Ready or Not (2 page)

Kate heard Holly
calling for Chris in the background, competing with the noise of the TV.

             
Kate sighed. ‘It’s not,’ she admitted.

             
‘No joy with the Stacey case?’

             
She looked again at the photo on the wall, almost willing the still, smiling image of the girl who hadn’t been seen in almost two months to miraculously find a voice and start giving her answers to her many questions.

             
‘None.’

             
‘Are you still in the office?’

             
‘Yeah. The number comes up on your phone if you hadn’t noticed.’

             
Chris laughed. ‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘I’ve sort of got my hands full here at the moment.’

             
As if on cue, there was a loud clattering in the background, as though something heavy had toppled over and its contents had bounced across an uncarpeted floor.

             
‘Shit,’ Chris said.

             
‘I can call…’

             
‘Hang on a minute, Katy.’

             
Kate waited at the end of the line whilst Chris went to see to his daughter. There was another bang in the background; something that had teetered and hung on for dear life had given up the ghost and gone crashing to the floor with the rest.

             
‘Everything ok?’ Kate asked when Chris came back to the phone.

             
‘Yeah. Honestly, I can’t turn my back for two minutes. This house is not exactly child friendly.’

             
‘How long have you got her for?’

             
‘Just another hour. Lydia’s coming back to pick her up.’

             
At the mention of Chris’ ex-wife there was an awkward silence. Her name was rarely brought up in conversation between them; it had been less than a year since she had walked out on him, still too soon to be discussed without awkwardness and discomfort on both their parts. Kate never knew what to say to him, or even if he wanted to talk about it at all. He was a private man and she had the sense to let him speak in his own good time, as infrequent as that was.

             
Kate wasn’t too sure that she wanted to talk about it either.

             
‘Look,’ Kate said, breaking the silence. ‘I’ll speak to you tomorrow. Go back to Holly, it was nothing important.’

             
Chris paused, as though selecting his words from the dictionary of things that wouldn’t offend her. Kate had begun to recognise the sound of his silences. ‘Katy,’ he said, ‘are you sure you’re coping?’

             
‘Yes,’ Kate replied too quickly, her tone coated with a defensive edge. ‘Why wouldn’t I be?’

‘The case,’ Chris said, although she didn’t need reminding. ‘You know…everything.’

‘I’m fine,’ she assured him, doing her best to lie convincingly. She leaned back in her seat and had the good grace to blush. She had always been a terrible liar. It was a skill she had always felt she should try to improve upon. It seemed to work wonders for others and was almost an essential skill for a police officer. Fight fire with fire, and all that; that seemed to be the way in which most of her colleagues operated their professional lives.

‘It’s just frustrating,’
she told him, her voice still on edge. ‘Time wasters. Do you know, we had an old woman call in yesterday, said she’d seen a little girl matching Stacey’s description walking through the railway station with a middle aged man at around 4 o’clock the day after she went missing. I’ve sat through bloody hours of footage, watched tapes from every camera at the station and the main street outside and found nothing. I’ve spoken to the staff who worked the shift. Not one man with a girl Stacey’s age – not even one that doesn’t look like her.’

             
‘How old was she?’ Chris asked. ‘The woman who called.’

             
‘I don’t know, elderly, I think. Seventies, maybe. Why?’

             
‘There was probably nothing malicious in it,’ Chris reassured her. ‘Just a mistake, that’s all. She probably thought she was helping.’

             
Kate sighed and made an aimless doodle on her notepad. ‘I know. I know. It’s just frustrating,’ she repeated.

             
Outside in the corridor someone else was battling with the coffee machine. The clanging of metal and incessant whirring of the reluctant dispenser got on her nerves. Give up, Kate thought. Half the nervous energy in the building was either caused by caffeine overload or pure bloody frustration with the vending machines.

             
‘You need a drink,’ Chris declared. ‘Just a half for medicinal purposes.’

             
Kate glanced at the clock on the far wall. It was a quarter to six. ‘Just a half then,’ she agreed. ‘Usual place? Seven?’

             
‘See you there.’

             
She hung up and turned back to the case file. She couldn’t let this one go. She couldn’t let anything go. Somewhere, there was an innocent girl waiting for Kate to find her. There had to be some clue somewhere – something that had somehow been overlooked – that would lead them to Stacey. After all, she was the specialist in missing children cases: wasn’t she? If she couldn’t find her, who could?

Chris would come up with something. Without realising, Chris had helped her before, on so many
other cases; never forcing an opinion or a theory on her, but allowing her to absorb his words and his thoughts, compare suppositions and come to a conclusion as to the most effective way to move forward. A passing comment, an outsider’s opinion: he was an invaluable resource, one she often thought she’d have difficulty functioning without. He was her friend, and sometimes it was good just to see a friendly face and hear a kind word. It often seemed to Kate that the world was sadly lacking in both.

Before leaving her office she looked again at the picture on the wall. The wide eyes of the little girl who stared back wrenched at an emotion Kate tried not to bring to work with her, but all too
often found it hard to leave at home. She took a moment to collect herself and fought back the urge to cry tears of frustration. Where are you, Stacey, she thought? Where the hell are you?

T
wo months was a long time in a missing child case. Chances were they could be looking for a body, but while others might have, Kate couldn’t allow herself to think in that way. Stacey was a child: a real girl, someone’s daughter, not a crime statistic that could be filed as unsolved. She wasn’t prepared to give up on this girl; not until she knew for sure, one way or the other.

