Out of Mind
Authors: Catherine Sampson
Copyright © 2005 by Catherine Sampson
All rights reserved.
Grand Central Publishing
Hachette Book Group
237 Park Avenue, New York, NY 10017
Visit our website at
www.HachetteBookGroup.com
.
Originally published in hardcover by Mysterious Press
First eBook Edition: June 2009
ISBN: 978-0-446-56298-0
Other books by Catherine Sampson
Falling Off Air
For My Parents
Contents
I
would like to thank many people for all sorts of support and guidance. They include Lizzie Aylett, Joanna Bates, Caroline
Finnigan, Nancy Fraser, Rupert Wingfield Hayes, Martha Huang, Isabelle Keen, Lucy Kynge, Jean-Noël and Val Pommier, Jennifer
Schwerin, and my parents Joan and John Sampson. I am extremely grateful to my agent, Amanda Preston, and to my editors, Sarah
Turner, Amy Einhorn, and Kristen Weber. My husband, James Miles, has been a pillar of strength.
S
HE had resisted coming here, to this place where violence raped serenity. But the lawns covered in virgin snow, the valley
seamed with silver, had lulled her into a sense of rare and exquisite security. As beauty always did. When would she learn
that scenes of bucolic tranquillity were always the scenes of the greatest betrayal, that the rolling hills were the swell
of fear, that the good earth hid butchered flesh, and that the steadfast face of a farmer was a mask of grief?
Now, with the brittle snap of the twig behind her, she knew she should never have come. Her body primed for flight, adrenaline
flooding blood, oxygen fueling muscles, senses screaming for information. Claustrophobia engulfed her, trees encircling, skeletal
branches bearing down. She broke into a run, long legs covering the ground at speed, then shoes suddenly skating on ice, feet
sliding, she fell.
As she pulled herself upright, she heard the voice of reason in her head, speaking quietly beneath the high-pitched hum of
panic: Was there really someone there, or did the snap of the twig invent him?
Then feet crunched across the ice, and he reached her and grabbed her. He pushed her to her knees, and the ground froze to
the fabric of her jeans. He pulled a sack over her head and she was blinded, her arms flailing for balance. Her lungs cried
out for air, but the sacking was tight around her nose and mouth, and the knowledge of death seeped into her gut. She delved
inside herself for comfort, pushing her way back past the horrors she had witnessed, back past the suffering of others, and
back to the beginning, to what was good and true.
W
HEN I awoke the twins were playing quietly in the patch of sunlight at the foot of my bed. I pretended to be asleep and through
half-closed eyes watched them squatting, bottoms stuck out, in their pajamas. Hannah and William are three years old. Hannah
has the willpower of a Sherman tank and William the devastating cunning of a stealth bomber. They were sorting through my
jewelry box, draping strings of beads around their necks. William had a bangle dangling from one ear, and Hannah had devised
for herself a crown. Once in a while, Hannah would thwack William, and he would obediently hand over whatever treasure she
coveted, then steal it back when she wasn’t looking. They were so busy that they had forgotten even to demand food and drink.
Their father, Adam, was murdered nearly two years ago and anyway was never really a father to them. Perhaps, I thought wistfully
as I watched them play, this was what parenting would be like as they grew older. They would require only the occasional meal
or dose of moral guidance, and I could recline on the sofa and admire them as they quietly bathed and dressed themselves and
bent their heads dutifully over their homework.
Half an hour later, when Finney arrived, Hannah was sitting stark naked on the stairs and screaming, and William was clinging
to my leg, trying to pull me toward his train set. Finney took in the scene in one sweep of the eyes, settling on Hannah to
give her a look he would usually reserve for the drunk and disorderly.
“We’re going to be late,” he growled.
Long weekend drives in the country with my children in the backseat are not Finney’s idea of fun, but I had asked him to come
along because I needed the eyes of a detective chief inspector. And he agreed because he has fallen in love with me, even
if he has not fallen in love with my children. We were heading south on the A23 toward Reigate, to a manor house on the edge
of London, a place known among my fellow journalists as the War School. Here in rural England, journalists learn from former
elite forces soldiers how to duck and dive in deadly games of hide-and-seek. Or how to stanch the bleeding of a fallen colleague
whose stomach has been blown open or eye dislodged. His screams are amateur dramatics and the torn flesh is bread soaked in
animal blood, none of which makes it any less a matter of life and death.
Because of the number of journalists who have died in the past decade in war zones, news organizations now realize they must
try to protect their employees, at least with knowledge and sometimes with arms, too.
“You know this is a wild goose chase,” Finney shouted over the children’s yelling. I was driving, and he was in the passenger
seat, stoically ignoring Hannah, who was stretching out her legs to kick the back of his seat. “If there was anything to find,
Coburn would have found it six months ago when she disappeared.”
Finney can be pretty scathing about the incompetence of his colleagues, even about DCI Coburn, who headed the investigation
into Melanie’s disappearance. But the police force is his family, not mine, and I didn’t want to get into a fight.
“I promised Melanie’s parents. I can’t not go.”
