Shatter

by Michael Robotham

  A shadow passes the door. I see the bitch’s reflection in the tilted mirror. She goes to the toilet. Her skirt is pulled up, her tights rolled down. Her thighs are pale as candle wax. She stands and flushes, turning to face the mirror, pivoting forward over the sink to examine her face, pulling at the skin around her eyes. She talks to herself. I can’t hear what she says. Her tights are tossed aside. She raises her arms and a nightdress slides over her shoulders and the hem drops to her knees.

  Her daughter has gone to her room. I hear her schoolbag tossed in a corner and the sound of the shower. Later she comes to say good night. Air kisses. Tousled hair. Sweet dreams.

  I’m alone with the bitch. There is no man of the house. He has been evicted, cast out, passed over, disenfranchised; the king is dead, long live the queen!

  She has turned on the TV and watches from her bed, flicking through the channels, a bright square in her eyes. She isn’t really watching. She picks up a book instead. Does she feel me here? Is there a shiver of apprehension or a sense of disquiet, like a ghost leaving footprints on her grave?

  I am the voice she’s going to hear when she dies. My words. I am going to ask her if she’s frightened. I am going to unlock her mind. I am going to stop her heart. I am going to beat her to the floor and feed on her bloody mouth.

  When?

  Soon.

  12

  My legs don’t want to move this morning. It takes harsh words and willpower to swing them from the bed. I stand and pull on a dressing gown. It’s after seven. Charlie should have woken me by now. She’s going to be late for school. I yell out for her. Nobody answers.

  The bedrooms are empty. I make my way downstairs. Two bowls of soggy cereal sit on the kitchen table. The milk has been left out of the fridge.

  The phone rings. It’s Julianne.

  “Hello.”

  There is a beat of silence. “Hi.”

  “How are you?”

  “Good. How’s Rome?”

  “I’m in Moscow. Rome was last week.”

  “Oh, that’s right.”

  “Are you OK?”

  “Fine. Just woke up.”

  “How are my beautiful girls?”

  “Perfect.”

  “How is it that when I’m home they’re capable of being absolutely horrid but around you they’re perfect?”

  “I bribe them.”

  “I remember. Have you found a nanny?”

  “Not yet.”

  “What happened?”

  “I’m still interviewing. I’m looking for Mother Teresa.”

  “You know she’s dead.”

  “How about Scarlett Johansson?”

  “We’re not having Scarlett Johansson look after our children.”

  “Now who’s being picky?”

  She laughs. “Can I talk to Emma?”

  “She’s not here just now.”

  “Where is she?”

  I look at the open door and can hear the rustle of my own breathing in the mouthpiece. “In the garden.”

  “It must have stopped raining.”

  “Uh-huh. How’s the trip?”

  “Painful. The Russians are stalling. They want a better deal.”

  I’m standing at the sink, looking out the window. The lower panes are smeared with condensation. The upper panes frame a blue sky.

  “Are you sure everything is all right?” she asks. “You’re sounding very strange.”

  “I’m fine. I miss you.”

  “I miss you too. I’ve got to go. Bye.”

  “Bye.”

  I hear the click of the phone. As if on cue, Emma comes bounding through the back door with Darcy behind her. The teenager catches the youngster and hugs her tightly. Both are laughing.

  Darcy is wearing a dress. It belongs to Julianne. She must have found it in the ironing basket. The light from the doorway paints the outline of her body within it. Teenage girls don’t feel the cold.

  “Where have you been?”

  “We went for a walk,” she says, defensively. Emma reaches towards me with her arms and I pick her up.

  “Where’s Charlie?”

  “On her way to school—I walked her to the bus stop.”

  “You should have told me.”

  “You were asleep.” She nudges me gently sideways with her hip and picks up the cereal bowl.

  “You should have written a note.”

  She fills the sink with hot water and suds. For the first time she notices my arm is twitching and my leg seems to spasm in sympathy. I haven’t taken my morning medication.

