Shatter

by Michael Robotham

  For the first time I notice her feet. Her toes are misshapen and covered in calluses, blisters and raw skin. The littlest toe is curled under the others as if hiding and the biggest is bloated with a discolored nail.

  “They’re ugly,” she says, covering her feet with a pillow.

  “What happened to them?”

  “I’m a dancer, remember? One of my old ballet teachers used to say that pointe shoes were the last instruments of torture that were still legal.”

  Moving a magazine, I take a seat on a corner of the bed. There’s nowhere else to sit.

  “I wanted to talk about pointe shoes,” I say.

  She laughs. “You’re a bit old for ballet.”

  “The package that was left for you at school—tell me about it.”

  She describes a shoebox wrapped in brown paper with no note, just her name written in capital letters.

  “Other than your mum, is there anyone else who would have sent you a gift like that?”

  She shakes her head.

  “This is very important, Darcy. I need you to think back over the past few weeks. Did you talk to or meet anyone new? Was there anyone who asked questions about your mother?”

  “I was at school.”

  “OK, but you must have had weekends. Did you go shopping? Did you leave the school for anything?”

  “I went to London for the auditions.”

  “Did you talk to anyone?”

  “The teachers and other dancers…”

  “What about on the train?”

  Her mouth opens and closes. Her forehead creases.

  “There was this one guy… he sat down opposite me.”

  “And you talked to him?”

  “Not right away.” She pushes her fringe back behind her ears. “He seemed to fall asleep. I went to the buffet car and when I came back he asked me if I was a dancer. He said he could tell from the way I walked—splay-footed, you know. It seemed weird that he knew so much about ballet.”

  “What did he look like?”

  She shrugs. “Ordinary.”

  “How old?”

  “Not as old as you. He wore sunglasses, like Bono. I think he was a bit of a try-hard.”

  “A try-hard.”

  “One of those old guys who try to look cool.”

  “Was he flirting with you?”

  She shrugs. “Maybe. I don’t know.”

  “Would you recognize him again?”

  “I guess.”

  She describes him. It might be the same man Alice spoke to, but his hair was darker and longer and he wore different clothes.

  “I want to try something,” I tell her. “Lie down and close your eyes.”

  “Why?”

  “Don’t worry—nothing’s going to happen—you just have to close your eyes and think about that day. Try to picture it. Imagine you’re back there, stepping onto the train, finding a seat, putting your bag in the overhead rack.”

  Her eyes close.

  “Can you see it?”

  She nods.

  “Describe the train carriage for me. Where were you sitting in relation to the doors?”

  “Three rows from the rear, facing forwards.”

  I ask her what she was wearing. Where she put her bag. Who else was in the carriage.

  “There was a little girl sitting in front of me, peering between the seats. I played peek-a-boo with her.”

  “Who else do you remember?”

  “A guy in a suit. He was talking too loudly on his mobile.” She pauses. “And a backpacker with a maple leaf on his rucksack.”

  I ask her to focus on the man who sat opposite her. What was he wearing?

  “I don’t remember. A shirt, I think.”

  “What color was it?”

  “Blue with a collar.”

  “Did it have anything written on it?”

  “No.”

  I move on to his face. His eyes. His hair. His ears. Feature by feature, she begins to describe him in small ways. His hands. His fingers. His forearms. He wore a silver wristwatch, but no rings.

  “When did you first see him?”

  “When he sat down.”

  “Are you sure? I want you to go further back. When you caught the train in Cardiff, who was on the platform?”

  “A few people. The backpacker was there. I bought a bottle of water. I knew the girl in the kiosk. She’d bleached her hair since I saw her last.”

  I take her back further. “When you bought your ticket, was there a queue?”

  “Um… yes.”

  “Who was in the queue?”

  “I don’t remember.”

  “Picture the ticket window. Look at the faces. Who can you see?”

