Michael Robotham - Shatter

I glance back at Veronica Cray and Monk.

‘There’s something behind the wall. Get some lights in here.’

They won’t let me dig. They won’t let me watch. Teams of two officers are taking turns, using shovels and buckets to scrape away the floor. A police car has been driven across the lawn and its headlights are allowing them to see.

Shielding my eyes to the brightness, I can see Charlie through the kitchen window. The blonde paramedic has given her something warm to drink and wrapped a blanket around her shoulders.

‘Someone you love is going to die,’ Gideon told me. He asked me to choose. I couldn’t do it. I wouldn’t do it. ‘No choice is still a choice,’ he said. ‘I’m going to let Julianne decide.’ The other thing Gideon said was that I would remember him. Whether he died today or spent a lifetime in prison, he wouldn’t be forgotten.

Julianne told me that she didn’t love me any more. She said that I was a different person to the one she married. She was right. Mr Parkinson has seen to that. I am different- more pensive, philosophical and melancholic. This disease has not broken me against a rock, but it is like a parasite with tentacles coiling inside me, taking over my movements. I try not to let it show. I fail.

I don’t want to know if she’s had an affair with Eugene Franklin or Dirk Cresswell. I don’t care. No, that’s not true. I do care. It’s just that I care more about getting her back safely. I am to blame, but this is not about seeking redemption or easing a swollen conscience. Julianne will never forgive me. I know that. I will give her whatever she wants. I will make her any promise. I will walk away. I will let her go. Just let her be alive.

Monk calls for help. Two more officers join him. The digging has exposed the lowest edge of the plywood. They’re going to rip down the wall.

Dust and dirt reflect in the beams of the headlights, penetrating the cavity. Julianne’s body is inside, curled in a foetal ball, with her knees touching her chin and hands cradling her head. I catch a whiff of the urinous smell and see the blueness of her skin.

Other men’s hands reach into the cavity and lift her body out. Monk takes her from the others and carries her into the light, stepping over a mound of earth and placing her on a stretcher. Her head is encased in plastic tape. The headlights have turned her body to silver.

A blonde paramedic pulls a hose from Julianne’s mouth, replacing it with her lips, forcing air into her lungs. They’re cutting the tape from her head.

‘Pupils dilated. Her abdomen is cold. She’s hypothermic,’ says the paramedic, yelling to her partner. ‘I got a pulse.’

They roll Julianne gently onto her back. Blankets cover her nakedness. The blonde paramedic is kneeling on the stretcher putting heat packs on Julianne’s neck.

‘What’s wrong?’ I ask.

‘Her core body temperature is too low. Her heartbeat is erratic.’

‘Make her warm.’

‘I wish it were that easy. We have to get her to hospital.’

She’s not shivering. She’s not moving at all. An oxygen mask is pulled over her face.

‘Coming through.’

Julianne’s eyes flutter open, blind as a kitten in the brightness. She tries to say something but it comes out as a weak groan. Her mouth moves again.

‘Charlie’s safe. She’s fine,’ I tell her.

The paramedic issues instructions. ‘Tell her not to talk.’

‘Just lie still.’

Julianne isn’t listening. Her head moves from side to side. She wants to say something. I press my cheek close to the oxygen mask. ‘He said she was in a box. I tried not to breathe. I tried to save the air.’

‘He lied.’

Her hand snakes out from beneath the blankets and grabs my wrist. It’s like ice.

‘I remembered what you said. You said he wouldn’t kill Charlie. Otherwise I would have stopped breathing.’

I know.

We’re almost at the doors to the ambulance. Charlie comes sprinting out of the house, across the grass. Two detectives try to stop her. She feints left and goes right, ducking under their arms.

Ruiz hooks her around the waist and carries her the final few yards. She throws herself at Julianne, calling her Mummy. I haven’t heard her use the word in four years.

‘Be careful. Don’t squeeze her too hard,’ warns the young blonde paramedic.

‘Do you have children?’ I ask her.

‘No.’

‘You’ll learn it doesn’t hurt when they squeeze you hard.’

It’s a typical spring day with the mist being burned away early and the sky so high and blue it seems impossible that space is a dark domain. The stream looks clear, shallow at the edges where the gravel is clean and eddies swirl around the grasses.

On the far side of the valley the road is visible through the budding trees, curling around a church and dipping out of sight over the ridge.

‘Any bites?’

‘Nope,’ says Charlie.

I keep an eye on Emma who is playing with Gunsmoke, a gold-coloured Labrador I rescued from the pound. He is a very earnest dog who regards me as the cleverest human being he has ever met. Unfortunately, apart from loyalty, he is almost totally useless. As a guard dog he barks whenever I get home and completely ignores strangers until they’ve been in the house for upwards of an hour at which point he howls as though he has just discovered Myra Hindley coming through the window. The girls love him, which is why I got him.

We’re fishing in a stream about a quarter of a mile from the road, through a farm gate and across a field. A picnic rug is spread out on a grassy bank, just near the gravel beach.

Charlie has adopted the Vincent Ruiz mode of fishing, eschewing bait, lures or hooks. This is not for philosophical reasons (or beer drinking), it is because she cannot bring herself to putting a ‘living breathing’ earthworm on a hook.

‘What if he has a whole earthworm family who will miss him if he gets eaten?’ she argued.

At this point I tried to explain that earthworms were asexual and didn’t have families but that just confused the issue.

‘It’s just a worm. It doesn’t have any feelings.’

‘How do you know? Look, it’s squirming, trying to get away.’

‘It’s squirming because it’s a worm.’

‘No. He’s saying, “Please, please don’t stick that big hook in me.”’

‘I didn’t know you could speak worm.’

‘I can read his body language.’

‘Body language.’

‘Yes.’

I gave up after that. Now I’m fishing with bread, watching Emma, who has managed to sit in a puddle and get pondweed in her hair. The worm debate is lost on her. Gunsmoke is off chasing rabbits.

The changing seasons are more obvious since we moved out of London, the cycle of death and rebirth. There are blossoms on the trees and daffodils in every garden.

It has been six months since that afternoon on the bridge. Autumn and winter have gone. Darcy is dancing at the Royal Ballet School in London. She’s still living with Ruiz and constantly threatening to leave if he doesn’t stop treating her like a child.

I haven’t heard any news of Gideon Tyler. There has been no military court martial or official statement. Nobody seems to know where Gideon is being held and if he’ll ever stand trial. I did hear from Veronica Cray that the military chopper had to land after leaving Bristol. Apparently, Gideon managed to pick the lock on his handcuffs using the frames of his glasses. He forced the pilot to put down in a field, but according to the Ministry of Defence he was recaptured quickly.

I also heard from Helen Chambers and Chloe. They sent me a postcard from Greece. Helen has opened the hotel for the season and Chloe is going to a local school on Patmos. They didn’t say very much in the card. Thank you seemed to be the gist of it.