Shatter jo-3

by Michael Robotham

  ‘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?

  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 Fuller 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 Fuller’s tower block. I recognise the grey concrete and streaks of rust below the window frames.

  More police cars pull 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 pill-rolling. I hold my walking stick in my left fist to keep it steady.

  I follow 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 roll of flesh bulges over the waistband of her jeans.

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

  It’s Fuller’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 const
able 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 full-time patient?’

  ‘Apparently so.’

  Cheryl pulls 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 really 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 “temperamentally 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 called 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 pulls out another.

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

  ‘Well, it weren’t Pat,’ she says.

  ‘Who else could it have been?’

  Cheryl rolls 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 bull.’

  ‘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 falls 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. All I did was use his poxy mobile phone. One call. And he went completely apeshit. One sodding call.’

  ‘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.

  Cheryl has found a large photo album on a top shelf.

  ‘I told Gideon he should be in Fernwood with Patrick. I didn’t hang around. I rang Gerry and he came and picked me up. He wanted to punch Gideon’s lights out and probably could have done it, but I told him not to bother.’

  She turns the album to face us, propping it open on her chest.

  ‘Here’s Pat. That was taken at his passing out parade. He looked dead handsome.’

  Patrick Fuller is in a dress uniform, with dark brown hair shaved at the sides. Smiling at the camera with a slightly lopsided grin, he looks like he’s barely out of secondary school. More importantly, he’s not the man police arrested nine days ago; the one I interviewed at Trinity Road police station.

  She points a bitten fingernail to another photograph. ‘That’s him again.’

  A group of soldiers are standing and squatting at the edge of a basketball court, having finished a game. Patrick is dressed in camouflage trousers and no shirt; he crouches casually, a forearm on his knee, his muscled torso shiny with sweat.

  Cheryl turns more pages. ‘There should be one of Gideon here, as well.’

  She can’t find it. She goes back to the beginning and looks again.

  ‘That’s funny. It’s gone.’

  She points to a vacant square on the page. ‘I’m sure it was here,’ she says.

  Sometimes a gap in an album says as much as any photograph would. Gideon removed it. He doesn’t want his face known. It doesn’t matter. I remember him. I can remember his pale grey eyes and thin lips. And I remember him pacing the floor, stepping over invisible mousetraps, his face a mass of tics and grimaces. He confabulated. He invented fantastic stories. It was a consummate performance.

  I have based a career on being able to tell when someone is lying or being deliberately vague or deceptive, but Gideon Tyler played me for a sucker. His lies were almost perfect because he managed to take charge of the conversation, to distract and divert. There were no momentary gaps while he conjured up something new or added one detail too many. Not even his unconscious physiological responses held any clues; his pupil dilation, pore size, muscle tone, skin flush and his breathing were in normal parameters.

  I convinced Veronica Cray to let him go. I said he couldn’t possibly have made Christine Wheeler jump off the Clifton Suspension Bridge. I was wrong.

  Veronica Cray is issuing instructions. Safari Roy scribbles notes, trying to keep up. She wants a list of Tyler’s friends, family, army buddies and ex-girlfriends.

  ‘Visit them. Put pressure on them. One of them must know where he is.’

  She hasn’t said a word to me since we left Fuller’s flat. Disgrace is an odd feeling- a fluttering in my stomach. The public recriminations will come later but the private ones begin immediately. Attribution. Condemnation. Castigation.

  The Fernwood Clinic is a Grade II listed building set in five acres of trees and gardens at the edge of Durdham Down. The main building was once a stately home and the access road a private driveway.

  The medical director will talk to us in his office. His name is Dr Caplin and he welcomes us as if we’ve arrived for a hunting weekend at his private estate.

  ‘Isn’t it magnificent,’ he says, gazing across the gardens from large bay windows in his office. He offers us refreshments. Takes a seat.

  ‘I’ve heard about you, Professor O’Loughlin,’ he says. ‘Someone told me you’d moved into the area. I thought I might see your CV pass across my desk at some point.’

  ‘I’m no longer practicing as a clinical psychologist.’

  ‘A pity. We could use someone of your experience.’

  I glance around his office. The decor is Laura Ashley meets Ikea with a touch of new technology. Dr Caplin’s tie almost perfectly matches the curtains.

  I know a little about the Fernwood Clinic. It’s owned by a private company and specialises in looking after those wealthy enough to afford its daily fees, which are substantial.

  ‘What sort of problems are you treating?’

  ‘Mainly eating disorders and addictions but we do some general psychiatry.’

  ‘We’re interested in Patrick Fuller, a former soldier.’

  Dr Caplin purses his lips. ‘We treat a large a number of military personnel, serving soldiers and veterans,’ he says. ‘The Ministry of Defence is one of our biggest referrers.’

  ‘Isn’t war a wonderful thing?’ mutters Veronica Cray.<
br />
  Dr Caplin flinches and his hazel irises seem to fragment with anger.

  ‘We do important work here, detective. We help people. I’m not here to comment on our Government’s foreign policy or how it conducts its wars.’

  ‘Yes, of course,’ I say. ‘I’m sure your work is vital. We’re only interested in Patrick Fuller.’

  ‘You intimated over the phone that Patrick had been the victim of identify theft.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I’m sure you understand, Professor, that I can’t possibly discuss details of his treatment.’

  ‘I understand.’

  ‘So you won’t be seeking to see his records?’

  ‘Not unless he’s confessed to murder,’ says the DI.

  The doctor’s smile has long gone. ‘I don’t understand. What is he supposed to have done?’

  ‘That’s what we’re seeking to establish,’ says the DI. ‘We wish to speak to Patrick Fuller and I expect your full co-operation.’

  Dr Caplin pats his hair as though checking its dimensions.

  ‘I assure you, Detective Inspector, this hospital is a friend of the Avon amp; Somerset Police. I’m actually on very good terms with your Assistant Chief Constable, Mr Fowler.’

  Of all the names to drop, he chooses this one. Veronica Cray doesn’t bat an eyelid.

  ‘Well, doctor, I’ll be sure to pass on your best wishes to the ACC. I’m sure he’ll appreciate your co-operation as much as I do.’

  Dr Caplin nods, satisfied.

  He takes a file from his desk. Opens it.

  ‘Patrick Fuller is suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder and general anxiety. He’s preoccupied with suicide and plagued with guilt over the loss of comrades in Iraq. Patrick is sometimes disorientated and confused. He suffers mood swings, some of them quite violent.’

  ‘How violent?’ asks the DI.

  ‘He’s not a serious management risk and his behaviour has been exemplary. We’re making real progress.’

  At three thousand pounds a week I should hope so.

  ‘Why didn’t the army psychiatrists pick it up?’ I ask.

  ‘Patrick wasn’t a military referral.’

  ‘But his problems are related to his military service?’