Shattered: a gripping crime thriller

by Heleyne Hammersley

  The police are different. They used to come in groups, gangs, and shout at us but now they seem to keep their distance a lot more. They still shout sometimes but now they spend more time pacing round the perimeter like tigers trapped in cages – but they’re outside the cage, we all are. Or maybe we’re the zoo animals and they just wander round and look at us like we’re some exotic species that’s interesting but might bite if they get too close.

  The women are different as well. I wonder if they got some of their energy from fighting with the policemen (and they are all men) and without it they can’t recharge their batteries properly. It’s a funny atmosphere, like in the summer holidays when I can’t be bothered to do anything and the air’s all still and dense, so I just sit in the garden, not waiting exactly but not doing anything else.

  Quite a lot of them have gone home. There are gaps around the perimeter and clusters round the gates as if the gates are magnets and the woman are iron filings. Or perhaps they’re huddling together for warmth and protection. Sarah’s still here but she’s different – like a shadow of herself. She tries to be normal but she reminds me of my nan’s old cat. Every time I thought it was sleeping and tried to creep up on it, it would jump up and shoot across the room. Sarah’s like that now. She talks the same and takes part in the things going on around the camp, but the slightest thing makes her jump a mile. The other day we were sitting around and the women were talking about the miners’ strike. One of them noticed a policeman coming towards us and Sarah leapt to her feet and ran away. She seems more scared of them now they leave us alone. I wonder if she wants to go home – back to her family and her life.

  I thought a lot about that last visit and Taz’s reaction when some of the women were leaving. She called them traitors but, now she’s gone, is she a traitor as well? Did she say the same about me and Mum when we had to go home, or were we all right because we’d promised to come back? It’s all very confusing.

  There are still stories in the evenings. We sit round the fires, blankets draped round our shoulders like witches’ capes and the women talk about their homes, or their jobs – the ones they used to have – or their husbands and boyfriends. Some of them have girlfriends – I didn’t know that was allowed but Taz explained that it’s just like having a boyfriend except she’s a girl. They do all the same things. She winked when she told me that and I felt a bit odd and squirmy in my tummy.

  Sometimes the stories are about the future – what it will be like when the missiles are gone and everybody’s safe. Sometimes the women talk about getting rid of the government, the people who run the country, and putting women in charge. They say it’ll be better, but there’s a woman in charge now and they all hate her. I think it’s because she tries to be like a man, all hard and tough, but she has to do that to keep everybody in order – doesn’t she?

  I sometimes think the women hate everything in the world. I could make a list: the government, the missiles, America, the soldiers, pollution, litter, factories, banks. There are a lot more things, but these are the ones I understand. They want to get rid of them all. Sometimes, when somebody has passed round a bottle of wine or whisky, one of them tells me that she’s doing all of this for me. I want to tell her to stop. Or to do it for herself. I don’t want that responsibility. It’s not fair.

  38

  ‘Matt’s spoken to one of Sadie’s ex-boyfriends. He doesn’t know of a second home, but they did spend a lot of time in Northumberland and south-west Scotland. Walking, camping, that sort of thing.’

  ‘Sam, we can’t check every campsite in those areas, it would take weeks and cost a fortune.’

  Sam sighed and Kate got the feeling that the DC was trying to resist saying ‘Duh!’.

  ‘One of the things that’s been bugging me about the Liv Thornbury case is the timing. If Sadie doesn’t have a car, how could she have met Thornbury so early in the day? She could have stayed at a pub or a B & B but she’d have to have been up with the lark to get to Burbage Edge so early. What if she camped nearby? She could have got a train to Sheffield and cycled out to the Peak. If it’s somewhere she feels safe…’

  ‘She might be there,’ Kate finished. ‘But staying on a campsite isn’t much less anonymous than a B & B. I’m sure they’d ask for details.’

  ‘What if it wasn’t an official site. Liv’s climbing friends might know of somewhere that climbers use regularly. Somewhere close to the edges. Let’s talk to somebody from the club.’

  ‘They might not be very keen to tell us about unofficial camping spots. It’s illegal unless you get the landowner’s permission.’

