Shattered Read Online Free PDF Page A

(called a marver) on which I should have been rolling eternity into basic balls of liquid glass, and thought only of Martin alive in the body, Martin laughing and winning races, and Martin’s lost message on videotape. Where was that tape, what did it contain and who thought it worth stealing?
    These profitless thoughts were interrupted by the doorbell ringing early at nine o‘clock, when we’d said we’d open at ten.
    On the doorstep stood no recognizable customer but a young woman in a vast sloppy sweater hanging around her knees, topped by a baseball cap over a shock of brass ily dyed streaky hair. We stared at each other with interest, her brown eyes alive and curious, her jaw rhythmic with chewing gum.
    I said politely, “Good morning.”
    â€œYeah. Yeah.” She laughed. “Happy New Century and all that rubbish. Are you Gerard Logan?”
    Her accent was Estuary, Essex or Thames: take your pick.
    â€œLogan.” I nodded. “And you?”
    â€œDetective Constable Dodd.”
    I blinked. “Plainclothes?”
    â€œYou may laugh,” she said, chewing away. “You reported a theft at twelve thirty-two this A.M. Can I come in?”
    â€œBe my guest.”
    She stepped into the gallery spotlights and glowed. From habit I dramatized her in glass in my mind, an abstract essence as a conduit of feeling and light, exactly the instinctive process I’d tried in vain to summon up for Martin.
    Oblivious, Detective Constable Dodd produced a down-to-earth warrant card identifying her in uniform and adding a first name, Catherine. I handed the warrant card back and answered her questions, but the police opinion was already firm. Too bad I’d left a bagful of money lying around, she said. What did I expect? And videotapes came by the dozen. No one would think twice about snapping one up.
    â€œWhat was on it?” she asked, pencil poised over a notepad.
    â€œI’ve no idea.” I explained how it had come to me originally in a brown-paper parcel.
    â€œPornography. Bound to be.” Her pronouncement was brisk, world-weary and convinced. “Unidentified.” She shrugged. “Would you know it from any other tape if you saw it again?”
    â€œIt hadn’t any labels.”
    I dug the wrapping out of the rubbish bin and gave her the wrinkled and torn paper. “This came to me by hand,” I said. “There’s no postmark.”
    She took the paper dubiously, enclosed it in a further bag, got me to sign across the fold and tucked it away somewhere under the extra-loose sweater.
    My answers to her questions about the stolen money caused her eyebrows to rise over the amount, but she obviously thought I’d never again see the canvas bag or the mini-bonanza inside. I still had checks and credit card slips, of course, but most of my tourist customers paid in cash.
    I told her then about Lloyd Baxter and his epileptic fit. “Maybe he saw the thief,” I said.
    She frowned. “Maybe he was the thief. Could he have faked the fit?”
    â€œThe paramedics didn’t seem to think so.”
    She sighed. “How long were you out in the street?”
    â€œBells. ‘Auld Lang Syne,’ fireworks, happy new thousand years...”
    â€œGetting on for half an hour?” She consulted her notebook. “You phoned the ambulance service at twelve twenty-seven.”
    She wandered through the showroom looking at the small colorful vases, the clowns, sailing boats, fishes and horses. She picked up a haloed angel and disapproved of the price sticker under the feet. Her swath of hair fell forward, framing her intent face, and I again clearly saw the bright analytical intelligence inside the sloppy hippie-type disguise. She was through and through a police officer, not primarily a come-hither female.
    Replacing the angel with decision on the shelf, she folded her notebook, stored it out of sight and with body language announced