The sun is up, hidden behind grey clouds that seem low enough to have been painted by hand. White plastic sheets, strung between pillars, are shielding where Maureen Bracken fell.
She’s alive. The bullet entered beneath her right collarbone and exited six inches below her right shoulder, near the middle of her back. The police marksman had aimed to wound, not to kill.
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 patrolled.
Two cordons- inner and outer- create concentric circles around the bandstand, limiting access and allowing 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’ll stay for a while.’
The DI muses a moment, gazing at the duck pond where the branches of a willow 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 will 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 calls and threats, all 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 kills 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’ll 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, smelling of sweat and artificial warmth. We follow 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 full 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 dwelling 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 tell 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 challenge me to an arm wrestle.
The ground floor has been cleared. Monk says I can come inside. The place smells 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 balled with a woollen 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 bell 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 yell 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 roller 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 Fuller’s flat, snarling and thrashing at the police arrest party, wanting to rip out their throats. What’s the dog doing here?