Ready or Not

by Thomas, Rachel

  Kate felt her own impatience rise. Ben’s foster parents were fraught with worry about the boy, his father had no idea where he was and his sister seemed not to care either way. Kate remembered Neil telling her that Sophie was upset about her brother being missing. She paused and took a breath, trying not to lose her cool with the girl. It wasn’t Sophie she was frustrated with. It was herself.

  ‘Are you a detective?’ Sophie asked. She smiled sarcastically, snorted

  and laughed. Little cow, Kate thought. The look and the attitude reminded her of some of the girls she’d been at training college with all those years ago: smug little rich girls who’d had everything given to them on a silver platter and thought joining the police was a form of charity work. Two of them she knew had dropped out by the end of their first year after realising that real life was a little bit different to the American TV police dramas they’d been watching. Kate didn’t know what’d happened to the third, though if she was still working now it would surely be a miracle.

  She was wasting her time with Sophie. She and her brother had obviously seen little of one another in the time since they had been separated and sent to live with different families. They went to different schools and although there was only a three year age gap between them, at twelve and fifteen it may as well have been twenty. Kate had always thought that separating siblings in this way was wrong. Whatever had happened to or between their parents, the children shouldn’t be made to suffer as a consequence. Separating them was only inflicting further suffering on them. These were definitive years of their childhoods; in a few years, Sophie would be a completely different girl. Kate remembered herself at fifteen and then at eighteen: the transformation had been huge. The same would happen for Ben. Sophie and her brother might be able to recognise each other physically, Kate thought, but their characters might be unrecognisable by the time they next saw each other.

  Brothers and sisters needed each other.

  Kate stood from her seat, took a card from her pocket and placed it on the table in front of Sophie.

  ‘If you think of anything,’ she said, ‘let me know.’

  Sophie shrugged and, without looking up at Kate, took the card and walked out of the room.

  Outside, Mr Evans, Sophie’s foster father, was still washing his car. ‘Everything alright?’ he asked cheerily as Kate stepped from the front door.

  She smiled. ‘Fine, thanks. I’ve given Sophie my number,’ she told him. ‘If she does think of anything regarding her brother – no matter how small it may be – could you please make sure she contacts me?’

  ‘Will do,’ he said.

  Kate walked down the drive and got back into her car. Her head felt heavy and she found herself unable to stop thinking about her meeting with Neil Davies earlier that afternoon.

  How would she have reacted if that waitress hadn’t interrupted them? She could still smell his aftershave; could still see the expression on his

  face as he had caught her eye: caught her watching him. She reached for her mobile, changed her mind and put it back into her pocket.

  Andrew Langley still hadn’t called back.

  *

  Instinct took her the long way back to the A470 – the route that would take her directly past the castle. In Caerphilly town centre she decided to park her car outside a discount store and made her way on foot to the moat surrounding the castle. A group of teenagers sat by the water’s edge, a fishing rod and a box of lager cans lying on the grass between them. Families wandered around; some children fed bread to the ducks.

  The teenagers’ laughter echoed in the cold air and she wondered how they could sit out here in such low temperatures. Maybe the alcohol warmed them through; made them immune to the chill February breeze. Or maybe it was her, Kate thought. Maybe her own cooled spirits had chilled her insides. The ice queen, she thought. Always winter, and never spring.

  She felt cold shivers of sadness as she always did when she approached the side of the castle, where the path split two ways where she had last seen her brother, thirty years ago. The wooden fence she had climbed as a seven year old – where she had reached to lift her brother, who had followed without question – had long since been replaced by a metal one, but the beer garden behind it, despite the number of years that had passed, looked eerily the same. Wooden park-style tables and benches sat in rows; modern outdoor heating lamps now placed at regular spaces between them.

  Kate stopped twenty metres or so from the tree behind which she had hidden all those years ago. She saw her seven year old self running along this path, briefly noticing a strangely dressed woman watching them as they played, but thinking nothing of it. She saw herself cut across the grass to hide behind the tree. She remembered the rustling of leaves beneath her feet; recalled the silence that fell upon the park as she held her breath and waited.

