The Kate Fletcher Series

by Heleyne Hammersley

  She used Kate’s name like a swear word, almost spitting it as she backed through the door and allowed Kate and Hollis to pass her.

  1984

  Kathy wasn’t used to wagging school. A lot of her friends had done it once or twice but she’d always worried too much about getting caught and the effect it would have on her dad. He was always telling her and Karen that they should get a good education. O-levels and A-levels were better than money because they’d always have them to fall back on. He’d been thrilled when Kathy had mentioned university a few months ago and had been helping her to find out about courses at the grammar school sixth form. If she could get in there, he’d said, she could do really well.

  But none of that mattered today. Kathy had managed to ignore the stares and sniggers on the bus but the note had tipped her over the edge and she had to get away. She only had four more weeks anyway and then she’d leave for good. The only reason she had to come back was for her exams and most of the whisperers wouldn’t be there – they were doing CSE courses, the boys were destined for the pit and the girls would mostly end up in the clothing factories in Rotherham. Not that Kathy would ever give voice to her snobbery. She just knew that she was different from most of the girls in her year – she had ambition. The careers teacher had said so.

  The teachers probably wouldn’t notice if she wagged it. She’d briefly considered showing the note to her form teacher but he’d probably have said that it was a joke and not to be so sensitive. So, she’d stuffed it into her jeans pocket and stormed out of the main school entrance, not caring who saw her or who they told.

  She wasn’t sure where to go. School gave structure and order to her day and without it she was at a loss, so she decided to wander down into the village and wait in the park near the bus stop until she was sure her dad would have gone to work. Then she could go home to watch telly or read something for school. Hardly a serious effort at truancy, but anything was better than being there.

  The village was starting to change in an indefinable way. It looked the same as it always did, but it felt quieter as though the buildings and the concrete beneath her feet were brooding, waiting; something felt coiled and dark like a sea serpent about to surge up from black water, smashing everything to kindling. The view from the higher part of the village, where most of the shops were located, was familiar in its topography of slag heaps and railway line but something felt different. The winding gear at the pit head was still and silent – which wasn’t unusual: it wasn’t used between shifts except in an emergency – but there was a finality in the stillness as though, when all this was over, the mine and the village would never be quite the same.

  The people she saw seemed exaggeratedly huddled down in their coats and jackets like spies, unwilling to be confronted, reluctant to exchange pleasantries. The strike was beginning to bite and its steel jaws had the village firmly in their grip. In the flats and rows of terraced houses she passed on her way to the park, Kathy sensed the edge of a precipice – families would soon start to slide slowly over into poverty and hunger as the great beast padded slowly on through their lives.

  Not her life though. And that was the problem. So many of the kids in her year were the children of miners; so many were facing the stigma of ‘free dinners’ and second-hand clothes. Kathy wasn’t one of them. It had never mattered before that her dad worked at the pit but he wasn’t an ordinary miner. Nobody had ever singled her out before because he was a pit deputy – not management but not a hewer either. Since the strike that had changed. Other kids whose dads worked on the railway or the steelworks or in one of the various factories surrounding Rotherham and Doncaster were immune from the teasing. They had nothing to do with the pit or the strike but they were happy to join in when others were being tormented.

  Kathy pushed open the gate to the park, a metal one, she noted, so it hadn’t been stolen for somebody’s fire place, and sat on the roundabout, pushing slowly with one foot. She took the note from her pocket and flattened it against the faded, chipped paint of the wooden seat and read it again. There was no mistaking the malice. This wasn’t a harmless bit of fun. This was a threat.

  DIE SCAB BITCH!

