I drop my arm. Through the window Oliver presses a button or flips a switch and a dozen mobile phone towers are silenced.
I can picture Gideon staring at his handset, wondering what happened to the signal. His daughter was right there but her words were snatched away. Fifteen police units are within a hundred and fifty yards of his last known location, near the Prince Street Bridge. Veronica Cray has gone to join them.
Chloe doesn’t understand what’s happened.
‘You did really well,’ I say, taking the mobile from her.
‘Where’s he gone?’
‘He’s going to call back. We want him to use another telephone.’
I glance through the window at Oliver and Lieutenant Greene. Both seem to be holding a collective breath. It has been two minutes. We can’t keep the phone towers blacked out for any longer than ten. How long will it take Gideon to find a landline?
Come on.
Make the call.
67
One of the few lessons I remember from physics class at school is that nothing travels faster than the speed of light. And if a person could move at light speed for long distances, time would slow down for them and even stand still.
I have my own theories on time. Fear expands it. Panic collapses it to nothing. Right now my heartbeat is racing and my mind is alert, yet everything else in the incident room has the stillness of a hot Sunday afternoon and a fat dog sleeping in the shade. Even the second hand on the clock seem to hesitate between ticks, unsure whether to go forward or stop completely.
In front of me, the desk is clear except for two landlines attached to the station switchboard. Oliver Rabb and Lieutenant Greene are sitting in the comms room next door. Helen and Chloe are waiting in Veronica Cray’s office.
Picking at a patch of flaking paint on the chair, I stare at the phones, willing them to ring. Perhaps if I stare hard enough I can picture him calling. Through the earpiece, I hear Oliver count down another minute. Eight have gone. My chest rises and falls. Relax. He’ll call. He just has to find a landline.
It takes me a moment to realise the phone is ringing. I glance at Oliver Rabb. He wants me to let it ring four times.
I pick up.
‘Hello.’
‘Where the fuck is Chloe?’
‘Why did you hang up on her?’
Gideon explodes: ‘I didn’t hang up. The line went dead. If this is some fucking stunt…’
‘Chloe said you hung up on her.’
‘There’s no signal, arsehole. Look at your mobile.’
‘Hey, yeah.’
‘Put Chloe on the phone.’
‘I’ll send someone to get her.’
‘Where is she?’
‘Next door.’
‘Get her.’
‘I’ll put the call through to her.’
‘I know what you’re doing. Get her on the line now!’
I glance at Oliver and William Greene. They’re still trying to trace the call. It’s taking too long. My left side is trembling. If I keep my leg on the ground, I can stop it shaking.
Ruiz ushers Chloe into the room. I cover the phone.
‘You OK?’
She nods.
‘I’m going to be listening. If you get frightened, I want you to cover the phone and tell me.’
She nods and picks up the second phone.
‘Hello, Daddy, it’s me.’
‘Hi, how are you?’
‘Good.’
‘I’m sorry we got cut off, baby. I can’t talk long.’
‘I lost a tooth.’
‘Did you?’
‘The tooth fairy gave me two bits of money. I left the tooth fairy a note. Mummy helped me write it.’
Chloe is a natural at this. Without even trying, she’s holding his attention completely, keeping him on the line.
‘Is your mum there?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Is she listening?’
‘No.’
Beyond the glass, Oliver turns and raises both thumbs. They’ve traced the call. Chloe has run out of things to say. Gideon is asking her questions. Sometimes she nods rather than answers.
‘Are you in trouble?’ she asks him.
‘Don’t worry about me.’
‘Did you do something wrong?’
In the background I hear the wail of approaching sirens. Gideon has heard them too. I take the handset from Chloe.
‘It’s over,’ I say. ‘Where are Charlie and Julianne?’
Gideon screams down the phone. ‘You cocksucker! You scumbag! I’m going to rip you a new arsehole! You’re dead! No, your wife’s dead! You’re never going to see her alive.’