  She remembered her frustration when her brother didn’t come for her.

  She could still hear the rhythms of her breathing infiltrating the hush that lay like a blanket upon that winter’s afternoon.

  Thirty years on, standing now beside the same tree, her breathing faltered once more. Andrew Langley had shone a glimmer of hope into a dark tunnel that had seemed to Kate never-ending, yet there was a part of her that suspected it might all be too good to be true. If she suspected the worst she could never be disappointed. And what if the news he had was bad news; something she didn’t want to hear. What if Daniel had died, years ago, and all this searching for him had been in vain?

  Kate looked up at the giant branches that stretched like misshapen wings above her and, without warning, felt the tears come.

  Twenty Two

  ‘I don’t know how important it is,’ Diane Morris said, pouring water from the kettle into three mugs. Every movement she made was slow and measured; each press of a tea bag against the inside of the mug punctuated with a silent pause in which she seemed to take a hold of herself; stop herself from losing grip of her controlled, resourceful exterior.

  ‘Anything is helpful,’ Chris reassured her.

  PC Matthew Curtis had accompanied him again, vowing to do his best to overcome his aversion to mournful infant faces and to avoid saying anything thoughtless or insensitive. Chris imagined that he was doing his best to push the thought of Joseph Ryan’s daughter in the doorway of the family living room from his mind. He hadn’t missed the way in which Matthew had been mesmerised by the wide eyes that had stared up at him and silent in the car when they had returned to the station.

  Chris had brought him up to speed with the Anna Ferguson and Lauren Carter meetings in the car on the journey over.

  ‘Just a coincidence?’ he asked.

  Chris shook his head. ‘Don’t think so,’ he said. ‘Jamie Griffiths. Remember the name?’

  Matthew nodded slowly and turned to look out of the window. ‘Last year’s murder mystery,’ he said.

  ‘Maybe,’ Chris said, doubting it already. ‘Maybe not. Might not be such a mystery anymore.’

  Chris had been comparing the three cases – Jamie Griffiths, Joseph Ryan and Michael Morris – since his earlier meeting with Lauren Carter and the phone call from Matthew telling him that Michael Morris’ wife had been in touch. Jamie Griffiths had been found the previous winter in a bus shelter in Cardiff. He had received a single blow to the side of the head. Pathology suggested it was caused by a heavy lump hammer, the type builders used for smashing brick or stone: the very same kind of hammer that had been used to kill Michael Morris and Joseph Ryan. But how were the three men connected? Had they known each other?

  ‘Where’s the link, boss?’ Matthew asked; his attention still focused on the houses and shops that passed by the window in a blur. He swallowed; the sound of it loud enough for Chris to hear. ‘Besides the skull bashing.’

  Chris gave him a sideways look. ‘Besides the skull bashing, as you so sensitively put it,’ he said, ‘there’s the fact that each of these men has an identical family pattern: married, two kids; one boy, o
ne girl. It’s too much to be a coincidence.’

  Matthew watched a row of tall gabled houses quickly pass by. ‘You may have a point, boss, but it’s a bit of a long shot, isn’t it?’

  ‘Are you in the right job?’ asked Chris, glancing at him quizzically.

  *

  Now they were in the Morris household again and Diane was putting two mugs of tea in front of them. Christ, they drank enough tea in this job to float a kidney.

  ‘He talked about this friend a lot over the past few months,’ she said, leaning tiredly against the sink.

  Chris watched her distractedly twist the corner of a blue checked tea towel.

  ‘They met when this man Adam helped him with the car, you said?’ Chris recalled.

  Diane nodded slowly. ‘Michael was on his way to work when the car broke down. It had been on its way out for a while, but we just never got around to doing anything about it. He wasn’t much of a mechanic.’

