Shatter (20 page)

Sylvia Furness froze to death. She had a mobile phone, but didn’t cal for help. He kept her talking until the battery ran out. Either that or he was here, taunting her with it.

This was a piece of twisted sadistic theatre, but what was the artist trying to say? He gained pleasure from her pain; he revel ed in his power over Sylvia, but why did he leave her body so obviously on display? Is it a message or a warning?

There he is again, the man who knows Johnny Cochran’s distant cousin; the one who tried to talk to my fallen angel. He’s a regular corpse chaser, isn’t he? The grim reaper.

I watch him cross the field, ruining his shoes. Then he falls over the fence into the ditch. What a clown!

I’ve known my share of shrinks, doctor-major types who administer mental enemas, trying to get soldiers to bring their nightmares into daylight like some steaming pile of crap. Most
of them were bullshit artists, who made me feel like I was doing them a favour by telling them things. Instead of asking questions, they sat and listened— or pretended to.

It’s like that old joke about two shrinks meeting at a university reunion and one looks old and haggard while the other is bright-eyed and youthful. The older-looking one says, ‘How
do you do it? I listen to other people’s problems all day, every day, year after year, and it’s turned me into an old man. What’s your secret?’

The younger-looking one replies, ‘Who listens?’

A guy I know called Felini, my first CO in Afghanistan, used to have nightmares. We called him Felini because he said his family came from Sicily and he had an uncle in the
Mafia. I don’t know his real name. We weren’t supposed to know.

Felini had been in Afghanistan for twelve years. At first he fought alongside Osama Bin Laden against the Soviets and then finished up fighting against him. In between times he
reported to the CIA and DEA monitoring opium production.

He was the first westerner into Mazar-e-Sharif after the Taliban captured the city in 1998. He told me what he saw. The Taliban had gone through the streets, strafing everything that
moved with machine guns. Then they went from house to house, rounding up Hazaras, before locking them in steel shipping containers in the broiling sun. They baked to death or
suffocated. Others were thrown alive into wells before the tops were bulldozed over. No wonder Felini had nightmares.

Strangely, none of that changed how he felt about the Talibs. He respected them.

‘The Talibs knew they were never going to win over the locals,’ he told me. ‘So they taught them a lesson. Each time they lost a village and won it back again, they were more savage
than before. Payback can be a bitch, but it’s what you have to do,’ he said. ‘Forget about winning hearts and minds. You rip out their hearts and break open their minds.’

Felini was the best interrogator I’ve ever seen. There was no part of the body he couldn’t hurt. Nothing he couldn’t find out. His other theory was about Islam. He said that for four
thousand years the guy who carried the biggest stick had been in charge and been respected in the Middle East. It’s the only language the Arabs understand— Sunni, Shiite,
Kurdish, Wahhabi, Ismaili, Kufi— makes no fucking difference.

Enough of the nostalgia. They’re taking the bitch’s body down.

A bird flies out of the trees in a clatter of wings. It startles me. I brace my hands against the top strand of wire, feeling the cold radiate from the metal.

On the lower reaches of the field, dozens of police officers are shuffling forward in a long unbroken line. Clouds of condensed vapour bil ow from their faces. As I watch the strange procession, a realisation washes over me, a sense that I’m not alone. Peering into the trees, I scan the deeper shadows. On the periphery of my vision I notice a movement. A man is crouched behind a fal en tree, trying not to be seen. He is wearing a wool en hat and something dark is covering his face.

Without even realising it, I am moving towards him.

He hears a sound. Turning, he tucks something into a bag and then scrambles to his feet and begins to run. I yel at him to stop. He carries on, crashing through the undergrowth. Big, slow and shiny faced, he can’t stay ahead of me. I close the gap and he stops suddenly. Unable to slow down, I hurtle into him, knocking him to the ground.

I scramble to my knees and raise my walking stick, holding it above my head like an axe.

‘Don’t move!’

‘Christ, mate, ease up.’

‘Who are you?’

‘I’m a photographer. I work for a press agency.’

