Michael Robotham - Say You're sorry

“I knocked. They answered.”

“Who answered?”

“I don’t remember,” she says, annoyed with herself.

I can almost see her mind working, the nerves fizzing and popping under her skin.

“What did you hear?” I ask.

“They were playing music.”

“Did Natasha have a radio alarm?”

“Yes.”

“What time did she set the alarm for?”

“Seven-thirty.”

“You knocked on the door at seven-forty, but you didn’t open it. What if you heard the radio and not the girls?”

Alice squints at me, unsure if I’m trying to trap her. She wants to argue. She tries to think. She comes back empty.

Drury is next to her. “What’s this about?”

“It changes everything,” I say. “What if the girls weren’t at the house on Sunday morning? Alice didn’t see them. She heard the radio alarm.”

“You’re saying they didn’t go home.”

“They went missing the night before.”

He pulls me close to him, his unshaven cheek brushing against my forehead.

“You’re like an ice block. Let’s warm you up.”

One hand takes hold of my hair like it’s a piece of rope and his other hand slides down to the bottom of my spine.

“Mmmm,” he says. “You’re a lovely one for hugging.”

He wraps a blanket around me and points me towards the open door. My bare feet make little slapping sounds on the floor as I walk. I know he’s a step behind me. I still haven’t looked at his face, his eyes.

A bath has been drawn. Water steaming. Clothes set out.

I taste copper in my mouth and wonder if I’ve bitten my tongue.

“I’m hungry.”

“This time you eat afterwards.”

He’s humming to himself, fussing over the towels. I undress and slip beneath the water, leaning my head against the bath. I can feel his gaze drifting over me, dismantling my body as though dissecting it with a knife. Cutting me into little pieces.

I am going to be nice to him. I am going to moan and tell him how good he makes me feel. If I’m nice to him, he’ll let me see Tash. We’ll be together again and I’ll look after her. If I’m nice to him, he’ll let his guard slip and I’ll find a way of getting out of here.

He calls me his “poor defective monkey” as he washes me. I don’t feel his hands.

After the bath I let him rape me. Is it even rape if I let him do it?

He breaks my hymen. I bleed. I look at his face when he ejaculates and he doesn’t look human. It twists and grimaces and looks like a rubber mask.

Afterwards, he lets me eat. Satay sticks of chicken and beef. This time I eat more slowly, sore between my legs. My cup of tea is on the table with a swollen brown bag submerged in it, growing cold.

How calm he seems. How little difference it makes. He sits there, staring at me, sipping his tea as though nothing has happened.

“Can I see Tash now?”

“No.”

“You told me I could see her.”

“Not yet.”

I feel like crying. “You lied to me.”

“She needs a few more days.”

“I did what you asked.”

He laughs sarcastically and I stare at him with narrowed eyes. This is a mistake. I am aware of his temper, how easily he could injure me. The sensation creeps along my spine like a spider crawling on bare skin.

Afterwards, he falls asleep next to me, chained to my ankle. I look at his white cheesy body asleep on its back and listen to the wet gurgling in his throat. His right arm hangs down over the side of the mattress and his left hand is touching my thigh.

I do not sleep. I want to be awake. I want to put my hand over his mouth and nose until he stops breathing. I want to drive a knife into his heart. For the moment, I lie still next to him, listening to him gurgle, thinking how fear is different when it’s real. I used to love those fairground rides that take you higher and drop you faster, but that was a fear that came wrapped in pleasure. This sort of fear has no upside or happy ending.

He’s awake now. Stretching. I force myself to snuggle up against him. His breath smells like sour milk.

He strokes my cheek. “You missed me?”

“You were away so long… I got frightened.”

This pleases him.

“Can’t I come with you? I won’t try to run away.”

“That’s not possible, my little monkey.”

I ask about Tash. Is she close? When can I see her?

His mood suddenly changes. It’s like flicking a switch. He slaps my face, knocking my head against the wall. He raises his hand again, showing me his palm, challenging me, daring me.

“Forget about her.”

“I’m lonely.”

“I’ll find you another friend.”

“What?”

“Someone to keep you company, eh?”

My mind suddenly stops. Is he suggesting what I think?

“No… who?”

“I can find someone.”

“No! No! Please don’t!”

He takes a photograph from his wallet. “How about if I bring her?”

My throat closes. It’s a picture of Emily. I have seen it before. We were mucking around in a photo booth at Oxford Station, pulling funny faces.

“She’s your friend?”

“No!”

“You wrote a letter to her.”

“I don’t want a friend.”

Even as the words come out of my mouth, I know a part of me isn’t convinced. I want someone to talk to. I don’t want to be alone. I push the thoughts away. Horrified. Hating myself.

“I just want to see Tash. Nobody else,” I say.

“That’s not possible. She’s still being punished.”

He takes me back to the trapdoor and kisses me. Then he lowers me down until my feet touch the ladder.

“If you want a friend, I promise I will get you one.”

“No. Please let Tash come back.”

The trapdoor is closing.

“That I can’t promise.”

It’s been sixteen hours since the fire. I slept through most of them, waking to more snow, which has bleached the pavements and parks, dipping the world in white. The newspapers are full of headlines about mob justice and public lynching.

Ironically, for perhaps the first time in his life, Augie Shaw has become a sympathetic figure, a victim not a villain. The police are to blame according to the Guardian. They took too long to react. The Daily Mail says Augie Shaw should never have been granted bail; the judge was clearly out of touch or deranged.

Putting aside the newspapers, I arrange a dozen photographs around the hotel room, propping them on chairs and the TV cabinet. I take a seat in the middle of the room, directly in front of an image of Natasha and Piper sitting side by side in a class photograph, light and dark, blonde and brunette, salt and pepper.

Radiating an odd mixture of vulnerability and sensuality, Natasha has a classical beauty. Piper, by comparison, looks almost boyish and angular.

I am beginning to understand this crime. The details have been floating just out of reach, but are now falling into place. The person responsible is no longer a figment. No longer a mystery. No longer a part of my imagining. I can see the world through his eyes; hear what he hears.

He’s a collector. He enjoys owning things, rare objects, valuable artifacts, things he’s been denied in the past. Some collectors fall in love with great works of art. A few arrange to have them stolen to order, knowing they can never hope to resell such a famous artwork or put it on public display. That doesn’t matter. It is about possession not largesse; owning something unattainable and bathing in the brightness of its perfection.

He’s an aesthete, who craves control and order in a disordered world. A man of strong discipline, trained to reason and compute, yet he has no moral base. He doesn’t believe he is bound by the same rules as other people but is willing to abide by the law because it helps him conceal his desires. Others wouldn’t understand what it feels like to “own” something, to have complete control over another human being-life, death, light, darkness, warmth, cold and sustenance.