Ready or Not

by Thomas, Rachel

  Kate processed the information. ‘But you were happy to do this to her?’

  Dean looked down at his hands again. ‘It weren’t like that,’ he objected. ‘The kid were well looked after, fed and that.’

  ‘Well looked after?’ Kate repeated, her voice rising. ‘She was half dead when we pulled her out of that attic. She hadn’t had a bath in god knows how long, she was malnourished...’

  Dean glanced sideways at the duty solicitor.

  ‘Under fed,’ he explained.

  ‘I gave her food!’ Dean argued, looking back at Kate.

  Kate took a deep breath, trying to calm her anger. ‘She was probably too scared to eat it,’ she snapped. ‘Interview suspended at two twenty five,’ she said, glancing at the clock. She turned off the recorder. ‘I’ll be two minutes,’ she told the duty solicitor.

  Outside in the corridor a PC stood guard by the waiting room, on the off chance that Dawn Reed was in fact RADA material and tried to make a run for it.

  ‘She still in there?’ Kate asked, gesturing at the closed door.

  The PC nodded. ‘She keeps asking to see Stacey. Reckon she was in on it, boss?’

  Kate shook her head. ‘Not a chance. Beavis and Butthead had her well fooled. Speaking of idiots, where is the other Mr Williams?’

  ‘Cell three. He’s demanding his phone call.’

  Kate laughed bitterly. ‘Keep him waiting.’

  Back in the interview room Dean Williams sat with his head in his hands. Kate restarted the tape. ‘You said there was a man. A man with a friend who worked for the press?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Did he suggest this idea then, or had you and Nathan already planned it?’

  Dean gripped the edges of the table. ‘We’d thought of doing something,’ he confessed. ‘But it weren’t nothing more than that. It was just a thought. But him…’ He paused and let go of the desk, his big hands forming fat fists. ‘He egged us on, like. Kept talking about the money and that. I never trusted him, like,’ he lied. ‘I knew he was messing us about, but Nathan wanted to go through with it, give it a go.’

  ‘How did you know Dawn would even sell her story to the papers, Mr Williams? Didn’t it occur to you or your cousin that Dawn might be more interested in finding her daughter than talking to the press?’

  Dean shrugged his bulky, weight lifter’s shoulders. ‘Dunno,’ he admitted. ‘Nathan was gonna persuade her, I suppose. She always gives in to him, sooner or later.’

  ‘And how were you going to end up with any of the money?’

  Dean lowered his arms and put his hands on the desk. His face creased in a look of confusion and his piggy eyes stared through her as he digested the question. It was obvious he hadn’t planned that far ahead.

  It was also obvious that Nathan had planned to pocket the lot. He was going to screw them both over, Dawn and Dean.

  Kate shook her head slowly, despondently. ‘How did you think you were going to get away with it?’ she asked. ‘How was Stacey going to be ‘found’?

  Dean clenched his fists on the desk. His puffy cheeks were colouring and a shine of perspiration dampened his forehead. There was a prolonged silence in which he tried to form an answer. There wasn’t one; he didn’t know. It was clear to Kate and the duty solicitor that Dean had no idea how the plan was supposed to unfold. The promise of a fat wad of cash had been enough to cloud what little common sense he had.

  ‘Fucker,’ Dean muttered under his breath, his knuckles whitening as he clenched his fists tighter.

  He sat straight suddenly and banged a fist on the desk.

  ‘Dean…’ Kate warned.

  ‘He said it was idiot proof!’

  If it hadn’t all been so tragic, Kate may have been tempted to laugh. ‘Who said?’ she asked, forcing back a smile. ‘Nathan?’

  Dean looked up at the ceiling and gritted his teeth. ‘No!’ he snapped. ‘Adam!’

  Kate glanced at the duty solicitor, who shrugged unhelpfully.

  ‘Who’s Adam?’ she asked.

  ‘The one with the mate at The Sun,’ Dean explained. ‘He put us up to it – it was him!’

  Kate sat back. ‘I’m not following,’ she admitted. ‘Why would he ‘put you up to it’? What was in it for him? A share of the money?’

