The Sister(53)

The reconstruction began by showing posters of the Dire Straits concert that night, the cameras panned across hundreds of people queuing outside, showing the local pubs packed with concertgoers. A young, dark-haired girl sipped at her drink, dressed in a crisp new nurse’s uniform similar to the one Kathy had worn that fateful night. The narrator was speaking. ‘Kathy had a change of clothes with her when she left for work that morning. It is thought she lost or mislaid them. Her mother said at the time, ‘There was no way she’d go out socialising in her uniform.’

The show portrayed her as a young girl enjoying a night out, meeting up with friends at the show, drinking, laughing and becoming louder as the evening progressed. Then they showed her looking confused after losing her friends. They used actors to portray her friends talking about Kathy, how although she’d had a lot to drink, she was all right until someone gave her something.

‘I saw this guy give her a joint, and she lit it. They argued about something; he tried to make her stop with the smoking; I think he was scared they'd be thrown out. She wouldn’t listen. One minute she was there and the next she’s gone. It was just before the end of the show; the band was doing their encore.’

The re-enactment then showed two police officers walking down a typical affluent North London street. They noticed a man and a woman, at first it appeared they were arguing, she was clearly worse for wear, and as the officers approached to check up on her, a call to a domestic disturbance came in. It was two hundred yards away. The older one tapped his colleague and said, ‘Let’s go!’

The other officer said, ‘You go on ahead; I’ll catch up with you.’ The woman almost stumbled over; the man caught her by the arm and pulled her upright. She was giggly and seemed happy enough, but something about their body language had bothered him. He started walking over to them calling back to his colleague. ‘I’ll be right with you; I just want to make sure she’s all right!’

The older one hesitated, weighing up the situation. ‘Okay, but be quick,’ he said, as he took off down the street.

The actor playing the young officer approached the couple.

The narrator cut in. ‘We have in the studio with us tonight, the officer who approached the couple that night, he is still with the force, now a DCI.’ He swung round to face the detective who'd had his features fuzzed out with a blurry disc.

‘DCI Kennedy, I understand you were the young officer who spoke to Kathy that night. Can you tell us in your own words, what you recall?’

The more astute viewer might have thought it odd that they named him, but concealed his face. Kennedy himself had insisted on that, citing a delicate case he was currently working on.

‘As I approached, I thought the man who was with her looked a little out of place, too old for her. I thought he’d probably just stopped to try to help her. When I got closer, I realised she appeared to know him; she kept calling out his name, ‘Michael!’ Like that, repeating his name two, maybe three times. She didn’t sound distressed, quite the opposite really. A happy drunk.’ He’d spoken at length after that, but when the show went out, they'd cut to the actor playing him that night. The officer had said, ‘Are you all right, miss, do you know this man?’

‘Ish Michael,’ the girl playing Kathy said.

The officer looked hard at the other man’s face; there was bruising around the eye and dried blood in the corner of his mouth.

Kennedy’s original narration picked it up from there. ‘I noticed he’d clearly been in a fight. I asked him how he knew the young woman in question, at this point I could hear raised voices coming from the other end of the street where my colleague was. Michael said he was a porter. “I’m at the same hospital she works for.”

The reconstruction cut in for the last time with loud and aggressive shouting coming from the disturbance his colleague was attending and showed the young policeman telling Michael to look after her as he turned and ran down to help his colleague.

Subsequent investigations revealed no one matching that name or description was employed at the hospital where she worked.’

Kathy’s sister was speaking, filmed in silhouette.

‘I never met my sister. I was born after she disappeared, but thanks to my parents, I have a strong sense of having known her and what she was like.’

She talked about the disappearance being so out of character; she’d just started a new job, which she loved. ‘That was all she wanted to be from when she was a little girl,’ she said. ‘Sadly, our parents are no longer with us or they would have made this appeal. They worked tirelessly towards finding out what happened to Kathy that night, they never…’ her voice betrayed her emotions and trailed as her thoughts drifted. She quickly regained control. ‘If there’s anyone out there that knows what happened to her or knows anything at all, please call.’





The presenter summarised. ‘Were you at that Dire Straits concert that night? Perhaps you saw Kathy. Does anyone recognise the man who gave Kathy the marijuana cigarette? Can you remember seeing her outside? Did you see Kathy with this man getting into a car after the officer was called away?’

Photo-fits of the man as he looked then appeared on the screen, followed by a digitally aged photograph showing how he might look today.

‘Do you know this man? Does anybody recall the fight in the pub that night? Has anybody seen or heard of Kathy since that night? If you know of her whereabouts or what happened to her, we want to hear from you. Please call the incident room number on your screen. DCI Kendricks and his team are waiting for your calls.’