(2012) Say You're Sorry

by Michael Robotham

  “OK, we won’t talk about the post-mortem. I’ll ask you general questions.”

  He nods.

  “How long would a person survive outside without shelter in a blizzard like the one on Saturday?”

  “A matter of hours.”

  “The bruises and cuts…”

  “She was wandering around in a blizzard. She could have bumped into trees and fallen into ditches.”

  “Nobody has reported her missing.”

  “Maybe she’s not a local.”

  “They haven’t found a vehicle.”

  Dr. Leece presses his thumbs into his eye sockets. “I don’t know. Sometimes I’m grateful that I don’t have to understand human behavior.”

  Augie Shaw saw a woman standing barefoot in the middle of the road. It has to be the same one. She didn’t take her shoes off next to the pond. She wasn’t wearing any to begin with. Why run off? Why was she outside in a blizzard? Who was she running from?

  “Did you notice anything else unusual about the scene?” I ask.

  “We found a dog.”

  “What?”

  “It was frozen with her. Maybe the dog went in after her or she was trying to rescue it. Once she hit the water, the cold overwhelmed her and she didn’t have the strength to drag herself out.”

  “Was it a black and white Jack Russell?”

  The pathologist stares at me. “How could you possibly know that?”

  “One went missing from the farmhouse. Small, black and white, I figured it was probably a Jack Russell.”

  “The Heymans’ dog?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why would it be with the girl?”

  It’s the same question I’ve been asking myself and I keep coming back to something that Grievous told me at the farmhouse.

  “Do you keep the dental records of missing persons?”

  “Of course.”

  “Can you look up a file for me?”

  “Certainly. Who?”

  “It’s a girl who went missing a few years ago. Natasha McBain.”

  Dr. Leece’s eyes bobble behind his glasses. “She was one of the Bingham Girls.”

  “Her family used to live at the farmhouse, but they moved out after Natasha went missing.”

  The pathologist’s mouth opens; a question half formed on his lips.

  “So the dog?”

  “What if they left it behind?”

  10

  Charlie is waiting for me at the hotel suite, sprawled out on one of the twin beds as though bored with life. I kiss her forehead. She looks past me at the TV. Silent. Righteous.

  The room is dully corporate, decorated in navy blues, with a high ceiling and an ornate plaster rosette above the hanging light.

  “Sorry I’m late. I got held up.”

  “All day?”

  “I left you a message.”

  “Who was that woman you were talking to?”

  “Pardon?”

  “Outside the college after your lecture: you were talking to her.”

  “She’s an old acquaintance.”

  “Did you go to lunch?”

  “Yes.”

  “She’s very good looking.”

  “I hadn’t noticed.”

  “Dad. Don’t.”

  “Don’t what?”

  “Act like you’re stupid.”

  Even without looking at her reflection in the mirror I know she’s scowling at me.

  “Her name is Victoria Naparstek. She’s a psychiatrist. She wanted to discuss one of her patients.”

  “Augie Shaw.”

  “How could you know that?”

  “He was just on the news. He’s being questioned about those murders at the farm. Did he do it?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “He looks like a psycho.”

  “We don’t call them psychos.”

  “They said he burned that woman alive.”

  “Allegedly. And you shouldn’t think about stuff like that.”

  “What am I supposed to think about?”

  “Celibacy.”

  She’s sitting cross-legged on the bed, hands in her lap, treating a grown-up subject like true confessions at a teenage sleepover.

  My mobile is vibrating. It’s Julianne.

  “Hi.”

  “Hi.”

  “How did your talk go?”

  “They didn’t fall asleep.”

  “That’s always a good sign. I haven’t heard from Charlie all day. Is she all right?”

  “She’s here now. I’ll put her on.”

  Charlie takes the phone and walks to the far side of the room. I can only hear her side of the conversation.

  “Yesterday… It’s OK… I went shopping… No, I didn’t buy anything… Didn’t like the colors… I saw some boots but they didn’t have my size… Pretty lame… He snores… I know… Yeah… I will… OK.”

