On the way home, I call Detective Lane, but he doesn’t pick up. I think about leaving a message, but he knows why I’m calling. Katy was involved in something dangerous, in something she needed protection from. I saw Peter’s face, bruised and bloodied, because someone knew what he had.
I glance over my shoulder as I turn down my road. The street is so dark it looks like an empty black tunnel, and everything up ahead is the unknown. An icy wind whips across the path, whistling in the cracks in the stone. I pause, seeing a light on in my house, a light I didn’t leave on.
I press myself against the stone wall and grasp the black railing with a gloved hand, hooking my keys between fingers like Mum taught me how to, and how I taught Katy to. I shake the thought away. Is that a shadow? Crossing the kitchen towards the front door?
My breath quickens as I reach for my phone, dialling Detective Lane’s number again, desperate for him to answer. Suddenly, my heart explodes and a warmth floods my body. I sink to the ground, the stone wall scraping against my back. I cry out for Detective Lane, hoping he’s heard me. As I close my eyes and I’m locked into darkness, I hear footsteps, a gentle touch on the shoulder.
‘Mum?’ Katy whispers. ‘You need to get up.’
‘I can’t,’ I stutter.
‘But you’re so close.’
I shake my head. ‘No.’
‘Whoever took that USB from Peter knows you had it. You need to be careful. What other secrets had I hidden?’
‘Why did you keep secrets from me?’ I cry.
‘You have to know I didn’t want to, but it was bigger than me, Mum, bigger than you, bigger than us.’
‘What was?’ I say, stretching out a hand, but there is no one there.
* * *
‘Grace?’ a voice whispers, touching my arm lightly.
I stir, trying to lift my head and open my eyes. There’s a light shining directly at me, burning the lids of my eyes as I stretch out a hand to stop it.
‘It’s me,’ Detective Lane says. ‘Shine that torch away, please, I think she’s okay.’
I swallow but my throat is dry and coarse. I try to speak but my chest aches and my neck is stiff, my shoulders numb.
‘What happened?’ he says. ‘Do you think you need an ambulance?’
I shake my head, swatting around to catch his arm so he can pull me up. ‘It’s just a panic attack,’ I croak.
‘Just?’ he asks. He takes my arm and hauls me up, letting me lean my full weight on him.
‘Wait in the car, will you? I’m just going to get Miss Harper inside.’
The other officer nods and disappears into the tunnel. When I look up at the house, there isn’t a light on.
‘No,’ I whisper, stopping.
‘Come on, it’s freezing,’ Detective Lane says.
‘There was someone in the house,’ I say, trying to pull him away.
He looks towards the house then back at me.
‘There was a light on, I saw someone.’
‘Who?’
‘I don’t know.’
He points up the road. ‘We’ve had police posted, remember?’ I follow his finger, but I can’t see anything in the distance. ‘They called me when they saw you collapse, said you were talking about Katy?’ He rubs my forearm and pries my fingers from his wrist. I didn’t know I was gripping it so tightly.
‘Let me do a quick sweep, but if anyone had been in that house, the officers would have seen it.’
I nod, releasing him. He takes my keys and walks up the pathway, letting himself in. I stand outside in the cold watching him through the windows. Lights come on as he searches around, then flash off again. He moves from room to room until he opens the front door again and says, ‘No one here.’
I join him at the front door, peering into the house. It doesn’t feel the same and I can’t place why; something is different, something is off. But I don’t tell Detective Lane that, he wouldn’t believe me anyway.
‘Sit down, I’ll get you some water.’
I take a seat at the dining table and he fills a glass of water at the sink. He’s silent for a moment, until he hands me the glass and pulls out a chair opposite me. ‘You’re still having panic attacks?’ he asks.
I nod.
‘Have you been to see anyone?’
‘No,’ I say, placing the glass back down. ‘I usually manage.’
He glances around at the mess in the kitchen and through to the lounge where the remains of the snow globe lie smashed on the carpet.
‘How are you feeling?’
I shrug. ‘I really thought I saw someone.’
‘Sometimes stress and anxiety can cause us to see things, it’s not uncommon.’
‘That’s not what happened.’ I peer up at him.
‘Why are you here?’ I ask, bluntly.
‘I spoke to the security guard at NTV.’
I nod slowly, expecting this.
‘I was surprised to hear you went back there.’
‘I was invited,’ I say.
‘By who?’
