Just Keep Breathing

by GS Rhodes

  He opened the internet browser, immediately clicking on the history. There was one place she visited more than most. ThisIsMyHeaven. It was a Tumblr, whatever the hell that was, stark white with pale grey writing on it. He saw the initial D and J in a block of text that seemed to go on forever.

  Then the screen went black.

  He tried to switch it on again, now greeted with an empty battery icon.

  “Shit,” he muttered.

  “Can I help you?”

  DI Kidd froze. Busted.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  He closed the desk drawer, slipping the phone up the sleeve in his jacket out of sight. He turned around slowly to see PC Clara McCulloch stood in the door frame. They had worked together on a previous missing persons case some years ago. She was tall, dark-skinned, fairly well built, and staring daggers at DI Kidd. Her jacket was still zipped up like she’d just come in from the cold. Perhaps she had and Kidd had been too distracted to hear the door open and shut in the hall, to hear her footsteps on the stairs.

  “Afternoon, Clara,” he said, straightening up and looking her square in the eye. The only way he was going to get through this was with some blind confidence, maybe a little blagging. “I didn’t know you were on this case, how have you been?”

  “I’ve been better,” she said flatly. “You here for—?”

  “To discuss Sarah with her parents, yes,” he said.

  She eyed him carefully. “And what were you doing in Sarah’s bedroom?” she asked.

  “Looking for the bathroom,” DI Kidd said, keeping his voice level, staying cool. He knew he’d been caught out here. They would have had a warrant for the search last night, but that didn’t mean he could just wander into rooms in the house and start rummaging through drawers. This was the kind of mistake that could get him in trouble if he didn’t play this right. “What about you?”

  “Was coming to the bathroom myself. I just got here,” Claire said, flashing him a smile. “Just a quick visit to make sure Mrs Harper is doing okay.”

  “I don’t think she is.”

  “Neither do I,” Claire replied. “But she certainly manages to put a brave face on it most of the time, don’t you think?”

  “I’ve only just met her,” Kidd said. “Well, I knew her about twenty years ago, but I hardly think that counts.”

  “No,” she said. “Did they sign another search book?” she added quickly.

  “Not exactly,” Kidd said. “Like I said, I was looking for the bathroom.”

  She stepped out of the doorframe and pointed down the hallway to where Kidd already knew the bathroom was. “It’s just there.”

  “You’re more than welcome to go first,” Kidd said.

  “You were looking,” she said. “I don’t want you to get any more lost than you already are.” She knew what he’d been doing, snooping, looking for answers to questions he hadn’t had the opportunity to ask. But she wasn’t about to call him out on it.

  “Thank you,” he said. “You’re very kind.”

  He walked out of Sarah’s bedroom, sliding past PC McCulloch and towards the open door of the bathroom.

  “They’ve already done a search of the room,” PC McCulloch said quietly. “It’s the first thing they do, you know that.”

  “They didn’t find anything,” Kidd said. “Looks like they ransacked the place.”

  “And did you?”

  “Did I what?”

  “Find anything,” PC McCulloch asked.

  DI Kidd smiled at her. He turned and pointed to the bathroom. “I found exactly what I was looking for.”

  He stepped inside, closing the door behind him before PC McCulloch could ask him any more questions. He took the phone from his sleeve and put it in his jacket pocket. He’d been looking, but as far as she knew, he’d not taken anything. She couldn’t prove it. The only thing now was that there was an old phone burning a hole in his pocket and he wanted to fire it up and see what was on it.

  He relieved himself, washed his hands, and left the room to find PC McCulloch still waiting for him to appear. No chance he was getting back into Sarah’s room just now. Little did she know he might have already found what he was looking for. He nodded at her on the way past and headed downstairs once again, snapping pictures of the photos on the stairs as he passed, just in case there was anything in them that they could use.