  My daughter doesn’t mention the murder investigation because she knows that Julianne doesn’t like me working for the police. These are old arguments. Lost battles. The war continues.

  Charlie hands me the phone and goes to the bathroom, closing the door.

  “Have you talked to her about Jacob?”

  “Not yet.”

  “Don’t leave it too long.”

  “I’m waiting for the right time.”

  She makes a thoughtful sound or maybe it’s a doubtful sound.

  Our phone conversations are often like this, revolving around domestic issues: the girls, schools, excursions and mutual friends. Julianne is the bright, cheerful one—happier now that she’s not with me.

  She’s working as a translator for the Home Office. I don’t know if she’s dating anyone. For a while she went out with a lawyer called Marcus Bryant. I had to Google him because Julianne was so guarded and Charlie refused to be my spy. I typed in his name. Started reading. Stopped. His four-year stint with the International War Crimes Tribunal had me worried, along with his pro bono work for Amnesty International. I had visions of him donating a kidney to save his little sister and rescuing kittens from burning buildings.

  Charlie is still in the bathroom. I can hear her whispering to someone on her mobile.

  Julianne is still on the line. “… Emma was going to call you but she’s asleep now. She’s a snowflake in her ballet recital. She wants you to come. I told her you wouldn’t be able to make it.”

  “When is it?”

  “When school goes back.”

  “I’ll try.”

  “Don’t make promises you can’t keep.”

  “It’s not a promise.”

  After she hangs up I take Charlie out for dinner. We walk along Magdalen Street past the Martyrs’ Memorial, where three bishops were burned at the stake for heresy in 1555: Protestants who offended a Catholic queen. Charlie knows the whole story.

  “They hung gunpowder around their necks and when it exploded it took their heads off… but this one bishop had wet wood, which only smoldered, and he kept begging for the fire to get hotter…”

  “How do you know all this?”

  “I took the walking tour.”

  “Really?”

  “Why are you looking at me like that?”

  “I’m impressed.”

  “I haven’t just been shopping, Dad.”

  We find an Italian place in Broad Street, opposite the Gothic main buildings of Balliol College. Charlie is talking about her day. She doesn’t want to go to Oxford University, she says, because it feels like a museum.

  “Maybe you want to take a gap year,” I say.

  “And do what?”

  “Travel. Broaden the mind.”

  “People should just call it a holiday,” says Charlie. “That’s what it is.”

  When did she become such a cynic?

  The waitress leans over to light a candle on our table. I catch a glimpse of her lace-edged bra. Charlie’s mobile vibrates on the table. She ignores it. There’s no name on the caller display.

  “Aren�
�t you going to answer it?”

  “No.”

  “Maybe it’s Jacob.”

  She narrows her eyes.

  “I know you’re still talking to him, Charlie.”

  “It’s a free country, Dad.”

  She wants the subject to end there. I give it a moment and try again.

  “Your mum wants me to talk to you.”

  Charlie sighs. “Why don’t we save ourselves some time? I’ll tell Mum you gave me a right royal bollocking. You can assure her that I’m straightened out. Everyone is happy.”

  “That’s not really the point.”

  “I’m not going to stop talking to him, Dad. We love each other.”

  “He’s too old for you, Charlie.”

  “He’s twenty. You’re five years older than Mum.”

  “That’s different.”

  “How?”

  “Five years is a lot when you’re fifteen.”

  “Girls get married at my age.”

  “Not any more they don’t.”

  “They do in some countries.”

  “Arranged marriages to men old enough to be their grandfathers.”

  She looks at me defiantly and we both opt for silence. A woman laughs too loudly at a nearby table and two men are arguing about football.

  “Maybe we can go back to London tomorrow,” I suggest.

  “Haven’t you still got work to do?”

  “I’ve done what they asked. We can catch an early train and have lunch at Covent Garden… see the Christmas lights on Regent Street.”

