Shatter (21 page)

‘Yes.’

‘Did you know her wel ?’

She shakes her head.

I don’t have enough information to explain to Darcy what happened today or ten days ago. Her mother and Sylvia Furness were in business together but what else did they share? The man who kil ed them knew things about them. He chose them for a reason.

This is a search that must go backwards rather than forwards. Address books. Diaries. Wal ets. Emails. Letters. Telephone messages. The movements of both victims have to be traced— where they went, who they spoke to, what shops they visited, where they had their hair done. What friends do they have in common? Were they members of the same gym? Did they share a doctor or a drycleaner or a palm reader? And this is important: where did they buy their shoes?

A key rattles in the lock. Julianne, Charlie and Emma come bustling into the hal way with polished paper shopping bags and red cheeks from the cold. Charlie is in her school uniform.

Emma is wearing new boots that look too big for her but she’l grow into them before winter is over.

Julianne looks at Darcy. ‘Are you dressed for dancing or double pneumonia?’

‘I’ve been practicing.’

She turns to me. ‘And what have you been doing?’

‘He’s been helping me,’ says Darcy.

Julianne gives me one of her impenetrable looks; the same look that makes our children confess immediately to wrongdoing and sends unwelcome Seventh Day Adventists jostling for the front gate.

I sit Emma on the table and unzip her boots.

‘Where did you go this morning?’ asks Julianne.

‘I had a cal from the police.’

There is something in my tone that makes her turn and fix her gaze on mine. No words are spoken, but she knows there has been another death. Darcy tickles Emma under the arms.

Julianne glances at her and then back to me. Again, no words are exchanged.

Perhaps this is what happens when two people have been married for sixteen years: it gets so that they know what the other is thinking. It’s also what happens when you’re married to someone as intuitive and perceptive as Julianne. I have made a career out of studying human behaviour but like most in my profession I’m lousy at psychoanalysing myself. I have a wife for that. She’s good. Better than any therapist. Scarier.

‘Can you take me into town?’ Darcy asks me. ‘I need a few things.’

‘You should have asked me to get them,’ answers Julianne.

‘I didn’t think.’

A sudden tight smile covers Julianne’s annoyance. Darcy goes upstairs to change.

Julianne begins unpacking groceries. ‘She can’t stay here indefinitely, Joe.’

‘I cal ed her aunt in Spain today and left a message for her. I’m also talking to her headmistress.’

Julianne nods, only partial y satisfied. ‘Wel , tomorrow I’m interviewing more nannies. If I find someone we’l need the spare room. Darcy has to go.’

She opens the fridge door and arranges eggs in a tray.

‘Tel me what happened this morning.’

‘Another woman is dead.’

‘Who is it?’

‘Christine Wheeler’s business partner.’

Julianne is speechless. Stunned. She stares at the grapefruit in her hand, trying to decide if she was putting it in the fridge or taking it out. She doesn’t want to hear any more. Details matter to me but not to her. She closes the fridge and steps around me, taking her silent verdict upstairs.

I wish I could make her understand that I didn’t choose to get involved in this. I didn’t choose to watch Christine Wheeler jump to her death or have her daughter turn up on my doorstep.

Julianne used to love my sense of fairness and compassion and my hatred of hypocrisy. Now she treats me like I have no other role to play except to raise my children, perform a handful of lectures and wait for Mr Parkinson to steal what he hasn’t already taken.

Even when Ruiz came to dinner last night she took a long while to relax.

‘I’m surprised at you, Vincent,’ she told him. ‘I thought
you
would have talked Joe out of this.’

‘Out of what?’

‘This nonsense.’ She looked at him over her wine glass. ‘I thought you retired. Why aren’t you playing golf?’

‘I have actual y hired a hitman to bump me off if I ever leave the house wearing tartan trousers.’

‘Not a golfer.’

‘No.’

‘What about bowling or driving a caravan around the country?’

Ruiz laughed nervously and looked at me as though he no longer envied my life.

‘I hope you never retire, Professor.’

From upstairs there are raised voices. Julianne is shouting at Darcy.

