She's Mine

by Claire S. Lewis

  Following receipt of this information, a land-and-sea search was carried out by British Leeward Isles Search and Rescue, the British Leeward Isles Police Force and members of the local community for several hours into the night. The search of coastal waters and the shoreline in the bay area resumed from 6 a.m. on Wednesday 17 June.

  Initial inquiries indicate that the child may have been swept out to sea on an inflatable air mattress. Police are appealing for witnesses. No body has been recovered. Investigations are ongoing.

  The four-year-old child is described as slim, white, approximately 102 cm tall and weighing approximately 16.5 kg, with blue eyes and medium-length wavy blonde hair. At the time of her disappearance she was wearing a pink-and-white striped swimsuit.

  Anyone who may have seen her or know of any information relating to her whereabouts is asked to call 999 or contact the Criminal Investigations Department via Police Access number 206.

  Christina turns away. ‘This can’t be happening’ she says. ‘I must be going mad.’

  I reach into the back pocket of my shorts for my phone and the tips of my fingers touch the earring. I hold out my hand to Christina.

  ‘I found this on the floor of the Jeep. I think it’s yours.’

  Christina hesitates for a second or two before taking the earring from my fingers.

  ‘Thank you,’ she says coldly. She puts the earring in her purse. ‘I’ve been looking for it everywhere. I’d have been gutted to lose it.’

  An awkward pause as she registers the irony, then, ‘What were you doing in Damien’s car?’ Christina gives me an icy look.

  ‘Oh, he gave me a lift.’ I say breezily. ‘I went out on the trail again searching for Katie. I woke up this morning tortured with the thought that she might be wandering about out there lost and alone.’ Christina’s lips quiver as she struggles to hold back her tears. ‘Damien drove past on his way back to the hotel and stopped to pick me up.’

  Fortunately my explanations are cut short when a police officer blusters up to us. I recognise him from yesterday. Today he’s in full regalia, all shining buttons and buckles, and bulging holster. He must be in his late twenties or early thirties, tall, well-built with strong features. His shirt is bright white against his tanned skin. His eyes are unusually blue. He nods at me briefly and addresses Christina.

  ‘Detective Sergeant Costa.’ He shakes her hand a little too firmly. ‘I am the officer in charge of this operation.’ He has a studied, self-conscious, self-important screen-shot-police-cop air about him – a caricature of the cops in the NYPD movies. I’ve come across his type before – vain and power-hungry.

  ‘Mrs Kennedy, thank you for coming in to the station. Come this way please.’

  ‘It’s Miss,’ she says, ‘Miss Kenedey, spelt K-E-N-E-D-E-Y.’

  He gestures to me. ‘Please come.’

  We follow him into a small, windowless side-room containing only a bare wooden table, three chairs and a large clock on the wall.

  ‘Please have a seat,’ says Costa, pointing to the chairs. ‘Can I fetch you some water? I will let the Commissioner know you are here.’ He leaves us on our own.

  ‘There’s no sense of urgency round here,’ says Christina. I hear the despair in her voice. Her eyes are glued to the old-fashioned clock on the wall, relentlessly ticking away the precious seconds. ‘We’re losing valuable time.’

  From her bereft, frozen expression, I can imagine something of how she must be feeling – betrayed, numb, helpless, at a complete loss about what to do next. I put my arm round her. None of the police officers seems to care very much about her plight, or to have a word to comfort her.

  She turns away.

  ‘Is there someone we should call?’ I say. ‘What about your family? Have you told your parents? You should call them. You need their support.’

  She must feel so very isolated and lonely with only me here by her side. And just the sight of me must make her sick. I’ve become a monster.

  ‘There’s no one. Please take your hands off me.’