Two

On the other side of town, Michael Morris’ only friend followed him home from the restaurant where they had just shared dinner. He cruised steadily behind Michael’s blue family estate car in his own run-of-the-mill Ford, blending into the background amongst the other Tuesday evening commuters, one bead on the necklace of headlights moving through the town’s streets. As he drove he listened to Radio 4. He couldn’t muster the energy to hum along with familiar tunes, but made mumbled, disagreeable comments about the babbling excuses of a top politician who fumbled his way through a news interview regarding the expenses claim’s scandal.

             
He gripped the steering wheel and pushed a hand through his dishevelled blond hair. He glared at the restaurant receipt that sat on the dashboard and felt a sickness in his stomach and anger in his chest that made him lean forward and tighten his grasp on the wheel. He reached over and flicked the receipt to the floor. A sheen of sweat glistened on his forehead and he wound down the window slightly to let in a rush of cold evening air. He pushed his head back against the driver’s seat, trying to still the feeling of overpowering irritability that was making his whole body itch. It had been a bad day. But it was about to get better.

He turned left and continued to follow
Michael; trailing behind him into a 1980s housing estate where each house was a mirror image of its neighbour. Red brick houses, driveway large enough for two cars; lawns square, their borders lined with all the creative flair of an obsessive-compulsive horticulturist. He pitied Michael his routine; the one thing most people spend their lives searching for then resenting as soon as they achieved it. He hoped that by the time he turned forty, there would be something more in his life than the monotonous bricks and concrete of suburbia.

             
Pulling up outside a standard semi-detached house he waited as Michael manoeuvred onto his driveway and turned off his engine. His children would be inside the house, no doubt, watching TV in the living room or completing their homework at the dining table as their mother, a short, plump woman with shoulder length, coarse copper hair like rusting wire, prepared dinner in time for Michael’s arrival home. He pictured Michael’s daughter – a pretty, intelligent girl of nine – practising her flute playing upstairs in her bedroom, and his son – an athletic, skinny boy aged twelve – kicking a football against the back wall, barely seeing each strike in the early darkness of the winter evening. Poor kids.

             
He wondered what his own children were doing now. Perhaps his daughter was reading; she always seemed to have her head stuck in a book, so absorbed with some character or narrative that the most he or anyone else would get from her in terms of conversation would be a mumbled response as she continued to read, lost within the pages of a tatty paperback she had borrowed from the school library or her mother’s bookshelves.

His son would probably be listening to music, more than likely on the MP3 player his mother had bought for him. His son loved anything with a frantic, ear shattering beat and lyrics that were either inaudible or too explicit to repeat. Anything, in fact, his father would disapprove of. It was probably time it was replaced with a new one. Maybe he would get him an Ipod for his birthday.

              Michael Morris hummed along to the radio, unable to remember the words to the song. It had been a good day. Better than good. Pleasant. Was pleasant better than good? He wasn’t sure, but whatever; he was happy, and happiness was a rare experience that felt to him like putting on a flamboyant outfit that one would ever normally wear, even if it was only in the privacy of one’s own home. He knew he would never have the confidence or the opportunity to actually air this new image in public, but this, for the moment at least, didn’t seem to matter.

             
During dinner that evening Michael had talked and Adam had listened. Listening had become a full time occupation for Adam and – as with the others – he had discovered that the more he listened, the less he needed to hear. Eventually Michael’s mouth had been moving but Adam was no longer listening. The words became silent; unheard through the plans that were formulating between Adam’s deafened ears. Adam could predict what Michael was going to say before the words left his mouth. He had heard and seen enough.

             
They had eaten an early dinner at what loosely passed for an Italian restaurant. Michael had left work early so that he wouldn’t be home too late and would therefore avoid having to explain to his wife where he had been. Where would he start? If Michael wasn’t in the house he was at work; if he wasn’t at work, he was at home. It would have been far too complicated to try to explain to his wife that suddenly, after twenty years of marriage in which he’d had no friends other than his wife and spent all his time outside work with his family, he had gained a social life that involved dinners in Italian restaurants.

A plate of garlic bread
had lay cooling between them on the table next to a bottle of cheap white wine. Michael had developed a taste for alcohol in the months since he had first met Adam. Drink made the situation easier for him and clouded his feelings so that, for a small time at least, he was able to pretend they weren’t there. He was just an average man enjoying a drink with a friend. It was simple. Entirely plausible.

The bottle was almost finished. Michael, not usually a big drinker, slurred his words
slightly; his cheeks glowing with the warmth of the wine and the excessive heat in the restaurant. The heating system was turned up far too high despite the time of year.

Drinking and driving, he caught himself thinking: w
hat had happened to him? He’d have a few glasses of water and a brisk walk around the town before heading home; hopefully the wine would wear off by then and Diane wouldn’t notice that he had been drinking. He would go straight upstairs to the bathroom when he got in and brush his teeth. It would never occur to his wife that he may have been drinking because the idea itself was alien.

             
Adam scanned the restaurant. In the far corner of the dining area a row of tables pushed together and adorned with helium balloons and party poppers was surrounded by a large family who had already entertained their fellow diners with an impromptu version of ‘Happy Birthday’ for the teenage girl Adam presumed to be the daughter and granddaughter of the group.