‘It’s okay,’ Patrick replied. ‘So you saw Beatrix’s picture in the media?’

‘Yes. In the newspaper.’

‘After she was reported missing in 1987?’

‘Yes. She was on page four of the Mail. I remember that.’

‘How did you know it was her?’

‘If you look at photos of her, she has a birthmark on the right side of her face, on her cheek, just below her eye. It’s small and quite pale – but it’s very distinctive.’

‘You mean the shape of it?’

‘Yes. I always thought it looked like butterfly wings.’

I’d thought the same thing.

I remembered the birthmark. I remembered the light green, almost grey colour of Beatrix’s eyes in the photograph of her, how her mouth had been turned up in the merest hint of a smile, her slim build, her short, dark bob.

‘How did it feel when you saw her in the paper?’

‘I felt,’ the woman started, but then stopped again. ‘I don’t know. I guess I felt surprised to start with. And then when I was definitely sure that it was her, I felt shocked, and a terrible sense of guilt. I think it was that, more than anything. Guilt is such a dreadful burden to carry.’

‘What did you feel guilty about?’

‘It’s pretty obvious, isn’t it?’ the woman said, although there was no malice in her voice, no disdain. ‘I did an awful thing to Beatrix – an awful, terrible thing.’

Absolute silence.

On the tape.

In the office.

‘I hurt her,’ the woman said, her words breaking up, ‘and then I betrayed her, and then – when it was finally over – I buried her in the deepest hole I could find.’

43

I buried her in the deepest hole I could find.

I was listening to Beatrix Steards’s killer.

‘Is there any part of you now that thinks what you did back then might have been justified?’ Patrick asked, the twang of his Mancunian accent pulling my thoughts back into focus. ‘It’s easier sometimes to look at decisions we’ve made –’

‘No.’

The woman cut him off, her answer unambiguous, but, once again, there was no aggression in her tone, no sense that she was shouting Patrick down, admonishing him, even correcting him.

‘Not a single part of you thinks there was any justification for –’

‘No,’ she repeated, cutting him short again. ‘Not a single part.’

I rewound the recording, so I could listen again. Patrick’s question had been so jarring, I almost didn’t process it properly the first time: how could he ask if there was a justification for murder?

‘I’ve tried to forget,’ the woman continued, ‘but there’s not a day that goes by when I don’t think of what I did. My choices are like a disease eating away at me –’

Suddenly, the woman stopped talking.