Ready or Not

by Thomas, Rachel

  ‘Seems unlikely, you’re right. I’ll know more later. What about you?’ Chris asked, changing the subject. He’d seen and heard enough misery already for one day: though it was not yet eleven. Hopefully Kate would have some good news. He could do with a bit of cheering up. ‘I hope you didn’t wait too long at the pub?’ he asked.

  ‘Not long,’ she confessed. She paused and twisted a strand of hair around a finger. ‘I thought I saw Stacey Reed on Taff Street.’

  At the other end of the line Chris raised his eyes skyward and Kate sensed the expression though she wasn’t there to witness it. It was a look she’d seen an uncountable number of times before.

  ‘Katy,’ he said. ‘You promised this wouldn’t happen again.’

  ‘I didn’t promise anything,’ she replied defensively. She sat back resignedly, leaned an arm against the driver’s side window and prepared herself for the lecture that was bound to follow. ‘She looked a lot like her from a distance. It would have been irresponsible not to follow it up.’

  ‘Follow it up?’ Chris repeated. He didn’t like the way the conversation was going. He knew how impulsive Kate could be. Her body had an unhelpful tendency to move before she’d had time to put her brain in gear and consider what she was doing.

  ‘I just followed her to check,’ she said, winding down the window. Despite the fact that it was only February the air seemed close and she felt trapped, claustrophobic in the confines of her car. ‘It wasn’t her. She had one of those bags – the frog one that Stacey had from that new cheap shop in town.’

  ‘What kid under the age of seven doesn’t have one of those bags?’ Chris asked incredulously.

  Chris knew Holly had nagged Lydia for one, but his ex-wife wouldn’t allow their daughter to wear anything that hadn’t been purchased from a Monsoon catalogue. He sometimes wondered whether she’d really wanted a child, or if a life-sized doll that she could dress in pretty clothes and show off to her friends would have done the trick.

  ‘I know,’ Kate responded, her defences rising, ‘but listen, Chris. The thing is, after I followed this kid…’ She paused and pushed a hand through her hair. ‘I went to Stacey Reed’s house.’

  Chris moved his elbow on the desk and rested his head in his hand. Why did she always have to do this? He sighed heavily, making no attempt to disguise his impatience.

  ‘Christ, Kate – why?’

  ‘I don’t know. A hunch.’

  ‘Kate, American cops in bad TV shows get ‘hunches,’ Chris said, a little more bluntly than he had intended.

  ‘This is different,’ Kate snapped, returning his antagonistic tone. ‘If your daughter was missing would you be watching TV and eating chips? If your daughter was missing would you refer to her in the past tense?’

  Chris stood from his chair and distractedly crossed the office to the window. ‘No,’ he admitted calmly, placing a hand on the glass and looking down at the car park below. ‘I can’t imagine I would do any of those things.’ He thought of the few hours he’d had with Holly the previous evening. She was taller every time he saw her, and each time they met she knew a word or a fact she hadn’t known before. She was changing, growing, and he wasn’t there to see any of it. Though they still lived in the same town if often felt to Chris as though the distance between them may as well have been a hundred times more.

  Inevitably, his phone seemed to ring during the two minute window of time in which Lydia was either dropping off or collecting their daughter. The same had happened yesterday: Chris had had just a few hours with Holly before she was whisked away again by her mother, and the call about Michael Morris had come just as Lydia was dragging their daughter out into the hallway. Chris hadn’t missed the way in which his wife had rolled her eyes when his mobile started ringing. It was an expression he knew well. His wife didn’t need to speak to vent her opinions or frustrations; she had a plethora of intricate facial expressions, all of which Chris had learned to read expertly.

  Lydia had been impossible to please. She loved the money his job brought into the house – and her wardrobe – yet his job had been the cause of a long line of disagreements between them, and not just because of Chris’ anti-social hours and heavily burdened workload.

  In fact, the work itself had been the least of Lydia’s concerns.

