Shattered: a gripping crime thriller

by Heleyne Hammersley

  Kate thought about the tattoos; nothing like them had been found on Anastasia Cohen but, if she’d been younger than the others, if the artist was one of the women at the camp, she may have been reluctant to mark somebody so young for life. Or maybe Anastasia just didn’t like tattoos.

  ‘I think we need to find out more about what Thornbury was doing at Greenham,’ Kate said, watching as Das shifted in her seat. She’d been reluctant to dig up the former DCI’s past but the attack on Anastasia Cohen had convinced her that they needed as much background as they could get. She knew it wouldn’t be easy as she was fairly convinced that the documents she needed were deeply buried in a Special Branch vault somewhere, but there seemed no other course of action. If they could find out what Thornbury’s brief was and possibly access her reports, they might be closer to working out who she’d pissed off and why.

  ‘I’ll see what I can do,’ Das said in a tone which suggested she didn’t expect to be able to do very much. Kate knew she’d try though. The DCI could be relied upon to follow through if she thought a task was worthwhile and finding out about Olivia Thornbury’s time at Greenham seemed to be important to this case.

  ‘Right, Sam. Have a look at Liv Thornbury’s laptop and see if you can find anything else from the person who sent the photograph. There’s also an email with a phone number. It’s disconnected but I want you to scan the records of the Houghtons and Julia Sullivan – see if it shows up there. And, see if you can put me in touch with anybody who was at Greenham Common between 1983 and 1986 – I want to get more of an idea of what the relationships between the women and the police were like. Matt–’

  ‘I can put you in touch with somebody,’ Barratt said, not waiting to see which jobs he’d be allocated. ‘My auntie was there. Get her piss–’ He glanced at Das. ‘Drunk, and she won’t shut up about it. Solidarity, women against the world, sisterhood, that sort of thing.’

  ‘Do you think she’d be willing to talk to one of us?’

  Barratt grinned. ‘She’s not a big fan of the police but she does love her nephew so I’m sure it can be arranged.’ He flinched and frowned at Hollis who’d obviously just kicked him under the table.

  ‘Favourite nephew,’ Hollis teased. ‘Does she buy you sweeties for your birthday?’

  Barratt opened his mouth to reply but Das held out a hand, palm facing the squabbling DCs. ‘Enough. We need to find out if the other three women might have encountered Olivia Thornbury at Greenham Common. I suggest Barratt talks to Julia Sullivan’s husband and to Eleanor Houghton’s nephew.’

  Kate nodded; she’d been about to assign those jobs to him herself. ‘And see if you can get next-of-kin details for Anastasia Cohen,’ she added. ‘We need to talk to somebody who knows her well and might know about her past.’

  ‘Wouldn’t it be better if I came with you to my auntie’s house?’ Barratt asked.

  Kate shook her head. She’d rather the woman wasn’t distracted by the presence of her ‘favourite nephew’ and she also didn’t want her to feel she needed to filter or censor any information. ‘Thanks, Matt, but I’d rather you set up a meeting and then stepped back. To be honest, you might be a distraction. I’ll take Dan.’

  If he was disappointed, Barratt hid it well as he took out his phone and tapped the screen. ‘You might be right,’ he admitted. ‘I’ve texted you her number. Her name’s Bev Padley. She’s retired so she’s usually around in the daytime.’

  Kate smiled her thanks and stood up. ‘I’ll check in before the end of the day, see where we’re all at.’

  Her colleagues nodded, a little too enthusiastically which, Kate realised, was for the benefit of the DCI. It didn’t hurt to seem eager and she wouldn’t normally have mentioned checking in – it was taken as read after every briefing – but she wanted Das to know that she was organised and in control. She thought she’d got away with it as her team filed out and she shrugged on her suit jacket, dreading the heat of the car park. She’d slipped her phone into her pocket and closed her laptop before realising that Das wasn’t leaving. Not a good sign. Before she could ask if the DCI had any questions, Das scowled at her. ‘I’d like a word now we’re alone.’

  1983

  We were packing to go home when the men arrived; only four of them but they moved together like an eight-legged beast. Their faces were beastly too – beards hiding their lips and shaggy hair in their eyes. If they had been wearing animal skins, we might have thought they were cavemen.