  She nods and sips her soft drink.

  “I could always go back by myself and stay at the flat. You could give me the key.”

  “You’d be on your own.”

  “I can cook.”

  “I don’t think your mother would like that.”

  Charlie has an agenda. She’s testing her boundaries. Separating from me slowly. Growing up. Away. As we walk back to the hotel I notice a dozen teenagers on the street, skinny bow-legged girls in tight jeans and boys with buzz cuts and hooded sweatshirts.

  One of the girls whispers to a boy, grinding against him until his neck turns red. He gives her a cigarette for her and her friends.

  Charlie notices them, without even appearing to raise her eyes. She walks a few paces ahead, distancing herself from me. Soon they turn the corner and she drops back.

  “Friends of yours?”

  “Don’t be funny, Dad.”

  That night I dream of a girl running as fast as she can, bursting through branches and low undergrowth, her feet bare, frozen. She has cuts on her face and hands, the blood mingling with sweat on her skin.

  The snow changes the landscape, covering the paths, the rocks, the tree stumps. She wishes she were running on tarmac, familiar streets. She can’t find her bearings and moves blindly, the blizzard erasing her footsteps. But the darkness can’t conceal her. Something is following, relentlessly.

  Stumbling onwards, she climbs fences and thrashes through undergrowth, along farm tracks and through forests. Knee deep in snow, unable to quicken her pace, she can’t feel her feet.

  Bright lights suddenly blind her and she’s caught in the beam like a fly on flypaper. The oncoming car slews sideways and she braces for the impact. Flung backwards into a bank of snow, she feels the powder fold around her like a duvet. Her lungs draw icy feathers into her chest.

  She’s alive. The wind howls. Trees are lost in white static. A voice calls out. Dragging herself up, she runs again, scrambling over a snow bank, escaping from the thing that hunts her.

  In the corner of her eye she sees something moving, a dark shape. An animal. Bounding through the snow, it stops, barks. She shushes the dog. Be quiet. You’ll give me away. They run together, company, their fates combined.

  In the darkness she cannot see the brittle edges of the lake until she falls, breaking the surface. The shock of the cold catches her breath, drawing water into her lungs. Ice.

  In my dream a figure stands at the edge of the lake. He crouches. Waiting for her. He holds out a branch, wanting her to come, but she doesn’t take it. She won’t surrender. She will not save herself. The cold leaches into her bones. Her limbs cease to work. She cannot hold her head above the water.

  In those final seconds of her life, a paralyzing certainty descends. There will be no later. Now is where it ends.

  After that first time

  Tash went up the ladder whenever George asked. He would come every three or four days to bring us food and water. Once or twice he left it a week and the longest was ten days.

  We ran out of food and water, but the worst thing was the stink of the chamber pot, which made the cellar smell like a slum toilet in Mumbai. Not that I’ve been to Mumbai, but I’ve seen that movie, Slumdog Millionaire, where the little boy jumps into the pit toilet and is covered in diarrhea. That was truly gross, but it was a good movie.

  Each time he came, we’d hear things being dragged across the floor. The trapdoor would open and he ordered Tash up the ladder. Each time she returned she would smell of perfume and powder. She brought back more gifts for me. Toothpaste. A hairbrush. Tweezers. She wore clean clothes. Wasn’t hungry.

  “What did you eat?”

  “It doesn’t matter.”

  “Was it nice?”

  “No.”

  I grew more and more jealous. I wanted to go upstairs. I wanted to be spoiled… to eat nice food and wash my hair properly.

  Sometimes we didn’t talk for hours I was so angry. I called her a skanky whore. She called me an uptight virgin, which seemed to hurt more.

  She shared her new clothes, but that wasn’t enough. She wouldn’t tell me what happened up there.

  “He gave you nice stuff to eat, didn’t he? He let you wash. You smell like a Body Shop.”

  “It’s not what you think.”

  “Why? What did he do?”

