Authors: Michael Robotham
“You have nothing I haven’t seen before.”
But that isn’t true. He hasn’t seen me naked before. Not up close. Not like this.
He takes hold of my face again, forcing me to look into his eyes, which peer deep inside my head. His fingers tighten. Tears fall on the back of his hand.
“Don’t disobey me, Piper. You know what I can do.”
I take off my clothes. He holds them between his finger and thumb, dropping them into a plastic rubbish bag. I cover my breasts with my forearm.
He motions to my knickers. Soiled. Yellow.
“Those next.”
“I want to leave them on.”
He shakes his head.
I push them down, turning my back, stepping quickly into the bath and sliding beneath the surface, curling up into a ball. He pulls his chair close so his knees touch the edge of the bath.
He hands me a pink disposable razor.
“Do your legs.”
I hesitate. He reaches into the water and grabs me by the left ankle, lifting the leg upwards. I don’t have time to grip the sides of the bath. I slide completely underwater. He’s holds my leg higher, keeping my head under. I can’t breathe. I may never breathe again.
When he drops the leg, I come up spluttering and coughing, leaking snot, eyes stinging.
“Either you shave or I do it for you.”
I shave, one leg at a time, propping each on the edge of the bath. He watches. My hand is shaking as the blade carves a track through the foam.
Then he tells me to stand up. I cover my groin and breasts. He points to my pubic hair.
“We have to do something about that.”
I don’t understand.
“Shave it off.”
My hand is shaking. I can’t do it.
Nobody has ever touched me there. Nobody. The only guy who ever tried was Gerard Bryant who pushed his hand up my skirt at the Odeon in Oxford, but got a punch in the stomach for his troubles.
I don’t punch George. I stand very still and taste the tears that are running into the corners of my mouth. He talks to me as he works, but the words don’t register. When he’s finished he holds up the towel, putting it around my shoulders, drying me gently, my arms and legs, between my toes…
He lets me keep the towel around my shoulders as he opens the trunk and removes the top shelf. Beneath there are bras, knickers and lingerie. He chooses a nightgown.
“Put this on.”
“Why?”
“Because I want you to.”
I raise my arms. The fabric slides over me. I stand self-consciously, still feeling naked. He puts his hands on my shoulders and makes me sit while he brushes my hair and pulls my face towards his, using a tube of lipstick to paint my lips.
He puts his hand under my chin and lifts my head so that I’ll look at his face. His thumb and forefinger are digging into my cheeks, pulling my mouth out of shape. I don’t want to look into his eyes. Instead, I try to concentrate on a spot just above them, a patch of dry skin on his forehead.
“Don’t you look pretty?” he says, pointing me towards the mirror.
He makes me stand.
“Do a twirl.”
I shuffle in circles. Then he leads me to the bed and forces me forwards, his hands urgent, lifting the nightdress over my hips, bunching it around my waist. His breath quickens with the march of his fingers.
I should fight. I should bite and scratch. I should jam my fingers into his soft bits. Instead, I squeak like a kitten as his fingers invade me.
I don’t know what happens next. My mind goes blank. He’s talking to me but the sound is washed away. I’m writing in my head, putting words together randomly.
I become a different person. I can be somewhere else… in a safe place. Why can’t I be an angry person, who can fight and punch and kick? Why can’t I set loose the dogs of war? I don’t know what the “dogs of war” are or if they’re real dogs but they sound pretty scary.
He’s unbuckling his belt. Sliding down his trousers. My face is pressing into something soft—a blanket made of fur, so soft and warm.
“Do you know what you’re lying upon, Piper?” he whispers. “Lots and lots of animals; pretty little dead things all sewn together. Once they were alive and now they’re not.”
The words echo inside my head.
“Rabbits. Baby seals. Foxes. Beavers. Shall I tell you how they died? They were bludgeoned or electrocuted. They were skinned, their pelts pulled over their bleeding heads. Their little hairless bodies were thrown onto a pile, some still breathing, blinking, dying…”
His lips are pressed to my ear.
“If you ever disobey me, Piper… if you ever try to escape… I will strip off your skin and toss your body on a pile just like all those pretty little dead animals.”
His hand snakes around my head and covers my mouth and nose. My head snaps back. I claw at his hands and a rushing sound fills my head, drowning out my silent screams. I don’t feel pain. My mind has gone blank. He cannot touch me now. He cannot reach inside my head.
I have found my hiding place.
O
n an icy morning the news runs hot and normality lifts from the streets of Bingham like a flock of startled birds. Residents read the headlines over breakfast or watch the reports on morning TV.
Natasha McBain. Three years missing. Five days dead.
By ten o’clock there are broadcast vans parked on Bingham’s village green and reporters are going door to door to get reactions from neighbors and friends. Memories are revisited and raked over like the embers of last night’s fire, while the girl in question is being reinvented and rebranded. Natasha McBain is no longer the troublemaker and delinquent who ran away from home. She is a victim. Abducted. Imprisoned. Sexually violated. A predator is living in their very midst—one of their own, perhaps—a neighbor, a work colleague or that strange man over the road whose basement lights burn all night.
The police car navigates through a crowd of reporters who are milling outside the gates of The Old Vicarage. Two constables force them back onto the road and the gates close again.
Grievous steers the car along a crushed marble driveway, pulling up outside a double garage. Ahead of us, the gardens spread across two acres, dotted with huge old trees, garden beds and patches of manicured lawns. There is also a pond, a tennis court, a croquet lawn and greenhouses full of spring seed trays.
