The Mysterious Disappearance of Lucas Downing

jay call.vid

"Thanks," said Detective Inspector Gallager said, standing up snapping his notebook shut. "And, once again, my condolences for your family after this sudden disappearance."

I was sat in the corner, alone, staring at the floor, a fixed melancholic expression on my face. I had done a lot of that, recently.

I had also been looking around and knocking on doors with a picture of Lucas. I traipsed around the town and school, desperately trying to find someone with some sort of information. Alas, I had had no luck.

It still struck me as odd. I know him too well for him to have ran away. I suppose that there's a chance of kidnap but, it seems too fishy for that. I talked to him when he was on the bus. I noticed no change in the tone of the texts or language used in them. They were unmistakably his.

For what must've been the hundredth time, I took out my phone to look at those pictures and watch the video of the jay. I always thought those things were beautiful. I play it again. It zooms in on the jay at the beginning. It's not really Lucas' style but...

What am I saying? At this point anything could be a clue. I go back to the start of it and pause.

The tree. It's a birch tree.

But that can't be right... Lucas said he was going to the park. Darsend Gardens is partly an oak forest that birdwatchers, such as Lucas, saw as heaven. At dawn it's beautiful though its prime is dusk. There are too many sparrows and robins to count, a couple of rooks, quite a few woodpeckers and some people say that there's an owl or two. So many birds in the oak wood.

But the tree's a birch. 

I play the video again, from the start, my mind racing through every possibility. Was he kidnapped? Was he killed? Did he run away? Spontaneous combustion?!

It's when I'm on my billionth repeat when I see the grey thing in the corner of the screen. Just for a second. At the very beginning. I rewind the video and pause it at the first frame. In the corner is a grey chimmney with 'Faulan Bakery'. So I did what anyone would do in my situation. I googled it. It turned out that it was a bread factory in Jorsborough. I checked it on Google Maps and found out that this place was miles away. I knew that I had to carry on looking into this.

You could get a bus that ran from Darsend Station to Jorsborough Town Centre. The bus left at 7am and 7pm daily. Looking at a map of Jorsborough, the famous 'Jorsie Woods' as some people called it, was right next to The Faulan Bakery.

"Lana?"

Mum poked her head round the door. She had puffy eyes and red cheeks. "We're going to send out for a pizza." A pause. "Neither me nor Nick are up to cooking tonight."

"Sounds great. Can we get pepperoni?" I asked with batting eyelids. She smiled at that.

"Sure." As she left the room and closed the door, the corners of my mouth went down and my smile had vanished.