Wish You Were Here, page 11
The page filled with TV appearances and YouTube links. There were sites about the search for Courtney and news stories about every aspect of the case. There were original reports from when she’d gone missing, as well as more recent stories. The death of Courtney’s mother was also widely reported; Lorraine threw herself under the London to Brighton train one sunny Monday morning. Sian had travelled on commuter trains when such things had happened and remembered well the whinging she’d heard. People running late were the worst kind, so self-centred that they were blind to the fact that a life had gone, just like that, in a blink, and that this was more important than their arrival time to work. Sian’s heart ached for Courtney’s family, for all the things they had lost. This research was not making her feel any better about life, that was for sure.
She got up to pour the filter coffee and then really didn’t fancy it. She wanted a milky coffee from one of the many chain shops that were nearby the office. There was something about those paper cups. The feel of one warm in your hand was comforting. She headed out of the office at a pace, almost knocking over a woman who’d been coming up the stairs towards her. Sian came out into the city centre street and breathed in deeply, enjoying the cool air. That was what she’d needed really, rather than the coffee. Air and a breeze and an excuse to move about for ten minutes or so.
Clutching her costa lotta, and full of a weird hit from spending money she didn’t need to, Sian headed back to her office. There were a few people around now. She took the stairs to the first-floor reception. As she walked in through the door, she saw straight away that there was someone waiting for her. Nikki fucking Renaux.
For fuck’s sake. How had she got hold of this address?
Nikki glanced up at the sound of the door from the stairwell. ‘Hello,’ she said. She looked dishevelled, and Sian guessed that she probably hadn’t slept much that weekend either. She had probably come straight from one of her hippy parties.
‘Hello,’ Sian said.
Nikki’s arms were folded across her chest, a closed-off gesture. She was not happy at all. She stood up.
Sian’s hackles rose and she was alert right away, ready to defend herself in case things got physical. She quickly assessed the situation. She had a good 20lbs on Nikki, and most of Sian’s weight was muscle. She was trained in various fighting techniques, both from her time in the police and leisure time doing martial arts. The smaller woman was unlikely to be particularly strong, based on her lifestyle, and the yoga she did in her leisure time was hardly the best preparation for aggression… All of these sums and probabilities went through Sian’s head, and she took a step back, a jump kick away but out of easy hitting/stabbing distance.
Nikki frowned. ‘Can we talk, please.’ She sounded angry and she didn’t make it sound like a question. But she didn’t seem to be making any kind of physical move towards Sian. And why would she? Ordinary people didn’t do that kind of thing. Sian’s psyche was not taking the risk of assuming anyone was ordinary, though.
Sian nodded and gestured towards her office. ‘Come on, then.’ She let Nikki go ahead towards the door, not turning her back on the aggressor for a moment.
Nikki took a seat with her back to the door and Sian wedged it open. She walked past Nikki and sat at the other side of the desk.
‘How can I help?’ Sian said.
Nikki snorted. ‘I think you’ve already done enough with your “help”,’ she said. She made the final word sound ridiculous, her entire demeanour dripping with sarcasm.
‘I don’t understand.’
‘I think you do.’
The two women stared at each other for a few moments. Then Sian sighed, picking up a yellow legal pad and a pen.
‘Right,’ she said. ‘Let’s start at the beginning. Why are you here? And no more of this “think we both know” nonsense. Let’s just get to business.’
Nikki nodded.
‘Why are you here?’ Sian tried again. She attempted to sound businesslike and serious but felt like she was doing an impersonation just as much as she had been at the rave a week or so ago.
‘You’ve been talking to my daughter. Here, in this office.’ Nikki tapped the desk with a finger, as if for emphasis. ‘Here,’ she said again.
Sian didn’t see any point in denying it. ‘Yes,’ she said.
‘Ana told me everything on Saturday. While I was holding her stupid blue hair back so she could throw up.’
