July 14, Serbia
I DON’T SLEEP. The stifling silence in my hotel room, broken up only by the whir of the air-con, leaves too much space for my anxiety to take hold. I can’t breathe. I throw off the covers. I still can’t breathe. I crank a window open far as it’ll go. I still can’t breathe.
Grabbing my rucksack, I shove a shaking hand into its depths and pull out the coloring book I’m supposed to use when I feel a panic attack starting. Pen pen pen, there’s a pen here somewhere, but I can’t find it.
The hotel pen. Blue. It’s blue. BLUE IS CALMING.
My scribbles are outside the lines, outside the page, outside this room.
No no no no no.
Erin.
How can doodling help when my best friend is gone?
I hurl the book across the room. It hits the wall and flutters to the ground.
Fuck fuck fuck.
I’m gasping and gasping, but my lungs won’t fill. I know what’s happening. I can’t stop it.
Erin Erin Erin Erin Erin her is name on loop inside my head, faster and faster like a fairground ride I can’t get off.
I grab my silver bangle from the bedside table and clutch it to my heart. Erin.
I let her go. I let her go to the toilet alone. I could’ve stopped it.
What have I done what have I done what have I done?
Stupid stupid stupid I’m so stupid.
Over and over and over and over again in my head I replay the scenario. I force it to end differently. Maybe if I think it vividly enough, perfectly enough, it’ll change how this ends.
No.
Water. I run to the bathroom and crank the tap on so harshly it sprays everywhere but I don’t care. I scoop up handfuls and drink, drench my face, cover my clothes. I’m too hot it’s too hot I can’t breathe.
The adrenaline is pumping so hard and fast it’s like being trapped for hours at a time in that heart-stopping moment you miss a step. Falling falling I’m falling.
I fall to the floor. Gasp for air. There’s none.
What have I done what have I done what have I done?
Erin. What have you done?
ERIN IS OFFICIALLY reported missing by the next morning. Medium priority. I wonder what she’d have to do to be upgraded to high. Again, the arbitrary police procedure seems absurd—how can all of this be measured in time limits and quantifiable criteria?
A girl is missing. That’s all there is.
The search party is launched in earnest by midday. Her murder victim profile picture is plastered all over lampposts and bins, like she’s an old lady’s missing cat and she’ll turn up in a tree somewhere. The image sticks in my mind, and in my sleep-deprived hysteria, I struggle to let go.
More sweeps of the hospitals come up empty. She hasn’t used her phone or bank cards since she went missing, nor was any large withdrawal made from a cash point on Sunday. Her passport hasn’t been flagged up at any of the land borders. Police are checking the CCTV from the area around the fortress, but there are so many bodies and so many hours of footage and so much alcohol and, well, she’s only a medium fucking priority, isn’t she?
It’s all I can do not to drop to my knees and beg them to plow every last resource they have into finding my best friend. To me, right in this moment, I can’t imagine anything in the world is more important. But I’m sure the loved ones of every missing person feel that way.
I make my way to reception feeling like my mind is full of fog and my eyes have been sprayed with acid. Tiredness has a physical presence; it clings to me. It’s heavy.
Today we’re all to give our accounts of what happened two days ago. We meet in the lobby, none of the others looking as exhausted as me, and make our way to the police station together. Ilić is there to escort us. He makes idle chitchat about the weather and the headliners at JUMP last night. Absurd absurd this is absurd. How can he talk about the thunder showers when my brain is such a storm?
Tim looks bad, like maybe he hasn’t slept either. “Carina. How you holding up?”
“M’fine,” I mutter. “Just want to find her.” My words are hollow. After thirty-six hours, what kind of state might she be in? My stomach cramps painfully. I touch my fingertips to the silver bangle. Is she still wearing hers?
