Ready or Not (13 page)

             
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 t
he 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 12
th
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 12
th
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.

             
‘12
th
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.