‘What are you doing? Get away from my things.’

‘Ow! You’re hurting me.’

I take the stairs two at a time and find them in our bedroom.

Julianne is gripping Darcy’s forearm, squeezing it hard to stop her getting away. The teenager is bent over, cupping something against her stomach as if hiding it.

‘What’s wrong?’

‘I caught her going through my things,’ says Julianne. I look at the dresser. The drawers are open.

‘No, I wasn’t,’ says Darcy.

‘What were you doing?’

‘Nothing.’

‘It doesn’t look like nothing,’ I say. ‘What were you looking for?’

She blushes. I haven’t seen her blush before.

She straightens and moves her arms. A smal dark crimson stain is visible in the crotch of her track pants.

‘My period started. I looked in the bathroom, but I couldn’t find any pads.’

Julianne looks mortified. She lets go of Darcy and tries to apologise.

‘I am so sorry. You should have said something. You could have asked me.’

Ignoring my inertia, she takes Darcy by the hand and leads her to the en-suite. As the door closes, Julianne’s eyes connect with mine. Normal y so poised and unflappable, she has become a different person around Darcy and she blames me.

26

I was thirty-one years old when I understood what it was like to watch someone die. A Pashtun taxi driver, with psoriasis on his joints, expired as I watched. We had made him stand
for five days until his feet swelled to the size of footballs and the shackles cut into his ankles. He didn’t sleep. He didn’t eat.

This is an approved ‘stress and duress position’. It’s in the manual. Look it up. SK 46/34.

His name was Hamad Mowhoush and he’d been arrested at a checkpoint in southern Afghanistan after a roadside bomb killed two Royal Marines and wounded three others,
including a mate of mine.

We put a sleeping bag over Hamad’s head and bound it with wire. Then we rolled him back and forth and sat on his chest. That’s when his heart gave out.

Some folks claim torture isn’t an effective way to get reliable information because the strong defy pain and the weak will say anything to make it stop. They’re right. Most of the time,
it’s pointless, but if you act quickly and combine the shock of capture with the fear of torture, it’s amazing how often the mind unlocks and all sorts of secrets tumble out.

We weren’t allowed to call the detainees POWs. They were PUCs (persons under control). The military loves acronyms. Another one is HCI (Highly Coercive Interrogation). That’s
what I was trained to do.

When I first saw Hamad someone had sandbagged and zip-tied him. Felini gave him to me. ‘Fuck a PUC,’ he said, grinning. ‘We can smoke him later.’

To ‘fuck a PUC’ meant to beat him up. To ‘smoke’ them meant using a stress position. Felini used to make them stand in the sun in hundred degree heat with their arms
outstretched, holding up five-gallon jerry cans.

We added some of our own touches. Sometimes we doused them in water, rolled them in dirt and beat them with chem lights until they glowed in the dark.

We buried Hamad’s body in lime. I couldn’t sleep for days afterwards. I kept imagining his body slowly bloating and the gas escaping from his chest, making it seem like he was still
breathing. I still think about him sometimes. I wake at night, with a weight on my chest and imagine lying in the ground with the lime burning my skin.

I’m not scared of dying. I know there’s something worse than lying underground, worse than being smoked, or fucked over with chem lights. It happened to me on Thursday May 17,
just after midnight. That’s when I last saw Chloe. She was sitting in the passenger seat of a car, still in her pyjamas, being stolen from me.

That was twenty-nine Sundays ago.

Ten things I remember about my daughter:

1.
The paleness of her skin.

2. Yellow shorts.

3. A homemade Father’s Day card with two stick figures, one large and one small, holding hands.

4. Telling her about Jack and the Beanstalk, but leaving out the bit about the giant wanting to grind Jack’s bones to make his bread.

5. The time she tripped over and opened up a cut above her eye that needed two and a half stitches. (Is there such a thing as a half-stitch? Perhaps I made this up to impress her.)
6. Watching her play an Indian squaw in a primary school production of Peter Pan.

7. Taking her to see a European cup tie in Munich, even though I missed the only goal while retrieving the Maltesers she dropped beneath her seat.

