The Disappearance of Katie Wren

by Cross,Amy

  “Of course,” I reply, even though I think I've seen quite enough shocking sights for one day.

  “Get it filled in as quickly as possible,” Father Curtis tells the workman who passes us as we head to the church. “I want to say a few words at the grave once you're done. It just seems like the right thing to do. That poor Mr. Cobham should be allowed to rest in peace.”

  I hurry to catch up to the priest as he leads me across the bumpy, undulating grass.

  “You must be going through a very trying time yourself,” he says after a moment. “I must say, Winifred, that the relief was palpable all through the village when we heard that young Katie had been found safe and well. We were all talking about her while you were away, and sending your our best wishes. We prayed for Katie to be delivered, and I'm just so thankful that those prayers were answered. Obviously she went through a terrible ordeal, but everybody is thrilled that you have her back home with you. Now the healing process can begin.”

  “Absolutely,” I reply, preferring not to mention any of the difficulties that Katie and I have experienced since she came home. “And I'm sure -

  Stopping suddenly, I see that a symbol has been daubed on the church's door. Painted in some kind of red shade that looks suspiciously like blood, the symbol is a rather complex and arcane-looking set of circles and triangles, along with what appears to be gibberish text underneath. I open my mouth to ask Father Curtis what it all means, but a strange sense of familiarity is starting to rumble in my chest, and I can't shake the feeling that I've seen this exact same symbol once before.

  Katie's apartment.

  This symbol was on the wall.

  “It's painted in blood,” Father Curtis says after a moment, sounding rather depressed by the whole situation. “Don't worry, though. It's not human.”

  “How do you know?” I ask, turning to him.

  “I think the poor donor is down there.”

  I look at the floor, and I'm shocked to see a dead crow with its head torn almost fully from its body. The size of the bird certainly seems to fit with the crow that was harassing Katie last night.

  “Now I'm no expert,” Father Curtis continues with a sigh, “but I can't help thinking that this is the work of some low-rent wannabe satanists. I mean, really, it's amazing what these people get up to at night while they're trying to entertain themselves.” He sighs again. “I've tried looking for the symbol online, but I haven't had any luck at all. It probably means something to someone, but I can't even begin to figure it all out. I suppose I shall just have to paint over it and hope that the miscreants have moved on. If this is the start of some kind of campaign, it's going to become very tiring very quickly.”

  He picks up a pot of paint from the ground and moves it closer to the door, before carefully removing the lid.

  “I suppose it was due a new coat anyway,” he mutters, “but really, this is a most inauspicious start to the day. I feel almost as if we're under siege.”

  “Did anyone see the person who did all this?” I ask, still shocked by the sight of the symbol. After a moment, I turn and look across the cemetery, and I see that the disturbed grave is slowly being refilled. “Surely someone must have spotted something?”

  “Not as far as I can tell. There's a CCTV camera at the front of the bank, but it's not quite pointing in the right direction. And you know what Shropley is like, Winifred. After darkness and before sunrise, there's nary a soul out, especially once the Star and Garter has kicked out at eleven. Short of putting up cameras or sitting out all night myself, I honestly don't see what more I can do. And I certainly don't want to turn the church and its cemetery into Fort Knox. The church must be a welcoming place and a house of worship, not a fortress.”

  I watch for a moment as he starts painting over the symbol on the door. I want to believe that I'm wrong, that the symbol is nothing like the symbols in Katie's London apartment, or even that the similarity is only casual. At the same time, deep down I know that this is exactly the same symbol, and that there's no point trying to persuade myself otherwise.

  “I have to go,” I stammer suddenly, turning and hurrying along the path.

  “I hope to see you in church on Sunday!” he calls after me.

  “Of course!”

  “And bring Katie, if you can!”

  “I'll try,” I mutter, although by the time I reach the pavement I can't help feeling a sense of panic. I pause for a moment, trying to resettle my thoughts, before suddenly hearing a familiar laugh nearby.

  Turning, I'm shocked to see Katie standing outside the pub, chatting and joking with two other girls. I watch them for a moment, before Katie happens to glance this way and we briefly make eye contact. She doesn't seem particularly troubled that I've seen her, and she quickly turns back to her friends. For the first time since she returned from London, she looks like my carefree, happy girl again.

  I take a deep breath, while reminding myself that it's healthy for her to finally be out of the house, and then I cross the road.

  “It's all any of them could talk about for days after,” one of the other girls is explaining as I reach them. She has the palest skin I've ever seen, along with reddish shades around her sore-looking eyes. “The car had to be washed down and everything, and there were little pieces of -”

  She stops suddenly as she turns to me, and it's evident that my arrival has caused her to clam up. She mumbles something under her breath, but she seems rather shy.

  “I didn't know you were coming out this morning, Katie,” I say with a smile, hoping not to disturb them too much. “You should have -”

  “I'm just talking to some friends,” Katie says dourly, and now her smile has entirely faded. “It's nothing.”