  She paused and stared at the cupboards on the opposite wall, her thoughts far away. Her expression was distant; removed, Chris thought. Matthew scanned the kitchen, his attention also diverted. His inability to keep his eyes focused on one thing or one person for longer than a few moments was increasingly irritating and intrigued Chris. His mind wasn’t on the job, or if it was, he didn’t seem to be able to cope with it.

  ‘When was this, Mrs Morris?’ Chris asked.

  ‘Oh, a good few months ago now,’ she said. ‘Well before Christmas. About four months ago, I’d say.’

  Matthew looked at Chris. He was listening then, Chris thought.

  ‘The car broke down on the side of the road and someone was good enough to help him. I don’t know how, or why, but after that they seemed to stay in touch.’

  ‘Did you ever meet Adam, Mrs Morris?’ Matthew asked.

  ‘Never,’ she said. ‘Michael invited him and his wife around for dinner once, but they had to cancel. We never got around to rearranging.’

  Was this the same Adam who had last night joined Joseph Ryan on a night out at Candy’s, Chris wondered? Surely it would be too much of a coincidence if it wasn’t; particularly now that an ‘Adam’ had been connected to Joseph Ryan also. He thought of Kate. Just this once, Chris, he told himself, allow yourself to go with the hunch and believe in the reality of coincidence.

  ‘Did Michael ever tell you Adam’s surname?’ Matthew asked.

  She shook her head apologetically. ‘If he did, I don’t remember,’ she admitted. ‘Although I’m pretty sure he never mentioned it.’ She turned her back to them, looked out of the window and into the garden. ‘Do you think he may know anything?’ she asked, her words choked. There were no tears now, just an apparent inability to get the words out without stumbling on them. It was obviously too difficult for her to accept the idea that somebody had wanted to intentionally hurt Michael.

  ‘We don’t know,’ Chris told her. ‘But perhaps he spoke to your husband on Tuesday, or maybe he saw him. Either way, he may know something that we don’t.’

  Diane turned back and sat with the two men at the table. Her eyes were damp with burgeoning tears. ‘Michael never had many friends,’ she said. ‘Even at school he was a bit of a lone soul. He was…I don’t know…lacking in confidence, I suppose. He had the kindest heart. He could be easily taken advantage of, but I thought he was getting on well with this Adam. It was all Adam this and Adam that for a while.’

  She stood again and paced the kitchen uneasily, gripping the tea towel in a tight fist.

  ‘Please don’t read too much into it, Mrs Morris,’ Chris reassured her, noticing the way in which her features had tightened. ‘We’ll do our best to track this Adam down and when we do we’ll let you know. In the meantime, please try not to jump to any conclusions.’

  ‘I was pleased, at first,’ she said. The fist tightened around the tea towel again, her knuckles strained white. ‘I was glad he’d made a friend. I always thought perhaps it wasn’t healthy that he spent all his time either at work or at home, with us.’

  There was something other than sadness in her voice now. Her teeth clenched and a flush of colour rose in her cheeks. Chris couldn’t be certain, but it almost sounded like resentment.

  ‘You can’t blame yourself,’ Matthew offered, although his attempts at reassurance were unconvincing. ‘Like the Chief Inspector said, don’t jump to any conclusions.’

  Diane wiped at her left eye with the tea towel she had been grasping tightly since answering the door to Matthew and Chris.

  ‘At first?’ Chris said, recalling her earlier words.

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘At first,’ he repeated purposefully. ‘You said, you were pleased that he had this friend, ‘at first’, Mrs Morris.’

  Diane sniffed and put the tea towel on the table in front of her. ‘Did I?’ she said, regaining her composure; features slackening. ‘Well…I was, I suppose. I was pleased. At first.’

  *

  In the car Matthew exhaled loudly, as though he’d been holding his breath for the forty minutes they had been inside the Morris house.

  ‘Good job in there,’ Chris said, turning the engine.

  Matthew pushed his head against the rest behind him and closed his eyes. ‘Thanks, boss.’

  ‘She’s not telling us everything though, is she?’

  Matthew opened his eyes and pulled a face. ‘What do you mean? What else can she know?’

