Page 27 of Drift

Newborn Dumped in Garden Waste Bin.

Christ. A dead weight hit hard in the pit of Gray’s stomach.

“It’s a two-hour drive from here to Bristol,” added Ray, “and although it’s unclear how she got there with being sixteen, it coincided with Joanna telling Susan she’d be away for that date and would need cover with her apprenticeship work. Joanna had earned a list of ASBOs since she was ten, had been kicked out of three schools since she was thirteen, and by the time she fell pregnant at sixteen, she was working full time at a café. The café owner remembered her, mostly because she liked to skim money from their till, and she confirmed by her own clocking in card that Joanna wasn’t there those few days.” Ray frowned. “But what hearsay and official records couldn’t tell for sure, my DNA tests did.”

“The boy in the bin is hers.”

“He’s Martin’s.” Ray winced. “Jack’s DNA calls biological father, but because of whose daughter this girl was, the fact her name is on Martin’s list, it more than putsMartinas the father in my book. And that’s damn dangerous play with who Joanna’s father is.”

Gray briefly closed his eyes. He hadn’t wanted to run the background checks, but the longer Martin stayed buried, the more it niggled under his skin. It was there: if they did loseMartin completely, could Gray turn away from any kid Martin… and Jack might have had? And how screwed up was that?

Jack’s DNA.

Martin’s mindset.

And just what the hell had been going through Martin and his mindset to have slept with Joanna in particular?

The hollow pit in Gray’s stomach had an inkling as to why, but he didn’t want to get his own head mixed in with it just yet.

He hadn’t discussed the search with Jack or Jan, mostly because he didn’t want to upturn lives if all of this came to nothing. In all honesty, he thought it would have come to nothing. Martin wasn’t the type to play…. unprotected. But seventeen…. That’s all Martin had been, just thumping his way into Jack’s life. Martin didn’t usually screw up, but with youth and aggression in the mix? Didn’t matter whose daughter she was, would Joanna have really stood a chance even though Gray damn well knew Martin played with consent in mind?

But why risk a kid in the toxic mix?

And just what had happened to that kid? Gray ghosted a touch over the title. “Fuck sake,” he mumbled. “She tossed him in a bloody bin. Just a few hours old.” That said everything about her, her encounter with Martin, and her own father’s blood.

Ray gave a rough sigh, saying nothing, but there was a lot being held back in his eyes. Gray understood why. Ray’s look called out…sixteen, Gray.With Martin.

“A woman walking her dog on the edge of the park where he was dumped heard the cries” said Ray, breaking his thoughts. “She called the police, and from there the boy went to the local hospital to get checked over, hence where I pulled the DNAfrom. He had mild hypothermia, saying he’d been in there a few hours, but otherwise he was a healthy newborn.” He flicked through some more detail. “Kept at the hospital for two days; nobody claimed him, so Social Services stepped in.”

“Was there any CCTV placing Joanna at the scene?”

Ray shook his head. “Just the friend and the boy’s DNA itself. After that, he was fostered for those few early months, then he along with a two-year old girl were taken in together by a couple when he was four months old: The Farlands. All seemed fine up until the lad turned eight.” He looked at Gray. “He bolted after he’d been dropped off at school and fell completely off the radar despite a heavy police search.”

And that was where the report stopped. “Nothing at all since then on him?”

“Not even dental records. Doctors and Social Service records have never looked so thin either. It wasn’t just with Martin’s lad. A lot of checks lapsed back then: the area was underfunded. And looking into his foster-parent finances and online receipts, the account they gave of providing a good home didn’t quite tally up, not with the gambling debt on the mother’s shoulders.”

“Any mention of abuse?” Gray kept his breathing even.

“Nothing on record, both with social services and the school. The Farlands even stayed in touch with the girl they adopted: Grace, who said she never understood why she had a brother she held hands with on the school bus but who wasn’t there at home time.” Ray sucked in a pained breath. “So other than the name the nurse gave the lad, the records from then on the adoption, I have nothing else to go on. The trail goes cold after he ran, unnaturally so.”

And the likelihood of an eight-year-old boy surviving the night on the streets, let alone another nine years was…

Gray set his jaw tensing.

No matter Martin’s mindset at the time, the possibility of catching an echo of him, all to potentially lose it…

“Name,” Gray said quietly. “What was… is his name?”

Ray gave a sigh. “Jude,” he said gently. “The adoption agency kept the first name his nurse gave him. Apparently she has a soft spot for Jude Law, but Social Services gave our Jude the surname of Miller. Way to bury his Korean heritage, by the way. But going by the calculations, he’d be—”

“Seventeen.” Gray had already worked it out. Jack first slept with someone at fifteen, but Martin started in the scene when he was seventeen. Jack’s last birthday saw him turn thirty-five, so yeah… just seventeen. “Any images?” Echoes. Would there be any physical ones?

“Just this one out as a flyer during the search. He’s eight years old, so the most recent at that time.” Ray leaned over and sorted through his iPad, and a file came up a moment later before he sat back. “The Farlands had a fire a year or so later over crayons left inside the guard of an electrical fire. It took most of their things. And like I said with Social Services: records were thin.”

Turned away from the snapshot, Jude sat in a concrete backyard, trying to fight off the face licks of a black Labrador. Baggy T-shirt, jogging bottoms, bare feet, he looked a little thin, yet….

Gray brushed over Jude’s soldier-straight hair that the wind swept across his eyes and part of his pale face.

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