  Glancing at the other girls, I'm struck by the realization that they both seem unfamiliar. Shropley isn't exactly some stereotypical insular little town, but at the same time it's the kind of place where everybody knows everybody else, and I'm quite sure I would have heard by now if some new arrivals had moved to the area. Besides, it must be over a year since a house was last sold here, and that was when the Maybuttles moved in, and as far as I'm aware the Maybuttles have no young female grandchildren. In which case...

  “Are you from the area?” I ask the closest girl.

  She stares at me, but she makes no effort to answer.

  I turn to the other girl. “Are you here on holiday?”

  Again, I receive no reply.

  “I'm sure you'll like Shropley a great deal,” I continue, still hoping to get a little conversation started. “I know we can seem like a sleepy little place when you first come here, but that impression belies our strong sense of community. We have our way of life here, and it can be quite lively once you get used to it.”

  “We should go,” the closest girl says suddenly, keeping her eyes fixed on me as she steps back. “We should probably get some sleep. Last night was pretty intense.”

  “I'll come with you,” Katie replies eagerly.

  “No, you should stay here.”

  “But -”

  “We'll see you tonight,” the second girl adds, placing a hand on her arm, as if to reassure her. “Don't worry, everything's cool.”

  “You have a very nice little village here,” the first girls tells me, perhaps a little too politely. “It's calm and peaceful. I can see why you prefer it to London. I bet nothing ever happens here at all!”

  Giggling, they turn and hurry away, leaving me standing alone with Katie. For a moment, I feel rather discombobulated, and I can't shake the feeling that those two girls were making fun of me.

  “I didn't know you'd made new friends,” I tell her, trying to look on the bright side. “Are they new to the area, or are they just visiting?”

  “Visiting,” she murmurs, watching as they walk away, before turning to me with a dour, unimpressed expression on her face. “It's not a big deal. I was just talking to them, that's all. I think I'll go back to bed now. There's not really anything else to do and
-”

  She pauses, almost as if she's in pain.

  “Are you alright?” I ask. “If you -”

  “I'm fine,” she says quickly, perhaps even a little defensively.

  “I thought I heard you talking to someone,” I continue. “Last night, after you'd gone to bed.”

  She shakes her head.

  “I'm quite sure, darling,” I add, forcing a smile. “I heard your voice and it seemed as if you were calling someone on your computer. There's no reason not to, I was just wondering whether -”

  “You're wrong,” she replies, turning and walking away, heading back toward our house. She's limping slightly, more than before, and she seems a little weak. “I'm tired. I'm going back to bed.”

  I open my mouth to ask if she wants to join me for lunch in the local pub, but it's rather clear that she'd never agree to such a thing. In fact, as she heads off along the street I can't help thinking that she seems almost petulant. Katie never went through one of those rebellious phases when she was a teenager, and I was very grateful for that small mercy; now, at the age of twenty-one, she suddenly seems sullen and annoyed, which I can only put down to the fact that she's still trying to recover from her ordeal in Tim Ashford-Clarke's basement.

  As I get back to the house, I see that the postman is just arriving. When I take the mail from him, I'm shocked to see that one of the letters is addressed to me from an inmate at Kentonville Prison.

  ***

  “What do you think I should do?” I ask Milly as she sets the last of her fuchsia pots down in the greenhouse. “Should I tell someone? I didn't think he'd even be allowed to write to us. I thought there'd be some kind of rule preventing it. I suppose this one must have slipped through the net.”

  “Bin it,” she replies, taking a pair of clippers in her trembling hands. “You shouldn't even have opened it. Even better, burn it.”

  “I couldn't not read it,” I mutter, looking down at the letter. Tim's handwritten message is short and to-the-point, imploring me to believe him when he says that he's innocent. At the end of the missive, he asks me to visit him at the prison before his trial date, and he promises he can make me see the truth. “I don't think I can go,” I continue. “I just can't face him, not after everything he did to Katie.”

  “Of course you can't. Leave him to rot.”

  “But what do you think he wants?”

  “Does it matter?” Her hands stop trembling for a moment as she snips the head off a dead bud, and then the shakiness returns. “It's not your problem anymore. The wheels of justice are turning and that rotten scoundrel will get what he deserves.”

  I read the letter again, and I can't help thinking of Tim sitting in some jail cell, desperately trying to reach out to me. Deep down, I feel an instinctive burst of concern, as if some part of me still believes he might be innocent. That feeling is quite wrong, of course, and I must push it to the back of my mind. I must focus on the fact that everyone else – Katie, the police, the journalists writing in the national papers – seems absolutely certain of his guilt. I mustn't betray Katie by letting myself be swayed. Tim is a monster.

  “I was reading about him in the paper the other day,” Milly says after a moment. “Oh, the things they dug up about that man when they started looking into his past. Awful things, horrible things. It's just shocking to me that he was allowed out in polite society for so long. Makes you wonder who else is out there, doesn't it?”

  “What kind of things?” I ask.

  “For a start, there were two women who had restraining orders against him.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “That's what it said. They weren't named, for obvious reasons, but they were both quoted and they said he'd been quite awful to them. Following them, taking photographs, trying to force his way into their homes. Now, that all happened a few years ago, but it clearly shows that he's not right in the head. It's the sex, you know. Sometimes sex just messes a man up.”

