Say You're Sorry

by Michael Robotham

  “Is anyone there?” I ask.

  There’s no answer.

  “Talk to me, please.”

  “What would you like me to say?” asks George.

  He is sitting on a chair between the wardrobe and the window, leaning back against the wall. I can’t see his face.

  “What was your nightmare about?”

  “I didn’t have a nightmare.”

  “Yes, you did.”

  “I don’t remember.”

  “Dreams are funny like that,” he says. “I don’t remember mine.”

  “Am I a long way from home?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean in miles. Is it a long way?”

  “No.”

  “Could I make it if I walked all day?”

  “Perhaps.”

  “Are you just saying that to make me happy?”

  “Yes.”

  46

  It is past midnight on Christmas morning and the only creatures stirring are being nourished by machine coffee and the chocolate bars with raisins that nobody likes. Every available officer has been recalled. Leave cancelled. Festivities put on hold.

  The roadblocks have been maintained throughout the night and plans are being prepared for a major ground search at first light using volunteers, dogs, helicopters and heat-sensing radar.

  On a whiteboard in the incident room, somebody has written, “Piper Hadley is coming home.” Yesterday’s message. Premature. Out of date. Nobody has the energy to scrub it off.

  Drury moves down the corridor as though walking in his sleep. At the coffee machine he presses a button and listens to the machine give an emphysemic cough and hack, spitting out coffee that looks like tar.

  He takes a sealed evidence bag from his pocket and studies the tiny manikin of the stationmaster.

  “Are you sure it belongs to Martinez?”

  “Yes.”

  He runs his thumb over the model piece.

  “It’s not much of a smoking gun.”

  “If you wait for fingerprints or DNA, it could take days. Piper doesn’t have that long.”

  The DCI’s face twists. “We’ve issued an arrest warrant for Martinez and circulated details of his vehicle.”

  “What about going public?”

  “He could have Emily and Piper. It’s too big a risk.”

  Drury sips the coffee and almost spits it out. He pours the dregs into the sink, crushing the plastic cup in his fist.

  “Are you sleeping with Victoria Naparstek?” he asks.

  “What?”

  “You heard the question.”

  “I don’t think that’s any—”

  “I’ll take that as a yes.” He rocks back on his heels, flexing his fingers against his thighs. “I think you should leave her alone.”

  “Why?”

  “I’m concerned for her.”

  “You care for her?”

  “Yes.”

  “Does your wife know?”

  He smiles tightly. No teeth. “My wife and I have an understanding. I know it sounds like a cliché.”

  “You have an open marriage?”

  “If you want to call it that.”

  “Does your wife see other men?”

  “She could.”

  As soon as he utters the statement, he’s aware of how self-absorbed and insincere it sounds. Elevating his chin, he presses his lips into thin lines.

  “Are you married?” he asks.

  “My wife and I are separated.”

  “I notice that you still wear a wedding ring. I guess that makes us both hypocrites, but only one of us is a showboat.”

  He leaves me then, striding down the corridor like a soldier marching into battle. How can a man with so much ego and self-hatred survive in a job with so few highs and so many lows? I fear for his sanity. I feel for his wife.

  Ruiz wakes me just after 4:00 a.m. I’ve fallen asleep on a desk, head resting on my forearms, dribble on the blotter beneath my chin. I sit up, dry-mouthed, thirsty.

  “You don’t twitch when you sleep,” he says. “It’s like your Parkinson’s takes the night off.”

  My arms and head are moving now, jerking and spasming. It’s a strange dance, self-conscious and nerdish. I take two pills from a childproof bottle and Ruiz gets me a cup of water from the cooler.

  “Merry Christmas,” he says.

  “Ditto, big man.”

  I’m waiting for the medication to take hold. Then I’ll be “on”—as they say in Parkinson’s parlance—as opposed to “off.”

  “Where have you been?”

  “I took Dale Hadley home. Nice house. Good-looking children. They’re like a Disney family.”

  “With a missing daughter.”

  “Swings and roundabouts.”

  Ruiz has news. Phillip Martinez was picked up two hours ago by a highway patrol car on the M40 near Stokenchurch. He was alone in the car.

  “Where is he now?”

  “Downstairs. Drury is about to interview him. I thought you’d want to watch.”

  I wash my face with cold water. Ruiz waits. Then we take the lift downstairs. Phillip Martinez is sitting alone in the interview suite. He glances at the ceiling like a man who is trapped at the bottom of a deep dark well, who can see a circle of blue sky above him.

  Disheveled and tired, he raises his hairless hand, scratching the stubble on his jaw. One side of his face is bruised and swollen, slowly changing color.

  DCI Drury and DS Casey enter the room. Martinez leaps to his feet.

  “It’s about bloody time.”

  “Sit down, please,” says Drury.

  “Have you found Emily? Did you talk to her mother?”

  “Sit down.”

  “That bitch is behind this. She’s been planning it all long.”

  Drury points again to the chair. The two men stare at each other and Martinez blinks first, taking a seat. He crosses his legs and his upper foot jiggles up and down.

