Burnt Paper Sky by Gilly Macmillan Read Free Book Online

strength from some internal reserve. ‘The boys have found something that they believe might be significant. It’s not Ben –’ he’d seen the question on my lips – ‘but it might be an item or items of his clothing.’
    ‘Where?’ said John.
    ‘By the pond at Paradise Bottom.’
    I knew it. It was nearby. I ran. I heard them shout after me, I was aware of the heavy rhythm of someone running behind me, but I didn’t pause, I sprinted into the woods as fast as I could.
    Before I even reached the pond I saw them: a group of three men, huddled together, standing in the middle of the path. They watched me as I approached. One man held a bundle in his hands, a clear plastic bag with something in it.
    ‘I’ve come to see,’ I said, and the man with the bundle said, ‘It would be good if you could confirm whether any of these items belong to Ben or not, but please don’t take them out of the bag.’
    He held it out towards me, an offering.
    John arrived beside me, his breathing loud and ragged.
    I took the bag. It had a weight to it. Droplets of water smeared the plastic outside and in. The contents were wet. I saw a flash of red, some denim, bundled up white cotton fabric. I turned it upside down, and beneath the fabric items were two shoes: blue Geox trainers. They were scuffed, and on one of them the sole was slightly separated from the shoe at the toe, as I knew it would be. I gave the bag a little shake. Triggered by the movement, blue lights flashed along the sole of the shoes.
    ‘The shoes are named,’ I said. ‘With his initials, under the tongue.’
    Through the plastic I managed to pull up the tongue of the shoe. Underneath it were the letters ‘BF’. The ink had bled into the fabric around it.
    ‘Thank you,’ said the man. He had white hair and a darker grey moustache and eyebrows, and red, pockmarked skin. He took the bag from me, though I didn’t want to give it back to him.
    ‘Where’s Ben?’ I said.
    ‘We’re doing our very best to find him,’ the man replied, and the compassion in his voice robbed me of any shreds of composure that I might have had left.
    An ugly fear was growing in me like a tumour; it was an idea that I hadn’t wanted to contemplate. John hugged me, tightly. He knew what I was thinking because he was thinking it too.
    ‘No!’ I shouted and it was the sound of a wild animal, an ululation, an uttering that a mother might make if she saw her offspring being dragged away by a predator.

JIM
    The morning after Benedict Finch went missing I woke up early, like I always do. I’ve got a reliable body clock. I never need to set an alarm, although I do, just in case. You don’t want to oversleep. I started the day the way I always do: a cup of good black coffee, made properly in my Bialetti. I drank it standing in my kitchen.
    My flat is on the top floor of a tall Georgian building in Clifton. It’s the best area in Bristol, and the flat’s got amazing views because it’s on the side of a steep hill. The front overlooks a big garden, which is nice, but out the back it’s better because I can see a proper slice of the city. I’ve got Brandon Hill opposite, dotted with trees, Cabot Tower on its summit, a couple of Georgian and Victorian terraces below. Just out of sight are modern office buildings and shops, but you can see a bit of Jacob’s Wells Road below, leading steeply downhill to the harbour, where you can go for a night out or a weekend walk. I can’t see the water from my flat, but I can sense it, and gulls often circle and cry out, diving past my windows.
    Until I started going out with Emma I didn’t know that this city was built on sea trade that docked there for hundreds of years: sugar, tobacco, paper, slaves. She told me how a lot of human suffering made the wealth that built Bristol, and a lot of men gambled lives and fortunes on that. Emma was an army brat, and the reason she was so well informed was that her dad made her learn a history of every new