Part-time waitressing at Tom’s Café in the local motorway service station had turned into a full-time job. It had become normal for Amy to wake up at four in the morning to work the early shift. She’d return in the early afternoon and was often in bed by eight. While that should have put a dampener on her social life, she had never been much of a party girl.
Amy felt satisfied. Not happy, but secure and safe in her life. She knew that her mum was worried. Little comments would be dropped and certain tones would be used, but, for the most part, they were avoiding the conversation that hung over them like a dark cloud. It would have to happen one day, but for now they were both happy to be putting it off.
“What did the police say?” Julie asked, fishing for Amy to elaborate.
“Nothing much.” Amy opened her eyes and looked over to her. “Just that they can’t do anything. As I said, useless. One called my coffee swill.”
“It’s better than that stuff from the American chain,” Julie reassured. The actual name of the outlet was banned in front of Amy.
“I know.” Amy nodded. “I banned him.”
“You banned the police?”
“Yep.”
Julie laughed. “That’s typical you.”
“He was being uppity.”
“He’s a police officer.”
Amy shrugged her shoulders. “He was being an arse.”
“You won’t get very far in life if you have trouble with people in authority.”
Amy bristled. “I don’t have problems with people in authority. I just don’t see authority. I think people should be equal. Trust and respect should be handed out freely, and expected back in return. Not all this respect where it’s due crap.”
“Sadly, the world is different; we don’t live in that Utopia you have in your brain.”
“I know, Mum. Trust me, I know. It doesn’t matter. I’m going to investigate it myself.”
Julie raised a questioning eyebrow. “What do you mean?”
“If the police won’t look for her, I’ll do it myself.” Amy unzipped her rucksack and pulled out a notebook. She flipped through used pages and opened where a till receipt served as a bookmark. “How hard can it be? Follow the clues. If that dog on the television can do it...”
“The dog on the television is a cartoon,” Julie pointed out.
“Same principle applies. Minus the ridiculously large magnifying glass.” Amy started to write some notes down, adding to the basic outline that she had scribbled earlier.
“I don’t think the dog has a magnifying glass, I think that’s the other one.”
“Let’s not get bogged down in what cartoon character has a magnifying glass,” Amy said. She tapped her pen on the pad. “We need to focus on what’s relevant.”
“Maybe she moved away?” Julie suggested.
Amy looked up. “You too?” She didn’t understand how people could just assume that Cara would leave without telling her.
“I’m just being realistic. You said yourself, you don’t know that much about her.”
Amy regarded her for a few silent moments before she shook her head and turned her attention back to her notebook. Her pen flew across the page. She was making notes of everything they had talked about, no matter how irrelevant it might seem.
Her mum had known nothing about Cara right up until a couple of days ago. Amy hadn’t wanted advice, or worse, confirmation of her assumption that Cara was well out of her league. While supportive of Amy’s sexuality, Julie wasn’t her first go-to for romantic advice. The thought alone made Amy shiver.
But Amy hadn’t been able to keep a lid on her frustration at Cara’s disappearance, and so it all came spilling out on Monday afternoon. Amy had paced the kitchen floor while she attempted to summarise ten months of conversations and feelings into the space of ten minutes. Seeking to balance the feeling of loss and concern, while maintaining an aloofness that said she wasn’t head over heels for the woman. She wasn’t sure she succeeded, judging by the look on her mum’s face when she was finished. Especially when her theorising suggested that Cara might have been the victim of a murder or kidnap plot.
“Is Kerry coming over this evening?” Julie asked, clearly trying to change the subject to something lighter.
“Yep,” Amy replied without looking up from her notes.
“I washed your sleeping bag for you.”
Amy looked up. She felt the crinkle of skin between her eyebrows as she tried to think why that was relevant.
Julie chuckled. “You’re going camping tomorrow, remember?”
“Oh!” Amy suddenly remembered. “Is that tomorrow? Thursday? Yes. I completely forgot. I need to get packing.”
Amy stuffed her notebook back into her bag and quickly left the room to go upstairs.
“You’re only going for one night,” Julie called after her. “Don’t over pack!”
Amy tapped her pen on the notebook at a fast pace. “Good, good. What else?”
Kerry spun around on the office chair and looked up at the ceiling. “Um. Alien abduction?”
Amy pointed the pen at Kerry accusingly. “You’re not taking this seriously.”
Kerry stopped spinning around and looked at her best friend with a tired expression. “Amy, we’ve been theorising for an hour, and I still maintain that it’s one of three things.” She lifted up her hand and counted down on three fingers. “She’s moved, her schedule has changed, or she’s dead.”
“Kerry! That is not helping.” Amy rolled over on the bed and stared up at the ceiling. “She would have said something.”
“Not if she’s dead,” Kerry pointed out. “That kinda thing can creep up on you.”
Amy heard her get out of the office chair and slowly walk over to the bed. “Oh, hi Amy,” Kerry said in a strong Spanish accent. “I won’t be around next week because I’m slipping on a banana skin this weekend.”
Amy looked up at her and chuckled despite the grim situation. “She did not sound like that.”