He sits up. I look at his bag. The contents have spil ed across the sodden leaves. A camera and flash, long lenses, filters, a notebook…

‘If anything’s broken you’re fucking paying,’ he says, examining the camera.

My shouts have summoned Monk who vaults the fence with far more proficiency than I did.

‘Shit!’ he says, ‘Cooper.’

‘Morning, Monk.’

‘Detective Constable Abbott to you.’ Monk hauls him to his feet. ‘This is a crime scene and private property. You’re trespassing.’

‘Fuck off.’

‘Offensive language— that’s another charge.’

‘Gimme a break.’

‘The film.’

‘I don’t have any film. It’s digital.’

‘Then give me the bloody memory card.’

‘People have got a right to see these pictures,’ says Cooper. ‘It’s in the public interest.’

‘Yeah, sure, woman hanging from a tree; big public interest story.’

I leave the two of them arguing. Monk is going to prevail. He’s six-foot four. Nature wins again.

I climb a gate and fol ow the road to where police cars have blocked off the lane. DI Cray is standing beside a mobile canteen, stirring sugar into tea. She stares at my trousers.

‘I fel down.’

She shakes her head and pauses to watch the white body bag being carried past us on a stretcher and loaded into a waiting Home Office van.

‘What makes someone like Sylvia Furness take off her clothes, walk out of her flat and come here?’

‘I think he used the daughter.’

‘But she was at a riding school.’

‘Remember what Ful er said? When he met Christine Wheeler on the path last Friday, she asked about her daughter.’

‘Darcy was at school.’

‘Exactly. But what if Christine didn’t know that? What if he convinced her otherwise?’

DI Cray draws breath and runs her hand across her scalp. Her short hair flattens and springs back again. I catch her staring at me as though I’m a strange artefact that she has stumbled across and can’t name.

Off to my right I hear the sounds of a commotion, several people shouting at once. Reporters and news crews have crossed the police tape and are charging up the farm track. At least a dozen uniforms and plainclothes converge on them, forming a barricade.

One reporter pivots and ducks under the line. A detective tackles him from behind and they both finish up in the mud.

Veronica Cray utters a knowing sigh and tips out her tea.

‘It’s feeding time.’

Moments later she disappears into the throng. I can barely see the top of her head. She orders them to step back… further stil . I can see her now. The TV lights have bleached her face whiter than a ful moon.

‘My name is Detective Inspector Veronica Cray. At 7.55 this morning the body of a woman was found at this location. Early indications suggest the death is suspicious. We wil not be releasing her name until her next of kin have been informed.’

Each time she pauses, a dozen flashguns fire and the questions come almost as quickly.

‘Who found the body?’

‘Is it true she was naked?’

‘Was she sexually assaulted?’

Some of them are answered, others parried. The DI looks directly at the cameras and maintains a calm, businesslike demeanour, keeping her answers short and to the point.

There are angry objections when she ends the impromptu press conference. Already pushing through their shoulders, she reaches my side and pul s me towards a waiting car.

‘I have no il usions about my work, Professor. My job is pretty straightforward most of the time. Your average murderer is drunk, angry and stupid. He’s white, in his late twenties, with a low IQ and a history of violence. And gets into a pub brawl or gets sick of his wife’s nagging and puts a claw hammer in the back of her head. I can understand that sort of homicide.’

By inference she’s saying this case is different.

‘I’ve heard stories about you. They say you can tel things about people; understand them; read them like tealeaves in a cup.’

‘I make clinical judgements.’

‘Whatever you want to cal it, you seem to be good at this sort of thing. Details are important to you. You like finding patterns to them. I want you to find a pattern for me. I want to know who did this. I want to know why he did it and how he did it. And I want to stop the sick fuck from doing it again.’

25

The house is quiet. Strains of classical music drift along the hal . The dining table has been pushed back against the wal . A lone chair remains in the centre of the room.

Darcy is dressed in trackies rol ed low onto her hips and a green midriff top which shows the paleness of her shoulders and stomach. Her chestnut hair is pinned tightly into a bun.

She balances one leg on the back of a chair with her toes pointed and leans forward until her forehead touches her knee. The outlines of her shoulder blades are like stunted wings beneath her skin.

