Authors: Michael Robotham
“Why did you stop working for them?”
Augie fidgets, scratching at the gauze on his hands. Minutes pass. I try again.
“You were sacked. What happened?”
“Ask Mrs. H.”
“How can I do that, Augie? Mrs. Heyman is dead. The police think you killed her.”
“No, no.”
“That’s why you’re here.”
He blinks at me. “She’s with God. I’m going to pray for her.”
“Do you pray a lot?”
“Every day.”
“What do you ask God for?”
“Forgiveness.”
“Why do you need to be forgiven?”
“Not for me—for the sinners.”
“Why were you at the farmhouse?”
“Mrs. H told me to come.”
“Did she call you?”
“Yes.”
“The phone lines were down, Augie. There was a terrible storm. How did she call you?”
“She told me to come.”
“When did she call you?”
“The day before.”
He makes it sound so obvious.
I take him over the details. He borrowed his mother’s car and drove to the farmhouse, almost missing the turn because it was snowing so heavily. He couldn’t drive all the way to the house because of the snow, so he stopped and walked the rest of the way.
“The house was dark. There was no power. I saw a light in the upstairs window but it was strange, you know, not like a lamp or a candle.” He covers his ears. “I heard her screaming.”
“Mrs. Heyman?”
Augie nods. “I bashed down the door. Hurt my shoulder. I went up the stairs, but the flames pushed me back.”
He starts to hyperventilate as though breathing in smoke and holds his hands against his forehead, hitting his temple.
“How did you burn your hands?”
“I don’t know.”
“Did you hit Mr. Heyman?”
He shakes his head.
“Did you start the fire?”
“No, no.”
Without warning, he stands and walks to the far side of the room, whispering to himself, arguing.
“Are you talking to someone, Augie?”
He shakes his head.
“Who is it?”
He crouches and peers past me as though something is creeping up behind me like a pantomime wolf.
“Tell me about your brother.”
He hesitates. “Can you see him too?”
“No. Tell me about him.”
“Sometimes he steals my memories.”
“Is that all he does?”
“He warns me about people.”
“What does he say?”
“He says they’re trying to poison me.”
“What people?”
“It’s in the air.”
“Why did you really go to the farmhouse, Augie?”
“To get my wages.”
“I don’t believe you.”
Augie puts his bandaged hands together, as though pleading with me. A flush on the back of his neck spreads to his hairline.
“God will judge me if I’m lying.”
“God can’t help you now.”
“He can. He must.”
“Why?”
“Who else is going to stop the devil?”
Drury’s office is on the second floor. No posters. Minimal furniture. I expect to see commendations and photographs on the walls, but instead he has a whiteboard with timelines, names and photographs—a murder tree as opposed to a family tree.
Condensation beads the window and tiny splinters of ice seem to be trapped within the glass. The DCI leans back in his chair and crosses his legs, brushing lint from his trousers.
“So what do you make of him?”
“He’s delusional, possibly schizophrenic.”
“You diagnosed that in an hour?”
“I diagnosed that in five minutes.”
Drury drains a plastic bottle of water, tossing it towards the bin. “How do I interview him?”
“Right now he’s locked into damage control. He’s strong physically but not psychologically. Keep the sessions short with plenty of breaks. Don’t hammer certain points—let him reveal the story in his own way. If he gets upset, let him retreat. Treat him like a victim not a perpetrator.”
“Will he confess?”
“He’s saying he didn’t do it.”
“But that’s bullshit, right?”
“He’s hiding something but I don’t know what that is.”
Fierceness fills the detective’s eyes and he looks at me with a mixture of impatience and irritation. He gets up, walks round the desk, his body humming with tension.
“It was the worst blizzard in a century yet this kid drives a mile through the storm. I think he went there for revenge. He was obsessed with the daughter. He was angry about being sacked. We can put him at the scene. He had the motive and the opportunity.”
“Whoever did this didn’t panic. They tried to destroy any evidence with bleach and fire. This is organized thinking. Higher intellect. That doesn’t sound like Augie Shaw.”
“How did his hands get burned?”
“He tried to save her.”
“He fled the scene.”
“He panicked.”
The DCI has heard enough. “This is bullshit! Augie Shaw murdered the husband and then raped the wife. He wanted revenge. He killed those poor people and I’m going to prove it.” Drury opens the door. “Thanks for your help, Professor. I’ll have a car drop you back to your hotel.”
I pick up my jacket and look at my shoes. A line of mud has dried on the leather uppers above the sole.
“Didn’t something about the scene strike you as odd?” I ask.
“What do you mean?”
“The Heymans weren’t drinkers. The only alcohol they had in the house was that bottle of Scotch. It was sitting on the mantelpiece, freshly opened.”
“So?”
“You don’t open a twenty-year-old single malt for a man you’ve just sacked.”
“It was cold. The power was out. Maybe the Heymans wanted a tipple.”
“There were three mugs. Only one of them smelled of Scotch.”
“What’s your point?”
“There was a blanket on the floor in front of the fire. Somebody was sitting near the hearth, getting warm. Drying her shoes. Ballet flats. Size six. Mother and daughter are both size eight.”
Drury is listening now. We’re walking down the corridor towards the lifts.
“A dress in the laundry tub was two sizes too small for Mrs. Heyman.”
“Maybe her daughter—”
“Is a size 12. I looked in her wardrobe.”
“I still don’t understand what you’re suggesting.”
