Wish You Were Here, page 17
‘Maybe.’ Sian thought about the sample she’d taken and frowned, but didn’t say anything to Kris. She knew he wouldn’t approve. She didn’t even approve herself.
A car buzzed past them doing about a ton. ‘Idiot,’ Kris said. ‘Wish I had my blues and twos.’
‘So, you fancy a stint in traffic now?’ Sian said, grinning.
‘Always been a fantasy of mine, pulling idiots over.’ Kris was grinning too. ‘It’s why I joined the force.’
They sat in a comfortable silence for a while. Sian watched Kris drive and thought about how he really was an excellent driver. One of the few she’d been in the car with on the motorway who did what you were supposed to, overtook then returned left, every time. Of course, like loads of police officers, he’d done his advanced driving test. Still. It made her feel safe to sit there next to him. She knew that was about more than the driving.
‘I don’t think Ana is Courtney,’ Sian said, finally. ‘I think Courtney is dead. But I also think there’s a connection that we’re missing.’ She shook her head, frustrated with herself. ‘I can just feel it in my gut.’
Kris nodded, then looked over his shoulder as he moved to the far lane to overtake someone who was sitting in the middle lane doing sixty. As they passed, Sian glanced back to try to see the driver, the way she often did with bad drivers, curious to see what kind of person would do something so annoying. For a horrible moment, she thought it was Palm Tree Hair she was looking at. She blinked her eyes and realised it was just some random, middle-aged bloke with a scruffy haircut.
‘Stop at Watford Gap, then again at London Gateway? I’m thinking it’ll be way past rush hour when we hit the edge of the smoke, so we can head straight through instead of round the M25.’
‘Cool,’ Sian said. She turned to look at Kris, to watch him as he drove. This was exactly the route she would have suggested. Exactly the stops she’d have made. No one else made so many of the decisions she would have made herself. She couldn’t help thinking that they were a good team.
She wasn’t about to say that out loud, though. Not yet. She thought again about Gabriella Kennedy, what she’d found out about her father.
‘Kris, I need to tell you something.’
‘Oh right,’ he said. He was focused on the road, but she could tell he was listening to her.
‘It’s about Gabriella. I didn’t tell Dominic because I don’t trust him, but I found a potential match for her. A man very likely to be her biological father. It’s someone very well known.’
‘OK,’ Kris said. ‘So, tell me.’
Sian whispered a name into the car. Now Kris turned his head to look at her. For a moment, he lost his focus completely and she had to remind him to watch the road.
ELEVEN
They arrived in Worthing nearly four hours later and checked into their cosy B&B. Sian nervously reminded the bloke checking them in that she had a dog, worried at the last moment that the venue might not have noticed this on her booking and that Elvis wouldn’t be welcome after all. But the guy at the desk, who she suspected was the owner, just smiled and pointed at a water bowl and dog biscuits on the porch behind them. He started to reel off details of how the place operated and about using the garden out the back if they wanted to.
Sian touched Kris gently on the arm and he nodded, knowing exactly what she was trying to communicate. She went to get Elvis from the car and, when she came back, Kris was waiting to go up to the room with her.
‘Oh, he’s a lovely Shepherd.’ The guy came around from the reception desk and walked towards them. ‘Can I say hello?’ He was beaming broadly.
‘Of course,’ Sian said.
Their host petted Elvis quite vigorously and gave him a biscuit, and Elvis danced with the joy of meeting a new friend.
Sian took Elvis into the garden for a quick sniff around and the toilet, and Kris stood by the door and waited for them. Then they headed upstairs and fed the dog, and he settled himself in his crate.
‘Let’s get the visit to the Watkins over with now,’ she said. Something about meeting Nikki’s parents was setting Sian on edge; she could not explain why. ‘The sooner I have something solid to tell Ana, the sooner we’ll hear from her.’ Sian had no concrete reason to think this, but she was sure it was true.
Kris nodded and picked up the car keys.
