Then he says, through Danijel, “And can you describe them to me? Let’s start with Borko. What was he like?”
My memory of him is less vivid than Andrijo, but I force myself to paint in the details. I close my eyes. “Short, stocky. Shaven head. Eyes set close together, a crooked nose. A nice smile, though. Friendly, but quiet. Welcoming. He took pride in the food he made us, and kept making sure we were all well fed and watered. Brought us blankets to keep warm. Towels to dry our hair. Asked us about our journalism work, whether we’d interviewed any interesting people recently. We talked about the founder of JUMP, who we’d spoken to at a press conference the night before. Borko knew him from school; they’re both locals.” I open my eyes. He looks intrigued.
Another encouraging nod. “This is great stuff. Anything else?”
“Just . . .” I pause. “He had really clean hands. They both did. I remember thinking that was weird, considering they’d been in the forest all day.” Is that a ridiculous thing to say? Probably. What kind of lunatic notices people’s clean hands? “And . . . neither of them seemed willing to give up anything personal about themselves.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, they were great with us. Really. So welcoming, and like I say, they asked a lot of questions. It was like they were genuinely interested. But . . . but whenever we asked questions in return, the answers were kind of vague. Noncommittal. When I was trying to jot down everything I could remember about their lives, I realized I knew nothing. And I think they wanted it that way.”
“I see.” Ilić leans forward now, steepling his fingers in front of him. “Can you give any examples? Of times they dodged questions, or gave strange answers?”
I press my lips together. Try to sort through the jumble in my mind. I can feel the thoughts starting to swirl out of control, shimmery strands of memory slipping through my fingers as I try to grasp them.
Shit, I’m going insane. I’m not Albus fucking Dumbledore. My brain isn’t some weird bowl of memories I can dip my nose into. Pull it together, Corbett. Focus.
Okay. Examples. Examples, examples, examples. “Erm . . . at one point, Erin asked Andrijo where he worked. He said ‘in a café,’ but when she asked him where, he just told her he’d love to take her out for coffee sometime.” Even as I’m recounting the exchange, I know my logic is tenuous. He was probably just being flirty.
But no. There’s a gut feeling growing more and more intense. He was different. I’m drawn to him. And that has to mean something.
I push on. “She asked him where he grew up. He was vague. Said here, there and everywhere. She asked if his dad was in the army, as they tend to move around a lot. He just asked what Newcastle was like. That’s where we live,” I add hastily.
“Okay.”
“And . . . and this happened in every conversation. He was noncommittal about the music he likes, the places he’s visited, his hobbies. Every time Erin asked him something, he batted it back unanswered. I think she was too blinded by his beauty to notice.”
“So you noticed this based on interactions between Erin and Andrijo? Not your own conversations with him?”
I swallow. “Yeah. I’m kinda awkward, socially. Not the best with strangers.” I hold up a clammy palm. The strip lighting illuminates the thin coat of sweat. “See?” I try for a smile, and am grateful when he reciprocates.
“You’re an introvert,” he says. Danijel stumbles over the words as he translates, and I think of how beautifully it mimics the way I stumble through life. Fucking poetry.
“You could say that.”
“We like introverts. They’re good observers.” Another friendly smile. It’s probably all a ploy—to build rapport and gain my trust and hope I spill some game-changing secret—but I still appreciate it. Just like I appreciate how he doesn’t find it weird that I spend a lot of time watching Erin, enraptured. “Let’s move on to Andrijo. Can you tell me about him?”
The way he phrases questions makes it seem like he knows nothing about the investigation, like he’s never seen or spoken to the people involved. It makes sense. The open-ended questions allow for me to elaborate far more. Besides, whoever listens to this tape might not know the ins and outs of the cast of characters. Like a jury. I shudder.