“Somebody ran a bath upstairs. There was an extra towel. The bathroom window was broken.”
“You’re ignoring the obvious and fixating on an extra towel and a dress size.”
“What about the missing dog?”
“It ran away from the fire. Died in the blizzard.”
There is a long pause: an uncomfortable silence. Drury presses the lift button impatiently. A small vein on his forehead is beating out a tattoo.
“You don’t like me very much, do you?” I ask.
He smiles wryly. “That’s a benefit of reaching my rank. I don’t have to
like
people.”
“I’m sorry if I’ve said something to upset you.”
“Upset me, no. I think you like disagreeing with people, Professor, because it makes you feel superior or smarter than everybody else. But contrary to what you might think, I’m not some dim-witted plod who doesn’t read books and thinks Joan of Arc was Noah’s wife.”
It’s a good line. It reminds me of something a friend of mine might have said: Vincent Ruiz, a former detective inspector with a flair for the telling phrase.
“Do you know how many murders I’ve investigated?” he asks.
“No.”
“How many bodies I’ve seen?”
“No.”
“Stabbed, shot, strangled, drowned, poisoned, electrocuted; tossed off cliffs, shoved in barrels, cut up in bathtubs, wrapped in carpets, burned in cars and fed to pigs. You think you understand people, Professor, but I’ve seen what they can do. I understand more about human behavior than you ever will.”
The lift has arrived. The doors open.
“What is your wife’s name?” I ask.
The DCI pauses. “What’s that got to do with anything?”
“I was just thinking that you should change that shirt before you go home. You’ve been wearing it since yesterday, which means you didn’t go home last night. You were with another woman, at her place. Lipstick—left side of the collar, below your ear. You didn’t have a spare shirt so you wore this one again and sprayed it with her deodorant.
“I also noticed the box of chocolates in your office—expensive, Belgian—for your wife. You must like this mistress a lot, but you don’t want the affair to wreck your marriage. Good luck with that…”
Drury hasn’t moved a muscle.
“Dead bodies don’t interest me, DCI. I deal with the living.”
T
here is a difference between
a runaway girl and a missing one. Runaways are like spare change lost down a crack in the sofa. You might find it eventually, but it’s not like winning the lottery.
We slipped through the cracks, disappeared from the headlines. Out of sight, out of mind. George said that nobody cared except him. He was our guardian now. He would look after us.
I wanted to believe him. There were times when I looked forward to hearing him moving boxes and uncovering the trapdoor. Tash always hated him. She knew him better than I did. She knew more about men… what they wanted, what they did.
We were an odd couple, but that didn’t stop Tash and me from being friends. I walked like a pigeon. She walked like a model. I wore shorts and trainers. She mini-skirts and platform shoes. I was into running. She thought sport was a waste of time.
I had blotches on account of my psoriasis. Tash had perfect skin, so free of blotches and spots it was like looking at one of those mannequins you see in shop windows—the normal-looking ones, not the ones that could be bald aliens. (She once tried to hide my blotches with foundation, but it made me look like an Oompa Loompa.)
We were born two weeks apart in the same hospital and went to the same primary school. We thought we were going to be separated after that, but Tash won a scholarship to St. Catherine’s, which helped pay the fees. Her dad works as a scaffolder. Mine works as a banker. Her mum has a job in a supermarket. Mine doesn’t work at all.
We seemed to have nothing in common, but still we were friends. I spent most afternoons at the training track, doing wind sprints and pulling a truck tire across the grass. Tash thought this was hilarious, but she didn’t make me feel stupid. And it’s not like she wanted an ugly girlfriend to make her look good. There were way uglier girls than me.
I think Tash liked my family more than she liked her own, particularly my mum who is the Bingham equivalent of a Stepford wife. She calls herself a “home-maker,” which means she does yoga on Monday, tennis on Wednesday and golf on Friday. Before she married she was a model. She said it was on runways, but most of her scrapbook photographs are from motor shows.
She’s very elegant and graceful and nothing ever creases or smears around her. She’s like a doll that you’re not allowed to play with, but instead have to keep it in the original box because one day it’s going to be worth a lot of money.
I’ve never been interested in fashions and make-up and girly things, which disappointed my mother. I sometimes wonder if they got the babies mixed up at the hospital and she was supposed to bring Tash home.
People always talked about me as “the runner” and “that tough little thing” or “the tomboy.” Mum despaired, but Daddy showed off my running trophies and said I was the next best thing to having a son. Being “next best” was like coming second, but I couldn’t be expected to win everything.
The last story I read about us going missing was when my dad doubled the reward. I knew he must love me then. Tash didn’t say anything for a long while. Her parents couldn’t afford that sort of money.
“Maybe you’ll be going home,” she said.
“Don’t worry,” I said. “I won’t leave without you.”
For weeks I had begged George to let us write letters. Eventually, he agreed. I wrote one to Mum and Dad and another to Emily. Tash wrote to her folks and to Aiden Foster, her old boyfriend, although I don’t know why she bothered.
George told us what we had to say, so we didn’t give away any clues. We had to tell them that we ran away and that we were living in London and that people should stop looking for us. I wanted to put in other stuff, but George wouldn’t let me.
On a good day he could be kind and generous. On a bad day he was cruel. He enjoyed telling us that our parents didn’t want us. My mum was pregnant and having a baby to replace me, he said, and Tash’s parents were getting a divorce.