(2012) Say You're Sorry

by Michael Robotham

  We didn’t talk. We competed. We argued. We loved each other. But we hated each other too.

  My mother was the world champion at making smiley comments about my hair or my weight or my bra size, slicing and dicing my self-confidence. And she was never happier than when dancing through the tulip fields of the bleeding obvious.

  Dad would tell me not to get so bent out of shape, but I was born bent out of shape. I came into the world backwards in a breech birth. Whales breach and so do babies.

  Mum is taller than my dad but really skinny. She has these amazing green eyes and eyelashes that look like they’re false but they’re not.

  People say she’s beautiful and talk about Dad “punching above his weight” when he married her, but I think he could have done much better. He could have married someone who didn’t care so much about money and what other people thought.

  My dad is the nicest person you’ll ever meet. Whenever he’s disappointed in me he has this way of sagging and letting out a long sigh, as if someone has pulled out his plug and he’s crumpling like a bouncy castle at the end of a party. He would die of disappointment rather than raise a finger against me.

  Mum used to complain when he spoiled me and Dad always agreed with her before winking at me.

  My last birthday at home was cancelled because Mum said I didn’t deserve a party or presents because of my ingratitude and my filthy language, particularly the word “fuck.” Everything was fucking this and fucking that; fucking unfair and fucking unbelievable and you have to be fucking kidding me.

  That’s one of the reasons I wanted to run away, but it was just talk, you know. I wasn’t really serious. Kids always say things they don’t mean.

  It’s morning. I stand on the bench and see if the sun is shining or if it has snowed overnight. No snow. No sunshine. Rain today. It’s colder than yesterday.

  Standing here, I can almost feel the weight of Tash kneeling on my shoulders and then standing, as she squeezed through that narrow gap. I was afraid that she’d get stuck and I wouldn’t be able to pull her back inside. She’d be like Winnie the Pooh in that story where he eats too much honey and gets stuck in Rabbit’s front door.

  I wet my finger and hold it against the gap, feeling the breeze on my skin. Then I draw a heart in the condensation on the inside of the window. Why do people always draw hearts?

  It’s been four days since Tash left. That might not seem to be very long after three years, but some days are longer than others. Some days are longer than years.

  Only one of us could escape because we couldn’t both climb that high. One of us had to lift the other. Tash was smaller. She’d lost so much weight.

  Ever since George made her bleed, Tash had been acting differently. I don’t know if she tried to stab him with the screwdriver. She wouldn’t talk to me. Instead, she scratched at her wrists, biting her nails, sleeping all the time… I tried to talk to her… to make her eat, but she didn’t even have the energy to argue with me.

  “You’re scaring me,” I said, rocking her in my arms. “Please come back.”

  “We’re going to die,” she whispered.

  I knew she was right. It was like a message from God. A pretty disappointing message, but I didn’t blame him. That’s what everything comes down to—dying. Well, not literally everything, but most things.

  Tash didn’t seem scared any more. Perhaps knowing you want to die makes you less scared. Sometimes there’s no rock so heavy or dark or hopeless that people won’t crawl under it.

  The idea came to me when I was standing like this, looking through the crack. I noticed how the condensation on the inside of the glass had leaked down and frozen along the bottom edge of the window. The ice had expanded in the crack and forced the metal frame to lift. I could see a chink of light where there hadn’t been one before. My old science teacher taught me that water expands when it freezes. That’s why it can break open granite boulders.

  I thought, If it could break a boulder why not a window or a wall?

  So I filled a bowl with water and tore up an old T-shirt. I soaked the torn fabric and shoved it into the gap, using a nail file to push it hard into the space. Some of the water squeezed out and leaked down the wall.

  It was cold that night. The fabric froze. The next day, I pulled it out and wet it again. Night after night, it froze and refroze. For a long time I didn’t think it was working. The gap looked the same. But then one day, I pushed at the window and the whole thing moved.

