Shatter (34 page)

I yel at her, ‘NO. DON‘T LISTEN TO HIM.’

Her eyes flicker. The barrel of the pistol is doing figure eight patterns. She’s just as likely to miss me as hit me.

‘JACKSON‘S SAFE! I PROMISE YOU.’

A switch has clicked off in her head. She’s no longer listening to me. Her second hand is now gripping the pistol, holding it steady. She’s going to do it. She’s going to pul the trigger.

Please don’t shoot me, Maureen.

I lunge towards her. My left leg locks and carries me down. At the same moment the air explodes and Maureen’s body jerks. A red mist sprays across my eyes. I blink it away. She slumps forward, col apsing over her knees, face first, hips in the air, as if subjugating herself to the new day.

The mobile clatters onto the concrete. The pistol fol ows, bouncing end over end and sliding to a stop beneath my chin.

Something inside me has opened; a black vacuum that is flooded with rage. I pick up the handset and scream, ‘YOU SICK, SICK FUCK!’

The insult echoes back at me. Silence. Punctuated by the sound of someone breathing. Calmly. Quietly.

People are running towards me. A police officer dressed in body armour crouches a dozen feet away, his rifle pointed at me.

‘Put the gun down, sir.’

My ears are stil ringing. I look at the pistol in my hand.

‘Sir, put down the gun.’

44

The sun is up, hidden behind grey clouds that seem low enough to have been painted by hand. White plastic sheets, strung between pil ars, are shielding where Maureen Bracken fel .

She’s alive. The bul et entered beneath her right col arbone and exited six inches below her right shoulder, near the middle of her back. The police marksman had aimed to wound, not to kil .

Surgeons are waiting to operate at the Bristol Royal Infirmary. Maureen is en route in an ambulance, escorted by two police cars. Meanwhile officers are scouring Victoria Park. The entrances have been sealed off and the perimeter fences are being patrol ed.

Two cordons— inner and outer— create concentric circles around the bandstand, limiting access and al owing the forensic teams to safeguard the crime scene. I watch them working, while sitting on the steps with a silver trauma blanket wrapped around my shoulders. The blood on my face has dried into brittle scabs that flake off on my fingertips.

Veronica Cray joins me. I clench my left fist and open it again. It doesn’t stop the shaking.

‘How are you?’

‘Fine.’

‘You don’t look fine. I can have someone drop you home.’

‘I’l stay for a while.’

The DI muses a moment, gazing at the duck pond where the branches of a wil ow tree droop into the foam-scummed water. A search warrant is being sought for Gideon Tyler’s last known address, this time with renewed urgency. Detectives are interviewing neighbours and looking for family links. Every aspect of his life wil be documented and cross-checked.

‘You think he’s good for this?’

‘Yes.’

‘What would he hope to achieve by murdering his wife’s friends?’

‘He’s a sexual sadist. He doesn’t need any other reason.’

‘But you think he has one?’

‘Yes.’

‘The break-in at the Chambers house, the phone cal s and threats, al began when Helen left him and went into hiding with Chloe. Gideon was trying to find them.’

‘OK, I can understand that, but now they’re dead.’

‘Maybe Gideon is so angry and bitter he’s going to destroy anyone close to Helen. Like I said, sexual sadists don’t need to look for any other reasons. They’re driven by a whole different set of impulses.’

I press my face in my hands. I’m tired. My mind is tired. Yet it cannot stop working. Somebody broke into Christine Wheeler’s house and opened the condolence cards. They were looking for a name or address.

‘There is another explanation,’ I say. ‘It’s possible Gideon doesn’t believe they’re dead. He may think Helen’s family and friends are hiding her or have information about her whereabouts.’

‘So he tortures them?’

‘And when that doesn’t work, he kil s them in the hope he can force Helen out of hiding.’

Veronica Cray doesn’t seem shocked or surprised. Divorced and separated couples often do terrible things to each other. They fight over their children, kidnap them and sometimes worse. Helen Chambers spent eight years married to Gideon Tyler. Even in death she can’t escape him.

‘I’l have Monk take you home.’

‘I want to see Tyler’s house.’

‘Why?’

‘It could help me.’

The air in the car has a musty, used-up feel, smel ing of sweat and artificial warmth. We fol ow Bath Road into Bristol, hurtling forward between the traffic lights.

