The Search Party Read online

  PRAISE FOR THE SEARCH PARTY

  “A chillingly complex, well-crafted web. The voices cry out from Simon Lelic’s pages as if they are standing right next to you.”

  —Jane Corry, bestselling author of The Dead Ex

  “Clever and atmospheric, with shades of Stand by Me.”

  —Mark Edwards, author of Here to Stay

  “A brilliantly tense tale of teenage frustration, lost souls, and sibling love, with an atmosphere as tense as the end of a summer storm that threatens throughout the book. Plus a whirlwind of an ending that’s like riding a roller coaster.”

  —Araminta Hall, author of Our Kind of Cruelty

  “I’ve spent every free moment of the last few days feasting on The Search Party . . . a bloody good read and the very definition of unpredictable. Twisty, creepy, brilliantly paced, and with a denouement I never saw coming.”

  —John Marrs, author of The One

  PRAISE FOR SIMON LELIC

  “An intricate, powerful, and deeply unsettling thriller about the profound ways in which cruelty can change its survivors, and the creeping fear that nothing—not your home, not love, not even your own mind—is as rock-solid and impregnable as we all want to believe.”

  —Tana French, New York Times bestselling author of The Trespasser, on The New Neighbors

  “Highly recommended!”

  —Karen Dionne, author of The Marsh King’s Daughter

  “I’m such a fan of this author and can’t wait to see what he has in store next.”

  —Criminal Element

  “Lelic slowly and exquisitely ratchets up the suspense. . . . If you like your stories tangled and complicated by eminently readable, [he] is one you will want to pick up.”

  —Book Reporter

  TITLES BY SIMON LELIC

  The Search Party

  The Liar’s Room

  The New Neighbors

  The Facility

  The Child Who

  A Thousand Cuts

  BERKLEY

  An imprint of Penguin Random House LLC

  penguinrandomhouse.com

  Copyright © 2020 by Simon Lelic

  Penguin Random House supports copyright. Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes free speech, and creates a vibrant culture. Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, or distributing any part of it in any form without permission. You are supporting writers and allowing Penguin Random House to continue to publish books for every reader.

  BERKLEY and the BERKLEY & B colophon are registered trademarks of Penguin Random House LLC.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: Lelic, Simon, author.

  Title: The search party / Simon Lelic.

  Description: Berkley trade paperback edition. | New York: Berkley, 2020.

  Identifiers: LCCN 2019055349 (print) | LCCN 2019055350 (ebook) | ISBN 9780593098332 (trade paperback) | ISBN 9780593098349 (ebook)

  Subjects: GSAFD: Suspense fiction.

  Classification: LCC PR6112.E48 S43 2020 (print) | LCC PR6112.E48 (ebook) | DDC 823/.92—dc23

  LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019055349

  LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019055350

  Viking UK trade paperback edition / August 2020

  Berkley trade paperback edition / August 2020

  Cover art by Robert Norbury / Millennium Images

  Cover design by Mumtaz Mustafa

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  pid_prh_5.5.0_c0_r0

  CONTENTS

  Cover

  Praise for Simon Lelic

  Titles by Simon Lelic

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Prologue

  Day Six

  The bloody rain.

  Day Seven

  Abi

  Cora

  “A search party?”

  Mason

  Fash

  Cora

  Mason

  “Sir? They're here.”

  Abi

  Cora

  Fleet sat in his car

  “Hello, mum.”

  Fash

  Cora

  Abi

  Cora

  Full dark, no stars.

  Day Eight

  “Something wrong with your neck, boss?”

  Mason

  Fash

  “Look at those leeches,”

  Mason

  Abi

  Cora

  Fash

  Mason

  Abi

  Cora

  This time Fleet didn’t bother

  It didn’t take long

  Mason

  Abi

  Fash

  Fleet was walking the estuary

  Day Nine

  The first thing Fleet noticed

  Cora

  Abi

  Fash

  “Your business card?”

  Luke

  The rain had dwindled

  “That way. He went that way.”

  Day Ten

  He spotted her

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  For my family

  [phone call]

  Operator: Emergency, which service please?

  Caller: Hello? Hello?

  Operator: Do you need fire, police or ambulance?

  Caller: I can’t . . . Hello? Is anyone there?

  Operator: I can hear you. Can you hear me?

  Caller: Yes, I . . . Thank God. Please, help us. Please.

  Operator: Can you tell me what’s happened?

  Caller: Hello? She’s gone. I can’t . . .

  Operator: I’m here. I can still hear you. Where are you?

  Caller: I don’t know. In the woods. Somewhere, I . . . Please. We need an ambulance.

  Operator: Right. An ambulance. Can you tell me where you are? What can you see?

  Caller: Oh God. Oh God.

  Operator: You’re in the woods, is that what you said?

  Caller: Yes. Yes. Near . . . a building. A house, or . . . [inaudible]

  Operator: A house, you say? Do you know the address?