  Some nights weren’t cold enough for the fabric to freeze, but then we had a long cold spell. We shivered and huddled together at night, trying to stay warm. And each morning the crack had opened a little more.

  I wedged my fingers inside and to my surprise the window moved. I tried again and it gave way. I caught it before it crashed to the ground, falling backwards off the bench. The edge of the window frame cut my forehead, but it wasn’t so deep.

  Where the window had been, there was now a hole. Tash couldn’t fit through it, so she took most of her clothes off. First she knelt on my shoulders and then she stood. Once she put her head and arms through the window, I pushed and she clawed at the ground, trying to pull herself through.

  She wouldn’t budge. I couldn’t pull her back or push her forward. That’s when I got really scared. I thought she was going freeze to death stuck in that window, lying half in the snow. I managed to pull off her leggings and then I poured vegetable oil over her hips and thighs.

  “I can’t do it,” she kept saying.

  “Sure you can.”

  “I can’t.”

  “Wiggle your hips.”

  “I’m stuck.”

  “Keep trying.”

  “I am trying.”

  She was swearing at me and crying. I had to scream at her and slap her on the thighs. I hit her so hard she slipped right through that hole, her legs and feet slithering out of sight. Snowflakes drifted in. Her head reappeared. I grabbed some more clothes and pushed them through the window.

  “I’ll be back,” she said, all business. “Don’t go anywhere.”

  14

  Grievous has been assigned to me. He’s drawn the short straw—a fat man’s penance or the new boy’s forfeit—accepted with grace and good humor. Not fat. Solid. Muscled. Fighting the flab.

  I follow him downstairs and through a rear door into the vehicle compound. His gray jacket is slightly too small for him, stretched across his shoulders. He unlocks the car.

  “Best ride up front, sir. A drunk threw up on the back seat. Smell doesn’t go away.”

  As he ducks into his seat, I notice a dull white scar behind his left ear beneath his hairline. Surgery. Rehab. Long past.

  Minivans and coaches are parked on the far side of the police compound, waiting for the search parties. Civilian volunteers in white overalls are milling around a brazier, trying to stay warm. One of them waves to Grievous, pulling off a glove to shake hands. The two men exchange pleasantries, commenting on the cold. They talk about the blizzard and the search, wishing each other a Merry Christmas.

  “Sorry about that,” says Grievous, as he starts the engine. “I know a lot of the OxSAR volunteers.”

  “OxSAR?”

  “Oxfordshire Search and Rescue. I trained most of them. Dentists, mechanics, insurance salesmen… they’re good lads.”

  Cracking the window, he turns up the heating and pulls out of the parking area. In Colwell Drive, he circles the roundabout and heads into central Abingdon where a one-way system funnels traffic around the High Street. Soon cottages and terraces give way to factories and playing fields.

  Grievous is a talker. He points out local landmarks and restaurants, showing me where he went to primary school.

  “I just want to say that it’s an honor to be working with you, sir,” says Grievous. “I mean, it’s a privilege, you being so famous.”

  “What makes you think I’m famous?”

  “I looked you up, sir. I hope you don’t mind. You helped find
Mickey Carlisle and catch Ray Hegarty’s killer and that guy who kidnapped your wife and daughter. I can’t remember his name.”

  “Gideon Tyler.”

  “That’s him. You battled evil and won.”

  “I didn’t win. Trust me on that.”

  “You saved your wife and daughter.”

  But not my marriage, I want to add, but instead say nothing. Why spoil a good story? Grievous doesn’t have to know that my wife didn’t forgive me; that she blamed me for infecting our family with my “poisonous work” and allowing my daughter to become a target for a sadistic psychopath.

  Grievous is still talking. “I don’t know what I’d do if I was confronted by a man like that,” he says, ruminating on the prospect. “I mean, if somebody took my wife and child, I think I’d want to kill him, you know. Not that I’m married—not yet anyway—but it’s a natural reaction. It comes from in here.” He thumps his chest. “They cross a line, people like that. They can’t expect sympathy or understanding. Yeah, I’d pull the trigger.”

