(2012) Say You're Sorry

by Michael Robotham

Again she looks at the stairs. “It was just talk at first. I didn’t think we’d actually do it—not for real. It was exciting… something different… but then…”

  “Then what?”

  “Tash got serious.”

  “Why?”

  “It was after the night Aiden Foster ran down Callum Loach. We made a sort of pact because things were so shitty at school and at home.”

  “Why were things bad at home?”

  Emily raises her eyes to the ceiling.

  “Your parents were divorcing.”

  She nods.

  “Tash sort of lost interest in the idea but then she got into trouble at school and Miss Jacobson said she couldn’t come back after the holidays. Tash didn’t tell her folks. She was going to run away before they found out.”

  “What happened on the night of the Bingham festival?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You were with Piper and Natasha.”

  “Only until ten o’clock.”

  “What happened then?”

  “I got a call saying that Mum was in hospital. I came straight home.”

  “But you saw Piper later?”

  “She woke me. I heard her knocking on the bedroom window. Straight away I knew something was wrong, but she wouldn’t tell me. She said they were running away in the morning. I said I couldn’t come—Mum was in hospital.”

  “But you changed your mind?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why?”

  She shrugs.

  “How were you going to live in London?”

  “Tash had money. She said her uncle owed her. She used to work for him.”

  “What did she do?”

  “Filing in his office.”

  “I thought she was a waitress.”

  “That too.”

  “Did she get on with her uncle?”

  Emily reacts as though slapped, holding her cheek.

  “What was that?”

  “What?”

  “That thing you just did?”

  “What thing?”

  “You reacted when I mentioned Tash and her uncle.”

  Emily lets out an avian squawk, shaking her head. “I didn’t say anything! I didn’t! You’re putting words in my mouth.”

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to upset you.”

  She calms down, sinking back into the sofa.

  “Tell me about the accident.”

  “We went to a party at this house in Abingdon. It was thrown by one of Aiden’s friends. He was Tash’s boyfriend: Aiden Foster. The party was full of university students and stuck-up girls who treated us like we were in pre-school.”

  “Tell me about Aiden.”

  “He was all right, I guess. Older. He had a car. Tash didn’t like taking the bus so she sort of used him. Aiden got wasted at the party and Tash started flirting with Callum Loach. He was a couple of years ahead of us, but went to a different school.

  “Aiden got pissed off. He grabbed Callum and acted like a complete psycho and then laughed.”

  “You saw this?”

  “Piper told me later. I was inside.”

  “What happened then?”

  “Tash was sick. Callum offered to drive her home, but he came back for her phone, which was upstairs. Callum was getting back in the car when Aiden came around the corner in his Subaru and he just ran him down.” Emily bites down hard on her lip. “We thought he was dead. He flew into the air and over the car and landed on the road.”

  “What happened to him?”

  “He lost both his legs. He’s in a wheelchair.”

  “And Aiden?”

  “He went to jail.”

  “Is he still in prison?”

  Emily shrugs.

  “Would your dad know?” I ask.

  She stares at the ceiling. “I don’t want to ask him.”

  On the morning after the party,

  two police officers came to Tash’s house and took her to hospital where they tested her blood for alcohol and drugs. Then she went to Abingdon Police Station and made a statement.

  Aiden Foster arrived at the station late that afternoon, along with his father and a big-shot barrister. He was charged with attempted murder and was granted bail the next day. They confiscated his car and told him not to approach any of the witnesses.

  The police came to my house on the Sunday and asked me a lot of questions. I was a minor so I had a social worker with me during the interview. The only bits I left out were about the drugs. I was scared they might charge me for having puffed on a joint.

  That night I heard Mum and Dad arguing downstairs, saying that I had “run off the rails” and “gone feral” and was going to finish up in prison or worse. The next morning I didn’t get woken for school. Mum didn’t knock on my door. I dressed in my school uniform and came downstairs, but she told me to go back and get changed. That’s when I noticed the suitcase in the corner of the kitchen.

  Two men came to get me. Their van was so clean and shiny that clouds rolled across the sides and the roof. I thought I was going to the police station, but instead they took me to some sort of boarding house with gardens and high walls. Not in Oxford or in London. It was surrounded by fields and had the sea on one side.

  Mum came with me that first day, but she didn’t stay.

  “Please be a good girl and you’ll be home in no time,” she said.

  I grabbed her arm and begged her not to leave.

  “This is only because we love you,” she said.

  Parents always say things like that—like “this is going to hurt me more than it hurts you,” but how can that be true?

  That night I heard them lock my door. And every couple of hours someone came along the corridor and looked through a hatch. I couldn’t turn the lights off even if I wanted to. The next day I kicked off at one of the nurses and she threatened to handcuff me to the bed. I didn’t believe her, until she waved the cuffs in front of my face.

  That day they gave me all these different tests, showing me pictures and shapes. Some of them were just images flashed onto a computer screen and I had to press either a red or green button depending on how the picture made me feel. I assumed the red was supposed to symbolize anger and green was calm. I tried to throw the results out by pressing red on the pictures of puppies and green on the pictures of riots.

