Plus, I’ve been doing my research. It seems the FLO is important in building a solid relationship with the family, gathering material from them in a manner that contributes to the investigation. They gain confidence and trust, making the family feel like they can confide anything in them.
Anything. Like a confession? Or am I too cynical?
I’m willing to bet it’s happened before.
Having tried to make sense of the gibberish in my coloring book, I’ve brought more sensible notes to show Paige. I’ve laid out the timeline of Sunday, July 12, and filled it in with every single little detail I can remember. For a moment, self-preservation kicks in and I worry this makes me look suspicious—apparently liars always give too much detail. But finding Erin is the most important thing, and I don’t care if I accidentally implicate myself in the process.
I know I’m innocent.
The cigarette-smoking officer holds the door open for me. The reception is all curved white walls and blue plastic chairs illuminated by fluorescent strip lighting. I tell the receptionist I’m here to see Officer Tierney, and he ushers me toward a seat. Paige is just finishing up with another family and will be with me shortly.
My fingers fumble absentmindedly with my notepad as I wait. There’s something about being around policemen that makes you want to appear unsuspicious, and apparently that involves sitting as rigidly as a plank of wood—with about the same level of facial expression.
Again, my mind floats to Andrijo. I’ve pictured those coal-black eyes so many times now that they’re imprinted on my frontal lobe. When I was writing my timeline, I tried to note down everything I remember him saying on that day, and again I fixated on the same strange pattern. He gave no personal details. He didn’t talk about his friends or family, his job or his hobbies, his musical tastes or what food he likes to eat. Every comment he made was about the events of that day—the storm is settling and there are so many thunder flies swarming around and isn’t the Danube so moody and beautiful when the sky is overcast?
Everything he said was an observation. And that’s weird. Why would you be so careful and guarded during conversation that you give away absolutely no personal details whatsoever?
Unless you have something to hide.
Fortunately, Officer Tierney—“call me Paige”—doesn’t take long and descends down an übermodern glass-and-chrome staircase to greet me. She’s relatively young with smooth, dark skin like mine, black hair combed back in a neat bun, and she’s in a tailored gray suit rather than a police uniform. Chatting away about the weather and other mundanities, she leads me upstairs, past a school-like cafeteria and down a corridor to a small interview room.
I take a seat opposite her as she arranges her files across the desk. We start chatting, and it’s wonderfully informal compared to the interviews I did with Ilić. But for some reason I find myself missing the stilted soliloquies about protocol—the firm guidelines made me feel secure. Nevertheless, Paige is warm and chatty, and seems to take a huge amount of interest in Erin as a person. You assume all police officers will be solely focused on the cold hard facts of the investigation, but Officer Tierney is sensitive and considerate. It’s not that she tiptoes around me, but she never pushes me for more, and offers a sympathetic smile whenever appropriate. She’s more like a shrink than a detective. And I’m pretty familiar with both as this point.
I keep talking for nearly an hour. We cover a lot of the same ground as I did with Ilić, and the same buzz phrase keeps coming up—“out of character.”
I’ll say yes, yes, it is out of character, then I wonder if it really is. I’m thinking too hard about Erin’s character, and now it’s like when you’re waiting for your suitcase on an airport carousel and you’re so sure you know what it looks like until you’re faced with all these other options that could just as easily be yours. And is it definitely gray not black? Does it really have wheels? Is it shiny or matte or metallic? And now you have no fucking idea what your suitcase looks like.
Who is Erin Baxter?
I find it hard to explain how Erin’s identity is warping and shifting in my memory, but I try and put across that she’s protective of her friends and responsible. I try and emphasize that this is not normal behavior for her. I try and define her character so I can prove this is out of it.
But as soon as I land on a particular trait, I remember instances that contradict it. She’s logical and rational, but her common sense seems to evaporate after a glass of wine. She’s considerate, but she often called in sick to work and left me to deal with deadline week hell alone. She’s self-assured, but she cries over what her misogynistic boyfriend thinks of her. If you try and pin down her personality, you’ll go around and around in circles until you’re seasick.
Erin is a perfect contradiction. Everything and nothing is out of character.
“How are her parents doing?” I ask Paige, wondering if I’m overstepping my mark.
“Her mum’s a mess, understandably.” A grimace. “It’s horrific enough when your child goes missing on home turf. She must feel even more helpless and afraid when it’s overseas. I believe she’s flying out to Belgrade soon. We’re helping cover the costs.”
“Makes sense,” I say. “What about her dad? Is he flying out, too?” I remember Erin telling me her father works offshore on the rigs. She doesn’t see him very often.
Sadie gives me a strange look. “Her father’s in prison. Domestic abuse. Four years and eleven months through a five-year sentence.”
My stomach drops.
Something else I didn’t know about Erin.
She’s honest, but she lies.
HER DAD WAS in prison.
Domestic abuse.
Against her? Her sister? Her mum?
The bruise. She had a bruise, an old one.
It was round, like a coin, and quite small. On the inside of her upper arm.
A . . . thumbprint?
