Shatter (53 page)

‘Stay with me, Joe,’ he says, in a soft insinuating tone. ‘She was stil alive when I last saw her. I’l stil let you choose.’

‘What have you done?’

‘I gave her what she wanted.’

‘What does that mean?’

‘She wanted to take her daughter’s place.’

The grotesque image is beyond words. My imagination paints pictures instead. And in my mind’s eye I see Julianne’s breathing body, sipping the darkness, unable to move, her hair spread out beneath her head.

‘Please, please, don’t do this,’ I beg, my voice breaking.

‘Put my daughter on the phone.’

‘Wait.’

Ruiz is standing in front of me. Chloe and Helen are with him. He pul s two chairs to the desk and motions for them to sit. Helen is dressed in jeans and a striped top. Clutching Chloe’s hand, she sits with her head drawn down between her shoulders, her face a crumpled mask. Worn down. Defeated.

I cover the phone. ‘Thank you.’

She nods.

Chloe’s blonde fringe has fal en across her eyes. She doesn’t push it back. It is a physical barrier she can hide behind.

‘He wants to talk to Chloe.’

‘What’s she going to say?’ asks Helen.

‘She just has to say hel o.’

‘Is that it?’

‘Yes.’

Chloe rocks her legs beneath the chair, chewing at a fingernail. A baggy green cardigan hangs down to her thighs and narrow jeans make her legs look like sticks in denim.

I motion to her. She circles the desk on tiptoes, as if frightened of bruising her heels. I cover the mouthpiece and silently mouth the words I want her to say.

Then I raise my hand to Oliver, giving him a countdown by closing my fingers one at a time. Five… four… three…

Chloe takes the handset and whispers, ‘Hel o, Daddy, it’s me.’

…two… one…

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 real y wel ,’ I say, taking the mobile from her.

‘Where’s he gone?’

‘He’s going to cal back. We want him to use another telephone.’

I glance through the window at Oliver and Lieutenant Greene. Both seem to be holding a col ective breath. It has been two minutes. We can’t keep the phone towers blacked out for any longer than ten. How long wil it take Gideon to find a landline?

Come on.

Make the cal .

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 stil .

I have my own theories on time. Fear expands it. Panic col apses it to nothing. Right now my heartbeat is racing and my mind is alert, yet everything else in the incident room has the stil ness 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, wil ing them to ring. Perhaps if I stare hard enough I can picture him cal ing. Through the earpiece, I hear Oliver count down another minute. Eight have gone. My chest rises and fal s. Relax. He’l cal . 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.

‘Hel o.’

‘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’l send someone to get her.’

‘Where is she?’

‘Next door.’

‘Get her.’

‘I’l put the cal through to her.’

‘I know what you’re doing. Get her on the line now!’

I glance at Oliver and Wil iam Greene. They’re stil trying to trace the cal . 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 tel me.’

She nods and picks up the second phone.

‘Hel o, 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 cal . 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 stil pressing the phone to my ear, listening to the sound of at least twenty weapons being cocked. Someone is yel ing at Gideon to lie on the ground, to put his hands on his head. More voices. Heavy boots.

‘Hel o? Is anyone there? Hel o?’

Nobody is listening.

‘Can someone hear me? Pick up!’ I scream down the line. ‘Tel 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 physical y 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 smal 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 wil ing 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. Occasional y, he looks up and stares into the mirror— not 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 stil arguing?’

Ruiz nods.

‘The military are sending a chopper. They want to take him to an army base. They’re scared he might tel us something. Like the truth.’

Surely, there’s no way Veronica Cray wil surrender jurisdiction. She’l 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 manoeuvrings 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 al 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 tel , 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. Tel 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 wil 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 Intel igence Brigade.’

He is fol owing the Conduct Under Capture rules— name, age and rank.

‘Don’t give me this bul shit,’ 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 cal 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 ful of arse-holes so I shouldn’t think so.’

Veronica Cray’s voice remains smooth but the back of her neck is blazing. ‘I’l 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’l 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 tel 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 tel 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’l 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 cal s after her. ‘Tel the Professor to come and see me. I’l tel 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.