Kerry furrowed her brow in concentration before kneeling beside the bed, her mouth to Amy’s ear. “Oh no? Was it like this?” she asked in a deep, gruff voice straight from a horror movie.
Amy quickly reached out and pushed her so she lost her balance and fell on the floor. “No, not like that either. But you should keep it for yourself, you might finally get yourself a boyfriend.”
Kerry laughed and pulled herself up onto the bed. She crossed her legs and looked over at Amy. “What was she like? You hardly spoke about her.”
“Amazing,” Amy said dreamily.
“Descriptive.” Kerry rolled her eyes.
“I dunno.” Amy shrugged her shoulders. “She was just... different. You know? I knew so little about her, but I felt like I’d known her for years. She had a slight accent, she wore amazing designer clothes, she smiled a lot. And I swear she was flirting with me, Kez.”
“Maybe she was,” Kerry said.
Amy blew out a deep breath. “Then, why did she just vanish like that?”
“Banana skin.”
“Shut up.” Amy laughed as she sat up.
“Look, we all know that you’re not going to be satisfied until you have fully investigated this matter, Officer Hewitt,” Kerry joked.
“That’s true, Holmes.” Amy slid from the bed and walked over to her desk. “The lady has vanished, and I think the game is afoot.”
“Why did he say that?” Kerry asked. “What the hell is ‘afoot’?”
“No idea, bloke was a lunatic and high most of the time. Not to mention fictional.” Amy shrugged. She sat at the desk and turned on her laptop. “I just need my first clue, and then I can go from there.”
“I remember when you first told me about her,” Kerry reminisced. “The text came in about eight in the morning, and you were all happy about the sexy woman who had made eyes at you.”
“She’d left an hour before, and I couldn’t get her out of my head,” Amy remembered.
“And then she came
back,” Kerry added.
“And I was in heaven.” Amy smiled at the memory.
“And I had to hear about how amazing she was every day for a week,” Kerry said.
“And you teased me.”
“And you joked about my non-existent love life.”
Amy turned and looked at her with a wry smile. “Yeah, fun times.”
Kerry poked her tongue out, and Amy chuckled. She turned back to look at her laptop. It wasn’t the most elegant solution, but surely a Google search on missing people would give her some indication on where to start.
“You haven’t forgotten about tomorrow, have you?”
“Tomorrow?” Amy asked. She turned and looked at Kerry in confusion.
Kerry rolled her eyes. “Tomorrow. Camping! Focus, Amy.” She snapped her fingers in her friend’s direction to wake her up.
“Kidding!” Amy skipped over to her wardrobe and opened the door to reveal her fully-packed rucksack. She may have gone a little overboard, judging by Kerry’s shocked expression. Kerry walked over to the wardrobe. She looked at the bag and then at Amy. Then back at the bag.
“Amy?”
“Yeah?”
“We’re going for one night. In my dad’s garden,” Kerry reminded her.
Amy folded her arms and looked at Kerry seriously. “Remind me. Why are we going camping, again?”
“To check we’re able to look after fifteen kids from my mum’s Guides group. So, we can say with honesty that we’ve been camping before. Even if it is in Dad’s garden.”
“Exactly,” Amy told her. She pointed to the rucksack, which was bursting at the seams. “And I have in here everything we could possibly need for two nights in the woods with fifteen under-10s. What’s the point in doing a trial run if you’re just going to pop into your dad’s house every time you need a glass of water? If we’re doing this, let’s do it properly!”
Kerry pinched the bridge of her nose. “Yeah, that does make sense.”
“Which is why you asked me to go with you, because you know that my organisational skills are second to none.”
“Well, they’re better than mine,” Kerry said. She reached into the wardrobe and tentatively lifted the rucksack. “Wow. What have you got in here? Bricks?”
Amy picked up her packing list from the desk and handed it to Kerry. “This is my packing list. Thought you might like a copy so you know what you should pack, too.”
Kerry dropped the heavy bag to the floor. She took the list, scanning through the items. “Shampoo, conditioner, lotion, cotton pads, torch, ear plugs, duct tape... Amy, we’re camping for two nights. What do you need all this stuff for?”
“You never know,” Amy told her. “Besides, when that dry spot on your forehead flares up and you want some lotion, don’t come running to me.”
“If I have all this in my bag, I won’t be running anywhere. I’m going to have to go to the gym before I pack all this stuff.”
“You joke now, but when the kids need something... anything at all, I’ll have it.”
Kerry nodded. She folded the list in half and put it into her pocket. “Very true, thank you for doing that.”
“You’re welcome. But, I’m helping you with your thing, so now you can help me with mine,” Amy said.
Kerry sighed. “Fine, fine. You need to get it out of your system, I get that.”
“I need to know that we’ve exhausted all lines of investigation,” Amy explained.
“Considering we don’t know anything about her, this won’t take long,” Kerry said. Amy pouted at her, stormed back to her desk, and sat down.
“Bottom line, you need to identify her. Woman in coffee shop isn’t going to get you far,” Kerry continued. “Did she ever pay by card?”
Amy shook her head. “No, always cash. Trust me, I would have checked for her surname long ago if she ever paid by card.”