It was a thirty-minute drive to the Watkins’s home and Sian felt herself gritting her teeth for most of the journey. Soon enough, though, they were pulling up outside the small terraced house where, Sian assumed, Nikki had spent her childhood. The birth records Sian had looked at online implied that the family had lived here when Nikki was born or, at the very least, extremely close by.
The house had a well-tended front lawn and a little gnome on a swing hung from the canopy above the door. They got out of the car and Kris smiled at Sian as she walked towards him on the pavement. It was a warm day for spring, and she had left her coat at the B&B. She shivered slightly despite the heat. She had no idea what secrets Nikki had, no idea what can of worms they might be opening here, but she knew there was something and that this meeting needed careful handling. She stood and looked at the average semi, its small bay window and typical patterned glass door, but she felt the weight of something else. Something darker.
She took a few deep breaths and steeled herself.
Sian rang the doorbell and waited. A small woman with white hair opened it just a few moments later. She didn’t look at all like Nikki or Ana, and Sian wondered for a moment if they had the wrong house. ‘Mrs Watkins?’ she asked.
‘Yes, that’s me name, don’t wear it out,’ the old woman said, with a smile. ‘Can I help?’
‘Possibly,’ Sian said. ‘It’s about your daughter.’
The woman went pale for a moment. ‘Joanne?’ she said. ‘What’s happened to Joanne?’ She held a hand to her chest as if anticipating a minor disaster.
‘No,’ Sian said. ‘Your other daughter?’ She realised as she said this that she had no idea how many daughters Mrs Watkins had. This was something she could have easily researched on the genealogy website, and she internally told herself off as she stood there for this sloppiness. She cleared her throat. ‘Nicole?’ she said. A question she was about to get an answer to.
‘Oh,’ Mrs Watkins said. ‘I see.’ She stared at Sian for a long moment then she opened the door slightly. ‘I suppose you’d better come in.’ Her voice sounded stern and grave, and Sian knew that her disquiet about what they were about to find out was justified.
Sian tripped on the runner underneath the door as she stepped over the threshold, and Kris stopped her from falling. They shared a quiet smile before following the old woman into her living room. Sian felt lightheaded and slightly cold.
Mrs Watkins nodded towards the sofa. ‘You’d better sit down. Can I get either of you a cuppa?’
Kris shook his head and sat down on the armchair. His demeanour was quiet and respectful, and Sian thought he must be feeling the same grave tension that she was.
‘Just some water, please,’ Sian said. The old woman left the room and Sian stared around. There were photographs everywhere of children in uniform, young families, slightly older ones. None of them were Nikki or Ana. She took a deep breath. It wasn’t exactly a surprise that they were estranged, but seeing the rest of the loving family in that context was quite chilling.
Mrs Watkins came back with a glass of water and passed it to her. Sian took it and took a deep sip, then placed the glass down on the coffee table. She tried to smile at the woman but even she could feel that it was a weak gesture. ‘I was looking for the parents of Nicole Watkins. Am I in the right place?’ she said.
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘But what do you want?’ She sat down on the armchair. ‘It’s not nice, dragging up all of this old stuff.’ She shook her head. ‘Horrible, actually. It’s the worst thing that ever happened to me.’ She shivered.
‘We’re really sorry to drag things up,’ Kris said. He didn’t make excuses or give reasons, but his voice was soft and gentle and it seemed to calm the woman down a little. He was so much better than Sian at this people stuff.
Sian made eye contact, despite all of her instincts telling her not to. ‘Mrs Watkins, I’m investigating something for Nikki’s daughter. Nicole’s, I mean. And I’m hoping you might be able to help me with some of it.’
The old woman looked really confused. ‘I’m sorry, but I think you’ve got the wrong person after all.’ She sniffed, then swallowed deeply. ‘My Nicole died,’ she said. ‘When she was tiny.’ Her voice broke at this. ‘Cot death, you know? Like I said, worst thing that ever happened to me.’
