college days, when Sarah used to trawl round the place in Doc Martens and denim overalls, famous for never shaving under her arms. Then, the minute she graduated and went to work in her family’s catering company, overnight she suddenly morphed into a female Alan Sugar, crossed with a Karren Brady-businesswoman-type, dressed in stilettos and scarily smart black pantsuits, and living off a combination of fags and nerves. It’s in the blood and genes will always out, as Kitty used to shrug.
Really delighted to see her now, though. Like a burst of vitally needed energy.
3.45 p.m.
It was exhausting, it nearly bloody killed us, but somehow between us, Simon, Sarah and I, we’ve now managed to work our weary way through to the v. last name and get to speak to everyone we could on that everlastingly long contact list. Don’t know how we did it, but between Sarah’s Prussian efficiency and my insane, misguided optimism in the face of overwhelming odds, somehow we get there.
Absolutely nowhere, that is. No one has seen or heard from Kitty since her last shift in work, no one knew of any late-night parties she might have pitched up at, not a bleeding sausage. Just dead ends everywhere we turn.
Poor Simon’s really worrying me now. Like a shadow of the same guy I knew from only a few days ago. He’s jumpy, tense, even a bit irritable, so unlike his usual über-gentlemanly self. Has already asked me about five times to come with him to police station later on this evening.
‘I really need you there with me, Angie,’ is all he says, with a pleading look, like a lost little puppy.
He’s actually starting to treat me like I’m his lifeline. Even Sarah noticed.
5.10 p.m.
Fast approaching the 6.00 p.m. deadline to get back to the cop shop, and Simon and I are about as organised as we’ll ever be to finally file a report. We’ve covered absolutely everything; we even rang up Foxborough House care home again, in vain hopes Kitty may somehow have surfaced there. But nothing.
Weird just how quickly you become inured to disappointment.
Between the whole lot of us though, I think we’re fully prepped for all eventualities. Sarah, being Sarah (bit ghoulishly I thought), even went and unearthed a whole missing persons website and saw that the first thing police apparently look for are mobile phone details, as well as bank account and credit card statements. So after a fair bit of rummaging through Kitty’s desk, the pair of us stumbled on a few old bank statements as well as a mobile phone bill (Kitty’s never a great one for clearing out her desk, it seems). Felt a bit like tempting fate even taking all this stuff with me, but as Sarah kept reminding me, far better to arrive fully prepared.
All in all, getting organised for this was relatively easy.
So now for the hard part.
Harcourt Street Police Station, 6.00 p.m. on the nail
Utterly mental in the cop shop tonight. Like a riot just broke out before we arrived and Simon and I had the bad luck to walk right into the aftermath. Place is packed with underage-looking yobbos with buzz cuts and v. scary-looking ‘body art’, all out of their heads on meths or God knows what. I’m not kidding, every single one of them looks fully ready to start fisticuffs with his own shadow. Bloody terrifying.
I shuffle over to stand v. close to Simon, who instinctively grips my hand. Grip it back, tight. Grateful.
We wait meekly at the back of a tiny reception area, either till the yob-heads all get arrested or else someone notices us, but by a stroke of pure luck, the very same adolescent copper who was on duty last night chances to walk right by us with a tray of coffee. He sees us and immediately stops.
‘You two must be back about your missing friend then, yeah?’ he asks.
Pair of us nod.
‘I take it she still hasn’t turned up, then?’
It’s all I can do to fire him an impatient look and stop myself from snapping, ‘Eh, no, sonny, she’s actually at home with the feet up watching tonight’s Christmas movie, which I believe is Avatar. Sure, we just thought we’d swing by to drink in the homely atmosphere.’
But Simon, as always, is that bit more tactful than I am.
‘Still nothing to report, I’m afraid,’ he says politely. ‘Can you tell me who’s the most senior person on duty here tonight?’
‘That’d be Detective Sergeant Jack Crown. If you just follow me, I’ll get him for you now. He said if there was still no news about your friend this evening, then he’d like to interview you both together.’
Sudden surge of elation. The sergeant wants to interview us! You see? Finally, finally, finally this is being taken seriously! Jubilantly we follow the pimply adolescent Garda, as he leads us out of the packed waiting area and down a long, snaking corridor to a tiny interview room right at the very end.
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
