I want far, far fewer questions and far, far more coppers to burst in, heavily armed and telling us they’re now taking over the whole investigation. And that they confidently expect to have Kitty back home, with not a hair on her head harmed and looking for a shower, a glass of wine and a big feed of chips, in that order.
‘Well, then, in that case,’ Crown shrugs dismissively, ‘the news is not necessarily bad. Rest assured, we’ll do everything we can, but you should know that the chances of her turning up safe and sound are relatively high. In well over ninety per cent of cases like this, the subject is nearly always secure and will inevitably return when they’re good and ready.
‘However, given the worry and upset that Kitty’s causing to all around her, then unfortunately there’s one hard, cold fact that remains. So I’m afraid I’ll need you both to ask yourselves one unpleasant but unavoidable question.’
We both look at him expectantly.
‘Why would she do this in the first place? She must have had a very good reason for wanting to leave. So what do you think it might have been?’
I ask Simon exactly the same question again in car on our way home.
He doesn’t answer me, though, just goes v. quiet and stares out window into the night, completely wrapped up in thought.
By the age of fifteen, she’d already been with a grand total of eight foster homes, which had to have been some class of a record, she figured. They should be giving her a survival medal, like they did in Stalinist Russia, just for lasting this long in their poxy system. And here she was now, on the doorstep of number nine.
Initial reaction? Worst one yet. An old lady-type house in the back arse of nowhere, over-heavy with crappy-looking ornaments, family photos and, dear Jaysus help her, knitted tea cosies. And all those do-gooder social workers from Health must have seriously been scraping the barrel when they vetted the aul one, who was to be her new foster parent. This one was fifty if she was a day, with helmet-y hair like a wig, who answered the door to her in an actual suit. Feck’s sake, a suit? Who wore a suit going round their own house, unless you were a complete weirdo?
The care liaison officer had tactfully left, ‘just so you two can get to know each other a little better’, and with a stern ‘you’d better be on your best behaviour’ glare over in her direction, he was gone. Thank f**k. She’d accidentally seen a copy of her own file once and it had been impressed on her that she was lucky to have been homed at all, with her track record. But to hell with that shower of gobshites anyway, she thought furiously. They could feck off, the lot of them.
‘Out of control,’ her file had said. ‘Complaints of a serious nature … shoplifting … swearing … smoking … underage drinking … wild …’ Made her feel proud, though. She didn’t want to fit in; she was sick to the teeth of all their rules and regulations, and being told how lucky she was to be homed at all, like she was supposed to be grateful. All she wanted was to hit eighteen, get out into the world and tell the whole shagging lot of them to go and f**k themselves.
And yet here she was, arms folded defensively, sat sullenly at yet another kitchen table with this Old Dear opposite her. Mrs Kennedy; a widow, this time. Husband probably died of boredom, she thought viciously to herself, taking in the pin-neat house with cushions on the cushions and net fecking curtains. It felt like she’d been through the drill a thousand times. This was the bit where both parties were supposed to be on their best behaviour, tiptoeing round each other, while the house rules were impressed in on her. Don’t this, don’t that, please can you remember to x and y and z.
Mind you, the worst were the foster parents who cheerily told you, ‘This is your home now, so please just try to relax and enjoy!’ Then within hours, she’d find herself hauled over the coals for smoking in her room, or cursing in front of other kids, or any other rule-infraction shite they could think of to throw at her. In other words, we’re saying that this is your home now, except it’s not really and never will be, and we can turf you out on a whim. So don’t you forget it, missy.
Fine, she wouldn’t. In fact, she made a bet with herself, as Mrs Ancient here fussed around her and poured tea and handed her slices of gooey-looking cake. She’d see if she could equal her personal best of getting turfed out of a new home in under a week. Shouldn’t be hard either. By the look of her, if she refused to go to Mass on Sundays, then this one would probably take a heart attack, start calling her the spawn of the devil and she’d be outta here in no time. Problem solved.