  Hollis snorted. ‘I’m sure plenty of climbers discreetly pitch a tent late at night for an early climb. We can say we’re doing follow-up questions after looking at Matt and Steve’s interviews – ask whether they saw Liv with anybody on her early-morning walks, or if there’d been any new faces in the climbing community.’

  It was a long shot, but they had little else at this point.

  Broomhill Climbing Club used an indoor climbing wall near Sheffield University’s main accommodation blocks. Kate had rung Barratt’s contact from when he and O’Connor had interviewed Liv’s climbing friends and arranged a meeting within the hour with Tyler Dixon who ran the club that Liv Thornbury had attended. He’d been at the wall instructing and agreed to fit them in during his lunch hour. A short, wiry man in his thirties, Dixon seemed to be a bundle of barely contained energy as he showed them into the café area of the facility. It was just a corner of the building that had been carpeted and had a few tables and chairs. A short counter stood in front of the window with an array of sandwiches, tray bakes and bags of crisps. A kettle stood on a separate table with trays full of mugs, boxes of tea bags and a jar of coffee. Kate looked at the refreshments and declined Dixon’s offer of a drink. His tight-fitting red T-shirt was soaked with sweat and his short blond hair stood up in spikes as he removed a safety helmet.

  ‘What’s this about?’ he asked. ‘Your colleague said on the phone that it has something to do with Liv’s suicide. I’ve already given a statement. We all have.’

  ‘We’re still investigating Liv’s death,’ Kate confirmed. ‘It turns out it has similarities to two others and it now seems unlikely that she killed herself.’

  Dixon sank onto a hard plastic chair, his expression unreadable.

  ‘You okay?’ Kate asked.

  He nodded. ‘Just a bit stunned. I couldn’t believe Liv would do something like that, but she’d left a note. I went to her funeral, had a good cry with Sylvia and then sort of moved on. Much as I miss Liv, I had to accept what she’d done and respect it. Now I don’t know what to think. It did seem weird that the police had started asking questions but I thought it might just be something routine.’ He ran a shaking hand over the stubble on his chin and cheeks.

  Hollis went to the counter and came back with a glass of water. ‘Drink this, mate,’ he said, sitting down opposite the climber. Dixon gulped it greedily.

  ‘We need to know who might have spent time with Liv in the weeks before she died. Her partner said she had to give up climbing due to arthritis, but she was still going out into the Peak, walking around the edges.’

  ‘She was still doing a bit of climbing as well,’ Dixon said, wiping his mouth. ‘Sylvia didn’t know. Not difficult pitches and nothing overly technical. She said she needed to wean herself off, that she couldn’t just go cold turkey.’

  ‘She was getting up early and going for walks as well. Did she mention those?’

  Dixon’s eyes suddenly drifted to a group of children getting ready to climb. Kate could see he was working out how to answer.

  ‘She was meeting somebody,’ he said eventually. ‘I don’t know who she was, and I don’t think there was anything seedy about it, but I also don’t think she’d told Sylvia.’

  Hollis was making notes. He glanced up. ‘You didn’t mention this before. Did you ever meet this person?’

  Dixon shook his head. ‘I didn�
��t see much point. Liv’s dead and I only saw this woman from a distance. It didn’t seem worth causing Sylvia any upset. I’d been camping near the edge to get an early-morning climb in and I saw Liv walking the track below the rocks with a woman. She seemed to be tallish and had dark hair but that’s all I saw. I was too far away to see her face.’

  ‘Camping?’ Kate asked. ‘At a site?’

  ‘Er…’

  ‘We’re not interested in prosecuting you for trespassing,’ Kate said. ‘We need to know if there’s a regular spot where climbers might camp.’

  Dixon nodded. ‘Okay. There’s a clearing in the heather that some of us use in the summer. It’s well known. Climbers from all over the area pitch up to get an early start.’

  Kate could feel her heart rate accelerating. This was promising. ‘On the morning you saw Liv with the woman was there anybody else camping?’

  Dixon closed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose. ‘I honestly can’t remember.’

  ‘And you didn’t see this woman camping there?’

