Julian Mercer was interviewed twice and ruled out within forty-eight hours.
There had never been very much to rule out.
He had printed the missing posters because Graham Mann had asked him to and because he owned the machinery required to do it. He had never held a VUBU account, had never worked for the company, had never accessed its systems and, until Davey’s disappearance, had regarded the product as an expensive gimmick chiefly useful for telling people that tomorrow would contain a parcel.
His computers were examined. His phones were examined. His business server was examined.
Nothing connected him to VUBU except the fact that, several hours after Davey disappeared, he created a poster which VUBU had apparently generated the day before.
That was enough to make him famous.
Within hours of his name becoming public, television crews had gathered outside his print shop. Amateur investigators photographed customers entering and leaving. His business records were dissected online. Old social-media photographs were reposted and enlarged. Somebody found his home address. Somebody else found his wife’s name.
By the end of the week, police officers were stationed outside his house.
The irony was not lost on Shah. A man who had been investigated because he might have known too much now required police protection because millions of people had decided that he knew more than the police.
A statement was issued on Friday afternoon.
Julian Mercer, police said, had been fully cooperative with the investigation and had been eliminated as a person of interest. There was no evidence that he had accessed VUBU systems, no evidence that he had prior knowledge of Davey Mann’s disappearance and no evidence that the poster had existed before he created it.
Members of the public and the media were asked to respect his privacy.
Then another theory replaced him.
By November, there were hundreds.
None found Davey.
There were sightings at airports, railway stations, shopping centres and parks. A boy photographed in Rotterdam was identified with absolute confidence by thousands of strangers before his mother appeared on television holding his passport. A grainy motorway-service-station image occupied the news cycle for two days. A taxi driver became certain he had collected Davey outside a hotel. A woman in Bristol was equally certain she had seen him buying crisps.
Every possibility created its own little atmosphere of imminence.
Every one collapsed.
The physical search contracted first.
Fields had been crossed and crossed again. Waterways had been dragged. CCTV had been collected until the quantity itself became a problem. Doorbell footage accumulated by the terabyte. Police dogs returned to places they had already searched. Volunteers who had initially arrived in hundreds began arriving in tens.
Then in ones.
The posters faded.
Rain entered the paper around the staple holes. Corners peeled away from lampposts. Davey’s face remained visible longer than the telephone numbers beneath it.
Graham and Rebecca Mann continued appearing occasionally before cameras, although their appearances changed in character.
During the first week, every statement had carried the implicit assumption that Davey was somewhere nearby and about to be found.
By the third month, the language had altered.
Anyone who knows anything.
Anyone who remembers anything.
Please.
The tense had not changed.
Almost everything else had.