Sian’s breath was taken from her for a moment. She turned, shocked, and looked at Kris, who shrugged. Why hadn’t she looked for a death certificate? Why hadn’t she started by asking a few questions instead of launching straight in, the way she had?
‘I’m so sorry,’ Sian said. ‘You’re right, there’s been a terrible mix-up.’
Kris stood up and walked over to the old lady, taking a packet of tissues from his inside jacket pocket as he did.
Sian was furious with herself. How could she have made such a basic mistake? She hadn’t done enough research for this visit and had trusted the information she’d been given by Ana too quickly. Broken her own rule about questioning everything and finding out all you could before you spoke to anyone.
‘I’m so sorry,’ she said. And she really was.
Kris drove them back to the B&B. They barely spoke on the drive. Sian was feeling very out of sorts, and Kris must have picked up on that as he left her to her thoughts. They were greeted enthusiastically by Elvis as they walked back into the room. Sian took him for a quick march around the block and, when she got back to the room, she was ready to talk.
‘Well, that was a monumental fuck-up,’ she said, unclipping the dog’s lead and watching him pad over to his crate in the corner.
Kris didn’t respond. He didn’t tell her that it was all OK or try to reassure her, and Sian was so glad. Elvis walked circles on his bed before curling into a ball and settling down. She picked up the kettle, which was a travel-sized one and made her feel like a giant as she held it. She took it through to the bathroom to fill up. She came back and flicked it on, shoving spoonfuls of coffee into mugs and sugar for Kris.
‘You OK?’ Kris said. He was sitting on the bed now, leaning back against the cushions with his feet up.
‘No, not really.’ She took a deep breath. ‘I can’t believe I wasn’t more thorough. And now I’ve barged in and asked some poor old woman about a baby she lost back in the eighties. All of that, so bloody unnecessary.’
‘You’re being too hard on yourself, as usual,’ he said, rolling his eyes. He pulled his phone from his back pocket and glanced at the screen before putting it back down again on the table beside him. ‘No reply from Mandy Johnson yet,’ he said. He’d messaged and phoned her several times trying to arrange a meeting while they were down here but, like before, she’d proved difficult to reach.
The kettle started to make wheezing noises as it heated, and Sian stared at it as if the power of her mind could speed it up.
‘So, what next?’ Kris said.
Sian shrugged. ‘Well, we carry on with the rest of the stuff we’ve come to do, I guess. Try to find this Daniel Harris bloke and keep trying to get hold of Mandy, hope she responds eventually. And hopefully find Ana along the way.’
Sian moved the cups around on the small plastic tray; a useless task but she found her hands needed to do something. The room was very quiet, and Kris looked deep in thought.
Sian broke the silence. ‘Do you think she’s ex-covert ops? Nikki, I mean.’ Even using her alternative phrase, Sian found the idea made her want to shiver and that resisting that urge felt wrong, the way holding back a sneeze does.
The small kettle finally boiled, and Sian poured water into the mugs, stirring them and adding creamer from a small carton to Kris’s cup before passing it to him. As she did all this, he was still considering her question and took a sip of his drink before finally answering.
‘Well,’ he said. ‘It’s a possibility. But that’s quite a conclusion to jump to. Really, all we actually know from this is that she was keen to hide her identity.’
‘Yes,’ Sian said. ‘Very keen. We know of at least three surnames she’s gone by at this point. Lots of distancing from her birth name, and who knows what that was at this stage.’
‘Exactly.’
Sian thought about it for a moment or two. ‘A very specific way of doing that, though,’ she said. ‘A thorough, thoughtful way. You might even say an expert way. What we were always taught in covert ops was that you keep your first name and do exactly what Nikki did – find a dead baby and use their name and details. Some people went as far as to get passports, open bank accounts, all sorts, using that child’s birth certificate.’ She sighed. ‘It was one of the many, many things that made me hate that job. Even before what happened to Cally.’
