Claudia Carroll - Me and You

A gloomy, depressing, dismal-looking kip of a place. Overly bright fluorescent light that’d nearly give you a migraine, walls painted hospital green, with the paint peeling off them, and only one tiny window with bars on it, about seven feet above us. Bit like a prison cell. Underage Garda leaves us there and says that the sergeant will be along shortly.

The door slams shut and Simon shoots me a concerned look.

‘Don’t be nervous, Ange,’ he tells me gently. ‘Remember we’ve got all the facts in front of us and all we have to do now is tell the truth and nothing but.’

‘To be honest,’ I answer, ‘right now I’m mostly just relieved that maybe now they’ll get up off their arses and finally start to do something to help. Think about it: we’ve spent all of yesterday and most of today essentially doing the police’s work for them! It’s a complete disgrace, that’s what it is! Don’t know about you, but I’ve no intentions of leaving here without them promising to do what they’re being paid to do and get the bloody finger out.’

Because I want this sergeant, whoever he is, to be an elder statesman, Inspector Morse type, who’ll have this solved in a mere matter of hours. Or else a wise, elderly Miss Marple sort, as played by Margaret Rutherford, who’ll offer us pots of tea and scones, ask questions that initially seem totally irrelevant, like, ‘What was Kitty’s mother’s maiden name?’ Or, ‘Had she ever visited Bologna in springtime?’ And yet still manage to trace Kitty by morning.

Failing that, I want Kenneth Branagh as Wallander to stride confidently in here, or better yet, David Suchet as Poirot, who’ll waddle around, charm the arses off us, ask insightful questions, then whisk off and have Kitty back to us with nothing more than a funny tale to dine out on. I want someone who’ll walk in here and immediately inspire confidence. I want to just look at him and know that if this guy can’t track down Kitty, no one can.

What’s more, I want whoever this guy is to give us his solemn word that highly trained SWAT teams are, as we speak, being deployed to come in and help. I want helicopters patrolling the area where Kitty was last seen, I want everyone she ever met in her entire life from the age of three upwards to be hauled in for a full police interview; I want her story to be on one of those ‘live police enactments’ that you see on TV shows like Crimewatch (except with somebody thinner playing me, obviously).

I want whole entire units of coppers with trained Alsatians pounding on every hall door between here and West Belfast, asking questions and demanding answers. I want to paper-blitz whole country with a full poster and flyer campaign, so no one can possibly avoid seeing Kitty’s unforgettable face staring out at them from billboards, bus stops and lampposts.

I want total media blanket coverage. And only when all that is done, will I …

6.35 p.m.

Mental ramblings are suddenly interrupted by arrival of Detective Sergeant Jack Crown, who instantly surprises me by not being a senior, Inspector Morse or even a Scando detective type, but a youngish guy. Not that much older than Simon, late thirties at most, and not a bit wise or experienced-looking at all.

Definitely not a Wallander or even a Poirot either; the guy’s sandy-haired, freckly, chunky and with sharp blue eyes and an intent, tight-jawed look about him. Thick-set build too, with hands the approximate size of shovels. Puts me in mind of Simon Pegg, for some reason. Initial reaction? Bit disappointed, actually. Was just hoping for someone with more gravitas and authority about them, that’s all. Whereas this fella looks like the type of guy who’d be far more at home in a theme bar with a big feed of chips and a few pints in front of him. Not what I was expecting and certainly not what you might call confidence-inspiring.

Glance over to Simon, who shoots a ‘would you just give the guy a chance?’ look back at me.

Funny; we’ve spent so much time together of late, it’s getting so we’re starting to communicate without speech.

Det. Sgt Crown shakes hands vigorously with both of us as we introduce ourselves, but he isn’t exactly what you might call friendly or even particularly concerned for our welfare. Never says, ‘Call me Jack’, and no offers of tea from plastic cups either. Just dumps down a notepad with a thick wad of files on the desk in front of him and rolls up his sleeves, ready to write down anything we say that might, in some small way, help.

‘OK, firstly I’m really sorry you both had to come back,’ he starts off, efficiently whipping a Biro out of his uniform pocket. ‘But I’m taking it that at this point in time Kitty Hope has been gone for over three days now? If you’ve an accurate date and time as to when she was last seen, that would be really useful, as a starting point.’

No chat, no ‘So where you do think she went?’ or ‘Tell me how you’ve both been coping?’ No preamble with this guy whatsoever. Just efficiently cuts to the chase, like we’ve come in about a missing passport and are now holding up a v. long queue.

Simon starts to fill him in, aided by me shoving notes I made earlier in front of him, with exact names of who last saw Kitty, where and critically at what time. I keep on red-pencilling around stuff, so he won’t forget and impatiently tapping my biro off sheaves of paper in front of him to draw his attention to anything he’s leaving out. Driving the poor guy completely mental, in other words.

Crown works his way through a whole list of fairly standard-sounding questions and we answer almost in unison, nearly tripping over each other to get our spake in first. It’s a long, long list, and we tell him everything: Kitty’s age, gender, height, build, hair colour, eye colour, the date she was last seen, where she was last seen, plus full details about her next of kin and, more specifically, all about poor Mrs K. and her condition.

Then I can’t help myself butting in.

‘So you see, by far the weirdest thing of all here,’ I interrupt, overeager to get the story out, ‘is that we know she was most definitely planning to visit her foster mum in the nursing home on Christmas Day. So that categorically proves that something awful must have happened in the meantime … because only something really disastrous would ever have prevented her from …’

‘… Going to see Mrs Kennedy on Christmas Day,’ Simon butts in, finishing the sentence for me. ‘Which, of course, was when we both started to realise just how serious the situation was, because up till then, we’d thought … that is to say, we’d hoped , that maybe she’d just been out having a few Christmas drinks somewhere …’

‘… And maybe crashed out at friend’s house or something? So then, between the two of us, we phoned around just about everybody we knew, not to mention everyone she worked with, even random strangers who were booked into the restaurant where she was working that night …’

‘… And we got absolutely nowhere. Total dead end.’

‘OK, OK, guys,’ Crown interrupts, waving at us to quieten down. ‘Let’s just hear one voice at a time and take the whole story from the very beginning. Why don’t we start with you, Angie?’

Strongly suspect it’s because he knows I won’t shut up or stop interrupting otherwise, but v. happy to have the floor properly opened to me.

‘Now, I want you to take your time and tell me in your own words exactly when you last saw Kitty and when you first became alarmed at her disappearance. Remember, don’t leave anything out. Even the most insignificant detail could prove to be vitally important to our investigation at this point. OK?’

‘OK.’

I feel a bit like a star witness who’s just been ushered up to stand in front of packed courtroom. But Crown’s not making any eye contact with me at all. Which is not exactly what you might call encouraging.