  ‘Again, I can’t remember. The deal is that you arrive late and leave early and never build a fire or use a barbecue. A few times when I got there, there were a couple of other tents, weekends mostly, but you don’t always see who’s in them.’

  Kate passed her phone over the table. ‘Could this be the woman?’

  Dixon studied the photograph of Sadie Sullivan for a few seconds and then shook his head. ‘I really can’t say. She was too far away.’

  A child screamed, either in pleasure or fear, Kate couldn’t tell. Dixon looked over and smiled. ‘It’s great to see them so enthusiastic. I wish my parents had taken me climbing when I was a kid – it’s so good for building confidence.’

  ‘Tyler, could you show us where this campsite is?’

  ‘Show you? Like, take you there?’ He seemed confused, as though Kate’s request was bizarre.

  ‘If you don’t have time, you could show us on a map.’

  He brightened at Hollis’s suggestion. ‘Hang on.’

  He disappeared, leaving Kate and Hollis to watch the children trying to follow the directions of their instructors. Most seemed to be coping well with the stretches and pulls as they crawled up the wall like Spiderman, but one was just swinging in his harness, giggling. Kate smiled at his obvious delight at being so high up.

  ‘Daft bugger,’ said Hollis.

  ‘You’re just jealous,’ Kate said. ‘You’d be terrified to do that.’

  ‘True,’ Hollis agreed. ‘Must be nice to have that fearlessness. I wonder what age it all changes. When do we start to be scared of everything? Especially responsibility.’

  ‘Whoa!’ Kate said, leaning back in her chair. ‘That’s way too deep. Watch the little kiddies enjoying themselves and please, try not to think.’

  Tyler Dixon returned waving a sheet of A4 paper. ‘Here we go,’ he said, placing it on the table between Kate and Hollis. ‘You both okay with OS maps?’

  Hollis nodded but Kate could only manage a non-committal grunt.

  ‘This is Burbage Rocks,’ Dixon was saying, pointing to a place on the map where the orange contours gathered together like a tiny musical stave. ‘There’s parking at the end here near the bridge, if you go out of town on Ringinglow Road you can’t miss it. The place we usually camp is on this flat area.’ He drew a circle in black pen about an inch away from a green dotted line which Kate seemed to remember meant a footpath.

  ‘It looks like it’s all heather but if you walk straight back from the rocks as soon as you see a big block of gritstone that looks like a mushroom you should find it. It’s a flat patch of grass about fifty feet wide.’

  Kate folded the map in half and thanked Dixon for his time.

  ‘Did you get all that?’ she asked as they walked back to the car. ‘I assume you can read a map.’

  ‘Not a clue. I failed my geography GCSE twice,’ Hollis said.

  ‘Great.’ Kate sighed. ‘Where’s Bear Grylls when you need him?’

  39

  The sun was hot and high as Hollis squeezed the pool car between an old Land Rover and a small SUV. The tiny parking area was busy and the grass around the bridge dotted with couples and young families enjoying treats from the ice-cream van parked on the opposite side of the road.

  ‘Wasn’t expecting so many people,’ Kate said. ‘School holidays don’t start for another few weeks.’

  ‘Maybe that’s why,’ Hollis replied, scanning the knots of people. ‘I bet these are all getting their fix of the Peak before it gets overrun for the summer.’

  They set off, following Kate’s memory of Dixon’s instructions and the dotted line on the map extract. The peaty path was as solid as concrete and the heather and grass whispered scratchily in a faint breeze.

  ‘You can see why Dixon made the point about fires,’ she said. ‘One loose spark and the whole area would go up.’

  They trudged on, Kate’s feet feeling hot and tight in her ‘sensible’ work shoes. Not as sensible as a pair of walking boots, she thought ruefully, stumbling over yet another thick heather root that was trying to throw a tripwire across her path. She looked across the lower ground to the west trying to make out the villages of the Hope Valley but the air was hazy and she could barely see the church in Hathersage. To her left the ground rose up slightly to the edge of the city and she realised with a jolt that they were probably less than two miles from Liv Thornbury’s house. Liv and Sylvia may have been able to make out Burbage Rocks from the top floor of their house on a clear day.