There are more sirens, along with screeching brakes and car doors opening. Glass breaks and a gunshot echoes through the handset. Please, God, don’t shoot him.
There are cheers from the incident room. Fists punch the air. ‘We’ve got the bastard,’ someone declares.
Chloe looks at me, bewildered, terrified. I’m still pressing the phone to my ear, listening to the sound of at least twenty weapons being cocked. Someone is yelling at Gideon to lie on the ground, to put his hands on his head. More voices. Heavy boots.
‘Hello? Is anyone there? Hello?’
Nobody is listening.
‘Can someone hear me? Pick up!’ I scream down the line. ‘Tell me what’s happened.’
Suddenly, there’s a voice on the end of the line. It’s Veronica Cray.
‘We got him.’
‘What about Charlie and Julianne?’
‘They’re not with him.’
68
Gideon Tyler looks different. Fitter. Leaner. He is no longer a stuttering confabulator and constructor of deceits. There are no invisible mousetraps on the floor. It’s almost as though he can physically transform himself by taking on a new persona, his real one.
Some things are the same. His thin blond hair hangs limply over his ears and his pale grey eyes blink at the world from behind a pair of small rectangular glasses with metal frames. His hands are cuffed and placed palm-down on the surface of the table. The only signs of stress are the circles of perspiration beneath the arms of his shirt.
Strip-searched and examined by a doctor, his belt and shoelaces have been confiscated along with his watch and personal effects. Since then he’s been alone in the interview suite, staring at his hands as if willing the metal cuffs to break and the door to open and the guards to dissolve.
I am watching him through an observation window- a one-way mirror into the interview room. Although he can’t see me, I sense that he knows I’m here. Occasionally, he looks up and stares into the mirrornot examining his own features as much as looking beyond it, imagining my face.
Veronica Cray is meeting upstairs with a brace of military lawyers and the Chief Constable. The army is demanding the right to interrogate Gideon, claiming it has national security concerns. DI Cray isn’t likely to cede ground. I don’t care who asks the questions. Someone should be in there now, demanding answers, finding my wife and daughter.
A door opens behind me. Ruiz steps from the darkness of the corridor into the darkness of the observation room. There are no lights. Any luminosity could leak through the mirror and reveal the hidden room.
‘So that’s him.’
‘That’s him. Can’t we do something?’
‘Like what?’
‘Make him talk. I mean, if this were the movies you’d go in there and beat the crap out of him.’
‘Perhaps in the old days,’ says Ruiz, sounding genuinely nostalgic.
‘They still arguing?’
Ruiz nods.
‘The military are sending a chopper. They want to take him to an army base. They’re scared he might tell us something. Like the truth.’
Surely, there’s no way Veronica Cray will surrender jurisdiction. She’ll take it to the Home Secretary or the Lord Chamberlain. She has two murders, a shooting and two kidnappings on her patch, on her watch. The arguments and legal m
anoeuvrings are taking up too much time. Meanwhile, Gideon sits twelve feet away, humming to himself and staring into the mirror.
He doesn’t look like a man who’s going to spend the rest of his life in prison. He looks like a man without a care in the world.
DI Cray enters the interview suite. Monk is sitting second chair. A third person, a military lawyer, takes up a position behind them, standing ready to intervene at any moment. Microphones have been removed from the room. There are no pads or pencils. The interview isn’t being recorded. I doubt if there’s a record any longer of Gideon’s arrest or his fingerprinting. Somebody is determined to remove all trace of him.
Veronica Cray pours water from a plastic bottle into a plastic cup. Leaning her head back, she takes a long deep draught. Tyler seems to look at her throat with interest.
‘As you can probably tell, this isn’t a formal interview,’ she says. ‘Nothing you say is being taken down. It can’t be used against you. You only have to answer one question. Tell us the whereabouts of Julianne and Charlotte O’Loughlin.’
Gideon presses his back against the chair and pushes his arms forward, fingers splayed on the table. Then slowly he raises his head, his eyes disappearing in the wash of fluorescence reflecting from his glasses.
