Ready or Not (20 page)

Twenty Six

Chris and Matthew pulled
out of the Gabalfa housing estate at the north end of Cardiff. They had just been to visit Jamie Griffiths’ widow who was living in a different house now, but still on the same estate where she had stayed since her husband’s death. Chris hadn’t been involved in the initial investigation, but knew the man who had headed the case. Finding out the relevant details and getting hold of a copy of the case file had been relatively straightforward and he’d had a chance that morning to read up on the details before visiting Griffiths’ wife.

             
Their meeting with her had been brief. She was a young woman, but she had the hard edges of someone who’d lived a troubled life and the way she had stood in her living room doorway, arms folded, face tight, said she’d already had enough and wasn’t going to let them push her any further.

             
They went through what had happened eleven months earlier. She had got home late from work that day and made dinner for their two kids before Jamie had arrived home. He’d been drinking, she said; enough to be able to smell the alcohol on him when he’d come into the living room. She and Jamie argued about the money he’d just spent in the pub and he’d left the house at around half eight. That was the last she’d seen of him. She took their two children to her mothers for the night, suspecting that Jamie would get home in an even worse state, and went straight to work from there the following morning. 

             
Chris could fill in the blanks. Jamie Griffiths had spent three hours in a pub on Caerphilly Road. He’d left at twenty to twelve after a row with the pub landlord, who’d been asking him to leave for twenty minutes. He’d had six pints, two games of darts and a piss on the floor of the men’s toilets. After leaving the pub he made it as far as the bus stop, where someone caved his head in with a lump hammer.

*

Back in the car Matthew quickly jumped to the conclusion Chris could have predicted he would.

             
‘Reckon she did it?’

             
Chris started the engine. ‘No.’

             
‘But she said…’

             
‘I know what she said, Matt,’ Chris said, putting the car into first gear. Whoever done it done us all a bloody favour, he recalled. ‘Doesn’t mean she killed him. Anyway, she’d have been questioned months ago – if she was guilty we’d have known about it by now. There was someone else’s blood found at the scene – whoever murdered Jamie Griffiths was a bit sloppy about it.’

             
Matthew fumbled for his seat belt and cleared his throat.

             
‘You OK?’ Chris asked, watching him.

             
‘Fine,’ Matthew said. He pushed his head against the headrest. ‘So it wasn’t our man, Adam, then?’

             
Chris turned out of the estate and pulled onto the main road. ‘Not necessarily,’ he said. ‘But if it was, he’s cleaned up his act a bit.’

             
They drove back out of Cardiff, heading for the A470 to take them back to the valleys.

             
‘What’s the link then?’ Matthew asked, easing into his seat. The sickness he had felt a moment ago was easing slightly. Being in the Griffiths’ house had made him feel claustrophobic and he couldn’t get out of there fast enough.

             
Chris tapped the steering wheel. ‘I don’t know,’ he confessed. ‘Her reaction to her husband’s murder is completely different to Stephanie’s and Diane’s. Joseph and Michael were both hiding something from their wives – Jamie doesn’t seem to have been doing the same. Not that we know of anyway.’

             
‘Why do you think she’s glad he’s dead?’

             
‘That’s not what she said.’

             
‘As good as,’ Matthew said. ‘“Did us a favour”, she said.’

             
‘People say things they don’t mean,’ Chris reasoned.

             
‘She’s angry about something though,’ Matthew said. ‘What did he do to her that was so bad she’d be grateful to his murderer?’

             
‘No idea,’ Chris said. He continued to tap the steering wheel and considered the facts regarding Jamie Griffiths. His profile wasn’t glowing. He had a fairly extensive criminal background, including convictions for GBH and perverting the course of justice. He had received a two year prison sentence in 2002, but had served just half that.

             
‘Whatever it is,’ he told Matthew, ‘you can bet her mother will know. She went to her mother’s the night Jamie was killed because she wanted to avoid another argument right?’

             
‘And avoid him pissed,’ Matthew added.

             
‘Exactly. That wouldn’t have been the first time she’d gone to her mother’s to get away from him. Whatever was going on – the drinking, the money problems – she’s bound to have confided in her mother.’

             
They were now on the A470, making their way back to Pontypridd. The daily traffic jam that had blocked the other carriageway heading into Cardiff earlier that morning had now dispersed and the road was clear. They were passing the turn off for Caerphilly when Chris’ mobile phone started ringing in his pocket. He reached for it, took it and handed it to Matthew.

             
‘DCI Jones?’

             
‘No, it’s Matthew Curtis.’

             
‘I’m sorry,’ Diane Morris said, her voice characteristically flustered. ‘I’ve just had a thought. I can’t believe I didn’t think of this before. That Adam I told DCI Jones about – his wife’s a teacher. He told Michael that she works in Park Hill Comprehensive. Her name’s Sarah. She’s an English teacher.’

             
Matthew thanked her and hung up. He looked at Chris.

             
‘Time for one more stop off?’

T
wenty Seven

It was Friday. Kate couldn’t help the feeling that came over her as she waited outside Superintendent Clayton’s office. It wasn’t arrogance or pride, just the fact that today she might avoid the look of disappointment that had become customary when he faced her.

             
On Tuesday she thought she’d lost two children: today, she was confident she’d find at least one of them.

             
She waited outside his office as he took a telephone call. During the drive to work that morning she had been distracted by thoughts of the evening before and had decided to wait until later before allowing herself to think of Neil again. There was too much to think about; too many conflicting feelings that needed her full attention. There was Daniel and Andrew, and the fact that she still hadn’t heard back from him.

             
In the meantime, she had more pressing matters to deal with and a little girl to find. Stacey Reed came first. Everything else after that would have to wait.

