People teem with their own information. It leaks from their pores, spouts from their mouths, reveals itself in every mannerism, tic and twitch. Whether they are shy, materialistic, body conscious, vain, fluent in cliche, brimming with aphorisms and tabloid axioms, they reveal themselves in thousands of different ways.
And almost unconsciously I pick up these signals, reading their body language and registering the cues. I used to want to know why things happened. Why would a couple murder young women and bury them in their basement? Why does a teenage boy spray a schoolyard with bullets? Why would a schoolgirl give birth to a baby in a toilet block and dump the newborn in a rubbish bin? Not anymore. I don’t want to be able to see inside people’s heads. It’s like knowing too much. It’s like living too long or witnessing too many events; experiencing things to the point of fatigue.
People are complicated, cruel, brave, damaged and prone to outrageous acts of brutality and kindness. I know the causes. I know the effects. I have been there and back again and bought the souvenirs. It’s not that I don’t care anymore. I’ve done my bit. Someone else should shoulder the burden.
DS Casey opens the rear door for me. Drury is riding up front. We’re not going to the police station. Instead, we drive to Abingdon, the tires crunching on gritted tarmac and splashing through puddles of slush. Few cars. Fewer people.
Twenty minutes pass. We pull up outside a red brick and tile bungalow with pebble dash on the facade. Drury stares through the windscreen and finally speaks.
“Someone removed her clitoral hood and clitoris. That’s a religious thing, right? Some Muslim communities do it to young girls. Sew them up…”
“It wasn’t religious.”
“What sort of sick-”
“It was punishment. Payback.”
“Someone hated this girl?”
“Or what she represented.”
“She was eighteen-what did she represent?”
“Women, youthfulness, beauty, sex…”
“It’s a sex crime?”
“Yes.”
He blows air from his cheeks and shakes his head.
“I’m not happy about this, Professor, but I don’t have a choice. Next time you have a theory or uncover something-you tell me first, understand?”
“Yes.”
“I want a full psychological profile. I want to know where Natasha has been and why she came back. Did she run away or was she abducted? Where was she held? Why was she mutilated?”
“I’m a psychologist, not a psychic.”
“And you’re not a detective-remember that.”
The DCI steps out of the car and signals me to follow. He rings the doorbell. We wait. I can hear a TV playing. Footsteps. The door opens. A young man blinks at us. There are tattoos on his forearms and neck. He’s wearing a T-shirt that says, POKER — YOU KNOW SHE LIKES IT, and he’s holding something out of sight, behind the edge of the door.
Drury flashes his badge. “Hello, Hayden, is your mother home?”
“She’s getting ready for work.”
“This won’t take long.”
For a moment they stare at each other before Hayden turns his head and yells up the stairs.
“Mum. Coppers.”
A loud noise, something dropped. An exclamation. Then a tentative answer: “Won’t be a minute.”
Hayden slips whatever he’s holding into the waistband of his jeans and covers it with his T-shirt. A burst of canned laughter escapes from a TV. He opens the door, inviting us in.
A skinny white girl is sitting on the sofa looking drugged in the watery half-light. She’s sitting in an armchair, smoking, her arm bent and her head tilted sideways to let the smoke escape from her lips. Hayden’s girlfriend. She looks about twenty-seven but could be seventeen.
Hayden tells her to go home. She blows a fringe from her eyes and ignores him.
“I said piss off!”
This time she grabs her coat and sneers at him, slamming the door on her way out.
Hayden takes her seat in the armchair and picks up a TV magazine, turning the pages, not reading.
The sitting room is cluttered and claustrophobic, smelling of old shoes and cigarettes. There are Christmas cards on the mantelpiece next to a sad-looking Christmas tree. Fake green branches are draped in strips of tinsel and weighed down by cheap ornaments. The crowning angel is too heavy, bending the uppermost branch like a catapult.
Quiet footsteps on the stairs signal Alice McBain’s arrival. She’s wearing dark trousers, a green-hemmed blouse and a cardigan. A nametag with a supermarket logo is pinned to the pocket. Late-forties, maybe younger, she’s a small woman with short straight hair and the slightly dazed, disbelieving air of a refugee or some other figure beaten down by life without ever comprehending why.
“We’re here to talk about Natasha,” Drury says.
Alice raises a hand to her mouth. Uncertainty shimmers in her eyes; not fear or hope, but something that swings wildly between the two extremes. Missing children create a silence around themselves, a vacuum that is filled with every shade of hope and despair.
Drury has taken a seat opposite Alice, their knees almost touching. She tries to speak, but can’t summon a sound. This is the moment when all that sadness and dreadful wondering come to a climax.
“Late last night I received a phone call from the senior pathologist at the mortuary at John Radcliffe Hospital. Dental records have confirmed that the body recovered from Radley Lakes four days ago was your daughter.”
Mrs. McBain looks at him and then at me. “But on the radio they said it was a woman.”
“It was definitely Natasha. I am very sorry for your loss.”
Alice shakes her head. Her eyes show no emotion, no focus. She understands the news, but doesn’t feel it yet.
“Natasha is dead, Mum,” says Hayden.
There is a groan deep in her chest. She puts one fist and then a second over her mouth, pressing them to her lips. She looks at me, wanting confirmation, fearing everything beyond this moment.
Almost as quickly her grief seems to evaporate. She drops her hands and places them in her lap. She’s not angry with Drury. She’s not hurling insults or making accusations or laying blame. Humble and undemanding, she lowers her gaze to the faded carpet.
“Was she raped?” Hayden asks.
“I can’t discuss the nature of her injuries,” says Drury.
“It’s been three years-where has she been?”
“We don’t know.”
Drury turns to Alice.
“I have to ask you some questions. I know it’s difficult. Had you heard anything from Natasha?”
She shakes her head.
“No phone calls? Letters? Emails?”
“No.”
“Did anyone ever call and hang up?”
“No.”
“I need to talk to your husband, Mrs. McBain.”
“He’s not my husband anymore.”
“I still need to talk to him.”
Hayden interrupts. “I’ll give you his address.”
Alice sniffles and twists the sleeve of her cardigan. “How did my baby die?”
“She drowned in a lake. She was caught out in the blizzard.”
“What was she doing out there?”