  The stuffy interview room is separated from the control room by a dirty glass partition wall. Through the glass I can see desks and workstations equipped with primitive computers and phones. Stacks of papers and files accumulate on the floor and every work surface. Wastepaper bins overflow with cans and empty take-away boxes. A grey-haired officer munches a sandwich at his desk, taking occasional bites, as he answers the phone and scribbles notes onto a large pad of lined paper; a younger officer, who looks no more than a teenager, lies slumped in his chair with his feet up on the desk and his eyes closed. His desk is littered with empty plastic coffee cups. Just on the other side of the glass, a third officer, a woman in her mid-twenties sits at a screen, touch-typing with one hand, and balancing a cigarette in the other. I can’t help admiring her flawlessly polished purple nails. But if this is the hub of the search-and-rescue operation, it doesn’t inspire me with much confidence.

  My eyes gravitate to the wall and we sit in silence both watching the second hand, then the minute hand, turning. Seven minutes to four. Five to four. Eight minutes past four. Have we been completely forgotten?

  After what seems like an eternity, the door opens and Costa enters the room with the Commissioner. Christina leaps to her feet.

  ‘Have you found her? Have you got any news?’ she says breathlessly.

  ‘Ah, Miss Kenedey’ says the Commissioner, stressing the Miss (he’s been well briefed by Costa). He gestures for her to sit down. ‘Thank you for coming. I’d like to update you on what’s been happening today and to go over your statement,’ he says sternly. He turns to me. ‘And Miss Reyes’.’ He nods curtly.

  He starts the interview by repeating what we’ve already gleaned from the news in the waiting room. He assures us the search continues at sea and along the coast. Police boats are patrolling the shore. Tracker dogs are scouring the beaches. Divers are searching the waters close to the reef where the lilo was found.

  ‘Have you got the report about the lilo?’ says Christina. Her voice is shaking.

  ‘I’m expecting the marine forensic report back any minute,’ says the Commissioner. ‘It’s just a precaution, to eliminate this line of enquiry. Shark attack is most unlikely but we have to follow certain protocols when we have a victim at sea.’

  She winces at the word ‘victim’, causing the Commissioner to change his tone. He becomes fatherly, condescending, pats her arm.

  ‘Listen, my dear, we’re doing everything we can to find your daughter. We’ll find her. We’ll bring her back to you safe and well. You must be patient.’ His voice is calm and soothing but he avoids eye contact making me doubt his sincerity. He’s just trying to avoid a scene.

  They haven’t found a body, he tells Christina, and they haven’t given up hope of finding Katie alive. There are many small inlets and coves still being searched. She might have jumped off and made it to shore before the lilo floated out to sea. She could perhaps be taking shelter in one of the caves hidden in the coastal rock formations. She could have wandered some distance.

  Well I’m not taken in and Christina doesn’t appear to take comfort from his words either. Now she’s got her elbows on the table and her head in her hands. The Commissioner’s words ring hollow. Katie is dead, drowned. Swallowed up by the sea. It’s no use clinging on to false hopes. The police know it and we know it. I take a couple of sips of water and say nothing.

  I recall a grim statistic that caught my attention on the TV news coverage in the police station waiting area earlier on. Unusually, the British Leeward Isles has one of the highest drowning mortality rates in the world with over 20 per cent of deaths per year being recorded as such, most of them tourists. Despite this, the islands’ most popular beaches still don’t have lifeguards.

  Katie is dead, drowned. She’s become one of those statistics.

  *

  ‘Now Miss Kenedey, shall we begin?’ Christina looks up into the Commissioner’s impassive grey eyes.


  ‘Let’s take up where we left off yesterday…’

  He flips over a couple of pages of her statement until he gets to the part dealing with the hours before Katie was reported missing. Costa’s beside him, ready to take notes. He runs his hand through his hair. I can feel his eyes boring into me.

  ‘Can you remind us what time you last saw your daughter?’

  ‘I think it was about noon,’ says Christina.

  The Commissioner looks down at his papers. ‘But I see from the coast guard’s report that your daughter was reported missing at 5.03 p.m.? So where were you between noon and 5.03?’

  ‘The four of us left the pool bar around twelve o’clock.’ She gestures towards me. ‘Scarlett and Katie went down to the beach. I had lunch at the beach club with Damien.’ She shifts awkwardly in her chair. ‘We stayed there until about two o’clock and then went up to the hotel room for a siesta’. I see Costa raise an eyebrow as he writes down the word.

