Shatter - v4, page 35
I reach the High Street and cross over, scanning the footpaths. Charlie might have fallen off her bike. Someone might have picked her up. Not Gideon; someone else— a good Samaritan.
I’m nearing the cottage. I look up and see Julianne naked in the bedroom window, her mouth smeared with lipstick. I take the stairs two at a time, flinging open the door, pulling her away from the window. I take the quilt and wrap it around her shoulders, taking the phone from her fingers. Gideon is still on the line.
‘Hello, Joe, did you find Charlie? Still think I’m bluffing? I hate to say I told you so.’
‘Where is she?’
‘With me, of course, I wouldn’t lie to you.’
‘Prove it.’
‘I’m sorry?’
‘Prove that you have her.’
‘Which part of her do you want me to post to you?’
‘Put her on the phone.’
‘Put Julianne back on the line.’
‘No. I want to hear from Charlie.’
‘I don’t think you’re in any position to make demands, Joe.’
‘I’m not going to play games with you, Gideon. Prove to me that you have Charlie and we’ll talk. Otherwise I’m not interested.’
I press a button on the handset, ending the call.
Julianne screams and throws herself at me, trying to take the handset.
‘Trust me. I know what I’m doing.’
‘Don’t hang up! Don’t hang up!’
‘Sit down. Please. Trust me.’
The phone is ringing. I answer: ‘Put my daughter on the phone!’
Gideon explodes, ‘DON‘T YOU EVER FUCKING DO THAT AGAIN!’
I hang up.
Julianne is sobbing, ‘He’ll kill her. He’ll kill her.’
The phone rings.
‘DO THAT AGAIN AND I SWEAR I’LL—’
I hit the button, cutting him off.
He calls back.
‘YOU WANT HER DEAD? YOU WANT ME TO KILL HER? I’LL DO IT RIGHT NOW!’
I hang up.
Julianne is fighting me for the phone, hammering her fists on my chest. I have to hold the handset out of her reach.
‘Let me talk to him. Let me talk,’ she cries.
‘I know what I’m doing.’
‘Don’t hang up.’
‘Just get dressed and go downstairs. The police are coming. I need you to let them in.’
I’m trying to sound confident but inside I’m so frightened I can barely function. All I know for certain is that Gideon has been pulling strings like a master puppeteer, in total control. Somehow I have to stop his momentum, to slow him down.
The first rule of hostage negotiation is to demand proof of life. Gideon doesn’t want to negotiate. Not yet. I have to make him rethink his plans and change his methods.
The phone rings again.
Gideon is ranting: ‘LISTEN YOU COCKSUCKER. I’M GOING TO CUT HER OPEN. I’M GOING TO WATCH HER INSIDES STEAM—’
I hang up as Julianne lunges for the handset and finishes on the floor. I reach down to pick her up. She slaps my hand away and turns on me, her face contorted with fury and fear.
‘YOU DID THIS! YOU BROUGHT THIS ON US,’ she screams, stabbing her finger at me. Her voice drops to a whisper. ‘I warned you! I told you not to get involved. I didn’t want you infecting this family with your sick, twisted patients or the sadists and psychopaths you know so much about.’
‘We’ll get her back,’ I say, but Julianne isn’t listening.
‘Charlie, poor Charlie.’ She groans, collapsing on the bed in great snorting sobs. Her head is hanging over her naked thighs. There’s nothing I can say to comfort her. I cannot comfort myself.
The phone rings. I pick up.
‘Hello, Daddy, it’s me.’
My heart breaks.
‘Hello, sweetheart, are you all right?’
‘I hurt my leg. My bike is busted. I’m sorry.’
‘It’s not your fault.’
‘I’m fright—’
She doesn’t finish the statement. Her words are cut off and I hear masking tape being ripped from a spool.
Gideon’s voice replaces hers.
‘Say goodbye, Joe, you’re not going to see her again. You think you can fuck with me. You have no idea what I’m capable of.’
‘Charlie has nothing to do with this!’
