Ready or Not (39 page)

             
              And then he began to sing. The song that her mother had used to sing to them when they were children: a beautiful, strange Gaelic song that brought with it a flood of repressed memories. The sound filled the room like a haunting lullaby; like a dream she couldn’t wake from. She heard her mother’s voice – the voice that had been drowned in drink and despair – and Kate’s heart swelled with the memory of the woman she had felt such contempt towards for so long, and so unfairly.

             
              No one could possibly have known about that song. No one other than her mother, her father and Daniel.

             
              Kate rested her head against the wall behind her. She put a hand to her face, partly to assess the damage to her nose; mainly to cover the tears that were welling in her eyes. She didn’t want to let the bastard see her cry.

             
              She didn’t want it to be like this.

             
              Neil stopped singing. He turned to her. ‘Now do you believe me?’

             
              Kate kept her hand to her face.

             
              ‘I’m sorry about that, by the way,’ Neil said, gesturing towards her nose. ‘He gets carried away. You were starting to suspect him, weren’t you?’

             
              ‘Suspect him of what?’

             
              Neil shrugged. ‘Being a shit copper? Christ, the kid’s scared of his own shadow half the time. He only got in by the skin of his teeth and that was thanks to me. It took a lot of training and a bit of good old fashioned bribery. Fucking idiot. I should have just done it myself, but it would’ve spoiled all the fun. You’d have known me, wouldn’t you? You knew straight away.’

             
              Kate ran a finger down the dried blood that was caked on her face. She didn’t care about Matthew. She cared about the truth.

             
              ‘Why are you doing this?’ she said. ‘If you knew who I was, why would you do this to me?’

             
              ‘Have you tried looking for me at all?’ Neil asked, ignoring her question.

             
              She turned to him. ‘I tried looking for Daniel,’ she said angrily. ‘But you – you’re not him. I don’t know who you are.’

             
              ‘You couldn’t have looked very hard,’ Neil said, raising his knees. ‘In fact, I’d say, that for a detective, you did a pretty shitty job.’

             
              Kate looked away from him. She couldn’t bear to look at him; couldn’t stand to think that after all this time, thirty years of searching, she had found this. Or this had found her. This was what her brother had become. Better he had died, she thought bitterly.

             
              ‘I’ve been looking for Daniel Kelly,’ she told him, ‘not Neil Davies.’

             
              ‘Kelly,’ he said, spitting the name. ‘I’m not a Kelly. I never have been. Different name – different life. I grew up in a care home,’ he told her. ‘Do you know what that does to a kid? Fucks you up. We vowed we’d find whoever was responsible for putting us there.’

             
              ‘We?’

             
              She hadn’t needed to ask; it suddenly all made sense. Matthew. Of course. His own human puppet who asked how high when he was told to jump.

             
              Kate shook her head and put her hands to her face.

             
              ‘Don’t feel sorry for him,’ Neil said. ‘He comes across as a bit of a drip but he knows exactly what he’s doing. Couldn’t wait to join the force. Thought it was going to be all gun fights and car chases, like some bloody Bruce Willis movie. Just as well it’s not. He’d have been fucked.’

             
              Neil reached across and caught her arm. Kate flinched from his touch. ‘It wasn’t your fault,’ he said. ‘It was his.’

             
              It took Kate a moment to make the mental leap from Matthew to her father, but she refused to allow herself to believe the words that began to spill from Neil’s mouth like venom.

             
              ‘Daddy sold me, like some cheap piece of furniture he didn’t like the look of anymore,’ he said, his voice frantic; the words falling over each other. ‘Couldn’t afford us both? Couldn’t love me in the same way he loved you? Who knows? Sold me to some crazy bitch who’d had a mental breakdown and couldn’t adopt because no social services jobs-worth would be insane enough to have trusted her with a fucking sandwich, let alone a child. So what sort of crazy bastard would leave a kid with the crazy bitch, besides some sort of crazy bastard that happened to be our crazy bastard father?’

             
              His hands had formed tight fists at his side and his face had paled as though the life was drained from them. As Neil continued to talk, Kate shook her head continuously and emphatically, her already intense fury with him growing with every word he spoke. His hand stayed on her arm, gently rubbing the sleeve of her coat; the feel of her beside him somehow soothing his anger.

             
              ‘Believe it…don’t believe it,’ he said pulling his hand away from her. ‘Makes no difference to me.’ He flicked the cigarette to the floor and crushed it out beneath his heel.

             
              ‘Why didn’t you tell me where Ben was?’ Kate asked, trying to push thoughts of her father out of her mind. ‘You knew he was with Claire all the time. You left him there, for Christ’s sake? Why would you pretend he was missing when you knew exactly where he was?’

             
              Neil turned to her, pulling his legs underneath him. Kate shifted nervously, looking around her but knowing she had nowhere to go, not while Sophie, Ben and Claire were still locked in the next room.

             
              ‘You know why,’ he said. ‘I wanted to get closer to you.’

             
              He put a hand on her face and turned her head sharply towards him. ‘I told Claire to keep him with her in Newport. I knew she’d do it. She’ll do pretty much anything I tell her.’ He tutted, shook his head and moved his hand down Kate’s face and onto her neck. ‘I don’t know why,’ he said, his face breaking into a sickening smile, ‘but I think she’s scared of me. And a little bit in love with me perhaps.’