“He’s . . . he’s a looker.” I blush. My cheeks are hot, like an idiot schoolgirl. Because that’s totally the kind of thing I do. “Muscular. Short, dark brown hair, ruffled and damp from the storm. Black eyes, like pools of ink. Tanned, stubbly face, with one of those cleft chins you could stick a coin in. Perfect white teeth. He wore a red T-shirt, blue jeans and white, muddy Converse.”
I omit certain details. I know I shouldn’t, but so many of the details etched on my memory are borderline creepy. The kind of things no normal person would remember. But I do, because I’m either hyperaware or completely disengaged. Usually depending on whether I’ve remembered to take my meds.
No normal person would remember the way his dark veins were a road map on his bulging arms. Or the way his eyes, blacker than the thunderclouds, kept darting to Erin. Or how, when he handed her a flask of coffee and their fingers touched, he snapped his hand back like a static shock had passed between them.
I imagine them labeling me an Unreliable Witness: withholds information in a futile attempt to disguise her own insanity.
“He complimented her a lot,” I blurt out. “Andrijo. Erin. Said she was beautiful, like the sunset over the Danube.” I remember the burning jealousy I felt at those words. I remember not knowing whether I was jealous of Erin because of them, or jealous of Andrijo for having her attention. “Maybe that’s a Serbian thing. European men tend to be more forward than Brits. But still . . . it was quite intense.”
“Intense how?”
“Like . . . by the fourth or fifth reference to her beauty, she looked a little uncomfortable. Maybe just because it was happening in front of everyone else, which would make anyone feel a little awkward. Not that she isn’t used to the attention . . .” Stop, Carina. Remove that ugly bitterness from your voice. She’s missing. She’s in trouble. Now isn’t the time to resent her. I stare at my hands. “Or maybe it was the intensity in his eyes. Like he was a predator and she was perfect prey.”
“Some men are strange around beautiful women,” Ilić says. It’s a throwaway comment, but the warmness that was building between us rapidly vanishes. His tone leaves me cold. Don’t, I want to snap. Don’t make excuses for it. Erin is nobody’s prey.
Except maybe she is.
Chapter Six
July 17, Serbia
I’M A SIGNIFICANT Witness.
It’s because I’m the last person who saw her, mainly, but also because I’m the person in the group who knows her best. The paranoid part of me also wonders if they’ve clocked on to the fact I’m holding back. That my brain is clinically diagnosed chaos.
We were supposed to fly home yesterday.
If you buy into the parallel universe theory, I’m sure there’s another world out there, a world exactly like ours, in which we all boarded the 10:28 a.m. plane to London Heathrow via Vienna. All of us, including Erin.
I read up on it once. The multiverse theory. When I couldn’t sleep and felt like having my mind blown. The idea is this: space is so big that the laws of probability imply that surely, somewhere else out there, there are other planets exactly like Earth. In fact, an infinite universe would have infinite planets, and on some of them, the events that play out would be virtually identical to those on our own Earth. But we don’t see these other universes because our cosmic vision is limited by the speed of light—the ultimate speed limit, in a way. Light started traveling at the moment of the big bang, about fourteen billion years ago, and so we can’t see any farther than about fourteen billion light-years.
Many physicists would argue that somewhere in our infinite universe, Erin is still safe
. I try to take comfort in that fact, but I can’t. Because I’m not a physicist. And because that world is not the world I’m in.
Tim and I are staying in Novi Sad for another week. Because I’m a SigWit, and because I guess he feels responsible. In my moments of anger, I think about how dismissive he was of my concerns. “Nah. She’s a big girl. Can look after herself. Don’t wanna miss this set.” He has clout with the festival organizers. He could have had a message sent to the security on the fortress entrances, made sure they looked out for her leaving. But he didn’t.
Is that suspicious? I’m losing track. I don’t think so. He was just drunk and lazy. His concern since he realized the magnitude of the situation has been sincere, without a doubt.
We remain in the same hotel. This morning Tim and I eat breakfast in near-silence. We have nothing in common except this monumental tragedy that sits beside us like a third person at the table, a devastating black hole sucking away our conversational energy.
