Senseless

by Ed James

  Singing along, Harry pushed himself up to standing and raced over to the window, sliding on his socks for the second half, catching himself on the table in the window. He put his knee down on the chair and pulled himself up so he could get the second one up, then he was there.

  ‘He’s Charlie the Seahorse and he’s here for you!’

  His dolls lay on the tabletop, perfectly arranged. Charlie the Seahorse, Octopus Robert, Sharky Keith and Dominic the Dolphin. Harry picked up Charlie and moved him in time with the action on the screen, first dancing around Dominic, then running away from Sharky Keith as he snapped his teeth.

  The programme froze on the title page, Charlie standing there, beaming wide. Then it cut to Sharky Keith in his hut under the waves.

  And Harry let out a snort. He hated Sharky Keith. Kept giving him nightmares, even made him piddle the bed once at Nana’s, which made her cross. He kept watching the episode, but it was mostly Keith. So he looked out of the window instead.

  Oh, there was that fox that Daddy didn’t believe him about! Then it was gone and the paperboy wheeled past, his bright-red footballer headphones catching the light. He stopped at their house and strutted up the path, reading the front page of Daddy’s paper, then slotted it through. Harry heard the thump by the front door and his father’s thumping footsteps.

  ‘Daddy?’

  But he wasn’t listening. He had his own headphones in, listening to his podcast, soaked with sweat from his exercise in the garage. Harry knew not to interrupt him when he was like that.

  Outside, the paperboy walked back to his BMX, dancing in time to his music, strutting like he was in a video on YouTube. He stopped and waved his arm in a circle, mouthing ‘oh yeah’, then hopped on the bike and scooted off back to the main road, his long arm indicating left.

  Across the road, the church’s front door cracked open and the vicar stepped out. Harry waved at him, but the vicar shut his eyes and sucked in the fresh morning air, listening to the few birds tweeting this early in the year, feeling the light rain on his cheeks, the gust of wind blowing his greying hair. He opened his eyes again and scanned the street, a broad grin on his face, but still didn’t see Harry’s waving arm, and he went back inside the church.

  Harry looked at the screen and it was still Sharky Keith, though he was now chasing Octopus Robert, all eight of his legs flailing. But still no sign of Charlie the Seahorse. Harry picked up his Sharky Keith doll and flung it across the room, the plastic skidding along the floor and hitting his beanbag.

  ‘Harry, can you get yourself ready for nursery?’ Daddy’s voice was a shout, his headphones too loud.

  And now all Harry wanted was to watch Sharky Keith as he schemed with Dominic the Dolphin.

  ‘Harry? Come on!’

  He pouted, but there was nobody around to see it. So he got up. But outside, a van had parked in the exact spot Daddy hated people parking in. ‘Daddy!’

  A man got out onto the street and pulled up the collar of his black leather jacket. He looked around like a baddie, then opened the back of the van and kicked out a ramp.

  ‘Daddy, there’s a man!’

  But Daddy still wasn’t listening, instead thumping up the stairs towards his shower.

  The man pulled out a wheelchair holding another man, easing it down to the street. The ramp bent as it took his weight. The bad man took another look around the street but it was still quiet, still dead.

  ‘Daddy! Mummy!’

  The man removed a gag on the other man’s face and let it go, stuffing it in his pocket and looking round again, then he loosened the ropes around the other man’s wrists and let the ropes dangle free on both sides, but the man was awake now and he was looking right at the bad man and he shouted but Harry couldn’t hear it. The other man lashed out with his head – just like when Sharky Keith tried to headbutt Charlie the Seahorse – but he missed!

  ‘Daaaadddddyyyyy!’

  The bad man grabbed the other man’s shoulder and pulled him out of the chair. It tipped up and the other man fell flat on his face! But the wheelchair hit the bad man in the knees and he fell over too! Then the other man grabbed his arm and the wheelchair landed on the bad man’s leg, but the other man punched his arm over and over again!

  ‘Mummy! Daddy!’

  But the good man might be a bad man too because he tried biting the bad man just like Sharky Keith would and just missed his ear. The bad man hit him on the neck and pushed him away and the wheelchair rolled into the middle of the road where Mrs McAllister told them never to cycle. They got up at the same time, but the bad man was quicker. He hit the other man in the tummy with an elbow. The other man doubled over like at nursery when Lewis hit Alfie in the naughty place and he had to go to the doctor and was away for ages. Then the bad man kicked the back of the man’s head and pushed him face first into the ground.