“Stalker,” Kerry whispered.
“Guilty.”
“Okay, so no surname.” Kerry paced the room. Amy picked up her pen and tried to recall previous conversations with Cara, anything that might be a clue.
Kerry snapped her fingers. “Got it. What does everyone at the services have in common?”
“They desperately need a wee?” Amy guessed flippantly.
“Well, yes, and?”
Amy shrugged her shoulders.
Kerry rolled her eyes. “And you’re supposed to be the clever one... They have all driven there,” she explained.
Amy’s eyes snapped up. “She drove there!” The excitement started to build within. Suddenly she had something concrete to start with.
“Yep, and doesn’t the car park have CCTV or something?” Kerry continued.
“Number plate!” Amy screeched happily as she ran towards Kerry and hugged her tightly. She’d show the police how it was done.
3
Investigation
Amy peered in through the window to the security office. The lone occupant of the room looked back at her and rolled his eyes. Amy smiled and waved animatedly. He turned away, ignoring her.
“Rude,” Amy mumbled to herself. She opened the door loudly and walked into the room.
“Hey, this is a restricted area.”
“Shut up, Kevin.” Amy closed the door behind her and folded her arms. “I need to look at your camera things.”
“No way.” Kevin shook his head. “And they are not camera things, this here is state-of-the-art monitoring and recording equipment. Worth more than both of our yearly salaries put together. So, no, I’m not going to let you look at the camera things.”
“Come on, Kev.” Amy nudged him with her elbow. “Go on, you know you want to.”
“Pretty sure I don’t.”
“Pretty sure you do.” Amy smiled sweetly. “If you don’t want me to tell your boss about that time you and that blonde—”
“Hey, you said you’d not tell anyone!”
“Yeah, but that was before I needed something. Now, I need something. So, I’m throwing you under the bus.” Amy grinned. She sat down on one of the operator chairs in front of the CCTV cameras. “Go on. Just show me which buttons to push, and then go for a walk. I’ll do the rest.”
Kevin looked at her. He shook his head in disgust. “You know that’s blackmail, right?”
“Such a nasty word!” Amy exclaimed with her hand on her chest. “But yeah, don’t make me mention last December, when you clocked in here and then went Christmas shopping with your mum—”
“Okay, fine, fine.” Kevin sat forward in his chair and picked up the CCTV remote console.
“Thanks, Kev. You’re a pal. Did I ever tell you that?” Amy leaned forward and watched as he accessed the recordings.
“Yeah, whatever.” He pushed some buttons on the console. “Here’s the camera numbers. You change them with this dial. Then you go back and forward by days with this dial and then you rewind or fast forward here.”
“Ooh, gimme.” Amy snatched the console from his hands and started to play.
“I’ll be back in fifteen minutes. You better be gone by then. And if anyone catches you in here, I’ll throw you under the bus,” Kevin told her. He pushed his chair back and stood up.
“Love you, too, Kev.” She waved goodbye.
Kevin left the room, and Amy let out a deep sigh. She started to focus on the screens in front of her. She quickly mastered the controls and looked for the familiar face in the crowd. She blitzed through hours of footage in seconds and saw thousands and thousands of people speed-walking through the motorway services.
Even early in the morning, the services were busy. First were the office types and sales people in their suits, who were blurring into one long stream of dull colour. They entered the building, went to the bathroom, and left again. At high speed it looked like a nature documentary’s most boring migration.
The elderly contingent, who were solely responsible for the shops starting to sell wooden giraffes, sleeping pillows, and tartan blankets, appeared to move
at a normal speed when the playback was doubled. Amy smothered a laugh with her hand as she watched a group of old people hurriedly zigzag the entire footprint of the huge services building. Buying crap and getting in everyone’s way as they went.
Then she saw her. Cara. Stuck behind a woman who was surely approaching her centenary. Amy let go of the switch, and the playback automatically snapped back to standard speed. She leaned forward and watched as Cara gracefully made her way around the older lady. She strode across the services like she was floating on air, heading straight past the generic coffee shop and towards Amy. Cara moved out of the shot. Amy hurriedly looked at the remote console for how to access the next camera.
In quick succession, she followed Cara across the services and towards the coffee shop. She winced as she saw herself on camera. She sighed at the recorded image of her awkward-looking self.
“Smooth!” She mimicked the ridiculous smile she had thrown Cara’s way and smacked herself on the side of the head. “So stupid.”
Seeing herself on camera, so clearly enamoured with the woman, was painful. She turned the knob to find the end of Cara’s visit. She used various cameras to follow her out of the services. In the car park, she flipped between cameras until she found where Cara had parked. She sighed. The car was obscured by an overgrown tree. She couldn’t even tell the colour of the vehicle.
She spun the knob and hurried backwards in time a few days at random. She soon realised that Cara’s car always appeared in the same spot. Leaving and arriving by a blind spot in the camera. She sat back in the seat and furrowed her brow.
Must be a coincidence, she told herself. She’s a creature of habit. Same breakfast place, same food on the same day. It makes sense that she parks in the same space. It just happens to be obscured.
Huntress Page 2