Shatter (19 page)

‘Can I talk to her again?’

‘OK
.
She’s listening.’

‘Baby, can you hear me? It’s OK. Don’t be scared. Mummy is going to come and get you. I promise. I love you.’

‘That was very touching, Sylvia. Are you naked, yet?’

‘Yes.’

‘Walk to the window and open the curtains.’

‘Why?’

‘I can see everywhere, Sylvia. I can tell you all about your bedroom and your wardrobe, the clothes on the hangers, your shoes…’

‘Who are you?’

‘I’m the man who’s going to fuck your daughter to death if you don’t do exactly as I say.’

‘I just want to know your name.’

‘No you don’t. You want to make a connection. You want to develop a bond between us because you think I’ll be less likely to hurt Alice. Don’t play mind games with me, Sylvia. I’m a
professional. I’m a mind-fuck expert. I do this for a living. I did it for my country.’

‘What does that mean?’

‘It means I know what you’re thinking. I know all about you. I know where you live. I know what friends you have. I’m going to give you another test, Sylvia. Remember what happened
last time. I know one of your friends: her name is Helen Chambers.’

‘What about Helen?’

‘I want you to tell me where she is.’

‘I don’t know. I haven’t seen her in years.’

‘Liar!’

‘No, it’s true. She sent me an email a few weeks ago.’

‘What did it say?’

‘She-she-she said she was coming home. She wanted to meet up.’

‘Syl-vee-a, don’t lie to me.’

‘I’m not.’

‘YOU‘RE A FUCKING LIAR!’

‘No.’

‘Are you naked yet?’

Tearfully, ‘Yes.’

‘You haven’t opened the curtains.’

‘Yes I have.’

‘That’s good. Now go to your wardrobe. I want you to find your black boots. The ones with the pointy toes and fuck-me heels. You know the pair. I want you to put them on.’

I hear her looking for them. I imagine her on her knees, scrabbling on the floor.

‘I can’t find them.’

‘You can.’

‘I have to put the phone down.’

‘No. If you put the phone down, Alice dies. It’s very simple.’

‘I’m trying.’

‘You’re taking too long. I am going to take the blindfold off Alice. Do you know what that means? She can recognise me. I’ll have to kill her. I’m undoing the knot. When she opens
her eyes, she dies.’

‘I found them! They’re here!’

‘Put them on.’

‘I have to put the phone down to zip them up.’

‘No you don’t.’

‘It’s not poss—’

‘Do you think I’m stupid, Sylvia? Do you think I haven’t done this before? There are dead girls up and down this country. You read about them in the newspapers and see their
pictures on the TV. Missing teenagers. Their bodies never found. I did that! It was me! Don’t fuck with me, Sylvia.’

‘I won’t. You will let Alice go. I mean, if I do what you say, you’ll let her go?’

‘One or two get spared, but only if someone is willing to take their place. Are you willing, Sylvia? Don’t disappoint me. Don’t disappoint Alice. Either you do it for me or she does it for
me.’

‘Yes.’

I direct her to the bathroom. In the second drawer of the vanity there is a lipstick. Glossy. Pink.

‘Look at yourself in the mirror, Sylvia. What do you see?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Oh, come on. What do you see?’

‘Me.’

‘A slut. Wear the lipstick for me. Make yourself beautiful.’

‘I can’t do it.’

‘You do it for me or she does it for me.’

‘All right.’

‘Now in the bottom drawer— there’s a pink bag— take it with you.’

‘I can’t see a pink bag. It’s not here.’

‘Yes it is. Don’t lie to me again.’

‘I won’t.’

‘Are you ready?’

‘Yes.’

I tell her to walk to the front door of the flat, to take her car keys and the pink bag.

‘Open the door, Sylvia. Take one step at a time.’

‘And you’ll let Alice go.’

‘If you do as I say.’

‘You won’t hurt her.’

‘I’ll keep her safe. Look at that— Alice is nodding. She’s happy. She’s waiting for you.’

Sylvia is downstairs. She opens the main door. I tell her not to look at anyone or signal anyone. She says the street is empty
.

‘Now, walk to your car. Get in. Plug in the hands free. You have to talk and drive.’

