Ready or Not (26 page)

             
He knew things about her that only Chris and Stuart knew. She’d allowed him to know too much about her and it was all down to her impulsive stupidity. She trusted people when she shouldn’t. Even now, after all these years in the police and all the bastards she had met during that time, she still made the mistake of thinking the best of people. She still thought that possibly, beneath it all, people were inherently good.

             
Of course, she knew, they weren’t. Allowing Neil to get so close to her had been stupid and unprofessional and as she sat in the Evans’ kitchen holding her throbbing temples in her hands Kate began to realise the seriousness of her situation.

             
Why would Neil have told her Ben was missing if he knew all along where his son was? He had asked her to help him – had treated her as though she was the only person who would possibly be able to find his son – when all the time he knew where Ben was, and must have realised that it would be almost impossible to find him if his aunt had been hiding him. After all, Claire had lied to the police when she’d been asked if she’d heard from Ben. Why would she do that? Why would she protect her brother-in-law in that way, especially if she was as close to her nephew as Sophie claimed?

             
None of it made sense. Kate couldn’t understand why anyone would waste her time in that way; although it would explain why he had seemed almost certain that his son would be found safe. Of course he was certain. He knew. What sort of a father was he? What sort of man was he?

             
Kate’s longing to see her own father was almost unbearable. She would lie half awake sometimes imagining she had heard him calling her from across the landing; then she would wake properly, adjust herself to the darkness and realise that there was no landing: she wasn’t in the house in which she had grown up and her father wasn’t there, not any more. She would never again hear him call her name.

             
Time was supposed to ease these feelings, but time was the one thing that made them all worse, she thought. Every day that passed gave her yet more time to contemplate what had happened to her family; more time to think about all the mistakes she had made, and all the words that had been left unspoken. Time, and age, gave her more opportunity to consider the words she had heard spoken by her parents all those years ago; the arguments that they had mistakenly assumed her young ears were deaf to.

             
It would be just the same for Sophie, Kate thought.

             
Last night, over drinks with Neil, she had spoken about her mother with bitterness. She had left Kate when she had most needed her; when she was just a fourteen year old child with no other female influence in her life. In reality, she had left long before that, lost in the bottom of a vodka bottle. A bottle of pills and a litre of vodka had been her chosen goodbye.

             
Suicide was the coward’s way out. Kate had tried for years, but couldn’t bring herself to forgive her mother for taking a route neither she nor her father could follow. They had needed her, both of them, but she had done what was best for her. Or what she must have believed was best, at least. The selfish way out. Yes, she had lost her son. But she still had a daughter who was very much alive, very much present, and needed her mother more than anyone.

             
Yesterday, Kate had spoken about her mother with hate. Today, she felt as guilty as hell for feeling that way towards her. The bitterness she had displayed was like bile in the back of her throat, choking her with its sour aftertaste.

             
But she knew what she had heard. Knew, but still couldn’t make sense of it even now.

             
When her mother died, Kate hadn’t been taken from her father. No one from social services came by the house, prying into her family’s business or questioning her father’s capabilities as a parent. What was the difference between their situation and the Davies family’s then? Nothing of what Sophie had said explained why she and Ben had been taken from their father. People had affairs every day of the week; it didn’t make it right, but they didn’t have their kids taken away from them as a result of it.  

*

When Sophie came back into the room she was carrying a slip of paper on which she’d written Claire Morgan’s phone number. Kate dialled the number from the pay-as-you-go mobile she usually kept in the bottom drawer back at the station, just in case, while Sophie sat opposite her. She had picked up her book again and turned to the bookmarked page, but Kate could see from the corner of her eye that the book was just a prop that the girl had no intention of reading and she was instead waiting for her aunt to answer the call.

             
Ben was safe and well at Claire’s house. She apologised profusely for not informing the foster parents of Ben’s whereabouts and for lying to the police, as if an apology was going to counterbalance the worry she had caused and the fact that she had wasted days of police time and resources. Claire was quick to emphasise the fact that she had only respected her nephew’s wishes when he had said he didn’t want to go back home, but she was the adult, Kate told her: she should have been the one deciding what was best for him, and what was best for him was to be where everyone knew that he was safe and well.

             
Kate’s impatience was not subtle and she had the feeling her words were being wasted on the woman. She told Claire that she had wasted police time and had caused the foster family an unnecessary amount of worry, but this was again received with a pointless, weak apology. Claire said she would get Ben back to Pontypridd the following morning. She asked if she would be arrested, but Kate couldn’t think about that now. She had bigger things to consider.

             
There was more that Kate needed to know. She looked at Sophie, who quickly turned her eyes back to her book. Kate went out into the hall to continue her conversation. She was gone for three or four minutes, during which Sophie tried to listen at the door.

             
‘I’ll let his foster parents know now,’ Kate told Claire as she came back into the kitchen, ‘but please make sure you get Ben to call them too.’

             
‘Yes,’ Claire said, ‘of course.’

             
Kate was just about to end the call when Claire asked suddenly where she had got her number.

             
‘Sophie,’ Kate told her.

             
There was silence at the other end of the line and for a moment Kate had thought Claire had lost the signal.

