Shatter (24 page)

‘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 colour 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 155 mm 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?

He’s still whining, yelling over the sound of the TV.

‘That’s the problems with soldiers today. They’re soft. They’re pampered. Feather pillows. Gourmet food…’

I’m frying pieces of ham and breaking eggs into the spaces between the slices. The beans won’t take long to heat in the microwave.

Pop changes the subject. ‘How’s my granddaughter?’

‘Good.’

‘How come you never bring her to see me?’

‘She doesn’t live with me, Pop.’

‘Yeah, but that judge gave you—.’

‘Don’t matter what the judge said. She doesn’t live with me.’

‘But you see her, right? You talk to her.’

‘Yeah. Sure.’ I lie.

‘So why don’t you bring her round? I want to see her.’

I look around the kitchen. ‘She doesn’t want to come.’

‘Why not?’

‘I don’t know.’

He grunts.

‘I guess she’s at school now.’

‘Yeah.’

‘What school?’

I don’t answer him.

‘Probably some fancy private school like her mother went to. She was always too good for the likes of you. Couldn’t stand her father. Thought his shit didn’t smell. Drove a different
car every year.’

‘They were company cars.’

‘Yeah, well, he looked down his nose at you.’

‘No he didn’t.’

‘Fucking did. We weren’t his type. Golf clubs, skiing holidays… He paid for that posh wedding.’ He pauses and gets excited. ‘Maybe you should apply for alimony, you know. Take
her to court. Get your share.’

‘I don’t want her money.’

‘Give it to me.’

‘No.’

‘Why not? I deserve something.’

‘I got you this place.’

‘Yeah, a fucking palace!’

He shuffles into the kitchen and sits down. I dish up the food. He smothers everything in brown sauce. Doesn’t say thank you. Doesn’t wait for me.

I wonder when he looks in the mirror if he sees what other people see: a useless bladder of piss and wind. That’s what I see. The man has no right to lecture me. He’s a foul-mouthed,
whining, skid-mark on the world and I wish sometimes that he’d just die or at least get even.

I don’t know why I bother coming to visit him. When I remember what he did to me, it’s all I can do not to spit in his face. He won’t remember. He’ll say I’m making it up.

His beltings were never as bad as the long, drawn out prelude to them. I was sent to the stairs, where I had to drop my trousers and put my arms through the railings, crossing them
and gripping my wrists. I’d stand there waiting and waiting, with my forehead pressed against the wood.

The first sound I heard was the swishing of the flex as it curled through the air a split-second before it landed. He used an old toaster cord with the plug still attached, which he
gripped in his fist.

I’ll tell you the strange thing about them beatings. They taught me how to split my mind in two. I didn’t leave home at sixteen. I left home years earlier when I was hanging on those
railings. I left home when that cord whipped through the air and sank into my skin.

I used to fantasise about what I’d do to him when I was big enough and strong enough. I didn’t have much of an imagination back then. I thought of punching him or kicking him in
the head. It’s different now. I can imagine a thousand ways to cause him pain. I can imagine him begging to die. He might even think he was already dead. That’s happened to me
before. An Algerian terrorist, captured fighting for the Talibs in the mountains north of Gardeyz, asked me if he was in hell.

‘Not yet,’ I said. ‘But it’s going to seem like a holiday camp when you get there.’

Pop pushes his plate away and rubs a hand over his jaw, giving me a quick sly look. A gin bottle appears from the cupboard below the sink. He pours a glass, with the air of a man
who is putting something over on the world.

‘You want one?’

‘No.’

I look around, seeking a distraction, an excuse to leave.

‘You got to be somewhere?’ he asks.

‘Yeah.’

‘You only just got here.’

‘There’s a job.’

‘Fixing more locks.’

‘Yeah.’

He snorts in disgust. ‘You must be cock-deep in cash.’

Then he launches into another speech, complaining about his life and telling me I’m useless and selfish and a fucking disappointment.

I look at his neck. I could break it easily enough. Two hands, thumbs in the right place, and he stops talking… and breathing. No different to killing a rabbit.

On he goes, blah, blah, blah, his mouth opening and closing, filling the world with shit. Maybe the Algerian was right about hell.

31

A shadow fil s the glass panels of the door. It opens. Veronica Cray turns and sways down the hal way.

‘You seen the Sunday papers, Professor?’

‘No.’

‘Sylvia Furness is al over them— page one, page three, page five… Monk just cal ed. There are two dozen reporters outside Trinity Road.’

I fol ow her to the kitchen. She moves to the stove and begins pushing pots and pans around the hotplates. A spil of sunlight from the window highlights flecks of silver at the roots of her hair.

‘This is a tabloid editor’s wet dream. Two victims— white, attractive, middle-class women. Mothers. Both naked. Business partners. One of them jumps off a bridge and the other is left hanging from a tree like a side of beef. You should read some of the theories they’re coming up with— love triangles, lesbian affairs, jilted lovers.’

She opens the fridge and retrieves a carton of eggs, butter, rashers of bacon and a tomato. I’m stil standing.

‘Sit down. I’m going to make
you
breakfast.’ She makes it sound like I’m on the menu.

‘That’s real y not necessary.’

‘For you maybe— I’ve been up since five. You want coffee or tea?’