‘I don’t have one.’

‘Don’t lie to me, Sylvia. There’s one in the glove compartment.’

‘Where am I going?’

‘You’re coming to me. I’m going to give you directions. Don’t take any wrong turns. Don’t flash your lights or sound your horn. I’ll know. Don’t disappoint me. Go straight ahead,
through the roundabout and turn right into Sydney Road.’

‘Why are you doing this? What have we done to you?’

‘Don’t even get me started.’

‘I’ve done nothing wrong. Alice has done nothing.’

‘You’re all the same.’

‘No, we’re not. I’m not like you say—’

‘I’ve watched you, Sylvia. I’ve seen what you’re like. Tell me where you are.’

‘Passing the museum.’

‘Turn into Warminster Road. Stay on it until I tell you.’

Sylvia changes her tactics, trying to find a way through to me. ‘I can be very good to you,’ she says, hesitatingly. ‘I’m very good in bed. I can do things. Whatever you want.’

‘I know you can. How many times have you cheated on your husband?’

‘I don’t cheat—’

‘Liar!’

‘I’m telling the truth.’

‘I want you to slap yourself, Sylvia.’

She doesn’t understand.

‘Slap yourself on the face… as punishment.’

I give her a moment to obey. I hear nothing. I whack the phone against my fist. ‘You hear that, Sylvia. Alice took your punishment again. Her lip is bleeding. Don’t blame me, little
one, it’s Mummy’s fault.’

Sylvia screams at me to stop but I’ve heard enough of her mewling, pathetic pesthole excuses. I slam the phone into my fist again and again.

She sobs. ‘Please don’t hurt her. Please. I’m coming.’

‘Alice is such a sweet thing. I have tasted her tears. They’re like sugar water. Has she had her period yet?’

‘She’s only eleven.’

‘I can make her bleed. I can make her bleed from places that you can’t even imagine.’

‘No. I’m coming. Where’s Alice?’

‘She’s waiting for you.’

‘Let me talk to her?’

‘She can hear you.’

‘I love you, baby.’

‘How much do you love her? Will you take her place?’

‘Yes.’

‘Come to me, Sylvia. She’s waiting. Come and take her home.’

24

The tree is an ogre with outstretched arms. A body hangs beneath it, suspended from a branch, motionless, white. Not white. Naked. Hooded.

Behind the branches, across the val ey a monochrome landscape is slowly emerging from the darkness. Fields divided by hedges and patches of evergreen scrub. Twisting trails of beech trees that fol ow the streams. The sun is hiding behind a bruised sky. Nosegays and primroses and daffodils are beneath the ground. Colours might not exist.

The wide metal gate has been sealed off with blue and white police tape. Spotlights have been set up around an adjacent barn. The weathered wood seems to be whitewashed by the brightness.

More police tape seals off the farm track. Vehicle tyre prints are being photographed and cast in plaster. At the end of the track is a narrow lane, blocked in both directions by police cars and vans.

The police have erected makeshift barriers and a checkpoint. I have to give my name to a constable with a clipboard. Picking my way along the track, avoiding the puddles, I reach the barn and can look across a ploughed field to where the body is hanging.

Duckboards cover the rest of the journey, white plastic stepping-stones, leading to the base of the tree, fifty feet away. The blades of a plough have created a teardrop shape around the trunk. The furrowed earth is dusted with frost.

Veronica Cray is standing beside the body, looking like an executioner. A naked woman, hanging by one arm, is suspended from a branch by a set of handcuffs. Her left wrist is raw and bleeding beneath the locked metal band. A white pil owcase encases her head, bunching on her shoulders. Her toes barely touch the earth.

Lying on the ground at her feet is a mobile phone. The battery is dead. She’s wearing knee-length leather boots. One of the heels has broken off. The other is embedded in mud. A flashgun fires in rapid bursts, creating the il usion that the body is moving like a stop-motion animation puppet.

The same Geordie pathologist who examined Christine Wheeler’s car at the lock-up is working again, issuing instructions to the photographer. For the next few hours at least the scene belongs to the evidence gatherers.