  Her brow furrows and her head rocks from side to side on the pillow. Suddenly, her eyes open. “The man from the train.”

  “Where?”

  “At the top of the stairs near the ticket machine.”

  “The same man?”

  “Yes.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “I’m sure.”

  She sits up and rubs her hands along her upper arms as if suddenly cold.

  “Did I do something wrong?” she asks.

  “No.”

  “Why do you want to know about him?”

  “It may be nothing.”

  She wraps the duvet around her shoulders before leaning her back against the wall. Her gaze drifts over me awkwardly.

  “Do you ever get the feeling that something terrible is about to happen?” she asks. “Something dreadful that you can’t change because you don’t know what it is.”

  “I don’t know. Maybe. Why do you ask?”

  “That’s how I felt on that Friday—when I couldn’t get through to Mum. I knew something was wrong.” She drops her head and looks at her knees. “That night I said a prayer for her, but I left it too late, didn’t I? Nobody heard me.”

  29

  DI Cray has organized for six boxes to be delivered to the cottage. They must be back in the incident room by morning. A courier will collect them just after midnight.

  Inside the boxes are witness statements, time lines, phone wheels and crime scene photographs relating to both murders. I managed to get them into the house without Julianne noticing.

  Closing the study door, I turn the key and take a seat before opening the first box. My mouth is dry but I can’t blame my medication. Stacked in boxes around my feet is evidence of two lives and two deaths. Nothing will bring these women back and nothing can harm their feelings anymore, yet I feel like an uninvited guest sorting through their underwear. Photographs. Statements. Time lines. Videos. Versions of the past.

  They say once is an event, twice is a coincidence and three times is a pattern. I have only two crimes to consider. Two victims. Christine Wheeler and Sylvia Furness were the same age. They went to school together. Both were mothers of young daughters. I try to imagine each of their lives, the places they went, the people they met and the events they experienced.

  Already, in the space of forty-eight hours, detectives have pieced together a biographical history of Sylvia Furness (née Ferguson). She was born in 1972, grew up in Bath and went to Oldfield School for Girls. Her father worked as a haulage contractor and her mother was a nurse. Sylvia went to university in Leeds but dropped out in her second year to go traveling. She worked on charter boats in the Caribbean where she met her future husband, Richard Furness, in St. Lucia in the West Indies. He had taken a year off from university and was transferring yachts for rich Europeans. They married in 1994. Alice came along a year later. Richard Furness graduated from Bristol University and has worked for two major pharmaceutical companies.

  Sylvia was a party girl who loved to socialize and go dancing. Christine couldn’t have been more different. Quiet, unadventurous, hardworking and reliable, she didn’t have boyfriends or an active social life.

  One interesting point was that Sylvia took self-defense classes. Karate. In this case, it didn’t help her fi
ght back. There were no defense wounds on her body. She submitted. The pillowcase that hooded her head was a popular high street brand. The handcuffs belonged to the husband—purchased from a sex shop in Amsterdam—“to spice up their sex life.”

  How did the killer know about the handcuffs? He must have been inside Sylvia’s flat, invited or otherwise. She didn’t report any burglaries or break-ins. Maybe Ruiz is right and it’s a former lover or boyfriend.

  Wondering out loud, I begin talking to him, trying to understand how a predator like this one thinks and feels. “You knew so much about them—about their houses, their movements, their daughters, their shoes… Did you tell them what to wear?”

  There’s a knock on the study door. I turn the key and open it a crack.

  It’s Julianne. “What’s going on?”

  “Nothing.”

  “I heard you talking to someone.”

  “Myself.”

  She tries to peer under my arm to the desk. I block her view. “Why is the door locked?”

  “There are things I don’t want the girls to see.”

  Her eyes suddenly narrow. “You’re doing it, aren’t you. You’re bringing this poison into our house.”

  “It’s just for tonight.”

  She shakes her head. Her voice is flat. “I hate secrets. I know most people have them, but I hate them.”