  I don’t answer.

  Grievous glances at me. “I don’t suppose I should say stuff like that—being a detective—but we’re human beings, aren’t we? You hear all those debates about the death penalty, the pros and cons, but when it’s your family it’s different, isn’t it?”

  “Can we talk about something else?”

  “Yeah, sure,” he says. “I shouldn’t have said anything. I’m just pleased to be working with you. It’s a privilege, you know.”

  There are roadworks, a temporary red light. I glance to my right and watch two schoolboy teams playing rugby, muddy armies interlocked, shoving each other off a ball.

  “Tell me about the Bingham Girls.”

  Grievous nods, gathering his thoughts.

  “They went missing on the last Sunday in August. The Bingham Summer Festival had been the day before and they were still packing up the carnival rides and sideshows.”

  “What about suspects?”

  “Some of those carnie workers were interviewed. That sort of job attracts drifters and perverts. The task force also looked at a band of travelers who were camping in a farmer’s field on the edge of the village. They raided the camp three days after the girls went missing, but found nothing. A week later, two caravans were gutted by fire and a little girl got burned.”

  “Why did people think the girls ran away?”

  “They were planning to, according to one of their friends. Emily Martinez was supposed to go with them.”

  “What happened?”

  “The girls didn’t show up. Police checked the buses and trains that left that Sunday morning. They interviewed drivers and passengers, but nobody saw Piper or Natasha.”

  “What do you think happened?”

  “They got in the wrong car. Natasha was known to hitchhike. She wasn’t exactly the shy retiring type.”

  “Meaning?”

  He hesitates, tugging at the collar of his shirt. “There were rumors, you know. Drinking. Drugs. Lipstick parties. You know about those?”

  “Sadly, yes.”

  “According to some people, Natasha was charging money for blowjobs.”

  “What about Piper?”

  “She was quieter, a good athlete.”

  “You know the families?”

  “Not really, just the rumors.” He indicates left and turns. “Hayden McBain is a small time dealer, selling dope and amphetamines—makes more in a week than I do in a month. Every time we arrest him he gives the judge a sob story about his sister going missing. Blah, blah, blah. He walks.”

  “You don’t believe him.”

  “He was dealing before she went missing.”

  A burst of static from the two-way interrupts his train of thought. He turns it down. For a big man, he has a boyish face and soft eyes. He cocks his head each time I ask a question.

  “What about Piper’s family?”

  “They’ve never stopped talking about her—giving interviews, going on radio, putting up posters, writing to politicians. Every year they hold a candlelight vigil. It’s like the McCanns—you know, Madeleine’s folks—they’re never going to stop looking. They’ve got websites and newsletters and posters. You’ll see. It’s just up ahead.”

  Moments later we pass a WELCOME TO BINGHAM sign and arrive in a pretty little village that clings to the banks of the Thames. Painted houses shine brightly in the angled light and smoke swirls from chimneys. A mixture of old and new architecture, the village has three pubs, a pharmacy, café, clothing store, butcher, bakery and two hair salons.

  Grievous pulls up at the pedestrian crossing. Signposts on either side are decorated with yellow ribbons along with something else—a photocopied poster covered in plastic. MISSING is printed in bold letters across the top, above a photograph. More writing below: Have you seen Piper?

  “The street cleaners take them down, but they go up again just as quickly,” says Grievous. “Wait here, sir.”

  He pulls over and gets out of the car. Collecting a poster, he hands it to me. The plastic cover is beaded with rain.

  PIPER HADLEY

  AGE: 18

  MISSING SINCE AUGUST 31, 2008

  LAST SEEN WEARING BLUE JEANS AND BLACK AND RED STRIPED T-SHIRT.