  Taz told me that there had been trouble in one of the villages near the base – some of the people who lived there didn’t like women from the camp going to the pub because they thought the police would come and there’d be trouble. Taz said that she thought some of the locals were the ones who rang the police just to get rid of the women. She said that most people don’t really agree with what the camp women want and, even the ones who do, don’t have the courage of their convictions. I’m not sure what that means, but I think it’s like putting your money where your mouth is.

  The men started shouting as soon as they got near the small group of women who usually stand next to the gate, calling them bitches and dykes – I know what both of these mean now thanks to Taz – but the women didn’t say anything back. They just huddled a bit closer together, linking arms as though they were making their own fence. Then one of the men took a knife out of his pocket and started waving it around. The others backed away from him like they didn’t want anything to do with the knife, but he kept shouting and lunging at the women.

  Mum tried to cover my ears so I couldn’t hear the swear words, but I shrugged her off. I’ve heard much worse from some of the other women and I know what most of the words mean. The only one I hadn’t heard the women use was ‘cunt’, but I know that one from some of the boys at school. It’s not a word that girls and women like to use – it’s a man’s swear.

  Other women came running from other parts of the camp – whenever anything happens it gets passed along the fence like Chinese whispers – and started to challenge the men. The three who didn’t have knives looked a bit sorry for themselves and started to walk away but their friend started to call them names as well. Then he turned round, really fast, and grabbed Sarah by the neck, holding her against him like a shield with the knife at her throat. There was a big gasp from the women. Sarah looked terrified but then Taz stepped forwards, right up to the man. I couldn’t hear everything she said because she lowered her voice and spoke straight into his face, but I saw him go red and shake his head. I heard her say something about the police and five minutes and I wondered if she’d sent somebody to the phone box near the village to call 999.

  As suddenly as he’d grabbed her, the man let Sarah go and put the knife back in his pocket. He pushed Taz out of the way and jogged towards his friends who’d been watching from further back. All four of them yelled and stuck two fingers up and then they just turned round and walked away. Mum pulled me into a tight hug, but I pulled away and ran over to Taz who had her arm round Sarah.

  ‘What happened?’ I asked, but Taz just carried on whispering something to keep her friend calm.

  ‘Taz? What did that man want?’

  She looked up at me suddenly, her eyes like car headlights in the dark – piercing and angry. ‘He wanted to hurt Sarah, and the rest of us, in the worst way a man can hurt a woman. He was going to take her somewhere with his friends and use her to teach us all a lesson.’

  I didn’t understand but I knew it was bad when Sarah started to cry.

  ‘We need to stick together,’ Taz said. ‘All of us. The police won’t help us and the soldiers in there are as bad as the men out here.’ She carried on, her voice getting louder and shakier.

  I wanted to hear what she was saying but this time Mum covered my ears and steered me away to our tent so I could carry on packing. I didn’t really want to go home. We’d had fun today and lots of the women were laughing and joking. We’d had a picnic. It was a bit strange, but it was kind of silly. Some o
f the women dressed up as teddy bears and used big ladders to climb over the fence singing daft songs as they went. Me and Mum sat outside the fence on a blanket and ate our sandwiches – Mum said it wasn’t safe for me to climb over – but it was too cold, and the bread tasted of nothing. I suppose it’ll be nice to be back in our warm house again.

  29

  Still smarting from Das’s dressing down, Kate jabbed at the car’s air con, desperate for something cooler than the lukewarm draught that was trickling from the ventilation system.

  ‘What the hell’s wrong with the air in this car?’ she said, twisting one of the dials all the way into the blue and tapping the grille next to the passenger window.

  ‘Give it time,’ Hollis said. ‘We’ve only been driving for a minute.’ If he thought she was behaving as irrationally as she felt, he gave no sign, probably assuming that she was in a foul mood because of whatever Das had said. Hollis had been the last one out of the briefing room and Kate was convinced he had overheard Das asking for a word. Thankfully, he wouldn’t have heard the DCI accuse Kate of allowing one of her team to ‘go rogue’ and follow his own investigation. She had been slightly mollified when Kate explained that she’d had absolutely no knowledge of O’Connor’s nocturnal activities, yet she thought he’d done excellent work and this could be a big coup for all of them, but Das had warned Kate that she needed to keep a tighter rein.