  The call had meant there wasn’t time to talk to Lydia, or get embroiled in another bitter dispute, so another argument had been successfully avoided. He was sure she would keep it safely wrapped up warm, ready to open at their next encounter and use as ammunition against him.

  Kate was silent. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said eventually. She could almost feel his disappointment through the phone line. She pushed her head back against the seat and watched a group of schoolboys who should have been in class idly passing a cigarette between them as they sat waiting at the bus stop across the road.

  ‘I don’t mean to take it out on you. I just know that something’s not right, Chris. They’re liars, the pair of them.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Dawn Reed and Nathan Williams.’

  ‘Kate,’ Chris tried to reason calmly, running a hand through his light brown hair. ‘Don’t go making any accusations. You’ve got no proof. I don’t want to see you repeat mistakes.’

  Five years earlier Kate had been immersed in the case of a missing three year old boy. She had become so deeply involved in the investigation that it had become a kind of obsession. She had suspected the boy’s mother of concealing evidence and, rather than going about things ‘by the book’ she had taken matters into her own hands. She had been wrong and it had almost cost Kate her career.

  Since then it had felt as though no one trusted her. Sometimes not even Chris. Kate always felt as though she was being watched; as if every decision she made was questioned and needed to be run past a whole string of superiors before she was allowed to act on it. No wonder she sometimes went against the rules. Her professionalism was constantly under doubt and her creativity – the ability to read situations sideways and see things that others were blind to – was gradually being drained from her. She was being suffocated.

  Perhaps now wasn’t the time to confess to Chris that she had waited outside Dawn Reed’s house that morning and accosted Nathan Williams in a lane at the back of the housing estate. She didn’t miss much, so the fact that Nathan’s sly little eyes had followed hers when she’d scanned the kitchen hadn’t escaped her. He knew what she’d seen and he’d had enough time to get rid of it before officers had turned up with a search warrant only hours later. The smug little shit wouldn’t admit it, but then she’d have been a fool to have expected him to just hand her a confession so easily.

  ‘It’s not like that,’ Kate said. ‘When Dawn Reed was interviewed at the beginning of the investigation she told us that on the day she went missing, Stacey was carrying her favourite bag – the green frog rucksack. Weeks later she retracted that and said she wasn’t sure – that she couldn’t remember for a fact if Stacey had the bag or not, but she couldn’t find it in the house.’

  ‘Does it matter?’ Chris asked. ‘Maybe she’s not sure whether she had it or not. How is the bag relevant?’

  Nathan had done something infuriating: looked Kate up and down and let a smug, self-satisfied grin slowly creep across his face; the same smirk that he’d greeted her with the previous evening. The look made Kate want to slap him. He knew she was onto him, but he also knew that she had nothing concrete or tangible to go on and the bastard was relishing the fact. It would be her word against his.

  ‘I don’t know that it is,’ Kate confessed. ‘But I know one thing: the bag proves Dawn Reed is a liar. When I was at her house last night that rucksack was lying on her kitchen floor.’

  Six

  Yesterday Kate believed she may have – almost – found a missing child. If she could just nail Dawn Reed and Nathan Williams, she was sure that she would find Stacey. Today, however, she had lost another. A twelve year old boy, Ben Davies, had been missing for th
ree days and his foster parents had just been to the station and spoken with Kate. They had contacted the station on Sunday evening after Ben had failed to return home, and had been told by the officer on duty to ring around friends’ houses and get back to them if he hadn’t returned by the following day.

  Very helpful, Kate thought.

  The woman and her husband sat opposite Kate in the least intimidating and lifeless of the station’s interview rooms. Kate had been pressing the need for a family liaison room for what seemed forever but, as with everything these days it seemed, her requests had simply been ignored.

  Caroline Jennings, a stocky woman in her late forties with streaky grey hair and a slight balding patch by her left temple, clutched the hot paper cup in which her tea remained untouched. She stared with a creased expression at the surface of her drink like a fortune teller studying a crystal ball. Her husband, older – mid fifties, Kate guessed – held his wife’s hand beneath the table, squeezing the fingers around her wedding band.