  ‘Does that rock look like a mushroom?’ Hollis asked, stopping suddenly, and tilting his head to one side.

  ‘Only if you’ve eaten some first,’ Kate said, squinting at the chunk of rock.

  ‘No. It does. Look, it’s narrow there.’ He pointed. ‘Then it’s thicker at the top.’

  Kate looked more closely. He had a point. ‘Is there a path heading away from the edge,’ she asked, scanning the ground at her feet.

  ‘There’s something here,’ Hollis said, pointing to a faint trail a few paces ahead of where they were standing.

  He was right, there was a slash of dark peat cutting through the vibrant green, only wide enough for one person. Kate led the way slowly, the roots even more lethal than on the edge.

  ‘Watch your footing,’ she said, hearing Hollis stumbling behind her.

  He mumbled something that sounded like a string of swear words before almost crashing into her back. ‘Sorry, not used to this,’ he panted.

  Kate scanned the flat area ahead of them. The path was starting to fade as the heather gave way to springy turf interspersed with clumps of bracken. Four more paces and she was standing in a clear area of short grass with a few stones scattered around.

  ‘Here, look,’ Hollis said, pointing to a patch of ground near the edge of the clearing. Kate walked closer trying to make out what he was pointing at.

  ‘This patch of grass has been flattened,’ Hollis said. ‘When I used to go camping as a kid, before my dad bought the caravan, he used to make me walk the pitch looking for loose pegs or rubbish we’d left behind. The tent always left a pale, flat patch if we’d been there for a couple of nights.’

  Kate squatted down and ran her hand across the grass. He was right, it had been flattened by something, probably a tent, but it didn’t help them.

  ‘Much as I’m in awe of your bushcraft knowledge,’ Kate said. ‘I don’t see how this helps. There’s nothing to suggest Sadie was here. I was hoping there’d be somebody camping here who might have seen her.’

  ‘Well you’re out of luck,’ a voice said from behind them. Kate turned to see a tall, well-built man dressed in combat trousers and a navy-blue polo shirt with the national park logo on the breast pocket. He was glaring at them with startling green eyes, nestled beneath wiry eyebrows which matched his heavy grey beard.

  ‘We’re police officers,’ Kate said, holding out her warrant card.

  The man crossed his arms and stared
, clearly unimpressed.

  ‘We were hoping to find somebody here. We think she may have been camping for the past couple of nights.’

  ‘Well, she’s obviously gone,’ the man said. ‘And good riddance.’

  ‘Can I ask your name?’

  ‘Len Whitehall. I’m a ranger and I’m sick of bloody kids coming out here to party. They have no idea how to behave. There’s been more than a dozen tents down by the bridge some weekends and the sodding fires… They think they’ve put them out but it’s all peat round here and it can be smouldering underneath for days. I have to keep checking that nothing’s caught even if there’s been nobody here for a week.’

  ‘What about climbers?’ Kate asked before he could continue his tirade. ‘Many of them about?’

  The man looked across the clearing as though checking that everything was in its proper place. ‘We get a few. They tend to pitch up here, well away from the road. They’re not the problem. They arrive late and pack up early. And they don’t set bloody fires. I tend to turn a blind eye if it’s only one or two. I still come up and check though – you never know.’

  ‘So you’re up here quite often?’

  ‘Most days in the summer.’

  Kate took out her phone, scrolled to a picture of Liv Thornbury and showed it to him. ‘Do you recognise her?’

  Whitehall drew in breath sharply. ‘I should. I was there when the police got her down from the rocks. After she’d hanged herself.’

  ‘We’re investigating her death,’ Kate said.

  ‘That was weeks ago. And I thought it was suicide.’

  Kate showed him her phone again. ‘What about this woman?’

  Whitehall stared at the photograph of Sadie. ‘I’m not sure,’ he said. ‘She could be one of the climbing crowd. There’s one or two women who camp on their own. There was a lass here last night, pitched up at eightish. I was on my way home and saw the tent from the track over there – wouldn’t have seen it from the road. I’d been out in the Land Rover checking a patch of fence that had come down. The only person around was a woman down at the bridge – no car so I assumed she was hiking and had stopped for the night.’