Closer To Home

by Heleyne Hammersley

  2

  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 overgrown 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 in 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.

  Kate stepped over to the desk which was littered with pencils, crayons and papers covered in drawings. Picking up the top one, she recognised Aleah’s mother sitting at the kitchen table smoking an oversized electronic cigarette. Another was the view from the bedroom window. Underneath were a series of pencil sketches on smaller pieces of paper, street scenes and faces, some of which were quite sophisticated for a seven-year-old. She turned one over. A betting slip. A quick flick through the others revealed that all the pencil sketches had been drawn on the back of betting slips from the bookmakers in the village. Kate slipped her phone out of her pocket and took photographs of the pictures and of the reverse side of one to record the address and phone number of the bookies. A quick glance in the small chest of drawers added nothing of interest to her search so she headed back across the landing.

  Hollis had finished collecting the information that they needed when Kate returned to the kitchen. He was standing at the sink with PC Tatton, drinking a cup of coffee and discussing a mutual friend in hushed tones. The Reeses were still at the table, mugs of tea forgotten as they sat in identical poses of grief, elbows on the table and heads in hands.

  Mrs Reese looked up accusingly as Kate pushed open the door.

  ‘You didn’t touch anything, did you?’

  Reese’s hands jerked out from under his chin and he knocked one of the mugs, sending a river of tea across the table. His wife didn’t seem to notice as she stared back down at the table-top.

  ‘Mrs Reese,’ Kate said. ‘It’s important that we establish all the facts surrounding Aleah’s disappearance. Can you tell me where
you work?

  ‘I… er… what do you want to know that for?’

  ‘Just routine,’ Kate reassured her.

  ‘At the doctor’s surgery. I’m a receptionist.’

  Kate nodded.

  ‘And you, Mr Reese?’

  Craig Reese shifted in his seat as though it had suddenly grown too hot to sit on.

  ‘I’m not working at the minute. I got laid off when the tyre place in Doncaster shut. Can’t find anything else.’

  ‘So, neither of you have ever worked in the bookmakers on Main Street?’

  Both parents shook their heads.

  ‘Only, I noticed that a lot of Aleah’s drawings were done on the back of blank betting slips.’

  Mrs Reese jumped to her feet, grief replaced by a blazing anger.

  ‘Craig, you bloody bastard! You said you’d stop.’

  She began slapping him round the head and he raised his hands to protect himself.

  ‘They’re not mine, Jackie. Bob gave them to her. I told him once that she likes to draw and he gave them to me in the pub. Said he had a spare pad with an old phone number on and she could have them.’

  ‘Fucker,’ his wife hissed and stormed out of the kitchen.

  ‘They’re all blank,’ Reese yelled after her. ‘You can check.’

  Kate nodded to Hollis. Time to go.

  ‘I think we need to give you some time,’ Hollis said, turning to rinse his coffee cup in the sink. ‘We have everything we need for now. Please let PC Tatton know if there’s anything else you think of that might help us. Or if there’s anything that you need to know. Somebody will contact you about the identification.’

  Reese nodded and slumped back in his chair.

  As the FLO followed them to the door Kate turned to her.

  ‘You missed the betting slips, Tatton.’

  She looked startled.

  ‘What?’

  ‘When you looked upstairs. Thought you’d have spotted them.’

  ‘I didn’t look. Rigby took a statement and did a preliminary search before he rang it in. He didn’t mention it to me. I took on the FLO role. I’m trained.’