             
‘Hello?’

             
‘Sorry,’ Claire said, still there. ‘Please give her my love, won’t you?’

             
Kate finished her conversation in the hall before returning to the kitchen and Sophie. ‘She sends her love,’ Kate said, putting her mobile back into her bag.

             
Sophie snorted and turned her tear-stained face away. ‘She can stuff her love,’ she said.

             
Kate took her seat opposite the girl. ‘Why were you and Ben taken from your father, Sophie?’

             
Sophie put her book down and sighed. ‘Ask social services,’ she said. Her mouth pressed into a hard line and the attitude was back.

             
‘I’m asking you.’

             
The girl’s defences had been set high, but Kate could sense them slowly crumbling, despite the guarded shifty looks and the hard set, pouting mouth. She would give her time; let her speak when she was ready to.

             
‘He couldn’t cope with us,’ she eventually said. ‘He didn’t want us there. It was like we were invisible. Sometimes, he wouldn’t speak to me at all. I mean, for like days on end. It was like we were in his way. We were invisible to him.’

             
She pulled at a clump of hair that had come loose from the band at the back of her head and distractedly peeled a split end.

             
‘He started drinking,’ she continued. ‘I was practically bringing Ben up for a while. He was too young to do stuff for himself, you know? So I was washing his school uniform, making his dinner. The drinking just got worse, and that was when everything went wrong really, or at least got a lot worse, if you know what I mean.’

             
Kate studied the girl and thought her far older than her years. She spoke with the tired acceptance of someone who’d lived a life of hardship, not a fifteen year old whose biggest worry should have been what she was going to wear out that evening.

             
She thought of her own mother; of the states she had seen her in as a result of alcohol. In the end, in the months leading up to her suicide, she had been barely recognisable as the woman Kate remembered from her childhood, before Daniel had been taken from them.

             
‘What was he like before, Sophie?’

             
‘Before?’

             
‘Before your mother died.’

             
She shrugged and dropped her hair on her shoulder. ‘He worked a lot. He always seemed separate from us, somehow. I dunno,’ she said, ‘Like there was somewhere else he’d rather be, I suppose. It was like he was looking for something. He spent a lot more time working than he did with us. He was always at his bloody computer, or at some work meeting, or away on some business trip. I was never really close to him. I was always closer to mum.’

             
‘And what about Ben?’

             
‘The same. He was always closer to mum.’

             
‘If you knew your father was having an affair, why did you never tell your mum?’

             
Sophie chewed anxiously on her lower lip and stared at the table. ‘I was going to,’ she said. ‘I kept building up the courage to tell her and then I just couldn’t do it. I didn’t want them to get a divorce, no matter how much he pissed me off sometimes. He made her happy somehow. She always looked so happy, you know?’

             
Kate thought about what Claire had just told her on the phone.

             
‘Were your parents close, Sophie? What were they like together?’

             
The shutters slammed closed again and Sophie glared at her defensively again. ‘Why are you asking me all these questions?’ she said. ‘You were looking for Ben. You’ve found him. You can go now.’

             
Kate wasn’t ready to go. ‘I just…’ She hesitated, not knowing how to explain herself. What would she say to Sophie? How could she suitably explain her unusual interest in the girl’s father? She could hardly tell her that she had as good as dated him and wanted to know what she had almost let herself in for.

             
‘I said you can go now,’ Sophie repeated.

Thirty Six

PC Matthew Curtis had sat through ninety long minutes of CCTV footage from Candy’s. He had only been to a strip club once, when he was seventeen, and it had been one of the most embarrassing experiences of his adolescence. His mates had paid for a dance and watched and laughed as he had turned practically purple, when a stripper gyrated just inches from his face.

             
‘Chill out, little boy,’ the girl had said to him, as hard as the floor she danced on.

             
He needed to toughen up, he knew. He’d managed it, early on; he’d done a good job at proving that he had what it took to cut it as a police officer. He managed to switch off: he didn’t let things get to him. He hadn’t meant them to, but the edges were fraying now, and he was sure that people he worked with had begun to notice it.              

*

He spotted Joseph Ryan first. He appeared in the corner of the screen, ordering a drink from the bar. Overly confident, a swagger in his step, he flirted openly with the girl who served his drink then turned to lean with his back to the bar, leisurely surveying his surroundings. He was, Matthew supposed, handsome: dark hair, darker eyes and an athletic, toned physique. His eyes scanned the room, looking over the women as though considering a purchase.

             
When Joseph moved again and stepped further into the picture another man appeared closely behind him. Early thirties, dark hair, athletic build again; another one for the ladies by the looks of him. Adam.

             
Matthew sat back and watched the figure cross the frame. He skipped the tape forward and pressed pause when he found the best shot of the mysterious Adam. A strange expression crossed his face. He would have to tell the boss. He left the room, stuck his head in next door and called for Chris.

             
‘Come and look at this, boss,’ Matthew said.

             
He stood behind Chris as he studied the image on the screen. He’d done his job, but didn’t feel particularly pleased with himself or confident about what was yet to come. He sat back in his seat and aimlessly shuffled some papers.