Michael Robotham - Shatter

Gideon is still talking. He calls me Mr Joe.

‘Why are you still looking for your wife?’ I ask.

‘She took something that belongs to me.’

‘What did she take?’

‘Ask her.’

‘I would, but she’s dead. She drowned.’

‘If you say so, Mr Joe.’

‘You don’t believe it.’

‘I know her better than you do.’

It’s a rasping statement, laced with hatred.

‘What were you doing with Christine Wheeler’s mobile?’

‘I found it.’

‘That’s a coincidence- finding a phone that belonged to your wife’s oldest friend.’

‘Truth is stranger than fiction.’

‘Did you tell her to jump from the bridge?’

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

‘What about Sylvia Furness?’

‘Name rings a bell. Is she a TV weathergirl?’

‘You made her handcuff herself to a tree and she died of exposure.’

‘Good luck proving that.’

‘Maureen Bracken is alive. She’s going to give us your name. The police are going to find you, Gideon.’

He chuckles. ‘You’re full of shit, Mr Joe. So far you’ve mentioned a suicide, a death due to exposure and a police shooting. Nothing to do with me. You don’t have a single solid, first-hand piece of evidence that links me to any of this.’

‘We have Maureen Bracken.’

‘Never met the woman. Ask her.’

‘I did. She says she met you once.’

‘She’s lying.’

The words are sucked through his teeth as though he’s nibbling on a tiny seed.

‘Help me understand something, Gideon. Do you hate women?’

‘Are we talking intellectually, physically or as a sub-species?’

‘You’re a misogynist.’

‘I knew there’d be a word for it.’

He’s teasing me now. He thinks he’s cleverer than I am. So far he’s right. I can hear a school bell in the background. Children are jostling and shouting.

‘Maybe we could meet,’ I say.

‘Sure. We could do lunch some time.’

‘How about now?’

‘Sorry, I’m busy.’

‘What are you doing?’

‘I’m waiting for a bus.’

Air brakes sound in the silence. A diesel engine knocks and trembles.

‘I have to go, Professor. It’s been nice talking to you. Give my best to Patrick.’

He hangs up. I hit redial. The mobile is turned off.

I look at DI Cray and shake my head. She swings her right boot at a wastepaper bin, which thuds into the opposite wall and bounces off again. The large dent in the side of the bin makes it rock unevenly on the carpeted floor.

The bus door hisses open. Students pile forward, pushing between shoulders. Some of them are carrying papier mache masks and hollowed-out pumpkins. Halloween is two weeks away.

There she is; dressed in a tartan skirt, black tights and bottle green jumper. She finds a seat halfway down the bus and drops her school bag beside her. Strands of hair have escaped from her ponytail.

I swing past her on my crutches. She doesn’t look up. All the seats are taken. I stare at one of the schoolboys, rocking back on forth on my metal sticks. He moves. I sit down.

The older boys have commandeered the back seats, yelling out the windows at their mates. The ringleader has a mouthful of braces and bum fluff on his chin. He’s watching the girl. She’s picking at her fingernails.

The bus has started moving- stopping, dropping and picking up. The kid with the braces makes his way forward, moving past me. He leans over her seat and snatches her schoolbag. She tries to grab it back but he kicks it along the floor. She asks nicely. He laughs. She tells him to grow up.

I move behind him. My hand seems to clap him gently on the neck. It’s a friendly looking gesture- fatherly- but my fingers have closed on either side of his spine. His eyeballs are bulging and his thick-soled shoes are balancing on their toes.

His mates have come down the bus. One of them tells me to let him go.

I give him a stare. They go quiet. The bus driver, a mud-coloured Sikh in a turban, is looking in the rear mirror.

‘Is there a problem?’ he shouts.

‘I think this kid is sick,’ I say. ‘He needs some fresh air.’

‘You want me to stop?’

‘He’ll get a later bus.’ I look at the boy. ‘Won’t you?’ I move my hand. His head nods up and down.

The bus pulls up. I guide the boy to the back door.

‘Where’s his bag?’

Somebody passes it forward.

I let him go. He drops onto a seat at the bus shelter. The door closes with a hiss. We pull away.

The girl is looking at me uncertainly. Her schoolbag is on her lap now, beneath her folded arms.

I take a seat in front of her, resting my crutches on the metal rail.

‘Do you know if this bus goes past Bradford Road?’ I ask.

She shakes her head.

I open a bottle of water. ‘I can never read those maps they put up in the shelters.’

Still she doesn’t answer.

‘Isn’t it amazing how we buy water in plastic bottles. When I was a kid you would have died of thirst looking for bottled water. My old man says it’s a disgrace. Soon they’ll be charging us for clean air.’

No response.

‘I guess you’re not supposed to talk to strangers.’

‘No.’

‘That’s OK. It’s good advice. It’s cold today, don’t you think? Especially for a Friday.’

She takes the bait. ‘It’s not Friday. It’s Wednesday.’

‘Are you sure?’

‘Yes.’

I take another sip of water.

‘What difference does the day make?’ she asks.

‘Well you see the days of the week each have a different character. Saturdays are busy. Sundays are slow. Fridays are supposed to be full of promise. Mondays… well we all hate Mondays.’

She smiles and looks away. For a brief moment we are complicit. I enter her mind. She enters mine.

‘The guy with the braces- he a friend of yours?’

‘No.’

‘He gives you problems?’

‘I guess.’

‘You try to avoid him but he finds you?’

‘We catch the same bus.’

She’s beginning to get the hang of this conversation.

‘You got brothers?’

‘No.’

‘You know how to knee someone? That’s what you do- knee him right in the you-know-where.’

She blushes. Sweet.

‘Want to hear a joke?’ I say.

She doesn’t answer.

‘A woman gets on a bus with her baby and the bus driver says, “That’s the ugliest baby I’ve ever seen.” The woman is furious but pays the fare and sits down. Another passenger says, “You can’t let him get away with saying that. You go back and tell him off. Here, I’ll hold the monkey for you.”‘

I get a proper laugh this time. It’s the sweetest thing you ever heard. She’s a peach, a sweet, sweet peach.

‘What’s your name?’

She doesn’t answer.

‘Oh right, I forgot, you’re not supposed to talk to strangers. I guess I’ll have to call you Snowflake.’

She stares out the window.

‘Well, this is my stop,’ I say, pulling myself up. A crutch topples into the aisle. She bends and picks it up for me.

‘What happened to your leg?’

‘Nothing.’

‘Why do you need the crutches?’

‘Gets me a seat on the bus.’

Again she laughs.

‘It’s been nice talking to you, Snowflake.’

Maureen Bracken has tubes flowing into her and tubes flowing out. It has been two days since the shooting and a day since she woke, pale and relieved, with only a vague idea of what happened. Every few hours a nurse gives her morphine and she floats into sleep again.

She is under police guard at the Bristol Royal Infirmary- a landmark building in a city with precious few landmarks. Inside the front entrance at a welcome desk there are volunteers wearing blue and white sashes. They look like geriatric beauty queens who missed their pageant by forty years.