Shatter (12 page)

‘What’s that?’

‘Why didn’t someone stop her? A naked woman walks out of her house, gets in a car, drives fifteen miles and climbs over a safety rail on a bridge and nobody stops her. Can you explain that?’

‘It’s cal ed the bystander effect.’

‘It’s cal ed apathy,’ he grunts.

‘No.’

I tel him the story of Kitty Genovese, a New York waitress who was attacked outside her apartment building in the mid-sixties. Forty neighbours heard her cries for help or watched her being stabbed but none of them cal ed the police or tried to help her. The attack lasted thirty-two minutes. She escaped twice but each time her assailant caught her and stabbed her again.

The cal er who eventual y raised the alarm phoned a friend first to ask what he should do. Then he went next door and asked a neighbour to make the cal because ‘he didn’t want to get involved.’ Kitty Genovese died only two minutes after the police arrived.

The crime caused a massive outpouring of anger and disbelief in America and abroad. People blamed overcrowding, urbanisation and poverty for creating a generation of city dwel ers with the morals and behaviour of rats in cages.

Once the hysteria died down and proper studies were done, psychologists identified the bystander effect. If a group of people witness an emergency they look to each other to react, expecting someone else to take the lead. They are lul ed into inaction by a pluralistic ignorance.

Dozens of people must have seen Christine Wheeler on Friday afternoon— motorists, passengers, pedestrians, tol col ectors, people walking their dogs in Leigh Woods— and they each expected someone else to get involved and help her.

Ruiz grunts sceptical y. ‘Don’t you just love people?’

He closes his eyes and exhales slowly as if trying to warm the world. ‘Where to now?’ he asks.

‘I want to see Leigh Woods.’

‘Why?’

‘It might help me understand.’

We emerge out of Junction 19 and take back roads towards Clifton, winding between playing fields, farms and streams that are brackish and sul en as the floodwaters recede. Smal sections of the blacktop are dry for the first time in weeks.

Pil Road becomes Abbots Leigh Road and the gorge drops dramatical y away on our left behind the trees. According to local legend it was created by two giant brothers, Vincent and Goram, who carved it with a single pickaxe. The giants died and their bodies floated down the Avon River to form islands in the Bristol Channel.

Ruiz likes the legend (and the names). Maybe it appeals to his sense of the absurd.

A sandstone arch marks the entrance to Leigh Woods. The narrow access road, flanked by trees, leads to a smal car park, a dead end. This is where they found Christine Wheeler’s car, parked amongst the fal en leaves. It is not a place that she would necessarily know about unless she were given directions or had been here before.

Thirty yards from the car park is a signpost pointing out several walking trails. The red trail takes an hour and covers two miles to the edge of Paradise Bottom with views over the gorge.

The purple trail is shorter but takes in Stokeleigh Camp, an iron-age hil fort.

Ruiz walks ahead of me, pausing occasional y for me to catch up. I’m not wearing the right shoes for this. Neither was Christine Wheeler. How naked and exposed she must have felt.

How cold and frightened. She walked this path in high heels. She stumbled and fel . She tore her skin on brambles. Someone was issuing instructions to her, leading her away from the car park.

Fal en leaves are piled like snowdrifts along the ditches and the breeze shakes droplets from the branches. This is ancient wood-land and I can smel it in the damp earth, rotting boles and mould: a cavalcade of reeks. Occasional y, between the trees I glimpse a railing fence that marks the boundary. Above and beyond it there are roofs of houses.

During the Troubles in Ireland, the IRA would often bury arms caches in open countryside, using line of sight between three landmarks to hide the weapons in the middle of fields with nothing on the surface to mark the spot. British patrols searching for these caches learned to how to study the landscape, picking out features that caught the eye. It might be a different coloured tree, or a mound of stones or a leaning fencepost.

In a sense I’m doing the same thing— looking for reference points or psychological markers that could indicate Christine Wheeler’s last walk. I take out my mobile and check the signal strength. Three bars. Strong enough.

‘She took this path.’

‘What makes you so sure?’ asks Ruiz.

‘It has less cover. He wanted to be able to see her. And he wanted
her
to be seen.’

‘Why?’

‘I’m not sure yet.’