It’s late morning. We’re the only people in the hotel restaurant; all the JUMP-goers have gone home, and the businessmen are all away to important meetings and conference calls in the city. A young waiter is standing, hands folded around a tea towel, not so subtly checking his phone. The buffet smells of smoked sausage and burnt toast.
I push the rubbery scrambled eggs around my plate with a fork. The chinking noise is like nails on a chalkboard. Tim’s staring at his phone. It’s been flashing all morning.
I clear my throat. He doesn’t look up. “What do you think happened to her?” My voice is barely a whisper. Yesterday I was anxious, jittery, hyped up. Today I am low. A deflated balloon.
He puts his phone down carefully on the table. It’s faceup, the screen still on. He’s sending an email. “Honestly?” He sighs through his nose. “I’m not sure I want to think about it.”
“We have to,” I say, still murmuring. “We’re part of the investigation now. We have to think about it. It’s all we should be thinking about.”
His eyes flit down to his phone, then back to me. “It’s only been three days. She could still turn up unscathed.”
“Yeah.”
He stabs a sausage with his fork. Shoves it in his mouth. Chews. “You don’t remember anything that could be a clue?”
I shake my head. “She was there. Then she wasn’t.”
“Maybe that’s a good thing. That there was no sign of violence. Nothing suspicious.”
Not nothing. Andrijo.
“What if . . .” I put my fork down. Force myself to look at him. “What if she was trafficked?”
He raises an eyebrow. “Trafficked.”
“Yeah. You know. She’s beautiful. Probably worth a lot.”
“You’ve been watching too many movies, kid.”
“I’m serious.”
He sighs again. Flicks his phone screen off. Rubs his mouth with his hand. “So am I. Think about it. When it comes to trafficking—which I’m not denying does happen—locals are much easier targets. It makes no sense to abduct western girls, ’cause there’d be international pressure to actually look for them. Nobody gives a shit about poor people in poor countries, and traffickers know that. And if we’re being realistic, homicide—with or without sexual assault—is way more common than abduction and trafficking.”
“Yeah. Totally makes me feel better.” The words homicide and sexual assault ring in my ears.
A pained expression. He shuffles in his chair. “I know this looks bad, Carina. Trust me, I know. I’m not trying to dodge around that. It’s bad. But please don’t go jumping to radical conclusions.”
It’s a radical fucking situation, I want to say. I don’t. I say nothing.
Story of my life.
THERE’S ANOTHER POLICE interview today. I’m not as nervous as I was last time—I know Ilić now, and I know he’s thorough. He’ll get what he needs out of me, even if I’m not sure what exactly that is.
First he takes me shopping. He drives. I had no idea that happened, really, but apparently the police like to look after their SigWits, especially if they’re away from home. Makes sense. I wasn’t equipped for a long-term stay in Serbia. I buy some food to keep in my room, a few toiletries, a book to read. Then he takes me to a launderette—I’m running low on clean clothes. Even buys me a coffee while we wait.
The whole time, he’s friendly and professional. Tells me a little bit about himself and his personal life (he’s just got married to his high-school sweetheart; they’re expecting their first kid in a couple months), asks me about other places I’ve traveled. It’s all amicable, but there’s a certain distance I can’t quite put my finger on. It’s like he’s taking care of an elderly person for the day, and even though he’s happy to make conversation, there are a web of personal lines he can’t and won’t cross.
He doesn’t mention Erin once. I guess he doesn’t want me to say anything significant—there’s that word again—off the record, and he can’t really be giving away anything from their end. I’ve probably not been ruled out as a suspect yet. I remember a phrase from an incredibly dry police procedural my mum used to watch: “Trace, Implicate, Evaluate.” It’s used on everyone involved in a big case like this. Basically it means they take someone like me, find out everything they can about them, and compare that to all the other info they have, searching for any reason at all to make them a suspect. And then they evaluate how likely that is. Essentially everyone is a suspect until proven otherwise, even though they’re not formally declared as such. That’s a big deal. Even I know that.
