Michael Robotham - Shatter

‘If you do as I say.’

‘You won’t hurt her.’

‘I’ll keep her safe. Look at that- Alice is nodding. She’s happy. She’s waiting for you.’

Sylvia is downstairs. She opens the main door. I tell her not to look at anyone or signal anyone. She says the street is empty.

‘Now, walk to your car. Get in. Plug in the hands free. You have to talk and drive.’

‘I don’t have one.’

‘Don’t lie to me, Sylvia. There’s one in the glove compartment.’

‘Where am I going?’

‘You’re coming to me. I’m going to give you directions. Don’t take any wrong turns. Don’t flash your lights or sound your horn. I’ll know. Don’t disappoint me. Go straight ahead, through the roundabout and turn right into Sydney Road.’

‘Why are you doing this? What have we done to you?’

‘Don’t even get me started.’

‘I’ve done nothing wrong. Alice has done nothing.’

‘You’re all the same.’

‘No, we’re not. I’m not like you say-’

‘I’ve watched you, Sylvia. I’ve seen what you’re like. Tell me where you are.’

‘Passing the museum.’

‘Turn into Warminster Road. Stay on it until I tell you.’

Sylvia changes her tactics, trying to find a way through to me. ‘I can be very good to you,’ she says, hesitatingly. ‘I’m very good in bed. I can do things. Whatever you want.’

‘I know you can. How many times have you cheated on your husband?’

‘I don’t cheat-’

‘Liar!’

‘I’m telling the truth.’

‘I want you to slap yourself, Sylvia.’

She doesn’t understand.

‘Slap yourself on the face… as punishment.’

I give her a moment to obey. I hear nothing. I whack the phone against my fist. ‘You hear that, Sylvia. Alice took your punishment again. Her lip is bleeding. Don’t blame me, little one, it’s Mummy’s fault.’

Sylvia screams at me to stop but I’ve heard enough of her mewling, pathetic pesthole excuses. I slam the phone into my fist again and again.

She sobs. ‘Please don’t hurt her. Please. I’m coming.’

‘Alice is such a sweet thing. I have tasted her tears. They’re like sugar water. Has she had her period yet?’

‘She’s only eleven.’

‘I can make her bleed. I can make her bleed from places that you can’t even imagine.’

‘No. I’m coming. Where’s Alice?’

‘She’s waiting for you.’

‘Let me talk to her?’

‘She can hear you.’

‘I love you, baby.’

‘How much do you love her? Will you take her place?’

‘Yes.’

‘Come to me, Sylvia. She’s waiting. Come and take her home.’

The tree is an ogre with outstretched arms. A body hangs beneath it, suspended from a branch, motionless, white. Not white. Naked. Hooded.

Behind the branches, across the valley a monochrome landscape is slowly emerging from the darkness. Fields divided by hedges and patches of evergreen scrub. Twisting trails of beech trees that follow the streams. The sun is hiding behind a bruised sky. Nosegays and primroses and daffodils are beneath the ground. Colours might not exist.

The wide metal gate has been sealed off with blue and white police tape. Spotlights have been set up around an adjacent barn. The weathered wood seems to be whitewashed by the brightness.

More police tape seals off the farm track. Vehicle tyre prints are being photographed and cast in plaster. At the end of the track is a narrow lane, blocked in both directions by police cars and vans.

The police have erected makeshift barriers and a checkpoint. I have to give my name to a constable with a clipboard. Picking my way along the track, avoiding the puddles, I reach the barn and can look across a ploughed field to where the body is hanging.

Duckboards cover the rest of the journey, white plastic stepping-stones, leading to the base of the tree, fifty feet away. The blades of a plough have created a teardrop shape around the trunk. The furrowed earth is dusted with frost.

Veronica Cray is standing beside the body, looking like an executioner. A naked woman, hanging by one arm, is suspended from a branch by a set of handcuffs. Her left wrist is raw and bleeding beneath the locked metal band. A white pillowcase encases her head, bunching on her shoulders. Her toes barely touch the earth.

Lying on the ground at her feet is a mobile phone. The battery is dead. She’s wearing knee-length leather boots. One of the heels has broken off. The other is embedded in mud. A flashgun fires in rapid bursts, creating the illusion that the body is moving like a stop-motion animation puppet.

The same Geordie pathologist who examined Christine Wheeler’s car at the lock-up is working again, issuing instructions to the photographer. For the next few hours at least the scene belongs to the evidence gatherers.

Ruiz is already here, slapping his arms against the cold. I woke him at the pub and told him to meet me.

‘You interrupted a great dream,’ he says. ‘I was in bed with your wife.’

‘Was I there?’

‘If I ever have that dream, we can no longer be friends.’

Both of us listen as the pathologist briefs Veronica Cray. The unofficial cause of death is exposure.

‘Hypostasis indicates that this is where she died. Upright. There are no obvious signs of sexual assault or defence wounds. But I’ll know more when I get her to the lab.’

‘What about time of death?’ she asks.

‘Rigor mortis has set in. A body normally loses a degree of temperature every hour but it dropped below freezing last night. She could have been dead for twenty-four hours, perhaps longer.’

The pathologist scrawls his signature on a clipboard and goes back to his staff. The DI motions me to follow her. We pick our way across the duckboards to the tree.

Today I have my walking stick- a sign that my medication is having less effect. It is a nice stick, made of polished walnut with a metal tip. I’m less self-conscious about using it nowadays. Either that or I’m more frightened of my leg locking up and sending me over.

The photographer is shooting close-ups of the woman’s fingers. Her nails are slim and painted. Her nakedness is marbled with lividity and I can smell the sweet sourness of her perfume and urine.

‘You know who this is?’

I shake my head.

The DI gently rolls the hood upwards, bunching the fabric in her fists. Sylvia Furness is staring at me, her head hanging forward, twisted to one side by the weight of her body. Her ash blonde hair is matted into curls and is darker at her temples.

‘Her daughter, Alice, reported her missing late Monday afternoon. Alice was dropped home after a horse-riding lesson and found the front door open. No sign of her mother. Clothes lying on the floor. A missing persons report was filed on Tuesday morning.’

‘Who discovered her body?’ I ask.

She motions over my shoulder towards a farmer who is sitting in the front seat of a farm truck. ‘Last night he thought he heard foxes. He came out early to take a look. He found Sylvia Furness’s car parked in the barn. Then he saw the body.’

Veronica Cray lets the hood fall and cover Sylvia’s face. The death scene has a surreal, abstract, achingly theatrical sensibility; a whiff of sawdust and face paint, as if somehow it has been laid out like this for someone to find.

‘Where is Alice now?’

‘Being looked after by her grandparents.’

‘What about her father?’

‘He’s flying back from Switzerland. He’s been away on business.’

DI Cray plunges her hands into the pockets of her overcoat.

‘This make any sense to you?’

‘Not yet.’

‘There’s no sign of a struggle or defence injuries. She hasn’t been raped or tortured. She froze to death, for glory’s sake.’