Michael Robotham - Shatter

‘The thing I don’t understand,’ he says, without looking up at me, ‘is why did she go walking in the woods? If she wanted to kill herself, why not go straight to the bridge and jump off?’

‘She could have been making up her mind?’

‘Naked?’

He’s right. It does seem bizarre. The same is true of the body art. Suicide is the ultimate act of self loathing, but it’s not usually characterised by public self abuse and humiliation.

My eyes are still scanning the photographs. They come to rest on one of them. I see myself standing on the bridge. The perspective makes it look as though I’m close enough to touch her, to reach out and grab her before she falls.

Abernathy notices the same photograph. Rising from his desk, he walks to the door, opening it before I get to my feet.

‘It was a bad day at the coal face, Professor. We all have them. Make your statement and you can go home.’

The phone on his desk is ringing. I’m still in the doorway as he answers it. I can hear only one side of the conversation.

‘You’re sure? When did she last see her?… OK… And she hasn’t heard from her since? Right… Is she at home now?…

‘Send someone to the house. Pick her up. Make sure they get a photograph. I don’t want a sixteen-year-old identifying a body unless we’re bloody certain it’s her mother.’

My stomach drops. A daughter. Sixteen. Suicide is not a matter of self determination or free will. Someone is always left behind.

It takes me ten minutes to walk from the Boat House in Eastville Park to Stapleton Road. Avoiding the industrial estates and the slime-covered canal, I follow the concrete brutality of the M32 flyover.

The plastic shopping bags are cutting into my fingers. I put them down on the footpath and rest. I’m not far from home now. I have my supplies: meals in plastic trays, a six pack of beer, a slice of cheesecake in a plastic triangle- my treats for a Saturday night, purchased from a Paki grocer who keeps a shotgun under his counter, next to the porn magazines in their plastic wrappers.

The narrow streets cut in four directions, flanked by terraces and flat-fronted shops. An off-licence. A bookmakers. The Salvation Army selling second hand clothes. Posters warn against kerb crawling and urinating in public and, I love this one, putting up posters. Nobody takes a blind bit of notice. This is Bristol- city of lies, greed and corrupt politicians. The right hand always knows what the left is doing: robbing it blind. That’s something my dad would say. He’s always accusing people of ripping him off.

The wind and rain have stripped leaves from the trees along Fishponds Road, filling the gutters. A street sweeping machine, squat with spinning wheels, weaves between the parked cars. Shame it can’t pick up the human garbage- strung-out slum kids who want me to fuck them or buy crack from them.

One of the whores is standing on the corner. A car pulls up. She negotiates, throwing her head back and laughing like a horse. A doped horse. Don’t ride her, mate, you don’t know where she’s been.

At a cafe on the corner of Glen Park and Fishponds, I hang my waterproof on a hook beside the door and my hat next to it, along with my orange scarf. The place is warm and smells of boiled milk and toast. I choose a table by the window and take a moment to comb my hair, pressing the metal teeth hard against my scalp as I pull it backward from my crown to the nape of my neck.

The waitress is big-boned and almost pretty, a few years shy of being fat. Her ruffled skirt brushes against my thigh as she passes between the tables. She’s wearing a plaster on her finger.

I take out my notebook and a pencil that is sharp enough to maim. I begin writing. The date comes first. Then a list of things to do.

There is a customer at a table in the corner. A woman. She’s sending text messages on her mobile. If she looks at me I’ll smile back.

She won’t look, I think. Yes, she will. I’ll give her ten seconds. Nine… eight… seven… six… five…

Why am I bothering? Uppity bitch. I could wipe the sneer off her face. I could stain her cheeks with mascara. I could make her question her own name.

I don’t expect every woman to acknowledge me. But if I say hello to them or smile or pass the time of day, they should at least be polite enough to respond in kind.

The woman at the library, the Indian one, with hennaed hands and disappointed eyes, she always smiles. The other librarians are old and tired and treat everyone like book thieves.

The Indian woman has slender legs. She should wear short skirts and make the most of them instead of covering them up. I can only see her ankles when she crosses her legs at her desk. She does it often. I think she knows I’m watching her.

My coffee has arrived. The milk should be hotter. I will not send it back. The waitress with the almost-pretty face would be disappointed. I will tell her next time.

The list is almost finished. There are names down the left-hand column. Contacts. People of interest. I will cross each of them off as I find them.

Leaving coins on the table, I dress in my coat, my hat and my scarf. The waitress doesn’t see me leave. I should have handed her the money. She would have had to look at me then.

I can’t walk quickly with the shopping bags. Rain leaks into my eyes and gurgles in the downpipes. I am here now, at the end of Bourne Lane, outside a gated forecourt, fenced off and topped with barbed wire. It was once a panel-beaters or some sort of workshop with a house attached.

The door has three deadlocks- a Chubb Detector, a five pin Weiser and a Lips 8362C. I start at the bottom, listening to the steel pins retracting in their cylinders.

I step over the morning mail. There are no lights in the hallway. I removed the bulbs. Two floors of the house are empty. Closed off. The radiators are cold. When I signed the lease, the landlord Mr Swingler asked if I had a big family.

‘No.’

‘Why do you need such a big house?’

‘I have big dreams,’ I said.

Mr Swingler is Jewish but looks like a skinhead. He also owns a boarding house in Truro and a block of flats in St Pauls, not far from here. He asked me for references. I didn’t have any.

‘Do you have a job?’

‘Yes.’

‘No drugs. No parties. No orgies.’

He might have said ‘corgis’, I couldn’t understand his accent, but I paid three months rent in advance, which shut him up.

Taking a torch from on top of the fridge, I return to the hall and collect the mail: a gas bill, a pizza menu, and a large white envelope with a school crest in the top left corner.

I take the envelope to the kitchen and leave it sitting on the table while I pack away the shopping and open a can of beer. Then I sit and slide my finger beneath the flap, tearing a ragged line.

The envelope contains a glossy magazine and a letter from the admissions secretary of Oldfield Girls School in Bath.

Dear Mrs Tyler,

In reference to your request for addresses, I’m afraid that we don’t keep on-going records of our past students but there is an Old Girls website. You will need to contact the convenor Diane Gillespie to get a username, pin and password to access the secure section of the site containing the contact details of old girls.

I am enclosing a copy of the school yearbook for 1988 and hope it will bring back some memories.

Good luck with your search.

Yours sincerely,

Belinda Casson

The front page of the yearbook has a photograph of three smiling girls, in uniform, walking through the school gates. The school crest has a Latin quotation: ‘Lux et veritas’ (Light and Truth).

There are more photographs inside. I turn the pages, running my fingers over the images. Some of them are class photographs on a tiered stage. Girls at the front are seated with knees together and hands clasped on their laps. The middle row girls are standing and those at the back must be perched on an unseen bench. I study the captions, the names, the class, the year.