His hands are shaking. So are mine. The blades of the scissors open and close gently and I peel back the tape. I am staring at her with a kind of wonderment, mouth open, still not able to believe it’s her. I meet Charlie’s blue eyes. I am seeing her through a shining fluid that will not be blinked away.
She is dirty. Her hair has been hacked to her skull. Her skin is torn. Her wrists are bleeding. She is the most beautiful creature to ever draw breath.
I crush her to my chest. I rock her in my arms. I want to hold her until she stops crying, until she forgets everything. I want to hold her until she remembers only the warmth of my embrace and my words in her ears and my tears on her forehead.
Charlie is wearing a bathrobe. Her jeans are on a chair.
‘Did he…?’ The words get caught in my throat. ‘Did he touch you?’
She blinks at me, not understanding.
‘Did he make you do things? You can tell me. It’s OK.’
She shakes her head and wipes her nose with her sleeve.
‘Where’s your mum?’ I ask.
She frowns at me.
‘Have you seen her?’
‘No. Where is she?’
I look at Monk and Ruiz. They’re already moving. The house is being searched. I can hear doors being opened, cupboards explored, heavy boots sound from the attic and the turret room. Silence. It lasts half a dozen heartbeats. The boots start moving again.
Charlie puts her head back on my chest. Monk comes back with a set of 24” bolt cutters. I hold her ankles still as he eases the jaws around the shackles, pushing the arms together until the metal breaks and the chain snakes to the floor.
An ambulance has arrived. The paramedics are outside the bedroom door. One of them is young and blonde, carrying a first aid box.
‘I want to get dressed,’ says Charlie, suddenly self-conscious.
‘Sure. Just let these officers take a look at you. Just to be sure.’
I tear myself away from her and go downstairs. Ruiz is in the kitchen with Veronica Cray. The house has been searched. Now detectives are scouring the garden and the garage, poking at dead leaves with heavy boots, squatting to peer at the compost heap.
The trees along the northern border are skeletal and the shed has a derelict forsaken look. A wrought iron table and matching chairs are rusting under an elm tree, where colonies of toadstools have sprung up after the rains.
I walk out the back door, past the laundry and across the sodden lawn. I have the uncanny sense of the birds falling silent and the ground sucking at my shoes. My cane sinks into the earth as I walk between flowerbeds and past lemon trees in enormous stone pots. An incinerator built from breezeblocks is against the back fence, alongside a pile of old railway-sleepers meant for garden edging.
Veronica Cray is alongside me.
‘We can have ground-penetrating radar here within the hour. There are cadaver dogs in Wiltshire.’
I stop at the shed. The lock has been smashed open in the search and the door sags on rusting hinges. Inside smells of diesel, fertiliser and earth. A large sit-on lawnmower squats in the centre of the floor. There are metal shelves along two walls and garden tools propped in the corner. The blade of the shovel is clean and dry.
Come on, Gideon, talk to me. Tell me what you’ve done with her. You were talking half-truths. You said you’d bury her so deep I’d never find her. You said she and Charlie were sharing the same air. Everything you did was practiced. Planned. Your lies contained elements of the truth, which made them easier to maintain.
Leaning on my cane, I reach down and pick up the padlock and broken latch, brushing away mud. Tiny silver scratches are visible against the tarnished metal.
Then I look back into the shed. The wheels of the mower have been turned, wiping away the dust. My eyes study the shelves, the seed trays, aphid sprays and weedkiller. A garden hose is looped on a metal hook. I follow the coils, growing dizzy. One end of the hose droops downward against the upright frame of the shelf.
‘Help me move the mower,’ I say.
The DI grabs the seat and I push from the front, steering it out the door. The floor is compacted dirt. I try to move the shelf. It’s too heavy. Monk pushes me aside and wraps his arms either end, rocking it from one side to the other, walking it towards the door. Seed trays and bottles topple to the floor.
Dropping to my knees, I crawl forward. The compacted earth becomes softer near the wall where the shelf used to stand. A large piece of plywood has been screwed into place. The hosepipe hangs down the plywood and seems to disappear inside it.
I glance back at Veronica Cray and Monk.
‘There’s something behind the wall. Get some lights in here.’
They won’t let me dig. They won’t let me watch. Teams of two officers are taking turns, using shovels and buckets to scrape away the floor. A police car has been driven across the lawn and its headlights are allowing them to see.
Shielding my eyes to the brightness, I can see Charlie through the kitchen window. The blonde paramedic has given her something warm to drink and wrapped a blanket around her shoulders.
‘Someone you love is going to die,’ Gideon told me. He asked me to choose. I couldn’t do it. I wouldn’t do it. ‘No choice is still a choice,’ he said. ‘I’m going to let Julianne decide.’ The other thing Gideon said was that I would remember him. Whether he died today or spent a lifetime in prison, he wouldn’t be forgotten.
Julianne told me that she didn’t love me any more. She said that I was a different person to the one she married. She was right. Mr Parkinson has seen to that. I am different- more pensive, philosophical and melancholic. This disease has not broken me against a rock, but it is like a parasite with tentacles coiling inside me, taking over my movements. I try not to let it show. I fail.
I don’t want to know if she’s had an affair with Eugene Franklin or Dirk Cresswell. I don’t care. No, that’s not true. I do care. It’s just that I care more about getting her back safely. I am to blame, but this is not about seeking redemption or easing a swollen conscience. Julianne will never forgive me. I know that. I will give her whatever she wants. I will make her any promise. I will walk away. I will let her go. Just let her be alive.
Monk calls for help. Two more officers join him. The digging has exposed the lowest edge of the plywood. They’re going to rip down the wall.
Dust and dirt reflect in the beams of the headlights, penetrating the cavity. Julianne’s body is inside, curled in a foetal ball, with her knees touching her chin and hands cradling her head. I catch a whiff of the urinous smell and see the blueness of her skin.
Other men’s hands reach into the cavity and lift her body out. Monk takes her from the others and carries her into the light, stepping over a mound of earth and placing her on a stretcher. Her head is encased in plastic tape. The headlights have turned her body to silver.
A blonde paramedic pulls a hose from Julianne’s mouth, replacing it with her lips, forcing air into her lungs. They’re cutting the tape from her head.
‘Pupils dilated. Her abdomen is cold. She’s hypothermic,’ says the paramedic, yelling to her partner. ‘I got a pulse.’
They roll Julianne gently onto her back. Blankets cover her nakedness. The blonde paramedic is kneeling on the stretcher putting heat packs on Julianne’s neck.
‘What’s wrong?’ I ask.
‘Her core body temperature is too low. Her heartbeat is erratic.’
‘Make her warm.’
‘I wish it were that easy. We have to get her to hospital.’
She’s not shivering. She’s not moving at all. An oxygen mask is pulled over her face.
‘Coming through.’
Julianne’s eyes flutter open, blind as a kitten in the brightness. She tries to say something but it comes out as a weak groan. Her mouth moves again.