  Dean clamped his lips together and breathed heavily through his nose. The noise of his breathing filled the small interview room. ‘He never asked for no money,’ he said. ‘Not from me anyway.’

  Kate rolled her eyes. It didn’t make sense: why would someone encourage them to kidnap a child when there was nothing in it for him? What could he possibly gain from it? Unless, of course, he did it to drop Dean and Nathan in the shit.

  ‘Who is Adam?’ Kate asked.

  Dean shrugged. ‘I’ve only known him a few months,’ he said. ‘Met him down the job centre.’

  ‘What’s his surname?’

  Dean looked at the duty solicitor for guidance. ‘Do you know his surname, Dean?’ the man said.

  ‘No.’

  He was telling the truth. Kate had no doubt that if he knew the man’s full name he’d have already given it to her. There was no reason to be surprised by the fact that Dean had neglected to find out this small detail, when everything else seemed to have passed him by so easily.

  Kate raised her hands in disbelief. ‘Perfect,’ she said. ‘So a stranger whose surname you don’t even know tells you that if you kidnap a kid and get her mother to sell her story to the papers, you’ll make a load of money and no one will ask any questions?’

  Dean lowered his eyes. Even he, it seemed, couldn’t believe his own stupidity.

  ‘For the purposes of the tape,’ Kate said, keeping her eye on him, ‘Mr Williams is now shaking his head. What’s the matter, Dean?’

  Dean Williams said nothing, just shook his head in disbelief.

  ‘I’m charging you with the abduction and false imprisonment of Stacey Reed,’ Kate finished.

  *

  ‘Kate,’ Superintendent Clayton said, passing her in the corridor. She stopped and waited to bask in his approval. Clayton smiled. ‘Good job,’ he said.

  Kate didn’t wait for anything more; compliments from Clayton rarely consisted of more than a couple of syllables - he was a man of few words but many facial expressions - and she allowed herself to briefly savour the moment before heading back to her office.

  Perhaps now people would begin to take her seriously again. Maybe every decision she made and every theory she shared with her colleagues wouldn’t be met with a passing of rolled eyes or a patronising look that said, here she goes again.

  Her happiness was short lived. The photographs of a healthy, happy Stacey still greeted her as she entered the room and she began to take them down slowly, unable to comprehend the differences between this child and the one she had held in Dean Williams’ attic. The girl in the photographs was almost unrecognisable. Kate looked at the picture in her hand and wondered sadly how long it would be before the little girl smiled like that again, and how long it would be before another child took her place.

  Thirty Two

  They walked back to the car outside the school and Chris got Matthew to drive.

  ‘I knew I recognised that name,’ he said, buckling up in the passenger seat.

  ‘What name?’ Matthew asked, starting the engine.

  ‘Neil Davies.’

  Chris sat forward in his seat and tapped the dashboard distractedly. ‘His son, Ben, was reported missing at the beginning of the week,’ he told Matthew. ‘That’s the kid whose name the receptionist couldn’t remember.’

  Matthew glanced sideways. He narrowed his eyes and gripped the steering wheel. ‘Not exactly an uncommon name,’ he said.

  ‘True.’ But too much of a coincidence otherwise, he thought.

  ‘How do you know, anyway?’

  ‘Kate Kelly.’

  ‘The fit one?’ Matthew asked, winking slyly.

  Chris rolled his eyes. ‘You think?’ he s
aid dismissively.

  Matthew tutted. ‘You don’t?’

  Chris shrugged and avoided answering the question. Most men found Kate attractive, though she was not beautiful in the conventional sense. There was an awkward clumsiness about her that was endearing. She blushed easily and was slightly kooky. She thought herself aloof, but was more often than not the opposite. She was vulnerable, but she didn’t know it; if she did know it, she would never have admitted it. She didn’t realise how attractive she was, which paradoxically made her all the more so.

  ‘You two close then?’ Matthew asked, glancing at Chris.

  ‘We worked together when I first moved down here.’

  ‘Not what I asked.’ Matthew grinned and focused on the road ahead. He’d seen Kate just days earlier, watching him through her office window as he fought with the drinks machine on her corridor. There was something about her, he thought, but she was too old for him. Anyway, he’d been trained not to mix business with pleasure.

