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 daug
hter 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 Osnabruck 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.
‘Helen wanted to send Chloe to boarding school in England but Gideon refused. Instead she went to the garrison school. Gideon drove her every morning. From the moment Helen waved them goodbye she saw nobody. Yet every evening Gideon would quiz her about what she’d done and who she’d seen. If she stumbled or hesitated, his questions became harder.’
The big man is on his feet again, still talking.
‘This one particular day, he came home and noticed tyre tracks on the driveway. He accused Helen of having had a visitor. She denied it. He claimed it was her lover. Helen pleaded with him that it wasn’t true.
‘He forced her head to the kitchen table and then used a knife to carve “x” into the palm of his hand. Then he squeezed his fist and the blood dripped into her eyes.’
I remember the scar on Tyler’s left hand when I interviewed him at Trinity Road.
‘You know the ironic thing?’ says Chambers, squeezing his eyes shut. ‘The tyre marks didn’t belong to any visitor or lover. Gideon had forgotten that he’d driven a different vehicle home from the garrison the previous day. The tracks belonged to him.
‘That night Helen waited until Gideon was asleep. She took a suitcase from beneath the stairs and woke Chloe. They didn’t shut the car doors because she didn’t want to make a sound. The car wouldn’t start straight away, the ignition turned over and over. Helen knew the sound would wake Gideon.
‘He came crashing out of the farmhouse, with one leg in a pair of trousers, hopping barefoot down the steps. The engine started. Helen put her foot down. Gideon chased them down the driveway but she didn’t slow down. She took the corner onto the main road and Chloe’s door flew open. My granddaughter slipped out of the seat belt. Helen grabbed her as she fell and pulled her back inside. She broke Chloe’s arm, but she didn’t stop. She kept driving. And she kept thinking that Gideon was following her.’
Bryan Chambers sucks in a breath. He holds it. A part of him wants to stop talking. He wishes he’d stopped ten minutes ago but the story has a momentum that won’t be easily halted.
Instead of driving to Calais, Helen went in the opposite direction, towards Austria and then to Italy, stopping only to refuel. She phoned her parents from a motorway service station. Bryan Chambers offered to fly her home but she wanted to take some time to think.
Chloe had her arm set in a hospital in Milan. Bryan Chambers wired them money- en
ough to pay any medical bills, buy new clothes and let them travel for a few months.
‘Did you see Helen at all?’ I ask.
He shakes his head.
‘I spoke to her on the phone… and to Chloe. They sent us postcards from Turkey and Crete.’
The words are thick in his throat. These memories are precious to him- last words, last letters, last photographs… every scrap hoarded and treasured.
‘Why did none of Helen’s friends know that she drowned?’ asks Ruiz.
‘The newspapers used her married name.’
‘But there weren’t any death notices or funeral notices?’
‘There wasn’t a funeral.’
‘Why not?’
‘You want to know why?’ His eyes are blazing. ‘Because of Tyler! I was frightened that he would show up and do something to spoil the funeral. We couldn’t say a proper goodbye to our daughter and our granddaughter because that psychotic bastard would have turned it into a circus.’
His chest heaves. The sudden outburst seems to have sucked the remaining fight from him.
‘We had a private service,’ he murmurs.
‘Where?’
‘In Greece.’
‘Why Greece?’
‘That’s where we lost them. It’s where they were happy. We built a memorial on a rocky headland overlooking a bay where Chloe used to go swimming.’
‘A memorial,’ says Ruiz. ‘Where are their graves?’
‘Their bodies were never recovered. The currents are so strong in that part of the Aegean. One of the navy divers found Chloe. Her life vest had snagged on the metal rungs of a ladder near the stern of the ferry. He cut the vest from her but the current ripped her away. He didn’t have enough air left in his tanks to swim after her.’
‘And he was sure?’
‘She still had a cast on her arm. It was Chloe.’
The phone rings. The old lawyer glances at his watch. Time is measured in fifteen minute intervals- billable hours. I wonder how much he’s going to charge his ‘old friend’ for this consultation.
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