Ready or Not (12 page)

             
Kate had to keep her focus on Stacey Reed. She had already decided to watch again the television appeal made by Dawn Reed and Nathan Williams, as well as the CCTV recordings of Taff Street, the main street of Pontypridd, on the day Stacey had gone missing.

             
On her way home the previous evening she visited the home of Ben Davies’ school friend. Neither he nor his mother had seen or heard anything from Ben. Kate was sure that the boy was telling the truth and the visit had only served as confirmation that Ben hadn’t run away; or at least, if he had, things hadn’t gone to plan. She could only hope and pray that the boy wasn’t with anyone who might cause him harm.

             
Once again, a child had gone missing. Sometimes, it seemed to Kate, they just vanished as though they had never existed at all. It was only the memory of them that kept them alive, and the people who refused to push those memories into oblivion.

             
Neil Davies had called at the station again that morning. He had brought his late wife’s address book, although Kate suspected it would be of little use considering it was over six years old. However, he seemed keen to be of whatever help he could and she had promised she would check through it, contact anyone who may have information about Ben’s whereabouts and let him know if she made any further progress.

             
Kate still hoped that Ben’s disappearance was a deliberate cry for help. There was no reason to connect it to any other case, but Kate had yet to admit to Neil Davies that the more days that passed, the more likely the chances that something bad had happened to his son. It particularly concerned Kate that the weekend was fast approaching and that, if Ben was in any danger, the risks were only likely to have increased. The weekends brought out the drunks and the idiots. Wherever Ben was, nowhere could be as safe as back home with the Jennings.

             
Neil told her how, a year following his mother’s death, when Ben was just ten years old, he had disappeared for an entire day and eventually been found in the grounds of a disused warehouse on the other side of town. It was a cry for help and for attention: Ben had clearly wanted to be discovered, as he had left his bike on the main road in full view of any passing cars. 

             
Although frustrating when a child wasted police time in this way, it was always a relief when a disappearance was intentional and nothing more sinister. Though she had no children of her own, Kate more than understood the anger that would greet a missing child when they returned from an intentional absence. It was a parent’s natural reaction; an outburst of relief at the realisation that the worst, though feared, had been avoided.

             
In ninety percent of cases a missing child turned up within the first forty-eight hours. It was the ten percent of cases that kept Kate in her job. Sometimes she felt she could quite happily quit altogether: get a normal, everyday admin job, where her work stayed at work and her personal life - she thought she just about remembered it - was actually her own. She would be a normal person again; a normal woman with spare time, hobbies – maybe even a love life. Who was she kidding? She knew she wouldn’t change.

             
Ben Davies hadn’t run away. Where were the signs this time that would lead someone to him? He’d left his bike in full view of passing cars last time, but this time had disappeared completely leaving no clues to his whereabouts. He hadn’t been planning to go anywhere, Kate suspected.

             
Stacey Reed still looked down at her from the office wall, the girl’s innocent wide eyes watching over Kate as she worked. A photo of Ben, smiling proudly on his new bike, hung next to her. The children’s faces were enough to keep Kate going. The face of Stacey Reed had become her guardian angel, Kate thought; watching over her, keeping her in check. But where was Stacey’s guardian angel? Where was Ben’s? Who was watching over and protecting them?

*

Kate couldn’t explain why, but the connection she felt with Neil Davies had been there again that morning. It was against the better judgement she hoped she was in possession of, but she felt at ease in his presence and relaxed in his company despite the fact that, Chris excluded, she hadn’t felt that way in a man’s company for a long time. Sitting in the station that morning, Neil Davies had made her feel capable; successful, almost. He was confident that she – no one else – would locate his son’s whereabouts and would return him home safely to his foster family. Neil – a total stranger – had made her feel she was worth something. He had a faith in her that most others seemed to lack.

             
It was this feeling that had restored her resolve in the Stacey Reed case. Though no one else on the case seemed prepared to consider her theories, she knew that Dawn Reed and Nathan Williams had been lying to the police and she suspected they both knew where Stacey was and – Kate shuddered at the thought – whether the little girl, their daughter, was dead or alive. All she had to do was prove it.

             
In Kate’s mind, the case was a rewrite of a recent story that had made national news. A little girl had been abducted by members of her own family and hidden whilst her parents fronted a community search and made a variety of public appeals for her safe return. They had hoped to claim tens of thousands of pounds in reward money offered by national newspapers, but their plot had been uncovered before they’d had any chance to get their hands on the cash. They now had plenty of time on their hands in prison to figure out where they went wrong. Idiots.

             
Surely Dawn Reed and Nathan Williams were not so stupid as to expect to succeed where that couple had failed?

             
The television appeal made by Dawn and Nathan was saved as a file on Kate’s computer. She loaded it now and watched as the mother and her partner lied and performed their way through the appeal. Dawn Reed played the grieving mother perfectly. Her mascara streaked her cheeks as she pleaded with viewers to contact police with something, anything that may bring their daughter safely home to them.

             
Kate replayed the tape from the beginning. She paused at key moments, studying Dawn Reed’s expressions and gestures: the way her head hung loosely to one side and her collar bones protruded painfully from beneath her thin cotton shirt. Her tears were silent and rolled down her cheeks as she spoke. Her words were hesitant, unrehearsed, and she looked to the media circus behind the camera with a confused expression of fear and bewilderment.

             
Kate leaned back in her chair. Dawn’s face, frozen on the screen, was too wracked with suffering to be anything but genuine. She was no body language expert, but it all seemed too perfect to Kate to be a performance; too realistic and heartfelt to be an act. Kate began to wonder if she could be mistaken about Dawn.