I lean back on the greasy cloth seat, staring out the window. Nothing about the streets is familiar. Not the gasworks, girdled in steel, or the underside of railway bridges or the cement grey high rise.

From the main road we turn off and descend abruptly into a wilderness ful of crumbling terraces, factories, drug dens, rubbish bins, barricaded shops, stray cats and women who give blowjobs in cars.

Gideon Tyler lives just off Fishponds Road in the shadow of the M32. The dwel ing is an old smash repair workshop with an asphalt forecourt fenced off and topped with barbed wire.

Plastic bags are trapped against the chain link fence and pigeons circle the forecourt like prisoners in an exercise yard.

The landlord, Mr Swingler, has arrived with the keys. He looks like an ancient skinhead in Doc Martens, jeans and a tight T-shirt. There are four locks. Mr Swingler has only one key. The police tel him to stand back.

A snub-nosed battering ram swings once… twice… three times. Hinges splinter and the front door gives away. The police go first, crouching and spinning from room to room.

‘Clear.’

‘Clear.’

‘Clear.’

I have to wait outside with Mr Swingler. The landlord looks at me. ‘How much you press?’

‘Pardon?’

‘How much you bench press?’

‘No idea.’

‘I lift two hundred and forty pounds. How old you think I am?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Eighty.’ He flexes a bicep. ‘Pretty good, eh?’

Any moment he’s going to chal enge me to an arm wrestle.

The ground floor has been cleared. Monk says I can come inside. The place smel s of dog and damp newspapers. Someone has been using the fireplace to burn papers.

The kitchen benches are clean and the cupboards tidy. Plates and cups are lined up on a shelf, equal distance apart. The pantry is the same. Staples like rice and lentils are kept in tin airtight containers, alongside canned vegetables and long life milk. These are supplies for a siege or a disaster.

Upstairs the bed has been stripped. The linen is washed and folded on the mattress, ready for inspection. The bathroom has been scrubbed, scoured and bleached. I have visions of Gideon cleaning between the tiles with his toothbrush.

Every house, every wardrobe, every shopping basket says something about a person. This one is no different. It is the address of a soldier, a man to whom routines and regimens are intrinsic to living. His wardrobe contains five green shirts, six pairs of socks, one pair of black boots, one field jacket, one pair of gloves with green inserts, one poncho… His socks are bal ed with a wool en smile. His shirts have creases, evenly spaced on the front and back. They are folded rather than hung.

I can look at these details and make assumptions. Psychology is about probabilities and prospects; the statistical bel curves that can help predict human behaviour.

People are frightened of Gideon or don’t want to talk about him or want to pretend that he doesn’t exist. He’s like one of the monsters that I ‘edit out’ of the bedtime stories I read to Emma because I don’t want to give her nightmares.

Beware the Jabberwock… the jaws that bite, the claws that catch!

There is a yel from outside in the forecourt. They want a dog handler. Descending the stairs, I use the rear door and side gate to reach the workshop area. A dog is going berserk behind a metal shuttered door.

‘I want to see it.’

‘We should wait for the handler,’ says Monk.

‘Just raise the door a few inches.’

I kneel down and put my head on the ground. Monk jemmies the rol er door lock and raises it an inch and then another. The animal is hurling itself at the metal door, snarling furiously.

I catch a glimpse of its reflection in a mirror above a wash-basin, a fleeting image of tan fur and fangs.

My guts prickle. I recognise the dog. I’ve seen it before. It came rearing through the door of Patrick Ful er’s flat, snarling and thrashing at the police arrest party, wanting to rip out their throats. What’s the dog doing here?

45

A siren is shrieking abuse at passers-by as the police car weaves between traffic, flashing its headlights like grief-maddened eyes. Old people and children turn and watch. Others carry on as if oblivious to the noise.

We cross Bristol, clearing the streets; down Temple Way, past Temple Meads Station, onto York and then Coronation Road. My heart is thudding. We had Patrick Ful er in custody. I convinced Veronica Cray to let the former soldier go.

Twenty minutes accelerate past me in a blur of speed and screaming sirens. We are standing on the pavement outside Ful er’s tower block. I recognise the grey concrete and streaks of rust below the window frames.

More police cars pul up around us, nose-first into the gutter. DI Cray is briefing her team. Nobody is looking at me. I’m surplus to requirements. Redundant stock.