‘Coffee.’

Breaking eggs into a bowl, she begins whisking them into a liquid froth, every movement practised and precise. I take a seat, listening to her talk. A dozen different newspapers are open on the table. Sylvia Furness is smiling from the pages of each one of them.

The investigation is focusing on the wedding planning business, Blissful, now in receivership. The unpaid bil s and final demands had built up over two years, but Christine Wheeler had kept the bailiffs at bay by periodical y injecting cash, most of it borrowed against her house. Legal action over a food poisoning scare proved to be the final straw. She defaulted on two loans. The carrion began circling.

Police artists are due to sit down with Darcy and Alice. They’re going to be interviewed separately to see if their recol ections can help create identikit images of the man they spoke to in the days before their mothers died.

Physical y the girls described him as being roughly the same height and build, but Darcy remembered him having dark hair, while Alice was sure that he was fair. Appearances can be altered, of course, but eyewitness descriptions are notoriously fickle. Very few people can remember more than a handful of descriptors: sex, age, height, hair colour and race. This isn’t enough to draw up a truly accurate identikit and a poor one does more harm than good.

The detective scoops bacon from the frying pan and halves the scrambled eggs, tipping them onto thick slices of toast.

‘You want Tabasco on your eggs?’

‘Sure.’

She pours the coffee, adds milk.

The task force is fol owing up a dozen other leads. A traffic camera on Warminster Road picked up Sylvia Furness’s car at 16.08 on Monday. An unidentified silver van fol owed her through the traffic lights. A week earlier, a similar looking van crossed the Clifton Suspension Bridge twenty minutes before Christine Wheeler climbed the safety fence. Same make.

Same model. Neither CCTV camera picked up a ful number plate.

Sylvia Furness received a cal at home at four-fifteen on Monday afternoon. It was made from a mobile phone that was purchased two months ago at a high street outlet in south London, using a dodgy ID. A second handset, purchased on the same day, was used to cal Sylvia’s mobile at 16.42. It was the same MO as with Christine Wheeler. One cal overlapped the other. The cal er passed Sylvia from her landline to her mobile, possibly ensuring that he didn’t break contact with her.

DI Cray eats quickly, refil ing her plate. The coffee must burn her throat as she washes down every mouthful. She wipes her lips with a paper napkin.

‘Forensics came up with something interesting. Semen stains from two different men on her bed-sheets.’

‘Does the husband know?’

‘Seems they had an arrangement— an open marriage.’ Whenever I hear that term I think of a smal delicate craft floating on an ocean of shit. The DI senses my disil usionment and chuckles.

‘Don’t tel me you’re a romantic, Professor.’

‘I guess I am. What about you?’

‘Most women are— even a woman like me.’

She makes it sound like a statement of intent. I use it as an opening.

‘I noticed photographs of a young man. Is he your son?’

‘Yes.’

‘Where is he now?’

‘Grown up. He lives in London. They al seem to go to London eventual y— like turtles returning to the same beach.’

‘You miss him?’

‘Does Dol y Parton sleep on her back?

I want to pause and study this mental picture, but carry on. ‘Where’s his father?’

‘What is this— twenty questions?’

‘I’m interested.’

‘You’re nosy.’

‘Curious, that’s al .’

‘Yeah, wel , I’m not one of your bloody patients.’ She says it with unexpected anger and then looks slightly self-conscious. ‘You want to know, I was married for eight months. They were the longest years of my life. And my son is the only good thing that came out of them.’

She takes my plate from the table and dumps the cutlery into the sink. The tap is turned on and she scrubs the dishes as though cleaning away more than scrambled eggs.

‘Do you have a problem with psychologists?’ I ask.

‘No.’

‘Maybe it’s me?’

‘No offence, Professor, but a century ago people didn’t need shrinks to get by. They didn’t need therapy, Prozac, self-help manuals or the fucking “Secret”. They just got on with their lives.’

‘A century ago people only lived to be forty-five.’

‘So you’re saying that living longer makes us unhappier?’

‘It gives us more time to be unhappy. Our expectations have changed. Survival isn’t enough. We want fulfilment.’

She doesn’t answer, but it’s not a sign of consensus. Instead her demeanour suggests an episode in her past, a family history, or a visit to a psychologist or psychiatrist.

‘Is it because you’re gay?’ I ask.

‘You got a problem with it?’

‘No.’

‘Gertrude Stein told Hemingway that the reason he had a problem with accepting homosexuality was because the male homosexual act was ugly and repugnant whereas with women it is the opposite.’

‘I try not to judge people on their sexuality.’

‘But you
do
judge them, every day in your consulting room.’

‘I no longer have a clinical practice, but when I did I tried to help people.’

‘Have you ever had a patient who didn’t want to be gay?’

‘Yes.’

‘Did you try to fix them?’

‘There was nothing to fix. I can’t change someone’s sexuality. I help them come to terms with who they are. I help them cope with their own nature.’

The DI dries her hands and sits down again, reaching for her cigarettes. Lights one.

‘You finish the psychological profile?’

I nod. The crunch of wheels on gravel signals an arrival outside. Safari Roy has come to take her to Trinity Road.

‘I got a morning briefing. You should come.’

Roy knocks on the door and comes inside. He dips his head in greeting.