The humidity is so thick breathing hurts. Black clouds loom in the distance. There’s going to be another storm, but we won’t see it. Because we’re going to spend our whole day in a Serbian police station reliving one day over and over and over again until we lose touch on what’s real. My memories are already warping and distorting, but one thing remains vividly clear: Andrijo.
On the tail end of last night’s panic attack I was still too anxious to sleep, and wanted to feel like I was doing something worthwhile. Something that could help Erin. So I picked my coloring book and hotel-branded pen up off the floor, and started jotting down every single detail I could remember about that heart-stopping man with the intense black eyes. Working my way around the outline of a Buddhist mandala, I noted his cleft chin and grin worthy of a toothpaste advertisement, his thick accent and red T-shirt. Then I write down everything I remember him saying, from inane comments about the Danube at sunset to the compliments he showered Erin with. “Beautiful.” That word cropped up the most.
The coloring book’s tucked into my satchel now. In the cold light of day, my notes look like the scrawlings of a crazy person, obscuring dainty lotus flowers and delicate doves, with angry phrases scratched in blue ink. The words are so slanted and erratic they look like the Arabic on my bracelet. Erin’s bracelet.
The bracelet the bracelet the bracelet. I can’t stop staring at my wrist, where it’s sitting next to my JUMP wristband, wondering if Erin’s looking down to the same view. What if she’s not, what if—
Pull away. You’re falling.
I break the magnetic lure and force myself to focus on what’s around me. Hot pavement beneath my feet, a street vendor shouting about fresh donuts, the scent of cinnamon and sugar, the cold sweat coating my skin. Screeching tires. Coughing exhausts. Heat.
Reality.
Novi Sad Police Station is cool and clean. We’re here to tell the police everything we can about the day Erin went missing in a bid to find her.
First we’re given hot drinks. It’s the last thing any of us want when it’s ninety-five degrees outside, but they’re policemen and it seems impolite to say no. I know the black coffee is a mistake as soon as it scalds my lips. I wanted to wake myself up, inject some energy, but it just makes me even more jittery. My clammy hands shake like my great-uncle’s did before he died of Parkinson’s.
I’m first. I feel detached from my body as I walk down the corridor flanked by two detectives. Ilić’s presence is mildly comforting. Despite the vaguely racist vibe I get from him—“You’re from England?”—the familiarity is reassuring. He saw my distress last night. He knows how much Erin means to me.
I take a seat opposite Ilić as he arranges his files across the desk. Another bulky man sits next to him—a translator. Every aspect of the room’s design seems aimed at maximizing a suspect’s discomfort and sense of powerlessness. The way the desk wraps around the chair slightly, giving the feeling of being surrounded. The lack of anything on the walls, giving a sense of exposure and isolation. All of the light switches and thermostats are out of reach, emphasizing the lack of control the suspect has over their surroundings. I wonder if other people notice these things, too, or if it’s just my overactive brain attaching significance to irrelevant details.
And the cameras. One in each corner. Recording everything I say or do.
You’re not a suspect, I remind myself. You should not feel this claustrophobic.
My throat gets tighter. I sip my coffee. It burns my tongue.
“Okay Carina, let’s get started,” Ilić says. “Just to let you know that, from now on, I’m going to be talking in Serbian and our translator, Danijel—” Danijel nods “—will be relaying everything to you in English. This isn’t to make you feel uncomfortable, it’s just so that the recordings can be used and understood in a Serbian court. Okay?”
Court. There might be a trial. For there to be a trial, there has to be a crime. Oh God. A crime against Erin. Rape? Abduction? Murder? It’s not a new concept, that she could be hurt, but talking about it so matter-of-factly is like being shocked awake from a hazy nap. Oh God oh God oh God. Coffee and the word court twist in my abdomen. I wipe my palms on my jeans. “Okay.”
