or cremated?

ICE9: I don’t like this game.

Jackdaw44: It doesn’t mean anything. I’m just trying to get to know you better.

ICE9: Weird way of doing it.

Jackdaw44: I love you. I want to know everything about you.

ICE9: Buried.

Jackdaw44: Be infamous or be forgotten?

ICE9: Forgotten.

Jackdaw44: Seriously???

ICE9: Yes.

Jackdaw44: I’d choose infamy every time.

ICE9: No surprise there.

Jackdaw44: Cry at my funeral or save your tears for private?

ICE9: WHAT?!! Stop being so morbid.

Jackdaw44: I’m not. I’m just preparing you.

ICE9: For what?

ICE9: Hello?

ICE9: HELLO?

Chapter 1

Wednesday 5th August 2015

What do you wear when you peer into the barrel of a camera and plead for someone, anyone, to please, please tell you where your child is? A blouse? A jumper? Armour?

Today is the day of the second television appeal. It’s been six months since my son disappeared. Six months? How can it be that long? The counsellor I started seeing four weeks after he was taken from us told me the pain would lessen, that I would never feel his loss as keenly as I did that first day.

She lied.

It takes me the best part of an hour before I can look at myself in the bedroom mirror without crying. My hair, cut in a short elfin style last week, doesn’t suit my wide, angular face and my eyes look dark and deep-set beneath the new fringe. The blouse I’d deemed sensible and presentable last night suddenly looks thin and cheap, the knee-length pencil skirt too tight on my hips. I select a pair of navy trousers and a soft grey jumper instead. Smart, but not too smart, serious but not sombre.

Mark is not in the bedroom with me. He got up at 5.37 a.m. and slipped silently out of the room without acknowledging my soft grunt as I peered at the time on the alarm clock. When we went to bed last night we lay in silence side by side, not touching, too tense to talk. It took a long time for sleep to come.

I didn’t say anything when Mark got up. He’s always been an early riser and enjoys a solitary hour or so, pottering around the house, before everyone else wakes up.

Our house was always so noisy in the morning, with Billy and Jake fighting over who got to use the bathroom first and then turning up their stereos full volume when they returned to their rooms to get changed. I’d pound on their bedroom doors and shout at them to turn the music down. Mark’s never been very good with noise. He spends hours each week driving from city to city as part of his job as a pharmaceutical sales rep but always in silence – no music, audiobooks or radio for him.

‘Mark?’ It’s 7.30 a.m. when I pad into the kitchen, taking care to step over the cracked tile by the fridge so I don’t snag my pop socks. Three years ago Billy opened the fridge and a bottle of wine fell out, cracking the tiles that Mark had only finished laying the day before. I told him it was my fault.

‘Mark?’

The kettle is still warm but there’s no sign of my husband. I poke my head around the living-room door but he’s not there either. I return to the kitchen, and open the back door that leads to the driveway at the side of the house. The garage door is open. The rrr-rrr-rrr splutter of the lawnmower being started drifts towards me.

‘Mark?’ I slip my feet into a pair of Jake’s size ten trainers that have been abandoned next to the mat and slip-slide across the driveway towards the garage. It’s August and the sun is already high in the sky, the park on the other side of the street is a riot of colour and our lawn is damp with dew. ‘You’re not planning on cutting the grass now, surel—’

I stop short at the garage door. My tall, fair-haired husband is bent over the lawnmower in his best navy suit, a greasy black oil stain just above the knee of his left trouser leg.

‘Mark! What the hell are you doing?’

He doesn’t look up.

‘Servicing the lawnmower.’ He gives the starting cord another yank and the machine growls in protest.

‘Now?’

‘I haven’t used it for a month. It’ll rust up if it’s not serviced.’

I don’t know whether to laugh or cry.

‘But Mark, it’s Billy’s appeal.’

‘I know what day it is.’ This time he does look up. His cheeks are flushed and there’s a sheen of sweat that stretches from his thick, unkempt eyebrows all the way up to his receding hairline. He passes a hand over his brow, then wipes it on his trouser leg, rubbing sweat into the greasy oil stain. I want to scream at him that he’s ruined his best suit and he can’t go to Billy’s appeal like that, but today isn’t the day for an argument, so I take a deep breath instead.