             
Nathan Williams stayed silent by her side, his greasy head hanging low for the majority of the appeal. He looked up occasionally, taking furtive glances at the reporters behind the cameras. At one point, he took Dawn’s hand in his and held it there on the table for all to see what a loyal and supportive partner he was. Bullshit, Kate thought. He was sweating profusely and there was no way on earth it was all due to the glare of the overhead lights and flashbulbs.

             
Dawn cried at the end of the appeal, when she spoke directly to her missing daughter.

             
‘Stacey, if you’re watching this, we just want you to know that we love you and miss you very, very much. Try to be brave, sweetheart.’

             
She was followed by the TV announcer reminding viewers that a local businessman was offering a £5,000 reward for information leading to Stacey’s recovery.

             
At the time, Kate had felt sorry for Dawn. In the weeks following Stacey’s disappearance Dawn Reed had lost a considerable amount of weight and looked increasingly drawn and tired, as though she was missing sleep for nights on end. She would ring Kate frequently, on the off chance that someone had contacted the station with news of her daughter. Weeks later, it seemed to Kate that the performance had been unsustainable, if what she had witnessed in Dawn Reed’s living room on Tuesday evening was anything to go by.

             
Or was it unreasonable of her to assume that Dawn might be involved in Stacey’s disappearance just because Kate had seen her eating a take away and drinking wine? Were a take away and alcohol fair indicators that a mother was no longer concerned about her daughter’s whereabouts, or was Kate being too judgemental, too unforgiving? Surely the woman had a right to eat without Kate thinking her a bad, uncaring mother? Didn’t Dawn Reed have to get on with her life as best she could, or should it stop completely until her daughter was returned to her?

             
Sometimes it felt to Kate as though her own life was on hold.

             
Kate got a coffee from the machine in the corridor, and, for once, it surrendered a cup without a fight. She took it into the next room, where the TV and recording equipment were set up. The December 12
th
CCTV footage from the cameras on Taff Street was still stacked in a pile of discs on the desk, the team having already trawled through them in turn, each hoping to see some clue to Stacey’s whereabouts; each being offered nothing.

             
Kate feared that nothing new would be found from sitting through the hours of footage yet again, but she was determined to give it one final go. It was either that or go back to her office and sit beneath the gaze of Stacey, the innocent eyes telling her that she had failed her. If she gave up now she would never forgive herself, let alone be able to expect the forgiveness of anyone else.

             
The last anyone had seen of the girl on the tapes was Stacey and her mother standing beside a man dressed in a badly fitting Father Christmas outfit. Nathan Williams was with them, standing slightly away from them and puffing on a cigarette, looking every inch his greasy, suspicious self. Dawn Reed could be seen handing money over to the man at the stall, who then gave Stacey a stocking: the stocking with the snowman on it that a couple of shoppers had recalled seeing her with.

             
Would they have noticed the child if she hadn’t been so cute; so unusual looking, with her wonky haircut? It was a fickle, superficial world and Kate realised that, had Stacey looked otherwise, she may have gone unnoticed. But who could have seen such a cute little girl grasping her Santa stocking and not smiled at her; not remembered her?

             
And who could possibly want to do anything to cause her harm?

             
The last footage of the couple, on the disc at the bottom of the pile, was recorded at the far end of Taff Street: a panicked Dawn Reed embroiled in an altercation with Nathan Williams. She stood in front of him, her hands gripping the sleeves of his hooded top, and he pulled away, looking either side of him, back down Taff Street and across the road to the junction that led out of town. He pulled himself away from her brusquely; said something that Kate was unable to lip read.

             
Stacey wasn’t with them.

             
In between the two recordings: nothing.

*

Two hours passed: it was twenty to one. Kate had just finished her fourth coffee and seventh biscuit and was suffering from caffeine overdose and a sugar rush, feeling bleary eyed yet at the same time alert. She pinched the excess inches of her belly and wondered how anyone could do this for a living, stuck in a cramped office with nothing more than a swivel seat and a TV screen, spending hours on end staring at the little lit box and hoping for something even remotely interesting to happen. Perhaps security guards secretly longed for shoplifters. A decent street fight probably constituted a good day at the office. Anything to lift the boredom and pass the time.

             
And no wonder they got so fat, she thought as she stared at the half consumed packet of biscuits on the desk.

             
During the past half hour she had become aware of a car that had been parked on Taff Street for a lot longer than any other vehicle. There was a one hour limit on the main shopping street and there were usually traffic wardens patrolling at least every two hours, but on the 12
th
December there seemed to have been a shortage of wardens policing the parking. Two weeks before Christmas: bang in the middle of the busiest shopping period of the year. She’d have expected town to have been swarming with traffic wardens.

             
She ran back through the tape and saw that the car had been parked at the road side for over two hours. Yet in that time, no one had entered or exited the vehicle. How had everyone who’d sat through the tapes not noticed the vehicle before, and the fact that it had remained stationary for such a long period of time? How had everyone managed to overlook something that was so obviously suspicious? How had she missed it?

             
Perhaps they’d all been too busy stuffing their faces with tea and biscuits.

             
Kate ran the tape forward until the car moved. It pulled off the main shopping street and onto a side road: a rarely used lane on which Kate knew there were no security cameras. Shoppers passed the entrance to the lane in double speed and a stream of other vehicles passed down the main road. Within minutes the car reappeared on the main street before driving away out of view.