She holds the pose for a minute and rises again, drawing her arm above her head as if painting the air. Every movement has an economy of effort, the dip of a shoulder or extension of a hand. Nothing is forced or wasted. She is barely a woman, yet she moves with such grace and confidence.

Sitting on the floor, she stretches her legs wide apart and leans forward until her chin touches the floor. Her teenage body, extremely stretched and open, looks athletic and beautiful rather than vulgar.

Her eyes open.

‘Aren’t you cold?’ I ask.

‘No.’

‘How often do you practise?’

‘I should do it twice a day.’

‘You’re very good.’

She laughs. ‘Do you know anything about bal et?’

‘No.’

‘They say I have a dancer’s body,’ she says. ‘Long legs and a short torso.’ She stands and turns side-on. ‘Even when my legs are straight the knee is bent slightly backwards, you see that? It creates a better line when I’m on
pointe
.’ She rises onto her toes. ‘I can also flex my feet forward to be vertical from knee to toe. Can you see?’

‘Yes. You’re very graceful.’

She laughs. ‘I’m bow-legged and duck-footed.’

‘I used to have a patient who was a bal erina.’

‘Why were you seeing her?’

‘She was anorexic.’

Darcy nods sadly. ‘Some girls have to starve themselves. I didn’t have a period until I was fifteen. I also have curvature of the spine, partial y dislocated vertebrae and stress fractures in my neck.’

‘Why do you do it?’

She shakes her head. ‘You wouldn’t understand.’

She turns her toes outward.

‘This is a
pas de chat.
I leap off my left leg starting from a
plié
and raise my right leg into a
retiré.
In mid-air I raise my left leg into a
retiré
as wel so that my legs form a diamond shape in the air. You see? That’s what the four cygnets do when they dance in
Swan Lake
. Their arms are interlaced and they do sixteen
pas de chats
.’

An abiding sense of lightness makes her float through each jump.

‘Can you help me practise my
pas de deux
?’

‘What’s that?’

‘Come here. I’l show you.’

She takes my hands and puts them on her waist. I feel as though my fingertips could reach right around her and touch in the smal of her back.

‘A little lower,’ she says. ‘That’s it.’

‘I don’t know what I’m doing.’

‘It doesn’t matter. Nobody watches the man in a
pas de deux
. They’re too busy watching the bal erina.’

‘What do I do?’

‘Hold me as I jump.’

Effortlessly, she takes off. If anything it feels as though I’m holding her down rather than up. Her bare skin slides beneath my fingers.

She does it half a dozen times. ‘You can let go of me now,’ she says, giving me a teasing smile.

‘Perhaps you don’t like bal et. I can do other dances.’ Reaching up, she unpins her hair and lets it tumble over her eyes. Then she grinds her hips in a long slow circle, squatting with her knees apart, running her hands along her thighs and over her crotch.

It is shamelessly provocative. I force myself to look away.

‘You shouldn’t dance like that.’

‘Why not?’

‘It’s not something you should do in front of a stranger.’

‘But you’re not a stranger.’

She’s making fun of me now. Adolescent girls are the most complicated life forms in the known universe. It astonishes me how they manage to be so discomfiting. With little more than a glance or a flash of skin or a dismissive smirk, they can make a man feel ancient, meddlesome and vaguely lecherous.

‘I need to talk to you.’

‘What about?’

‘Your mother.’

‘I thought you’d asked me everything already.’

‘Not yet.’

‘Can I keep stretching?’

‘Of course.’

She sits on the floor again, pushing her legs wide apart.

‘Did you talk to anyone about your mother— in the past month? Was there someone who asked questions about her or about you?’

She shrugs. ‘I don’t think so. I can’t remember. What’s wrong? What’s happened?’

‘There’s been another death. The police are going to want to interview you again.’

Darcy stops stretching and her eyes meet mine. They’re no longer bright with energy or amusement.

‘Who?’

‘Sylvia Furness. I’m sorry.’

A slight noise catches in Darcy’s throat. She holds her hands to her mouth as if trying to stop the sound from escaping.

‘Did you ever meet Alice?’ I ask.