(2012) Say You're Sorry

by Michael Robotham

  Every question seemed to have a double meaning. Whenever Tash tried to answer both possibilities, he would tell her, “Just yes or no, Miss McBain.”

  After a while she got confused, saying yes when she meant to say no. Once he found the slightest flaw, he wouldn’t let it go. He would twist this big invisible knife inside her, occasionally glancing at the jury to make sure they were listening.

  Aiden Foster wasn’t on trial. It was Tash. Every word she spoke was skewed and stretched, giving it a different meaning. She grew angry. She swore. The judge told her to mind her language. The barrister smiled at the jury.

  Before the misery ended, Tash was like a poor defenseless animal and the cross-examination was like a blood sport. Nobody felt sorry for her except me.

  People shouted as she left the old stone courthouse. They hurled abuse and spat at her, Aiden’s friends and Callum’s friends, united against a common enemy. They blamed Tash for everything that had happened.

  Izzy Cruikshank tried to slap her, but a security guard pushed her away. Tash didn’t react. Instead, she kept walking as though nothing was wrong.

  Later that night, she knocked on my window.

  “I’m leaving,” she said.

  “When?”

  “Soon as.”

  “Where?”

  “Anywhere.”

  They say when you’re young you cry tears of pain and when you’re older you cry tears of joy. That’s why I want to grow up.

  27

  Ruiz is waiting for me in the hotel lounge, having commandeered a table and armchair big enough to make him look small. He’s spent the morning reading up on the original investigation, looking for patterns or disparate details.

  “Eight thousand interviews, three thousand statements, more than a million hours of police work,” he says. “I could spend the next ten years reading this stuff and miss the bloody obvious.”

  “Does anything jump out at you?” I ask, picking up a folder.

  “The silence,” he says. “The girls disappeared on Sunday morning sometime after 7:40 when Alice McBain left for work. Nobody saw them on the footpath into Bingham or crossing the fields or waiting at the train station. That strikes me as odd.”

  “Someone could have picked them up before they walked very far.”

  “Which means it had to be someone they knew. Girls that age don’t get into a stranger’s car.”

  “Maybe they were overpowered.”

  “It would take more than one kidnapper.”

  “You don’t often see that.”

  Ruiz is hungry. We go looking for a café that does an all-day breakfast.

  The sun is out and pigeons are fighting over crumbs on the pavement, beating their wings in a desperate dance. The waitress has a dreamy stare, loose hair escaping from a clip. Ruiz orders a full English with mushrooms, cooked tomato and baked beans.

  “Wholegrain toast,” he tells her. “My doctor wants me to eat healthier.”

  She doesn’t smile. Ruiz polishes his knife and fork with a paper napkin.

  “I did come across one detail—Augie Shaw must have known Natasha McBain.”

  “Why?”

  “When the Heymans moved into the farmhouse, Augie was already mowing the lawns. He worked for the McBains.”

  “What about his old man?”

  “I can’t find a link, but Drury has a dozen officers looking for one.”

  “I still don’t think Augie Shaw kidnapped those girls.”

  “Maybe you’re right. Maybe you’re thinking nice thoughts because your new girlfriend is his therapist.” A small smile tugs at Ruiz’s lips. “How was your date last night?”

  “None of your business.”

  “That sounds promising.”

  He grins and jiggles a tea bag in boiling water.

  “You’ll be pleased to know that I too can flirt. I chatted up a very nice middle-aged divorcée in the front office of the County Court.”

  “The reason being?”

  “I got a peek at the court transcripts for Aiden Foster’s trial. The jury found him guilty of GBH with intent and the judge gave him seven years with a non-parole of four.”

  “Where is he now?”

  “Her Majesty’s Prison, Bullingdon.”

  “What about Callum Loach?”

  “He still lives locally.”

  Ruiz reaches into his jacket pocket.

  “I took the opportunity to peruse copies of the local rag at the library. Came up with this.”

