Ready or Not

by Thomas, Rachel

  No one warns you during training that the job drains away the last dregs of your personal life, Kate thought. No one bothers telling you that every decision you make – every evening phone call, every should-be-innocent smile – will be determined by your role as police officer.

  The job had drawn an invisible circle around her and anyone who got too close received a jolt of electricity; not enough to kill, but enough to send them running. Or maybe that was her, Kate thought. Maybe it was she, not the job, that kept everyone safely beyond that invisible line.

  She closed the phone, put it back into her bag and returned to the sofa, annoyed with herself.

  Twenty Four

  Chris Jones was still at the station, wading through the paper work on the Jamie Griffiths murder case he’d had sent up from Cardiff. The case was now over a year old. He was trying to make a link between Jamie, Joseph and Michael, but if there was one, apart from the manner of death, it eluded him. The similarities he had pointed out to Matthew – the cause of death and identical family pattern of each victim - were so far the only ones Chris could find, but he was certain there was something else he wasn’t seeing, or some sense of logic only feasible to the person who had perhaps been responsible for the killing of all three.

  If the same person had been responsible for the murders of all three men, they were now looking for a serial killer. Chris shook his head at the thought. It had been a long time since Wales had harboured a serial killer, and it was certainly something he had never experienced in his time with the police. He knew men who’d longed for this kind of investigation during their careers; a chance to prove themselves as Detectives Extraordinaire. Chris had always found those attitudes unsettling and the men who displayed them almost inhumane. For every killer there was a victim; for ever victim, any number of family and friends who were left to suffer the consequences.

  As with every case, Chris had to consider the possibility that there may be no logic or motive behind the killings. Even if all three men had been murdered by the same person, there didn’t necessarily have to be an obvious motive. What was even more terrifying than premeditated murder was the spontaneity of motiveless crime; the ability of some to simply extinguish life without a second thought. No conscience; no remorse.

  Stephanie Ryan had been questioned about her husband’s infidelities. One thing had become obvious very quickly: the woman had no idea her husband had been having an affair. Nor had she been aware of any of the other women he had been involved with. She had loved him unquestioningly. She couldn’t have begun that day to realise just how many others there had been, but no doubt in the future the truths of his secret past would unveil themselves, piece by piece; person by person. What would that do to her, and to the memory she would have of her husband?

  Sometimes Chris hated the job. Hadn’t Stephanie Ryan been through enough, without having to be told that the husband she was mourning was a liar, a cheat, and an all round bastard of the first water?

  Chris was staring at a photo of Jamie Griffiths when his mobile rang, wondering how this man could possibly be connected to Joseph Ryan and Michael Morris and why, if he was, there’d been a year’s gap between the murders.

  ‘Chris Jones,’ he said, answering his mobile.

  There was a pause at the end of the line. A slight cough, then a nervous female voice.

  ‘DCI Jones.’

  It was Diane Morris; Michael’s wife. Chris recognised the timid, cautiously polite tone immediately.

  ‘I’m afraid I didn’t perhaps tell you everything this morning,’ she said. Tell me something I don’t know, Chris thought. The anxious twisting of the tea towel, the distracted staring at the cupboards: Diane Morris was terrible at hiding her emotions. He said nothing, waiting for her to continue. He absent-mindedly doodled on the back of an envelope, thoughtlessly scrawling a series of swirls and squares as his mind ran elsewhere, still hooked on the thought of Jamie Griffiths.

  There was a rustling at the end of the line, as though Diane was adjusting herself, trying to make herself comfortable before she disclosed her information, or desperately seeking a distraction that would put off the inevitable. Chris could wait. She had called him; whatever she wanted to tell him she would tell him, in her own time.

  She coughed nervously.

  ‘There are things that Michael kept from me,’ she said eventually, and when she said it the regret in her voice was immediate. ‘Things that he thought he’d kept from me – things I don’t think he had even fully admitted to himself. I knew when we married that he wasn’t the same as the other men I had dated, though there weren’t that many to compare him with, but it was those things that at the time I found the most endearing.’

  Diane paused to cough again; her voice was cracking and her speech became faster. She had obviously planned exactly what she was going to say, but now that she was on the phone the words didn’t want to be spoken despite the fact that she was keen to get through them as quickly as possible.

  ‘I think he always knew though he was afraid to admit it,’ she blurted. ‘I think I’ve always known as well, deep down.’

  ‘Known what, Mrs Morris?’ Chris asked.

  ‘Mr Jones,’ Diane said calmly. ‘I think my husband was gay, but I think he tried to suppress it.’

  Chris stopped doodling.

  Diane went on to explain the nature of her marriage to Michael: how she was pregnant with their first child when they married and how their daughter had been conceived within the six months following David’s birth; how Michael had been an excellent father, but the relationship between them following Emily’s birth had been one of close friends.

  After Emily was born, the physical relationship between Michael and Diane quickly faded. It was, she told Chris, as though they had served the purpose of their marriage by having children and they later continued to exist within their life together in a kind of cloudy bubble of expected domesticity, both convincing themselves that their situation was normal. Both devoted themselves to the children and, although they loved each other in their own way – as siblings love one another, she suggested - Diane always knew that her husband didn’t love her as she felt a husband should love his wife.

