The Kate Fletcher Series

by Heleyne Hammersley

  ‘Who did the search? Specifically, who looked in this pond and didn’t see a dead girl?’

  He frowned. ‘I did. She wasn’t here last night.’

  ‘Right,’ Kate nodded. ‘And you’re absolutely sure? You checked before the search was called off for the day?’

  ‘I checked over here yesterday afternoon and last night sometime between nine and ten. She wasn’t there.’

  Kate considered apologising for her belligerent manner but Fowler didn’t look offended; he looked like he’d been expecting her to challenge him. Either he was a convincing liar or the girl had been dumped in the pond overnight, sometime between the end of the search and Garrett’s unpleasant discovery.

  ‘You came here twice?’

  Fowler shrugged. ‘It seemed an obvious place to look. I went around the whole area twice in case she hadn’t been here the first time but had decided to hide out later on. I didn’t miss her. She wasn’t here.’

  ‘The team’s ready,’ Hollis said from behind her. He’d wriggled into his overalls and was snapping latex gloves on. ‘You might want to get kitted up.’

  She opened her plastic package and turned towards the pond, feeling Fowler’s eyes on her back as she grappled with overalls and gloves. Strange man, she thought. Very intense. She pulled on the protective suit and forced her sweating hands into gloves before covering her hair with the hood and heading back to the pond. The area had been cordoned off with blue-and-white tape, and stepping plates had been laid in place to form a path to the edge of the pond where the body lay. Kate approached, glancing at the water. What she saw didn’t compute in her brain for a few seconds; it wasn’t as deep as she’d been imagining. She could clearly see the muddy bottom barely three inches below the surface and there was little vegetation surrounding the edges, as though the soil was too contaminated to allow anything to take root. The water was flat-calm, mirror-like, but it bore no reflection of the horror of the girl’s death. Instead it showed a moving image of lazily drifting clouds.

  This wasn’t an accidental drowning, Kate was sure. The girl had either been held under the water until she drowned or the body was dumped here after her death. She turned her attention to the body to confirm her impressions; this was clearly a crime scene. Kate had no doubt that this was Aleah Reese. She was lying on her front, facing away from Kate; her hair was darkened by the water but it was obviously blonde and the jeans and hoodie matched those described by Jackie Reese in the statement that Kate had read the day before.

  This was the part Kate hated. The watching and waiting. She had to let the SOCOs do their job but it always took forever and she could have no part in the examination of the girl’s body. Their first job was to study the body in situ. Kate watched as photographs and measurements were taken including the depth of the pond at the point where the body had lain in the mud. Raymond watched each part of the operation with hawk-like focus – he wouldn’t allow anybody to miss anything – until it was time for the recovery. One of the SOCOs knelt on the ground near the dead girl, put out a gloved hand and gently turned her over onto her back.

  ‘Oh shit,’ Hollis said from behind her, as the face from the photo that Jackie Reese had sent them yesterday came into view. ‘It is her, then.’

  Kate closed her eyes, imagining having to break the news to Jackie and Craig Reese.

  ‘Shit,’ Hollis said again. ‘What the hell…?’

  The girl’s hands were tied in front of her with bright yellow cord.

  2015

  ‘Here drink this, love.’ Craig Reese placed a steaming cup of black coffee on the table in front of his wife. ‘Can I get you some toast or something? You need to keep your strength up.’

  Jackie shook her head. ‘I’m not hungry.’

  Craig sat down at the opposite side of the table feeling useless. She didn’t want him here; she barely seemed to have noticed him since Aleah went missing, and he knew that she blamed him for not keeping a closer eye on her daughter. He also knew that if he eventually told her the truth, she wouldn’t want anything to do with him.

  The woman he’d married was nowhere to be seen in the person who sat across the table. Jackie looked much smaller than she had yesterday, her tiny frame swamped by her fluffy, white dressing gown – a birthday present that Aleah had helped him to pick out. He’d tried to persuade the girl that white was impractical and would get dirty too quickly but she’d insisted, telling him that it would make her mum look like an angel. This morning it made her look like a melting snowman, her features sunken and blurred by lack of sleep.