  Kate studied the boy in the photograph on the table in front of her.

  ‘Looks older than his years,’ she commented.

  Caroline sighed sadly. ‘Acts it as well,’ she said. ‘Thinks he’s seventeen. Comes and goes as he pleases.’

  Kate wondered what had made Robert and Caroline Jennings choose to foster. In her eleven years since joining the police she had met a number of couples who fostered, all of varying ages and from a range of different backgrounds, and she was aware of a whole host of reasons behind the decision to foster. Many couples were unable to have children of their own; some wanted to help young people less fortunate than their own. Too many did it for the money.

  Kate made a mental note of the face looking up from the photo. Light brown hair; brown eyes. A cheeky grin for the camera; good teeth. In the photo, Ben Davies was sitting on a mountain bike, one foot on the ground to steady himself.

  ‘When was this taken?’ Kate asked.

  ‘About six weeks ago,’ Robert Jennings said. ‘Christmas present,’ he added, gesturing towards the bike.

  An expensive bike, thought Kate as she continued to study the photo. Very generous. No children of their own, she guessed.

  ‘I know you’ve already been asked this,’ Kate said, ‘but have you checked around Ben’s friends?’

  Both Caroline and Robert nodded.

  ‘Anyone you may have missed out?’ she continued.

  ‘Not that we know of,’ Caroline said. ‘Ben doesn’t have that many friends at school. There are a couple of boys he hangs around with, but I’ve spoken to both their mothers and they haven’t seen or heard from Ben.’

  Kate paused. ‘What about his family?’ she asked. She picked up the photograph from the table. ‘May I keep this?’

  Caroline nodded.

  ‘Is there anyone Ben may have gone to stay with?’ Kate asked.

  Caroline sipped at her tea. ‘I know his mother died,’ she told Kate. ‘It was quite a few years ago now, but I don’t know much else about his family. Not the extended family, anyway.’

  Kate nodded and took some notes. Caroline told her that this wasn’t the first time Ben had taken off without telling anyone where he was going; although, she added, he had never been gone longer than twelve hours. Kate found herself having to make a conscious effort to avoid Caroline Jennings’ face; the anguished, fraught look she wore was an expression that Kate was far too used to and understood all too well. If she looked at her for too long, she would remember exactly how it felt, and she didn’t want to. She couldn’t allow herself to.

  Ben Davies was probably hiding out somewhere, trying to purposefully cause as much concern as possible, Kate suspected. He was probably streetwise, confident and able to look after himself until the novelty wore off and he was bored. If he hadn’t been gone for three days already she’d have fully expected he would be back soon, with his tail between his legs and an empty, hungry stomach. If this was just a cry for attention, if only he could understand what he was doing to his foster parents, Kate thought.

  Although it was a relief when a child was discovered, or returned, safe and sound, it was also frustrating for Kate when someone wasted police time in this way. For every ten children who returned home safely – the ones who ran away after a family argument, or who hid and sulked when something hadn’t gone their way – one child was genuinely missing, exposed to the elements or, in the worst of cases, in the hands of someone who meant them harm.

  For every moment Kate wasted on a child who had run off in a sulk, she lost a vital minute on a child who had been abducted or worse. Stacey Reed, Kate thought, unable to distract her focus from the girl. Where are you?

  *

  Before the Jennings left the station, Kate took a short list of telephone numbers from them and spent the next half hour calling Ben’s friends and relatives to confirm that nobody had seen Ben since Sunday. She had also taken a list of addresses and was planning the order in which she would visit them as she was leaving the station. Although Caroline Jennings had made the calls herself, it was not unusual for the friends of a missing child to cover up and lie for them. It was unlikely that Ben Davies would have hidden outdoors overnight, no matter how much worry he wanted to cause or how much attention he wanted to gain. No doubt he would be hidden at a friend’s house, carefully concealed from the suspicions of the friend’s parents. Nine times out of ten, a police presence and a persuasive threat of arrest soon prompted a friend who was covering for a runaway to change their story.