‘I will not talk to you,’ he whispers.
‘You have to talk to me.’
His head moves from side to side.
Gideon stares at the mirror, through it.
‘Where are Charlie and Julianne O’Loughlin?’
He sits to attention. ‘My name is Major Gideon Tyler. Born October six, 1969. I am a soldier in Her Majesty’s First Military Intelligence Brigade.’
He is following the Conduct Under Capture rules- name, age and rank.
‘Don’t give me this bullshit,’ says Veronica Cray.
Gideon fixes her with a milky grey stare, searching her eyes. ‘It must be hard being a dyke in the police force, liking the black triangle, being a member of the tongue and groove club. Must get a lot of snide remarks. What do they call you behind your back?’
‘Answer the question.’
‘You answer mine. Do you get much? I often wonder about dykes and if you get much sex. You’re as ugly as a hat full of arse-holes so I shouldn’t think so.’
Veronica Cray’s voice remains smooth but the back of her neck is blazing. ‘I’ll hear your fantasies another time,’ she says.
‘Oh, I never leave anything to fantasy, detective. You must know that by now.’
There is something horribly truthful about the statement.
‘You’re going to prison for the rest of your life, Major Tyler. Things happen in prison to people like you. They get changed.’
Gideon smiles. ‘I’m not going to prison, Detective Inspector. Ask him.’ He motions to the military lawyer who doesn’t hold his gaze. ‘I doubt if I’ll even get out of this place. Ever heard the word rendition? Black prisons? Ghost flights?’
The lawyer steps forward. He wants the interview terminated.
Veronica Cray ignores him and keeps talking. ‘You’re a soldier, Tyler, a man who lives by rules. I’m not talking about military regulations or regimental codes of honour. I’m talking about your own rules, what you believe, and hurting children doesn’t come into it.’
‘Don’t tell me what I believe,’ Gideon says, his heels scraping on the floor. ‘Don’t talk about Honour, or Queen and Country. There are no rules.’
‘Just tell me what you’ve done with Mrs O’Loughlin and her daughter.’
‘Let me see the Professor.’ He turns to the mirror. ‘Is he watching? Are you there, Joe?’
‘No. You’ll talk to me,’ says the DI.
Gideon raises his arms above his head, stretching his back until his vertebrae pop and crack. Then he slams his fists into the table. The combination of his strength and the metal cuffs creates a sound like a gunshot and everybody in the room flinches except for the DI. Gideon crosses his wrists, holding them in front of himself as though warding her off. Then he flicks his hands apart and a long splash of blood flies across the table and lands on her shirt.
Using the edge of the handcuffs, Gideon has opened a gash across his left palm. DI Cray says nothing but her face is suddenly pale. She pushes back her chair and stands, looking at the crimson slash of blood on her white shirt. Then she excuses herself from interview while she changes.
With three quick stiff steps she reaches the door. Gideon calls after her. ‘Tell the Professor to come and see me. I’ll tell him how his wife died.’
69
I meet Veronica Cray in the passageway outside the interview suite. She looks at me helplessly and lowers her gaze, sagging under the weight of what she knows and doesn’t know. The bloodstain is drying on her shirt.
‘They’re sending a military chopper. I can’t stop them. They have a warrant signed by the Home Secretary.’
‘What about Charlie and Julianne?’
Her shoulder blades flinch beneath her shirt. ‘There’s nothing more I can do.’
It’s what I feared. The MOD cares more about silencing Gideon Tyler than it does about a missing mother and daughter.
‘Let me talk to him,’ I say. ‘He wants to see me.’
Time shimmers for a moment. The hubbub of the world disappears.
The DI takes a cigarette from a packet in the pocket of her trousers. She rests it between her lips. I notice a tiny tremor in her hand. Anger. Disappointment. Frustration. It could be all of them.
‘I’ll get rid of the military lawyer,’ she says. ‘You might only have twenty minutes. Take Ruiz with you. He’ll know what to do.’