Maureen Bracken’s blood has dried on my jacket. From a distance it looks like I’ve started to rust, like a tin man in search of a heart. I keep my nerve. My left thumb and forefinger are pil -rol ing. I hold my walking stick in my left fist to keep it steady.

I fol ow the police upstairs. They don’t have a search warrant. Veronica Cray raises her fist and knocks.

The door opens. A young woman is framed by the darkness behind her. She is wearing a sparkling blue midriff top, jeans and open-toed sandals. A single rol of flesh bulges over the waistband of her jeans.

Mutton. Mutton dressed as mutton. A decade ago she might have been cal ed pretty. Now she’s stil dressing like a teenager, trying to relive her salad days.

It’s Ful er’s younger sister. She’s been staying at his flat. I catch snippets of her answers but not enough to understand what happened. Veronica Cray takes her inside, leaving me in the corridor. I try to slip past the constable on the door. Taking a step to the left, he bars my way.

The door is open. I can see DI Cray sitting in an armchair talking to Tyler’s sister. Roy is watching from the kitchen through a service hatch and Monk seems to be guarding the bedroom door.

The DI catches sight of me. She nods and the constable lets me pass.

‘This is Cheryl,’ she explains. ‘Her brother Patrick is apparently a patient at the Fernwood Clinic.’

I know the place. It’s a private mental hospital in Bristol.

‘When was he admitted?’ I ask.

‘Three weeks ago.’

‘Is he a ful -time patient?’

‘Apparently so.’

Cheryl pul s a cigarette from a crumpled packet and straightens it between her fingertips. She sits with her knees together, perched on the edge of the sofa. Nervous.

‘Why is Patrick in Fernwood?’ I ask her.

‘Because the army fucked him up. He came home from Iraq hurt real y bad. He almost died. They had to rebuild his triceps— make new ones out of other muscles stitched together. It took months before he could even lift his arm. Ever since then he’s been different, not the same, you know. He has nightmares.’

She lights the cigarette. Blows a missile of smoke.

‘The army didn’t give a shit. They kicked him out. They said he was “temperamental y unsuitable”— what the fuck does that mean?’

‘What do the doctors at Fernwood say?’

‘They say Pat’s suffering from post-traumatic stress. Stands to reason after what happened. The army boned him. Gave him a medal and told him to disappear.’

‘Do you know someone cal ed Gideon Tyler?’

Cheryl hesitates. ‘He’s a friend of Pat’s. It was Gideon who got Pat into Fernwood.’

‘How do they know each other?’

‘They were in the army together.’

She stabs the cigarette into an ashtray and pul s out another.

‘Nine days ago. A Friday. The police arrested someone at this flat.’

‘Wel , it weren’t Pat,’ she says.

‘Who else could it have been?’

Cheryl rol s her tongue over her teeth, smudging lipstick on the enamel. ‘Gideon, I guess.’ She sucks hard on her cigarette and blinks away the smoke. ‘He’s been keeping an eye on the flat since Pat went into Fernwood. Best to have someone looking after the place. Them little black shits from the estate would steal your middle name if you let ’em.’

‘Where do you live?’ I ask.

‘In Cardiff. I got a flat with my boyfriend, Gerry. I come down every couple of weeks to see Pat.’

Veronica Cray is thin-lipped, staring vexedly at the floor. ‘There was a dog here. A pit bul .’

‘Yeah, Capo,’ replies Cheryl. ‘He belongs to Pat. Gideon’s looking after him.’

‘Do you have a photograph of Patrick?’ I ask.

‘Sure. Somewhere.’

She stands and brushes her thighs where the tight denim has wrinkled. Teetering on high heels she squeezes past Monk, chest to chest, giving him a half-smile.

She begins opening drawers and wardrobe doors.

‘When were you last here?’ I ask.

‘Ten, twelve days ago.’ Ash fal s from the cigarette in her mouth and smudges her jeans on the way down. ‘I came down to see Pat. Gideon was here, treating the place like he owned it.’

‘How so?’

‘He’s a weird fucker, you know. I reckon the army does it to ’em. Fucks ’em up. That Gideon’s got such a temper. Al I did was use his poxy mobile phone. One cal . And he went completely apeshit. One sodding cal .’

‘You ordered a pizza,’ I say.

Cheryl looks at me as though I’ve stolen her last cigarette. ‘How did you know that?’

‘Lucky guess.’

DI Cray gives me a sidelong glance.