  ‘Daddy!’

  The bad man ran towards his van and pushed his wheelchair in the back. He slammed the door and ran to the driver’s side and drove off.

  ‘Mummy!’

  The other man got up like his naughty place was really sore. He stood there, staring into space, but he was muttering something.

  ‘Daddy!’

  The vicar came back out again, clutching a teacup, a wide smile filling his face. He frowned when he saw the other man storming towards him, jabbing his finger and pointing.

  ‘Harry!’ Daddy stood in the doorway, shaking his head like he was really angry. ‘Are you still not ready yet? I told you—’

  ‘Look!’ Harry pointed at the window. ‘A man got attacked!’

  Daddy stomped over the floorboards. ‘You don’t half talk a lot of nonsense, my boy.’ He tried to scoop Harry up, but stopped. ‘Oh my Christ!’

  Thirteen

  [Palmer, 08:45]

  ‘You can’t blame yourselves for what’s happened to your daughter.’ Dr Marie Palmer perched forward in her chair, giving an open gesture with her hands, tilting her head to the side in sympathy. ‘This isn’t your fault or responsibility, okay?’

  Sally Norton was athletic and healthy, looking a lot like her daughter’s ‘before’ photo. Lines around her mouth, and a few stray greys in her long blonde hair, the roots starting to bleed through. She reached over to the table for a fresh tissue and blew her nose, already bright red. ‘That’s easy for you to say.’

  ‘I know it is. But it’s actually quite hard for me to mean it.’ Palmer let the words settle in. ‘And I do, I mean every single word. In situations like this, people will say things all the time, nice little homilies to get you to think in a positive way and handle the situation. Facebook memes. Condolence cards. But based on everything I know, what’s happened to Sarah is neither of your faults.’

  Richard Norton sat forward, mirroring Palmer’s body language. ‘We always did the best for Sarah.’ A bear of a man, but with the softest voice. Scottish islands, maybe. He grabbed hold of his wife’s hand. ‘I like to think that Sarah had a happy upbringing.’

  Palmer smiled again. ‘Well, I’m sure she’d agree, Mr Norton.’

  ‘I keep thinking if she’d not stuck with . . . with Christopher Langton . . .’

  Palmer settled back in her chair, eyebrow arched. ‘Oh?’

  ‘Ach, he’s a good lad.’ Richard ran a hand down his face. ‘I play golf with Chris’s father. When he’s not cheating, he’s . . .’ He sighed. ‘Thing is, Sarah and Chris were childhood sweethearts. And that never ends well, does it?’

  Sally stared into space, eyes wide, nibbling her bottom lip. ‘I should’ve got her to end it. Should’ve insisted she went to a different university, instead of following him to Cambridge like a lost puppy.’

  Palmer reached down to her rucksack and liberated her notebook. ‘Do you think Sarah’s husband is involved in her abduction?’

  ‘Do you?’

  Palmer held up her hands. ‘I’m just asking. You seem to be inferring that he might be.’

  ‘Don’t listen to us . . .’ Richard cross
ed his left leg over his right. Becoming at ease with Palmer now. ‘Chris is a good guy and I just want my daughter to be happy. Please, catch the animal who’s done this to our wee girl.’

  A knock on the door behind Palmer. A man with dark hair and a scientifically precise amount of stubble on his chin. Overweight but tall and with an intense look in his eyes. The holy trinity – tall, dark and handsome. And with a slight limp as he walked over to whisper, ‘DS Aidan Corcoran. Need a word.’ London accent, gruff like he smoked forty a day.

  Palmer clapped her thighs and got up with a polite smile. ‘I’ll give you some space.’ She grabbed her rucksack and joined Corcoran in the corridor, offering her hand. ‘Dr Marie Palmer, but you can call me Marie if you want.’

  ‘Sure.’ Corcoran shook her hand, but he seemed on edge. ‘Look, I’ve been asked to accompany you when you speak to Sarah.’

  ‘Oh, a shadow. Superb.’ Palmer’s turn to frown. ‘She’s awake?’

