The law firm of Spencer, Rose and Davis is located in a modern office block opposite the Guildhall and alongside the law courts. The foyer is like a modern-day citadel, towering five stories to a convex glass roof crisscrossed with white pipes.
There is a waterfall and a pond and a waiting area with black leather sofas. Ruiz and I watch a man in a pinstriped suit come floating to the floor in one of twin glass lifts.
“See that guy’s suit,” Ruiz whispers. “It’s worth more than my entire wardrobe.”
“My shoes are worth more than your entire wardrobe,” I reply.
“That’s cruel.”
The pinstriped man confers with the receptionist and moves towards us, unbuttoning his jacket. There are no introductions. We are to follow.
The lift carries us upwards. The potted plants grow smaller and the koi carp become like goldfish.
We are ushered into an office where a septuagenarian lawyer is seated at a large desk that makes him appear even more shrunken. He rises an inch from his leather chair and sits again. It’s either a sign of his age or how much respect he’s going to give us.
“My name is Julian Spencer,” he says. “I act for Chambers Construction and I’m an old friend of Bryan’s family. I believe that you’ve already met Mr. Chambers.”
Bryan Chambers doesn’t bother shaking hands. He is dressed in a suit that no tailor could ever make look comfortable. Some men are built to wear overalls.
“I think we got off on the wrong foot,” I say.
“You tricked your way onto my property and upset my wife.”
“I apologize if that’s the case.”
Mr. Spencer tries to take the edge off the moment, tut-tutting Mr. Chambers like a schoolmaster.
Family friends, he said. It doesn’t strike me as a natural alliance—an old money establishment lawyer and a working-class millionaire.
The pinstriped man has stayed in the room. He stands by the window, his arms folded.
“The police are looking for Gideon Tyler,” I say.
“It’s about bloody time,” says Bryan Chambers.
“Do you know where he is?”
“No.”
“When did you last speak to him?”
“I speak to him all the time. I yell at him down the phone when he calls in the middle of the night and says nothing, just stays on the line, breathing.”
“You’re sure it’s him.”
Chambers glares at me, as though I’m questioning his intelligence. I meet his eyes and hold them, studying his face. Big men tend to have big personalities, but a shadow has been cast over his life and he’s wilting under the weight of it.
Getting to his feet, he paces the floor, flexing his fingers, closing them into fists and then opening them again.
“Tyler broke into our house—more than once—I don’t know how many times. I put new locks on the doors, installed cameras, alarms, but it didn’t matter, because he still made it through. He left behind messages. Warnings. Dead birds in the microwave; a gun on our bed; my wife’s cat was stuffed into a toilet cistern.”
“And you reported all this to the police.”
“I had them on speed dial. They wore a path to my door, but they were next to fucking useless.” He glances towards Ruiz. “They didn’t arrest him. They didn’t charge him. They said there was no evidence. The calls came from different mobile phones that couldn’t be traced to Tyler. There were no fingerprints or fibers, no footage on the cameras. How can that be?”
“He’s careful,” answers Ruiz.
“Or they’re protecting him.”
“Why?”
Bryan Chambers shrugs. “I don’t know. Makes no sense. I got six guys guarding the house now, round the clock. It’s still not enough.”
“What do you mean?”
“Last night someone poisoned the lake at Stonebridge Manor,” he explains. “We had four thousand fish—tench, roach and bream—they’re all dead.”
“Tyler?”
“Who else?”
The big man has stopped pacing. The fire has gone out of him, at least for the moment.
“What does Gideon want?” I ask.
Julian Spencer answers for him. “Mr. Tyler hasn’t made this clear. At first he wanted to find his wife and daughter.”
“This was before the ferry accident.”
“Yes. He didn’t accept the marriage was over and he came looking for Helen and Chloe. He accused Bryan and Claudia of hiding them.”
The lawyer produces a letter from the drawer of his desk, refreshing his memory.
“Mr. Tyler took legal action in Germany and won a court order for joint custody of his daughter. He wanted an international warrant issued for his wife’s arrest.”
“They were hiding out in Greece,” says Ruiz.
“Just so.”
“Surely, after the tragedy, Tyler stopped his harassment.”
Bryan Chambers laughs caustically and it turns into a fit of coughing. The old lawyer pours him a glass of water.
“I don’t understand. Helen and Chloe are dead. Why would Tyler keep harassing you?”