‘Now please feel free to call me Kathleen,’ Aul One was saying to her, pouring out tea into dainty china cups that barely held two dribbles and that were covered in a pattern that looked like dead scorpions. Later on, she’d come to recognise this as the good, special occasion china, that only ever got wheeled out at Christmas and Easter, but for now she didn’t give a shite. Would gladly have smashed it, if she could.
‘Whatever,’ she shrugged back, putting her feet up on the chair opposite her. Aul One seemed to notice, but said nothing.
‘And remember,’ Aul One went on, ‘I really do want you to treat this as your own home.’
‘Fantastic. In that case, can I have an ashtray and a lighter please?’
Again no reaction.
‘Smoke all you like,’ Aul One shrugged back at her, ‘but I think you’d better do it outside.’
‘House rule?’ she sneered.
‘Not really,’ said Aul One. ‘I just don’t think it would be fair on the kittens. They’re barely two weeks old and still nursing. I only wanted to keep the air nice and fresh for them, that’s all.’
‘Kittens?’ In spite of herself, she was curious. ‘Where?’
‘In the kitchen, just behind you. Would you like to have a look? They’re the most adorable little bundles you’ve ever seen.’
In spite of herself, she was intrigued. She followed Aul One into the tiny, galley kitchen and there they were, in a warm basket by the door. Eight little balls of the cutest, fluffiest things you ever saw. She picked one up and instinctively cuddled it. It made a tiny, weak little mewling sound, no mistaking it.
‘She’s meowing,’ Aul One smiled down at her. ‘I think she must like you.’
‘Are you going to keep them all?’
‘I wish I could, love, but I can’t. They’re too young to leave their mother, but as soon as they are, I’m afraid they’ll all have to be rehomed.’
‘That’s horrible! They should be with their mother!’
‘I know,’ Mrs Kennedy said sagely, taking her in from head to foot. ‘And I agree. Farming them out is necessary, but awful.’ Then after a half-beat, she added, ‘unless … unless you’d like to keep one? As your own special little pet? You could name it and everything, if you liked.’
She looked up at her with shining eyes. Her very own pet; such a simple thing and yet she’d never had one before … or anything of her own, come to think of it.
‘You’d have to take care of him or her, though. Kittens are a lot of work. You’d have to take on all that responsibility.’
She just nodded back and surprised herself by actually smiling.
And the two of them stayed there for the whole afternoon, lost in the kittens, playing with them, cuddling them, laughing at their antics. One of them, a little tabby tom cat, kept trying to climb up the curtains and they roared laughing at that. Another one climbed inside a paper bag and played with it for hours, while they looked on fondly, both of them loving it.
A long time afterwards Mrs K., as she’d taking to calling her, said that when she first saw this scrap of a teenage girl landed on her doorstep, all bovver boots and attitude, she was instantly reminded of the kittens. That’s just what you were like, she’d told her. I thought you were like a young kitten who needed to be nurtured by a mom before being farmed out again. Or maybe not; maybe you’d found your forever home this time? She’d seen past the teenage sullenness that mistook rudeness for rebellion, and thought, I want to give this lost soul a chance. A p
roper home. And a proper mum.
Within days, she was settled, and within a week, she found herself actually rushing home from school, just so she could hang out with Mrs K. and the kittens.
Just the two of them.
Chapter Five
New Year’s Eve
… and Kitty’s still missing. But all of a sudden, everything’s shunted up about sixteen gears and now we’re actually being taken seriously. Bittersweet consolation that it all took this bleeding long to get here, but still. It’s something.
Absolutely everyone’s on high alert now. From staff at the restaurant where she works to other students and teachers at her night school in Rathmines, who’ve all been notified as well, even though it’s officially closed for another week and everyone’s scattered to the four winds. Locals around Kitty’s area are all being urged to be extra vigilant too. And I have to grudgingly admit that the team of police Jack Crown’s brought in to head up this inquiry have all been v. impressive to date. Though as Simon’s quick to point out, they’ve done every single thing bar actually finding the girl.