  She turns away. I see her bare feet beneath her dressing gown, disappearing along the hall. What about your secrets, I feel like saying, but she’s gone and the question remains unspoken. Closing the door, I turn the key.

  The second box contains crime scene photographs, beginning with long-distance shots and narrowing down to the minutiae of individual body parts. Halfway through the albums my constitution fails. I get up, recheck the door and stand at the window, looking through the bare branches of the cherry trees to the churchyard.

  I have two hours before the courier arrives. Taking a notebook, I place a photograph of Christine Wheeler and Sylvia Furness side by side on my desk. Not an image of them naked, but a normal, head and shoulders shot. Then I create a more confronting collage, using images from each crime scene.

  Those of Sylvia stand out more because of the hood covering her head. Her feet could barely touch the ground. She had to stand on her tiptoes. Within minutes her legs must have been in agony. As she grew exhausted, her heels dropped and her handcuffed wrist took the full weight of her body. More pain.

  The hood, nakedness and stress position are elements redolent of torture or execution. The more I stare at the photographs, the more familiar they seem. These are images from a different sort of theater—one of conflict and war.

  Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq became synonymous with torture and physical abuse. Pictures were beamed around the world of hooded prisoners, naked and leashed, being taunted and humiliated. Some were kept in stress positions, standing on tiptoes with arms outstretched, or pulled painfully behind them. Sleep deprivation, humiliation, extreme heat or cold, hunger and thirst, these are the hallmarks of interrogation and torture.

  It took six hours to break Christine Wheeler. How long did he have with Sylvia Furness? She went missing on Monday afternoon; she was found on Wednesday morning—a window of thirty-six hours. She was dead for two-thirds of that time. Normally, it takes days to brainwash a person, to pick apart their defenses. Whoever did this, managed to break Sylvia within twelve hours. That’s incredible.

  This wasn’t bloodlust. He didn’t lash out with his fists or his feet. He didn’t batter these women into submission. There were no marks on their bodies that indicated beatings or violence or any sort of physical assault. He used words. Where does a person gain this type of skill? It takes practice. Rehearsal. Training.

  Dividing the page of a notebook, I write the heading Things I Know and begin writing points.

  These were deliberate, relaxed, almost euphoric crimes, expressions of a corrupt lust. He chose what each victim wore and didn’t wear. He knew what they each had in their wardrobe. What makeup they wore. When they’d be home alone. The shoes were important to him.

  I think out loud again. “Why these women? What did they do to you? Did they ignore you? Laugh at you? Leave you behind? These women represented something or someone you despised. They were symbolic as well as precise targets—that’s why they were so unalike.

  “Sylvia Furness would not have submitted easily. She was no innocent. You must have worn her down, marched her to the tree, your voice in her ear, saying what?

  “I have met minds like yours. I have seen what sexual sadists can do. These women represented something or someone you despised. They were symbolic as well as precise targets—that’s why they were so unalike. They were actors, cast in your drama because they had a particular look or were the right age or because of some other factor.

  “What are the elements of your fantasy? Public humiliation is a feature. You wanted them to be found. You made these women strip naked and parade. Sylvia’s body was hung like a piece of meat. Christine scrawled “slut” on her stomach.

  “The first crime scene didn’t make sense. It was too public and exposed. Why didn’t you choose somewhere private—an empty house or isolated farm building? You wanted Christine to be seen. It was part of the deviant theater.

  “You did this for gratification. It might not have begun as your motive, but that’s what it’s become. At some point in your fantasy, sexual desire has become messed with anger and the need to dominate. You have learned to eroticize pain and torture. You have fantasized about it—taken women in your dreams and humiliated, punished, and broken them. Degraded. Devalued. Destroyed.

  “You are fastidious. You take notes. You find out everything you can about them by watching their houses and their movements. You know when they leave for work, when they get home, when the lights go off at night.