  “So what’s with the shaking thing?”

  “I have Parkinson’s.”

  “What’s that?”

  “It’s a progressive degenerative neurological disorder.”

  Darcy pushes her bra strap onto her shoulder. “Is it contagious?”

  “No. I shake. I take pills.”

  “Is that it?”

  “Pretty much.”

  “My friend Jasmine had cancer. She had to have a bone marrow transplant. She looked cool without any hair. I don’t think I could have done it. I’d rather die.”

  The last sentence has the bluntness and hyperbole of youth. Only teenagers can turn pimples into catastrophes or leukemia into a fashion dilemma.

  “This afternoon I’ll go and see the headmistress of your school…”

  Darcy’s mouth opens in protest. I cut her off. “I’m going to tell her that you’re spending a few days away from school—until the funeral or we decide what you want to do. She’s going to ask questions and want to know who I am.” Darcy doesn’t answer. Instead she turns back to the sink and continues washing a plate. My arm trembles. I need to shower and change. I’m on the stairs when I hear her final remark. “Don’t forget to take your pills.”

  Ruiz arrives just after eleven. His early model, forest green Mercedes is splattered with mud on the fenders and lower doors. It’s the sort of car they’re going to outlaw when emission regulations come into force because entire Pacific atolls disappear every time he refills the tank.

  He has put on weight since he retired, and let his hair grow longer, just over his ears. I can’t tell if he’s contented. Happiness is not a concept that I associate with Ruiz. He confronts the world like a sumo wrestler, slapping his thighs and throwing his weight around.

  Rumpled and careworn as ever, he gives me a crushing handshake. His hands are unfailingly steady. I envy him.

  “Thanks for coming,” I say.

  “What are friends for?”

  He says it without any irony.

  Darcy is standing at the gate, looking like an elf maiden in that dress. Before I can introduce her, Ruiz mistakes her for Charlie and grabs her around the waist, spinning her round.

  She fights at his arms. “Let me go, you pervert!”

  Ruiz puts her down suddenly. He looks at me.

  “You said Charlie had grown.”

  “Not that much.”

  I don’t know if he’s embarrassed. How do you tell? Darcy tugs down the dress and brushes hair from her eyes.

  Ruiz smiles and bows slightly. “No offense meant, miss. I mistook you for a princess. I know a couple who live round here. They turn frogs into princes in their spare time.”

  Darcy looks at me, confused, but she can recognize a compliment. The flush in her face has nothing to do with the cold. Meanwhile, Emma comes flying down the path and hurls herself into his arms. Holding her high in the air, Ruiz seems to be estimating how far he could throw her. Emma calls him Dooda. I have no idea why. It’s a name she’s used ever since she could talk whenever Ruiz came to visit. Her shyness around adults has never applied to him.

  “We have to go,” he says. “I might have found someone who can help us.”

  Darcy looks at me. “Can I come?”

  “I need you to look after Emma. It’s just for a few hours.”

  Ruiz is already at the car. I pause at the passenger door and glance back at Darcy. I hardly know this girl a
nd I’m leaving her alone with my youngest daughter. Julianne would have something to say. Maybe I won’t tell her this part.

  Heading west towards Bristol, we take the coast road to Portishead, along the Severn Estuary. Gulls swing and wheel above the rooftops, working against a blustery wind.

  “She’s a pretty thing,” says Ruiz, dangling his fingers over the steering wheel. “Is she staying with you?”

  “For a few days.”

  “What does Julianne say?”

  “I haven’t told her yet.”

  Nothing changes on his face. “Do you think Darcy is telling you everything—about the mother?”

  “I don’t think she’s lying.” We both know it’s not the same thing.

  I tell him the details of Friday, describing Christine Wheeler’s last moments on the bridge; and how her clothes were found lying on the floor of her house, beside the phone; and how she wrote some sort of sign in lipstick while leaning on the coffee table.

  “Was she seeing anyone?”

