Ready or Not (16 page)

             
Like he had said, it wouldn’t be forever. 

             
Kate wasn’t going to visit Sophie entirely unprepared. She had already done a Google search on the accident and had managed to find a small piece from a local newspaper: ‘Local Teacher Dies in Car Crash’. It was the end of July 2007 and the family had been on their way to West Wales for a camping holiday. The report suggested that the accident had been caused when the driver’s attention had been distracted by the two children in the back seat. Neil had been driving.

             
The news report was brief, but it provided enough information for Kate to make the assumption that Neil blamed himself for his wife’s death. Whatever had happened with the kids to make him take his eye of the road, it had been a long enough distraction for him to veer into the opposite lane, headlong into a lorry. Sarah, his wife, hadn’t been wearing a seat belt.

             
She had researched the crash before deciding to visit Sophie, if only to feel that she knew a little more about the elusive man who had entered her life by chance and had such a sudden, inexplicable impact on her. It had helped to piece together the edges, but there was still a huge gap in the middle where Kate didn’t know where to begin.

             
Sophie’s new address had been instantly recognisable to Kate who had grown up in the same area, and it had been from within the castle grounds not far from her childhood home where her brother, Daniel, had gone missing all those years ago during an innocent game of hide and seek. Kate felt an aching sadness creep over her as she drove through the town centre. She had so many memories of this town – of her father and her mother; her missing brother – and it always had the same effect on her whenever she made a return; that chilled, eerie feeling of hopelessness that wouldn’t let her forget her own guilt and regrets.

             
Kate tried to distract herself, for now, from her thoughts of Andrew Langley. One thing at a time, she told herself. Do this now: think about Daniel later.

             
She pulled into the estate where Sophie lived and slowed down in order to find the right house number. A man was washing a car on the driveway of the house she sought.

             
‘Who’re you looking for, love?’ the man asked as Kate made her way up the drive. He had a thick northern accent and a welcoming face.

             
‘I’m looking for Sophie,’ Kate said.

             
‘She’s in the house. Who shall I say’s asking for her?’

             
Kate reached into her pocket for her ID. ‘Detective Inspector Kate Kelly.’

             
The man put his sponge on the roof of the car, the smile he had worn now creased into a look of concern. ‘Everything’s alright, is it?’ he asked worriedly. ‘She’s not in trouble, is she?’

             
‘Everything’s fine,’ she reassured him. ‘I just wanted a little chat with Sophie about her brother.’

*

Inside the house Sophie’s foster father made tea and then left Kate in the kitchen with Sophie. She was a pretty girl, Kate noticed, despite the thick heavy make up that darkened her eyes, and for the first time she wondered what Sarah Davies had looked like. She assumed by looking at her daughter that she had been an attractive woman. Kate felt a sudden, ridiculously ill-timed twinge of jealousy and immediately reprimanded herself for being so stupid and inappropriate.

             
Sophie seemed sullen, but she was fifteen, so perhaps it came with the territory, Kate thought. She pushed her mug away from her with fingers that wore an array of heavy, cheap jewellery. ‘I don’t even like tea,’ she said. ‘What’s that all about? There’s been an emergency – let’s have a cup of tea. Someone’s dead – we’ll have a cup of tea. Ooh, police woman’s here – better put the kettle on.’

             
Kate felt the hostility from the girl rising like the steam that wafted from her own cup of tea.

             
‘I want to talk to you about your brother,’ Kate said. ‘Ben,’ she added, as if Sophie might need reminding.

             
Sophie shrugged nonchalantly and scratched her button nose. ‘Whatever he’s done it’s nothing to do with me,’ she said. ‘We don’t see each other.’

             
‘Do you have any idea where your brother might be, Sophie? A friend’s house that he might be staying at?’

             
Sophie studied Kate and twirled a long strand of blonde hair around her finger. ‘What my brother gets up to,’ she said slowly, as though Kate hadn’t listened the first time, ‘is no business of mine. Social services made sure of that.’

             
Kate understood the bitterness in her voice, but still felt that for someone whose brother was missing, Sophie Davies was being a touch insensitive. Either she wasn’t fully aware of the situation or she was purposefully trying to be as difficult as possible. Kate suspected the latter.

             
‘You do realise that your brother’s missing, Sophie, don’t you?’ Kate asked.

             
Sophie tutted impatiently. ‘Missing?’ she smirked, eyeing Kate with a smug sneer. ‘He goes missing at least three times a year.’ She rolled her eyes and flicked the hair out of her face. ‘It’s tradition.’

             
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. Sh
e 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.’