  So far, the day had produced nothing but bad news. The search at the Reed house proved unsuccessful and the rucksack that Kate had seen lying on the kitchen floor just the previous evening was now nowhere to be found. Like so many things, it seemed to have just disappeared without trace. When it was mentioned, Dawn Reed denied seeing it and reiterated the fact that she never said she was absolutely sure Stacey had it with on the day she went missing.

  Nathan Williams, typically cocky and unhelpful, was now claiming police harassment and was threatening to take action against the department and Kate in particular. He hadn’t mentioned the fact that Kate had waited outside Dawn’s house for him, but she had lined up her explanations and her justifications in preparation for the onslaught of criticism that would no doubt be thrown upon her by Superintendent Clayton. There was no way that the Super should believe a word of Nathan Williams’ before hers, but there was no guarantee of that anymore.

  There was no guarantee of anything anymore.

  Seven

  Chris Jones and Matthew Curtis were back in Michael Morris’ front room. The driveway was a crime scene: the front garden cordoned off with police tape. Forensics had been all over the drive in microscopic detail and the tent that had kept them shrouded from the prying eyes of the neighbours had only recently been collapsed. No fingerprints that didn’t belong to Michael on the car; no bruises on his body to suggest that there had been a struggle: no mud or prints to help identify the killer’s footwear. Michael Morris’ killer had apparently disappeared into the night.

  Diane Morris was alabaster pale; as drained of colour as when Chris had arrived at the house the previous evening to find an army of police officers surrounding the driveway and Michael Morris dead beside his car, his forehead smashed in. He remembered the man’s distorted features and shuddered. His face had collapsed under the force of the blow, but there was something else that had disturbed Chris; something about the expression on the victim’s face that had made it all the more sinister.

  The similarities between this case and that of Jamie Griffiths, a year earlier, seemed too much to be coincidence. This was South Wales, not London; having to investigate murders like this hadn’t been a prerequisite when Chris had taken on the job. Despite that, a nine mile and thirteen month gap between the two incidents was something Chris was unable to fathom.

  Matthew Curtis lingered in the doorway like an uninvited guest who was anxious not to outstay his welcome. He always seemed uneasy maki
ng visits to family homes and Chris sensed it wasn’t just for the obvious reasons. It was never a pleasant experience for any officer to visit the family of someone who had died, but there was something more to Matthew than simply being sensitive: something Chris suspected Matthew preferred to keep well hidden. He rarely talked about his own family, but Chris had gleaned enough information to get the impression that he wasn’t particularly close to his parents, but got on well with his only sibling, an older brother.

  Chris noticed Matthew trying to avert his attention from the photographs of Michael and his two children that lined the windowsill and mantelpiece. He was young, Chris thought: he would learn to switch off, eventually.

  ‘Would you like a cup of tea or anything?’ Diane asked politely, taking refuge in the ordinary.

  Chris shook his head and Matthew followed by example. Chris felt he should be offering her something, rather than the other way around, but he had the sense to know that no amount of well-intentioned words would make any difference to the sheer anguish this woman was experiencing.

  ‘We won’t keep you long, Mrs Morris,’ he said, sitting on the sofa opposite her. ‘I just need to establish Michael’s movements yesterday.’ He threw Matthew a sideways glance and gestured to the end of the sofa. The last thing Diane Morris needed was a police officer standing frozen in the doorway like some misplaced Lurch.

  ‘It’s OK,’ she said quietly. ‘Call me Diane.’

  Chris hesitated, hating his job; feeling the sadness emanating from her and knowing that, even with a conviction, there was nothing he could do or say that would ever remove that hurt. ‘How are the children?’ he asked, at once regretting the banality of the question. He often wondered at the senselessness of the questions people were asked by news reporters on the TV: ‘What was it like, being hit by that grenade and losing both legs?’ – ‘How did losing your daughter affect the family?’ Bloody stupid questions from bloody stupid, insensitive people. And here he was, doing exactly the same.