‘Call her collateral damage.’
‘Why take her?’
‘I want what you have.’
‘Your wife and daughter are dead.’
‘Is that so?’
‘Take me instead.’
‘I don’t want you.’
I hear more tape being pulled off the spool.
‘What are you doing?’
‘I’m wrapping up my present.’
‘Let’s talk about your wife.’
‘Why? Have you found her?’
‘No.’
‘Well, I have a new girlfriend to play with. Tell Julianne I’ll call her later and give her all the details.’
Before I can ask another question the lines goes dead. I dial the number. Gideon has turned off the mobile.
Julianne doesn’t look at me. I wrap the quilt around her shoulders. She’s not crying. She’s not screaming at me. The only tears are mine, falling on the inside. They’ve never come so easily.
56
A dozen detectives and twice that many uniforms have sealed off the village and the access roads. Vans and trucks are being searched and motorists questioned.
Veronica Cray is in the kitchen, along with Safari Roy. They look at me with a mixture of respect and pity. I wonder if that’s how I appear when I confront someone else’s misfortune.
Julianne has showered twice and dressed in jeans and a pullover. She has the body language of a rape victim with her arms crossed tightly over her chest as if desperately holding on to something she can’t afford to lose. She won’t look at me.
Oliver Rabb has two new mobiles to trace— mine and the one Gideon used when he first called Julianne. He should be able to track the signals up until an hour ago when Gideon broke off contact.
There is a ten-metre GSM tower in the middle of a field, two hundred yards north-west of the village. The next nearest tower is on Baggridge Hill a mile to the south; and the next closest on the outskirts of Peasedown St John, two miles to the west.
‘We need Tyler to phone back,’ says DI Cray.
‘He will,’ I answer, staring at Julianne’s mobile, which is sitting on the kitchen table. He knew her number. He knew the house number. He knew what clothes she was wearing, what lipstick and jewellery she had on her dressing table.
Julianne hasn’t told me exactly what Gideon said to her. If she were a patient in my consulting room, I’d be asking her to talk, to put things into context, to deal with her trauma. But she’s not a patient. She’s my wife and I don’t want to know the details. I want to pretend it didn’t happen.
Gideon Tyler has been inside my house. He has taken everything important— trust, peace of mind, tranquillity. He has watched my children sleeping. Emma said she saw a ghost. She woke and talked to him. He isolated Julianne. He told her what lipstick and jewellery to wear. He made her stand naked at the bedroom window.
I have always tried to put dark thoughts aside and imagine only good things happening to my family. Sometimes, looking into Charlie’s sweet, pale, changing face, I have almost come to believe that I could protect her from pain or heartbreak. Now she’s gone. Julianne is right. It’s my fault. A father is supposed to protect his children, to keep them safe and lay down his life for them.
I keep telling myself that Gideon Tyler won’t hurt Charlie. It is like a mantra in my head, but the message brings no comfort. I also try to tell myself that people like Gideon— sadists and psychopaths— are few and far between. Does that make Charlie one of the unlucky few? Don’t tell me there’s a price to be paid for living in a free society. Not this price. Not when it involves my daughter.
Recording devices are being attached to the landline of the cottage and a scanner programmed to pick up conversation on our mobile phones. Our SIM cards have been transferred to handsets with GPS tracking capabilities. I ask why. The DI says it’s a contingency. They may want to try a mobile intercept.
The village is framed through the window, looking like a page from a storybook with great billowing clouds, streaked by the sun. Imogen and Emma have gone next door to Mrs Nutall’s house. Neighbours have come outside to look at the police cars and vans parked in the street. They’re having casual conversations, exchanging pleasantries and pretending not to gawk at the detectives going door-to-door. Their children have been shooed inside, locked away from the unknown danger stalking their streets.
I hear the shower running upstairs again. Julianne is under the water, trying to wash away what happened. How long has it been? Three hours. No matter what happens Charlie will remember this day. She will be haunted by Gideon Tyler’s face, by his words, by his touch.