  “No.”

  “Any money problems?”

  “Yes, but she didn’t seem to be too worried.”

  “So you think someone threatened her?”

  “Yes.”

  “How?”

  “I don’t know. Blackmail, intimidation… She was terrified.”

  “Why didn’t she call the police?”

  “Maybe she couldn’t.”

  We turn off into a new business park full of metal and glass office buildings. The bitumen roads are starkly gray against the newly planted garden beds.

  Ruiz turns into a car park. The only sign on the building is a plaque beside a buzzer: Fastnet Telecommunications. The receptionist is barely twenty with a pencil skirt, a white blouse and even whiter teeth. Not even the sight of Ruiz interrupts her winning smile.

  “We’re here to see Oliver Rabb,” he says.

  “Please take a seat.”

  Ruiz prefers to stand. There are posters on the walls of beautiful young people, chatting on designer phones that obviously bring them great happiness, wealth and hot dates.

  “Imagine if mobiles had been invented earlier,” says Ruiz. “Custer could have called up the cavalry.”

  “And Paul Revere would have saved himself a long ride.”

  “Nelson could have sent a text from Trafalgar.”

  “Saying what?”

  “I won’t be home for dinner.”

  The receptionist is back. We are taken to a room lined with screens and shelves full of software manuals. It has that new computer smell of molded plastic, solvents and adhesives.

  “What does this Oliver Rabb do?” I ask.

  “He’s a telecommunications engineer—the best, according to my mate at BT. Some guys fix phones. He fixes satellites.”

  “Can he trace Christine Wheeler’s last call?”

  “That’s what we’re going to ask him.”

  Oliver Rabb almost sneaks up on us, appearing suddenly through a second door. Tall and bald, with big hands and a stoop, he seems to present the top of his head as he bows and shakes our hands. A study of tics and eccentricities, he is the sort of man who regards a bow tie and braces as practical rather than a fashion statement.

  “Ask away, ask away,” he says.

  “We’re looking for calls made to a mobile number,” replies Ruiz.

  “Is this investigation official?”

  “We’re assisting the police.”

  I wonder if Ruiz is so good at lying because he’s met so many liars.

  Oliver has logged on to the computer and is running through a series of password protocols. He types Christine Wheeler’s mobile number. “It’s amazing how much you can tell about a person by looking at their phone records,” he says, scanning the screen. “A few years ago a guy at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology did a PhD project where he gave out a hundred free mobile phones to students and employees. Over nine months he monitored these phones and logged over 350,000 hours of data. He wasn’t listening to the actual calls. He only wanted the numbers, the duration, the time of day and location.

  “By the time he finished he knew much more than that. He knew how long each person slept, what time they woke, when they went to work, where they shopped, their best friends, favorite restaurants, nightclubs, hangouts and holiday destinations. He could tell which of them were co-workers or lovers. And he could predict what people would do next with eighty-five percent accuracy.”

  Ruiz looks over his shoulder at me. “That sounds like your territory, Professor. How often do you get it right?”

  “I deal with the deviations, not the averages.”

  “Touché.”

  The screen refreshes with details of Christine Wheeler’s account and phone usage.

  “These are her call logs for the past month.”

  “What about Friday afternoon?”

  “Where was she?”

  “The Clifton Suspension Bridge—about five.”

  Oliver starts a new search. A sea of numbers appears on the screen. The flashing cursor seems to be reading them. The search comes up with nothing.

  “That doesn’t make sense,” I say. “She was talking on a mobile when she jumped.”

  “Maybe she was talking to herself,” replies Oliver.

  “No. There was another voice.”

  “Then she must have had another phone.”

  My mind trips over the possibilities. Where did she get a second mobile? Why change phones?

  “Could the data be wrong?” asks Ruiz.

  Oliver bristles at the suggestion. “Computers in my experience are more reliable than people.” His fingers stroke the top of the monitor as if worried that its feelings might have been hurt.

