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 12th 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 12th 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.
Kate pressed pause, rewound, played and paused again. After a bit of squinting she was able to make out the registration.
Sixteen
Chris waited on the doorstep of the Ryan household. This was the part of the job he hated the most and he could never have imagined that he’d have to do this twice in three days. Even worse than witnessing the reality of a dead body was the task of having to visit a family to tell them the body was one of their own. He would never become accustomed to the look of disbelief that could crumple a face, or the grief stricken, guttural sounds of denial that came from the mouths of the bereaved.
He didn’t have to do it. He could have sent one the junior members of his team to break the ‘news’ – as he had been sent on quite a few occasions in his early years with the police – but he wouldn’t send anyone else to do something he wasn’t prepared to do himself. He could have sent Matthew alone, but he didn’t think he was up to it; particularly not after yesterday’s performance at the Morris house. God knows what sort of priceless clichés he would come up with to break the news.
PC Matthew Curtis stood behind him now, anxiously staring at the ground between his feet. The physical opposite of Chris, Matthew Curtis was skinny and pale. He still had that student look about him: slightly dishevelled, half asleep. He was the last person who should be sent to inform someone that their husband had been found murdered, especially if his reactions at Michael Morris’ house had been anything to go by.
Still, Chris thought, he had to admire Matthew’s determination. In the car he had sat with his face turned to the window, but Chris had heard the heavy breathing as Matthew tried to compose himself, ready for the task ahead. It seemed he was dreading the next few moments even more than Chris, but Matthew had insisted on joining him: ‘I’ll have to do it sometime or other, boss’.
Stephanie Ryan had reported her husband missing shortly after the body had been found in the park. She told police she’d gone to bed early and had only realised he hadn’t come home when she awoke early the following morning to find he was not there. She tried calling him several times, but his mobile went straight to answer phone. It was completely out of character, she had said: he would have phoned if he had intended to stay out, and though he often worked late, he hadn’t spent a night away from home in over three years.
Chris rang the doorbell. He heard heavy footsteps on the stairs as Stephanie Ryan rushed down them, fumbling with the keys in the lock. She opened the door: a pretty woman with reddish hair and striking features; long lashes framing her dark eyes. Her face dropped when she saw the two men; Matthew, in his uniform.
‘God,’ she whimpered, steadying a thin arm on the doorframe. She had never had any involvement with the police, but knew enough from watching television dramas to know that uniformed officers didn’t turn up on the doorstep to bring good news.
She pressed her fingers to her head as though pushing away the thoughts that raced through her mind. Yesterday’s make-up clung to her eyelashes in sticky black clumps. The large stone of her engagement ring glinted crystal against the gold of her wedding band.
‘Mum?’ A young boy appeared in the living room doorway. He peered through a mop of thick, tousled hair at the policemen standing on the doorstep. There was no denying the similarities between the small boy and the man who had been found dead in the park just hours earlier.
Stephanie gulped air and fought to catch her breath. ‘Go upstairs,’ she told her son. ‘Go and play with your sister.’
Her son, sensing his mother’s impending tears, lingered in the hallway. He narrowed his eyes questioningly at Chris. ‘Please,’ she urged him.
The boy stared long at Chris and Matthew before going
slowly upstairs. Matthew stared back, willing himself to look away but transfixed by the curiosity and innocence of the boy’s face.
‘Can we come in, please, Mrs Ryan?’ Chris asked.
Stephanie stepped aside and visibly trembled as Chris and Matthew walked past her, through the hallway and into the living room. There they found a typical middle class family scene: expensive wooden furniture in the dining area at the far end of the room and leather sofas at the front. Family portraits dotted the walls and pictures of the Ryan’s two children – a boy and a girl – lined the top of the mantelpiece.
Mrs Ryan looked anxiously at the two men. She was a pretty woman, but the shock of seeing the policemen had quickly distorted her features; her face twisted with the same expression Chris had seen too many times before. It was a reflection of the look that Diane Morris had given him just the day before.
‘Please, Mrs Ryan,’ Chris said, gesturing to the nearest sofa. ‘Please sit down.’
He realised how trite he sounded as he said it, just like a character from a badly written soap opera. Stephanie didn’t need to be told twice. She fell onto the sofa and sobbed heavily, her shoulders heaving uncontrollably, given a life of their own. Tears stained her face.
‘Mrs Ryan,’ Chris said, sitting down on the sofa beside her, but keeping a distance between them. ‘A body was found in the park this morning. The description matches the one you gave us of your husband.’
Matthew consciously averted his eyes. He ran a hand through his hair and distractedly tapped a foot. Chris shot him a look and the foot froze. Chris noticed that since they had entered the living room Matthew had stared intently at the pictures on the mantelpiece, the black, lifeless TV screen and the pile of exercise books that had been left by the children on the dining table. His attention was now fixed on the carpet between his feet, like a guilty boy in the headmaster’s office. He looked everywhere but at Stephanie Ryan.
‘We will need you to identify your husband, Mrs Ryan,’ Chris said, ‘but only when you’re ready. Is there anyone who can look after your children? Anyone you’d like to be with you?’
Stephanie sobbed loudly. The sound was heart wrenching; a pained, animalistic wail that Chris would never become accustomed to. He waited patiently beside her as Stephanie hid her face in her arms, her body stretched over the arm of the sofa. He let her cry it out; gave her space to let her get over the initial shock, though he knew that the initial shock would only lead to a different, more permanent pain that would never truly go away.
He looked up again and noticed that Matthew was now no longer staring at the carpet. Instead, he was looking towards the living room doorway. Chris’ eyes followed the line of his younger colleague’s. There, silently clutching an embroidered cushion to her chest was a little red haired girl. Her thick fringe cast a shadow on her face – just like her brother’s – and her wide eyes, so like her mother’s, stared up at Matthew’s.