Monk ducks as he enters the kitchen, making it suddenly appear smaller. He glances at DI Cray and shakes his head. The roadblocks have been up for more than two hours. Police have knocked on every door, interviewed residents and retraced Charlie’s steps. Nothing.
I know what they’re thinking. Gideon has gone. He managed to get away before police sealed off the roads. Neither of the mobiles Gideon used has transmitted since 12.42. He must know we can trace the signals. That’s why he changes phones so often and turns them off.
As if on cue, Oliver Rabb arrives, shuffling up the front path like a nervous bag lady. He’s carrying a laptop computer in a shoulder case and is wearing a tweed cap to warm his smooth head. He wipes his feet three times on the doormat.
Setting up his laptop on the kitchen table, he downloads the latest information from the nearest base stations, triangulating the signals.
‘It’s harder in areas like this,’ he explains, brushing invisible creases from his trousers. ‘There are fewer towers.’
‘I don’t want excuses,’ says Veronica Cray.
Oliver goes back to the screen. Outside in the garden detectives are congregating in the patches of sunshine, stamping their feet to stay warm.
Oliver sniffs.
‘What is it?’
‘Both calls arrived through the same tower— the nearest one.’ He pauses, ‘But they originated from a tower outside the area.’
‘What does that mean?’
‘He wasn’t in the village when he called you. He was already out of the area.’
‘But he knew what Julianne was wearing. He made her stand at the bedroom window.’
Oliver shrugs. ‘He must have seen her earlier in the day.’
He checks the screen again and explains Charlie’s movements. She was carrying my mobile, which was pinging a tower about a mile south of Wellow while she was at Abbie’s house. The signal changed when she left the farmhouse just after midday. According to the strength analysis, she started moving towards home. That’s when Gideon knocked her off her bike and took her in the opposite direction.
Oliver pulls up a satellite image and overlays a second map showing the locations of phone towers.
‘They headed south as far as Wells Road and then west through Radstock and Midsomer Norton.’
‘Where did the signal die?’
‘On the outskirts of Bristol.’
DI Cray begins issuing orders, unsealing the village and re-assigning officers. Her voice has a metallic quality, as if bouncing off one of Oliver’s satellites. The focus of the investigation is shifting away from the house.
She waves a hand at Oliver. ‘We know Tyler has two mobiles. If he turns either one of them on, I want you to find him. Not where he was yesterday or an hour ago— I want to know now.’
Julianne is waiting on the landing, hanging back in a corner between the window and the bedroom door. Her dark hair is still tangled and damp from the shower.
She has changed again, wearing black trousers and a cashmere cardigan with just enough make-up to darken her eyelids and shape her cheekbones. It shocks me how beautiful she is. By comparison, I feel decrepit and ancient.
‘Let me know what you’re thinking.’
‘Believe me, you don’t want to know,’ she replies. I can barely recognise her voice any more.
‘I don’t think he wants to hurt Charlie.’
‘You don’t know that,’ she whispers.
‘I know him.’
Julianne glances up, her gaze challenging me. ‘I don’t want to hear that, Joe, because if you know a man like this— if you understand why he’s doing this— then I wonder how you can sleep at night. How you can… can…’
She can’t finish the statement. I try to hold her, but she stiffens and twists away from me.
‘You don’t know him,’ she says accusingly. ‘You said he was bluffing.’
‘Up until now he has been. I don’t think he’ll hurt her.’
‘He’s hurting her now, don’t you see. Just by taking her.’
Her face turns back to the window and she says accusingly, ‘You brought this on us.’
‘I never expected this. How could I have known?’
‘I warned you.’
I can feel my voice failing. ‘I’m forty-five, Julianne. I can’t live my life on the sidelines. I can’t turn my back on people or refuse to help them.’
‘You have Parkinson’s.’
‘I still have a life to live.’
‘You had a life… with us.’
She’s speaking in the past tense. This isn’t about Dirk or the hotel receipt or my jealous outburst at her office party. This is about Charlie. And amid the fear and uncertainty in her face, there’s something I don’t expect to see. Contempt. Loathing.