  The air con finally kicked in and Kate began to relax. O’Connor’s investigation would yield results – she was sure of it – and when it did, she would make certain that Das congratulated him. He might even be encouraged to go for promotion which was no bad thing. Despite some of his less appealing characteristics, Kate thought O’Connor was ready to run a team.

  ‘Have you thought about taking your sergeant’s exam?’ Kate asked as Hollis pulled onto the A1.

  ‘Where did that come from?’

  ‘Just thinking. It can’t hurt to give it a try.’

  ‘What about Matt?’

  Barratt had been a DC longer than Hollis and he was certainly ambitious. Kate felt though, that Hollis needed a push. He was not the kind to put himself forward even though his work was excellent and he was a diligent detective.

  ‘I’m talking about you, not Matt. You could do it, Dan. Give it some thought?’

  He gave her a non-committal shrug and changed lanes, his attention fixed on the rear-view mirror.

  ‘Your choice,’ she said. ‘But I wouldn’t have suggested it if I didn’t think you were capable.’

  The subject seemed to be closed as they turned off the busy motorway and drove the couple of miles of A-road into the village of Hickleton.

  ‘I don’t think I’ve ever been here,’ Hollis said, looking round at cream stone houses glowing gold in the early afternoon sun. ‘I wonder why this case keeps bringing us to the poshest spots in South Yorkshire.’

  ‘It’s not as posh as it used to be. Hickleton Hall used to be owned by the Earl of Halifax. The village grew up to serve the hall so a lot of these properties would have been rented out to commoners like us.’

  ‘Thanks for the potted history,’ Hollis said with a grin. Kate smiled back. She’d done a project on local stately homes when she’d been in junior school and remembered learning about the village.

  ‘I suppose where there’s money there’s murder,’ Kate quipped as they pulled up outside a small bungalow in a quiet cul-de-sac. The houses were set back from the road and each had a well-tended front garden suggesting that the occupants of most of the homes were probably retired. Kate thought about the garden in her new house. Would she ever have time to keep it tidy?

  ‘Kettle’s on,’ Bev Padley said from her open door as soon as Kate stepped out of the car. ‘I was looking out for you.’ A tiny woman with a halo of grey hair and a face as brown and wrinkled as chamois leather, Barratt’s aunt bore little resemblance to her nephew. She wore cut-off dungarees exposing skinny legs that were as brown as her face. Her blue eyes were alert and intelligent, on either side of a hooked nose that was familiar.

  Kate extended her hand. ‘DI Kate Fletcher. This is DC Dan Hollis.’

  ‘Lovely to meet you both. I’ve heard a lot about you,’ she said, giving Kate’s hand a hard squeeze. ‘Our Matty’s always telling me what a good boss you are.’

  She saw Hollis’s lips twitch as he tried to contain a smile. Barratt was going to be on the receiving end of some serious tormenting about his aunt’s diminutive nickname for him when they got back to Doncaster Central.

  ‘Come on through,’ Bev said. ‘There’s a good patch of shade in the back garden, it’ll be a lot cooler than sitting indoors.’

  Kate followed the woman down a short, gloomy hallway, into a tiny kitchen and out through a stable-type door into the back garden. Their host wasn’t wrong. The garden was an oasis of cool and shade with tall, leafy plants that Kate couldn’t name casting shadows on the red-brick patio.

  ‘This is lovely,’ she said, taking in the colours of the flowers and the range of foliage.

  ‘My pride and joy,’ Bev said. ‘My late husband was always telling me I spent too much time out here – he didn’t realise it was to get away from him. Poor bugger. Drinks? Tea, coffee, a cold drink?’

  Hollis asked for tea, he’d obviously not been impressed with whatever coffee-making facilities he’d spied in the kitchen; Kate asked for iced water. Despite the shade she was struggling with the sluggish, warm air on her face and neck and she used Bev’s brief absence in the kitchen to take off her jacket and find a slight breeze coming through the back gate.

  Drinks passed round, Bev sat opposite Kate and smiled. ‘You want to talk to me about Greenham Common? It’s such a long time ago, I’m sure anything I did back then isn’t something that I can be arrested for now.’

