Say You're Sorry(30)
The chief constable stabs his index finger at the photographs.
“You’re going to help us, Professor, because there’s a lot more at stake here than a few bruised reputations and a DCI with his nose out of joint. There were two Bingham Girls. The job is only half done.”
12
Drury hasn’t said a word since he emerged from the chief constable’s office. With his bloodless fists clenched and a manic gleam in his eyes, he strides towards the lift, slapping his palm against the button, trying to bruise the wall.
His arguments are stilling ringing in my ears. Delivered at decibels, they had opened doors along the corridor and raised eyebrows. He demanded a bigger task force. More detectives. Greater resources. What he didn’t want was a “bloody shrink” spouting clichés and telling him the bleeding obvious.
Charlie pretended not to listen. Turning up her iPod, she swung her legs beneath her chair and hummed to herself. Now we’re half-running down the corridor, trying to catch up to Drury who is holding open the lift doors like he’s Moses parting the Red Sea.
The police car drops us at the hotel where I rebook a room. Charlie has fallen silent, picking at a hangnail, a performance of compressed sullenness. I try to kiss her cheek. She turns her face away.
“I won’t be long.”
“What about London?”
“Maybe tomorrow.”
“I can go by myself.”
“Your mother wouldn’t like that.”
Drury is waiting downstairs, the engine running.
The lift doors slide closed. I stare at my reflection in the polished steel wondering how I finished up back here—involved in another investigation. Whatever skill I have, whatever ability to understand human behavior and motives, it has turned into a curse.
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 cliché, 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.