‘Mark Crawley. He’s doing a docuseries about missing girls in the city.’
‘I don’t know if the network will go for that,’ Detective Lane says.
‘Why not?’
‘Because…’ He hesitates. ‘We’ve just brought Peter Thomas in for questioning.’
Sweat tickles the bottom of my back and the backs of my hands prick mercilessly. I shake my head. ‘Why? Katy?’ I whisper.
‘He told us about the USB, but we checked his computer for any traces of the files, and…’ He leans forward as if he’s about to catch me. ‘We found pictures of Katy.’
‘What do you mean, pictures?’
‘He has a folder on his laptop called Katy, the pictures are harmless enough, ones he’s taken from her social media pages or at work events. Some are a bit more concerning. They appear to be photographs he’s taken where she hasn’t any knowledge of the picture being taken.’
‘That doesn’t seem like enough. I mean he had a crush on her, a stupid crush. No,’ I say. ‘There’s something else, isn’t there?’
He bites his lip and taps the dining table with one hand. ‘We found a contact on there, for Ian Walters.’
I fall forward and Detective Lane grasps my hands. ‘Why would he have Ian’s contact?’
Detective Lane licks his lips. ‘He exchanged some emails with him.’
I shake my head. ‘Why?’
‘So far as we understand, Ian reached out to Peter first. He knew Katy and Peter worked together and he wanted some information on Katy.’
‘He isn’t her father,’ I insist.
‘It doesn’t matter,’ he pauses. ‘We’ve also brought Ian in. He lied about not knowing about Katy before she went missing.’
He did lie. ‘He was here, his alibi was wrong. They were right.’
‘Who was right?’
I shake my head. ‘He was in the country, and he knew about Katy.’
I stare at him, wondering if he knows what that man did to me, but I’d pushed it out my mind that he could have ever known about Katy. I thought he wasn’t in the country. He didn’t know about her until afterwards … but Ian lies, Ian has always lied.
‘Ian did know about Katy, he’d gotten information from Peter. It looks like he paid Peter to obtain some of Katy’s DNA for him.’
‘I don’t believe this. He wouldn’t, he was helping me, he was trying to find her. Someone attacked him.’
Detective Lane shakes his head. ‘Yes, he was trying to help you and we’re doing everything we can to find out who attacked him and why, and we’re trying to find that USB. We’re going to establish what happened, but we can’t ignore this, either.’
‘Ignore what?’
‘Ian is Katy’s father.’
I pull away from him, shaking my head until I feel like it’ll spin off. ‘He isn’t.’
‘He has a paternity test to prove it. I’m sorry, but’ – he hesitates – ‘he did know about Katy. He’s lied about finding out about her afterwards. He knew, and we have to look into that.’
‘He could have something to do with it?’ I whisper.
‘We just don’t know right now, but we have him saying one thing on TV and then we have the truth.’
‘He isn’t capable of the truth,’ I sob. ‘He’s a monster.’
‘Do you think he could have done something to Katy?’
I rise, pacing across the kitchen to refill my glass of water. I choke it down, a pain rips through my chest and I start to sob.
‘I tried to protect her from him.’
Detective Lane strides over to me, gently placing a hand on my arm.
‘Did he hurt you?’ he asks.
I twist my head to look at him, trying to fight back tears and hurt and all the pain I’d suppressed all those years ago, but now my heart has exploded and I feel like I’m bled dry. I have nothing left.
‘Yes,’ I say.
‘Were you worried about him hurting Katy?’
‘I never would have let it get that far.’
‘You were in an abusive relationship?’
‘It wasn’t really a relationship,’ I say. ‘I was very young; we had been on a few dates.’ I swallow a mouthful of water and wander over to the broken glass from the snow globe, staring down at it. Pieces of a shattered life stare up. ‘I went back to his flat for a drink. He was nice at first, charming. He worked in in finance and had a lovely apartment overlooking the harbour.’ I sniff. ‘He felt completely out my league, and so I wanted to do it right, you know? Take it slow, not mess it up. We went for a nice dinner and shared a bottle of wine. He asked if I wanted a nightcap and I said yes, that’s all I thought it would be. A little drink and maybe a kiss.’ I hold the back of my hand to my nose, letting snot run freely across it. I wipe hard and let out a painful cry. ‘I went to leave, but…’
I’m still staring at the glass, but before I know it, I’m bending down to pick up a piece. I hold it in the palm of my hand, pressing a finger into the edge, so hard I start to bleed. Detective Lane doesn’t rush forward to stop me; he just gently reaches out an arm, his fingers curl around my own and he pulls my fist open, carefully picking out the piece of glass. He turns me in his arms and pulls me into his chest, letting me sob openly and freely. Then he releases me, walks over to the bin and places the glass inside. He pulls a dustpan and brush out from under the sink and starts to work around me, clearing the glass. Once he’s finished, he leads me over to the dining table and flicks the kettle on.