Corporation camerawoman Melanie Jacobs had disappeared on January 10, a Friday six months earlier, from the War School, which
is officially called HazPrep. The Corporation employs thousands of people. It is like a very little country, or a big school.
You have a few colleagues who are blood brothers, lots of people you know to say hi to, and legions you know by reputation
only. I worked just once with Melanie, but I was impressed by her seriousness and attention to detail. Since then I have heard
colleagues speak with approval, and sometimes with disbelief, about her bravery in war zones. Shortly after she covered a
particularly bloody civil war, I saw her in the canteen and went over to say hello. Melanie was tall and agile and strong.
She let her dark hair grow long and straight, and when she was working she generally tied it back behind her head. That was
when you could see that her left ear bore not one but a row of six gold studs. She nodded in greeting but she did not smile.
I looked into her eyes and saw that something had changed.
“It must have been hard,” I said. I don’t know why I said it. It’s not the sort of thing journalists normally say to each
other.
“It’s a job,” she muttered, shrugging.
I don’t know if she intended it in the way that it hit me, but I walked away bathed in guilt. I had the same job as her. I’d
started out as a television producer, but I’d learned how to operate a camera, and sometimes I filmed my own material. We
were both journalists. But I’d said no to war zones with scarcely a second thought because I am the single mother of two small
children. Melanie had no children to hold her back, and she had taken the decision to risk her own life day after day to record
human atrocity. It seemed to me that this was the purest form of journalism, to put the factual record above one’s own survival.
I did not know Melanie well enough to ask her motivation. I could not believe that she sought glory—camera operators do not,
in general, achieve glory however good their work. But could such a dangerous decision be entirely selfless?
On another occasion I bumped into Melanie with her parents at King’s Cross. So when she went missing a few weeks later, I
telephoned them to see if there was anything I could do to help. Melanie’s mother, Beatrice, worried sick but polite nevertheless,
thanked me for my concern and asked simply that I keep in touch, which I did. Beatrice and Melanie’s father, Elliot, lived
in Durham, and Elliot’s health had deteriorated rapidly after his daughter’s disappearance. Beatrice did not like to leave
him for more than a few hours, but the lengthy train journey to London was more than he could stand. She was the sort of person
who by instinct would have dug around to find out what had happened to her daughter, but her circumstances made her feel impotent
and cut off. She was frustrated at the lack of news and upset that the police investigation seemed to be running out of steam.
“DCI Coburn tells me there’s no evidence that she’s dead. He says it’s possible she’s had a nervous breakdown, and that she
just upped and went, but I find that hard to believe of Melanie.”
Desperately apologetic, she’d asked me whether I would mind keeping my ears open within the Corporation for any word at all
on what might have happened to Melanie.
“Who have you spoken to inside the Corporation?” I asked Beatrice. “There must be someone who’s the contact point for the
police.”
“There is a man called Ivor Collins,” Beatrice said, “who has been very kind. He came up on the train to see us, and he brought
us Melanie’s things. He talked with us for a long time, but he seemed to be completely mystified, too. He said he would let
us know anything he found out, but . . .” Her voice trailed off unhappily.
“He hasn’t contacted you?” I was incredulous.
“Oh yes, he has, he’s rung us every week. He’s been very kind. But he hasn’t had any news for us. Maybe he feels until there’s
something definite, he can’t tell us. But that’s not what I want. . . . Melanie had friends, she had colleagues, they must
be talking about her disappearance, people must have theories, there must be rumors. I want—” Her voice cracked, and she fell
silent. I could hear her trying to control herself, breathing hard and slow into the telephone.
She wanted what I would want. She wanted every tiny speck of information, she wanted to know she had left no stone unturned.
She wanted to know she had done everything she could for her daughter.
I knew the name Ivor Collins. Usually you glimpse him in the distance, like a star in the night sky. Occasionally, if there
is a morale issue, Collins visits the rank and file to dispense encouraging words, pat backs, and nose around to see where—or
with whom—the trouble lies. When I had spoken to Beatrice, I looked Ivor Collins up in the directory and found that he was
HCP (R, H), which stood for Head of Corporate Policy, parens Resources comma Human, close parens.
The next day, I made an appointment to see him and found his comfortably appointed office in the far reaches of the management
empire. He greeted me with a warm handshake and invited me to sit in an armchair opposite his. He had startling blue eyes
and snowy white hair cut very short. His body was narrow, and his long face seemed even longer because of its unusual thinness.
He looked like an exclamation mark.
“You wanted to talk to me about Melanie Jacobs,” he said, cocking his long head to one side.
“Her parents are frustrated by the lack of news,” I told him, “and they asked me to keep my ears open.”
He nodded thoughtfully. “And what have you learned?”
“You’re the first person I’ve asked.”
“Well . . .” He heaved a sigh and spoke in a voice that was so low, it was almost not there. Whether this indicated a desire
for ultimate deniability or simply a throat infection, I could not tell.
“I find it hard to speak to Beatrice and Elliot every Monday, as I do, when I can’t tell them any more than they’ve read in
the papers. All of us here have been helping the police in whatever ways we can, but there has been little to say to them.
Melanie was supremely brave, extremely talented, and we valued her highly. We have no idea why she disappeared.”