“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.