  ‘It’s background for a case we’re working,’ Kate explained, sipping her water gratefully. ‘I can guarantee you won’t be arrested.’

  Bev leaned back in her chair and crossed her arms. ‘Background?’

  ‘I want to know what it was like. How it was organised. How you all lived.’

  ‘Organised. That’s a laugh. There wasn’t much organisation – it was more like Chinese whispers. One group came up with an idea and it got passed all round the perimeter fence. Did you know we had 50,000 women there at one point? Stretched out along the fence holding hands. It must have been quite a sight.’ She smiled, obviously getting lost in her memories.

  ‘Were you there for a long time?’ Hollis asked.

  ‘I first went in ’81 but I didn’t stay. Some friends were going down to support one of the early demonstrations and I tagged along. There were about three dozen women chained to the fence at that point. We gave them food and chatted to them for a bit and then came home. I went back at the end of the following year and decided to stay. It was a women-only space by then. The protest had grown from those few women to 30,000. That was the first Embrace the Base protest. The next one was even bigger.’

  There was a sense of pride in Bev’s account. She obviously felt that she’d been a part of something important. Kate could barely remember the Greenham Common protests. She’d been in her teens when the camp had first appeared on the news and the women had been dismissed as ‘loony lefties’ and ‘lesbian fanatics’. The woman in front of her didn’t seem to fit in either category.

  ‘I was there when the first missiles arrived,’ Bev continued. ‘Word went round that we were going to break through the fence and confront the soldiers. They were British. The American military tended to stay well away from the fence – left it to the squaddies, and the police, of course.’

  Bev obviously saw something in Kate’s face as she spat the word ‘police’ because she held up a hand in apology. ‘I’m sorry but you have to understand that the police and the military were representatives of everything we were against. Politics, patriarchy and violence. They used to come in the night and drag us out of the benders to evict us. Some women were followed into the
bushes when they went for a wee. It was intimidating.’

  ‘But you still broke into the base and stood up to them?’

  ‘We dressed up as teddy bears and climbed the fence.’

  ‘What?’ Hollis spluttered. ‘Why?’

  ‘We knew that we’d been getting a lot of negative press attention so the idea was that the newspapers would take pictures of police officers and soldiers arresting and pointing guns at teddy bears. It was meant to be absurd – to show the public that we were harmless.’

  Hollis shook his head. ‘That’s mad.’

  Bev grinned at him. ‘It worked. It made the authorities look daft, like they were overreacting. We did another one. Reflect the Base. We wanted the police and soldiers to take a long hard look at themselves, so we surrounded the fence and held up mirrors.’

  Kate saw Hollis sit up straighter. He’d obviously had the same thought. Mirrors?

  ‘Tell me about that,’ she said. ‘How did it work?’

  The wrinkles around Bev’s eyes deepened with amusement. ‘We all lined up around the fence, facing inwards and held up a mirror. There were thousands of us. God knows where all the mirrors came from. It was symbolic – we were trying to show the people inside what they looked like to outsiders like us. To make them examine their motives.’

  ‘How did they react?’ Kate asked.

  It really freaked some of them out. Especially when we started keening. You know…’ She threw her head back, closed her eyes and let out a high-pitched wail. Hollis bit his lip and Kate could see he was trying not to laugh. She needed to get the woman back on track.

  ‘What was the atmosphere like?’ Kate asked. ‘Did the women get along with each other? Were there factions or disagreements?’

  Bev stopped wailing and frowned, her eyes drifting to a point over Kate’s shoulder. ‘Not factions exactly,’ she said. ‘We were all there for the same reason. There were groups though. Each gate had its own group – they were named after colours of the rainbow – and there were groups of women who had things in common; usually they were from the same area of the country or they were into the same thing; religion, Wicca, smoking dope. There was a group from Kent who were rumoured to be the most confrontational while the Yorkshire lasses supposedly got the best food parcels. Nonsense, of course, but it made the days and hours pass. There were some women who were political – left of centre, of course – but they didn’t do much in the way of conversion. We were a society, and in any society you get diversity. Some women were middle class, some came from very poor backgrounds. We had teachers mixing with cleaners, lawyers with laundry workers. The mud and the cold were great levellers. All ages as well. Some women brought their kids, some even brought their grandkids. But no husbands.’