  ‘Where did you go last night?’ she asked, taking a swig of coffee. She wouldn’t look directly at him, her eyes flitted from the table-top to the door as though she was expecting her daughter to walk in and demand a bowl of cornflakes. Her lack of focus made lying easier.

  ‘I couldn’t settle so I went out looking for Aleah. Just wandered round the estate for a bit. No sign though.’

  Jackie nodded, accepting his explanation.

  ‘Anybody else about?’

  ‘Saw a police car; they’d obviously had somebody out all night, just in case.’

  Another nod.

  ‘Time is it?’ Jackie asked.

  Reese tapped the screen of his phone. ‘Just after eight. The policewoman from yesterday’s here. Time to start looking again.’

  Jackie sighed heavily, close to tears. ‘She’s not coming back, is she, Craig? She’d have been here by now if she’d just run off. Somebody’s taken her.’

  Reese reached across the table and covered one of Jackie’s hands with his own. This time she didn’t pull away, allowing him to comfort her as she sobbed quietly. He hoped that she wouldn’t feel the tell-tale trembling as he kept his arms wrapped tightly around her. Jackie could never know that he’d lied to her. He’d rung his dad the previous evening and explained the situation and his dad had sworn to keep his mouth shut. As long as nobody else had seen him and put two and two together he’d be fine. His story made sense so why would anybody even think to question it?

  Kate pushed the car door open and stepped out of the air-conditioned chill into the late-morning humidity, sweat prickling the skin of her face within seconds. She scanned the street looking for changes. The houses were much as she remembered though. Regimented, red brick made from clay hewn from the quarry she’d visited earlier; it was like the houses and walls belonged to the earth and might one day return to it. There was one huge alteration to the skyline. One which Kate had been expecting but one that shocked her much more than the grassed-over hump that had once been the biggest clay quarry in Europe. The pit had gone. The winding gear that had dominated the view from her bedroom window had been demolished. Where it once stood was an absence like the gap of a missing tooth in a familiar smile.

  Kate knew it had closed down; they’d all closed down years ago. ‘Unproductive’ or ‘not profitable’; the ideas of economics condemning generations to the realities of unemployment. She was glad that she’d been long gone by then – she hadn’t had to witness the decline of the place first-hand.

  Hollis led the way through a rusting, wrought-iron gate, which left flecks of black paint on her damp hands as she closed it behind them, and up a steeply stepped garden path to the back door. It opened before they had a chance to knock.

  ‘Detective Inspector Kate Fletcher,’ Kate said, stepping forward. ‘This is DC Dan Hollis.’

  The police officer who had opened the door smiled at her as though she was salvation. ‘I’m PC Tatton, the FLO. Have you found her?’

  Kate nodded and put a finger to her lips to prevent Tatton from asking anything else. The woman’s face quickly transformed from an expression of excited optimism to sorrow as she realised the implication of what Kate had just said and done. Tatton led them through to the kitchen where Jackie Reese was sitting at the table and Craig was hovering near the sink, both studying the screens of their mobile phones. Kate immediately found them an unlikely couple. Reese looked like an overgr
own student in his baggy hoodie and skinny jeans and she could see that he was a few years younger than his wife. The flesh around his wide blue eyes was barely bothered by wrinkles and his dark hair was thick and unruly. His high cheekbones and slightly flushed cheeks gave him a slightly androgynous look that she knew a lot of women would find attractive. She wondered what he’d seen in Jackie who looked thin and haggard, almost skeletal, as she sat hunched across the table, dark eyes deeply set in her worn face and grey roots just starting to show in the parting of her dyed black hair.

  ‘Mrs Reese?’ Kate said, trying to get Jackie’s attention. ‘I’m Detective Inspector Fletcher and this is Detective Constable Hollis. We need to ask you a few more questions about Aleah.’

  Jackie finally looked up.

  ‘You’ve found her, haven’t you? They wouldn’t have sent you two if it wasn’t serious. You’ve got some news.’

  Kate nodded. ‘We think we’ve found your daughter, Mrs Reese. I’m sorry, it’s not good news.’