“This is some place,” he says. “Must be worth a pretty penny.”
“Dale Hadley is a banker,” I say, which says enough.
I glance at the detective constable. He has toothpaste in the shell of his ear. I point it out and he tilts the rear-view mirror, examining himself. Annoyed.
“The lads put toothpaste on my desk phone,” he explains. “Old dogs, old tricks.”
DCI Drury is already inside the house, trying to explain to Piper Hadley’s family why they weren’t informed that Natasha McBain had been found.
Dale Hadley is a short, stocky man with graying hair and deep lines around his eyes. His shoulders are as wide as his waist and his clothes look ill-fitting on his odd-shaped frame. He’s pacing the kitchen, fists clenched.
“What else haven’t you told us? What else are you hiding?”
“I understand you’re upset, Mr. Hadley, but the news blackout was necessary. We had to check the whereabouts of suspects. Establish alibis.”
“Which includes me! That’s why I had one of your detectives come here asking me where I was during the blizzard.”
“You have to understand—”
“No,
you
have to understand. I will not be treated like a fucking criminal. My daughter has been missing for three years. We’ve heard nothing. Not a whisper. Now we learn that you’ve been keeping information secret.”
“I will never lie to you,” says Drury, “but there will be certain things the police must keep to ourselves.”
Through an open door, I see a sunken living room where a girl of about eleven is holding her hands over her brother’s ears.
“Daddy!” she says.
“Sorry, Phoebes.”
The children go back to watching TV.
Dale Hadley turns again to Drury. “You must have some idea where she is.”
“We’re looking, I promise you. I have officers going door to door and dozens of volunteers searching the fields around the farmhouse. They’re going to keep looking, I promise you.”
“What farmhouse?”
“We think Natasha was trying to get home. It’s likely she didn’t know her parents had divorced and moved house.”
Mr. Hadley’s face bends like a white rubber mask. “Oh, Christ. So Piper might have been with her. They both could have escaped.”
“It’s too early to say.”
“You must have some leads.”
“We are questioning someone.”
“Who?”
“A man who was in the area when Natasha was found.”
“What’s his name?”
“I’m afraid I can’t tell you.”
“Does he know where Piper is? Have you asked him? Did he leave her somewhere safe?”
Drury opens his palms. “I can’t answer those questions.”
A woman enters the room, her hair freshly brushed and make-up applied. She’s carrying a toddler in colorful leggings and a bright-red smock.
She admonishes her husband. “You shouldn’t be talking in here, Dale. Not in front of the children.”
Sarah Hadley is a tall, attractive woman in her early forties, dressed in a dark silk shirt, cashmere cardigan and designer jeans that might never have been worn.
“Phoebe, can you please feed Jessica?” she asks. “She wants Rice Krispies. Make sure she wears a bib.”
Phoebe takes her sister, lifting her onto a booster chair.
Sarah insists on talking in the drawing room. The precisely furnished room has sofas and armchairs arranged around a walnut coffee table. A Christmas tree, decorated in white, fills the bay window.
Sarah perches on the edge of an armchair, hands on her lap, knees together. The whites of her eyes are threaded with tiny red veins and her breath smells of something sweet: a drink to steel herself.
“They’ve arrested someone,” says Mr. Hadley. “They think he might know where Piper is.”
“I didn’t say that,” says Drury. “At this stage it’s not wise to speculate.”
Sarah turns her head and stares past the Christmas tree into the garden. The sun has come out and turned the frosty lawn into a carpet of diamonds.
“Natasha was the strong one,” she whispers. “If she couldn’t survive, what hope is there for Piper?”
Her husband hushes her and reaches for her hand, but she withdraws it almost instinctively. They’re an odd-looking couple. Sarah looks like a former beauty queen with flawless skin, seemingly devoid of pores and such artfully applied make-up that it appears almost non-existent. Dale is short and stocky with a moon face and acne scars.
Each seems to have reacted differently to the news. Dale has allowed himself to hope for the first time in a long while. Now he wants to be outside, kicking down doors, shaking the trees and yelling Piper’s name from the rooftops.
Meanwhile, Sarah, who has spent three years publicizing Piper’s disappearance, keeping her in the public eye, giving interviews, putting up posters and running a website, has been hollowed out by the news of Natasha’s death.
I have seen hundreds of couples overwhelmed by loss. Some can look straight into each other’s eyes without needing words. Others are like strangers sitting on a long-distance train. Some fall to the ground shrieking while others remain unmoved, seemingly devoid of emotion. Some blame themselves, and others search for someone to blame, while a few drink themselves into oblivion or pretend nothing has changed.
I can picture this couple lying side by side in bed at night, hollow in heart and soul, wondering if Piper is still alive, one abandoning hope, the other clinging to it—until today when the roles have been reversed.
I have been there. I have lain awake staring at the ceiling, my bones aching with exhaustion, knowing Gideon Tyler had taken Charlie, wondering if she was still alive. I have been visited by every shade of grief and know that it doesn’t come in black or white.
Dale Hadley takes me upstairs to Piper’s bedroom. He pauses outside the door, as though unwilling to cross the threshold.
“I haven’t set foot in this room,” he explains. “Not since she went missing. Piper had this thing about her privacy. She didn’t like anyone invading her space.” He uses his fingers to make inverted commas around the last statement.
“She was secretive?”
“Aren’t they all? Teenagers, I mean.” He scratches his unshaven jaw. “We let her put a lock on her door, but we took it off after she and Natasha got into trouble. They went to a college-age party… there was an incident.”