Most crimes are a coincidence— a juxtaposition of circumstances. A few minutes or a few yards one way or the other and the crime may not have happened. This one was different.

Whoever did this knew Christine Wheeler’s phone numbers and where she lived. He told her to come here. He chose what shoes she wore.

How? How did you know her?

You must have seen her somewhere before. Perhaps she was wearing the red shoes.

Why bring her here?

You wanted her to be seen, but this is too open, too public. Someone could have stopped her or cal ed the police. Even on a miserable day like Friday there were people on the walking trails. If you truly wanted to isolate her you could have chosen almost anywhere. Somewhere private, where you had more time.

And rather than kil her privately, you made it very public. You told her to walk onto the bridge and climb over the railing. That sort of control is mind-boggling. Unbelievable.

Christine didn’t fight back. There were no skin cel s under her fingernails or defence bruises. You didn’t need ligatures to subdue her or physical force. Nobody saw you with Christine Wheeler in her car. None of the witnesses mention someone with her. You must have been waiting for her; somewhere you felt safe— a hiding place.

Ruiz has paused to wait for me. I walk past him and leave the footpath, climbing up a smal slope. At the top of the ridge there is a knol formed by three trees. The view of Avon Gorge is uninterrupted. I kneel on the grass, feeling the wetness of the earth soak through to my trousers and the elbows of my coat. The path is visible for a hundred yards in either direction. It’s a good hiding place, a place for innocent courting or il icit stalking.

A sudden burst of sunshine breaks through the scurrying clouds. Ruiz has fol owed me up the slope.

‘Someone uses this place to watch people,’ I explain. ‘See how the grass is crushed. Somebody lay on their stomach with their elbows here.’

Even as I utter the words my gaze is snagged by a piece of yel ow plastic caught in a mesh of brambles a dozen yards away. Rising to my feet, I close the gap, leaning between thorny branches until my fingers close around the plastic raincoat.

Ruiz lets out a long whistling breath. ‘You’re a freak. You know that.’

The engine is running. The heater at ful blast. I’m trying to dry my trousers.

‘We should cal the police,’ I say.

‘And say what?’ counters Ruiz.

‘Tel them about the raincoat.’

‘It changes nothing. They already
know
she was in the woods. People saw her. They saw her jump.’

‘But they could search the woods, seal it off.’

I can picture dozens of uniformed officers doing a fingertip search and police dogs fol owing a scent.

‘You know how much rain we’ve had since Friday. There won’t be anything left to find.’

He takes a tin of boiled sweets from his jacket pocket and offers me one. The rocklike sweet rattles against his teeth as he sucks.

‘What about her mobile phone?’

‘It’s in the river.’

‘The first one— the one she took from home.’

‘It wouldn’t tel us anything we don’t know already.’

I know Ruiz thinks I’m reading too much into this or that I’m looking for some sort of closure. It’s not true. There is only one natural convincing closure— the one none of us can avoid. The one Christine Wheeler col ided with at seventy-five miles per hour. I just want the truth for Darcy’s sake.

‘You said she had money problems. I’ve known loan sharks to get pretty heavy.’

‘This is a step up from breaking legs.’

‘Maybe they pushed her so hard that she cracked.’

I stare at my left hand where my thumb and forefinger are ‘pil rol ing’. This is how the tremors start, a rhythmic back and forth of two digits at three beats per second. If I concentrate hard on my thumb, wil ing it to stop moving, I can halt the tremor momentarily.

Clumsily, I try to hide my hand in my pocket. I know what Ruiz is going to say.

‘One more stop-off,’ I argue. ‘Then we’l go home.’

15

The police vehicle lock-up in Bristol is near Bedminster Railway Station, hidden behind soot-stained wal s and barbed wire fences. The ground shakes each time a train rattles past or brakes hard at a platform.

The place smel s of grease, transmission fluid and sump oil. A mechanic peers through the dirt-stained glass of an office and lowers a teacup to a saucer. Dressed in orange overal s and a checked shirt he meets us at the door, bracing one arm on the frame as if waiting to hear a password.

‘Sorry to disturb you,’ says Ruiz.

‘Is that what you’re gonna do?’

The mechanic makes a show of wiping his hands on a rag.