According to Crown, all missing persons cases are categorised into two groups: acceptable and unacceptable. In a nutshell, ‘acceptable’ is if a person is suffering from depression, drug abuse or similar, whereas ‘unacceptable’ would be someone more like Kitty. The type with a normal job, home, friends, life, the whole works. The unlikely-to-take-off type, the sort of girl not usually classified as a ‘flight risk’.
Which goes some way towards accounting for the reason they’re finally pulling out all the stops to find her now. But I have to report that all progress is at best slow and at worst, soul-destroyingly frustrating. Like a perpetual game of one step forward and two steps back.
First bit of bad news: traces on her mobile phone turned out to be a total dead end. Oh, they tracked it down all right, through a v. sophisticated technique called ‘pinging’, which can place you within metres of any phone, even if it’s powered off. (Am now getting au fait with copper-speak.) We discovered she made her last call – to my number, as it happened – at lunchtime on the day she disappeared, from within a one-mile radius of Camden Street, where the restaurant is. But beyond that, nothing. No outgoing calls have been made from her phone since then, or texts, emails … nada.
Coppers then narrowed the search down to within Byrne & Sacetti, then got security to force open her locker in the tiny staff room. For a whole, excruciating half-hour, Simon and I held out great hopes they might find something there, some clue as to what’s happened. I’d gratefully have leaped on any tiny little thing at all: a computer printout of hotel reservation somewhere? Train or bus timetable? No straw, no matter how weak and puny, was beyond my clutching at it, like a holy relic.
But when security eventually did prise open her locker, there was absolutely zilch, bar a few out-of-date Hello! magazines, a slightly battered pair of trainers she always wore in work to help her stride around the place that bit faster, plus a half-eaten pack of chocolate digestives, (her on-the-run carb-hit of choice). And at the back of all that, shoved into the pocket of a bright red fleece jumper she often wore, was her mobile. Just sitting there.
Which rang instant alarm bells. Kitty was finishing work for the holidays that night. So why would she leave her phone behind? Made absolutely no sense! Suspiciously knowing looks were exchanged between coppers and I knew right well what they were thinking, even without them opening their gobs. They were wrongly assuming that Kitty’s one of the ‘voluntary missing’, that she had this all planned, that she knew right well she could be traced through her phone and so had left it in the most obvious place she could.
‘Total crap!’ I felt like screeching at them. ‘You’ve got it all wrong!’ But Simon, level-headed as ever, cooled me down a bit. Yes, he agreed, it’s total shite, what’s at back of their minds. But for now, let’s co-operate as best we can and just concentrate on getting her back safely.
Simon unfailingly always says the right thing, even if it’s not particularly what I want to hear. Had a big, sullen lump in my throat for whole rest of day, though, directly attributable to Jack bleeding Crown. That any copper, no matter how well-intentioned, could even possibly think someone with as much to live for as Kitty would ever just take off without telling anyone? It’s just unthinkable.
Yet more dire news: the bank turned out to be similarly useless. Apparently her last transaction was day before she vanished, when she stopped off at Tesco at about nine in the evening and used her Laser card to shop. ‘A Goodfellas pizza, a sliced pan, a value-pack size of Andrex toilet rolls and three tins of cat food,’ the copper who discovered this proudly announced, having spent the guts of an entire morning uncovering this earth-shattering discovery.
I’ll grudgingly give the coppers this much though: they’ve really excelled themselves at door-to-door searches and have managed to get far, far more neighbours in houses close by Kitty’s to open up to them, than we humble civilians could ever have hoped to. In fact, I’m constantly amazed at just how powerful the flash of an official-looking badge and a uniform can be.
Everyone’s giving statements to them now, though to my disappointment, and Simon’s impatience, the search has yet to turn up some bright spark who’ll tell us, ‘Yes! I recognise that girl from her photo and remember distinctly! I saw her going into number forty-two with that well-known perv who lives there! So let’s batter door down and let the mighty sword of justice have its way!’
