Michael Robotham - Shatter

‘Wars don’t end,’ he laughs. ‘Wars thrive because enough men still love them. You meet people who think they can stop wars, one person at a time, but that’s bullshit. They complain that innocent women and children get killed or wounded, people who don’t choose to fight, but I’m betting a lot of them wave their sons and husbands off to war. Knit them socks. Send them food.

‘You see, Joe, not every enemy combatant carries a gun. Old men in rich countries make wars happen. And so do the people who sit on the sofas watching Sky News and voting for them. So spare me your bullshit homilies. There are no innocent victims. We’re all guilty of something.’

I’m not going to argue the morals of war with Gideon. I don’t want to hear his justifications and excuses, sins of commission and omission.

‘Please tell me where they are.’

‘And what are you going to give me?’

‘Forgiveness.’

‘I don’t want forgiveness for what I’ve done.’

‘I’m forgiving you for who you are.’

The statement seems to shake him for a moment.

‘They’re coming to get me, aren’t they?’

‘A chopper is on its way.’

‘Who did they send?’

‘Lieutenant Greene.’

Gideon looks at the mirror. ‘Greenie! Is he listening? His wife Verity has the sweetest arse. She spends every Tuesday afternoon in a budget hotel in Ladbroke Grove fucking a lieutenant colonel from acquisitions. One of the lads from ops put a bug in the room. What a tape! It’s been passed round the whole regiment.’ He smirks and closes his eyes, as if reliving the good times.

‘Could you adjust my glasses for me, Joe?’ he asks.

They’ve slipped down his nose. I lean forward and place my thumb and forefinger on the curved frame, pushing it up to the bridge of his nose. The fluorescent lights catch in the lenses and turn his eyes white. He tilts his head and his eyes are grey again. There doesn’t seem to be any magnification from the lenses.

He whispers. ‘They’re going to kill me, Joe. And if I die, you’ll never find Julianne and Charlie. The ticking clock- we all have one, but I guess mine is running a little faster than most and so is your wife’s.’

A bubble of saliva forms and bursts on my lips as I open them but no words come out.

‘I used to hate time,’ he says. ‘I counted Sundays. I imagined my daughter growing up without me. That was mechanical time, the stuff of clocks and calendars. I deal in something deeper than that now. I collect time from people. I take it away from them.’

Gideon makes it sound as though years can be traded between individuals. My loss can be his gain.

‘You love your daughter, Gideon. I love mine. I can’t possibly understand what you’ve been through, but you won’t let Charlie die. I know that.’

‘Is that who you want?’

‘Yes.’

‘So you’re making a choice.’

‘No. I want them both. Where are they?’

‘No choice is a choice, remember?’ He smiles. ‘Did you ask your wife about her affair? I bet she denied it and you believed her. Look at her text messages. I’ve seen them. She sent one to her boss saying that you suspected something and she couldn’t see him any more. Do you still want to save her?’

A blood-dark shadow shakes my heart and I want to lean across the space between us, one arm drawn back like a bow, and smash my fist into his face.

‘I don’t believe you.’

‘Look at her text messages.’

‘I don’t care.’

His voice erupts in a hoarse laugh. ‘Yes, you do.’

He glances at Ruiz and back to me. ‘I’m going to tell you what I did to your wife. I gave her a choice too. I put her in a box and told her that your daughter was in a box next to her. She could breathe through a hose and stay alive but only by taking her daughter’s air.’

His hands are bolted to the table, yet I can feel his fingers reaching into my head, wedging between the two halves of the cerebellum, levering them apart.

‘What do you think she’ll do, Joe? Will she steal Charlie’s air to stay alive a little longer?’

Ruiz launches himself across the room and hurls his fist into Gideon’s face with a force that would knock him down if his wrists weren’t bolted in place. I hear breaking bones.

Gripping Gideon beneath his lower ribs, he drives his knee into his kidneys, sending bolts of pain shooting through his body. Perspiration. Empty lungs. Fear. Faeces. Ruiz is screaming at him now, pounding his face with his fists, demanding to know the address. For a violent, bloody minute he takes out all his frustrations. He’s no longer a serving member of the police force. Rules don’t apply. This is what Veronica Cray meant.

Waves of pain break and crash on Gideon’s body. His face is already beginning to bruise and swell from the beating, yet he’s not complaining or crying out.

‘Gideon,’ I whisper. His eyes meet mine. ‘I’ll let him do it. I promise you. If you don’t tell me where they are, I’m going to let him kill you.’

A bloody froth forms on his lips and his tongue rolls across his teeth, painting them red. An unearthly smile forms on his face as the muscles contract and relax.

‘Do it.’

‘What?’

‘Torture me.’

I look at Ruiz, who is rubbing his fists. His knuckles are torn.

Gideon goads me. ‘Torture me. Ask me the right questions. Show me how good you are.’

He sees me hesitate and bows his head in the posture of the confessional. ‘What’s wrong? Don’t tell me you’re a sentimentalist. Surely you’re justified in torturing me.’

‘Yes.’

‘I have the information you need. I know exactly where your wife and daughter are. It’s not like you’re uncertain or half-sure. Even if you were fifty per cent certain, you’d be justified. I tortured people for far less. I tortured them because they were in the wrong place at the wrong time.’

He stares at his hands like a man considering his future and discounting it.

‘Torture me. Make me tell you.’

I feel as though someone somewhere has opened a sluice gate and my hostility and anger are draining away. I hate this man more than words can describe. I want to hurt him. I want him dead. But it’s not going to make any difference. He won’t tell me where they are.

Gideon doesn’t want forgiveness or justice or understanding. He has bathed in the blood of a terrible conflict, done the bidding of governments and secret departments and shadowy organisations operating beyond the law. He has broken minds, obtained secrets, destroyed lives and saved countless more. It changed him. How could it not? Yet throughout it all, he clung to the one pure, innocent, untainted thing in his life, his daughter, until she was taken away from him.

I can hate Gideon, but I cannot hate him more than he hates himself.

‘There’s another anomaly,’ says Oliver Rabb, adjusting his crooked bowtie and dabbing at his forehead with a matching handkerchief.

When I don’t answer he keeps talking. ‘Tyler turned on his mobile and turned it off again at 7.35 a.m. It was on for just over twenty-one seconds.’

The information rises and falls over me.

Oliver is looking at me expectantly. ‘You wanted me to check for anomalies. You seemed to think they were important. I think I know what he was doing. He was taking a photograph.’

Finally there is awareness. It’s not a grand vision or a blinding insight. Things have become clearer, clearer than yesterday.

Gideon took photographs of Julianne and Charlie. He used a mobile phone camera, which had to be turned on for the pictures to be taken. The anomalies can been explained. They support a theory.

Oliver follows me upstairs, through the incident room. I don’t notice if detectives are back at their desks. I don’t notice if my left hand is pill rolling or my left arm is swinging normally. These things are unimportant.