             
              His hand moved to the back of her neck and Kate’s body stiffened as he pulled her closer to him. ‘Am I forgiven?’ he asked in her ear.

             
              He breathed hot on her face.

             
              ‘You’re sick,’ she muttered.

             
              ‘Now, now,’ Neil scorned, his voice almost childishly sing-song. ‘Don’t make me angry.’

             
              She turned to him, confronting him head on. ‘What about Stacey Reed?’ she said accusingly. ‘You were involved, weren’t you?’

             
              Neil smiled knowingly and moved his legs back from beneath him. He stretched them out on the warehouse floor, leaning casually with his back to the wall. ‘Maybe you’re not such a terrible detective after all,’ he mused.

             
              Kate bit her tongue. ‘What the hell did you hope to achieve by encouraging those two morons to kidnap a little girl?’ she asked.

             
              ‘I take it back,’ Neil said. His mouth twisted into a look of scorn and he raised his eyebrows questioningly. ‘Go on, Kate,’ he prompted. ‘Have a little guess, at least.’

             
              Kate sighed heavily. ‘I’m not playing these games with you. Just tell me why you did it. That poor mother. That poor little girl…they’d done nothing to you.’

             
              Neil took offence at this. ‘It wasn’t about hurting the kid, Kate. It was about getting closer to you.’

             
              ‘How?’ Kate asked incredulously. ‘You were nothing to do with that family – it had nothing to do with you!’

             
              Neil moved his hands beneath his hips. ‘I was at the search for her.’

             
              Kate looked at him, but he looked ahead, not meeting her eyes. ‘What?’

             
              ‘The first search they held in the estate,’ he explained. ‘I was there. I stayed at the back. I watched. I watched you. It was the first time I’d seen you. The private detective I hired found out where you were, eventually. I moved my family for you, my life. Found out what you do. He told me you specialised in missing children cases. So to get close to you…’

             
              He drifted off and turned to meet her eyes.

             
              She couldn’t believe what she was hearing; couldn’t comprehend the twisted picture that was forming in her mind, the pieces moving together like a puzzle that had been there all the time, just waiting to be seen clearly.

             
              ‘You needed a missing child,’ she finished. ‘You’re fucking crazy. Christ, if all you wanted to do was see me you could have waited outside the police station or outside my flat until I turned up. I dare say your private detective could have provided you with a photo of me. It makes no sense.’ Kate lowered her head and looked at her lap. Her fault, she thought. Stacey Reed had been kept hidden for eight weeks – starved and filthy – and, crazy as it was, it was indirectly all her fault. She thought of the little girl as she had found her in the attic and tears welled again.

             
              It was all her fault.

             
              Kate put a hand to the side of her face, hoping to hide her eyes from Neil.

             
              ‘I wanted to see you in action,’ Neil said, ‘not a two minute glance outside the cop-shop. I wanted to see my big sister…action woman. See how long it’d take you to find them. Thirty years you had to find me. Couldn’t have tried very hard, could you? The kid shouldn’t have been kept up there that long,’ he said matter-of-factly, as though reading her thoughts. ‘That was…unfortunate.’

             
              Kate moved her hand from her face. ‘Unfortunate?’ she repeated. Her heart raced, anger burning through her. ‘She was half starved to death!’

             
              Neil sighed and shook his head. ‘You’ve met those two cousins,’ he said, stretching his legs in front of him. ‘Thick as shit, the pair of them. They told me she’d be looked after.’

             
              Kate snorted. ‘Oh, how good of you,’ she said, her voice dripping with sarcasm.

             
              ‘She was only supposed to be there a couple of weeks at the most,’ Neil continued, ignoring her. ‘That’s why I had to get shot of Ben. They were taking too long. You were taking too long.’

             
              He reached into his jacket for the cigarette packet, slid one from the pack then changed his mind, replacing it. ‘My fault,’ he added. ‘I should have gone straight for Ben, but I hadn’t thought of it. Dean Williams was just too easy to persuade. And his half head of a cousin was just as simple. I only had to mention the money and they were eating from my hand. Not one fucking brain cell between them.’

             
              ‘What about Joseph Ryan?’

             
              Neil relaxed against the wall. ‘I told you,’ he said casually. ‘World’s a better place without him.’

             
              Kate edged slowly away from him; the touch of his hip at her side revolted her. ‘You had an affair with Claire,’ she said, flinching in preparation for a violent reaction from him. ‘He wasn’t doing anything you didn’t.’

             
              Neil turned sharply, closing the gap between them.

             
              ‘I paid for what I did,’ he said through gritted teeth. ‘I lost everything.’

             
              ‘And the others?’ Kate asked, holding on to her composure and what little courage she had remaining. ‘Did they deserve to pay for what they’d done?’

             
              Neil smiled and eased away from her, returning to lean against the wall and stretch his legs out in front of him. ‘Fucking losers,’ he said. ‘Didn’t deserve their lives, let alone their families.’   

             
              Neil grabbed the back of Kate’s neck. She shrunk and tried to edge forward. She said nothing, but grimaced as his hand locked tighter. ‘I just wanted to get closer to you,’ he said again. ‘I spent years trying to find you, Kate. Trying to find my family. I love you, Kate.’