‘A car was towed here from Clifton a few days ago. A blue Renault Laguna. It belonged to a woman who jumped from the suspension bridge.’

‘You here to pick it up?’

‘We’re here to look at it.’

This answer doesn’t seem very palatable. He swirls it around his mouth for a moment and spits it into the rag. Glancing sideways at me, he contemplates whether I could possibly be a policeman.

‘You waiting to see a badge, son?’ says Ruiz.

He nods absently, no longer so sure of himself.

‘I’m retired,’ continues Ruiz. ‘I was a detective inspector with the London Metropolitan Police. You’re going to humour me today and you know why? Because al I want to do is look inside a car that isn’t the subject of a criminal investigation and is only here until a member of the deceased’s family comes and picks it up.’

‘I suppose that’s OK.’

‘Say it like you mean it, son.’

‘Yeah, sure, it’s over there.’

The blue Renault is parked along the north wal of the workshop beside a crumpled wreck that must have taken at least one life. I open the driver’s door of the Renault and let my eyes adjust to the darkness inside. The interior light isn’t strong enough to chase away the shadows. I don’t know what I’m looking for.

There is nothing in the glove compartment or beneath the seats. I search the pockets in the doors. There are tissues, moisturiser, make-up and loose change. Bunched beneath the seat is a rag for wiping the windscreen and a de-icing tool.

Ruiz has popped the boot. It’s empty except for the spare tyre, a tool kit and a fire extinguisher.

Going back to the driver’s door, I sit in the seat and close my eyes trying to imagine a wet Friday afternoon with rain streaking the windscreen. Christine Wheeler drove fifteen miles from her home, naked beneath a raincoat. The demister worked overtime, the heater as wel . Did she open the window to cal for help?

My eyes are drawn to the right where the glass has been smudged by fingerprints and something else. I need more light.

I yel to Ruiz. ‘I need a torch!’

‘What you got?’

I point to the markings.

The mechanic fetches an electric lantern with a bulb in a metal cage. The power cord is draped over his shoulder. Giant shadows slide across the brick wal s and soak away as the light moves.

Holding the lantern on the opposite side of the glass, I can just make out the faintest of lines. It’s like seeing a child’s finger drawings on a misty window after the rain has gone. These lines weren’t drawn by a child. They were transferred from something pressed against the glass.

Ruiz looks at the mechanic. ‘You smoke?’

‘Yeah.’

‘I want a cigarette.’

‘You’re not supposed to smoke in here.’

‘Humour me.’

I look at Ruiz mystified. I’ve seen him give up smoking at least twice, but never take it up on the spur of the moment.

I fol ow them to the office. Ruiz lights a cigarette and draws in deeply, staring at the ceiling as he exhales.

‘Here, have one too,’ he says, offering me one.

‘I don’t smoke.’

‘Just do it.’

The mechanic lights up. Meanwhile, Ruiz picks squashed cigarette butts from the tin ashtray and begins crushing the grey ash into a powder.

‘You got a candle?’

The mechanic searches the drawers until he finds one. Lighting it, Ruiz drips wax into the centre of a saucer and pushes the base of the candle into the melted wax until it stands upright.

Then he takes a coffee cup and rol s it sideways over the flame, turning the surface black with soot.

‘It’s an old trick,’ he explains, ‘taught to me by a guy cal ed George Noonan, who talks to dead people. He’s a pathologist.’

Ruiz begins scraping soot from the mug into the growing pile of ash and gently mixing them together with the point of a pencil.

‘Now we need a brush. Something soft. Fine.’

Christine Wheeler had a smal bag of make-up in the glove compartment of the car. Retrieving it, I tip the contents onto the desk— a lipstick, mascara, eyeliner and a polished steel compact holding blusher and a brush.

Ruiz picks up the brush gently as though it might crumble between his thumb and forefinger. ‘This should do. Bring the lantern.’

Returning to the Renault, he sits in the driver’s seat with the door propped open and the lantern on the opposite side of the window. Careful not to breathe too heavily, he gently begins

‘painting’ the mixture of soot and ash onto the inside of the glass.

Most of it fal s from the brush and dusts his shoes, but just enough of it clings to the faint markings on the interior window. As if by magic, symbols begin to form and then turn into words.

HELP ME