  He hands me a pile of photocopied stories from the Oxford Mail, most of them concerning the trial. One clipping has a photograph of Natasha at the courthouse, being escorted through an angry crowd. The shutter has captured the moment when she flinches under the abuse and a faceless security guard pushes someone aside.

  “They blamed her for what happened,” says Ruiz, whose afternoon breakfast has arrived. He eats like a condemned man, with his elbows either side of his plate.

  In the meantime, I read the articles. The last of them reports that Callum Loach has been selected in the British Paralympic Team. A photo shows him sitting in his wheelchair nursing a basketball.

  Ruiz pushes his plate away. Belching quietly. “Being crippled is a powerful sort of motive… so is being sent to prison. I doubt if Aiden Foster shed many tears when Natasha McBain went missing.”

  “Maybe we should ask him,” I reply.

  “I’m way ahead of you.” Ruiz pulls a ten quid note from his wallet and slides it under the teapot. “I booked us a visit. Visiting hours end at 4:30.”

  HMP Bullingdon is eighteen miles north-east of Oxford on the southern outskirts of Bicester. A category C training prison, it houses inmates who fall somewhere between serial killers (high security) and disgraced Cabinet ministers (open prison).

  Wives and girlfriends have already started to gather at the visitors’ center. Some of them have children, who fidget and fight, wanting to be somewhere else. Once inside we are searched, ID’d and have our belongings confiscated and put into lockers. Gifts are vetted in advance. Anyone wearing clothes too similar to prison garb is asked to change.

  The formalities over, we are escorted to a large annex, which has fixed tables and chairs. Visitors must stay outside until the prisoners are brought from their cells. Dockets are presented and the doors opened. Visitors and prisoners are kept apart. Knees cannot touch or lips meet. Hands can be held and children lifted over the divide. Some kids are fine. Others are howling. Some don’t leave the safety of their mothers’ skirts, peeking out at the stranger sitting opposite.

  Aiden Foster is twenty-three now, but looks younger. His pale blond hair is gelled into peaks like a seismic chart and he sits with his legs splayed as though he has weights hanging from his testicles. He’s a boy playing a man, trying to survive in a place where men who look like boys get turned into women.

  He gazes around the room, expecting to see someone else. Then his forehead creases. Mentally, the floor seems to tilt up and away from him.

  He slouches loosely, rocking slightly. I notice the bruises on his neck and the shadows beneath his eyes. He has done it hard. Parole is coming.

  Ruiz pulls a paper bag from his pocket. Inside are two packets of cigarettes and chewing gum. Aiden peers into the bag as though examining his school lunch. He stacks the cigarettes on the table with the gum on top.

  I introduce myself and Ruiz does the same. Aiden doesn’t react. He’s trying to give the impression of being completely at ease. A small silver crucifix swings on a chain around his neck.

  “We want to talk to you about Natasha McBain,” I say.

  “Has she turned up dead?”

  “What makes you say that?”

  “Why else would you be here?” He smiles.

  “You don’t seem very upset, Aiden.”

  “Oh, don’t worry, I’m crying on the inside.”

  Again he smiles. Ruiz folds his arms, unimpressed. He’s met a lot of smart-mouthed punk kids and has never lost his
desire to punch them.

  Certain people don’t seem to match their voices and Aiden Foster is one of them. His tone is pitched too high, but he tries to roughen it up by adopting a growl. I’ve read his police file and the trial transcripts of his evidence. I know his type. He’s a bully when he can be and a victim when it suits him. I knew somebody like him once, a lad called Martin Payne who made my life a misery at boarding school. Martin joined the army when he graduated. He fought in Bosnia and Kuwait, winning the Queen’s Gallantry Medal. Despite these heroics, I always considered Martin to be most at risk of being struck by a random thought. As it happened, I was right. After drinking fourteen pints he bet a friend that he could jump between two platforms on the London Underground—a leap that would have made Bob Beamon proud. Martin landed six feet short and perished on the live rail. Undone by idiocy.

