LITMIR.BIZ

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him.

      ‘So if we can just get back to your statement,’ Crown interjects and I half-glower back at him. Then notice he’s not wearing a wedding ring. Now why doesn’t that surprise me?

      ‘Can you remember if Kitty sounded in any way distressed or stressed out about anything?’

      ‘Not in the least,’ I tell him defiantly. ‘But then, she rarely ever did.’

      ‘OK,’ he says, head buried back in his notes and scribbling away. ‘Now if you feel up to it, just keep on talking.’

      And so I do, and before I know it, it’s Simon’s turn. He’s completely brilliant, though, far more businesslike and far less of a hysterical seesaw than I was. V. detailed and factual. I can practically see the sheer relief on Crown’s stony, emotionless face that at least one of us is making his life a bit easier, and not clouding the issue with tears and gulpy sobs, or with having to reach for Kleenex every two minutes.

      Even though we’re essentially both telling same story except from two different viewpoints, this still takes us ages. Actually starts to feel bit like we’ve been stuck in this stale, stifling room for hours. But then, as soon as Simon’s done with his statement and Crown’s finally stopped writing on the file in front of him, our questions right back at him start all at once, in a barrage.

      ‘So what happens now?’ Simon wants to know. ‘What exactly is the next step here?’

      ‘Yeah! I mean we’ve got buddies out trawling the streets, knocking on doors locally and asking if anyone’s seen or heard anything, and we could really use a bit of help. Proper, professional help,’ I throw in, fervently hoping offer of SWAT teams and helicopters is only round the corner.

      ‘Because we’re now working on the theory that she left the restaurant at around one in the morning,’ Simon takes up from me, ‘on Christmas Eve, when her shift ended. We’re assuming that she went to walk home, as she always did, and that something could have happened to her then. Maybe a mugging? An abduction of some kind? Maybe she’s being held involuntarily against her will? So you see, the faster you guys act, the better.’

      ‘And the more help we can get from the police, the quicker we’ll find her! She could be in some kind of awful danger right now, while we’re all just sitting around here doing nothing!’

      Crown makes another one of those ‘take it easy’ hand gestures that frankly are starting to annoy me.

      ‘I fully appreciate that you’re both deeply concerned,’ he says coolly. ‘But please remember that we’ve dealt with literally thousands of cases like this before and have a whole set of procedures in place that we’re obliged to follow first.’

      ‘Like what?’ Simon wants to know, sounding, for the first time since we got here, a bit impatient. Tetchy, not like himself at all.

      ‘OK, the first thing we’re going to take a look at are her mobile phone records. Was she the sort of person who’d have her phone on her person or close by her at all times?’

      A moment while Simon and I glance across at each other.

      ‘Well … yeah,’ we both say together. ‘In case one of her tutors at night school needed to contact her,’ Simon adds, ‘or if the restaurant ever called to change her shifts.’

      ‘But we’ve been ringing her mobile number for days now!’ I chip in. ‘And believe me, there’s nothing! I must have left about five hundred messages by now and still not a whisper out of her!’

      ‘When you call the number, does it go straight through to voicemail?’

      ‘Em … yeah, it does.’

      I’m narkily thinking: but what’s that got to do with anything?

      ‘Right then,’ Crown says, scribbling away on the pad in front of him. ‘In that case, we can safely assume her phone is probably out of battery. So the first step we take is to get onto her carrier and get them to put a triangulation trace on it a.s.a.p. Pinpoint the exact location of her phone, is the theory, and there’s a chance we’ll have a good starting point as to where to start the search for Kitty. With luck, she won’t be too far behind. Been very successful in cases like this before. We may not be able to nail down her specific location, but we certainly should narrow it down to within a one-mile radius.’

      Simon and I nod back at him, a bit more enthusiastically now. Maybe not offer of SWAT teams I’d been hoping for, but still. It’s positive. It’s something.

      ‘Secondly,’ he continues, ‘I’ll need to take her home computer to run a few checks on it, as well as all her bank records and credit card details, if you can access them. The first thing anyone who goes missing will always need is access to hard cash.’

      That, though, we’re prepared for, and I have them whipped out of the big mound of Kitty-related documents from my handbag barely before he’s finished talking. In fact, the only reason I haven’t called the bank myself before this, is that they’re all still closed for holidays.

      ‘And thirdly,’ Crown goes on, ‘I need to ask you both one or two personal things about her, if that’s OK?’

      We nod and sit forward, both on the edge of our seats.

      ‘You’ve already stated that Kitty Hope doesn’t have any history of drug or alcohol abuse …’

      ‘Most sober, reliable, upstanding girl you could ever hope to meet,’ I interrupt, to a raised eyebrow from Simon at the sheer outrageousness of the exaggeration.

      ‘So in cases such as these there’s about a ninety per cent chance that she is, in fact, safe and well. And just for whatever reasons, felt she needed a bit of time out. Was she under severe pressure at work or maybe at the night school she attended?’

      We both shake our heads.

      ‘Well, I mean, she worked long hours and when she wasn’t working, she was always studying,’ I throw in, ‘so the odd time she’d complain about being bone knackered, but apart from that …’ I trail off a bit here. Mainly because the exact phrase Kitty always uses is, ‘These fecking books have my brains turned into baked Alaska.’

      ‘Was she under any financial strain?’

      Again, we tell him no more so than any of the rest of us. No mortgage, low rent, no major credit card debts, no big whacks of cash outstanding to any shady loan sharks, nothing. She earned good money at the restaurant and always said Byrne & Sacetti’s customers were consistently the best tippers in town. Sure, she’d overspend a bit; but then Kitty’s outrageously generous and would often find herself broke and counting days till payday or until some whoppingly generous tip would tide her over. But doesn’t that just make her an ordinary, normal person?

      ‘Any gambling addictions that either of you know of?’

      Almost want to guffaw at that one. I once went dog racing with Kitty (under the misguided impression that it might be good place to meet blokes). I can still remember her roars of laughter, claiming that the mutt of a thing she bet on would probably still be panting towards the finishing post at midnight that night. Said anything she put money on was instantly cursed and doomed to the greyhound equivalent of early paralysis. So that one, single night was the beginning and end of her gambling career.

      ‘Was there a chance she may have been in the early stages of an unwanted pregnancy?’

      An angry flush from Simon at that, followed by a firm no.

      Did she appear to be suffering from depression lately?

      No, we tell him, stressing what a happy, open person Kitty is naturally.

      More questions come thick and fast, as Crown ticks off a long, long list in front of him.

      Had she been acting in any way strangely up until the night she disappeared? Was she bringing home large sums of money? Had she recently appeared alienated in any way from her close group of friends? Were a

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