  ‘Isn’t that why you’re here?’ Corcoran set off down the long corridor, forcing her to follow his lopsided walk.

  ‘Well, yes, but I was told to keep myself busy until I was formally notified.’ Palmer had to hurry to keep up with him, limp or not. ‘What’s your take on what’s happened?’

  ‘My take?’ Corcoran chuckled as he rounded a corner into another long corridor, doors leading off on both sides. An orderly pushed a trolley, head bobbing to the beat from his headphones. ‘You’ve just spent fifty minutes with her parents, so you tell me.’

  ‘Do you think Christopher Langton could’ve done this to his wife?’

  ‘Do you?’

  ‘Stop playing games with me.’ Palmer stopped and waited, resting her backpack at her feet. ‘Are you treating him as a suspect?’

  ‘We are.’ Corcoran stood there, a dark look on his face as the orderly weaved past. ‘Same as the German guy Sarah was sleeping with. Klaus Werner. We’ve interviewed them both.’

  ‘Oh.’

  Corcoran folded his arms. ‘Sounds like you think this isn’t either of them.’

  ‘It’s not my place to say either way.’

  ‘You’re a criminal psychologist, right?’

  ‘Well, yes, but—’

  ‘If you think I’m barking up the wrong tree with those, then please say. That way I can apply my resources more intelligently than having them combing through CCTV for months.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘So what?’

  ‘What’s your professional take on this?’

  ‘You say that with such enthusiasm.’ Palmer grabbed her bag and walked on. ‘In my opinion, and that’s with having seen little in the way of hard evidence, starving someone to the point of death before releasing them is a very calculated method of torture.’

  ‘Meaning her husband could’ve done it?’

  ‘You honestly think that being cuckolded is sufficient motive for this?’ Her shoes squelched as they walked along the drying floor. ‘Were that the case, isn’t it more likely her husband would’ve committed a crime of passion? Something rash like a stabbing or pushing her off a cliff?’

  ‘Is that you officially ruling him out?’

  ‘If he did this to his wife, then he probably would’ve done it to both Sarah and the man involved with his wife, this Klaus Werner, and not just to her.’

  Corcoran looked at her, his forehead creasing slightly. ‘Interesting.’ He stopped at the station, waving his hands in front of a male nurse’s face to wake him. ‘Here to see Dr Yadin?’

  The nurse came to and stood up in instalments. ‘I’ll see where she is.’ He waddled off.

  Corcoran focused on Palmer, his bright blue eyes dazzling under the light. ‘Okay, so what about Klaus? Could he have done it?’

  Palmer looked away, drumming her fingers on the laminated wood. ‘I think he’s a more likely suspect, given the circumstances. But I think the probability is third-level decimal places different, not first.’

  ‘And in words a mere police officer could understand?’

  ‘Well, I mean neither is likely to be your guy.’

  ‘So I should stop our investigation into them?’

  ‘Well, no. You asked me and I’m validating your hypotheses against an incredibly limited data set. I know how police investigations work. This is your decision, not mine.’

  Corcoran stared at her again, running a hand across his stubble.

  ‘Sergeant.’ Dr Yadin stood in the doorway, smiling. Silver hair with an elfin look. Green scrubs, creased. ‘Ah, I see you’ve met.’ She opened a door behind her. ‘I’ve got a slightly better office this time, if you’ll just follow me?’

  Corcoran let Palmer go first, into a consulting room with a broad white desk. Walls stacked with filing cabinets, a narrow window overlooking the car park.

  Palmer took the chair nearer the window and rested her bag on the floor. She fished out her notebook and pen from the side pockets, then turned to a fresh page.

  ‘Okay, so I’ve got an update on Sarah’s condition.’ Yadin sat behind the desk and focused on her tablet computer. ‘I spoke to a starvation specialist this morning and, coupled with the health data we’ve obtained from Sarah’s smartwatch and Wi-Fi scales,’ – she looked up to smile at Corcoran – ‘we can determine that Sarah’s weight when she was abducted was seven stone, seven pounds. Which is one hundred and five pounds, or forty-seven point six kilos, depending on what floats your boat. And she had just under fifteen percent body fat.’

  Corcoran folded his arms across his chest, rasping at his stubble with his free hand. ‘Is that healthy?’