  DI Kidd walked down the hallway towards where the sound of clinking could be heard. DS Sanchez was sitting at the breakfast bar in the kitchen, the cold, white light from the garden making everything looking a little washed out. She eyed him carefully as he walked in. Laura was on her feet, shuffling around, getting mugs out of the cupboard while the kettle boiled on the stove.

  Kidd did a double-take. She was using a vintage-looking metal kettle on the stove.

  Each to their own, he thought.

  “Sorry,” Kidd said as he reappeared. “Took me a minute to find it.”

  Laura turned around from the cupboard, three pastel pink mugs balanced on the ends of her fingers. She was smiling, though it seemed a little strained. “No problem,” she said. “DS Sanchez and I were just talking. Did you bump into PC McCulloch on your way down?”

  “Yes,” DI Kidd said. “She gave me quite a fright. Wasn’t expecting to see another one of ours here today.”

  Laura laughed. “She’s been awfully good to us,” she said. “Always making sure everything is alright, asking if we’ve had any contact with Sarah, if we remember anything that might have…” she trailed off. “I suppose we’ll come to that in a moment, won’t we?”

  The kettle whistled aggressively behind her. She poured the tea and brought it over to the breakfast bar, sitting across from them. She wrapped her hands around the mug, her nails a little chipped, the only thing about her that maybe wasn’t quite as put together as the rest of the house. Her knuckles were white with the ferocity with which she held the cup, like it was a lifeline. He could tell that she’d already prepared herself for the worst. Maybe she was already grieving in her head.

  “So,” she said softly. “Where do you want to start?”

  Kidd cleared his throat. “Is your husband here at all?” he asked. “It would be useful if—”

  “He’s at work,” Laura interrupted. “The world hasn’t stopped for him like it has for me. He still gets up every day at five o’clock, heads down to the office, does his day’s work, and returns sometime around seven.” She looked up at the two of them, her eyes looking a little misty. “Not that I mind, of course, it’s keeping a roof over our heads.”

  “Maybe that’s just his way of coping with it,” Zoe said. “Everyone deals with things like this differently.”

  “Very true,” Laura whispered, taking a sip of her tea. She winced at how hot it was, chuckling a little before returning her mug to the breakfast bar. “What do you want to ask me?”

  “It really would be great if we could talk to your husband at some point,” Kidd said. “I know he’s a busy man but—”

  “Well, he’s trying to keep the business afloat,” Laura said, nodding. “But I can give you the number of the office and I am sure he would be more than happy to set something up. He wants her found as much as I do.”

  “Has the business been struggling?” Kidd asked.

  “There were layoffs,” Laura said. “He had to make some very difficult decisions, stop some of the properties he was building mid-build, fire people who we were close to.”

  “Are you not close with them anymore?”

  She blinked. “What’s that?”

  “You said ‘were’, Mrs Harper,” Kidd said. “Have your relationships changed?”

  “I don’t see what that has to do with anything.”

  “I’m only thinking out loud, Mrs Harper—”

  “Call me Laura.”

  “Laura, then,” Kidd said. “I’m only thinking out loud. If your husband has made layoffs recently, upset people, it is possible there could be a connection to Sarah’s di
sappearance.”

  “Like revenge?” she whispered.

  Kidd had seen it happen many times before. People get low, people get desperate, and it makes them do desperate things. Of course, at this stage there likely would have been a ransom note, some demands that needed to be met, so it was pretty low on his expectation list but he wanted to cover as many bases as possible here.

  “It’s possible, Laura,” DI Kidd said. “I’m not trying to upset you, I’m just trying to build a picture.” She nodded, so he continued. “Could you give us a list of those people? It might be useful and it would give us places to look, just in case.”

  She nodded again. “I can ask Chris when he comes home. Chris, that’s my husband,” she added quickly. “Anything else?”

  “What was Sarah’s mental state like last week. It might give us some clue as to what might have happened.”

  “You think she might have run away rather than been kidnapped?” Laura asked, perking up suddenly. “Why would she do something like that?”

  “We’re keeping our options open,” Kidd said.