  CALL CRIMESTOPPERS: 0800 555 111

  REWARD OFFERED: £400,000

  I study the image of a brown-eyed girl with a lop-sided grin and a shock of dark hair. She’s almost defying the camera, challenging the result even as the shutter captures the moment.

  Grievous steers us through the village and out again, along a narrow tarmac road flanked by hedgerows and puddles of melting snow. Occasional clumps of hawthorn and gorse emerge along the ditches where the fences have collapsed or rotted with age.

  The road turns sharply. Straight ahead a padlocked gate prevents access. The sign advertises a concrete and gravel haulage business. Mounds of broken rock and shingle are visible beyond the vertical bars of the gate.

  Steering onto a sidetrack where the potholes grow deeper, we pass clumps of snow that have survived in the shady hollows. The trees suddenly thin and I notice a gray expanse of water, whiter at the edges. Not water, ice. The frozen lake is beginning to break up in places, creating darker patches, black as onyx, dotted with a few brave water birds.

  “They used to be gravel pits,” explains Grievous. “Over time they flooded to form lakes. There were more of them, but in the eighties the Electricity Board began filling them in with waste ash from Didcot Power Station. The locals complained and organized a campaign to save the rest of the lakes.”

  “How far away is the power station?”

  “Four miles south of here.”

  I remember seeing the six huge concrete chimneys from the train.

  “What about the Heymans’ farmhouse?”

  “As the crow flies, about a mile.”

  He pulls over. “You got any other shoes?”

  “No.”

  He shrugs and pulls on an oilskin jacket. I have the woolen hat that Charlie bought me for my last birthday.

  The cold nips at my cheeks, the chill of wind over water. The trainee detective constable leads. I follow. The track is part rubble, mud and grass, skirting the edge of the lake only a few feet from the water.

  “This is where they found her,” he says.

  The white tent has gone, but the crime scene is still marked by yellow police tape. On a nearby fence someone has pinned a bouquet of flowers, the petals withered by frost.

  The lake glitters like a field of broken glass. A railway line flanks the eastern side.

  Ducking under the police tape, I stand at the spot where Natasha’s body was cut from the ice with machines and ice picks. A misshapen hole marks the spot, now full of black water and dead leaves.

  Squatting on the ground, I pick up a blade of flattened grass, holding it between my thumb and forefinger. Closing my eyes, I listen to the winter silence, which is almost absolute. An image forms in my mind, a replay of la
st night’s dream—a girl running as fast as she can, bursting through the branches and undergrowth, her feet bare, the blizzard erasing her footsteps.

  She crossed the railway line and tumbled down the slope, feeling the ice crack beneath her and give way. She must have fought for the surface, the cold sapping her energy, unable to drag herself out. Someone chased her here. Watched her die.

  She lay for two days beneath the ice until the sun came out and created a halo of splintered light around her body. A couple walking their dog raised the alarm.

  “Which way to the farmhouse?” I ask.

  Grievous raises his arm and points across the tracks.

  “Can I walk it?”

  “I can drive you.”

  “Give me the directions and I’ll meet you there.”

  The farmhouse looks different from this angle, framed by a hard blue sky and plowed fields, streaked with snow, that look like marbled meat. The buses and minivans have arrived. Searchers stamp their feet to stay warm and police dogs pull at leashes, sniffing the air. Some of these men and animals have scoured these fields already, but Drury wants it done again—every inch between the farmhouse and Radley Lakes.

  Grievous is waiting for me at the house. He lifts the makeshift door aside and I walk through the rooms, reacquainting myself with the layout.

  Pausing at the laundry, I remember the floral dress that was soaking in the tub. Summer not winter wear. Bagged. Labeled. Taken for tests.

  “What are you looking for?”asks Grievous.

  “I’m trying not to look for anything.”

  “Huh?”

  “The trick is to keep an open mind. When you search for something specific, you can fail to see a more important detail. Beware desire.”

  “But how will you know if you find it?”

  “I just will.”

  “I see,” he says, when obviously he doesn’t.