Ready or Not (5 page)

             
‘OK,’ Kate said, meeting Nathan’s glare and holding it a moment longer than was comfortable for either of them. ‘Thanks anyway. If it does happen to turn up, please let us know.’

             
‘Why?’ Nathan asked; his piggy eyes narrowing as he studied her. ‘Why’s the bag so important?’

             
‘It may not be,’ Kate admitted, although she was beginning to suspect otherwise. ‘Just let us know.’

*

On the pavement outside the Reed house Kate stood looking back at the house. The curtains twitched and Kate knew she was being watched.

             
She crossed the pavement and walked back to her car, which was parked at the far end of the street. She took her keys from her pocket and, unlocking the door, took a last glance back at the house. She wondered if the house was always in that state, or whether it was simply the result of Stacey’s absence. Ironing and cleaning would surely be the last thing on Dawn’s mind.

             
But then, surely, take away fish and chips and a catch up with Coronation Street would also be way down the bottom on her list of priorities.

In the car she took her mobile phone from the glove box and called the station.

              ‘Get a search warrant and get over to the Reed house,’ she told one of the PCs. ‘I know,’ she objected, when reminded that the house had been searched before. ‘Just do it again. I don’t know – anything. Just get over there and see what you can turn up.’

She turned the car at the end of the street and d
rove slowly back past the house. Again the glow of the TV suffused the window and she heard the ringing of laughter, pretty sure that it would continue into the evening despite the absence of the child who should have been there. Kate didn’t have children of her own, but she was adamant that if her six year old daughter had been missing for almost two months, watching Coronation Street and enjoying a take away would be the last thing she would be doing. She wouldn’t be doing anything but looking for her, no matter the cost to her finances or her personal life. Everything would come second to searching for her child. She wouldn’t rest until she had brought her home.

             
If they didn’t find Stacey, she was pretty sure they’d find that bag.

             
Dawn Reed’s words echoed in her head.

             
‘She loved that bag.’

             
The past tense echoed with finality.

             
Loved that bag.

Wednesday

Five

The morning after Kate’s debacle with the Stacey look-alike in Pontypridd, Chris phoned her from the station.

             
‘I’m sorry I made a no-show last night,’ he apologised.

‘No worries,’ Kate said.
Something urgent must have happened to keep

him from meeting her
; Chris would never stand her up without good reason and especially not without calling to apologise.

‘Something come up?’

              ‘Body in a driveway.’

             
‘Jesus. Who was it?’

             
‘Accountant. Just a normal, everyday bloke, from what I’ve been told. I’ve just been to see his wife.’

             
Kate paused at the end of the line, thinking about the task Chris had just had to undertake. She knew how much Chris hated this part of the job. Who didn’t?

‘How was she?’

Stupid question, Kate.

             
Chris sighed tiredly. He hadn’t got back home until almost midnight and had been back at the station by half seven that morning. He’d hardly slept in between thinking about the murder and about his daughter.

‘As you’d expect,’ he said. ‘Not good.’

              There was silence for a moment as each contemplated the events of the past twenty four hours. Nothing was ever simple. Whenever things seemed to be straightening themselves out, something else happened to throw the world and their lives back out of sync. When Chris had first started at the station years earlier, Kate had warned him to brace himself for a quiet ride. Nothing much happened in South Wales.

She had tempted fate
. Since then, it seemed, nothing much ever stopped happening.

             
‘Do you remember Jamie Griffiths?’ he asked.

             
‘Remind me,’ Kate said, not recalling the name.              

‘
Last year,’ Chris reminded her. ‘Caerphilly Road in Cardiff. Guy comes out of a pub and gets his skull smashed in with a hammer.’

             
Of course Kate remembered. The sheer motiveless violence of the incident made it front page news for South Wales newspapers. The case had made national news for a while, until a premier league footballer was caught having an affair and the murder was casually pushed aside for this far more exciting and news-worthy story.

A lot had changed since Kate’s career had started. She remembered when real people mattered and a time when the public cared about what happened to other people around them; other normal, everyday people like them. Now no one seemed to care about anyone who didn’t have a famous face. News was determined by celebrity and scandal and
if you were famous enough, attractive enough, or rich enough – no matter how trivial the story surrounding you – you were more important to the press than some poor sod who’d been murdered after a night out.

The murderer hadn’t
been caught.

             
‘You don’t think…’

             
‘Seems unlikely, you’re right. I’ll know more later. What about you?’ Chris asked, changing the subject. He’d seen and heard enough misery already for one day: though it was not yet eleven. Hopefully Kate would have some good news. He could do with a bit of cheering up. ‘I hope you didn’t wait too long at the pub?’ he asked.

             
‘Not long,’ she confessed. She paused and twisted a strand of hair around a finger. ‘I thought I saw Stacey Reed on Taff Street.’

             
At the other end of the line Chris raised his eyes skyward and Kate sensed the expression though she wasn’t there to witness it. It was a look she’d seen an uncountable number of times before.

‘Katy,’ he said. ‘You promised this wouldn’t happen again.’