  My therapist was called Vernon and he asked me if I ever touched myself. I tried to think of what Tash would say. “Constantly. I use cucumbers, candlesticks, anything I can get my hands on.”

  There were group sessions with other girls. Never boys. Some of them were anorexics or bulimics or were suicidal or into cutting themselves. The therapists were never specific in the group sessions. It was all about “feelings.”

  “You want my feelings—I feel pissed off about being in here,” I told them. That lost me TV privileges for the evening. I told them I didn’t give a fuck about the TV, which lost me dessert privileges for a week. I lost a lot of privileges. I can’t even tell you what they were because I lost them before I had the privilege.

  They gave us each a work roster. We had to set the tables or clear away dishes, or help in the kitchens. Our beds had to be made and rooms tidied. It was like being at boarding school because even our socks had to be folded in a certain way.

  “Don’t knot them together—fold them with a smile,” the matron said.

  “Mine are smiling like the crack of your arse,” I told her.

  That lost me games room privileges.

  At least they let me write. It was encouraged. I had to write lists of things I liked about myself and the things I disliked. The way I looked, for instance; my swearing; my temper; the fact that I’m crap at math…

  I was allowed to make one phone call every week to Mum and Dad. I begged them. I cried. I tried to guilt them into letting me come home. My father’s voice would start to shake, but Mum would grab the phone from him before he broke down.

  I didn’t have a mobile. I couldn’t t
alk to Tash or find out what had happened to Callum or Aiden. Days stretched into weeks. A month. Two. There were more therapy sessions and lectures on drugs and alcohol.

  My parents thought I was a drug addict—or well on the way. I was “heading down the slippery slope,” they said.

  After eight weeks they let me go home. They didn’t tell me until half an hour before my parents arrived. Even then, the matron just said, “Pack your suitcase.”

  Mum came to the reception room. Dad stayed outside, standing by the car. That was it. We drove home in silence and I went to my room. I looked at my computer and at my mobile. I didn’t call Tash. I didn’t email anyone. I pulled out all my old toys and played with them. My Barbie dolls. I combed their hair and changed their clothes. I hadn’t done that in years.

  Miss McCrudden, my English teacher—the one who loves my stories—always told me not to have passive characters when I wrote. They have to make things happen, she said, not just have things happen to them.

  That’s when I realized what she meant. I was a passive character in my own life, letting things happen instead of forging my own way, finding my own path.

  Not any more, I decided, never again.

  23

  The caretaker is easy enough to track down. He hasn’t covered his tracks or crawled into a deep hole. Nobody is far from the surface these days—not with emails and Facebook pages and Twitter accounts. They leave an electronic trail behind like mouse droppings in cyberspace.

  Nelson Stokes works as a street cleaner for Oxford City Council, pushing a barrow in the pedestrianized precincts and laneways too narrow for the machines.

  Thirty-eight, with long hair and an angular face, he’s wearing a plaid wool shirt and a reflective jacket. His barrow is propped outside a shoe shop while he rolls himself a cigarette. Inside the shop, a young salesgirl is standing on tiptoes, putting boxes on a high shelf. Stokes is watching her thighs and rump flexing beneath her short skirt.

  “Mr. Stokes?”

  He turns his head slowly. “Do I know you?”

  I hand him a business card. He reads it carefully, taking a moment to decide if I’m an inconvenience or an opportunity. I’ve seen his police file, which is depressing reading. Arrested twice in his early twenties for accepting stolen goods, he pleaded guilty and was given the benefit. Before that he was studying engineering at university but lost his place for cheating in his first year exams. Odd jobs since then; married; divorced; one failed business. He worked at St. Catherine’s as a caretaker/groundsman for two years before being fired.

  According to the police file, a handful of senior students at St. Catherine’s complained about Stokes taking photographs of them. It emerged that some of the girls had opted to do a quick change at the back of the sports hall after gym instead of going to the locker room upstairs. Stokes had used a digital camera to record them. Pictures of Natasha were found among the images.

  The caretaker spent two days in custody and was interviewed for eight hours, but he had an alibi for the Sunday morning that the girls disappeared.

  Propping his broom in the barrow, Stokes takes a seat at a bus stop and lights his cigarette.

  “I was hoping we could talk about the Bingham Girls.”

  “What’s that got to do with you?”

  “I’ve been asked to review the case.”

  “Nothing to do with me.”

  “You knew the girls.”

  “Found them, have they? The bodies.”

  “What makes you think that?”

  “Stands to reason.” He blows smoke from the corner of his mouth. “Missing all this time—they must be dead.”

  He raises his eyes and glances across the street where a group of girls are chatting outside a Starbucks. I notice the heat in his eyes and his unwashed smell.

  “I know about the photographs.”

  “I never touched those girls. Not a hair.”

  “You took pictures.”

  He flicks ash. “That’s all. Why you bringing this up again? Did one of those little bitches make a complaint? Wants to sue. She can go ahead. Got no money. Can sue me for the barrow.” He laughs and nods to his brooms.

  Stokes isn’t a practiced deceiver. If you’re going to lie, you show your hands, let people see you’re unarmed. And you lean forward a little to reinforce your convictions, without breaking eye contact.