8. Walking along the seafront at St Mawes on our last holiday together.

9. Teaching her to ride a bicycle without training wheels.

10. Putting down her pet duck when a fox broke into the pen and ripped off its wing

The phone is ringing. I open my eyes. Heavy curtains and blackout blinds make the room almost totally dark. I reach for the telephone.

‘Yeah.’

‘Is that Gideon Tyler?’ The accent is pure Belfast.

‘Who wants to know?’

‘Royal Mail.’

‘How did you get this number?’

‘It was inside a package.’

‘What package?’

‘You posted a package to a Chloe Tyler seven weeks ago. We were unable to deliver it. The address you provided appears to be out-of-date or incorrect.’

‘Who are you?’

‘This is the National Return Letter Centre. We handle undeliverable mail.’

‘Can you try another address?’

‘What address, sir?’

‘You must have records… on computer. Type in the name Chloe Tyler, see what comes up. Or you could try Chloe Chambers.’

‘We don’t have such a capability, sir. Where should we return the parcel?’

‘I don’t want it returned. I want it delivered.’

‘That has not been possible, sir. What action would you like us to take?’

‘I paid the fucking postage. You deliver it.’

‘Please don’t swear, sir. We have permission to hang up on customers who use abusive language.’

‘Fuck off!’

I slam the handset down. It bounces on the cradle and settles again. The phone rings again. At least I didn’t break it.

My father is calling. He wants to know when I’m coming to see him.

‘I’ll come tomorrow.’

‘What time?’

‘Afternoon.’

‘What time in the afternoon?’

‘What does it matter— you never go anywhere.’

‘I might go to bingo.’

‘Then I’ll come in the morning.’

27

Alice Furness has three aunts, two uncles, two grandparents and a great grandfather who al seem to be competing to show the most compassion. Alice can’t take a step without one of them jumping to her side and asking her how she feels, if she’s hungry, or what they can get for her?

Ruiz and I are made to wait in the living room. The large semi-detached house on the outskirts of Bristol belongs to Sylvia’s sister, Gloria, who seems to be holding the clan together.

She’s in the kitchen, discussing with other family members whether we should be al owed to interview Alice.

The great grandfather isn’t taking part. He’s sitting in an armchair, staring at us. His name is Henry and he’s older than Methuselah (one of my mother’s sayings).

‘Gloria,’ Henry bel ows, frowning towards the kitchen.

His daughter appears. ‘What is it, Dad?’

‘These fel as want to interview our Alice.’

‘We know that, Dad, that’s what we’re discussing.’

‘Wel , hurry up then. Don’t keep them waiting.’

Gloria smiles apologetical y and goes back to the kitchen.

Sylvia Furness must have been the youngest sister. Her older siblings have entered that long, uncertain period of middle age where years are not a faithful measure of life. Their husbands are less vocal or interested— I can see them through the French doors in the back garden, smoking and discussing men’s business.

The debate in the kitchen is getting heated. I can hear servings of pop psychology and clichés. They’re protective of Alice, which I understand, but she’s already talked to the detectives.

Agreement is reached. One aunt wil sit with Alice during the interview— a thin woman in a dark skirt and cardigan. Her name is Denise and like a magician she produces a never-ending supply of tissues from the sleeve of her cardigan.

Alice has to be coaxed from a computer screen. She is a sul en-faced pre-teen, with a down-turned mouth and apple cheeks that owe more to her diet than her bone structure. Dressed in jeans and a rugby jumper, her arms are folded around a bundle of white fur— a rabbit with long pink-fringed ears that lie flat along its body.

‘Hel o, Alice.’

She doesn’t acknowledge me. Instead she asks for a cup of tea and a biscuit. Denise obeys without hesitation.

‘When is your father due to arrive?’ I ask.

She shrugs.

‘You must miss him. Does he go away often?’

‘Yes.’

‘What does he do?’

‘He’s a drug dealer.’

Denise draws a sharp breath. ‘That’s not very nice, dear.’

Alice corrects herself. ‘He works for a drug company.’ She sniffs at her aunt. ‘It’s just a joke, you know.’