  ‘It’s borderline healthy. Any lower and you’re at risk of not being able to fight off infections, colds and so on. Athletes are obsessed with minimising it, but Sarah went maybe a bit too low.’ Yadin tapped something on the tablet’s screen. ‘Given her height of five foot three, her BMI was eighteen point five. Again, that’s on the lower borderline, but it’s still healthy.’ She looked up, a grave expression on her face. ‘Now she’s four stone twelve.’

  ‘My god.’ Palmer’s mouth was dry.

  ‘That’s sixty-eight pounds, or thirty point eight kilos, giving a BMI of just twelve. My expert said that’s the same level he saw in famine victims in Somalia and Ethiopia.’

  Palmer sat back, her gut doing somersaults. She looked over at Corcoran and saw her revulsion reflected. ‘Like I said, Sergeant, Sarah’s been starved, and carefully. This is almost like torture.’

  Corcoran gave a tight nod. ‘What else have you got, doc?’

  Yadin tapped her fingers on her tablet. ‘We know that Sarah’s been missing for over forty days and that she’s lost a third of her bodyweight. By our reckoning, she’s had no calories in the last three weeks.’

  ‘You mean not many?’

  ‘No, I mean zero. Zilch, nada. Absolutely no nutrition. The rule of thumb is three days without water, three weeks without food. She was at that hard limit.’ Yadin shifted her focus between them. ‘And given that she didn’t have much body fat to begin with, Sarah’s body has converted all of her muscle into energy instead. And I mean all of it.’

  Corcoran swallowed hard. ‘Her body’s eaten itself?’

  ‘That’s one way of phrasing it, yes.’

  Palmer looked down at the blank page, too stunned to write any of it down. She forced herself to, noting data points that might lead somewhere.

  Someone’s done this to her. Someone who wants her to suffer. Someone with . . .

  She stopped writing.

  Then, Why?

  She couldn’t think of a single example of something similar. Starving someone almost to death was one thing, but then releasing them? She added ‘Release’, underlined it twice, then looked up.

  Corcoran was frowning. ‘And in plain English?’

  Dr Yadin locked her machine and set it to the side, then smiled like she was humouring a small child. ‘Sergeant, Sarah is going to take many months to get back to her previous weight, and it
’s going to be weeks until we can assess her chances of a full recovery. We’ll monitor her throughout, but this level of starvation will have placed extreme stress on her liver and other organs.’

  Corcoran looked like he’d swallowed something down. ‘But Sarah is awake, yes?’

  [09:00]

  Palmer followed Yadin into the room, leaving Corcoran standing by the door.

  Sarah lay on the bed, barely moving, a skeleton with skin. Tubes and wires hung out of her arms, attached to four separate drip bags. Her heart rate on the machine was dangerously low, her blood pressure even worse. She frowned at them, but her eyes were intense and full of life, fear and hope mixing in a toxic blend. She reached over to them, struggling with the effort. ‘Find him.’

  Palmer sat next to the bed and took Sarah’s hand. Bony and long, her thin skin stretched too tight. Just like Palmer’s nana before she died, the cancer eating away at everything. ‘Sarah, my name is Dr Marie Palmer and I’m working with the police to help find who did this to you. I know you’ve suffered a horrendous ordeal, but the worst is over. You’re safe and no further harm will come to you. Dr Yadin will try to help you back to full health, but I’ve been tasked with helping your mental journey. I want to—’

  ‘Find him.’

  Palmer stroked Sarah’s palm, deciding to toss out the rest of her script and just play it by ear, letting Sarah guide them. At least for a bit. ‘It was definitely a man?’

  ‘I think so. He . . .’ Sarah shut her eyes and her body started to rock. It was like she was crying, but there were no tears.

  ‘Sarah, how about you tell us everything you remember?’

  She took an exhausting breath, then opened her eyes again. ‘Where do you want me to start?’

  Palmer smiled at her. ‘Wherever you like.’

  Fourteen

  Sarah

  ‘Yeah, okay.’ I pull the headphone cord tight, pushing the mic to my lips, so Christopher can hear me better. ‘I won’t be long.’ I squat down low, my quads and hamstrings stretching hard, the Lycra rucking around the knees of these old leggings. Definitely need new ones. ‘I need to let off steam, you know how it is.’