  She shook her head.

  “Tell me.”

  I didn’t give a rat’s arse about the gifts she brought back. She was keeping something secret from me. Holding out.

  After a day of the silent treatment, we started talking again. Tash told me about the rooms upstairs. She said it was like an old factory full of rubbish and broken furniture. She said there was a yard outside with a shed on brick piers and metal drums against a high fence. She couldn’t see any other houses or hear any traffic.

  “George said he might give us a radio and some more magazines,” she said. “And we can get more food, clean sheets and maybe a microwave.”

  For everything George promised, only a fraction ever arrived. The clothes we wanted were little girl things—minuscule T-shirts and shorts. Instead of tampons, he gave us sanitary pads.

  Slowly we collected more things. Pillows. A clock. Soap. New toothbrushes. Books. But whatever he gave us, he could take away. Tash didn’t like asking, because she wasn’t sure how he’d react. He could flip from being polite and caring to slamming his fist onto the table and telling her to “shut the fuck up!”

  “Don’t you know how lucky you are?” he’d scream. “I could have killed you. I could have buried you.”

  At other times, he’d wheedle and coax her, brushing her hair and fussing with her clothes. She kept him happy. She went upstairs when he asked and did what he asked, but I should have seen what was happening. I should have noticed the changes in Tash.

  Whatever she ate upstairs made up for downstairs—where she ate nothing. She started biting her nails until they bled. She began losing weight. She stopped brushing her hair or cleaning her teeth.

  When she cut up the magazines she created weird monsters, hybrids with animal heads and human bodies. And she stabbed out the eyes so they were empty.

  Each time she climbed back down the ladder, there seemed to be less of her, as though George took a piece or she left it upstairs.

  One night she wet the bed. I found her shivering in sodden clothes. Peeling them off, I heated water in a saucepan and washed her. Sh
e didn’t say a word. Didn’t cry. Didn’t whimper.

  “I think it’s going to be a beautiful day,” I told her. “I can hear the birds.”

  It was around that time that Tash came up with her plan. We were going to escape, she said, whispering because we couldn’t be sure if George was watching or listening.

  Tash pulled me beneath the ladder. “I’m going to do it with this,” she said, reaching behind her back where she’d tucked something into her jeans. She unwrapped it carefully. “I found it upstairs when he wasn’t looking.”

  It was an old screwdriver with a broken handle. Tash had bound the damaged end in an old rag so the sharp edges wouldn’t cut her hand. She plunged it through the air in a stabbing motion.

  “How are you going to do it?” I asked.

  “I’m going to creep up behind him and stab him in the neck.”

  “What if he doesn’t turn his back?”

  “I’ll pull him towards me and shove it into his guts… or in his eye.”

  “When?”

  “Next time.”

  For hours she sat beneath the ladder and practiced, stabbing the metal tip into the wood, carving out her initials. At other times she lay on her bunk, listening. When the time comes, she said. When the time comes there will be no more time.

  We waited, lying on our bunks, thinking our own thoughts.

  “If something happens to me.”

  “Nothing is going to happen.”

  “If it does.”

  “It won’t.”

  “Don’t let him touch you, Piper.”

  “I won’t.”

  “Do you understand?”

  “Yes.”

  That’s when we heard the furniture shifting and we knew George had come back. The trapdoor opened and we went through the routine with the water and food. He lowered a bucket and we emptied the bedpan.

  Then it was time for Tash.

  I couldn’t see George’s face in the darkness above. He was just a voice, like Morgan Freeman playing God in all those movies.

  “I want Piper this time.”

  Tash looked at me. I was rocking from foot to foot, cold all over.

  “Take me,” she said.

  “It’s Piper’s turn.”

  “No.” Tash thought quickly. “It’s her time of the month.”

  George didn’t say anything for a while. Tash climbed the rough wooden ladder and raised her arms. Her cardigan rose up above the waistband of her jeans and I saw the screwdriver tucked against the small of her back.