Ruiz is already here, slapping his arms against the cold. I woke him at the pub and told him to meet me.

‘You interrupted a great dream,’ he says. ‘I was in bed with your wife.’

‘Was I there?’

‘If I ever have
that
dream, we can no longer be friends.’

Both of us listen as the pathologist briefs Veronica Cray. The unofficial cause of death is exposure.

‘Hypostasis indicates that this is where she died. Upright. There are no obvious signs of sexual assault or defence wounds. But I’l know more when I get her to the lab.’

‘What about time of death?’ she asks.

‘Rigor mortis has set in. A body normal y loses a degree of temperature every hour but it dropped below freezing last night. She could have been dead for twenty-four hours, perhaps longer.’

The pathologist scrawls his signature on a clipboard and goes back to his staff. The DI motions me to fol ow her. We pick our way across the duckboards to the tree.

Today I have my walking stick— a sign that my medication is having less effect. It is a nice stick, made of polished walnut with a metal tip. I’m less self-conscious about using it nowadays. Either that or I’m more frightened of my leg locking up and sending me over.

The photographer is shooting close-ups of the woman’s fingers. Her nails are slim and painted. Her nakedness is marbled with lividity and I can smel the sweet sourness of her perfume and urine.

‘You know who this is?’

I shake my head.

The DI gently rol s the hood upwards, bunching the fabric in her fists. Sylvia Furness is staring at me, her head hanging forward, twisted to one side by the weight of her body. Her ash blonde hair is matted into curls and is darker at her temples.

‘Her daughter, Alice, reported her missing late Monday afternoon. Alice was dropped home after a horse-riding lesson and found the front door open. No sign of her mother. Clothes lying on the floor. A missing persons report was filed on Tuesday morning.’

‘Who discovered her body?’ I ask.

She motions over my shoulder towards a farmer who is sitting in the front seat of a farm truck. ‘Last night he thought he heard foxes. He came out early to take a look. He found Sylvia Furness’s car parked in the barn. Then he saw the body.’

Veronica Cray lets the hood fal and cover Sylvia’s face. The death scene has a surreal, abstract, achingly theatrical sensibility; a whiff of sawdust and face paint, as if somehow it has been laid out like this for someone to find.

‘Where is Alice now?’

‘Being looked after by her grandparents.’

‘What about her father?’

‘He’s flying back from Switzerland. He’s been away on business.’

DI Cray plunges her hands into the pockets of her overcoat.

‘This make any sense to you?’

‘Not yet.’

‘There’s no sign of a struggle or defence injuries. She hasn’t been raped or tortured. She froze to death, for glory’s sake.’

I know she’s thinking about Christine Wheeler. The similarities are impossible to ignore, yet for every one of them I could find an equal y compel ing difference. Sometimes in mathematics, randomness itself becomes a pattern.

She’s also contemplating whether Patrick Ful er could have been involved. He was released from custody on Sunday morning having been charged with stealing Christine Wheeler’s mobile.

Uniformed officers have gathered beside the farm shed, waiting to begin a fingertip search of the field. Veronica Cray makes her way towards them, leaving me standing beside the body.

Nine days ago I glimpsed Sylvia Furness through an open door as she undressed in her flat. Her muscles were sculptured from hours in the gym. Now death has turned the sculpture to stone.

Stepping across the duckboards, I reach the perimeter of the roped area and begin walking up the slope towards the oak ridge. My polished cane is useless in the mud. I tuck it under one arm.

The sky has a porcelain quality as the sun fights to break through the high white clouds. The last of the mist has burned off and the val ey has ful y materialised, revealing humpback bridges and cows dotting the pastures.

I reach the fence and try to scramble over it. My leg locks and I fal into a ditch ful of knee-high grass and muddy water. At least it was a soft landing.

Turning back, I scrutinize the scene, watching as the SOCOs lift Sylvia’s body down from the tree and lay it upon a plastic sheet. Nature is a cruel, heartless observer. No matter how terrible the act or disaster, the trees, rocks and clouds are unmoved. Perhaps that is why mankind is destined to chop down the last tree and catch the last fish and shoot the last bird. If nature can be so dispassionate about our fate, why should we care about nature?