  Jackie leapt up from the table. ‘God, I don’t know what I was thinking. No manners, that’s me. Can I get you a cup of tea? Coffee? There’s bread if you want some toast, or eggs or something.’

  Hollis gestured to Reese to go to his wife and try to get her to sit down again, but, as Reese tried to put his arms round her, to guide her back to the chair, she slapped him away.

  ‘Not now, Craig, I’m busy. Do you take sugar?’ She smiled at Kate, nearly convincing, but her eyes were frightened and bright with unshed tears.

  ‘Jackie,’ he begged. ‘Come and sit down. We need to hear what they have to say.’

  She collapsed into his arms, the sudden surge of energy spent as abruptly as it had appeared. He hauled her back into her seat where she sat, staring at the table-top, refusing to acknowledge the presence of the two detectives.

  ‘Mrs Reese,’ Kate started again. ‘Does Aleah ever play over the road, where the quarry used to be?’

  ‘She’s not allowed over there,’ Jackie said, without looking up. ‘She knows that. It’s not safe. I told you, she’s a good girl; she wouldn’t just go off for no reason.’

  ‘Has she ever said anything about playing there?’

  ‘She does go wandering off sometimes,’ Reese said. ‘One of the neighbours told me that our Aleah had been over there with one of her friends. I think it was that Bailey lass.’

  Jackie smiled. ‘That’ll be it then. It’s one of her friends, trying to get her into trouble.’

  ‘Do either of you go over there at all?’ Kate asked.

  Jackie shook her head.

  ‘How about you?’

  Reese looked confused as though he had been asked a complicated question and wasn’t sure of the correct answer. ‘I sometimes use it as a shortcut,’ he said, eventually. ‘It’s a quick way over to my dad’s. Saves going up through the village.’

  ‘Mr Reese,’ Kate said. ‘Have a seat.’ She pointed to the chair next to Jackie and then sat down opposite them both.

  ‘We’ve found the body of a girl in the pond on the old quarry site. She fits Aleah’s description.’ Reese grabbed his wife’s hand, and looked at her as though waiting for her to respond before he dared to say anything.

  ‘Our Aleah’s a good swimmer,’ Jackie said. ‘It can’t be her. She’s been swimming since she was eight months old. I took her to the baths. Made sure that she wasn’t frightened of water. It’s important that they learn young.’

  Kate could hear that she was babbling, delaying the inevitable.

  ‘It might not have been an accident, I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘The pond’s too shallow to swim in.’

  Jackie Reese began to wail as she took in the implications of the words ‘not an accident’. A high-pitched keening came from between her clenched teeth and she started to rock backwards and forwards.

  ‘Is it her?’ Reese asked. ‘Is it our Aleah?’

  Kate nodded. ‘We think so. We’ll need formal identification though.’

  ‘So, you’re not sure?’

  ‘As I said, we’ll need somebody in the family to formally identify her.’

  Jackie was shaking her head, refusing to accept anything that the two detectives were saying. Reese tried to keep hold of her hand but she pushed him away.

  ‘This is your fucking fault!’ she yelled. ‘You were supposed to be a dad to her, to look after her and what do you do? Nothing. Fuck all! Letting her roam the streets when there’s all sorts out there. And you know it. That’s why you went back out last night to look for her. Guilty conscience.’

  ‘Please sit down, Mr Reese,’ Kate said. ‘DC Hollis and I would like to ask you a few questions if you don’t mind. It might help us to establish a timeline. You told the PCSO who first interviewed you that Aleah had gone out to play. Did she often play out in the street?’ Kate asked.

  Reese reddened and Kate mentally filed away his inability to meet her eyes and the way that his index finger started to drum on the table-top. It could mean nothing, but it was different from his demeanour a few seconds ago.

  ‘I told her to go out,’ Reese said, dredging the words up from somewhere deep inside himself. ‘If I’d just let her stay in and watch CBBC, she’d still be here. I just needed a break from those bloody stupid cartoons.’

  Kate noticed that his wife had removed her hand from his fist. He obviously wasn’t the only one who thought he was to blame.

  ‘What time was this?’ Hollis asked.