  “I don’t know the exact details of your planning, therefore I don’t know how closely you followed the strategy, but you were willing to take risks. What if Christine Wheeler had been rescued on the bridge or if Sylvia Furness had been found before the cold stopped her heart, they could have identified you.

  “It doesn’t make sense… unless… unless. They never saw your face! You whispered in their ears, you told them what to do and they obeyed, but they didn’t see your face.”

  Pushing the notebook aside, I lean back and close my eyes, drained, tired, trembling.

  It is late. The house is silent. Above my head, the light fitting has captured dead moths in the bowl of frosted glass. Inside there is a lightbulb, a fragile glass shell, and inside that is a glowing filament. People often use lightbulbs to represent ideas. Not me. My ideas begin as pencil marks on a white page, soft abstract outlines. Slowly the lines grow clearer and acquire light and shade, depth and clarity.

  I have never met the man who killed Christine Wheeler and Sylvia Furness, but suddenly I feel as though he has sprung from within my mind, flesh and blood, with a voice that echoes in my ears. He is no longer a figment, no longer a mystery, no longer part of my imagining. I have seen his mind.

  30

  The door barely opens. His grizzled face is peering at me.

  “You’re late.”

  “I had a job.”

  “It’s Sunday.”

  “I still have to work.”

  He turns and shuffles a few paces down the hall, broken slippers flapping at his heels.

  “What sort of job?”

  “I had to change some locks.”

  “Get paid?”

  “That’s the idea.”

  “I need some money.”

  “What about your pension?”

  “Gone.”

  “What do you spend it on?”

  “Champagne and fucking caviar.”

  He’s wearing a pajama shirt, threadbare at the elbows and tucked into high-waisted trousers that bulge over his stomach and have no room at all at his crotch. Maybe your penis drops off when you reach a certain age.

  We�
�re in the living room. The place smells of old farts and cooking fat. The only two pieces of furniture that matter are an armchair and the television.

  I take out my wallet. He tries to look over my hands to see how much I’m carrying. I give him forty quid.

  Hitching up his trousers, he sinks into the chair, filling the depressions that are molded to the shape of his arse. His head cocks forward, chin to chest, and his eyes focus on the television, his life support system.

  “You gonna watch the game, Pop?” I ask.

  “Which one?”

  “Everton and Liverpool.”

  He shakes his head.

  “I bought cable so you could see the big derby games.”

  He grunts. “Man shouldn’t have to pay to watch football. It’s like paying to drink water. I won’t do that.”

  “I’m paying.”

  “Makes no difference.”

  The only color in the room is coming from the screen and it paints a bright square in his eyes.

  “You going out later?”

  “Nah.”

  “I thought you said you had bingo.”

  “Don’t play bingo no more. Them cheating cunts said I couldn’t come back.”

  “Why?”

  “ ’Cos I caught ’em rigging things.”

  “How do you rig bingo?”

  “I’m one bloody number short every fucking time. One number. Cheating cunts!”

  I’m still holding a bag of groceries. I take them to the kitchen and offer to fix him something to eat. I’ve bought a tin of ham, baked beans and eggs.

  Dirty dishes are stacked in the sink. A cockroach crawls to the top of a cup and looks at me as if I’m trespassing. It scrambles away as I scrape plates into a pedal bin and turn on the tap. The gas water heater rumbles and coughs as a blue flame ignites along the burners.

  “You should never have left the army,” he shouts. “The army treat you like family.”

  Yeah, some family!

  He launches into a bullshit spiel about mateship and camaraderie, when the truth is he never fought in a war. He missed out on the Falklands because he couldn’t swim.

  I smile to myself. It’s not really true. He was medically unfit. He got his hand caught in the breech of a 155mm cannon and broke most of his fingers. The old bastard is still bitter about it. Fuck knows why. Who in their right mind wanted to fight a war over a few rocks in the South Atlantic?