Shatter

47

Maureen Bracken has tubes flowing into her and tubes flowing out. It has been two days since the shooting and a day since she woke, pale and relieved, with only a vague idea of what happened. Every few hours a nurse gives her morphine and she floats into sleep again.

She is under police guard at the Bristol Royal Infirmary- a landmark building in a city with precious few landmarks. Inside the front entrance at a welcome desk there are volunteers wearing blue and white sashes. They look like geriatric beauty queens who missed their pageant by forty years.

I mention Maureen Bracken’s name. The smiles disappear. A police officer is summoned from upstairs. Ruiz and I wait in the foyer, glancing through magazines at the hospital shop.

Bruno’s voice booms from an opening lift.

‘Thank God, a friendly face. Come to cheer the old girl up?’

‘How is she?’

‘Looking better. I had no idea a bullet could make such a mess. Horrible. Missed all the important bits, that’s the main thing.’

He looks genuinely relieved. We spend the next few minutes trading cliches about what the world’s coming to.

‘I’m just off to get some decent food,’ he says. ‘Can’t have her eating hospital swill. Full of super-bugs.’

‘It’s not as bad as you think,’ I say.

‘No, it’s worse,’ says Ruiz.

‘Do you think they’ll mind?’ asks Bruno

‘I’m sure they won’t.’

He waves goodbye and disappears through the automatic doors.

A detective emerges from the lift. Italian-looking with a crew cut and a pistol slung low in a holster beneath his jacket. I recognise him from briefings at Trinity Road.

He escorts us upstairs where a second officer is guarding the corridor outside Maureen Bracken’s room in a secure wing of the hospital. The detectives use metal detecting wands to screen visitors and medical personnel.

The door opens. Maureen looks up from a magazine and smiles nervously. Her shoulder is bandaged and her arm held in a sling across her chest. Tubes appear and disappear beneath the bandages and bedding.

She’s wearing make-up- for Bruno’s sake, I suspect. And the normally featureless room has been transformed by dozens of cards, painting and drawings. A banner is draped above her bed, fringed in gold and silver. It announces: GET WELL SOON and is signed by her hundreds of students.

‘You’re a very popular teacher,’ I say.

‘They all want to come and see me,’ she laughs. ‘Only in school hours of course, so they can get out of classes.’

‘How are you feeling?’

‘Better.’ She sits up a little higher. I adjust a pillow behind her back. Ruiz has stayed outside in the corridor, swapping off-colour jokes about nurses with the detectives.

‘You just missed Bruno,’ says Maureen.

‘I saw him downstairs.’

‘He’s gone to buy me lunch from Mario’s. I had this craving for pasta and a rocket and parmesan salad. It’s like being pregnant again and having Bruno spoil me, but don’t tell him I said that.’

‘I won’t.’

She looks at her hands. ‘I’m sorry I tried to shoot you.’

‘It’s OK.’

Her voice cracks momentarily. ‘It was horrible… the things he said about Jackson. I really believed him, you know. I really thought he was going to do it.’

Maureen recounts again what happened. Every parent knows what it’s like to lose sight of a child in a supermarket or a playground or in a busy street. Two minutes becomes a lifetime. Two hours and you’re capable of almost anything. It was worse for Maureen. She listened to her son screaming and imagined his pain and death. The caller told her that she would never see Jackson again, never find his body; never know the truth.

I tell her that I understand.

‘Do you?’ she asks.

‘I think so.’

She shakes her head and looks down at her wounded shoulder. ‘I don’t think anyone can understand. I would have put that gun in my own mouth. I would have pulled the trigger. I would have done anything to save Jackson.’

I take a seat beside the bed.

‘Did you recognise his voice?’

She shakes her head. ‘But I know it was Gideon.’

‘How?’

‘He asked about Helen. He demanded to know if she’d written or called or sent me an email. I told him no. I said Helen was dead and I was sorry, but he laughed.’

‘Did he say why he thinks she’s alive?’

‘No, but he made me believe it.’

‘How?’

She stumbles, searching for words. ‘He was so sure.’

Maureen looks away, seeking a distraction, no longer wanting to think about Gideon Tyler.

‘Helen’s mother sent me a get well message,’ she says, pointing to the side table. She directs me to the right card. It features a hand-drawn orchid in pastel shades. Claudia Chambers has written:

God sometimes tests the best people because he knows they’re going to pass. Our thoughts and prayers are with you. Please get well soon.

I replace the card.

Maureen has closed her eyes. Slowly her face folds in pain. The morphine is wearing off. A memory uncurls itself from inside her head and she opens her mouth.

‘Mothers should always know where their children are.’

‘Why do you say that?’

‘It’s something he said to me.’

‘Gideon?’

‘I thought he was goading me, but I don’t know any more. Maybe it was the only thing he said that wasn’t a lie.’