‘I don’t love you any more,’ she says blankly, coldly. ‘Not in the right way— not how I used to.’
‘There isn’t a right way. There’s just love.’
She shakes her head and turns away. It feels as though something vital has been cut out of my chest. My heart. She leaves me on the landing; an unseen string is pulling at my fingers, worked by a twitching puppeteer. Maybe he has Parkinson’s too.
The doors are open. The house is cold. SOCO have been examining the cottage for the past hour, dusting the smooth surfaces for fingerprints and vacuuming for fibres. Some of the officers I recognise. Nodding acquaintances. They do not look at me now. They have a job to do.
Gideon is a trained locksmith. He can open almost any door: a house, a flat, a warehouse, an office… There are thousands of properties lying empty in Bristol. He could hide Charlie in any one of them.
Veronica Cray has been conferring with Monk and Safari Roy in the kitchen. She wants a meeting to discuss tactics.
‘We have to decide what we’re going to do when he calls back,’ she says. ‘We have to be ready. Oliver needs time to pinpoint the source and location, so it’s important that we keep Tyler on the phone for as long as possible.’
She looks at Julianne. ‘Are you up for this?’
‘I’ll do it,’ I say, answering for her.
‘He might only speak to your wife,’ says the DI.
‘We make him talk to me. Don’t give him any another option.’
‘And if he says no?’
‘He wants an audience. Let him talk to me. Julianne isn’t strong enough.’
She reacts angrily, ‘Don’t speak about me as though I’m not in the room.’
‘I’m just trying to protect you.’
‘I don’t need protecting.’
I’m about to argue but she explodes, ‘Don’t say another word, Joe. Don’t talk for me. Don’t talk to me.’
I feel myself sway back, as if dodging punches. The hostility silences the room. Nobody will look at me.
‘You should both calm down,’ says the DI.
I try to stand but feel Monk’s hand on my shoulder, forcing me to stay seated. Veronica Cray is addressing Julianne, outlining the possible scenarios. Up until now the DI has always treated me with respect and valued my advice. Now she thinks my judgement has been compromised. I am too closely involved. My opinions can’t be relied upon. The whole scene has become dreamlike and slightly askew. The others are businesslike and thoughtful. I am dishevelled and out of control.
Veronica Cray wants to move the operation to Trinity Road to make it easier for the police to respond. The landline will be redirected to the incident room.
Julianne begins asking questions, her voice barely audible. She wants to know more details of the strategy. Oliver needs at least five minutes to track any call and triangulate the signals from the nearest three phone towers. If the clocks in the base stations are synchronised perfectly, he may be able to pinpoint the caller to within a hundred metres.
It isn’t foolproof. Signals can be affected by buildings, terrain and weather conditions. If Gideon moves indoors the signal strength will change and if the clocks are out by even a microsecond it could mean a difference of tens of metres. Microseconds and metres— that’s what my daughter’s life is coming down to.
‘We’ve installed a GPS tracker and a hands-free phone cradle in your car. Tyler may issue instructions. He may want you to jump through hoops. We’re not ready for a mobile intercept so you have to stall him.’
‘For how long?’ she whispers.
‘A few more hours.’
Julianne shakes her head adamantly. It has to be sooner.
‘I know you want your daughter back, Mrs O’Loughlin, but we have to secure your safety first. This man has killed two women. I need a few hours to get helicopters and intercept teams ready. Until then we have to stall him.’
‘This is crazy,’ I say. ‘You know what he’s done before.’
DI Cray nods towards Monk. I feel his fingers close around my arm. ‘Come on, Professor, let’s take a walk.’
I try and twist out of the big man’s hand, but he takes a firmer hold. His other arm hooks over my shoulder. From a distance it probably looks like a friendly gesture, but I can’t move. He walks me into the kitchen and out the back door, along the path to the clothesline. A lone towel flaps in the breeze like a vertical flag.