  Matthew wouldn’t have been the first person to try to interrogate Chris about his relationship with Kate. There were plenty of people who’d raised a curious eyebrow or given him a gentle nudge when Kate left a room, but the gossipmongers back at the station were going to be given no ammunition from Chris. They would be disappointed: nothing had ever happened between them; well, nothing that she’d decided she wanted to pursue. They were friends. She had made that clear.

  ‘What do you make of all this then?’ Chris asked, changing the subject. ‘It’s been me doing all the brain work so far – let’s hear your theories.’

  Matthew sighed exaggeratedly. He didn’t like being put on the spot and continually joked that he was just the tea boy; although Chris sometimes wondered whether the light-hearted, jovial tone was used to hide some deeper resentment of his position. He’d done well so far, but his progress had been steady and he could easily have been promoted by now had he demonstrated the right tenacity.

  ‘Victims, three men,’ Matthew said. ‘One killer. Or so we think.’

  ‘I think,’ Chris corrected him.

  ‘We both think then. All with a wife and two kids, one boy, one girl, but we don’t know what the relevance is, or even if it’s relevant at all.’

  He paused.

  ‘Is that it?’ Chris asked, hopeful for more.

  ‘I’m thinking.’

  Matthew groped in his pocket for a chewing gum. He offered Chris one; Chris declined.

  ‘That helping the thinking process at all?’ Chris asked, referring to the incessant chewing that ensued.

  ‘No,’ Matthew admitted. He stared blankly at the road ahead. ‘I don’t get it. Who the hell is Adam? And why would he claim to be the husband of someone who’s been dead for three years?’

  Chris reached into his pocket for his phone and brought up Kate’s mobile number. If anyone might be able to offer them some sort of insight it would be her. He hoped so, at least.

  He called, but it went straight to voicemail.

  ‘Hi, this is Kate Kelly. Sorry I can’t answer the phone at the moment – please leave a message and I’ll get back to you.’

  He hung up.

  Chris turned to Matthew. ‘Ever been to Candy’s?’

  Thirty Three

  There was too much mystery surrounding Neil Davies. Last night, in the glow of a couple of large glasses of wine and an absence of rational thinking, Kate had been happy not to know too much. Today, in the cold light and sobriety of the afternoon, an insinuating vein of common sense told her she needed to know more.

  Now that Stacey Reed was found, Kate had to concentrate her focus on Ben Davies. She’d been sure that he was safe and in some way responsible for his own disappearance, but now she couldn’t be so certain. He had been missing for five nights; if he was sulking, he’d have got over it and gone home by now. Children who cried for help didn’t stay away that long.

  Regardless of her feelings towards his father, Kate had a duty to the boy, and that was to bring him home safe and well. She just hoped that that was still possible.

  But where was home for Ben, Kate thought. What had happened to the family after Sarah’s death that was so bad Neil’s own children had been taken away from him?

  Plenty of people lost their partners, Kate thought. Other people found themselves suddenly and unexpectedly on their own, alone with children they would have to raise as a single parent, but that didn’t automatically mean they would have their children taken away from them and put into foster care. Just how badly had Neil’s wife’s death affected him? What were the repercussions of her death?

  Why hadn’t she asked him? There had been plenty of opportunities last night for her to ask her own questions, but she had been so wrapped up in responding to his that it hadn’t occurred to her. It was almost as though she didn’t need to ask, or didn’t need to know. Neil made her believe she could trust him, though she realised now she didn’t know the slightest thing about him. She had trusted someone who was no more than a stranger.

  Kate avoided the castle this time, taking the long way around the outskirts of Caerphilly town to get to the estate where Sophie Davies now lived. She needed to keep a clear head today and reminders of the past would only cloud her focus with distracting and unhelpful diversions.

  Yesterday she had gone easy on Sophie Davies, despite the girl’s bad attitude and her sniping comments. She’s made allowances for the fact that the girl had lost her mother and been removed from the rest of her family, but there was no room for sympathy when Ben was still missing.

  Today, the girl was going to talk.

  Kate pulled up outside the house. The car wasn’t in the driveway, but when she rang the bell Mrs Evans, Sophie’s foster mother, came to the door.