Kris looked up sharply at the mention of their late colleague’s name. He didn’t comment on the fact that Sian had talked about what happened for the first time in so many years, though.
‘Anyway, either this is another big coincidence, or she at least got advice from someone who had some grounding in this stuff, similar training,’ Sian said.
‘Yeah, I hear you.’ Kris didn’t sound completely convinced, though. ‘But she might have just thought it through and worked it out herself. She’s bright, sharp. You said that Ana said that about her.’
Sian held her head to the side and let out a slight whistle. ‘Yup,’ she said, ‘the only good thing she had to say about her mum.’ She sat down at the desk and took out her laptop, rooting around in her bag for the charger before plugging it in. The screen lit up as she opened it.
‘Mind if I watch a bit of telly?’ Kris said.
‘Knock yourself out,’ Sian said, nodding at the laptop. ‘I’ve got plenty to keep myself busy.’
Kris smiled and reached for the remote, turning on the TV and then turning the sound down so it was barely audible. He didn’t seem to be watching very closely, browsing his phone at the same time. Sian smiled at this and then turned back towards her computer.
She logged on to one of her many remote servers and then into Facebook. She hated social media and didn’t use it herself, but she had created several alias accounts using remote IP addresses so that she could use them to dig around when she needed to. She had a quick look at Nikki and Ana’s Facebook profiles, but there was nothing new to see. She checked Ana’s Instagram too, but still nothing. Her breath hitched with disappointment, but she decided the only thing to do was to keep digging on the case. She went through her now daily routine of checking all the groups relating to missing children. Some of these operated in good faith, trying to put out news and document sightings. But there were a lot that were very focused on conspiracies and rumours. In many ways, these were more useful for Sian.
One of the sites she checked regularly had quite a bit of new content up and a number of links to YouTube. She pulled her earbuds from her pocket and put them in, clicking through the links and playing the first few minutes of each video. Continuing if there was a hint that anything interesting was likely to come up. She’d honed this method of engaging with the internet for investigative work over the couple of years she’d been freelance.
The first video she watched all the way through wasn’t actually formed of moving images but contained stills from newspaper and magazine articles about Courtney. There were some images of the missing child and her family, and brightly coloured captions detailing headlines related to the case. The video was narrated by a computerised voice that you could almost mistake for human, and it covered everything from the moment the alarm was raised until the present day. It mentioned many things that had been identified by commentators as ‘strange’ about the alleged abduction.
The video suggested that Courtney’s mum, Lorraine, had been seen miles from where the alleged abduction took place on the same day. That there were very few people who could attest to having seen the mother and daughter together, that busy day on the beach in East Sussex. That the witnesses who had claimed to see them were lying. That Lorraine herself had problems with drugs and alcohol, and wasn’t a fit mother. Despite the strange narration and the childish captions, there were elements of the video that felt very professional, like the way the focus panned over the stills to give the feeling of movement and life. Sian wondered what somebody had to gain from spending time producing videos of this type. Was it simple clickbait, gaining views to earn money from advertising? The channel was quite small, though, and didn’t appear to be monetised, as far as Sian could tell. This was its most popular video and it had significantly more views than the others, which were on completely unrelated topics. Sian subscribed to the channel with her alias Gmail account and looked for what YouTube would suggest to her next. She found the website’s algorithm to be as good a way to follow a trail as any other.
This led her to another video with even more views. This one had a real person with a posh southern accent talking over news clips they’d sourced from all over the place. Sian thought she recognised the voice but couldn’t quite place it. There were shots of Lorraine Johnson, Courtney’s mum, from the days shortly after Courtney’s disappearance. They analysed her every movement, her facial expressions and nervous twitches, the outfits she was wearing. The major thrust of the story this one told was that she wasn’t acting the way you’d expect someone to when they had had a child taken. There were too many awkward smiles, her skirts were too short. On one of the clips of her returning home at night, she wasn’t walking straight and looked as if she’d been drinking.
