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, cafe, 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 last 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.
“Did you bring the photographs?” I ask.
He opens a satchel and hands me a ring-bound folder of crime-scene pictures. The first images are location shots of the farmhouse taken from every angle. For a hundred yards in every direction the pristine snow is untrammeled. No footsteps. No tire tracks. No signs of life.
The images move closer, skirting the fire engines and showing the shattered front door. The interior shots reveal a clean, comfortable house with no immediate signs of a disturbance apart from the evidence markers on the floor.
Taking a photograph from the folder, I prop it on a chair in the sitting room. I choose a second image, this one of William Heyman, and place it on the kitchen table. He’s lying on his stomach, head to one side, blood pooling beneath his cheek.
Closing my eyes, I try to picture that night. A blizzard raged outside, groaning through the roof beams and rattling the windows. The power lines were down. The Heymans lit candles on the stairs and in the kitchen. They were sitting in front of the open fire.
A teenage girl knocked on the front door. Wet. Cold. Covered with scratches. She wasn’t barefoot, but she was wearing a floral dress and perhaps other clothes that aren’t here anymore.
William and Patricia Heyman weren’t living in the area when the Bingham Girls went missing. They moved into the farmhouse a year later. The girl who came to their door was a stranger. They took her in, drew a bath, found her fresh clothes and dried her shoes by the fire.
She told them the story and William Heyman called 999, but the switchboard was overloaded and he was put on hold. Someone else was outside in the blizzard, following Natasha.
The attack was sudden… fierce. Mr. Heyman turned and tried to run. He was struck from behind before he reached the kitchen. He crawled a dozen feet before dying, smearing the tiles with his blood.
The weapon? Something blunt and heavy: an axe perhaps. I noticed a woodpile with a chopping block at the side of the farmhouse.
Natasha was upstairs in the bath. She must have heard the commotion. Pulling on her clothes, she smashed the bathroom window and crawled through, cutting herself on the broken glass.
Patricia Heyman fled upstairs but the killer followed. She tried to barricade herself in the bedroom but the lock didn’t hold.
Looking at the photographs, I notice little evidence of fire in the hallway but once inside the main bedroom the visual impact of the blaze is instantly clear. It burned intensely over a few square feet, yet covered every surface of the room in oily black soot, creating a strange “shadowland.”
The only “un-sooted” item on the bed is a blanket covering the body. It was placed on Mrs. Heyman after the fire. Augie Shaw wanted to shield her, to protect her privacy. He’s a schizophrenic. Interpreting his actions is perilous. It still doesn’t make sense. Why would he kill her, burn her body and then tenderly protect her modesty with a blanket?
Whoever killed the Heymans worked calmly and quickly, wiping benches and pouring bleach, removing traces of his presence. He didn’t come prepared. He made do. He didn’t plan ahead, but neither did he panic. He stayed afterwards to clean up or came back later.
Meanwhile, Natasha fled from the farmhouse, barefoot and bleeding, across a silent landscape. She knew he was coming… following…
Some girls are cutters or slicers or jabbers. Some are bulimic or anorexic. I’m a runner and a writer. I jot things down. Messages. Shopping lists. Quotes. Names. Ever since I learned how to write I’ve been filling exercise books, notepads, journals and diaries.
I like words. Sometimes they pop into my head randomly or I see them out of the corner of my eye, like shadows or flashes of light or stray eyelashes. I have favorites. Incandescent is a good word. So is serendipity. Epic. Perpendicular. (Tash said I only like it because it has a “dick” in it.) Audacious. Rapscallion. Oxymoron. Hullabaloo.
I have three exercise books, which I keep hidden beneath my mattress. I write in the corner beneath the ladder, just in case the camera is watching.
When I write things down, I own them. They’re no longer hanging in mid-air like cartoon bubbles or wisps of smoke. They’re made real. Solid. Conversation doesn’t last. Spoken words fade. We stop listening. Forget.
This is what I wrote down this morning.
• I dreamt last night that I had a mono-brow. • Cramps. My period is coming. • Spaghetti and meatballs… again. • The gas bottle is running out. • Must wash socks, but I’m wearing every pair.
Before I was taken, my lists were very different. I used to write down why I was unhappy.
• Because Mum and Dad row all the time. • Because I’m ugly. • Because I’m not a vampire. • Because my room’s a mess.
My handwriting is getting smaller and smaller, as though I’m shrinking. The real reason is that I’m running out of pages so I try not to waste the margins or the white spaces, filling them with words to pass the time. I have one page left after this one. Every word has to count.
Filling hours. Wasting days. Tash cut up our magazines and made a collage on the wall, sticking photographs and words together to form these weird worlds where people have dog heads and bikini bodies. It’s really clever because if you stand at the far side of the room you can see that all the random images and letters form a bigger picture-a portrait of a girl. Tash said it was of me, but I’m not that pretty and nobody will ever paint a picture of me.
You’re probably thinking I have low self-esteem. My mother taught me to lower my expectations. She was a debutante and a model at motor shows, but she talks as though she was the muse to Yves Saint Laurent and Versace.
And she makes out that her family was wealthy and upper class, but I know she came from Brighton where Gran and Granddad had a bed and breakfast on the seafront and they sent her to the local grammar school.
I don’t know what my dad sees in Mum-apart from her looks, of course-but beauty is only skin deep and short-lived and in the eye of the beholder. I know my cliches. In their wedding photographs, my mother looks like Natalie Portman and Daddy looks like Natalie Portman’s father, walking her down the aisle.
I don’t have his patience or his sense of duty when it comes to loving Mum. “Anything for a quiet life,” he used to say. I can give you more cliches: don’t rock the boat or make waves or upset the apple cart.
Mum was always going off to health spas because she needed to recharge. Daddy didn’t seem to mind because he could relax for a week. When she came home she’d throw these lavish parties, filling the house with freeloaders and hangers-on, who would eat our food and drink our booze, while she played lady of the manor.
I used to dream about leaving home. I wanted to go somewhere where I could lose myself. Bingham isn’t big enough to get lost in. It’s boring. Dullsville. It’s like going to a relative’s house when you know in advance where you’re going to eat and refuel and what songs you’re going to sing and what color cordial makes you throw up. And when you arrive, someone is going to pinch your cheek and tell you how much you’ve grown.
I don’t know why I’m writing stuff like this down. I don’t imagine anyone will ever find my notebooks or read them. And if they do, I don’t know if they’ll be young and sad. That’s the sort of reader who will understand me: young and sad and lonely.