  She’d managed to get away with wagging school on the day that she’d found the note and it had become her routine for the week. She’d head out for the school bus in the morning but she never made it to the bus stop. Instead, she’d turn in the opposite direction and walk up to the park by the shops at the top of the estate on Crosslands Road. She had a story rehearsed in case any of their neighbours stopped her; she was going into school later because she had to get some cough medicine for her sister but, so far, she’d been lucky. The park was a good place to wait for her dad to leave for work. Surrounded by high privet hedges on three sides it faced a quiet street which wasn’t a through-road to any other part of the estate. It had a slide, swings, a roundabout and a monkey climb all huddled conspiratorially together in the middle of the grass and it was the climbing frame where Kathy had started to spend the first hour of her morning; perched high above the ground reading a book for school or thinking about what she would do when she finally got away from home.

  After the first day of her truancy, when Karen had been at home with her fake period pains, she’d had the house to herself until her sister came home from school at four o’clock. Plenty of time for watching telly, reading and doing some revision. At least, if she was challenged, she’d be able to truthfully say that she’d been at home studying for her exams.

  Kathy hadn’t meant for her dad to find the note. She didn’t want anybody to see it, ever. Just looking at it made her burn with shame and a deeply smouldering anger towards whoever had left it in her locker. She had a few ideas, the usual suspects, people who had pretended to be her friend and then turned on her. Nothing definite though; and she didn’t want to get rid of the note until she’d confronted its author with the evidence.

  Her dad had been going through her pockets, sorting clothes for the Saturday wash and barking instructions to Karen about what to put where, when he went suddenly quiet. Kathy looked up from the copy of Twelfth Night that she’d been reading for the fourth time in the hope that some of it might stick in her already full-to-capacity brain and saw her dad, ashen faced, gripping a piece of paper.

  ‘Where did you get this,’ he asked, his voice barely a whisper.

  ‘What?’

  ‘This note, Kathryn. Where did it come from?’ He waved it at her as though she was the one writing threats; as though she was the one to blame.

  ‘What is it?’ she asked, trying to buy some time while she worked out what to say.

  ‘It came out of your jeans pocket so I’d expect you to know.’

  ‘Oh, that,’ she laughed, trying to counter his anger. ‘It’s nothing. Just a joke.’

  ‘Do I look like I’m laughing?’ her dad hissed. She’d never seen him so angry. His cheekbones were highlighted by vivid red slashes and his lips had contracted into a thin line even paler than the rest of his face. His normally slicked-back hair had fallen over one eye giving him a slightly unbalanced look, and his fist, still clutching the note, was trembling.

  ‘Kathy, this is serious. This is a threat. Is it the first one that you’ve had?’

  She considered lying; telling him that it was nothing, that she wasn’t sure that it had been meant for her, but she could almost anticipate the relief that the truth would bring.

  ‘No. It’s not the first. But it’s the worst one. I didn’t know what to do with it,’ she confessed.

  ‘Is it just the notes?’ her dad asked.

  Kathy shrugged.

  ‘Kathy. I want the truth.’

  The dam broke. All the weeks of pent-up anger and shame and fear came spilling through the cracks as Kathy told him everything. The other notes, the teasing on the bus, the whispering and pointing at school. Everything.

  ‘Right,’ her dad said. ‘This is going to stop. Here and now. I’m going up to that school and I�
�m going to make sure that those people get what they deserve. Bullies and cowards, every one of them.’

  ‘No, Dad, don’t!’ Kathy pleaded. Intervention from a parent was the worst thing that could happen to any teenager. The ridicule would get worse, the bullying more subtle but relentless and even the teachers would despise her weakness. And there was another problem. If her dad went up to school he’d find out that she hadn’t been there this week.

  He was determined though, marching down the hallway to phone up and make an appointment, even though it was Saturday.

  ‘I’m not having it, Kathy,’ he yelled. ‘I’m not having any daughter of mine bullied by these ignorant, cowardly bastards.’

  She heard a gasp behind her. Karen had just come in from the garden where she’d been pegging out the clean washing. Their father never swore. Ever.

  ‘What’s up?’ Karen whispered.

  Kathy picked up the note from the floor where her dad had thrown it in his rage.

  Karen glanced at it and her lower lip started to tremble.