  ‘What did Scarlett and Katie do for lunch?’ I’m sitting right in front of him. But I might as well be invisible as far as the Commissioner’s concerned.

  ‘They ate at the beach. Scarlett took a picnic,’ says Christina. I nod in agreement. If you can call a cheese sandwich a picnic!

  ‘Ah, I see, so you had lunch with your boyfriend and then went upstairs with him to your room for an afternoon siesta?’ There’s a shade of sarcasm in his voice. Clearly he doesn’t believe they went up to the hotel room to sleep. Surely, he doesn’t expect her to provide all the graphic details? ‘And when your little girl went missing? Where were you? You need to tell us everything you can recall.’

  ‘I’m not sure. I don’t know exactly when she disappeared. As I told you, I was in my room all afternoon.’ Christina averts her eyes from the steely gaze of the Commissioner. ‘It’s all very hazy,’ she says, covering her face with her hands. ‘I slept until about four o’clock. When I woke the room was empty, with the curtains drawn. I called out to Damien but there was no reply. I thought he must have gone down to the beach. I remember falling back onto the pillows and lying there listening to the waves and watching the ceiling fan spinning overhead.’ For an instant, her voice is dreamy. ‘The strange thing was that although I had a searing headache, for those few brief moments I felt happier and more carefree than I had felt in years.’ She hesitates and coughs to clear her throat. ‘Then I took a long, cool shower, dried my hair and dressed for dinner before going down to meet Damien, Scarlett and Katie in the play area. Damien had sent me a text telling me to meet him there at five-thirty.’

  There’s something pre-prepared and rehearsed about her speech. She looks directly at the Commissioner. ‘It’s here on my phone.’ She scrolls through her messages and shows him the screen.

  Hello beautiful! Gone for a swim. Meeting the girls by the swings at half five. See you there darling xxx

  She points vaguely in my direction. ‘But they never turned up…’

  ‘That was a lie,’ I blurt out. ‘Damien lied. He told me they’d come to meet us at the beach.’

  The Commissioner silences me with a dismissive gesture but I see Costa writing something down.

  ‘What time did Damien leave your hotel room?’

  ‘I don’t know, he left while I was sleeping. It must have been between half-past two and four o’clock.’ She glances at her phone.

  There’s a pause, and all I can hear is Christina’s shallow breathing and the scratching of Costa’s pen on paper.

  This is so cruel. The Commissioner’s treating her more like a suspect than a witness. At the very least, his line of questioning is designed to set her up and shame her as an irresponsible, neglectful mother, who abandoned her child on the beach. Anything to distract from the incompetence of the local police! She’s getting the same treatment as me! She looks wretched – more than that, she looks humiliated. It can’t be easy going over the details of her tawdry affair.

  ‘Weren’t you concerned or angry with Damien when he didn’t turn up at the play area with Katie?’ asks the Commissioner.

  ‘I was annoyed that he had stood me up but I wasn’t concerned,’ says Christina. ‘Scarlett was supposed to be looking after Katie.’ She nods in my direction.

  Your only concern was to get to the bar for your first gin and tonic of the evening to kick off another night of romancing under the Caribbean stars! My thoughts feel uncharitable.

  ‘I remember noticing that the play area was unusually quiet,’ continues Christina, ‘There was just one little boy on the monkey bars with his mother watching him – and then the peace was broken by the helicopter circling overhead. But it was only when I walked into the hotel lobby and saw the hotel manager deep in conversation with two police officers that I realised something was wrong. When he saw me his jaw dropped. I was heading for the bar. He almost knocked me flying when he grabbed hold of me. He told me they’d been looking for me everywhere… that something dreadful had happened…’ She rubs the tops of her arms that still show the marks of bruising where his fingers had dug into her flesh. ‘I can’t see how any of this is relevant.’ She puts her head in her hands again and sighs.

  At that moment a movement in the control room attracts my attention through the glass. The police officer with the purple fingernails stands up and walks over to a printer. A few seconds later she pushes open the door and hands a sheet of paper to Costa who places it in front of the Commissioner. My pulse is racing. I can scarcely breathe. I look over at Christina. Suddenly alert, she’s gripping the table. Her knuckles are white.

