Michael Robotham - Say You're sorry

It was a hot night, full of insect sounds and the smell of honeysuckle and jasmine. Every one of my senses seemed to be heightened. I could have run faster than ever before. I could have run all the night and into next week.

The only thing that seemed strange was my voice. I didn’t sound like me.

“We have to get out of this place,” said Tash, with the exhausted affectation of a bored housewife. “It’s so small and mean and…”

“Boring?”

“If we don’t escape, we’ll go mad with boredom. We’ll be trapped. We’ll get married and pregnant and buy a house and be stuck here for fifty years like our parents.”

She twirled onto the street with her arms outstretched, shouting, “We’re going to be free!” and spinning round and round before collapsing drunkenly onto the grass, dizzy and laughing uncontrollably.

The leisure center has two small outdoor pools and a larger one indoors beneath a domed roof where pool lights shone blue and painted patterns on the interior walls.

We walked around the outside, following the wire security fence. Someone had parked a builder’s skip behind the administration block, next to one of the brick pylons.

Tash climbed onto the skip.

“You’ll have to give me a leg-up.” She flipped the hem of her dress, showing me her thong. “No peeking.”

I cupped my hands together and she stepped into my palms. Then she shimmied upwards onto the brick pillar where she posed like a sea captain, staring into the distance.

“I see water.”

“What about me?”

“Follow the fence. I’ll let you through the gate.”

It was dark and I cracked my shin against a bike rack, cursing and hopping on one foot, rubbing the other. I called out to Tash. She didn’t answer.

I peered through the fence, wondering where she’d gone. Then I spied her near the gate, her short dress hanging loosely from her shoulders, her hair askew. Through the drugs and dark, she looked like a mermaid who had shed her tail and learned to walk.

She was looking over her shoulder and then she began to run, kicking up her feet like a newborn foal. At first I thought she was running away from me, but then I realized that she was running in my direction. She didn’t slow down. She smacked into the wire fence headlong and fell backwards. Up again, she tried to climb, but couldn’t get traction. Not strong enough.

“ Run, Piper,” she said. “Run!”

Drury gazes from his office window at the gray winter day, the eve of Christmas Eve. A wind has sprung up but the clouds seem too solid to move. Concrete. Summer might never come again.

“It’s not Victor McBain,” I say.

The DCI doesn’t seem to be listening. After a long pause, he turns to me and gives himself a heave as though shifting a heavy load from one shoulder to the other.

“What changed your mind?”

“On the night of the blizzard he was with a woman at a hotel. He doesn’t want to implicate her.”

“We need a name.”

“Will it be made public?”

“Not unless it’s relevant.”

“Sarah Hadley.”

“He told you that?”

“Yes.”

“And you believe him?”

“I do.”

Drury’s eyes move around the office, focusing on his desk, the back of his chair, the windowsill, but his mind is elsewhere. Perhaps he’s contemplating his own infidelity or trying to remember a time when people didn’t disappoint him.

“I don’t know how many people I’ll have left by tomorrow,” he says. “People want to get home for Christmas. My budget is blown and I can’t pay them overtime.”

“What about the search?”

“We’re going over old ground. I’m scaling it down.”

Voices interrupt him, the sound of a commotion. He turns back to the window. A crowd has gathered on the footpath outside. TV cameras, reporters and photographers: encircling Hayden McBain. He’s wearing a blue blazer and has combed his hair.

“My sister is dead and they have the nerve to arrest me,” he yells, pointing at the station. “They locked me up. They threatened me. They told me to shut up. Well, I won’t stay quiet. I’m going to sue these bastards for wrongful arrest, personal injury and emotional suffering. I’m going to sue them for destroying my good name.”

Drury rests his forehead against the glass, leaving an oily mark.

“Look at that toe-rag,” he mutters. “He’s got himself an agent, some Max Clifford type who’s flogging his story to the highest bidder. He should have been charged.”

“It would have made things worse.”

“He’s profiteering. There should be laws.”

Another interruption. Dave Casey this time.

“You’re going to want to see this, boss. Sky News just posted new pictures of Natasha McBain on their website. They’re saying they were taken on the night before she disappeared.”

Casey types the webpage address on the desktop computer. The page loads with photographs beneath a headline: “Natasha’s Last Dance.”

The images are poor quality, taken on a mobile phone, but the subject is instantly recognizable. Natasha McBain is wearing a short summer frock and appears to be dancing. Spinning. The movement causes the dress to lift from her hips.

She has an audience of men, although I can’t see their faces. They’re sitting on benches or standing around her, watching her dance.

These are the last images ever taken of tragic teenager Natasha McBain, who disappeared three years ago with her best friend Piper Hadley. The photographs were taken only hours before Natasha went

missing from a summer festival in Bingham, Oxfordshire, on August 30, 2008.

Natasha’s body was discovered last week in a frozen lake half a mile away from her home.

“I want the originals,” orders Drury. “I want to know who took them.”

Fifteen minutes later a call is patched through to the deputy director of news at the cable channel. Nathan Porter has a Brummie accent full of chummy bonhomie. He’s on speakerphone.

“How can I help, Detective Chief Inspector?”

“You have photographs of Natasha McBain. Where did they come from?”

“A member of the public provided them.”

“I need a name and contact address.”

“Our source wished to remain anonymous.”

Drury tries hard to control his temper. “This is not WikiLeaks, Mr. Porter. This is a murder investigation.”

“Sky News has an obligation to protect our journalistic sources. In a free society…”

Drury picks up the phone unit and pretends to bash it against the desk. Porter is still talking.

“… media independence is an important pillar of democracy…”

Any goodwill that existed between the two men has gone.

“Let’s be serious, Mr. Porter, you’re not protecting democracy, you’re protecting the killer of a teenage girl.”

“Steady on,” says the news editor. “I think you’re exaggerating the situation. All we’ve done is find a good story.”

“That’s all this is to you, a good story. A girl is dead. Another is missing. You have fifteen minutes to provide police with the identity of your source. If you fail to do so, I will call another media conference. I’m sure Mr. and Mrs. Hadley would appreciate the opportunity to comment on a news organization that withholds important evidence that could help find their daughter.”

There is a long pause. Some silences have their own grammar and syntax.

The news editor speaks first. “Please hold the line. I’m seeking advice from our lawyers.”

“The clock is ticking,” says Drury.

We wait, listening to a promotion for Christmas programs on Sky Premier.

Five minutes later, Porter returns.

“There seems to have been a misunderstanding,” he says, apologizing for the delay. “Crossed wires.”