  Caller: There isn’t one. It’s empty. Abandoned. But . . . Please. Just come. Quickly. Please. Just—

  [call ends]

  DAY SIX

  THE BLOODY RAIN. For twenty-four hours it had fallen, flaying the banks of the river with a tropical fervor. Except it was cold. Granted the summer was officially over, but just two days ago the volunteers had been wearing shorts, while Fleet had stood sweating in his thinnest suit. Since the weather had broken, the water had struck like winter hail. Hard, pitiless, icy. A month’s rainfall in barely a day, so they said. Fleet didn’t know about climate change, all that, but he knew when something wasn’t right. And this weather? It was freakish. As messed-up as everything else that was going on in this town right now.

  He paused in the doorway of his hotel to light a cigarette, taking almost as much pleasure from the brief burst of warmth as he did from the nicotine itself. He exhaled a cloud of smoke that was immediately doused by the tumbl
ing rain, then took two more drags and tossed the cigarette into the gutter, knowing it would be ruined anyway the moment he stepped into the torrent.

  That’s fifty pence down the drain right there, said a voice inside his head. His wife Holly’s, unmistakably, and Fleet felt a pang from somewhere in his gut. It was like an ulcer, this constant twinge, and he hadn’t yet found a way to stop it hurting.

  He thought of home. Was it raining like this there?, he wondered. Because it felt biblical. If he were to get into his car and drive the three miles to the parish limits, would he find himself confronting a ring of blue sky, a rainbow bridge to the world outside?

  You heavens above, rain down my righteousness . . .

  What was that? Genesis? Isaiah? The quote came unbidden, as powerfully evocative as a familiar smell, and it made him want to light another cigarette.

  “Detective Inspector Fleet?”

  Just as he’d been about to dash toward his company Insignia, Fleet turned. It was the hotelier, a woman in her late forties to whom Fleet had taken an instant dislike on first meeting her, only to later reverse his opinion completely. She dressed primly, rarely smiled, and wore her hair in a skin-stretching bun. Fleet had marked her down as yet another disapproving gossip, in a town with far more than its fair share, but she’d proved discreet, generous and obliquely loyal. In many ways, she was the closest thing Fleet had in this town to a friend.

  “There’s a call for you,” said Anne, as she pointed over her left shoulder. Her expression was apologetic. She was familiar enough now with Fleet’s business to know the news he received was never good.

  Fleet checked the screen of his mobile. There were no missed calls, but there was also no reception. The entire town was pocked with dead spots. Which seemed as appropriate an analogy as any.

  He followed Anne back inside. The hotel wasn’t luxurious, but it was a luxury. Fleet lived only an hour or so along the coast, but rather than traveling back and forth he’d taken a room here, at the Harbor View Hotel. For convenience, he’d told himself. The Harbor View was no more or less than your typical seaside-town B&B, and Fleet might have picked any one of the dozen or so guesthouses that were clustered beside the harbor. All would have had space, and Anne was the only thing that set this one apart. She cleaned his room, fried his breakfast and—now—fielded his calls. She did so much it made Fleet feel guilty, to the extent he’d started making his own bed. Not that he used it much anyway. Most nights, since checking in just under a week ago, he’d sat up gazing at the harbor, imagining what might be hidden beneath the water.

  Anne showed him to the little office behind the reception counter, and gestured to the receiver lying unhooked on the desk. She nodded when Fleet offered his thanks, and then closed the glass door to give him some privacy.

  “Robin Fleet,” he announced into the receiver.

  “Boss? It’s Nicky.”

  The line was poor, the reception wherever Nicky was clearly only a fraction better than it was in the black spot that covered the area around the harbor.

  “What’s up, Nicky? I was just on my way to the river.”

  Detective Sergeant Nicola Collins took a breath. Even through the crackle she sounded excited about something.

  “We’ve found them,” she said.

  Fleet straightened. “You did? When?”

  “Just now. And, Rob? Brace yourself. It’s a fucking shitshow.”

  * * *

  * * *

  So much for the rainbow bridge.

  Fleet had to follow the river inland to get to where he was heading—passing the current search site on the way—and though something inside him lifted when he reached the final dilapidated houses of the town itself, the clouds did not. The sky was gray to the end of the world, and on the roof of Fleet’s car the rain persisted with its relentless beat.

  As the last few buildings disappeared from his rearview mirror, Fleet found himself in countryside. The forest thickened, obscuring the river. And although Fleet remembered the area far better than he would have liked, he twice took a wrong turning. He blamed the satnav, which was insistent that he should cut across a field. He switched it off, turned up the radio—the local station, playing modern pop tunes, teenage stuff, until he dialed to something classical instead—and relied on memory, together with the directions Nicky had given him at the end of their patchy phone call.