  Chris indicated and took a left out of the street where the Morris family lived. He thought again of Kate and the conversation they’d had the previous day about her impetuous visit to the Reed house. Clayton had given Kate plenty of chances. This wasn’t the first time she’d acted impulsively and broken the basic rules of standard procedure. At the same time, she was his friend. He’d give her a call later, see how she was feeling.

  Chris shrugged.

  ‘Just a hunch,’ he said.

  Twenty Three

  The flat was cold and quiet. It had started to rain as she let herself into the building and now it came down heavily, thudding relentlessly against the windows. Kate paused in the living room doorway and glanced at the clock on the far wall. It had been such a long and eventful day that it seemed ages since she had last been home. She’d spent the latter part of the afternoon looking forward to this moment, but now that she was back here, she wished she were anywhere but.

  She kicked off her shoes and dropped her bag where she stood. In the bedroom she stared briefly at the floor space where Stuart’s records had sat for months; now, a mark on the carpet was all that remained. The square of carpet that hadn’t seen a vacuum cleaner for ages was a different colour to the rest of the floor; lighter: clean. She’d move the furniture around, she thought; find something to cover it up so she could pretend it wasn’t there.

  Kate sat on the end of the bed, removed her jacket and peeled her tights from tired legs. She thought back to lunch; remembered Neil Davies’ face, inches from hers, and reprimanded herself. She was too old to be acting like a smitten teenager and she was worried about her feelings. She was attracted to him, but couldn’t understand why. It was inappropriate and ill timed. She had met him yesterday; she didn’t really know the first thing about him. She couldn’t let distractions interfere with her work.

  After making herself a cup of tea and warming a bowl of soup in the microwave, Kate settled on the sofa and turned on the TV. She aimlessly flicked through channels as she distractedly stirred her soup, lost in thoughts of the castle grounds and the long repressed tears that she’d shed just hours earlier. She kept her mobile on the sofa beside her, willing Andrew Langley’s number to flash up on the screen.

  Where are you, she thought; the thought so loud that, for a moment, she thought she’d spoken it out loud.

  What happened to you, Daniel?

  She kept an eye on the phone, praying it would ring. She was tempted to try him again, but Andrew Langley would see that she’d tried contacting him and would call her back when he got her messages. Sh
e’d already called enough. She didn’t want to scare him off by coming across as a mad woman.

  Kate put a hand to her temple, pushing back the headache that was fighting its way through. She had waited too long behind that tree. She should have stepped from her hiding place earlier; should have peeped from where she hid to keep an eye on her little brother; ready or not. Perhaps then she may have seen where he went. Seen who took him.

  *

  Six months after Daniel went missing someone claimed to have seen him in Cardiff city centre. A boy matching his description had been seen on a late night bus with a middle aged woman, just past the city museum, but there was nothing more; no CCTV cameras on every street as there were now.

  Kate had often wondered if, had he gone missing now, she’d have already found her brother. Modern technology had made police work easier, making it less easy for a child to disappear, hadn’t it? Hadn’t science and forensics evolved at such a rate that it was more difficult now than it had ever been for a criminal to get away with abduction? Kidnapping? Murder?

  She yanked herself from the latter thought; distracted herself by looking at her phone again.

  Maybe developments in technology and policing hadn’t really helped at all. If they had then where was Ben Davies? Where was little Stacey Reed? Where were all the children who seemed to vanish, never to be seen again?

  And did it really matter how easy it became to catch a criminal, when there would always be people still intent on committing crime?

  *

  She took her mobile from the sofa beside her. Kate selected her contacts list and scrolled down the names until she found Neil’s number. Her thumb hovered above ‘select’.

  If she wasn’t a detective, and he wasn’t the father of a missing boy, would she have any hesitation in calling? Of course not, she thought. Why should she sit her every evening alone and miserable, waiting for something interesting to happen to her? Where in her work contract had it said that by signing she would be committing herself to a life of solitude and microwave dinners for one?