Page 12 of Dead to Me

‘What?’

‘Former Assistant Chief Constable Siegland?’the PC asked flatly.

‘I… I had no idea he’d retired,’ Seaton said, feeling his uncertainty growing.

There was a flicker around the PC’s eyes, and Seaton was suddenly certain that Gerry Siegland had not, in fact, retired.That there had been some kind of scandal.

‘Perhaps there’s someone else…?’he tried.

He saw the way the PC’s mouth tightened and he knew he’d played this wrong.

You’ve messed this up,he thought.Why couldn’t you actually keep in touch with these people?You would have known about Gerry.

But he hadn’t kept in touch with Gerry because Gerry was an obnoxious, bullying ass.With a sinking sensation, Seaton imagined the kind of trouble Gerry might have got himself into in a position of authority.The kind of trouble Seaton now appeared to be associated with.

After a brief pause, the PC said– in a very measured voice that Seaton suspected was an attempt to hide disgust– ‘Everyone who comes into the station will be listened to with respect, no matter who they know.Your daughter’s case will be taken as seriously as it needs to be.’

But it became clear that itwasn’tbeing taken seriously.That Seaton had lost credibility with the PC, and that he’d lost it further when the PC presumably caught a whiff of the champagne on his breath and asked him if he’d been drinking, to which Seaton stiffly admitted that he had.

It only got worse when the constable tried to ask him where Anna might have gone.Who she might have contacted.And Seaton had to admit, with a miserable sense of shame, that he didn’t know.That he only had one contact number for someone she’d been investigating– James’s number– and her editor’s phone number.That was it.

‘With the two of you being… not all that close,’ the PC said after a pause, ‘is it possible that she just decided she didn’t want to see you?She is twenty-six.’

‘But weareclose now,’ Seaton objected angrily.‘I keep explaining.She’s been updating me with all this, and that ball– she was in danger!’

‘The college May Ball,’ the PC had read back to him.‘A social event she went to with this group of friends?The ones you want us to pretend she’s called Aria to?’

And Seaton could tell that he’d lost.

He was ejected from the station shortly afterwards with a very clear idea of what was going to be done to find his daughter: nothing.Nothing at all.A form filled in somewhere and no action taken.

He’d failed her.That was what he now realised with a terrible, heavy certainty.He’d failed her both by not keeping up with the right kind of people and by not being close enough to her.

He’d failed her before that, really.From the moment he’d admitted to her mother that he didn’t love her, and was sure he never could.Failed her again when he’d let her mother walk away instead of asking what she intended on doing.

He’d probably failed Anna again a hundred times since.All the times he’d considered flying over to visit on a whim but been too afraid of a hostile reception.Over the money her mother and stepfather had refused to take, leading to Anna growing up too proud to takeanythingfrom him unless he hidit somehow.And by his inability to really talk to her as an adult now that she’d chosen to come back to England.

And he’d failed her last night, when he’d let her walk into that ball without backup or protection.

He was now standing beside the great, open expanse of Parker’s Piece, facing full into the bright June sun, with no memory of having crossed over the road from the police station.He closed his eyes against the glare.

This is your fault, he thought.Now what are you going to do to fix it?

By the time he opened his eyes again he’d remembered that he still had Anna’s phone.The phone he’d meant to tell the police about but had lost track of in the mess of the questions he’d had no answer to.

If he could just unlock the thing it would probably track her other device.The one she’d used as Aria.Knowing how useless she was at keeping track of objects, he was confident she’d have risked adding them both to her Apple account and would have assumed nobody would find out.If he could just get into the phone, he might be able to find her– assuming, that was, that the phone was still on her.

He had a sudden, horrifying image of her lifeless body being bundled into the river.Weighted down this time so nobody could find her.Killed because she’d found out too much and had never known when to back off.

Stop it, he thought, squeezing his eyes shut.You can find her.You can find her.

He remembered, in a vivid rush, Anna sitting at her laptop in his kitchen on one of the nights when she’d stayed over.He remembered asking her, ‘What are you doing?’

And then her half-focused reply, eyes still on the screen, ‘I’m writing to Reid.’

It had startled him, that response.‘Why?’

‘Because I was right about everything, and he was wrong.’

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