Ilić asked me if she had any others. Was he thinking of four more fingers on the back of her arm?
Grab marks?
My mind spins.
But he’s in prison. Nearly out, but . . .
Was she scared? Of him being freed?
What if she went to visit him?
What if he attacked her?
But why? Why would he attack her? That could prolong his sentence. And . . . and she’s his daughter.
How could he attack Erin—Erin, who’s gone?
Chapter Nine
July 24, England
I HAVE TO get out of the house.
My mind is spasming like an overexerted muscle, and I’m going stir-crazy. I consider calling my mum, but she doesn’t really “get” anxiety, and has long since given up on trying. So I’ve given up trying to explain. Sometimes I want to scream at her: “You spent my adolescence in a state of chronic depression and left me to fend for myself!” It wouldn’t achieve anything, though. So I bite my tongue. Now is normally when I’d call Erin and go do something fun. Her absence hurts.
So I set off on the four-mile walk to town. I live on a cheap estate in the student area of Newcastle, and while normally I’d get the bus, I could use the fresh air. Plus, I’m not exactly feeling flush right now.
I applied for a paid job last night. Junior Crime Reporter at the Daily Standard. I’m qualified, thanks to my degree, and I have publishing experience. And I’d be reporting on something that mattered. Plus, it pays a decent wage. But I’m not getting my hopes up. Hundreds of journalism graduates are after the same job.
It’s overcast and cold for late July. The British summer heat wave we were promised never really materialized, but I’m kind of glad. Extreme temperatures don’t suit me. The kids I pass playing football on a patch of cracked concrete don’t look at me, even when a rogue strike nearly decapitates me. I roll my eyes and throw the ball
back at them, trying to quiet the ridiculous thoughts of “What if I throw it wrong what if they laugh at me what if what if what if . . .” They’re kids. Why do I even care?
I think about Erin’s dad as I walk.
Part of me gets why she wouldn’t tell me. I’ve watched enough soaps to know that domestic violence victims often feel ashamed—that they didn’t speak up earlier, that they couldn’t stop it, that it was somehow their fault. Erin probably wanted to keep it in the past, to bury her shame along with her pain and move on.
But he’s getting out. Next month. August 11—that’s his release date. Surely she was stressed about that? What if he was planning to seek revenge on her family for pressing charges? What if one of them gave evidence in court he’d made them swear not to?
And the bruise. Old, yellow, the perfect thumbprint.
It can’t possibly be linked to what happened in Novi Sad, and yet . . .
And yet it seems too much of a coincidence not to be.
I FIND A grand total of nothing about Erin’s father’s trial on the internet.
I’m in Newcastle City Library. Sprawled open next to me, spines cracked, are a couple of psychology volumes, in which I found more info about the emotional and mental effects of prolonged domestic violence.
But I don’t know his name. I try the search terms “Baxter” and “domestic violence” and “Newcastle Crown Court” and “five-year sentence” in all different combinations, but nothing comes up. The surname is too common, as is, sadly, the crime. Maybe he wasn’t tried in Newcastle. Maybe his sentence was originally longer and they let him out early for good behavior. For whatever reason, it’s not showing up.
My stomach growls for the first time in ten days. Maybe being back on home turf has renewed my appetite. I grab a Snickers and a cup of crappy filter coffee from the cafeteria, then slump back into my chair, sighing so heavily the homeless-looking student next to me jumps. I’m at a dead end. The notes I made on the plane have proved fruitless; there’s no readily available information on the fortress layout.
Like a homing pigeon, my brain is drawn back to the same thing it always is when I’m thinking about Erin: Andrijo. Trafficking. Darkness.
I remember what Tim said: “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.”
It makes all kinds of sense. I’ll readily admit I’m clinging to false hope—other than her voluntarily running away, trafficking seems like the only scenario in which Erin’s heart is still beating.
Sweet, sweet endorphins follow my first bite of Snickers. Better than any antidepressants, I shit you not. Typing tentatively, I do a Google search for other Brits who’ve gone missing in Serbia.
Nada. Just a ton of official embassy sites, some articles on World War I casualties and a Daily Fail column on how Kim Kardashian is stealing her hairstyles from a Serbian pop princess.
Again, I try some different terms, but it’s no use. I find some immigration figures, a story about two newlyweds who died after their yacht capsized off the coast of Montenegro and another Daily Fail conspiracy theory about Winston Churchill being the secret love child of the king of Serbia. There’s a small piece about a young British woman called Brodie Breckenridge. She went missing in Croatia eight years ago, but that doesn’t help. Because she was never found. The mystery was never solved. She just vanished.
Crumpling up my empty Snickers wrapper and tossing it in the trash can near me, I start a search in the library’s digital archive: “sex trafficking, Serbia.”
A handful of titles appear. I make a note of their reference numbers and hunt them down in the library. They’re spread over a couple of floors—some filed under international politics, some under law and criminality—and some are missing, but I find a couple that seem like they might be useful. I flick open the first. Its cover is a sordid close-up of a woman’s crouched-over silhouette.