Sian wanted to laugh. The way Nikki had phrased this was genuinely funny. She held up her pen to cover the slightest of smiles. ‘So, Ana told you?’ she said. What was that thing they said about not working with children or animals? Well, Ana wasn’t exactly a child. But she was barely an adult either.
‘Yes.’ Nikki’s face was dead straight. ‘And I’m not happy. Coming to our party, pretending we’d met before, then turning up at my yoga class and feeding me all that bullshit. It’s, it’s…’ She trailed off, seemingly unable to find the word for what it was. ‘It’s not honest,’ she said, settling for what it wasn’t.
‘Ana is my client. I was just doing my job. Ana has questions, very significant and valid questions about her life story, and I’m trying to help her find answers.’ She kept her eyes on Nikki. Even sitting down, the woman seemed to be swaying slightly. Was she about to be sick? Sian wasn’t going to hold back anyone’s hair. ‘Can I get you a glass of water?’ she said.
Nikki nodded and Sian got up and walked to the filing cabinet, pouring water from a jug for both of them and placing one glass in front of Nikki. Nikki picked it up straightaway and took a couple of deep gulps, then slammed it back down. ‘I’m her mother!’ she said, half shouting. She pulled a phone from her pocket and unlocked it, searching through for something before holding it out to Sian. ‘Look,’ she said. The screen showed a photo of Nikki holding a tiny baby. ‘That’s me, with Ana, the day I had her. Explain that if I’ve abducted her from somewhere.’
‘Look.’ Sian put down the notepad and pen with a huge sigh. ‘I absolutely never said you had. I made no judgement. That’s not how I work. Ana came to me and asked for my help. I agreed to help her. It’s a business transaction, that’s all.’ She took another deep breath. ‘For what it’s worth, as soon as I saw you, I thought Ana must be wrong. I still do. And I think she knows that too, really. She wouldn’t take a DNA test.’
Nikki’s face softened for the first time since coming into the office. ‘She wouldn’t?’ she said.
Sian shook her head. ‘No.’ Cleared her throat. ‘I think she was afraid of what it might tell her.’ She sat back and chewed the end of her pen. Noticing she was doing it, she put the pen down. ‘Most people know the answers to their questions when they come here. I don’t really investigate mysteries so much as I confirm strong suspicions.’
Nikki folded her arms across her chest and looked triumphant, and then angry again. ‘I don’t really care what you say now. You took this case, fine. I get that. But you also came up to me at a party and pretended we had met before.’ Her face hardened. ‘That’s not on.’
Sian shrugged, thinking all’s fair in love and war, and while this was neither, she felt the saying stood. She was sure her Uncle Rob would have had a useful phrase or two to lend her here, but nothing came to mind. In the years since he’d died, she was finding his voice less vivid in her mind, his solid presence in her life slowly drifting sideways. ‘You could probably make all this go away by fully addressing your daughter’s concerns and questions,’ she said.
Nikki’s face clouded further. Then she got up and stormed out of the room, slamming the door.
Sian stared at the door as it rattled in its frame. She probably could have handled that better. But what was Ana playing at? And how was Sian going to solve this case now, with her cover blown and the person who had all the answers furious with them both, unlikely to be prepared to cooperate at all?
Opportunity Knocks
Lorraine sits in the small back room. She has a pen in her hand, the type with a nib that retracts, and she is clicking it open and closed. She glances at her own hand doing this, looking surprised, as if she is not responsible for its actions. She places the pen on the low coffee table in front of her.
The young woman police officer sits down opposite her. She reaches across the table and takes Lorraine’s hand in her own. ‘You OK?’ she says, her face tilting sideways and her eyes searching for Lorraine’s.
Lorraine doesn’t make eye contact. She looks down at the table and pulls her hand back. Nods.
‘You remember what we said? You just keep it simple like we discussed and read the note you’ve written.’
‘Yes,’ Lorraine says, her voice low. She touches the table three times and then sits up straighter. She finally makes eye contact with the police officer and shares the slightest of smiles.