At least, not yet.
Have been working v. closely with the coppers for a while now and they’ve even carried out massive street-by-street searches in the local area, which hopefully may just throw up something. It was case of all hands on deck; dog units and subaqua diving teams were even called in; exactly what was needed.
The plan was to comb the whole area in and around Camden Street, where Kitty was last seen, in the hope of finding something, anything, that might give us some clue as to where she might have gone. I was v. hopeful something would turn up or someone’s memory would have been jogged. It took hours and hours, cost God alone knows what, but the whole operation turned out to be yet another massive disappointment. Yielded absolutely nada, but I have to say in one way I was hugely relieved. The thoughts of police diving units being drafted in bloody terrified me. Because what if they did actually find something at the bottom of a river? Nearly got weak-kneed just thinking about it.
But Simon’s always quick to ladle yet more mugs of tea down my throat to calm me down. ‘She’s absolutely fine, remember,’ he keeps saying, gently talking me down, like I’m a five-year-old. ‘Now repeat after me what the police are constantly telling us.’
‘Ninety per cent chance of her coming back to us alive and well,’ we singsong together.
Aside from all those setbacks, though, in one way it’s actually v. reassuring to have full police back-up alongside us. To date, they’ve done things I never even considered: putting out appeals in the papers and on radio, for starters, though given that it’s Christmas, they reckon not too many people will be paying attention to hardcore news. But Crown assures us we can do another media blitz after the holliers, when we’re far more likely to grab the public’s attention. They’ve even placed alerts on all ‘points of exit’ around country. Like at major roadblocks, where they’re randomly stopping cars and whipping out breathalysers checking for drivers over the limit after a few Xmas drinks too many, that kind of thing.
Not only that, but Interpol have now been alerted, we’re told, as well as international police forces. Also, staff have been placed on high alert at all airport passport control and ferry embarkation points, which I supposed they figured might actually have lead somewhere, till I had to point out to Crown that her passport was in fact sitting stuffed in her desk drawer at home.
No matter, I was told brusquely. It’s ‘standard procedure’, apparently. And one thing I’m fast learning with this fella is, don’t, whatever you do, even think about coming between him
and his ‘standard procedures’. Starting to wonder if the guy falls asleep at night with book tucked on his lap called Garda Procedure: A Guide to Driving the General Public Mental by Relentlessly Banging on about It. For a bit of light bedtime reading, that is.
If Kitty did actually have all this planned for a long time, is his ridiculous thinking, then she could easily have been travelling under an alias or even a false passport. Happens v. frequently, apparently. Could have all been worked out well in advance.
‘Just think,’ he told me over the phone, in that brisk, businesslike way that’s frankly starting to drive me round the twist. ‘Had she used her own passport with all her given details on it, then at every arrival point wherever she travelled, we’d not only have a record of her arrival, but most likely CCTV footage to accompany it too.’
‘You’re seriously telling me that Kitty went out and somehow acquired a false passport? And said nothing to no one?’ Are you deranged? I want to tack on, rudely, but somehow don’t.
‘Angie, please, you have to trust me,’ Crown insists. ‘It’s a lot more common than you might think.’
Utterly mental, as I pointed out during yet another blowing-off-steam chat with Simon. For one thing, there’s no one worse in the world at keeping secrets than Kitty. Had she seriously been planning some big upheaval to Rio secretly without telling any of her nearest and dearest, you can be bloody sure she’d have left a trail of holiday brochures and bottles of mosquito repellent scattered all over the place. Kitty’s a wonderful girl, but discretion never was her strongest suit.
Meanwhile, coppers are continuing to interview everyone who last worked with her at Byrne & Sacetti on her last night, just in case that might throw up a lead. And this time, for a change, it was Simon who got a violent urge to gnash his teeth when he heard and ended up quietly seething to me, ‘But you and I have already covered all of that! What’s the matter, don’t these people give us any credit at all? Why are they wasting precious time?’
Me and You Page 9