Shatter - v4, page 29
I get a proper laugh this time. It’s the sweetest thing you ever heard. She’s a peach, a sweet, sweet peach.
‘What’s your name?’
She doesn’t answer.
‘Oh right, I forgot, you’re not supposed to talk to strangers. I guess I’ll have to call you Snowflake.’
She stares out the window.
‘Well, this is my stop,’ I say, pulling myself up. A crutch topples into the aisle. She bends and picks it up for me.
‘What happened to your leg?’
‘Nothing.’
‘Why do you need the crutches?’
‘Gets me a seat on the bus.’
Again she laughs.
‘It’s been nice talking to you, Snowflake.’
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 clichés 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.’
48
The law firm of Spencer, Rose and Davis is located in a modern office block opposite the Guildhall and alongside the Law Courts. The foyer is like a modern day citadel, towering five storeys to a convex glass roof crisscrossed with white pipes.
There is a waterfall and a pond and a waiting area with black leather sofas. Ruiz and I watch a man in a pinstriped suit come floating to the floor in one of twin glass lifts.
‘See that guy’s suit,’ Ruiz whispers. ‘It’s worth more than my entire wardrobe.’
‘My shoes are worth more than your entire wardrobe,’ I reply.
‘That’s cruel.’
The pinstriped man confers with the receptionist and moves towards us, unbuttoning his jacket. There are no introductions. We are to follow.
The lift carries us upwards. The potted plants grow smaller and the koi carp become like goldfish.
We are ushered into an office where a septuagenarian lawyer is seated at a large desk that makes him appear even more shrunken. He rises an inch from his leather chair and sits again. It’s either a sign of his age or how much respect he’s going to give us.
‘My name is Julian Spencer,’ he says. ‘I act for Chambers Construction and I’m an old friend of Bryan’s family. I believe that you’ve already met Mr Chambers.’
Bryan Chambers doesn’t bother shaking hands. He is dressed in a suit that no tailor could ever make look comfortable. Some men are built to wear overalls.
‘I think we got off on the wrong foot,’ I say.
‘You tricked your way onto my property and upset my wife.’
‘I apologise if that’s the case.’
Mr Spencer tries to take the edge off the moment, tut-tutting Mr Chambers like a schoolmaster.
Family friends, he said. It doesn’t strike me as a natural alliance— an old money establishment lawyer and working-class millionaire.
The pinstriped man has stayed in the room. He stands by the window, his arms folded.
‘The police are looking for Gideon Tyler,’ I say.
‘It’s about bloody time,’ says Bryan Chambers.
‘Do you know where he is?’
‘No.’
‘When did you last speak to him?’
‘I speak to him all the time. I yell at him down the phone when he calls in the middle of the night and says nothing, just stays on the line, breathing.’
‘You’re sure it’s him.’
Chambers glares at me, as though I’m questioning his intelligence. I meet his eyes and hold them, studying his face. Big men tend to have big personalities, but a shadow has been cast over his life and he’s wilting under the weight of it.
Getting to his feet, he paces the floor, flexing his fingers, closing them into fists and then opening them again.
‘Tyler broke into our house— more than once— I don’t know how many times. I put new locks on the doors, installed cameras, alarms, but it didn’t matter, because he still made it through. He left behind messages. Warnings. Dead birds in the microwave; a gun on our bed; my wife’s cat was stuffed into a toilet cistern.’
‘And you reported all this to the police.’
‘I had them on speed dial. They wore a path to my door, but they were next to fucking useless.’ He glances towards Ruiz. ‘They didn’t arrest him. They didn’t charge him. They said there was no evidence. The calls came from different mobile phones that couldn’t be traced to Tyler. There were no fingerprints or fibres, no footage on the cameras. How can that be?’
‘He’s careful,’ answers Ruiz.
‘Or they’re protecting him.’
‘Why?’
Bryan Chambers shrugs. ‘I don’t know. Makes no sense. I got six guys guarding the house now, round the clock. It’s still not enough.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Last night someone poisoned the lake at Stonebridge Manor,’ he explains. ‘We had four thousand fish— tench, roach and bream— they’re all dead.’
‘Tyler?’
‘Who else?’
The big man has stopped pacing. The fire has gone out of him, at least for the moment.
‘What does Gideon want?’ I ask.
Julian Spencer answers for him. ‘Mr Tyler hasn’t made this clear. At first he wanted to find his wife and daughter.’
‘This was before the ferry accident.’
‘Yes. He didn’t accept the marriage was over and he came looking for Helen and Chloe. He accused Bryan and Claudia of hiding them.’
The lawyer produces a letter from the drawer of his desk, refreshing his memory.
‘My Tyler took legal action in Germany and won a court order for joint custody of his daughter. He wanted an international warrant issued for his wife’s arrest.’
‘They were hiding out in Greece,’ says Ruiz.
‘Just so.’
‘Surely, after the tragedy, Tyler stopped his harassment.’
Bryan Chambers laughs caustically and it turns into a fit of coughing. The old lawyer pours him a glass of water.
‘I don’t understand. Helen and Chloe are dead. Why would Tyler keep harassing you?’
Bryan Chambers slumps forward in a chair, his shoulders collapsing over his chest in a posture of abject defeat. ‘I figured it was about money. Helen was going to inherit the manor one day. I thought Tyler wanted some sort of pay-off. I offered him two hundred thousand pounds if he left us alone. He wouldn’t take it.’
The old lawyer tut-tuts his disapproval.