  ‘Is it good news?’ she bursts out, and lashes out with her arm as if to snatch the sheet from him. The expression on his face is determinedly bland as painfully slowly he puts on his reading glasses and peruses the document. At last he looks up.

  ‘It is good news,’ he says. I take a breath. He reads from the report. ‘In conclusion, Marine Forensics advise that lacerations on the yellow inflatable are not consistent with a shark bite… Lacerations were caused by protrusions of coral and rock from the reef… Microscopic analysis reveals trace particles of coral and other marine micro-organisms where the tearing occurred. No human DNA has been detected.’

  My heart sinks. Katie has not been found. Not even a sighting. So Katie was not attacked by a shark, but most likely drowned at sea. What kind of good news is that?

  Christina slumps back in the chair, defeated.

  ‘You’re wasting your time,’ she says.

  She slams her palms down on the table, sending her water glass crashing down to the floor.

  ‘I’m sick of all this crap! Katie wasn’t eaten by a shark and I don’t believe she drowned. Can we stop this ridiculous circus and get on with the search?’ she shouts. ‘I know she’s still alive and you need to get out there and start looking for her.’

  Christina pushes back her chair and stands up. ‘Please can I go now,’ she says. ‘I need some fresh air. The air is stifling in here. These walls are closing in on me.’ She looks white and clammy, as if she’s about to faint. ‘I need to get down to the beach, to see with my own eyes what’s happening down there, to be part of the search to find my daughter. Time is slipping away. Shouldn’t you be down there too, directing the operation?’

  ‘Miss Kenedey,’ says the Commissioner coldly, ‘please don’t try to tell me how to do my job. We are pursuing several avenues of enquiry. My officers are fully in control.’

  He closes Christina’s incomplete statement and stands up. Looks like she’s offended him.

  ‘You are free to leave at any time. Thank you for your help with our enquiries. If you remember anything more, you know where to find us.’

  ‘What about my statement?’ I protest. ‘I want to have it put on the record that I believe I was drugged.’

  Costa shuffles through the papers and hands a single sheet over to the Commissioner. Reading upside down, I can see that it’s a few notes from my conversation with the family liaison officer yesterday consisting only of my personal details
and a brief summary of the timeline based on my answers to her questions. There’s no record of what I told the police earlier in the day about having been drugged; no mention that I suspect that I am the victim of foul play.

  The Commissioner ignores my protest.

  ‘I’m very sorry Miss Reyes, but we have to stick to proven facts in the record of evidence.’

  ‘Then give me a drug test,’ I say. ‘That will give you all the proof you need.’

  ‘A drug test at this stage will serve no purpose,’ says the Commissioner. He gives me a hard glare. ‘Even if it comes back positive that doesn’t prove that you had been drugged against your will at the time the little girl disappeared. You could have self-administered drugs last night or this morning.’

  He gestures for me to remain seated while he holds open the door for Christina.

  ‘I do, however, have some further questions for you in relation to the events of this morning,’ he says disapprovingly, as he dismisses Christina with a nod.

  I groan inwardly.

  Here we go, now he’s going to grill me about what happened in the Jeep.

  *

  Twenty minutes later I rejoin Christina and an officer leads us through a maze of corridors to the back of the building, where an emergency exit leads out onto a backstreet away from the main square.

  ‘There’s about twenty of them round the front,’ she says, ‘waiting to jump on you with cameras and mics.’

  As we walk through the door, Christina turns to the officer.

  ‘What have you done with Damien?’

  ‘We’ve taken him to a holding cell,’ says the woman. ‘He’s been remanded in custody overnight for his driving offences. The bail hearing will be tomorrow morning.’

  I’m so happy. He had it coming.

  Christina stands on the kerb, hailing a cab. She’s desperate to get going. But it’s market day. The road is gridlocked with pick-up trucks belonging to market traders now packing up their stalls and driving away from the main square close to the police station. Just as a taxi driver finally responds to Christina’s dramatic hand signals and pulls across the road towards us, I hear her name being shouted loudly and the sound of pounding feet.