              ‘I didn’t promise anything,’ she replied defensively. She sat back resignedly, leaned an arm against the driver’s side window and prepared herself for the lecture that was bound to follow. ‘She looked a lot like her from a distance. It would have been irresponsible not to follow it up.’

             
‘Follow it up?’ Chris repeated. He didn’t like the way the conversation was going. He knew how impulsive Kate could be. Her body had an unhelpful tendency to move before she’d had time to put her brain in gear and consider what she was doing.

             
‘I just followed her to check,’ she said, winding down the window. Despite the fact that it was only February the air seemed close and she felt trapped, claustrophobic in the confines of her car. ‘It wasn’t her. She had one of those bags – the frog one that Stacey had from that new cheap shop in town.’

             
‘What kid under the age of seven doesn’t have one of those bags?’ Chris asked incredulously.

Chris knew Holly had nagged
Lydia for one, but his ex-wife wouldn’t allow their daughter to wear anything that hadn’t been purchased from a Monsoon catalogue. He sometimes wondered whether she’d really wanted a child, or if a life-sized doll that she could dress in pretty clothes and show off to her friends would have done the trick.

             
‘I know,’ Kate responded, her defences rising, ‘but listen, Chris. The thing is, after I followed this kid…’ She paused and pushed a hand through her hair. ‘I went to Stacey Reed’s house.’

             
Chris moved his elbow on the desk and rested his head in his hand. Why did she always have to do this? He sighed heavily, making no attempt to disguise his impatience.

             
‘Christ, Kate – why?’

             
‘I don’t know. A hunch.’

             
‘Kate, American cops in bad TV shows get ‘hunches,’ Chris said, a little more bluntly than he had intended.

             
‘This is different,’ Kate snapped, returning his antagonistic tone. ‘If your daughter was missing would you be watching TV and eating chips? If your daughter was missing would you refer to her in the past tense?’

Chris stood from his chair and distractedly crossed the office to the window. ‘No,’ he
admitted calmly, placing a hand on the glass and looking down at the car park below. ‘I can’t imagine I would do any of those things.’ He thought of the few hours he’d had with Holly the previous evening. She was taller every time he saw her, and each time they met she knew a word or a fact she hadn’t known before. She was changing, growing, and he wasn’t there to see any of it. Though they still lived in the same town if often felt to Chris as though the distance between them may as well have been a hundred times more.

Inevitably, his phone seemed to ring during the two minute window of time in which
Lydia was either dropping off or collecting their daughter. The same had happened yesterday: Chris had had just a few hours with Holly before she was whisked away again by her mother, and the call about Michael Morris had come just as Lydia was dragging their daughter out into the hallway. Chris hadn’t missed the way in which his wife had rolled her eyes when his mobile started ringing. It was an expression he knew well. His wife didn’t need to speak to vent her opinions or frustrations; she had a plethora of intricate facial expressions, all of which Chris had learned to read expertly.

Lydia
had been impossible to please. She loved the money his job brought into the house – and her wardrobe – yet his job had been the cause of a long line of disagreements between them, and not just because of Chris’ anti-social hours and heavily burdened workload.

In fact, t
he work itself had been the least of Lydia’s concerns.

The call had meant there wasn’t time to talk to
Lydia, or get embroiled in another bitter dispute, so another argument had been successfully avoided. He was sure she would keep it safely wrapped up warm, ready to open at their next encounter and use as ammunition against him.

             
Kate was silent. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said eventually. She could almost feel his disappointment through the phone line. She pushed her head back against the seat and watched a group of schoolboys who should have been in class idly passing a cigarette between them as they sat waiting at the bus stop across the road.

‘I don’t mean to take it out on you. I just know that something’s not right, Chris. They’re liars, the pair of them.’

              ‘Who?’

             
‘Dawn Reed and Nathan Williams.’

             
‘Kate,’ Chris tried to reason calmly, running a hand through his light brown hair. ‘Don’t go making any accusations. You’ve got no proof. I don’t want to see you repeat mistakes.’

             
Five years earlier Kate had been immersed in the case of a missing three year old boy. She had become so deeply involved in the investigation that it had become a kind of obsession. She had suspected the boy’s mother of concealing evidence and, rather than going about things ‘by the book’ she had taken matters into her own hands. She had been wrong and it had almost cost Kate her career.

Since then it had felt as though no one trusted her. Sometimes not even Chris. Kate always felt as though she was being watched; as if every decision she made was questioned and needed to be run past a whole string of superiors before she was allowed to act on it. No wonder she sometimes went against the rules.
Her professionalism was constantly under doubt and her creativity – the ability to read situations sideways and see things that others were blind to – was gradually being drained from her. She was being suffocated. 

             
Perhaps now wasn’t the time to confess to Chris that she had waited outside Dawn Reed’s house that morning and accosted Nathan Williams in a lane at the back of the housing estate. She didn’t miss much, so the fact that Nathan’s sly little eyes had followed hers when she’d scanned the kitchen hadn’t escaped her. He knew what she’d seen and he’d had enough time to get rid of it before officers had turned up with a search warrant only hours later. The smug little shit wouldn’t admit it, but then she’d have been a fool to have expected him to just hand her a confession so easily.