  ‘Miss Kelly,’ she said, after Kate had introduced herself. Her North Wales accent was as thick as her husband’s. ‘My husband said you’d called yesterday. Nothing the matter is there?’

  ‘I’m sure Sophie has told you, Mrs Evans that her brother, Ben, is missing. I know they don’t see a lot of each other at the moment, but Sophie really does need to tell me everything she knows. Yesterday she was a little…’

  She paused while trying to find the most suitable, least offensive choice of adjective.

  Mrs Evans waved a hand dismissively. ‘I know,’ she said. ‘It’s been a very tough few years for Sophie. She’s not always so difficult, but she has her moments.’

  Mrs Evans ushered Kate into the house and closed the door behind her.

  ‘She’s in the kitchen,’ she told Kate. ‘I’ll be in the living room if you need me.’

  In the kitchen Sophie Davies sat at the table with a book in front of her. She glanced up briefly as Kate entered the room, but went straight back to the book, determined to get to the end of the chapter before being interrupted. Kate sat opposite her and waited patiently.

  Sophie got to the end of the chapter and closed the book.

  ‘What are you reading?’ Kate asked, glancing at the title on the front cover.

  Sophie pushed the book across the table towards her.

  ‘Any good?’ Kate asked, studying the cover.

  Sophie shrugged. ‘It’s about a girl who lives with her grandmother,’ she explained sullenly. ‘The girl’s father is dead and she thinks her mother is dead too, but she’s not – that’s just what her grandmother told her.’ Sophie paused. ‘Why would anyone do that?’ she asked, although Kate suspected that she was not expected to answer. ‘Why would anyone lie to their own family like that?’

  Kate said nothing. She didn’t know what to say that might ease the tension and avoid exacerbating the girl’s bitterness.

  ‘I thought we’d said everything yesterday,’ Sophie said, breaking the silence. She folded her arms defensively and stared at Kate with her dark, heavily made-up eyes.

  ‘I didn’t,’ Kate said, ‘and I’m pretty sure you didn’t either, Sophie.’

  Sophie gazed out of the kitchen window, avoiding eye contact wi
th Kate. She played aimlessly with the plastic bracelets on her wrist.

  ‘Every day your brother is missing,’ Kate told her carefully, ‘it becomes harder to find him. It’s been five days now, Sophie. That might not sound a lot to you, but he’s a twelve year old boy. I know he’s not as independent as you are. I know he can’t look after himself the way that you probably could.’

  ‘You don’t know anything about me,’ Sophie said defensively.

  ‘No, I don’t,’ Kate admitted, realising flattery wasn’t going to work with the girl. ‘And I don’t know enough about Ben either. That’s why I need someone who knows him better. That’s why I need you.’

  Sophie leaned on the table and looked up at Kate from beneath her thick eyelashes. ‘For a detective, you’re not especially good at detecting,’ she said. There was a sneer in her voice and an attitude in the way she held her shoulders, as though challenging Kate; trying to provoke a reaction.

  ‘I’m sure your father told you how concerned everyone is,’ Kate said abruptly, ignoring Sophie’s last comment. ‘In fact, he told me you were very upset about the matter.’

  Sophie narrowed her eyes and sat back sharply in her chair. ‘I haven’t spoken to my father in two years,’ she said bitterly. ‘I’m not allowed to. Or, more to the point, he’s not allowed to speak to me.’

  Sophie Davies was playing a very silly game, Kate thought. She could feel her impatience growing already. She rose from the table and opened the kitchen door. ‘Stay there,’ she said sharply to Sophie.

  Mrs Evans was sitting in the living room watching last night’s Eastenders on Sky Plus. She pressed the TV off with the remote when she saw Kate enter the room. ‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘Thought I’d leave you to it.’

  ‘That’s fine,’ Kate said. ‘I just wanted to ask you a little bit about Sophie. Has she…’ She considered the most appropriate way to pose the question. ‘Does she cause you any problems, Mrs Evans?’

  The woman smiled. ‘No more than any of the others we’ve had,’ she said. ‘My husband and I have been fostering for years, Miss…’