“In the middle of a blizzard?”
“Exactly. According to Shaw, the fire was already burning when he arrived. He went inside and tried to save Mrs. Heyman.”
“Why didn’t he raise the alarm?”
“He went for help but the roads were so icy he put his car into a ditch. He walked the rest of the way to Abingdon and went straight home. Went to bed. Forgot to tell us.”
“He forgot?”
“It gets better. He says his brother told him not to go to the police.”
“Where is the brother?”
“He doesn’t have one. Like I said, he’s not playing with the full deck. Either that or faking it.”
Retreating downstairs, I follow a side path to a rear terrace garden, where rose bushes, heavily pruned, push through the snow. My gaze sweeps from the gate to the barn and then the orchard, unsure of what I’m looking for.
Several times I walk to the fence and back again. How soon did a person become lost in the trees? How easy is it to watch a house like this and not be seen?
A psychologist views a crime scene differently from a detective. Police search for physical clues and witnesses. I look at the overall picture and the salience of certain landmarks and features. Some roads, for example, act as psychological barriers. People living on one side may almost never cross over to the other. The same applies to railway lines and rivers. Boundaries alter behavior.
Grievous joins me in the yard, knocking snow off his shoes.
“Some places are just unlucky,” he says.
“What do you mean?”
“This is where Tash McBain lived.”
“Who?”
“You remember her,” he says. “She was one of the Bingham Girls.”
I feel myself reaching for a memory and coming back with half a story, a headline and a photograph of two teenage girls.
“Her family was renting this place,” explains Grievous. “But after she went missing, they split up. Divorced. Couldn’t handle not knowing.”
“The girls didn’t turn up.”
“Never. It’s one of those mysteries that locals still talk about. I remember when it happened. This place was crawling with reporters and TV crews.”
“You worked the case?”
“I was still in uniform-a probationary constable.”
“What do you think happened to them?”
He shrugs. “Five thousand people are reported missing every year in Thames Valley. More than half are kids, twelve to eighteen, runaways most of them. They turn up eventually… or they don’t.”
Drury emerges from the house and tells Grievous to bring the Land Rover.
“What about the dog?” I ask.
“Pardon?”
“The family had a dog.”
“How do you know?”
“There was a water bowl in the laundry and an empty dog-food tin in the rubbish bin. Something short-haired; black and white, maybe a Jack Russell.”
He shakes his head, but I see a question mark ghost across his eyes. He dismisses it and pulls on his gloves.
“It’s time you met Augie Shaw.”
U ntil we went missing the worst thing that had ever happened in Bingham was when a German bomber overshot London by eighty miles and dropped its payload on a community hall where people were sheltering. The death toll was never made public-the government wanted to protect morale-but local historians said twenty-one people died.
The next worst thing was the night that Aiden Foster ran down Callum Loach and crushed both his legs, which had to be amputated above his knees. Now he has these stumps, but mostly he wears prosthetic legs made of skin-colored plastic.
Tash giggled at the term prosthetic. She thought it sounded like prophylactic, which is a fancy name for a condom. That reminded me of when our PE teacher (Miss Trunchbull) put a condom on a banana in sex-ed class. Tash raised her hand and said, “Why do we need protection from bananas, Miss?”
I laughed so hard I almost wet myself. Tash got sent to see Mrs. Jacobson, the headmistress (otherwise known as Lady Adolf). Tash had been to see her so often she should have had a frequent offender’s card.
Going missing made Tash and me popular. Sack loads of mail arrived at our houses: letters, cards, poems and pictures from mums, dads, children, churches and schools. The Prime Minister wrote. So did the Prince of Wales.
When school started there were TV cameras outside the gates of St. Catherine’s. Most of our friends were interviewed: everyone except for Emily, who was kept away from the cameras. She was the other member of our gang. Emily Martinez. She’s six months older, slightly overweight and she says “Wow!” a lot. I didn’t like her at first because she had this Little Miss Perfect thing going. Then I felt sorry for her because her parents were getting a divorce and fighting over her.
I never met her father-he was working in America-but her mum was pretty weird, always visiting doctors and therapists. Emily said she was highly strung, but Tash would tip up her hand, making a drinking motion.
On the first day back at school there were trauma counselors fluttering around the playground like seagulls fighting over chips. They were telling students it was all right to be upset and they should share their feelings. TV cameras were given permission to film the school assembly when Mrs. Jacobson said a special prayer for us, getting a little wobble in her voice as she talked fondly about Tash and me.
“Would you listen to her,” laughed Tash. “A month ago she couldn’t wait to get rid of me.”
“Now she wants you back.”
“Sod that.”
A month after we disappeared, George moved us from the attic room to this place. By then the police had stopped looking and everyone assumed that we’d run away. George no longer talked about ransom demands and money. He had rescued us, he said, like some noble knight in a fairy tale. He was going to protect us from all the temptations and evil in the world.
You probably think we were stupid to believe his lies. Naive. Gullible. Moronic. Next time you’re drugged and locked in a basement, hungry, thirsty, frightened, then you can judge us. When you have cried as many tears as we did; when you’re huddled beneath a blanket with your mind twisted; when you don’t have the strength to disobey or disbelieve.
He made us swallow some pills and we woke up in the basement. He cut the ladder so we couldn’t reach the trapdoor, not without his help, and we no longer had a TV or a skylight.
When we were good he would leave the lights on. If we misbehaved he would turn them off. You have never known darkness like it; so thick I could have suffocated upon it; so deep it felt like a monster breathing in my ears.
Our lives were managed and manipulated. George decided what we ate and what we wore. He controlled the light and air. There were times when he was kind and we could make fun of him. We could give him shopping lists and tease him into bringing us magazines and extra food.
“I don’t want you getting fat,” he said, as he rationed the chocolate.
The magazines were read cover to cover, over and over. There were new faces, new movies, new fashions, but also the familiar. Brad and Angelina. Posh and Becks. Elton and David. The world wasn’t changing so much. Prince William married Kate Middleton. Pippa’s bottom became famous.
We had no way of knowing if we were close to home. I still don’t. It could be miles away. It could be just past the trees. I know there’s a railway line nearby because I can hear the trains when the wind is blowing in the right direction.
I miss Tash. I miss being able to reach between our bunks and hold her hand. I miss hearing her voice. I miss watching her sleep.
George hasn’t come to see me since she ran away and I know he’s going to be angry. That’s why Tash has to come back soon with the police… before George does.
I’m running out of food and there’s hardly any gas left in the bottle.
My handwriting is getting messier, because it’s so cold. I can’t feel my fingers, which makes it hard to hold the pencil. When the point gets worn down, I scrape the lead gently across the bricks to sharpen it.