The insinuation in her voice has not been there before. She turns and moves slowly along the passage towards the stairs.
I enter the interview suite. The door swings shut behind me.
We’re alone for a moment. The very air in the room seems to have congregated in distant corners. Gideon can no longer jump to his feet or pace the floor. His handcuffs have been secured on the surface of the table, fixed with bolts and recessed screws. A doctor has bandaged the cut to his palm.
I move closer and take a seat opposite him, placing my hands on the table. My left thumb and forefinger are beating a silent tattoo. I take the hand away and press it between my thighs. Ruiz has slipped into the room behind me, shutting the door softly.
Gideon gazes at me steadily with a formless smile. I can see the ruins of my life reflected in his glasses.
‘Hello, Joe, heard from your wife lately?’
‘Where is she?’
‘Dead.’
‘I don’t believe you.’
‘You killed her the moment I was arrested.’
I can smell the very odour of his insides, the rancid, festering, misogyny and hatred.
‘Tell me where they are.’
‘You can only have one of them. I asked you to choose.’
‘No.’
‘I wasn’t given a choice when I lost my wife and daughter.’
‘You didn’t lose them. They ran away.’
‘The slut betrayed me.’
‘You’re making excuses. You’re obsessed with your own sense of entitlement. You believe because you’ve fought for your country, done terrible things for them, that you are owed something better.’
‘No. Not better. I want what everyone else wants. But what if my dream conflicts with yours? What if my happiness comes at your expense?’
‘We make do.’
‘Not good enough,’ he says, blinking slowly.
‘The war is over, Gideon. Let them come home.’
‘Wars don’t end,’ he laughs. ‘Wars thrive because enough men still love them. You meet people who think they can stop wars, one person at a time, but that’s bullshit. They complain that innocent women and children get killed or wounded, people who don’t choose to fight, but I’m betting a lot of them wave their sons and husbands off to war. Knit them socks. Send them food.
‘You see, Joe, no
t every enemy combatant carries a gun. Old men in rich countries make wars happen. And so do the people who sit on the sofas watching Sky News and voting for them. So spare me your bullshit homilies. There are no innocent victims. We’re all guilty of something.’
I’m not going to argue the morals of war with Gideon. I don’t want to hear his justifications and excuses, sins of commission and omission.
‘Please tell me where they are.’
‘And what are you going to give me?’
‘Forgiveness.’
‘I don’t want forgiveness for what I’ve done.’
‘I’m forgiving you for who you are.’
The statement seems to shake him for a moment.
‘They’re coming to get me, aren’t they?’
‘A chopper is on its way.’
‘Who did they send?’
‘Lieutenant Greene.’
Gideon looks at the mirror. ‘Greenie! Is he listening? His wife Verity has the sweetest arse. She spends every Tuesday afternoon in a budget hotel in Ladbroke Grove fucking a lieutenant colonel from acquisitions. One of the lads from ops put a bug in the room. What a tape! It’s been passed round the whole regiment.’ He smirks and closes his eyes, as if reliving the good times.
‘Could you adjust my glasses for me, Joe?’ he asks.
They’ve slipped down his nose. I lean forward and place my thumb and forefinger on the curved frame, pushing it up to the bridge of his nose. The fluorescent lights catch in the lenses and turn his eyes white. He tilts his head and his eyes are grey again. There doesn’t seem to be any magnification from the lenses.
He whispers. ‘They’re going to kill me, Joe. And if I die, you’ll never find Julianne and Charlie. The ticking clock- we all have one, but I guess mine is running a little faster than most and so is your wife’s.’
A bubble of saliva forms and bursts on my lips as I open them but no words come out.
‘I used to hate time,’ he says. ‘I counted Sundays. I imagined my daughter growing up without me. That was mechanical time, the stuff of clocks and calendars. I deal in something deeper than that now. I collect time from people. I take it away from them.’
Gideon makes it sound as though years can be traded between individuals. My loss can be his gain.
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