‘It’s seven-thirty,’ I say. ‘We need to get going in half an hour. DS Forbes said he’d meet us at eight-thirty to go through a few things.’

Mark rubs a clenched fist against his lower back as he straightens up. ‘Is Jake ready?’

‘I don’t think so. His door was shut as I came downstairs and I couldn’t hear voices.’

Jake shares his bedroom with his girlfriend Kira. They started dating at school when they were sixteen and they’ve been together three years now, sharing a room in our house for the last eighteen months. Jake begged me to let her stay. Her mum’s drinking had got worse and she’d started lashing out at Kira, physically and verbally. He told me that if I didn’t let her live with us she’d have to move up to Edinburgh to live with her grandfather and they’d never get to see each other.

‘Well, if Jake can’t be bothered to get up, then let’s go without him,’ Mark says. ‘I haven’t got the energy to deal with him. Not today.’

It was Billy who used to disappoint Mark. Billy with his ‘I don’t give a shit’ attitude about school and his belief that life owed him fame and fortune. Jake was always Mark’s golden boy in comparison. He worked hard at school, gained six A- to C-grade GCSEs and passed his electrician course at college with flying colours. These days it’s phone calls about Jake’s poor attendance at work that we’re dealing with, not Billy’s.

I haven’t got the energy to deal with Jake either but I can’t just shrug my shoulders like Mark. We need to present a united front to the media. We all need to be there, sitting side by side behind the desk. A strong family, in appearance if nothing else.

‘I’m going back to the house. I’ll get your other suit out of the wardrobe,’ I say but Mark has already turned his attention back to the lawnmower.

I shuffle back to the path, Jake’s oversized shoes leaving a trail in the gravel, and reach for the handle of the back door.

I hear the scream the second I push it open.

Chapter 2

‘Jake, give me that!’ Kira’s screech carries down the stairs and there’s a loud thump from the bedroom above as something, or someone, hits the floor.

I kick off Jake’s shoes and take the stairs two at a time, cross the landing and fly into his bedroom without stopping to knock. There’s a flurry of activity as Kira and Jake jump away from each other. Barely five foot tall with blonde hair that falls past her shoulders, Kira looks tiny and doll-like in her pink knickers and a tight white T-shirt. Jake is bare-chested, naked apart from a pair of black jockey shorts that cling to his hips. His shoulders and chest are so broad and muscled he seems to fill the room. At his feet is a shattered bottle leaking pale brown liquid onto the beige carpet. There are shards of glass on the pile of weights plates beside it.

‘Mum!’ Jake leaps away from Kira, planting his right foot on the broken bottle. He howls in anguish as a shard of clear glass embeds itself in his sole.

‘Don’t!’ I shout, but he’s already yanked it out. Bright red blood gushes out, covering his fingers and dripping onto the carpet.

‘Don’t move!’ I sprint to the bathroom and grab the first towel I see. When I return to the bedroom Jake is sitting on the bed, one hand gripping his ankle, the other pressed over the wound. Blood seeps between his fingers. Kira, still standing in the centre of the room, is ashen. I pick my way carefully through the broken glass on the floor, then crouch on the carpet in front of Jake. It stinks of alcohol.

‘Let go.’

He winces as he peels his fingers away from his foot. The wound isn’t more than half a centimetre across but it’s deep and blood is still gushing out. I wrap the towel as tightly around it as I can in an attempt to stem the flow.

‘Hold it here.’ I gesture for Jake to press his hands over the towel. ‘I need to get a safety pin.’

Seconds later I’m back in the bedroom and attempting to secure the makeshift bandage around my son’s foot. There are dark circles under his eyes and the skin is pulled too tight over his cheekbones. Mark and I weren’t the only ones who didn’t sleep last night.

‘What happened, Jake?’ I ask carefully.

