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JIM
We made it to the woods in one hour. I used blue lights.
On the way in the car we got more details. About Ben Finch’s condition. About Joanna May, and
the room in the basement of her flat.
‘We interviewed her,’ I said to Woodley. ‘We should have fucking seen it.’
He didn’t respond.
The paramedics were still working with Ben Finch in the woods. They couldn’t get the ambulance
to the site so they’d had to stabilise him and move him in stages.
We parked and I ran. I wanted to be with Ben. I wanted to see his clear blue eyes for myself, see if
there was life in them. I wanted to tell him that he would be OK, that his mother was waiting for him.
I wanted to do that for him at least.
Rain was falling in a downpour, crashing through the canopy above. The trees lining the path were
bowed and streaked from it. They arched over me, a skeletal tunnel of bare branches, urging me
onwards, making me feel as if it was impossible to make progress.
My breathing was ragged and fast, my heart thumping, my clumsy feet tripping over sticks, stones,
each other, never moving fast enough. With every step I was soaked some more, but with every step I
cared less.
I rounded a bend in the path, and ahead I saw the ambulance, and a stretcher being loaded on
board.
I pushed myself, tried to reach them in time, tried to shout out, but it was futile, because they
slammed the door shut long before I reached them, and by the time I got there the ambulance had
begun the tricky process of turning around.
Mark Bennett was guiding it. I stayed back, stood to the side of the path as the ambulance
manoeuvred past me, watched him pat the back of it as a farewell.
And Bennett, all dressed up in waterproofs, jaw clenched and wet from rain said, ‘That lad’s not in
a good way, Jim. Not at all.’ It had got to him. I could see that.
And I said, ‘I wanted to see him.’ I wiped the rain from my face, felt my sodden clothing cling
coldly to me.
‘Nothing we can do for him now. It’s too late for that. It’s in the hands of the medics.’
And I hated him for saying that, and I hated him for being there when it should have been me, and I
hated myself for letting harm come to that boy, any harm at all.