  “For the record,” says the DCI, “we are recording this conversation. Can you confirm, Mr. Martinez, that you have been read your rights?”

  “Yes.”

  “You have also been given the opportunity to have a lawyer present, but you have declined.”

  “Yes.”

  “Where were you between 2:00 p.m. and 3:00 p.m. yesterday afternoon?”

  “I was looking for my daughter. She ran away.”

  “Why?”

  “We had an argument.”

  “How did you get the bruises and scratches on your face?”

  Martinez touches his cheek. “She was upset. She threw a few things.”

  “What was this argument about?”

  Martinez sighs. “Emily wanted to spend Christmas with her mother. I told her that she could go to London on Boxing Day but not before. She wouldn’t listen.”

  “She hit you?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did you hit her?”

  “No. I mean… I tried to stop her hurting herself. She was out of control. Hysterical.”

  “Did you hit her?”

  “Is that what she said? She’s exaggerating. She’s a typical teenager. Headstrong. Ungrateful. Melodramatic.”

  “When did you last see her?”

  “Eight-fifteen yesterday morning.”

  “Why didn’t you report her missing?”

  “I didn’t know she’d run away until later. I thought she’d gone to work. When she didn’t come home at midday I started to worry.”

  “What did you do then?”

  “I went looking for her. I called her friends. I found a train timetable in her room. That’s when I realized that she’d gone to London. Her mother lives at a hostel in Ealing. I drove there but Amanda wouldn’t see me and the staff threatened to call the police.”

  “You didn’t see Emily?”

  “They were hiding her.”

  Drury pauses. With deliberate slowness, he places a sealed evidence bag in front of Martinez.

  �
��Is this your wallet?”

  “Yes.”

  “There is a photograph in the inside sleeve of a young woman.”

  “Emily. So what?”

  Drury places a second plastic bag on the table.

  “Do you recognize this?”

  “That’s one of my pieces: the stationmaster. I have a model railway. Where did you get it?”

  “You’re sure it belongs to you?”

  “Positive. I commissioned it from Aiden Campbell, a famous model maker. I supplied him with a photograph. How did you get it?”

  “It was found at an abandoned factory where we believe Piper Hadley and Natasha McBain were imprisoned for three years.”

  Martinez blinks at Drury incredulously, his eyebrows raised, his palms open. He’s unsure if he’s missing something.

  “You must be joking.”

  Drury doesn’t respond.

  Martinez wags his finger in the air. “Oh, no, you’re not suggesting—”

  “I’m asking for an explanation.”

  Martinez frowns, his features bunching together in the center of his face. “This is ridiculous. Somebody is winding you up.”

  Martinez turns to the mirror, as though aware that someone is watching him. Or maybe he’s looking at his own reflection, needing confirmation that this is really happening to him.

  Watching from behind the one-way mirror, I look for signs of stress and deception. There nothing disjointed or improvised or put together in haste.

  “He’s good,” says Ruiz.

  “Yes, he is.”

  “Is he telling the truth?”

  “About Emily… possibly.” I saw the train timetable in her room.

  “I should check on the ex-wife. I could drive to London.”

  “It’s worth a shot.”

  I hug the big man and wish him Merry Christmas again.

  “What are you going to do?” he asks.

  “I’ll hang around a bit longer.”

  “What about Julianne and the girls?”

  “I’ll call them.”

  Ruiz leaves and I turn back to the interview. Drury has placed a photograph on the table in front of Phillip Martinez.

  “Recognize this place?”

  “No.”

  “Take a closer look.”

  “What is it?”

  “It’s where you kept Piper and Natasha. You tried to clean up, but didn’t do a very good job. One skin cell is all it takes to get a DNA profile. We’re dismantling the pipes and vacuuming the floors. The same thing is happening downstairs. We’re taking your car apart. We’re going to find the evidence. We’re going to link you to this.”

  “This is completely ridiculous. I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

  “I’m giving you a chance to redeem yourself. Tell us where Piper is. Tell us what you did to Emily.”

  Martinez tries to stand. DS Casey matches his movements. He’s bigger. Stronger. More intimidating.

  “I won custody of my daughter. She belongs to me. Why aren’t you looking for her?”

  “Answer my question, Mr. Martinez.”

  “I don’t have to listen to you.”

  “But you do have to sit down.”

  The scientist retakes his seat. Shocked. Angry.

  This man is either telling the truth or he’s an expert liar, practiced to the point of being pathologically good. Drury has done everything right—pushing for details, looking for the minutiae that so often trip up a suspect because lying is harder to sustain than the truth. But Phillip Martinez is even more remarkable. His answers sound so credible. He doesn’t embellish or avoid eye contact. There are no gaps or clumsy repetitions. He is genuinely concerned about Emily—asking about her constantly, accusing his ex-wife of orchestrating her disappearance.

  On the night of the Bingham festival he had a phone call from a doctor saying that his ex-wife had been admitted to Littlemore Hospital in Oxford suffering from auditory hallucinations. He called Emily and met her at the house and that’s where he spent the night. He didn’t see Piper arrive. He didn’t know Emily was planning to run away.