‘And he hasn’t asked for anything else?’
Chambers shakes his head. ‘The man is a psychopath. I’ve given up trying to understand him. I want to crush the bastard. I want to make him pay…’
Julian Spencer cautions him about making threats.
‘Fuck being careful! My wife is on antidepressants. She doesn’t sleep any more. You see my hands?’ Chambers holds them across the table. ‘You want to know why they’re so steady? Drugs. That’s what Tyler has done to us. We’re both on medication. He’s made our lives a misery.’
When I first met Bryan Chambers, I thought his anger and secrecy were evidence of paranoia. I’m more sympathetic now. He has lost a daughter and granddaughter and his sanity is under threat.
‘Tell me about Gideon,’ I ask. ‘When was the first time you met him?’
‘Helen brought him home. I thought he was a cold fish.’
‘Why?’
‘He looked as though he knew the secrets of everyone in the room, but nobody knew his. It was obvious that he was in the military, but he wouldn’t talk about the army or his work— not even to Helen.’
‘Where was he based?’
‘At Chicksands in Bedfordshire. It’s some sort of army training place.’
‘And then?’
‘Northern Ireland and Germany. He was away a lot. He wouldn’t tell Helen where he was going, but there were clues, she said. Afghanistan. Egypt. Morocco. Poland. Iraq…’
‘Any idea what he was doing?’
‘No.’
Ruiz has wandered across to the window, taking in the view. At the same time, he glances sidelong at the pinstriped man, sizing him up. Ruiz is more intuitive than I am. I look for telltale signals to judge a person, he feels it inside.
I ask Mr Chambers about his daughter’s marriage. I want to know if the breakdown had been sudden or protracted. Some couples cling to nothing more than familiarity and routine, long after any real affection has gone.
‘I love my daughter, Professor, but I don’t profess to understand women particularly well, not even my wife,’ he says, blowing his nose. ‘She loves me— figure that out.’
He folds the handkerchief into quarters and returns it to his trouser pocket.
‘I didn’t like the way Gideon manipulated Helen. She was a different girl around him. When they married, Gideon wanted her to be blonde. She went to a hairdresser but the result was a disaster. She finished up with bright ginger hair. She was embarrassed enough, but Gideon made it worse. He poked fun at her at their wedding; belittled her in front of her friends. I hated him for that.’
‘At the wedding reception, I wanted to dance with her. It’s traditional— the father dancing with the bride. Gideon made Helen ask his permission first. It was her wedding day, for Christ’s sake! What bride has to get permission to dance with her father on her wedding day?’
Something flashes across his face, an involuntary spasm.
‘When they moved to Northern Ireland, Helen would call at least twice a week and write long letters. Then the calls and letters dried up. Gideon didn’t want her communicating with us.’
‘Why?’
‘I don’t know. He seemed to be jealous of her family and her friends. We saw less and less of Helen. When she came to visit it was never for more than a night or two before Gideon packed the car. Helen rarely smiled and she spoke in whispers but she was loyal to Gideon and wouldn’t say a word against him.
‘When she fell pregnant with Chloe, she told her mother not to visit. Later we discovered that Gideon didn’t want the baby. He was furious and demanded she had an abortion. Helen refused.
‘I don’t know for sure but I think he was jealous of his own child. Can you believe that? Funny thing is, when Chloe was born his attitude changed completely. He was besotted. Captivated. Things settled down. They were happier.
‘Gideon was transferred to Osnabrück in Germany, the British Forces base. They moved into a flat provided by the army. There were lots of other wives and families in the married quarters. Helen managed to write about once a month but soon these letters stopped and she couldn’t contact us without his permission.
‘Every evening Gideon quizzed her about where she went, who she saw, what was said. Helen had to remember entire conversations verbatim or Gideon accused of her of lying or keeping secrets from him. She had to sneak out of the house to call her mother from a public phone because she knew any call from home or her mobile would show up on the phone bill.
‘Even when Gideon went away on tours of duty, Helen had to be careful. She was sure that people were watching her and reporting back to him.
‘His jealousy was like a disease. Whenever they went out socialising, Gideon would make Helen sit in a corner by herself. If another man talked to her, he’d get angry. He’d demand to know exactly what was said— word for word.’
Rocking forward in his chair Bryan Chambers clasps his hands together, as if praying he’d done something sooner to rescue his daughter.
‘Gideon’s behaviour became even more erratic after his last tour. I don’t know what happened. According to Helen he became distant, moody, violent…’
‘He hit her?’ asks Ruiz.
‘Only the once— a backhander across her face. It split Helen’s lip. She threatened to leave. He apologised. He cried. He begged her to stay. She should have left him then. She should have run away. But every time she contemplated leaving, her resolve weakened.’
‘What happened on his last tour?’
Chambers shrugs. ‘I don’t know. He was in Afghanistan. Helen said something about a friend dying and another getting badly wounded.’
‘Did you ever hear the name Patrick Fuller mentioned?’
He shakes his head.
‘Gideon came back and suddenly demanded that Helen have another baby, a boy. He wanted a boy that he could name after his dead friend. He flushed her birth control pills down the toilet, but Helen found ways to stop herself falling pregnant.
‘Soon after that Gideon got permission to move them out of the married quarters. He rented a farmhouse about ten miles from the garrison, in the middle of nowhere. Helen didn’t have a telephone or a car. She and Chloe were totally isolated. He was closing the world around them, making it shrink to fit just the three of them.