  ‘Shit, Kath. I think I know who wrote it.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I know who wrote this note,’ her face reddened in embarrassment. ‘I heard two lads talking about it at break. They thought it was a right laugh. I’m sorry. I didn’t realise it was this bad and I didn’t realise that they’d sent it to you. I thought they were having a bit of fun.’

  ‘Who?’ Kathy demanded.

  Karen shook her head.

  ‘Who left me this fucking note?’ she screamed, grabbing her sister’s long red hair and curling it round her fist. ‘You’d better tell me or I’ll bray you!’ Kathy yelled, raising her other fist.

  ‘It was some lads in fourth year and a couple of boys in my form. I think the one who wrote it is that lad who asked you out last year. You turned him down. He was calling you all sorts of names. He said that you were a bitch and that you deserved it. I didn’t realise it was you that he was talking about though. It could have been anybody.’

  ‘What lad?’

  Karen shook her head as far as she could without increasing her sister’s grip.

  ‘Robert something. He lives up Old Mill near that lass you used to play with in juniors. I don’t know his name, Kathy. Honest.’

  ‘Loach,’ she said, releasing her grip on her sister’s hair. ‘His name’s Robert Loach.’

  ‘And he’s that one that wrote it, is he?’ her dad asked from the kitchen doorway. Neither girl had realised that he’d been listening and Karen’s blush deepened as her dad frowned at her possible complicity.

  ‘Right. I’ll have him. First thing on Monday I’m going straight to your headmaster and telling him what our Karen just said. And you two are coming with me.’

  Karen’s mouth had formed an ‘o’ of horror.

  ‘He’ll get expelled, dad,’ she whimpered.

  ‘Good riddance,’ her dad said, snatching the note from Kathy’s hand, folding it and placing it carefully in the letter rack on the mantelpiece.

  ‘And don’t either of you dare pretend that you’re poorly on Monday. You’re coming with me if I have to drag the pair of you there by your hair.’

  2015

  Kate signed off the evidence bags in the property room at the station then headed upstairs to the incident room. She was already starting to feel the frustrations of the case and needed to hear what the other detectives had found out. The evidence that she and Hollis had gathered at the Reeses’ house was insufficient to warrant bringing in either Craig or any other member of Aleah’s family and there didn’t seem much point in initiating a forensic search, with the added costs and extra staff, based on what they had seen this morning. Craig Reese had lied in his initial statement but that didn’t make him guilty of the kidnapping and murder of his stepdaughter. It was starting to look like this could be a stranger abduction which meant widening the search parameters and a lot of ‘what ifs’ and ‘maybes’.

  She’d have to wait for the results on the tent but, when she’d glanced inside the canvas bag in the shed, she hadn’t noticed anything unusual about the guy ropes. They didn’t look like they’d been cut but she couldn’t tell if anything was missing.

  As she reached the landing on the second floor a figure barged through the double doors and nearly knocked her back downstairs.

  ‘Watch it!’ she snapped.

  He stopped suddenly and backed up until she could see him properly. Drew Rigby.

  ‘I was looking for you,’ he said, frowning as though she’d stood him up on a date. ‘I thought you wanted to meet me back here.’

  There was no respect for her rank in his tone and his deep blue eyes glowered belligerently from beneath dark eyebrows.

  ‘And I said I’d be here in twenty minutes.’

  ‘That was nearly an hour ago,’ Rigby complained.

  ‘Sorry. It’s not like I have anything better to do,’ Kate said and Rigby’s head pulled back, shocked by her sarcasm. ‘I’m trying to find out who killed Aleah Reese but I’m sorry if that got in the way of your tight schedule.’

  At least he had the good grace to look embarrassed as he mumbled an apology.

  ‘What did you want to see me about?’ Rigby asked.

  Kate sighed. This suddenly didn’t feel like the time or the place to criticise a junior officer. ‘Come back through,’ she said, holding the door open and gesturing for Rigby to pass through. ‘We can chat at my desk.’