  Then there were the undeleted websites he had visited; the magazine that Diane had found hastily shoved beneath the seat of her husband’s car.

  ‘Was Adam your husband’s lover, Mrs Morris?’

  Silence.

  He wouldn’t have predicted that he’d be asking that question today.

  ‘I’m sorry to have to ask,’ Chris said. ‘But if it will help us find out what happened to Michael then I have to know.’

  Diane sighed. ‘I don’t think he was,’ she told him. ‘I don’t think Michael ever had a lover. He didn’t condone infidelity. He believed that marriage vows were for life. We’re not really church-goers as such, but…well, you know how it is, I’m sure. There’s always that fear, isn’t there? He always tried to do the right thing. It wasn’t in him to be unfaithful, you see. No matter how much he may have wanted to be,’ she added.

  There it was again, Chris thought; the resentment he had heard in her voice earlier that afternoon. The tightened fists, the edge that lined her voice razor sharp; they were explainable now. Diane Morris was resentful. Not in an angry, revenge-seeking sense, but in a tired, worn-down, defeated manner. She was on the brink of middle-age and she’d devoted the best years of her life to a man who could never love her in the way she should have felt love from her husband.

  Chris scribbled notes as Diane talked, trying to create a clearer picture of the type of man Michael Morris had been.

  ‘He took his vows seriously,’ she told him. ‘He lived his life the way he felt he was expected to. He did what he thought was the right thing – the moral thing. Things were different back then,’ she said. ‘Not like now. If we were in our twenties now, who knows, he may never have married. It’s not a big deal anymore, is it? Not like it used to be. Anyway, I don’t believe he w
ould ever have broken those vows no matter how repressed he may have felt. I don’t think Adam was his lover. But I think Michael may have been in love with him.’

  *

  When the call had ended Chris sat in silence in his office for a few moments, staring again at the photo of Jamie Griffiths. His left temple throbbed with information overload and the need for sleep had begun to creep up on him like a thief, catching him unawares and stealing his concentration. How would he sleep knowing what he knew now? This changed everything.

  He glanced at his mobile and thought about calling Kate. Would he tell her about the conversation he had just had with Diane Morris? Probably not, he thought. Not yet, anyway.

  That wasn’t why he wanted to call her. He just wanted to hear her voice.

  He picked up his phone, found her number; put it back down again.

  Chris wrote the three names next to his doodles on the back of the envelope. Jamie Griffiths. Joseph Ryan. Michael Morris. Next to Joseph’s name he wrote the word adulterer. Next to Michael: homosexual.

  He drew a question mark next to Jamie Griffiths. What secret were you hiding, Jamie? Chris spoke aloud.

  Twenty Five

  Kate made the call without giving herself a chance to talk herself out of it, and in the half hour between the call ending and Neil arriving at the flat, she agonised over whether or not she had done the right thing. She briefly imagined Clayton’s reaction if he was to find out that she had invited the father of a missing child to her flat – her own home – during the middle of an investigation. It would send his moustache into spasms.

  Of course, she knew, he would be appalled. She would probably receive her final written warning. Maybe even face suspension. Worse than that, she thought, would be the look. That look: his disappointment in her stamped on his face with pursed lips and a disapproving stare – far worse than a good, old-fashioned bollocking.

  She imagined Chris’ reaction and quickly shook off the thought. Lydia’s voice echoed in her memory.

  He had made his decision and she had to accept it.

  None of it really seemed to matter anymore. She was on her way out anyway. She would stay for the remainder of the Stacey Reed case, find Neil’s son, if she could, then she would quit before anyone had a chance to fire her. Hadn’t she already had enough? Wasn’t she already, long before now, tired of the long hours, the red tape that strangled her, the instability of it all: the sense of hopelessness that followed even the cases that were solved?

  There was no joy in success. Success at the station was equated with the number of cases that were solved and the number of criminals brought to justice. For Kate, there was no satisfaction in knowing a crime had been committed and nothing could be put in place to prevent it happening again.

  Because it would happen again. Maybe not tomorrow, maybe not next week, but at some point in the future another child would go missing, another family would be ripped down the middle; another person would demonstrate that human beings were inherently evil, and that the underlying thread of darkness that could be found in even the best of people would somehow find a way of weaving itself to the surface and poisoning the world around it.

  Closure was never really attainable: Kate was on an endless loop, and the following day, the following week, no matter how short or lengthy the space between, another child would vanish from their lives and the misery of it all would begin again. She would continue to chase a thread of darkness, like Theseus in the maze, following the string that would eventually lead him to his own demise.

  She often had moments like these. Since Stuart left these moments had been arriving with greater frequency; perhaps because he wasn’t there to irritate her sufficiently enough to provide a diversion. She would often lose sleep, lying awake at night and wondering where her life was going and what she had actually managed to achieve so far. Sometimes, it felt like very little. She would be forty years old in a few years: unmarried, childless; hopeless.