  Aiden leans back in his chair, scratching his groin. I point to his crucifix.

  “Does God help you sleep at night or does he play well with the parole board?”

  “The priest here has been good to me.”

  “Let’s talk about Natasha.”

  “What happened to her?”

  “She fell through the ice on a frozen lake.”

  “In London?”

  There is a pause, before Ruiz asks the obvious question. “What makes you think she was in London?”

  Aiden hesitates, preparing to lie.

  “Had you heard from her?” I ask.

  “No.”

  “Why then?”

  There is another long silence. Ruiz speaks first. “Let me give you some free advice, Aiden, since you’ve still got six months to go. Most of the cons in here are uneducated, violent, washed-up drug addicts and habitual criminals. They know how to work the system… to survive. But you, Aiden, you’re a fish. You’re too young and pretty for a place like this. I bet the wolves have been sniffing around, waiting to introduce you to a little prison romance.”

  “No fucking way, man.”

  Something drops with a loud bang on the far side of the room and Aiden spins around as though shot. After a beat of silence, conversations begin again. Aiden tries to shrug it off but he’s less sure of himself.

  “Shower-time must be a nightmare,” says Ruiz. “What do you do? If you fight them they punish you. You get shanked in the breakfast queue or lighter fuel thrown on your bed while you’re sleeping. Are you getting much sleep, Aiden? I wouldn’t be. I’d keep my back to every wall.”

  Aiden’s eyes are wide.

  “Or maybe you’ve found yourself a benefactor, someone who looks after you. What do you give him in return? Are you bending over for someone, Aiden? Or maybe you’re muling drugs or lining up other fish?”

  “You got it all wrong.”

  “I wonder what your mates are going to think when they hear you’re somebody’s prison bitch.”

  “No way, man! I’m nobody’s bitch.”

  “That sort of rumor is hard to shake. Girls won’t treat you the same way. They’ll want you to take an Aids test just to look at them.”

  Aiden’s eyes are filming over. “This is bullshit!”

  “I’m not telling you anything you don’t know,” says Ruiz. “Maybe it doesn’t matter what your mates think. So what if they tell stories about you behind your back—about how some hare-lipped, flat-nosed con found you alone in the shower and uttered sweet nothings in your ear.”

  “That didn’t fucking happen.”

  “I believe you, truly I do.” Ruiz looks at me. “I don’t know how these rumors start.”

  The silence lasts a dozen heartbeats.

  “She sent me a letter,” says Aiden.

  “Who?” I ask.

  “Tash.”

  “When?”

  “A few months after she went missing.” He squints at something on the ceiling. “She said she and Piper were in London. They were living in a squat and she was working for some guy who ran a place in Soho.”

  I look at Ruiz.

  “Why did she write to you?”

  “She said she was sorry.”

  “Sorry for what?”

  “What do you fucking think?”

  “Do you still have the letter?”

  “Oh, yeah, I put it in my scrapbook with my pressed flowers and needlework.”

  Aiden thinks that’s funny. He wants an audience.

  “Did you write back?”

  “Why would I write to her? She put me in here. She put Callum Loach in a wheelchair. If it weren’t for that little prick-tease, none of this would have happened.”

  I can see Ruiz’s shoulders flexing beneath his shirt. It isn’t so much Aiden’s whining that he dislikes, but his cocky self-importance and how he wants to blame his own immeasurable stupidity on a schoolgirl because the alternative requires too much self-analysis and accountability.

  “Why didn’t you tell anyone about the letter?” I ask

  “Why should I? Nobody did me any favors.”

  Taking a photograph from my jacket pocket, I place it on the table between his elbows. The image is from the post-mortem. Natasha’s thin body laid out on the stainless steel bench, swollen and exposed, her eyes blank. Aiden is staring at me, unwilling to look. Slowly he lowers his gaze. Hesitates. Recovers.

  “She’s not so pretty now,” he says, turning his face away from the photograph.

  “You still think she got what was coming to her?” asks Ruiz.