  It took him half an hour longer than he’d expected, and in the end even the radio signal gave out. Had they really come this far? This deep inland?

  The Insignia wasn’t built for country lanes, even less for muddy fields, so he had to park it short of the pair of police Land Rovers. Nicky was waiting for him, wellied and dripping. Somehow, though, DS Nicola Collins always managed to look like she was fresh from a good night’s sleep and her second cup of coffee. It was those frost blue eyes of hers, clear and crisp against the frame of her short black hair. Also, she was young. Twenty-six? Twenty-seven? A decade younger than Fleet, and Fleet’s true age, he always felt, was his own plus the number of cigarettes he’d smoked that day.

  But what Fleet had mistaken for excitement in Nicky’s voice when he’d spoken to her on the phone was something else, he quickly realized. It was adrenaline, yes, but Fleet could see she was rattled. And DS Collins didn’t rattle easily.

  “Boss,” she said, in greeting. She looked down at his shoes, which were already sinking into the mud.

  Fleet flipped the hood of his anorak over his head. “You can always give me a piggyback if I get stuck,” he said. Fleet was six-three, and at least fifteen kilos overweight. Nicky was trimmer than a greyhound, and weighed about as much. Even so, Fleet had no doubt she could have managed it. She was tenacious as hell, which was part of the reason he’d given this particular assignment to her. Others would have seen it as being sidelined, but Nicky seemed to appreciate how crucial it was likely to be.

  “If it carries on raining like this, we’ll both be swimming soon anyway,” Nicky said.

  Which might actually have suited Fleet better. When he’d been a teenager he’d swum competitively, and even though it was years since he’d been in a pool, these days he’d probably still show more grace in the water than he did on dry land. Wasn’t body fat supposed to help with buoyancy, after all?

  They started across the field toward the woods.

  “How far have we got to go?” Fleet asked.

  “Far enough,” Nicky answered. “Especially in brogues. But they were closer to the edge of the forest than they apparently realized.”

  “They were lost?”

  “To be honest, I’m not sure. When they called, they struggled to pinpoint their location. On the other hand, I’ve got a feeling they knew where they were heading. But their stories are . . . garbled. Which is understandable, given the circumstances.”

  Fleet turned, but could see only the tip of Nicky’s nose past the solid yellow wall of her hood.

  “You said they called in,” he said, prompting her.

  “That’s right. About two hours ago. It took us an hour to find them. Would have been longer if we hadn’t already been on their trail. The ambulance is apparently on its way, but I guess it got stuck behind a tractor or something. And . . . Well. There’s no rush.” She looked at him meaningfully.

  “Sadie?” Fleet asked. It was all he could say, all he needed to.

  But, “No,” said Nicky. “Not Sadie.”

  They passed through the tree line. Even at the edge of the forest the foliage was dense, but there was something like a path cutting through the undergrowth.

  About a mile in, they reached a clearing, and Nicky moved to one side. Unlike most of the cops assigned to the investigation, she’d worked with Fleet before, and she knew him well enough to appreciate that the time for commentary had passed. It was important to Fleet that he be able to make his own assessment. When he wanted more fro
m Nicky—or from anyone—he would ask.

  The first thing Fleet noted was how well Nicky had preserved the scene. Unexpectedly, this far from the road, there was a clutch of buildings on the other side of the clearing—all long abandoned, by the look of them. There was a small cabin, as well as two large barns, presumably for crops or farming equipment, not that anything was being cultivated out here now. All the structures had been taped off, as indeed had the entire area. Patches of the open ground between Fleet and the buildings had also been marked, and covered with tarps to protect them from the rain. Footprints? Fleet wondered. Or blood?

  He skirted the edge of the clearing, as the rain on his hood struck a steady patter—only interrupted every so often by a heavier drop from the branches overhead. Fleet pulled the hood back to release himself from the distraction.

  Half a dozen steps from the access path he saw them. While they’d waited for the ambulance to arrive, Nicky and her three colleagues had herded them under cover, beneath the roof of one of the barns. The four kids were seated on the ground, wrapped in silver blankets, and Fleet noted they were even more poorly prepared for the weather than he was. They had on trainers, T-shirts, shorts, and all were soaked to the skin. They looked like Glastonbury-goers on a comedown, long after the music had stopped.

  Fleet’s attention moved on, his eyes sweeping the shadows in the outbuilding.

  And then he saw it. The body at the base of the tree. It was beyond the view of the kids in the barn, but from the way the teenagers were facing, it was obvious they were aware it was there.

  “Jesus Christ,” Fleet muttered. He looked at the kids again, and then the body.

  You heavens above, rain down my righteousness.

  For the first time since he’d been a teenager himself, Fleet felt the urge to cross himself.

  DAY SEVEN

  ABI

  WE SHOULD NEVER have been out there in the first place. We should have . . . I don’t know what we should have done. What the hell do you do in a situation like that?