After Anna. Alex Lake

      The search was organized quickly and efficiently. The police knew what they were doing, and they set about it calmly.

      They’ve done this before, Julia thought. This is the kind of thing that happens, which means this is real.

      The local community centre – a wood and glass structure built a few years previously with lottery money – was the base of operations. A large, detailed map of the area was stuck to a wall, lines made with marker pens delineating the streets that volunteers had been assigned to search.

      And there were a lot of volunteers: friends of Julia and Brian, other parents, concerned locals. Julia had rung through her address book; many others had called the police asking how they could help and had been directed to the community centre, and then out to their search areas.

      Alongside them, police officers pointed torches into alleys or knocked on doors or quizzed the homeless. Dog teams roamed the parks and copses and fields and woodlands. If none of these things worked, in the morning divers would search the waterways.

      It was a thorough search. They were searching places that Julia knew Anna could not have got to on her own.

      Which meant she had been moved by somebody, and that somebody would not want her to be found.

      Brian was out with the searchers; Julia waited in the community centre with DI Wynne; waited for the triumphant smile as the detective heard that Anna was lost and cold but alive and well. But as the night wore on the volunteers came back with their news that there was no news, then went home to their beds and dreams of the poor parents who they had left behind. Julia thanked them for their effort, accepted their well wishes, their don’t worry, I’m sure she’ll turn ups.

      But there was no sign of Anna, so how could she not worry? She was that woman, the mother whose child was lost, who was at the centre of a storm of sympathy and community spirit. So how could she not worry?

      It was around midnight when the door opened and Brian came in. He looked at DI Wynne.

      ‘Nothing?’ he asked.

      ‘Not yet, Mr Crowne,’ she replied. ‘You and Mrs Crowne should go home. Try and get some rest.’

      ‘I’d prefer to stay,’ Julia said. ‘I can go out and look myself.’

      ‘If anything changes I’ll call you immediately,’ Wynne said. ‘The best thing you can do is to preserve your strength. Tomorrow will be a busy day.’

      ‘If you don’t find Anna tonight,’ Brian said.

      There was a long, uncomfortable, pause, then DI Wynne nodded. ‘If we don’t find her tonight,’ she said. ‘That’s right. But go, and get some rest.’

      Julia was pretty sure that rest would be an elusive quarry, but she nodded. She took her car keys from her pocket. She looked at Brian. ‘I’ll drive,’ she said. ‘Let’s go.’

      They climbed into the car, silent. There was nothing to say. For the first time in a long time they were both feeling exactly the same things. Fear. Worry. Dread. Panic. One after another in a horrific spin cycle.

      Julia turned the key in the ignition. She almost expected the car not to start – everything else was broken, so why not that, too? – but it fired and the engine came to life. It was a short drive home – maybe a mile – but to Julia it felt like the most important journey she had ever taken; as if she was crossing an invisible border into a new land, a land in which everything had changed.

       3

       The First Day

       i.

      You slept well. In the wee hours you brought the girl inside and then went to bed, tired from the exertions of the day – the adrenaline was pumping and it took it out of you – and fell asleep in a heartbeat. Woke at six, a little bleary-eyed, and made a strong coffee.

      The story is everywhere. The girl’s photo in every news bulletin. Numbers for the public to call if they know where she is. The police were searching all night, helped by concerned locals. A local pub provided sandwiches and hot drinks. Dogs barked and yelped and sniffed their way across scrubland and through parks and forests.

      They found nothing. There is nothing to find. You made sure of that.

      Not a peep from the girl in the night. That was no surprise, though. She is young and the sleeping pills you’d crushed into a milkshake (bought from McDonald’s before you took her and administered as soon as you got her in the car – kids were powerless to resist sugary drinks) were powerful. She sleeps still. She’ll be groggy when she wakes, but that is no problem. You plan to keep her under sedation until the end comes – perhaps a week or so, not much more than that – after which, it won’t matter anyway.

      It matters now, though. You need her asleep or sedated so that she doesn’t make a noise when you are not there. You can’t be with her all the time. You are needed – expected – to be elsewhere, and your absence would be noted. It would cause suspicion. You know that they will be looking everywhere for the girl – pretty five-year-olds who vanish are big news – and you must do nothing that invites suspicion onto you. So you must leave her, and she must be silent when you are gone.

      If she isn’t? Well, even then it is unlikely anyone would hear her. She is in a safe place, hidden away in the bowels of your house, and her screams would not travel far. But maybe far enough if they happened to coincide with the arrival of the milkman or the postman. You have kept the milk deliveries up. Would the police look for people who had abruptly cancelled milk deliveries? They might, so you have maintained yours. That is the attention to detail that sets you apart from the common run.

      So the girl must be silent. Just in case.

      Just in case. Those are your watchwords. You examine every possibility, weigh every risk, and make your plans accordingly.

      That is why you can sleep at night. Because you know you have nothing to fear. You know you have not made any errors. You know you will not get caught.

      And you know you are doing the right thing. You have no crisis of conscience. Yes, you feel sorry for the girl, but her suffering is a necessary evil.

      And a necessary evil is indistinguishable from something right and proper. If it is necessary, how can it be evil? If it is the only path to the right and proper outcome then it must itself be right and proper. To be deterred from doing the right thing because a little girl might undergo some temporary suffering – wouldn’t that be worse than letting her suffer? If everyone made decisions like that then nothing great would ever be accomplished. How many people died in order for the great cathedrals to be built? Or bridges? Or railways? Or for the wars of the righteous to be fought? Did their deaths matter? Were they tragedies, every one of them? Yes, of course they were. But were they to be regretted? No, they were not. Without their deaths the world would be a poorer place, and that was what mattered. Their deaths were a necessary evil.

      And, as you know better than anyone else, a necessary evil can be a good thing.

       ii.

      Julia lay in bed, staring at the ceiling. It was four a.m. and there was a chill in the room. They’d come home and relieved Edna, then Brian had disappeared with a bottle of whisky. Somehow she’d fallen asleep, for maybe an hour, which in the circumstances was the best she could hope for. Now, in the small hours of the morning, mind racing, she knew her night was over. Sleep would be impossible.

      The house was still and dark; the witching hour, as her dad had called it. He was a leather tanner and he used to come home smelling of the chemicals they used to clean the leather. Whatever they were they were powerful: the run-off polluted the local rivers and polluted