all those movies.
“I want Piper this time.”
Tash looked at me. I was rocking from foot to foot, cold all over.
“Take me,” she said.
“It’s Piper’s turn.”
“No.” Tash thought quickly. “It’s her time of the month.”
George didn’t say anything for a while. Tash climbed the rough wooden ladder and raised her arms. Her cardigan rose up above the waistband of her jeans and I saw the screwdriver tucked against the small of her back.
I wanted to tell her not to do it. Don’t risk it.
I sat down on the bunk and huddled against the back wall. Every shadow held a withered body.
I prayed. I don’t pray very well. We’re not a very religious family. My dad says nine out of ten religions fail in their first year.
While I was praying, I was listening, trying to hear what was happening upstairs. I imagined the worst things. Holes being dug and bodies buried. Hideous screams. That’s what he always threatened to do: bury us deep where nobody would find us.
I don’t know how long I waited. Dozing. Waking. Listening. I shouted at the ceiling.
“Give her back, you bastard! Don’t you hurt her!”
I stood on the bench and looked out the crack in the window. There was a moon somewhere and I could just make out the trees and hear the wind moving the leaves.
I woke in the dark again, shivering violently. I sat up. Still alone. I reached across to her bunk. Felt her cold blankets. When I woke again it was almost light enough to see. I threw back the blankets and climbed the ladder, trying to balance, but I couldn’t reach the trapdoor.
I stood on the bench. Looked through the crack. I could just make out a wire fence and the edge of another building with a broken window. Rubbish. Weeds. Silence. Nothing moving.
All the next day I waited. Time meant nothing. I was hungry and cold, but I wouldn’t eat without Tash. I looked at the black eye on the ceiling. I begged him to give her back. I didn’t want to be alone. I needed Tash.
Then I heard the sound of the hatch opening. Gaping darkly. He lowered her down to the ladder. Her legs didn’t seem strong enough to support her. I stood beneath in case she fell.
Slowly she descended, flinching, pale. She had blood on the front of her dress. It had dried and darkened. She stumbled. I had to hold her up. Reaching the bunk, she curled into a ball and closed her eyes. Closed to me. Bleeding.
I made her a cup of tea. Heated some baked beans. She didn’t eat. She didn’t drink. She had stopped living by then. All hope gone.
11
A sound has woken me: a creaking floorboard or a whispered voice outside the door. Maybe it wasn’t a sound at all. Dull-headed, I push back the duvet and I tiptoe across the floor, joints popping in my knees.
Turning the latch, I glance along the hotel corridor. Empty. The darkness of the staircase is like an open void. I take a step and feel something wet under my feet. Melting snow, tracked in from outside. Someone has been standing here.
Closing the door, I turn the double lock and go to the window, pulling aside the curtains. It’s still dark outside. Charlie is sleeping. She hardly makes a sound. When she was a baby I used to crouch over her cot, fearful that she wasn’t breathing at all.
I won’t sleep now. I will lie awake and go back over the details of yesterday. I cannot forget the image of the frozen girl. The more I try to push it away, the harder it pushes back. That is the grim inevitability of unwanted thoughts. We cannot empty our heads. We cannot forget.
I wake Charlie just after seven and we eat a quick breakfast before walking to the train station. Supplies for the journey-a take-away coffee, hot chocolate and the Daily Telegraph. Five minutes for the train.
Tires scorch into the station car park and a police car screeches to a halt. DCI Drury is out the door and sprinting up the steps, leaping the ticket barrier like a gymnast on parallel bars. Grievous struggles to catch up, straddling the barrier and grimacing in pain.
Drury storms along the platform. Breathless. Angry. He almost knocks Charlie over, before jabbing his finger into my chest.
“How in Christ’s name did you know?”
I don’t retreat, but I’m concerned for Charlie.
“Are you OK?” I ask.
She nods. I look at Drury. “Please apologize to my daughter.”
He won’t be distracted. “Tell me how you knew. Leece matched the dental records. It’s Natasha McBain.”
“I wasn’t sure.”
“Did Shaw recognize her?”
“No.”
“How?”
“The dog.”
“You’re kidding me! You pulled a name out of your arse based on a dog.”
“It was more than that.” I sound defensive.
“Where has she been? Three years and not a word, then she turns up in the middle of a blizzard.”
“I don’t know.”
A train has appeared around a far bend, the carriages straightening, rails humming. For a moment the platform announcer interrupts. Drury waits, loosening his tie.
“You should have told me. I don’t like being everybody’s prize fuck.”
“I could have been wrong.”
“The chief constable wants to see you.”
“Why?”
“That’s his business.”
“We’re supposed to catch this train.”
“There’ll be others.”
Chief Constable Thomas Fryer is a big man squeezed into a uniform that is one size too small for him. Pink- faced with jaundiced eyes, he has an office on the top floor of Thames Valley Police headquarters. It’s a blue-sky view and daily affirmation that he’s reached the top of his chosen profession.
Removing his rimless glasses, he wipes them with a Kleenex.
“DCI Drury wants to have you arrested.”
“On what grounds?”
“You’ve made him look foolish.”
“That wasn’t my intention.”
Through the vertical blinds, I can see the outer office. Charlie is waiting for me, sitting on a plastic chair, texting on her iPhone. Drury is in the same room, pacing the floor, furious at being excluded from the meeting.
Fryer puts on his glasses.
“He’s a good detective. Hot-headed. Noisy. But he gets results.”
The chief constable takes a seat. The silver buttons on his uniform rattle against the metal edge of his desk.
“Are you a gambling man, Professor?”
“No.”
“But you understand odds?”
“Yes.”