He smiles too big. Starts talking in Serbian. The translator relays, but it’s hard to concentrate on what he’s saying when Ilić is still chattering in the background. “ . . . Great, so our controller has started the recording now, and everything is being recorded like we talked about, okay? Before we talk at all about what happened, there are a few things I’m going to go through with you. The first thing I need to say is the fact that it’s about nine a.m. on the fourteenth of July, and we’re in the interview suite in Novi Sad. As you know, my name is Jovan Ilić and I’m a detective. Perfect. Now can you please say your full name for me, so that anyone who ever watches this knows who you are?”
I clear my sticky throat. “Carina Corbett.”
“Great. There’s only our controller watching right now, but the reason we’re recording this conversation today is so that you don’t have to go through everything over and over again with different people. You just talk about it once with me, and then anyone else who wants to know—who’s part of this investigation—can watch this and see what you had to say. So, as you can see, there are cameras there and there—” he points to the small domes in each corner of the room “—and there are microphones here and here.” They’re little white squares on the walls, the ones I’d earlier mistaken for plugs, with a black fuzzy circle in the middle. “That camera is looking at you, because you’re the most important bit, while the other one is looking at the whole room. So everything that we do and everything that we say in this room is being recorded on video and audio, okay? I just want to be sure you understand all of that, okay?”
If he says okay one more time I’m in danger of ramming his black marker pen down his throat.
“Okay.”
“Now, the purpose of this conversation today is for you to tell me everything you can about the last time you saw your friend Erin. And I just want to be completely clear to you that you’re not under any suspicion or in any trouble whatsoever. Your head contains information, perhaps even information that you don’t know about, and it’s my job to try to capture that information from you. To help us find Erin. That’s what this conversation is for, and that’s what my role is today. Are you happy you understand everything?”
“Yes,” I say, although happy is the last thing I feel.
“Excellent.” Danijel’s face is devoid of emotion, his voice completely deadpan. I know he’s probably concentrating on translating and doing his job, but it’s unnerving. I watch Ilić talk animatedly instead. “Before we do get into any of that, I want to explain some basic concepts to you while we’re here. First, I want you to know that you can tell me absolutely anything and I won’t be embarrassed. I won’t judge you. I’ve heard it all before, okay? You can tell me anything you want in this room, as long as it’s the truth as best you know it. And short of telling me you’ve killed someone, or done something really bad, nothing you tell me in this room can be used to get you into trouble. I don’t care if you’ve been smoking some weed, or taking other drugs, or you got really drunk and slept with someone you shouldn’t have. None of us care about that stuff.
“What we need, and what is the absolute most important thing, is that you tell the truth. It’s also very important that if I ask you a question and you don’t know the answer, please tell me you don’t know. Don’t try to guess, or make something up because you think it’s helpful or you want me to be happy. It’s absolutely all right if you don’t know the answer to something. I just want you to be honest and tell me that you don’t know, okay?”
“Okay.” Strangely, the box-ticking monologue he’s reeling off is actually helping me relax. Well, as much as I’m capable of relaxing during a police interview with an acute anxiety disorder. I’m the kind of person who needs to know everything about a situation in order to process it, so Ilić’s overexplaining makes it feel less alien. I’ve never been in this situation before, and on TV it looks so stressful. Probably because they edit the box-ticking monologue out.
I gather my thoughts, lining them up in a way that feels logical and helpful.
“Fantastic. And finally, I also want you to remember that I wasn’t there, during the events you’re going to describe to me. So it’s very important that with everything you tell me about, you tell me in as much detail as possible. So anyone listening can close their eyes, and picture in their own heads exactly what you’re seeing. Does that make sense? Great. Oh, and also if you need to take a break at any point, you want a drink or you need to use the restroom or something like that, or if you just need five minutes to breathe, then please let me know and it shouldn’t be a problem.”
“Okay.” And it sort of is.
“All right, so, Carina, I’d like you to sit back, take your time, really think, and tell me—in as much detail as you can—everything you can about the last time you saw Erin.”
“The whole day?”
Danijel translates. Ilić nods. “The whole day.”