In Transit:
European Trafficking Via the Balkans
According to research conducted by Dr. Norman Williams in 2012, Serbia is a source, transit and destination country for women and girls trafficked transnationally and internally, primarily for the purpose of commercial sexual exploitation.
Disturbing statistics compiled by Williams earlier this decade showed that not only are foreign victims transported to Serbia in the interim, but internal sex trafficking of Serbian women and girls also continued to increase as of 2007—comprising more than three-fourths of trafficking cases in that year.
However, local and national Serbian law enforcement bodies can only despair: Williams found that efforts to shut down known brothels only served to prompt traffickers into better concealing victims of trafficking.
I lean back in my chair, taking a swig of the coffee. Granules float on the surface, bitter and grainy. Delicious. The student next to me, dressed in one of those hobo cardigans and sporting extremely unwashed hair, keeps clicking her pen on and off, over and over and over. I press my eyes shut. They still sting with tiredness. I can’t remember the last time they didn’t.
This paper seems to corroborate Tim’s theory. Locals are easier targets, and account for over seventy-five percent of reported cases. But what about the other twenty-five percent?
I flick through a few more essays, one on the ineffective and often lenient prosecution of traffickers, another on the reintegration of the victims.
I’m not sure how long it takes for the reality of what I’m researching to sink in. Whether it’s the dry academic terminology used in this dark, dark world of exploitation, or the way my eyes keep dropping to my bangle as I read about one victim who committed suicide just a month after she was rescued.
I gulp down more coffee, but it’s no use. Hot tears sting my eyes. This can’t be real. It can’t be. My beautiful, kind best friend cannot be gone. I cannot be delving deep into this terrifying looking glass in a desperate attempt to convince myself she’s alive.
It’s the first time I’ve felt real-human sad, not manic-anxiety sad or gaping-depression sad. One tear slides down my cheek. Another. The lump in my throat is sharper than the iceberg that sunk the Titanic.
Whatever happened twelve days ago, she’s been hurt. She’s scared.
She’s dead, or she wants to be.
Chapter Ten
July 27, England
THERE’S NOT ONE single part of me that wants to go back to work today.
Erin was the only redeeming part of that hellhole—Erin, her laugh and the promise of something better. But my NYT-worthy article is still half-written on my USB drive, and my best friend isn’t coming back.
I swear, if Lowe gives me one ounce of sass today, I’ll . . . well, I’ll probably cry and pop a forty-seventh Xanax of the morning, but I like to think I’d tear her a brand-new asshole to bleach.
Turns out sympathy is worse than sass. The smarmy receptionist who calls everyone “hun” throws her fake-tanned arms around me, smelling wonderfully of burnt biscuits and cat piss. Almost everyone on the design team grimaces and nods once, in that way they assume means “I’m so sorry” but actually just makes them look like those toy dogs that sit in the back of cars and bob their heads out the rear window.
Hardly any of the advertising team have made it in yet—why would they? It’s before nine a.m.—but the editorial department is ready for my arrival. There’s a biscuit tin on the empty desk next to the men’s editor. Someone’s baked cookies. They’ve saved me a copy of the mag that hit shelves last week, something they always forget to do b
ecause I’m a lowly intern. I don’t want to open it because Erin’s name will be in the imprint, which is stupid because she’s probably dead.
Dead. It’s not quite onomatopoeic, but it feels it. Flat. Short. An unapologetic full stop at the end of a sentence.
And Lowe’s face, dear Lord. It’s like she’s trying to twist it up in an elaborate show of sympathy, but the Botox hasn’t quite worn off yet so she slightly resembles Helena Bonham Carter in full-blown villain mode. I really want to ask her why Tim Burton doesn’t need her on set today, but my jokes are always wasted on her.
“Sweetheart.” She swoops me up in a hug, all cashmere cardigan and musky perfume. “I’m so terribly sorry. I should never have agreed to the trip, knowing what I do about those kinds of countries.” I don’t ask what she means by that, because I doubt she even knows herself. “Shall we have a chat in the boardroom?”
Everyone watches as I trail behind her like a lost puppy. I’m still carrying my satchel, weighed down with the book I checked out of the library last week. I planned to read it on my lunch. She grabs us both a cup of water from the cooler and shuts the door behind her.
“Thanks for giving me the last few weeks off, Lowe,” I start.
She waves a hand at me. “Nonsense. You’d’ve been no use to me anyway. The police needed you, and besides, it’s important to grieve properly. How are you feeling? Poor dear. You must be in terrible shock. Was is traumatic? Are you traumatized?”
“I’m okay,” I lie. “I didn’t see anything, really. She just . . . didn’t come back.” I swallow.
She’s paler than usual. She drops her voice to a murmur. “I can’t believe it.”
“Me neither.” Stupid real-person tears threaten to pour again.
She sniffs, pushes back her chair. “Well, let me know if you need anything, okay?”
I’m grateful for the brevity. I think she’s in danger of getting emotional, too, and neither of us wants that.
“Thanks, Lowe.”
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