  With that, she snips the dead head off another plant.

  “He seemed so kind and decent,” I whisper, reading the letter again.

  “I wouldn't let Katie hear you saying that.”

  “Of course not,” I reply, suddenly realizing that I'm being grossly inconsiderate. Stepping past Milly, I tear the letter in half and drop the pieces into her waste bin. “The man is a monster, through and through,” I continue, “and I shall dispose of any further correspondence without even opening it.”

  “That's the spirit,” she continues, snipping a couple more dead buds. “You don't want to listen to his self-serving nonsense. You've got enough on your plate already. Did you hear about Joe O'Brien's sheep?”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  She turns to me and runs the clippers across her neck, just millimeters from her flesh.

  “They had their throats slit,” she explains. “Two of them, anyway. He found the carcasses this morning. Something had drained them of all their blood. Sounds like a real shocker.”

  “That seems rather extreme,” I point out with a shudder. “I wouldn't have thought anyone in Shropley would be into that sort of thing.”

  “He's not happy. Says it was definitely a person and not a fox, on account of how clean the wound is. Says there wasn't much blood spilled, though, which makes him think that someone went out there all prepared. They probably caught it in a bucket, something like that. Some of the guts were missing too, which really makes you wonder, eh?”

  She sighs, before snipping off another bud.

  “He's staying out there tonight,” she continues finally. “Shotgun n'all. Says he's gonna catch the buggers if they go up there again. I hope they don't show their faces, 'cause Joe's got a temper when he thinks he's in the right, and I wouldn't put it past him to fire off a few shots if he spots someone. He's not a man who takes easy to compromise, and I doubt he'll be cowed by the law. If someone's on his land, his thinking'll be that he's entitled to do what he wants with them. And most likely, that'll mean -”

  She snips another bud, letting the head drop to the floor.

  “Quite,” I mutter, thinking back to the sight of those two awful, pale girls who were talking to Katie earlier. For a moment, I find myself contemplating the possibility that they might have been involved in whatever happened to Joe O'Brien's sheep, and maybe even the awful incident at the church too. “Milly,” I continue finally, with a heavy heart, “I'm afraid I popped by today with an ulterior motive. Does your grandson still live with you?”

  “Dylan?” She turns to me. “Of course. He's inside right now.”

  “Do you think I might speak to him?” I ask. “I'm afraid I need him to help me do something rather terrible.”

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Signals on the Wire

  “This is probably illegal,” Dylan points out, typing at his laptop's keyboard for a moment longer before turning to me. “It probably counts as, like, wiretapping or something like that.”

  “Nonsense,” I mutter, watching as he starts dragging files from one window to another on the screen. “I've never heard such nonsense. She's my daughter. It's not illegal for one to keep one's daughter safe.”

  “It might be if she doesn't like it. And if she doesn't know about it.”

  “But it'll work, will it?”

  He waits a moment, before removing the USB key from the side of the machine and handing it to me.

  “You didn't get it from me,” he explains, “but yeah, it'll work. Whatever program she uses to make calls from her computer, this'll relay a copy in real-time to your computer and it'll automatically record the whole thing as well. All you have to do is plug that USB drive into her laptop, and it'll install itself. You'll need to leave it plugged-in for about five minutes, but it won't leave any trace once it's running. I mean, someone from the NSA could find it, but your average user won't have a clue that the calls are being monitored. It's just a standard tool I downloaded a while back from an onion site.”

  I pause for a moment
, staring at the little drive and trying to work out whether I can really do this. I know I'll be invading Katie's privacy, but I just want to be absolutely certain that she's not doing anything untoward on her computer. I have to keep her safe.

  “Is Katie into something weird?” he asks suddenly. “I know about the stuff that happened to her in London, but... Well, I mean, I don't know her that well, but she always seems pretty cool. It's hard to believe she'd be up to anything.”

  “What about the CCTV camera?” I ask, preferring to stick to the subject. “The one outside the bank. It covers part of the cemetery. Is there any way for you to access the footage from last night?”

  He shakes his head. “No chance. That's not my area, I don't do cameras.”

  “And you don't know anyone who could help?”

  “I'm not even gonna begin to try hacking into a bank's security camera,” he tells me. “Sorry, but that's a step too far. I've given you that nasty little spy program, but you should think twice before you stick it on her machine. I know that if I found out someone had done that to me, I'd be fuming. It's not really very cool, Mrs. Wren, but at the same time I get it. You're worried, and you've gotta do what you've gotta do.”

  “Absolutely,” I reply, still staring at the little drive. “Katie's my daughter. There's nothing I won't do to keep her safe.”

  ***

  “I'm tired,” Katie says as she shuffles past me. “I think I'm going to bed.”

  “Already?” I check my watch and see that it's only a few minutes after 7pm. I'm still on my first glass of wine for the evening and the bag of crisps is untouched. “Are you sure you don't want to keep your poor old mother company for a little while? Don't you remember how we used to enjoy watching some of the crime shows? You can have a glass with me, if you like.”

  Ignoring me, she makes her way to the stairs. It's as if my voice just drifted past her unnoticed.