Michael Robotham - Shatter

‘You’re being too hard on yourself.’ I say, reaching across the bed to hold her. She shrugs my hands away. I have lost that privilege. I must gain it back. I’m normally so good with words, but now I can’t think of anything to free her from her disappointment in me, to win her heart, to be her boy.

Countless times I told myself there had to be an innocent explanation for the hotel receipt and the lingerie and the phone calls, but instead of believing this, I spent weeks trying to prove Julianne’s guilt.

I stand, swaying. The curtains are open. A cold stream of headlights is edging along Kensington High Street. Above the opposite rooftops I see the glowing dome of the Royal Albert Hall.

Julianne whispers, ‘I don’t know you any more, Joe. You’re sad. You’re so, so sad. And you carry it around with you or it hangs over you like a cloud, infecting everyone around you.’

‘I’m not sad.’

‘You are. You worry about your disease. You worry about me. You worry about the girls. That’s why you’re sad. You think you’re the same man, Joe, but it’s not true. You don’t trust people any more. You don’t warm to them or go out of your way to meet them. You don’t have any friends.’

‘Yes I do. What about Ruiz?’

‘The man who once arrested you for murder.’

‘Jock, then.’

‘Jock wants to sleep with me.’

‘Every man I know wants to sleep with you.’

She turns and gives me a look of pity.

‘For such a clever man, how do you manage to be so stupid and self-absorbed? I’ve seen what you do, Joe. I’ve seen how you study yourself every day, looking for signs, imagining them. You want to blame someone for your Parkinson’s, but there’s nobody to blame. It just happened.’

I have to defend myself.

‘I am the same man. You’re the one who looks at me differently. I don’t make you laugh because when you look at me, you see this disease. And you’re the one who’s distant and distracted. You’re always thinking about work or London. Even when you are at home, your mind is somewhere else.’

Julianne snaps back, ‘Try psychoanalysing yourself, Joe. When did you last truly laugh? Laugh until your stomach hurt and you got tears in your eyes.’

‘What sort of question is that?’

‘You’re terrified of embarrassing yourself. You panic about falling over in public or drawing attention to yourself but you don’t mind embarrassing me. What you did tonight- in front of my friendsI’ve never been so ashamed… I… I…’ She can’t think of the words. She starts again.

‘I know you’re clever, Joe. I know you can read these people; you can rip apart their psyches and target their weaknesses, but these are good people- even Dirk- and they don’t deserve to be ridiculed and humiliated.’

She squeezes her hands between her knees. I have to win something back. Even the worst reconciliation with Julianne will be better than the best pact I could make with myself.

‘I thought I was losing you,’ I say, plaintively.

‘Oh, you have a bigger problem than that, Joe,’ she says. ‘I may already be lost.’

The minute hand has clicked past midnight and the second hand is racing away into a new day. The house is dark. The street is silent. For the past hour I have watched the moon rising above the slate rooftops and the latticed branches, creating shadows in the garden and beneath the eaves.

The sky has a sickly yellow glow from the lights of Bath and the smell of compost adds to the sense of decay and foulness. The mixture is too wet. Good compost is a combination of wet and dry: kitchen scraps, leaves, coffee grounds, eggshells and shredded paper. Too wet and it smells. Too dry and it doesn’t break down.

I know these things because my pop had an allotment for thirty years on waste ground behind the railway yards at Abbey Wood. He had a shed and I remember standing among the tools and flowerpots and seed packets, my shoes cloyed with soil.

Pop looked like a scarecrow in the garden, dressed in rags and an old hat. He grew potatoes mainly and brought them home in a Hessian sack stiff with dried mud. I was made to wash them in the sink with a scrubbing brush. I remember him telling me a story of someone who dug up an old World War II hand grenade among their potatoes and didn’t discover it until they were scrubbing the spuds. It blew them into the garden. I was always careful after that.

I look at my watch again. It’s time.

Keeping low, I follow a grey stone fence along the right side of the garden until I reach the corner of the house. I push through the shrubs. Peer through the window. There are no alarms. No dogs. A forgotten towel flaps on the clothesline, waving to nobody.

Crouching at the back door, I unroll the fabric pouch, laying out my tools: the diamond picks, rakes, combs, snakes, shallow picks and a hand-made tension wrench of black sprung steel fashioned from a small allen key that I flattened at one end with a grinder.

I link my fingers and push them away until tiny bubbles of gas trapped in the fluid between the joints expand and burst making a cracking sound.

The lock is a double plug Yale cylinder. The plug will open clockwise, away from the doorframe. I slide a snake pick into the keyway, feeling it bounce over the pins and increase the torque on the tension wrench. Minutes pass. It’s not an easy lock. I try and fail. One of the middle pins won’t lift up far enough as the pick passes over it.

I reduce the torque on the wrench and start over, concentrating on the back pins. First I try a light torque and moderate pressure, trying to feel for the click when a pin reaches the sheer line and the plug rotates ever so slightly.

The last of the pins is down. The plug rotates completely. The latch turns. The door opens. I step inside quickly and close it behind me, taking a pencil torch from my shirt pocket. The narrow beam of light sweeps over a laundry and the kitchen beyond it. I edge forward, easing my weight on the floorboards, listening for creaks.

The kitchen benches are clear apart from a glass jar of teabags and a bowl of sugar. The electric kettle is still warm. The torch beam picks out labels on metal tins: flour, rice and pasta. There is a drawer for cutlery, another for linen tea towels and a third for odds and ends like hairgrips, pencils, rubber bands and batteries.

It’s a nice house. Neat. A central hallway joins the front and rear. There’s a lounge on my left.

The blue upholstered sofa has large cushions. It faces a coffee table and a TV on a stand. Small brass animals line the mantelpiece next to a wedding photograph and a craft project, homemade candles, a porcelain horse, a mirror surrounded by seashells. I catch sight of my reflection. I look like a long-legged black insect, a night creature hunting its prey.

They’re sleeping upstairs. I am drawn towards them, testing the weight of each step. There are four doors. One must be a bathroom. The others are bedrooms.

There is a sound like an insect trapped against glass. It is a portable music player. Snowflake must have fallen asleep with it plugged into her ears. Her bedroom door is open. Her bed is beneath the window. The curtains only half-closed. A single square of moonlight paints the floor. I cross the room and kneel next to her, listening to her soft sweet breath. She looks like her mother, with the same oval-shaped face and dark hair.

I lean close to her face, breathing as she breathes. Her stuffed animals have been relegated to a box in the corner. Pooh has been usurped by Harry Potter and overpaid football stars.

I used to live in a house like this. My daughter slept down the hall from me. I wonder what she’s doing now? I wonder if she bites her nails; does she sleep on her side; has she grown her hair long; does she wear it out; I wonder if she’s bright, if she’s courageous, if she thinks of me?