The girl took her eyes from Matthew and looked at her mother, carefully observing the dishevelled hair, the tears and the fragile frame. She looked back at Matthew again, narrowing her eyes at his uniform. Chris resisted the urge to take her by the hand and lead her back into the hallway, away from the scene, but it was too late; she had already been exposed to the cruelty of death and, had it not happened now, it would have crept upon her eventually in the difficult days and weeks to come. Chris thought of Kate Kelly fleetingly and knew that this was a moment the little girl would remember for the rest of her life.
Seventeen
Kate was torn between elation and fury. How the hell had everyone - how the hell had she – missed the car that had been stationary for so long on Taff Street on the 12th December, just metres from where Stacey Reed had disappeared that afternoon? She couldn’t send anyone else to do this, not just for the fact that everyone back at the station was engrossed in the Michael Morris/Joseph Ryan murder cases, but for the simple reason that she didn’t trust anyone not to once again overlook something so blindingly obvious. If the car had no connections to Stacey and she was led up another dead-end path then she would happily take the rap for it; in the meantime, she wasn’t prepared to let another potential clue slip past them.
She made her way on foot to Morgan’s Vehicle Rentals, a car hire company situated behind Pontypridd’s train station. One of the PCs had called from Kate’s office to inform her that the Phantom Fiesta, as the car on the tape had now been labelled, had been traced to Morgan’s, a well known local business that was just a fifteen minute walk from the police station. This knowledge fuelled Kate with hope that this wouldn’t prove to be a waste of time. The car was hired. Someone didn’t want to be traced.
She stopped at the entrance to the railway station. A train had just pulled in and a young couple rushed past her, running and laughing as they raced to get to the platform before the train moved off towards Cardiff. A young woman pushing a pram with one hand and holding a little boy’s hand with the other came through the station’s automatic doors and Kate watched as she stopped and saw to the crying baby in the pram.
The word ‘abduction’ had floated around the station like a highly contagious virus. Despite her years on the job and her experience of missing children investigations, Kate had refused to catch the bug and refer to the Stacey Reed case as abduction. The word held too many negative connotations. Though it was almost certain the little girl had been taken, Kate wanted to believe that she would be found alive and well, with no harm done to her. She preferred to think of Stacey as ‘missing’. ‘Abduction’ had a sinister finality to it. It suggested that the child was never coming home. If Kate didn’t believe Stacey was still within her reach, what else would keep her going?
*
The boy behind the desk at Morgan’s Vehicle Rentals was young and clearly hadn’t been working at the centre for very long. He aimlessly tapped about on the keyboard of his computer for a few minutes before finally admitting, ‘I’ve got no idea how to work this system.’
Kate smiled patiently though she was anxious to get the information as quickly as possible. ‘Could I see the manager?’
The boy disappeared into the back room for the briefest of moments then came back saying, ‘The manager’s a bit busy at the moment. Can you come back later?’
Kate lost the smile. ‘No,’ she said bluntly.
The boy went back into the manager’s room. Moments later a disgruntled looking bearded middle aged man who’d probably been watching Loose Women on a portable TV set whilst drinking a bucket of sugared tea and working his way through a family-sized packet of biscuits appeared behind reception. With a grubby nail he picked at a crumb between his teeth.
Kate thought of the biscuits she’d consumed back at the station and vowed never to allow herself to become like this man. She was placing a ban on snacking as soon as she got back to her office.
‘DI Kate Kelly,’ Kate introduced herself, placing her identity on the desk between them. ‘You hired out this car on the 12th December,’ she told him, pushing a piece of paper with the vehicle’s details towards him. ‘I need to know who hired it.’
The man sighed loudly and logged himself onto the computer system. Kate waited patiently while he recalled the details, trying to avert her attention from the crumbs of digestive biscuits scattered in his beard like bird seed. Perhaps he was saving a bit for later, she thought, though by the looks of him he was just a clumsy, unhygienic sod.
‘12th December, you say?’ the man checked, glancing up at her.
Kate nodded.
‘Silver Fiesta?’
She nodded again.
The man turned back to the computer screen.
‘Nope,’ he said, shrugging indifferently. ‘Database only keeps records for two months. Automatically updates. Sorry.’
He sounded as sincere as a double glazing salesman.
The manager got up, ready to disappear back into his office.
Kate reached across the counter and grabbed him by the shirtsleeve;
a little more authoritatively than she had intended. He glared at her and pulled his arm away brusquely, shaking himself so that crumbs fell from his beard like dandruff.
‘I’m sure you’ll find a way around that, Sir,’ she snapped. ‘You have an hour to work it out. Otherwise I’ll send some people to help you.’
Back outside Pontypridd train station Kate took her mobile from her pocket and made a call back to her office.
‘It’s Kate,’ she said. ‘The manager at Morgan’s doesn’t want to play ball. Get someone with a search warrant round there within the hour and find out who hired this bloody car.’
Eighteen
It was half past one when Anna Ferguson walked into the station and asked to speak to Chris Jones. He took her into one of the interview rooms and offered her a cup of tea.
‘I’d rather have a Bacardi Breezer,’ she said, grinning.
Chris rolled his eyes. ‘Tough.’ He sat opposite her. ‘What can I do for you?’
The girl was young – late teens, possibly early twenties – but she had a confident air about her and a disdainful expression, as though her mere presence at the station was an honour for which Chris should be duly grateful.
Anna sat back in her chair and looked around the room though there wasn’t much to look at. She checked underneath the desk and behind her seat then nodded slowly when she spotted the camera in the corner of the ceiling. She chewed frantically on a piece of gum, occasionally pausing to blow a blue bubble.
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