‘Don’t worry,’ the young officer says. ‘I’ll be right beside you the whole time. It’ll be over before you know it.’
‘Thanks,’ Lorraine says. That uncertain smile again.
Then a male officer, older, dark haired but balding, appears at the door. He nods at the young woman.
‘Sarge,’ she says, acknowledgement of some unspoken order. She stands up and indicates to Lorraine that she should do the same. She curves an arm around Lorraine’s shoulder, and they walk through the door.
The other room is large. There is a long desk across the top of it with a line of chairs and microphones. On the other side of the desk, facing it, are many more chairs arranged in rows, filled with an audience wearing press lanyards. There are even more bodies than chairs, and at least twenty people are standing at the back of the room. As Lorraine and the two police officers walk in, there are flashes and clicks and whirrs of camera shutters, like so many hungry animals. Lorraine squints into the flashing lights. She puts an arm across to block them, like a celebrity caught with the wrong person outside a nightclub.
The young female officer indicates a chair to Lorraine and they both sit down. Lorraine stares out into the crowd as if she can’t quite figure out where she is and why. The cameras go quiet and so does the general buzz and then there’s the cold, white sound of waiting. The older male officer starts to speak. Stating facts about the case. Courtney’s age and description. What she was wearing that day. The time she disappeared. He holds up the picture that Lorraine took of her daughter on the shingle. They have blown it up poster-sized, and it is displayed all over the country as they search for the little girl.
The police sergeant indicates that it’s Lorraine’s turn to speak. She looks confused for a moment. Then she looks down and sees the piece of paper in front of her. She picks it up. She reads from it, slow and stuttering. ‘Please bring Courtney back. She’s my baby and I need her. Just bring her back, that’s all we want.’ Her voice sounds unsure but it doesn’t break, and she doesn’t cry. She just reads.
Then Lorraine looks up. For a moment, she looks like a different person. Her eyes change; they narrow. Her mouth sharpens. ‘You can’t keep her,’ she says. Then she smiles. It’s the strangest expression to see on a woman who has just lost a child. It looks immature and yet weirdly victorious. Like the look your sister would give you the moment she told your mum on you and you were sent to bed.
Lorraine straightens. She looks like she’s just remembered something. She reaches for her pocket and pulls out a tissue. Wipes at her dry eyes.
SEVEN
Sian looked at the new genealogy match for Gabriella Kennedy at least three times. What she saw there was a bit too much to take in for your average Tuesday morning. The man Gabriella’s DNA had matched to was entirely outside of her official family tree, and the reality this suggested was utterly mind-blowing. Sian would need to be very careful about how she’d word this when she met with Gabriella, be sure to couch it all in the science and with caveats about the probabilities. But there was no longer any doubt in Sian’s mind about which of the two sisters had the different biological father to the one on their birth certificate.
Sian threw away the cold coffee from her machine and rinsed the jug out. She felt a bit guilty for being wasteful as she walked back through to her office. She put in a fresh filter and filled the machine with water, then flicked it on again. It gurgled into life and the smell of fresh coffee filled the room. She sat back down at her computer and pressed the space bar to wake it up. The browser tabs she’d been looking at before, about Courtney Johnson and her family, popped up onto the screen and Sian started to read and click links. She was soon lost again in the world of 2006, when Courtney disappeared. It seemed ridiculous that this was sixteen years ago. It felt like yesterday.
Mandy Johnson, it turned out, was a woman it was hard to feel sorry for. Sian watched her latest TV performance on YouTube and she could see why people drew all sorts of conclusions about her. She was too polished and rehearsed. Too collected. Sian didn’t rush to judgement about that; why shouldn’t a woman come across this way, even someone who’d been through a trauma? A polished surface usually hid far more than people knew, anyway – Sian could attest to that. But she also knew that, generally, other people did judge you. If you didn’t display the right emotion or issue the expected response when faced with a certain situation, question or comment, people didn’t like it at all.
