The Disappearance of Katy Harper
Part 5
Joanna stares at the person behind the camera and says quietly. ‘Can I ask you to repeat the question?’
A woman’s voice repeats. ‘What did you think of the police investigation?’
‘I thought it was fine.’ She is lying. She hesitates. ‘I thought they could have done more,’ she admits. ‘But that’s a normal reaction, a frustrated reaction.’
‘They stopped looking for Katy,’ the voice probes.
‘Yes, a lot of people go missing, I know that. It’s just…’ She bites her tongue between her teeth. ‘No one vanishes into thin air, no one, and Katy left a trail of suspects, each one with, in my opinion, a flimsy alibi and a motive to hurt my best friend.’
‘Did you have any motive?’
‘Excuse me?’
‘Katy didn’t get on with your then boyfriend, now husband.’
Joanna shakes her head. ‘No, but what does that matter? We were young, it was different.’ She licks her lips and glances away to someone behind the camera we can’t see. ‘We never let boys come between us, and to ask if I would harm my friend because of one is abhorrent.’ She’s flustered. ‘Katy disappearing was never about me, or my husband.’
‘What was it about?’
She shakes her head. ‘I don’t know, but yes, the police didn’t do enough, they didn’t follow up on leads, they only questioned Graham once.’
The screen cuts to drone footage of Bristol, panning the NTV building and zooming in on each street, empty and dark.
Graham sits on the sofa, hands intertwined, a vein pulsating by his jawline and down his neck.
‘I’ve spent many years running and hiding from this because everyone assumed I was guilty, but no one ever looked closely at what was right in front of them. It wasn’t like Katy vanished without a trace. She left many, many traces, but none of them were looked at, examined. The police, they did nothing.’
‘What do you mean by that?’
‘Even my interview, I was never taken seriously as a suspect, and I saw what the papers wrote about me, what everyone online was saying, what people whispered in the shops when I went to get a pint of milk just so I could have a cup of tea. Of course, there was every reason to think it was me, I know that, everyone else thought that. I was the boyfriend, we’d had an argument, she’d contacted me saying we needed to speak, it was all there, plain as day.’
‘But?’
‘The police weren’t interested in me; they weren’t interested in anyone.’ He looks into the camera. ‘They weren’t interested in Katy.’
Detective Lane appears on the screen, he’s already shaking his head at a question he’s been asked.
‘It wasn’t like that.’ There’s something he’s not saying, he looks like he’s restraining himself.
‘Why did you close the investigation?’
‘We didn’t close the case; we just didn’t have any fresh evidence or leads. We aren’t actively investigating at the moment, but that could change.’
The screen fades to black.