He looks past me to Kira who is pulling on some clothes. Her lips part and, for a second, I think she’s about to speak but then she lowers her eyes and wriggles into her jeans. Downstairs the back door opens with a thud as Mark makes his way back into the house, then there’s a click-click sound as he paces backwards and forwards on the kitchen tiles. In a minute he’ll be up the stairs, asking what the hold-up is.

I sniff at Jake. His breath smells pungent. ‘Were you drinking that rum before I came in?’

‘Mum!’

‘Well? Were you?’

‘I had a few last night, that’s all.’

‘And then some.’ I pluck a large piece of glass from the carpet. Most of the label is still affixed. ‘What the hell were you thinking?’

‘I’m stressed, okay?’

‘I haven’t got enough for a taxi,’ Kira says plaintively, reaching into her jeans pocket and proffering a palm of small change.

‘Claire?’ Mark’s voice booms up the stairs. ‘It’s eight o’clock. We have to go. Now!’

‘I need to leave,’ Kira says. ‘There’s a college trip to London today – we’re going to the National Portrait Gallery – and I’m supposed to be at the train station for half eight.’

‘Okay, okay.’ I gesture for her to stop panicking. ‘Give me a sec.’

‘Mark?’ I step out onto the landing and shout down the stairs. ‘Have you got any cash on you?’

‘About three quid,’ he shouts back. ‘Why?’

‘Doesn’t matter.’

‘Right.’ I step back into Jake’s bedroom. ‘Kira, I’ll give you a lift to the train station. And as for you, Jake …’ There’s no blood on the towel I’ve pinned around his foot but he’ll still need the wound to be cleaned and a tetanus jab. If there was time I’d drop Kira at the station and then take Jake to the doctor’s but it would mean doubling back on myself and I can’t be late for the appeal. Why did this have to happen today of all days?

‘Okay.’ I make a snap decision. ‘Jake, stay here and sober up and I’ll drive you to the GP’s when I get back. If you need anything, Liz is next door. She’s not working until later.’

‘No, I’m coming with you. I need to go to the press conference.’ Jake grimaces as he pushes himself up and off the bed and hops onto his good foot so we’re face to face. Unlike Billy who shot up when he hit twelve, Jake’s height has never crept above five foot nine. The boys couldn’t have an argument without Billy slipping in some sly jab about his older brother’s stature. Jake would retaliate and then World War III would break out.

‘Claire!’ Mark shouts again, louder this time. He’ll fly off the handle if he sees the state Jake is in. ‘Claire! DS Forbes is here. We need to go!’

‘You’re not going anywhere,’ I hiss at Jake as Kira pulls an apologetic face and squeezes past me. She presses herself up against the linen cupboard on the landing, pulls on her coat and then roots around in the pockets.

‘Billy was my brother,’ Jake says. His face crumples and for a split second he looks like a child again, but then a tendon in his neck pulses and he raises his chin. ‘You can’t stop me from going.’

‘You’ve been drinking,’ I say as levelly as I can. ‘If you want to help Billy, then the best thing you can do right now is stay at home and sleep it off. We’ll talk when I get back.’

‘Claire!’ Mark shouts from the top of the stairs.

‘Mum …’ Jake reaches a hand towards me but I’m already halfway out the door. I yank it shut behind me, just as Mark draws level.

‘Is Jake ready?’

‘He’s not well.’ I press my palms against the door.

‘What’s wrong with him?’

‘Stomach upset,’ Kira says, her soft voice cutting through the awkward pause. ‘He was up all night with it. It must have been the vindaloo.’

I shoot her a grateful look. Poor girl, getting caught up in our family drama when the very reason she moved in with us was to escape from her own.

Mark glances at the closed door behind me, then his eyes meet mine. ‘Are we off then?’

‘I need to drop Kira at the train station for her college trip. You go on ahead with DS Forbes and I’ll meet you there.’

‘How’s that going to look? The two of us turning up separately?’ Mark looks at Kira. ‘Why didn’t you mention this trip last—’ He sighs. ‘Never mind. Forget it. I’ll see you there, Claire.’

He hasn’t changed his trousers. The greasy oil stain is still visible, a dark mark on his left thigh, but I haven’t got the heart to mention it.