  ‘About half past eleven. I thought she’d just go in the garden and play on her trampoline but when I came in here to get a cuppa she wasn’t there. I looked in the front garden and then went out onto the street. There was no sign of her. I rang a couple of her friends. Nothing.’

  ‘The friends would be Evie Moran and Lucie Bailey?’ Hollis asked, reading the names from his notes taken from the initial statement that Reese had given the day before.

  Reese nodded. ‘I rang both their mams. Both girls were at home and they hadn’t seen Aleah.’

  ‘What about neighbours? The people next door?’

  Reese shook his head.

  ‘Next door are in Whitby and there was no answer on the other side. They’re new. Only moved in a few weeks ago.’

  ‘So, who else did you ring?’ Hollis prompted.

  ‘Mrs Moran, Mrs Bailey, Jackie’s mum and my dad,’ Reese counted on his fingers as he listed names. ‘And then Jackie.’

  Hollis consulted his notes.

  ‘PCSO Rigby, who took your initial statement doesn’t mention that you rang your father. Did you tell him that?’

  ‘I don’t know. I must have. Or maybe I missed Dad off the list. I don’t know I was in a right state.’ Another defensive blush.

  ‘What about Aleah’s father? Could she have gone to visit him?’ Hollis asked.

  Reese shook his head. ‘Jackie never hears from him. Hasn’t done for years.’

  ‘Useless waste of space,’ Mrs Reese interjected. ‘Buggered off up to Scotland somewhere when our Aleah was a baby and not so much as a birthday card since. Never sent a penny for her. We don’t talk about him. As far as she’s concerned, Craig’s her dad.’

  Tatton placed two cups of tea in front of the parents and raised her eyebrows inquiringly at Kate and Hollis. Kate shook her head before Hollis could respond and the woman retreated, trying to be unobtrusive as she leaned back against the sink. Kate felt for her. It was a crappy job being with the family when somebody had gone missing and it usually only got worse when they were found. Tatton would be up to her neck in the investigation while trying to support the family.

  ‘Right,’ Kate said. ‘We’ll need names and phone numbers for Aleah’s friends’ parents and for your family. While DC Hollis gets those from you, would you mind if I had a look at Aleah’s bedroom?’ Kate stood up, allowing the parents no room to refuse her request.

  ‘What for?’ Mrs Reese asked. ‘There’s no point.’

  ‘I know,’ Kate said gently. ‘But there might be something i
n her room that might give us a new lead. A picture, a book, something that seems familiar to you but might stand out to me.’

  The woman stared at Kate for a few seconds as though deciding whether to grant her an audience with minor royalty, and then obviously saw the wisdom in letting a fresh pair of eyes have a look around.

  ‘Last door off the landing. Don’t touch anything and don’t make a mess. I want it just like she left it.’ Her voice cracked on the last word and she started to sob as the enormity of her daughter’s absence washed over her again.

  From the directions Kate knew which room would be Aleah’s, the small one at the front of the house. The layout of the Reeses’ home was exactly like the one she’d grown up in. Out of the kitchen, down the hallway towards the front door, stairs on the right, sitting room on the left. She counted them as she climbed, knowing that there would be twelve, just like in her dad’s house. At the top of the stairs the toilet had been knocked through to the bathroom instead of being the two separate, claustrophobic spaces that Kate remembered. Back bedroom next, exactly where her own had been, then the main front bedroom and, finally, the ‘box’ room. The smallest one in the house, the room that Kate’s sister Karen had occupied until they’d moved further south when Kate was sixteen and Karen was fourteen.

  There was nothing on the door to show that it was a little girl’s room. No poster, no little porcelain plaque like the one an auntie had bought for Kate which announced that the door was the entrance to ‘Kathryn’s Room’; Aleah’s bedroom door was just like the others. But, inside was clearly a girly place. A single bed occupied the length of one wall, neatly made with a Frozen duvet cover. Above the bed were posters of Justin Bieber and a boy band that Kate didn’t recognise. A bedside table held a night light and a pile of books – Jaqueline Wilson, Enid Blyton and Beatrix Potter. Nothing unusual.