Bryan Chambers slumps forward in a chair, his shoulders collapsing over his chest in a posture of abject defeat. “I figured it was about money. Helen was going to inherit the manor one day. I thought Tyler wanted some sort of payoff. I offered him two hundred thousand pounds if he left us alone. He wouldn’t take it.”
The old lawyer tut-tuts his disapproval.
“And he hasn’t asked for anything else?”
Chambers shakes his head. “The man is a psychopath. I’ve given up trying to understand him. I want to crush the bastard. I want to make him pay…”
Julian Spencer cautions him about making threats.
“Fuck being careful! My wife is on antidepressants. She doesn’t sleep anymore. You see my hands?” Chambers holds them across the table. “You want to know why they’re so steady? Drugs. That’s what Tyler has done to us. We’re both on medication. He’s made our lives a misery.”
When I first met Bryan Chambers, I thought his anger and secrecy were evidence of paranoia. I’m more sympathetic now. He has lost a daughter and granddaughter and his sanity is under threat.
“Tell me about Gideon,” I ask. “When was the first time you met him?”
“Helen brought him home. I thought he was a cold fish.”
“Why?”
“He looked as though he knew the secrets of everyone in the room, but nobody knew his. It was obvious that he was in the military, but he wouldn’t talk about the army or his work—not even to Helen.”
“Where was he based?”
“At Chicksands in Bedfordshire. It’s some sort of army training place.”
“And then?”
“Northern Ireland and Germany. He was away a lot. He wouldn’t tell Helen where he was going, but there were clues, she said. Afghanistan. Egypt. Morocco. Poland. Iraq…”
“Any idea what he was doing?”
“No.”
Ruiz has wandered across to the window, taking in the view. At the same time, he glances sidelong at the pinstriped man, sizing him up. Ruiz is more intuitive than I am. I look for telltale signals to judge a person, he feels it inside.
I ask Mr. Chambers about his daughter’s marriage. I want to know if the breakdown had been sudden or protracted. Some couples cling to nothing more than familiarity and routine, long after any real affection has gone.
“I love my daughter, Professor, but I don’t profess to understand women particularly well, not even my wife,” he says, blowing his nose. “She loves me—figure that out.”
He folds the handkerchief into quarters and returns it to his trouser pocket.
“I didn’t like the way Gideon manipulated Helen. She was a different girl around him. When they married, Gideon wanted her to be blond. She went to a hairdresser but the result was a disaster. She finished up with bright ginger hair. She was embarrassed enough, but Gideon made it worse. He poked fun at her at their wedding; belittled her in front of her friends. I hated him for that.
“At the wedding reception, I wanted to dance with her. It’s traditional—the father dancing with the bride. Gideon made Helen ask his permission first. It was her wedding day, for Christ’s sake! What bride has to get permission to dance with her father on her wedding day?”
Something flashes across his face, an involuntary spasm.
“When they moved to Northern Ireland, Helen would call at least twice a week and write long letters. Then the calls and letters dried up. Gideon didn’t want her communicating with us.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know. He seemed to be jealous of her family and her friends. We saw less and less of Helen. When she came to visit it was never for more than a night or two before Gideon packed the car. Helen rarely smiled and she spoke in whispers but she was loyal to Gideon and wouldn’t say a word against him.
“When she fell pregnant with Chloe, she told her mother not to visit. Later we discovered that Gideon didn’t want the baby. He was furious and demanded she had an abortion. Helen refused.
“I don’t know for sure but I think he was jealous of his own child. Can you believe that? Funny thing is, when Chloe was born his attitude changed completely. He was besotted. Captivated. Things settled down. They were happier.
“Gideon was transferred to Osnabrück in Germany, the British Forces base. They moved into a flat provided by the army. There were lots of other wives and families in the married quarters. Helen managed to write about once a month but soon these letters stopped and she couldn’t contact us without his permission.
“Every evening Gideon quizzed her about where she went, who she saw, what was said. Helen had to remember entire conversations verbatim or Gideon accused her of lying or keeping secrets from him. She had to sneak out of the house to call her mother from a public phone because she knew any call from home or her mobile would show up on the phone bill.
“Even when Gideon went away on tours of duty, Helen had to be careful. She was sure that people were watching her and reporting back to him.
“His jealousy was like a disease. Whenever they went out socializing, Gideon would make Helen sit in a corner by herself. If another man talked to her, he’d get angry. He’d demand to know exactly what was said—word for word.”
Rocking forward in his chair Bryan Chambers clasps his hands together, as if praying he’d done something sooner to rescue his daughter.