Sian trawled through the current Campaign for Courtney website once again and saw the full-colour version of the picture that had started all of this. In all its Technicolor glory, it looked slightly less like her client, but there was still a striking resemblance. Sian could understand why Ana had attached herself to this idea, given her doubts and issues with her own mum.
The contact details for the campaign were at the bottom of the page. Sian had emailed Mandy several times via this address but she was yet to receive a reply. She’d started to wonder if the email address was even real. There had been no server error responses, though, so she’d tried adding delivery and read receipts, and these had confirmed that somebody was opening her messages. She wondered what she could say that might prompt a response. She could just write and say she had a possible lead about Courtney. But she wasn’t sure she did. She didn’t really want to assert anything of the sort without more evidence, get Mandy’s hopes up after all this time. This was why she needed to meet Mandy and talk directly to her.
The coffee was fizzing in the pot. Still reading the screen, Sian reached for her mug and stood up, bumping her upper thigh on the desk as she did so. She rubbed it as she walked over and poured a cup of coffee, then went back to the browser. She hunted for press contacts for Mandy, for anything in the White Pages online. She trawled through the Whois records of all the campaign websites. Everything led back to a not-for-profit organisation and a PO Box. Sian could understand that. Courtney’s family had had a lot of abuse and accusations thrown their way over the years. Enough that they’d want to stay hidden. And yet something about it also made her itch.
Sian searched social media then. Facebook, Twitter, Instagram. But nothing. Mandy seemed only to exist in newspaper articles, or as a mention on the campaign pages. Or in horrible websites explaining exactly what had happened to Courtney in voodoo ceremonies carried out by her family. Well, they weren’t quite that far-fetched, but some were not far off. Sighing, Sian closed the browser. She couldn’t bear to read any more. There was a massive hole of hate here, on the internet, for these people who had lost so much. It was enough to put you off the human race altogether.
Getting up, she stretched and then walked over to pour more coffee. A knock on the door startled her and she hurriedly put the cup down and opened the door. Kris was standing there grinning. ‘Hello, Love,’ he said. ‘Time for a lunch break?’
Sian smiled and let him in. She walked back over to the filing cabinet, where she noticed her coffee mug balanced right on the edge. She pushed it so that it rested more securely on the surface.
Gesturing towards the papers on her desk and the computer, she shrugged. ‘I’m pretty busy,’ she said.
‘Bring stuff along. Working lunch? A break makes you more efficient.’ His face looked so hopeful. ‘Anyway, we can start talking about when I move in here. How it’s all going to work. We need to sort that out.’
‘I dunno.’ But she looked at him, at his soft smile and warm brown eyes. She couldn’t help but love him, even if she couldn’t quite bring herself to tell him. ‘Fine,’ she said. ‘But you have to help me with my case first.’
He was already at the door by the time she’d finished this sentence and he turned and saluted her. ‘With pleasure!’ he said.
They headed out of the office and walked a few streets to a small vegetarian café that was one of Sian’s favourites. They went upstairs. It was the kind of place where the tables felt too close together, but the food was so good that Sian was able to overlook that. She took a seat and let Kris order for her. His job still brought in a lot more money than her self-employment did, and although she had savings, he was insistent she shouldn’t dig into them too quickly. She wondered how they’d cope financially when he finished work. Although he had an excellent pension, which would certainly help.
Kris came back with coffees and sat opposite her. ‘So, Love,’ he said, ‘what’s happening with the case?’ He poured two sugars into his drink and stirred it rapidly.
She shrugged, suddenly feeling absolutely exhausted at the idea of discussing it at all. She took hold of the coffee cup and let its warmth seep into her. Then she looked at Kris. ‘I was getting somewhere before she blew my cover the other night.’ She smiled at these words, then shook a hand across the front of her as if to cancel them. ‘Her mum turned up at the office yesterday and Ana’s told her everything now. Livid with me.’
