‘You don’t know where she went?’ Sandra asked. ‘You sure about that?’
I shrugged, not meeting anyone’s eye. ‘I just thought she went home, that’s all.’
They asked me about Kerry’s other friends and I had to say she didn’t have any. She really didn’t. Just me and Zoe. No, in fact, just me, and I’m not very good at it, was what I didn’t say.
Fat-Cop was scribbling stuff down all the time. My mum squeezed my hand. The little squeeze somehow made tears prick at my eyes.
Sandra Nice-Cop flicked at her notebook. Then she said: ‘Tell me about Luke Jones.’
I could feel myself blushing. ‘What about him?’
‘He’s Kerry’s older brother. He’s, what, seventeen? And he’s your boyfriend, right?’
I glanced at Mum and back down at the table. ‘Sort of.’
Sandra raised her pale eyebrows. ‘Sort of? He says he is your boyfriend. He says you started going out together back in the summer.’
I nodded. ‘Something like that.’
‘He’s a step-brother, isn’t he? What sort of a relationship does he have with Kerry?’
I frowned. ‘What do you mean?’
Sandra smiled at me. ‘Do they get on?’
‘Yes. Yes. He – he tries to look after her. She – he – he’s great with her.’
Sandra flicked a page in her notebook. ‘Perhaps you can help me with something else.’
I nodded, saying nothing.
‘Does Kerry have a mobile?’
‘Umm…’ I thought about how to answer.
‘Only her mum says she doesn’t have one. But her brother texts someone called Kerry quite often. He’s been texting all day asking where she is and if she’s okay. A bit odd, don’t you think?’
I breathed out, hard. ‘I’m not sure.’
Sandra looked at me steadily. ‘You would know, if Kerry had a mobile, wouldn’t you? I know what you girls are like – never off their phones. But that number Luke’s texting – it’s also registered to him. So it could be that Luke’s pretending to text his sister, to cover up for something. See what I mean?’
Heat rose up my neck and face. ‘She does have a mobile,’ I mumbled.
Sandra sat forward. ‘She does? You’re sure?’
‘Yeah. It’s Luke’s old phone. He gave it to Kerry so she could message him if… if…’
‘If?’ Sandra prompted me.
‘Like, if some of the girls at school were after her.’
‘Does she get bullied a lot?’
‘Sometimes.’ I stared down at my hands. ‘Once she got beaten up, in The Cut. It was a few months ago. Luke gave her the phone after that. She really only used it with him. Her mum doesn’t know.’
I looked at the coppers and tried to work out what their faces were saying. They were like blank screens.
‘He was just looking after her, like I said. He tries to keep her out of trouble. Including with her mother.’
My mum chipped in. ‘Are you nowhere near finding the poor girl, officers?’ She was still clutching my hand, a bit harder now. ‘What do you think has happened?’
Sandra shook her head. Like she was going to tell my mum whatever she was thinking. ‘We just don’t know right now, Mrs Ellis, but we have some leads to follow. It’s very possible she’s quite safe, somewhere. But the problem for us is that the family didn’t report her missing until quite late. That means if someone has taken Kerry, they could have gone a long way by now.’
She gave me a one of those smiles where people just move their lips and crinkle their face up, but it’s not a real smile because their eyes don’t flicker. ‘If you think of anything else, Anna. Anything at all.’ And she put a card with her telephone number on it down on the table.
November 2
Twenty-four hours later, there was still no sign of Kerry. I’d told the police what I knew. Well, some of it, anyway. I wasn’t about to get Zoe into any more trouble. She still wasn’t answering her phone and my mum wouldn’t let me out of her sight, so I couldn’t call at the flat. My dad called at her house, but he said there was no one there – it was all in darkness. I had no way of knowing whether the police had got to her. I just told them that we’d seen Kerry at The Cut and we’d left her to make her way home.
It wasn’t quite all the facts of the matter. I left out a lot of stuff about the flats and whose party it was, because I reckoned all that didn’t really matter. Except to get us into trouble – and maybe Jodie too, if they found out who let us into the flat in the first place. We were squatting and using illegal electricity and the place was kitted out with stolen stuff. And what if they found Zoe’s knife? We could actually end up in some sort of prison.
The thing was, at first I didn’t really think Kerry would stay missing. I didn’t imagine she was in any kind of proper danger. I just expected that she’d soon come wandering back home, with some kind of a sob-story.
I texted Luke: Any news x. He texted back: 0. Can’t talk now. He didn’t return the x.
The coppers came back twice that day. The second time, they asked me questions for more than an hour. Mum sat alongside me all the time. The police asked me quite a bit about the empty flat, because by now Luke had told them everything about it and thought she might’ve gone there. But she hadn’t.
Before the officers left, I asked them if they’d spoken to Zoe.
‘We can’t say,’ Sandra said, as she marched out of the door.
I texted again, for the hundredth time. Zoe, where r u? Pls call. x.
After the coppers left, I tried texting Luke again but I didn’t get a reply. I called his number. His voice, when he answered, sounded heavy and flat.
‘Are you OK?’ I asked, knowing as the words came out that this was one of the dumbest things I’ve ever said.
He was
