Michael Robotham - Shatter

Dozens of people must have seen Christine Wheeler on Friday afternoon- motorists, passengers, pedestrians, toll collectors, people walking their dogs in Leigh Woods- and they each expected someone else to get involved and help her.

Ruiz grunts sceptically. ‘Don’t you just love people?’

He closes his eyes and exhales slowly as if trying to warm the world. ‘Where to now?’ he asks.

‘I want to see Leigh Woods.’

‘Why?’

‘It might help me understand.’

We emerge out of Junction 19 and take back roads towards Clifton, winding between playing fields, farms and streams that are brackish and sullen as the floodwaters recede. Small sections of the blacktop are dry for the first time in weeks.

Pill Road becomes Abbots Leigh Road and the gorge drops dramatically away on our left behind the trees. According to local legend it was created by two giant brothers, Vincent and Goram, who carved it with a single pickaxe. The giants died and their bodies floated down the Avon River to form islands in the Bristol Channel.

Ruiz likes the legend (and the names). Maybe it appeals to his sense of the absurd.

A sandstone arch marks the entrance to Leigh Woods. The narrow access road, flanked by trees, leads to a small car park, a dead end. This is where they found Christine Wheeler’s car, parked amongst the fallen leaves. It is not a place that she would necessarily know about unless she were given directions or had been here before.

Thirty yards from the car park is a signpost pointing out several walking trails. The red trail takes an hour and covers two miles to the edge of Paradise Bottom with views over the gorge. The purple trail is shorter but takes in Stokeleigh Camp, an iron-age hill fort.

Ruiz walks ahead of me, pausing occasionally for me to catch up. I’m not wearing the right shoes for this. Neither was Christine Wheeler. How naked and exposed she must have felt. How cold and frightened. She walked this path in high heels. She stumbled and fell. She tore her skin on brambles. Someone was issuing instructions to her, leading her away from the car park.

Fallen leaves are piled like snowdrifts along the ditches and the breeze shakes droplets from the branches. This is ancient wood-land and I can smell it in the damp earth, rotting boles and mould: a cavalcade of reeks. Occasionally, between the trees I glimpse a railing fence that marks the boundary. Above and beyond it there are roofs of houses.

During the Troubles in Ireland, the IRA would often bury arms caches in open countryside, using line of sight between three landmarks to hide the weapons in the middle of fields with nothing on the surface to mark the spot. British patrols searching for these caches learned to how to study the landscape, picking out features that caught the eye. It might be a different coloured tree, or a mound of stones or a leaning fencepost.

In a sense I’m doing the same thing- looking for reference points or psychological markers that could indicate Christine Wheeler’s last walk. I take out my mobile and check the signal strength. Three bars. Strong enough.

‘She took this path.’

‘What makes you so sure?’ asks Ruiz.

‘It has less cover. He wanted to be able to see her. And he wanted her to be seen.’

‘Why?’

‘I’m not sure yet.’

Most crimes are a coincidence- a juxtaposition of circumstances. A few minutes or a few yards one way or the other and the crime may not have happened. This one was different. Whoever did this knew Christine Wheeler’s phone numbers and where she lived. He told her to come here. He chose what shoes she wore.

How? How did you know her?

You must have seen her somewhere before. Perhaps she was wearing the red shoes.

Why bring her here?

You wanted her to be seen, but this is too open, too public. Someone could have stopped her or called the police. Even on a miserable day like Friday there were people on the walking trails. If you truly wanted to isolate her you could have chosen almost anywhere. Somewhere private, where you had more time.

And rather than kill her privately, you made it very public. You told her to walk onto the bridge and climb over the railing. That sort of control is mind-boggling. Unbelievable.

Christine didn’t fight back. There were no skin cells under her fingernails or defence bruises. You didn’t need ligatures to subdue her or physical force. Nobody saw you with Christine Wheeler in her car. None of the witnesses mention someone with her. You must have been waiting for her; somewhere you felt safe- a hiding place.

Ruiz has paused to wait for me. I walk past him and leave the footpath, climbing up a small slope. At the top of the ridge there is a knoll formed by three trees. The view of Avon Gorge is uninterrupted. I kneel on the grass, feeling the wetness of the earth soak through to my trousers and the elbows of my coat. The path is visible for a hundred yards in either direction. It’s a good hiding place, a place for innocent courting or illicit stalking.

A sudden burst of sunshine breaks through the scurrying clouds. Ruiz has followed me up the slope.

‘Someone uses this place to watch people,’ I explain. ‘See how the grass is crushed. Somebody lay on their stomach with their elbows here.’

Even as I utter the words my gaze is snagged by a piece of yellow plastic caught in a mesh of brambles a dozen yards away. Rising to my feet, I close the gap, leaning between thorny branches until my fingers close around the plastic raincoat.

Ruiz lets out a long whistling breath. ‘You’re a freak. You know that.’

The engine is running. The heater at full blast. I’m trying to dry my trousers.

‘We should call the police,’ I say.

‘And say what?’ counters Ruiz.

‘Tell them about the raincoat.’

‘It changes nothing. They already know she was in the woods. People saw her. They saw her jump.’

‘But they could search the woods, seal it off.’

I can picture dozens of uniformed officers doing a fingertip search and police dogs following a scent.

‘You know how much rain we’ve had since Friday. There won’t be anything left to find.’

He takes a tin of boiled sweets from his jacket pocket and offers me one. The rocklike sweet rattles against his teeth as he sucks.

‘What about her mobile phone?’

‘It’s in the river.’

‘The first one- the one she took from home.’

‘It wouldn’t tell us anything we don’t know already.’

I know Ruiz thinks I’m reading too much into this or that I’m looking for some sort of closure. It’s not true. There is only one natural convincing closure- the one none of us can avoid. The one Christine Wheeler collided with at seventy-five miles per hour. I just want the truth for Darcy’s sake.

‘You said she had money problems. I’ve known loan sharks to get pretty heavy.’

‘This is a step up from breaking legs.’

‘Maybe they pushed her so hard that she cracked.’

I stare at my left hand where my thumb and forefinger are ‘pillrolling’. This is how the tremors start, a rhythmic back and forth of two digits at three beats per second. If I concentrate hard on my thumb, willing it to stop moving, I can halt the tremor momentarily.

Clumsily, I try to hide my hand in my pocket. I know what Ruiz is going to say.

‘One more stop-off,’ I argue. ‘Then we’ll go home.’

The police vehicle lock-up in Bristol is near Bedminster Railway Station, hidden behind soot-stained walls and barbed wire fences. The ground shakes each time a train rattles past or brakes hard at a platform.

The place smells of grease, transmission fluid and sump oil. A mechanic peers through the dirt-stained glass of an office and lowers a teacup to a saucer. Dressed in orange overalls and a checked shirt he meets us at the door, bracing one arm on the frame as if waiting to hear a password.