  “Well you just asked me about enemies, I thought that—”

  “Her headteacher mentioned that Sarah would often do little disappearing acts from school,” Kidd interrupted. “Wouldn’t show up for a day or two at a time, usually when something happened in her personal life or at school.”

  “She got sick sometimes,” Laura said, sitting up a little taller, affronted at the suggestion that Sarah was faking it. “The school worried about her attendance but if my daughter says that she’s sick, then I’m not about to send her to school to infect other people or so that she’s there feeling terrible for the whole day. What kind of parent would that make me?”

  Laura returned to her cup, her hands shaking a little.

  “We’re not judging you, Mrs Harper,” DS Sanchez said. “We’re just trying to get an idea as to what Sarah might have been going through up to her disappearance.”

  “She seemed perfectly normal,” Laura said. “No more upset than she normally was. We saw her on Friday morning, just like we usually do, and then we just…we didn’t see her again. I thought she would be with a friend, she did that sometimes, but even checking her social media she hadn’t been anywhere that we could see. Nothing had been updated.”

  “You check her social media?”

  Laura nodded. “Of course,” she said. “We know all of her accounts just so we can check up on her if we need to. And sometimes her messages.” She looked at DI Kidd and DS Sanchez, doubling down as she caught whatever look was on their faces. “It’s not spying,” she insisted. Kidd got the impression she’d had this conversation before. “It’s just parenting. With all these new social media outlets, we have to be more aware of what our children are up to than ever before. That’s why.”

  DI Kidd wondered if it was also because Laura herself had a brand that she needed to uphold. If people were following both of them, surely anything Sarah did or said would reflect on her mother. Which might explain the website on the phone, giving her a place where she could express things she couldn’t express publicly.

  “So, Mrs Harper,” DS Sanchez started. “It would appear that Sarah was having a bit of a tough week at school. Some secrets that she had were plastered all over the internet and shared around.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “From what we can gather, Sarah was cheating on her boyfriend Dexter with a different boy, Jonno,” she continued, though DI Kidd noticed the face that Laura made when Zoe mentioned Dexter. A flash of disgust. “And someone took photos and posted them online.”

  “Why would someone do something like that?”

  “That, we don’t know yet,” Zoe replied. “But with everything that was happening at school for Sarah last week, did she show any indication that she was upset?”

  Laura shook her head, tears filling her eyes. It barely took a moment before they were furiously cascading down her face. But she wasn’t sobbing, she was just letting them fall, like she had simply turned on a tap.

  “So you think it’s more likely she’s run away?” Laura replied. “Or could it be worse than that?” She choked on the last few words, her hand flying to her mouth as she tried to hold back the flood of emotions roiling just under the surface. “Could she have...? You don’t think she’s…?” She took a breath, composing herself, locking eyes with Kidd as she asked. “Do you think she might have taken her own life?”

  “There’s no indication of that,” DI Kidd said flatly. “Sarah might have been in a fragile state of mind, but at the moment there’s nothing to suggest that’s what happened. We just want to find her. And we’re doing our best, Laura, it just might take some time.”

  “She has to be okay, Ben,” Laura said, her voice catching on practically every word. “She just has to be, I don’t know what I’d do without her.” And that was what it took for her to break down, sobs coming in heaving waves.

  PC McCulloch, who’d been watching from the door, approached and started speaking softly to Laura, reassuring her that things were going to be alright, calming her down. Kidd wondered just how many times she’d had to do this since she got here.

  “One last question, and then we’ll be on our way,” Kidd said. PC McCulloch looked up at him sharply. She didn’t want him to ask any more questions, but he needed to know. “What were your feelings about Dexter Black?”

  The sniffing stopped almost immediately, the crying quickly giving way to a stern expression that caught Kidd a little bit off guard.

  “I didn’t like him,” she said bluntly.

  “Why?”

  “Why?” she repeated. “You’re the investigating officer, DI Kidd, you don’t need me to tell you what a terrible influence that boy is.”