‘I have to go, Grace, but is there anyone I can call for you? I don’t think you should be on your own.’
I shake my head. ‘I’m always on my own,’ I whisper. I look up at him. ‘Do you think he had something to do with this? Ian?’
His shoulders sink as he collects his jacket. ‘That’s where I’m headed now. I just wanted to check you were okay first.’ He pauses in the doorway. ‘If you would be willing to make an official statement, we can charge him,’ he says. ‘It’s never too late to get justice.’ He smiles. ‘Think about it.’
Detective Lane leaves, disappearing into the night. I slowly pace through the house, closing the curtains, pausing at the bay window in the lounge. I was so sure I’d seen the light on, that a figure had slipped between the shadows, but my mind is playing tricks on me.
My phone rings in the background, 5pm, that’ll be Mum. It would be a relief to hear her voice, to tell her I’ve finally done something about Ian, but the truth is, I’m a coward. I never told the police about him, and although he’s caught in his web of lies, I’m drowning in my own deceit.
I didn’t tell Katy about her dad, about what happened to me, and he was looking for her ten years ago, he was closing in on her, slowly. I dig my fingernails into the open cut on the palm of my hand. What if he did have something to do with this? And I let him by keeping silent, hoping I’d never have to face him again.
I close the curtain and try and push away the thoughts, but one keeps forcing its way back into my mind. How could he know about Katy? How could he suddenly wonder if Katy was his, unless someone told him, unless he was watching me?
I ignore Mum’s call. I’ll go and see her tomorrow; I’ll take some of her favourite scones from the bakery and I’ll tell her that I’ve done it: I’ve finally told someone about Ian. I just hope I’m not too late, that Ian wasn’t somehow involved in Katy’s disappearance, but I’ve put my trust in the wrong person. Peter was always working against me. He’d taken something of Katy’s without consent and he didn’t give her a choice of knowing.
I boot up my laptop and open the forum and there is it, a blurry image of a man holding a pint of beer looking up at a security camera in the smoking area of a busy nightclub. He’s surrounded by other men, all wearing suits, all clasping a drink in one hand and a cigarette in the other. They’re all looking away from the camera, like they’re aware of it, but the man looks directly at it, and it’s undeniably him.
LAINDON24
Tell me I’m not crazy
IN_THE_SHADOWS
No, that’s him and look at the time stamp
LAINDON24
Exactly, he was in London the day before Katy went missing, what the fuck
IN_THE_SHADOWS
We’ve got to send this to the police
LAINDON24
For sure
IN_THE_SHADOWS
Why did you delete it?
LAINDON24
I didn’t
IN_THE_SHADOWS
I can’t see it anymore
I scroll back up and they’re right, the image is broken.
REDTURTLE
Where’s it gone? Can you reupload it
LAINDON24
Fuck, it isn’t here
IN_THE_SHADOWS
What?
LAINDON24
I can’t find it, anywhere, what the fuck, guys, this is so strange
IN_THE_SHADOWS
Ask your friend to send it over again
LAINDON24
Yeah, hang on
I wait, my hands poised over the keyboard. I try downloading the image, but nothing works, it’s not there.
LAINDON24
It’s gone
IN_THE_SHADOWS
That’s so creepy
LAINDON24
Guys I’m going to go, I’m a bit freaked out
REDTURTLE
We should tell the police anyway
IN_THE_SHADOWS
This isn’t right
REDTURTLE
What was the nightclub called? I have someone that can help
LAINDON24
Who, a police officer?
REDTURTLE
Yes
LAINDON24
The Mirror
REDTURTLE
Thanks, will report back, stay safe
I close the laptop, my heart in my throat. Should I have told them about the break-in at Peter’s? But other than the police, I’m the only one who knows so far. It would look suspicious. But I’m worried. We saw the image disappear and now it’s been erased.
‘It’s like I said, Mum, it’s bigger than us.’