  The incident room was fairly quiet as Kate ushered the PCSO over to her desk. She told him to sit down while she wheeled another chair over from an empty desk. Barratt and O’Connor were chatting on their phones, mouthpieces half covered as though they were whispering, but Kate knew that they were trying to mask the sounds of the office around them. Barratt glanced her way, pointed at his phone and shrugged as if to express his own frustration with the case. She shook her head and sat down opposite Rigby.

  ‘You searched the Reeses’ house yesterday?’ she asked even though she’d already checked this with him earlier.

  Rigby nodded warily.

  ‘Did you check the shed?’

  Another nod.

  ‘Thoroughly?’

  ‘I went inside, had a look behind some of the junk, opened the cupboard. There was no sign of the girl.’ He recited his actions as though he was giving evidence in court.

  ‘What about the house?’ Kate prompted.

  ‘I looked in Aleah’s bedroom, in the parents’ room and in the sitting room. There was nothing that struck me as unusual.’

  Kate thought about the pile of drawings that she’d found.

  ‘Did you see the pictures on Aleah’s desk?’

  Rigby nodded. ‘Just a pile of kid’s drawings.’

  ‘They were drawn on the back of betting slips,’ Kate said. ‘Craig Reese had taken her to the bookies despite his wife’s wishes that he stop gambling.’

  ‘And? I’m sorry but I don’t see why this is relevant. They didn’t tell me anything.’

  ‘But did you turn them over and look on the other side?’

  ‘No,’ Rigby admitted but Kate could see from his closed off expression that he didn’t see anything wrong with not checking.

  ‘If you’d spotted the betting slips we might have got an accurate statement from Craig Reese much earlier than we did. We could have at least added the bookmaker’s shop to our list of enquiries.’

  ‘Do you think it would have made a difference to the outcome? Am I in trouble in some way?’ Rigby asked. He tilted his head up and fixed his eyes on a point on the wall next to the desk as if he was a child awaiting an undeserved telling-off from an angry parent.

  Kate wanted to yell at him. He couldn’t see this from her point of view at all. He was only concerned about the implications for himself.

  ‘“I honestly don’t know” is the answer to your first question. And no, you’re not in trouble, I just wanted to urge you to be more thorough next time.’

  He nodded. ‘I will be.
Is there anything else?’

  Kate shook her head.

  Rigby suddenly grinned at her, the chastised schoolboy look gone in an instant. ‘I know you, you know.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘From when we were kids. I know you. Well, I knew your sister, Karen. You were a couple of years above me at school.’

  Kate didn’t know how to respond. First Jean Loach and now this PCSO. It seemed that there was no escape from the past today.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I don’t remember you.’

  Rigby shrugged. ‘There’s no reason that you should. My family moved away when I was in third year. I only remember you because I used to fancy your Karen but she never looked twice at me.’

  Kate smiled, remembering her sister’s view of boys when she was fourteen. As far as she was concerned boys were smelly and ‘only after one thing’. Her ideas had changed somewhat since then and a string of ‘the ones’ had left her disillusioned and in need of a new direction.

  ‘She wouldn’t have,’ Kate said. ‘She wasn’t bothered about lads when she was that age.’

  ‘What’s she doing now?’ Rigby asked, and Kate wondered if he had ideas about using her as a matchmaking service.

  ‘She’s trekking in India. She’s away for six months trying to “find herself”.’

  Kate was about to tell him about Karen’s failed attempts to find enlightenment through yoga and meditation but something about his expression stopped her. She could tell that he’d lost interest as soon as he’d discovered that Karen was out of the country. And she was aware that sharing personal information with a PCSO might be seen as inappropriate. She felt ambushed by the sudden familiarity and intimacy, as though she’d let her guard down for a few seconds and Rigby had slid under her defences.

  Instead of saying anything else about her sister, she told him that she had work to do, hoping that he’d take the hint and leave.