As far as I know, there are no official suspects. There’ve been a few dead-end leads—calls put into the station, a couple of supposed sightings. None of them have been viable. People seem to forget CCTV exists. I have no idea what’d compel someone to put in a fake call in a situation like this. Maybe they’re just bored. Maybe they’re just looking for their moment of glory. Who knows.
After we’ve run our errands, he takes me to a small bungalow on the outskirts of Novi Sad. It doesn’t look official from the outside—there’s a small porch with benches and plant pots, flowery curtains in the windows and a tiny but neat garden. Only the security gates and ID passes give the game away.
Ilić shows me around—the interview room, control room, bathroom and a minuscule kitchenette—before leaving me in the waiting room with a cup of tea while they set up. It’s homely but sterile—IKEA furniture, nothing personal, professionally cleaned. It’s so quiet I can hear my watch ticking. I still feel hollow and empty, which is actually easier to deal with than hyperanxious.
Next thing I know, I’m in the interview room with Ilić and Danijel. They do a sound check. Ilić asks the controller to bang the wall if he can hear us, and the steady thump comes a second later. The controller sticks his head around the door, says he’s ready to roll and the recording has started. Ilić gives me the official spiel. Again, I feel soothed by the monotony of the protocol. It’s reliable. It’s safe.
“Okay, Carina,” Danijel translates. “Today we’d like to start with your relationship with Erin, and what you know about her as a person. For us, it’s really important to understand her, and as one of her closest friends, you’re well-equipped to help us with that. Now, as you know, the last few times we’ve spoken it’s become clear there’s an hour-long gap in your knowledge of Erin’s movements on Sunday the twelfth of July—the time in which you took a nap at the hotel. What happened in that time may or not be important to the investigation, but we still need to fill it in as best we can. We are checking CCTV and tracking down anyone who could possibly have any information about that window, but in the meantime, it’d be extremely helpful if we could try and understand her mind-set at that point. Is that all right?”
“Sure.”
“So, in your own words, it would be fantastic if you could tell me a little about
Erin’s mood that afternoon. Nothing is too trivial or too silly. The more detail, the better.” A smile. “Whenever you’re ready.”
I’m silent for probably too long. This is hard, harder than recounting the actual events. Because anything Erin said or did that implies a certain mood is filtered through my mind, through the layers of friendship we’ve built up over the last year. But there are still holes in the filters. Black spots in my knowledge—hundreds of them, thousands, things I don’t know about her and now I maybe never will. I don’t know enough about her love life or her family or her upbringing to apply any context to her behavior.
Oh God. I’m overthinking it. But I can’t stop.
This is too much pressure. Too much weight for one girl to carry. Anything I say right now is going to somehow influence their investigation. What if I get it wrong? What if I fuck it all up?
Like a morbid mother pulling her drowning child from a lake, anxiety lifts me from my comfortable depressive lull. I gasp. The fresh air is toxic. Everything is heightened. I’m plugged into the waves of crippling fear and sparks of paranoia and overwhelming sense of impending doom.
Breathe breathe breathe breathe remember how to breathe. In, out, in, out. Ignore the morbid mother hugging you too tight, the morbid mother who saved you from drowning when you didn’t want to be saved.
Lake lake lake. Plunge back underwater.
I reach for depression, for my kinder aunt, but my mother won’t let me go.
Depression is feeling too little. Anxiety is feeling too much. I never win.
I’m losing it.
I’m lost.
EVENTUALLY, AROUND SEVEN at night, they calm me down enough to talk. The brown paper bag does fuck all, but the Xanax works a treat. It’s my last one, but I try not to think about that or I’ll spiral again.
“I’m sorry,” I say, back in the interview room. Danijel looks a bit pissed off—he probably wants to get home. If Ilić is irked, he doesn’t show it.
Perfect Prey Page 5
