Say You're Sorry(39)

“But how will you know if you find it?”

“I just will.”

“I see,” he says, when obviously he doesn’t.

“Did you bring the photographs?” I ask.

He opens a satchel and hands me a ring-bound folder of crime-scene pictures. The first images are location shots of the farmhouse taken from every angle. For a hundred yards in every direction the pristine snow is untrammeled. No footsteps. No tire tracks. No signs of life.

The images move closer, skirting the fire engines and showing the shattered front door. The interior shots reveal a clean, comfortable house with no immediate signs of a disturbance apart from the evidence markers on the floor.

Taking a photograph from the folder, I prop it on a chair in the sitting room. I choose a second image, this one of William Heyman, and place it on the kitchen table. He’s lying on his stomach, head to one side, blood pooling beneath his cheek.

Closing my eyes, I try to picture that night. A blizzard raged outside, groaning through the roof beams and rattling the windows. The power lines were down. The Heymans lit candles on the stairs and in the kitchen. They were sitting in front of the open fire.

A teenage girl knocked on the front door. Wet. Cold. Covered with scratches. She wasn’t barefoot, but she was wearing a floral dress and perhaps other clothes that aren’t here anymore.

William and Patricia Heyman weren’t living in the area when the Bingham Girls went missing. They moved into the farmhouse a year later. The girl who came to their door was a stranger. They took her in, drew a bath, found her fresh clothes and dried her shoes by the fire.

She told them the story and William Heyman called 999, but the switchboard was overloaded and he was put on hold. Someone else was outside in the blizzard, following Natasha.

The attack was sudden… fierce. Mr. Heyman turned and tried to run. He was struck from behind before he reached the kitchen. He crawled a dozen feet before dying, smearing the tiles with his blood.

The weapon? Something blunt and heavy: an axe perhaps. I noticed a woodpile with a chopping block at the side of the farmhouse.

Natasha was upstairs in the bath. She must have heard the commotion. Pulling on her clothes, she smashed the bathroom window and crawled through, cutting herself on the broken glass.

Patricia Heyman fled upstairs but the killer followed. She tried to barricade herself in the bedroom but the lock didn’t hold.

Looking at the photographs, I notice little evidence of fire in the hallway but once inside the main bedroom the visual impact of the blaze is instantly clear. It burned intensely over a few square feet, yet covered every surface of the room in oily black soot, creating a strange “shadowland.”

The only “un-sooted” item on the bed is a blanket covering the body. It was placed on Mrs. Heyman after the fire. Augie Shaw wanted to shield her, to protect her privacy. He’s a schizophrenic. Interpreting his actions is perilous. It still doesn’t make sense. Why would he kill her, burn her body and then tenderly protect her modesty with a blanket?

Whoever killed the Heymans worked calmly and quickly, wiping benches and pouring bleach, removing traces of his presence. He didn’t come prepared. He made do. He didn’t plan ahead, but neither did he panic. He stayed afterwards to clean up or came back later.

Meanwhile, Natasha fled from the farmhouse, barefoot and bleeding, across a silent landscape. She knew he was coming… following…





Some girls are cutters

or slicers or jabbers. Some are bulimic or anorexic. I’m a runner and a writer. I jot things down. Messages. Shopping lists. Quotes. Names. Ever since I learned how to write I’ve been filling exercise books, notepads, journals and diaries.

I like words. Sometimes they pop into my head randomly or I see them out of the corner of my eye, like shadows or flashes of light or stray eyelashes. I have favorites. Incandescent is a good word. So is serendipity. Epic. Perpendicular. (Tash said I only like it because it has a “dick” in it.) Audacious. Rapscallion. Oxymoron. Hullabaloo.

I have three exercise books, which I keep hidden beneath my mattress. I write in the corner beneath the ladder, just in case the camera is watching.

When I write things down, I own them. They’re no longer hanging in mid-air like cartoon bubbles or wisps of smoke. They’re made real. Solid. Conversation doesn’t last. Spoken words fade. We stop listening. Forget.

This is what I wrote down this morning.



I dreamt last night that I had a mono-brow.

Cramps. My period is coming.

Spaghetti and meatballs… again.

The gas bottle is running out.

Must wash socks, but I’m wearing every pair.





Before I was taken, my lists were very different. I used to write down why I was unhappy.