  It’s the same story when he’s questioned about the blizzard. He and Emily ate dinner and watched TV until the power went out. Then they played a game of Scrabble by candlelight before going to bed.

  It’s a bravura performance of a wronged man. Misunderstood. Angry. Frustrated. Prickly.

  Drury takes a break after two hours. Regulations must be followed. I meet him in the corridor.

  “Have you been listening?” he asks, taking deep swallows from a bottle of water.

  “Yes.”

  “It’s like he knows the questions are coming.”

  “He’s had three years to prepare.”

  Drury’s chest expands as though plates of muscle are moving beneath his shirt. “How do I break him down?”

  “Maybe you can’t. The very best liars are those people who are good at lying to themselves.”

  “He’s delusional?”

  “Not at all. Deception and self-deception require the same skills. Haven’t you ever wondered why people cheat at solitaire or peek at the answers to a crossword puzzle? It’s not a competition and there’s no prize, yet they still do it.”

  “They want to feel good about themselves.”

  “By cheating?”

  Drury shrugs. “So why do they do it?”

  “It’s an evolutionary process. Forty years ago a biologist called Robert Trivers argued that our flair for self-deception dated back to prehistoric times when we first formed into tribes. Communities have always punished cheats and liars but as highly intelligent primates we became aware of the risks of being ostracized and fed to the hyenas if we were caught. It didn’t stop us lying. We just got better at it. We learned to get away with more.”

  “So you’re saying we evolved into liars?”

  “I’m saying it’s a theory. It’s why Mark Twain wrote: ‘When a person cannot deceive himself, how is he going to deceive other people?’ ”

  Drury looks at his watch.

  “My kids are going wake up in a few hours. Their presents are under the tree. I’d like to be there.”

  “Let me talk to Martinez.”

  “Can’t do that—against the rules.”

  “Sign me in as a visitor. No cameras. No recording.”

  “It won’t be admissible in any court.”

  “Finding Piper is more important.”

  The DCI pulls his head from side to side, sucking saliva through his teeth. “Martinez would have to agree.”

  “Ask him.”

  “Why would he say yes?”

  “He’s a showman. He wants an audience.”

  47

  Phillip Martinez looks up as the door opens, eyes on mine, caught between hope and trepidation.

  “Have they found my Emily?”

  “Not yet.”

  He closes his eyes, shows his long lashes, a picture of misery; a man marooned on a desert island, waiting for rescue. As the air shifts, I catch a whiff of his sweat dried in his clothes.

  “Do you remember me?” I ask, sitting opposite him.

  “Of course.” He watches me cautiously. “Should I call you Professor or Doctor?”

  “I’m not a doctor.”

  “You trained for a while. Three years of medicine.”

  “How did you know that?”

  Martinez allows himself to smile. “You have talked to my daughter three times. In your wildest dreams did you imagine that I wouldn’t check up on you?”

  “That’s very diligent.”

  “I am always diligent, Professor. I am the senior scientist at one of the biggest research institutes in Europe. I have a staff of twenty and a budget of thirteen million pounds. Don’t mistake me for a stupid man.”

  “I would never do that.”

  He leans back, satisfied with his first salvo.

  “We got off to a bad start,” I say. “I won’t lie to you if you don’t lie to me.”r />
  “I haven’t yet,” he says.

  “You lied about why you came back from America. You were accused of falsifying data on treatments for cancer and were publicly rebuked by your peer reviewers.”

  Martinez barely moves a muscle. His glossy avid eyes remind me of a ventriloquist’s dummy.

  I keep pushing. “Two journal articles were published under your name. You took research funds under false pretences. You had to pay the money back.”

  His jaw flexes and his eyes glaze over.

  “In your wildest dreams, Mr. Martinez, did you imagine that I wouldn’t check up on you?”

  There it is—his breaking point. He rocks forward in his chair, his lips peeled back, canine teeth bared.

  “How dare you,” he spits. “How dare you insult me and question my ethics. Look at you! You’re diseased! You’re only functioning because of the drugs that people like me have discovered and tested. Your condition is getting worse—eating away at your nerves, robbing you of balance, movement, speech and eventually your mind. One day, not so many years from now, you’ll be a jerking, shitting, quivering sack of bones, unable to walk or talk or feed yourself. Instead of insulting my reputation, you should be praying I find a cure. You should be begging for my help, you pompous, self-righteous schmuck. You need people like me.”

  Watching spit fly from his mouth, I recognize a classic narcissist, a perfectionist governed by his own ego and sense of worth, someone who cannot accept anyone who questions the carefully crafted, flawless image he has manufactured of himself. He will destroy the messenger, rather than hear the message.

  He leans back, fire still burning inside him. He wants me to apologize. Expects it.

  I give him that much. “I’m sorry, Mr. Martinez. I didn’t mean to question your professional integrity.”

  He waves his hand dismissively.

  “Can I ask you some questions?”

  He nods.

  “Does the name George mean anything to you?”

  “Why?”

  “It’s a simple enough question.”

  “It’s a nickname. When we first married my wife called me Gorgeous George. She thought I looked like some wrestler who was big in the fifties. We both had curly hair.”

  “How did you get the bruise on your face?”