  “Where were you on the night of the blizzard?” I ask.

  “Saturday? I would have been washing my hair.”

  “Is that your alibi?”

  “Why would I need one?” He smiles at me sadly, a bitter taste in his mouth. “It’s the uncle they should be looking at. I told the police. I told them what I saw.”

  “What did you tell them?”

  “I told them about that girl and her uncle, Vic McBain.”

  “What about them?”

  “I saw them together. He was dropping Natasha at school one day and the two of them were in the front seat of his car. She was sitting on his lap and they were kissing. Not just any kiss. Not a peck on the cheek. Open-mouthed. You know what I’m saying? At first I thought it was one of the senior girls and her boyfriend, but then Natasha got out and I saw the bloke she’d been kissing. She went skipping off to class like it was right as rain.”

  “You’re sure it was Vic McBain?”

  “Yeah. I talked to Natasha. She said she knew about my taking pictures and that if I told anyone she’d tell the police that I touched her. That’s a lie. I never laid a finger on any of them girls.”

  “And you told the police this?”

  “Yeah, I told them.”

  “Who did you tell?”

  “A detective; I don’t know his name.”

  I’ve read the files. There were no allegations of an improper relationship between Vic McBain and his niece.

  Stokes squeezes his cigarette until the paper and ash disintegrate. He sweeps them into a dustpan on a stick.

  “She could be a real bitch that McBain girl, so full of herself, strutting around like she was on a catwalk. A prick-tease at fourteen, a runaway at fifteen, that girl was nothing but trouble. Maybe she got what she deserved.”

  “What did she deserve?”

  He doesn’t answer. Instead, he turns away and lifts a hard-bristled broom from the barrow.

  “I got work to do.”

  24

  A pint of Guinness is resting between Ruiz’s elbows and he’s studying the bubbles as they settle into a creamy head. We’re not drinking in the Morse Bar. He chose a pub around the corner, where the prices are cheaper and happy hour twice as long.

  “I’ve got nothing against TV detectives,” he explains. “They’re all equally full of shit. You take Columbo.”

  “Peter Falk?”

  “The guy wears the same raincoat for twenty years and pretends to be bumbling and stupid so people underestimate him. I know detectives who’ve been doing that for twice that long and haven’t solved more than a crossword puzzle. You know what happens to them?”

  “I have a feeling you’re going to tell me.”

  “They get promoted.”

  His pint glass is empty.

  “It’s your shout,” he says.

  “I’m not drinking.”

  “That’s not my fault. It’s called a tradition.”

  I go to the bar. When I get back to the table Ruiz has taken out his notebook and is licking his thumb as he turns the pages. While I’ve been interviewing Emily Martinez and Nelson Stokes, he’s been tracking down details of the accident.

  He rattles off the facts: Aiden Foster, twenty, and Callum Loach, eighteen, had an altercation at a party in Abingdon. Later in the evening Foster drove a car into Loach and fled the scene.

  “Foster was arrested the next day. He copped a plea and the charge was downgraded from attempted murder to GBH. He’s been inside for the past four years.”

  “What happened to Loach?”

  “He had both legs amputated above the knee. Lives a
t home.”

  “And the fight was over Natasha?”

  “Apparently so.” Ruiz takes a sip of Guinness and wipes his top lip. “It didn’t make her very popular.”

  “How so?”

  “When she gave evidence at the trial people abused her outside the court, saying it was her fault. Foster’s barrister made her sound like Slutty McSlut from Slutsville. Witnesses said she was dealing drugs at the party.”

  “So the families blamed Natasha?”

  “Looks like it.”

  Ruiz raises an eyebrow. He knows I’m trawling for motives, looking for anomalies or angles the police might have overlooked.

  “What was Aiden Foster doing with a fifteen-year-old girlfriend?” I ask.

  “What was Vic McBain doing with his niece?” he counters.

  “I don’t know if I believe Stokes.”

  “Why would he lie?”

  “To deflect attention. What do we know about Vic McBain?”

  “He and Isaac used to be business partners. They started a scaffolding business together ten years ago. It’s a niche market, very lucrative and competitive. Vic doesn’t so much win clients as lose competitors.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Other companies have trucks clamped or jobs cancelled or scaffolding collapse, but Vic’s business is bulletproof. When it comes to winning contracts, Vic seems to always be the low bidder or the last man standing.”

  “Why aren’t the brothers still partners?”

  “They had a falling out. Vic bought Isaac’s share of the company. Now Isaac works for him.”

  “What did Isaac do with the money?”

  “Lost it on the wheel of fortune—the one with the red and black numbers and the bouncing white ball. That’s probably why he fell in with the Connolly brothers. He owed fifteen grand to a loan shark called Cyril Honey.”

  “So he opted for the last resort—he robbed an armored van.”

  “And now he’s living in a shack while Vic owns five hundred square yards of a property on the Thames and a chateau in France.”

  Ruiz closes his notebook and slips a rubber band around the pages. “You think Stokes is good for this?”

  “Maybe. I’d really like to know why his statement didn’t mention Vic McBain.”