             
After she’d got back to the flat the previous evening she realised she’d lost her phone. She got the number of the pub from the internet and tried calling from the phone in the flat, but by then the pub had already closed. She’d called by that morning before heading to the station but it was too early and there were no signs of life. It was beyond careless and Kate was annoyed with herself for being so clumsy at a time when her phone meant possible access to potential information about Daniel. She had accessed Andrew Langley’s website again, this time from the internet at home, and called his office number, knowing that no one would be there at that time of night. She left a message explaining that she had misplaced her mobile and asked if he could call her again at the station the following day.

             
Clayton called Kate into the office and smiled. ‘How are you feeling?’ he asked.

             
‘Good,’ she told him honestly. She hadn’t mentioned Andrew Langley to anyone, not even Chris. She didn’t want them to think she’d taken her focus off the Stacey Reed case, and today would prove that she hadn’t.

             
Besides that, Clayton would only worry about her being led to yet another dead end, with yet another door of disappointment slammed in her face.

             
He nodded encouragingly. ‘What have you got for me?’

             
Kate placed a sheet of paper on the desk in front of him. As it happened, the unhelpful manager of the car rental place hadn’t been lying about the history of rentals being deleted from the computer system. What he had failed to inform Kate of, however, was how it easy it was to regain access to them.

             
‘I watched the CCTV again,’ she told Superintendent Clayton. ‘Somehow, everyone had overlooked a mysterious car that spent a hell of a long time parked on Taff Street the day Stacey Reed went missing.  No one got out of it and no one got in. I’ve had the vehicle traced – it belongs to Morgan’s car rental company next to Ponty train station.’

             
Clayton raised his eyebrows and studied the license number, waiting for more.

             
‘The car was stationary for almost two hours,’ Kate continued, trying to suppress the excitement in her voice, ‘before moving into one of the side lanes at twenty to five, ten minutes after the last reported sighting of Stacey. It was there for little more than a minute before reappearing and driving away.’

             
Clayton studied her contemplatively. ‘CCTV in the lane?’

             
Kate shook her head. ‘Seems a bit strange for someone to be hanging around that long then just happen to move again that close to the time Stacey goes missing. Check the name on the receipt,’ she prompted him, pushing the paper towards him.

             
Clayton looked down at the receipt, his chunky finger tracing the information as he scanned it.

             
‘Dean Williams,’ he said, looking back up at her.

             
‘Dean Williams,’ Kate repeated.

             
Clayton exhaled loudly. The eyebrow dropped. ‘Related to Nathan Williams?’ he asked.

             
‘Cousin.’

             
Clayton shook his head and sighed. ‘Wasn’t this man at the search just before Christmas?’ he reminded himself.

             
‘Yes. He was practically leading the thing.’

             
Kate remembered the widely televised search for little Stacey Reed that had taken place in the weeks following her disappearance. Friends and neighbours had joined the family in a search of the streets; Dean Williams at the head of the crowd, wearing the same ‘Find Stacey’ T-shirt that was worn by Nathan and Dawn.

             
Kate thought of the tape she had watched again a couple of nights earlier: Dawn Reed, the poor grieving mother, sobbing for the cameras, and her partner, Nathan Williams, keeping a decidedly low profile. The more Kate thought about it and the more footage she replayed, the less she believed Dawn Reed was involved in her daughter’s disappearance. Kate had seen enough to know the very worst existed in both men and women, but if Dawn had been involved in any way then her pretence and her deceit reached a level that Kate instinctively just didn’t believe her capable of.

             
Nathan Williams, on the other hand, had guilt slapped right across his greasy face.

             
‘The girl’s been missing right over the Christmas period,’ Clayton said, shaking his head. ‘Would an uncle do that?’

             
‘People have done a lot worse, Sir. Besides, he’s not really related to her.’

             
It sickened Kate to think of Nathan Williams enjoying a festive season free of the step-kid whilst Stacey was being held somewhere, robbed of her seventh Christmas. The thought that the girl’s own mother might have been involved was something else altogether. Surely not, Kate thought, rolling the question around in her mind once more.

             
Nathan Williams made her sick though. He represented everything she despised most in a person: he was devious, suspicious and, worst of all, stupid. He also smelled like a shithouse door made out of kipper boxes, but it was his stupidity that offended her the most. Stupidity was often the most dangerous of crimes.

             
Whether Dawn was involved or not, there was no doubt in Kate’s mind her boyfriend knew what had happened to Stacey. She wished that someone had listened to her earlier; if they had, perhaps Stacey would have been found by now. Kate shuddered at the thought of how they might now find the little girl. She could only hope that she would be found safe and well. Any other thoughts would be a distraction that would get in the way of finding her.

             
This was the price she had paid for her commitment to finding her brother. Her refusal to stop believing that he could be found had cost her the respect of her peers and her superiors. Her apparent tendency to ‘see things that aren’t there’, as Clayton had put it, meant that people questioned her opinions; her judgements: her abilities as a detective. And weren’t they also indirectly questioning her mental state?

             
Had they had faith in her as a detective they might have listened, and she wouldn’t have been in this office having to present hard evidence to Clayton. He would have trusted her instincts.

             
Whatever Chris had said about hunches, she hoped that he’d be right and she’d be wrong on this one. Finding Stacey held by members of her own extended family wasn’t going to be a victory for Kate. She doubted that was wrong though. It reminded her too much of a case that had made national headlines in 2008.

             
‘Get a search warrant and get a team together,’ Clayton said.

             
Kate didn’t wait for further instruction, or for a chance for Clayton to change his mind.

             
‘And Kate,’ he said, as she was opening the door to his office. ‘I hope for both our sakes you’re right.’