  Kate knew she was kidding herself. Though she regularly thought of quitting her job she would never leave, not really. She couldn’t. While her brother was still out there somewhere, she would never stop searching, or hoping for a miracle. She knew, in her heart, that he was out there somewhere. She just needed to keep looking.

  But what if Andrew Langley isn’t just another time waster, she asked herself. If he really does know what happened to Daniel, what then? What was there to keep her?

  And could she really bring herself to walk away from Chris so easily?

  When the intercom rang Kate was torn from her thoughts of Chris and knew that she couldn’t invite Neil up to the flat. It was absurd; she had known the man for little over twenty four hours and in any other instance would have waited weeks before allowing a man to come into her home. Getting her jacket from where she had left it in the bedroom, she decided she would take him instead to the pub a couple of streets away from where she lived. At least there she would be able to pretend that they had just happened to bump into each other should anyone from the station see them; a lot easier than trying to explain why he had been to her flat.

  The thought of Chris’ reaction passed again suddenly and fleetingly. She paused by the front door of the flat and remembered Lydia’s voice when she had answered Chris’ phone. Why was she answering his house phone? She shook herself and put her shoes on. She was being ridiculous, she scorned herself. Lydia was still Chris’ wife and he had never stopped wanting them to be a family. Of course he hadn’t. He wanted it for Holly. He wanted it for himself, Kate thought, and why shouldn’t he? They were more than she would ever be. They were family.

  She took a deep breath, mentally shrugged off the thought of him and made her way out of the flat to meet Neil downstairs.

  *

  ‘Maybe I should have left you to have an early night,’ Neil said as they got their drinks and made their way to a small table in a quiet corner of the pub. ‘You look tired.’

  The pub was fairly busy, as town increasingly seemed to be on a Thursday night these days. Friday as a working day had obviously become null and void; either everyone was now working a four day week, or they just didn’t care by the time Friday came around.

  Kate placed her drink down on the table, removed her jacket and hung it over the back of a chair. ‘I always look like this,’ she replied. ‘Anyway…I called you.’

  Neil waited for her to take her seat before sitting opposite her. Again she noted his impeccable, almost outdated, manners and it put her in mind of a Saturday afternoon black and white film, the type she used to snuggle under her duvet to watch when she’d been a student.

  ‘Well’ he said, ‘I did say any time…’

  ‘Bet you regret that now,’ Kate joked.

  ‘Not at all.’

  He looked at her intently and Kate felt herself begin to colour. He watched her almost too intensely, again as though trying to read her thoughts. She found she couldn’t look at him for too long; his eyes were too piercing and there was something almost hypnotic about his gaze; something that rendered her illogical and left her feeling uneasy. It was like looking into the eyes of someone who could read her mind, although she knew that it was nonsense and didn’t believe in fortune-tellers, mind readers and magicians. Even so, looking at him made her feel nervous, but she was unable to explain why. Nervous, but oddly excited.

  ‘Did you find what you were looking for this afternoon?’ Neil asked. He sat back in his seat and ran a hand through his dark hair. He was wearing a thin, long sleeved black knit top and light blue jeans. Kate had already noticed his shoes before they had sat down at the table: smart black leather, clean. He was obviously a man who took a pride in his appearance, without seeming arrogant with it. Kate liked that.

  ‘Not quite,’ Kate admitted. ‘But I’m hopeful.’

  ‘You work too hard.’

  ‘Perhaps,’ she agreed. ‘Perhaps not.’

  ‘Do you always do that?’ Neil asked, reaching for his drink.

&n
bsp; ‘Do what?’

  ‘What you just did. Question yourself. Berate yourself.’

  As he drank Kate noticed the softness of his lips. She felt a frisson as she watched him.

  ‘I don’t know,’ she said, looking away.

  ‘It’s not your fault,’ he said bluntly, but not unkindly.

  ‘What isn’t?’

  ‘My son,’ Neil explained. ‘It’s not your fault we haven’t found him yet.’

  Kate noted the use of ‘we’ and ‘yet’. In one simple sentence he had joined them, given them a common ground and a mutual purpose, and he had given her hope where she had so often doubted herself. What was it about this man? How did he have the ability to make her feel so reassured? And why did he feel the need to do it?

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Kate said.

  ‘What are you sorry for?’

  ‘I’m sorry Ben is missing. I’m sorry Stacey Reed is missing.’ She paused and sipped her drink. ‘I’m sorry that any child ever disappears.’

  Neil studied her. He put his drink back on the table and leaned back in his chair. ‘Is that what happens?’ he asked. ‘Do they ‘disappear’?’

  Kate shrugged despondently. ‘I don’t know anymore,’ she admitted. Some seem to.’

  There had once been a time when her answer to the same question would have been a definite and immediate no. No, no child ever just disappears. There is an accident. There is an abductor. There is someone who means to cause that child harm, or to cause the family harm even if for no apparent reason.

  Now she wasn’t so sure. One minute there, the next gone. All traces of that child evaporated, as though everything they had left behind them, the tangible belongings and the memories shared with others were lifted into the ether and taken with them, leaving only shapes around what once had been. Grey shapes that blurred when questioning eyes got too close.