  Aiden smiles ruefully, showing all the compassion of a shark loose in a colony of seals.

  “Been going to church while I been in here. Learned a few things. It’s like the Bible says: ‘Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap.’ Man, woman, same difference. She got what she deserved.”

  As we leave the prison, Ruiz takes a boiled sweet from his tin and sucks it hard as though wanting to get a bad taste from his mouth.

  “You know how most people in prison deserve to be there.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Some deserve it more than others.”

  28

  Late afternoon I drive across Oxford in mist that can’t decide if it wants to be rain, or perhaps it’s the other way around. The streets are crowded with cars and tourist coaches. The schools are closing, holidays starting, last-minute Christmas shoppers buying last-minute gifts. At the colleges, parents are arriving to fetch their offspring home from university. Trunks are hefted down narrow stairways and loaded into car boots.

  It makes me remember my own university days. I had expected a four-year slumber party full of sex, alcohol and soft drugs. Instead, I fell in love with a string of unattainable girls, who thought I was great fun to have around, but not very shaggable. They seemed to prefer rugby players or boys called Rupert whose parents had country estates. Normally all I could offer was my undying love and a bottle of warm Lambrusco Bianco.

  Victoria Naparstek comes to mind, her shy eyes and over-wide mouth. I remember seeing the same gratitude in her eyes that I felt was in mine; an appreciation that she was there and that I hadn’t completely embarrassed myself.

  Parking outside the sports center, I push through the double doors and hear the echo of basketballs rattling backboards. At the front counter, a woman is wearing a tracksuit on her thin frame and twenty years of sun damage around her eyes. I ask for Callum Loach.

  She points through another set of doors. “He’ll be inside with the Ayatollah.”

  “Sorry?”

  “Theo. That’s his old man.”

  There are three basketball courts side by side, but only one is being used. Theo Loach is pacing the edge of the court. Yelling instructions, he ducks and weaves as though he’s shadowboxing or playing the game from the bleachers. A Para tattoo on his right forearm has faded into a blue stain.

  “Hey, Cal, watch for the quick break. That’s it… cover him.”

  I’ve never seen a wheelchair game of basketball. The speed surprises me. With a flick of forearms, competitors are hurtling up and down the court.


  I recognize Callum from his photograph. He’s sitting in a lightweight chair with wheels that are canted inwards and give the impression they’re collapsing into his lap.

  Theo yells, “Good block! See who’s open. That’s it. Go… go!”

  Nursing the ball on his lap, Callum pushes twice on the wheels and dribbles, leading a charge of pumping arms and blurring wheels.

  “All the way!” shouts Theo.

  Callum shoots and lands the basket, colliding with an opposing player and toppling sideways. The chair seems to roll 360 degrees and he flips it up again, laughing and high-fiving his teammates.

  Theo rubs his hands together as if keeping them warm. Then he looks up.

  “Can I help you?”

  “I was hoping to speak to Callum.”

  “Game’s almost over.”

  I take a seat on a bench and rest my jacket over one thigh. Theo is no longer paying as much attention to the action. Periodically, he glances my way until curiosity gets the better of him.

  “I’m Cal’s father. What’s this about?”

  “You’ve heard the news about Natasha McBain?”

  “Sure.”

  “I’m assisting the police in the investigation.”

  “What’s that got to do with Cal?”

  I delay answering. The silence fills with a referee’s whistle, a foul and a free throw. Theo’s face is as round as a pie tin under a baseball cap. He takes a seat next to me, his knees creaking.

  “We have a policy in our house that nobody mentions that girl’s name.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “Isn’t it obvious?”

  “Natasha didn’t cripple Callum.”

  Theo doesn’t say anything. His gaze shifts and he studies cobwebs hanging from the lights. I notice his tattoo again.

  “You were in the army.”

  “Yeah.”

  “See any action?”

  “The Falklands.”

  He licks his lips and drapes his hands over his thighs. “You got children, Professor?”

  “Two girls.”

  “How old?”