  “Explain to me again how the system works,” I ask.

  The question seems to please him.

  “A mobile phone is basically a sophisticated radio, not much different to a walkie-talkie, but while a walkie-talkie can transmit perhaps a mile and a CB radio about five miles, the range of a mobile phone is huge because it can hop between transmission towers without losing the signal.”

  He holds out his hand. “Show me your phone.”

  I hand it to him.

  “Every mobile handset identifies itself in two ways. The Mobile Identification Number, MIN, is assigned by the service provider and is similar to a landline with a three-digit area code and a seven-digit phone number. The Electronic Serial Number, ESN, is a 32-bit binary number assigned by the manufacturer and can never be changed.

  “When you receive a call on your mobile, the message travels through the telephone network until it reaches a base station close to your phone.”

  “A base station?”

  “A phone tower. You might have seen them on top of buildings or mountains. The tower sends out radio waves that are detected by your handset. It also assigns a channel so you’re not suddenly on a party line.”

  Oliver’s fingers are still tapping at keys. “Every call that is placed or received leaves a digital record. It’s like a trail of bread crumbs.”

  He points to a flashing red triangle on the screen.

  “According to the call log, the last time Mrs. Wheeler’s mobile received a call was at 12:26 on Friday afternoon. The call was routed through a tower in Upper Bristol Road. It’s on the Albion Buildings.”

  “That’s less than a mile from her house,” I say.

  “Most likely the closest tower.”

  Ruiz is peering over his shoulder. “Can we see who called her?”

  “Another mobile.”

  “Who owns it?”

  “You need a warrant for that sort of information.”

  “I won’t tell,” replies Ruiz, sounding like a schoolboy about to sneak a kiss behind the bike shed.

  “When did the call end?” I ask.

  Oliver turns back to the screen and calls up a new map, covered in numbers. “That’s interesting. The signal strength started to change. She must have been moving.”
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  “How do you know?”

  “These red triangles are the locations of mobile phone towers. In built-up areas they’re usually about two miles apart, but in the country there can be twenty miles between them.

  “As you move further away from one tower the signal strength diminishes. The next base station—the tower you’re moving towards—notices the signal strengthening. The two base stations coordinate and switch your call to the new tower. It happens so quickly we rarely notice it.”

  “So Christine Wheeler was still talking on her mobile when she left her house?”

  “Looks like it.”

  “Can you tell where she went?”

  “Given enough time. Bread crumbs, remember? It might take a few days.”

  Ruiz has suddenly become interested in the technology, pulling up a chair and staring at the screen.

  “There are three missing hours. Perhaps we can find out where Christine Wheeler went.”

  “As long as she kept the phone with her,” replies Oliver. “Whenever a mobile is turned on it transmits a signal, a ‘ping,’ looking for base stations within range. It may find more than one but will latch on to the strongest signal. The ‘ping’ is actually a very short message lasting less than a quarter of a second, but it contains the MIN and ESN of the handset: the digital fingerprint. The base station stores the information.”

  “So you can track any mobile,” I say.

  “As long as it’s turned on.”

  “How close can you get? Can you pinpoint the exact location?”

  “No. It’s not like a GPS. The nearest tower could be miles away. Sometimes it’s possible to triangulate the signal from three or more towers and get a better fix.”

  “How accurate?”

  “Down to a street: certainly not a building.” He chuckles at my incredulity. “It’s not something your friendly service provider likes to advertise.”

  “And neither do the police,” adds Ruiz, who has started taking notes, boxing off details with doodled circles.

  We know Christine Wheeler finished up at the Clifton Suspension Bridge on Friday afternoon. At some point she stopped using her mobile and picked up another. When did it happen and why?

  Oliver pushes his chair away from the desk and rolls across the room to a second computer. His fingers flick at the keyboard.

  “I’m searching the base stations in the area. If we work backwards from five o’clock, we may find Mrs. Wheeler’s mobile.”