  “I think I do,” DI Kidd replied. “If nothing else, I’d like to hear your opinion.”

  Laura Harper took a few steadying breaths, brushing PC McCulloch away. She was staring daggers at Kidd again. Maybe this was a topic they’d already covered.

  “I think he is a bad influence,” she said flatly. “I think if anyone is responsible for her running away or for leading her astray, it’s that boy. She drops everything for him, always with him if she can be,” she said. “Though, maybe she was with that other boy, I don’t know. Have you interviewed Dexter? Have you? Have you arrested him yet?”

  “Mrs Harper, please calm down,” PC McCulloch said. “There’s no use getting yourself all upset.”

  “Don’t tell me to calm down,” Laura barked. “That boy is a menace. And if you really gave a shit about finding my daughter you’d be talking to him, not coming here and upsetting me, her mother, a woman who fucking misses her daughter, alright?” And that was the last thing she said before she broke down in tears, putting her head on the breakfast bar and sobbing.

  DS Sanchez turned to DI Kidd, moving her eyes towards the door. She was right. They’d probably gotten all they could out of Mrs Harper at this stage, and besides that, Kidd had a website in his pocket that he was desperate to look at, desperate to share with Zoe.

  He took his phone out of his pocket and found a string of angry messages peppered with a lot of colourful language from DCI Weaver asking him where he was. They would have to visit Dexter Black later. It looked like it was time for the press conference, where Kidd would say what? They were looking into it? He hated this part. Feeding the vultures.

  “Mrs Harper, we’d best be going,” Kidd said, quickly downing his cup of tea before getting to his feet. “You’ve been very helpful and we will keep you updated as this develops.”

  “Just bring her back to me,” Laura said, looking up at Kidd, tears running down her face, pulling her mascara with it so that black rivers ran to her jawline. “Please. I know I shouldn’t beg, I know, but I am begging you, please bring her back to me.”

  “We’re doing our best, Mrs Harper,” DS Sanchez said, joining Kidd in standing. “We’ll see ourselves out.”

  “Thank y
ou, Laura. PC McCulloch.” DI Kidd nodded to the PC before he started towards the front door, DS Sanchez on his tail. He opened the door and stepped out onto the driveway, practically marching away from the situation. DS Sanchez jogged a little to catch up.

  “Someone’s in a hurry,” Zoe said. “What’s happening?”

  “Just hoping that PC McCulloch isn’t following us, that’s all,” he said.

  DS Sanchez took a heavy breath. “Why? What have you done?”

  As they turned the corner, DI Kidd reached into his pocket and pulled out the phone. DS Sanchez jaw hit the floor.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  “You must be out of your mind,” DS Sanchez growled as they got back into the car. Kidd had explained going into Sarah’s room, looking through her things, finding the phone, and then the website. And PC McCulloch catching him. “Do you know how much trouble you could get in for doing that?”

  “Yes,” he said. “But the door was open and I couldn’t help myself.”

  “You absolutely could have helped yourself, Ben.” Sanchez groaned. “You could have helped yourself from going in there and contaminating evidence.”

  “I didn’t contaminate a damn thing,” he said, pulling on his seatbelt. “They ransacked the room last night looking for something and found fuck all. I went in there and found something and if this ends up helping our investigation—”

  “Then you acquired it illegally and you’ve completely fucked it,” she barked.

  “It looked like a whole private blog, Zoe. I only read a little bit of it but it’s in code. Enough code that a google search isn’t going to make it pop up in the results. This could give us information on how she was feeling, what she was thinking, maybe even details on where she could be hiding. It could be the key to everything.”

  “Or it could get you fired.”

  Kidd sighed and leaned back in his seat. “Always going straight to the negative.”

  Zoe turned on the engine. “I’m trying to keep you grounded,” she said. “You can’t just go around doing whatever you like and thinking you’re going to get away with it. You’re not untouchable.”