“Gideon’s behavior became even more erratic after his last tour. I don’t know what happened. According to Helen he became distant, moody, violent…”
“He hit her?” asks Ruiz.
“Only the once—a backhander across her face. It split Helen’s lip. She threatened to leave. He apologized. He cried. He begged her to stay. She should have left him then. She should have run away. But every time she contemplated leaving, her resolve weakened.”
“What happened on his last tour?”
Chambers shrugs. “I don’t know. He was in Afghanistan. Helen said something about a friend dying and another getting badly wounded.”
“Did you ever hear the name Patrick Fuller mentioned?”
He shakes his head.
“Gideon came back and suddenly demanded that Helen have another baby, a boy. He wanted a boy that he could name after his dead friend. He flushed her birth control pills down the toilet, but Helen found ways to stop herself falling pregnant.
“Soon after that Gideon got permission to move them out of the married quarters. He rented a farmhouse about ten miles from the garrison, in the middle of nowhere. Helen didn’t have a telephone or a car. She and Chloe were totally isolated. He was closing the world around them, making it shrink to fit just the three of them.
“Helen wanted to send Chloe to boarding school in England but Gideon refused. Instead she went to the garrison school. Gideon drove her every morning. From the moment Helen waved them good-bye she saw nobody. Yet every evening Gideon would quiz her about what she’d done and who she’d seen. If she stumbled or hesitated, his questions became harder.”
The big man is on his feet again, still talking.
“This one particular day, he came home and noticed tire tracks on the driveway. He accused Helen of having had a visitor. She denied it. He claimed it was her lover. Helen pleaded with him that it wasn’t true.
“He forced her head to the kitchen table and then used a knife to carve an ‘x’ into the palm of his hand. Then he squeezed his fist and the blood dripped into her eyes.”
I remember the scar on Tyler’s left hand when I interviewed him at Trinity Road.
“You know the ironic thing?” says Chambers, squeezing his eyes shut. “The tire marks didn’t belong to any visitor or lover. Gideon had forgotten that he’d driven a different vehicle home from the garrison the previous day. The tracks belonged to him.
“That night Helen waited until Gideon was asleep. She took a suitcase from beneath the stairs and woke Chloe. They didn’t shut the car doors because she didn’t want to make a sound. The car wouldn’t start straightaway, the ignition turned over and over. Helen knew the sound would wake Gideon.
“He came crashing out of the farmhouse, with one leg in a pair of trousers, hopping barefoot down the steps. The engine started. Helen put her foot down. Gideon chased them along the driveway but she didn’t slow down. She took the corner onto the main road and Chloe’s door flew open. My granddaughter slipped out of the seat belt. Helen grabbed her as she fell and pulled her back inside. She broke Chloe’s arm, but she didn’t stop. She kept driving. And she kept thinking that Gideon was following her.”
Bryan Chambers sucks in a breath. He holds it. A part of him wants to stop talking. He wishes he’d stopped ten minutes ago but the story has a momentum that won’t be easily halted.
Instead of driving to Calais, Helen went in the opposite direction, towards Austria, stopping only to refuel. She phoned her parents from a motorway service station. Bryan Chambers offered to fly her home but she wanted to take some time to think.
Chloe had her arm set in a hospital in Strasbourg. Bryan Chambers wired them money—enough to pay any medical bills, buy new clothes and let them travel for a few months.
“Did you see Helen at all?” I ask.
He shakes his head.
“I spoke to her on the phone… and to Chloe. They sent us postcards from Turkey and Crete.”
The words are thick in his throat. These memories are precious to him—last words, last letters, last photographs… every scrap hoarded and treasured.
“Why did none of Helen’s friends know that she drowned?” asks Ruiz.
“The newspapers used her married name.”
“But there weren’t any death notices or funeral notices?”
“There wasn’t a funeral.”
“Why not?”
“You want to know why?” His eyes are blazing. “Because of Tyler! I was frightened that he would show up and do something to spoil the funeral. We couldn’t say a proper good-bye to our daughter and our granddaughter because that psychotic bastard would have turned it into a circus.”
His chest heaves. The sudden outburst seems to have sucked the remaining fight from him.
“We had a private service,” he murmurs.
“Where?”
“In Greece.”
“Why Greece?”
“That’s where we lost them. It’s where they were happy. We built a memorial on a rocky headland overlooking a bay where Chloe used to go swimming.”
“A memorial,” says Ruiz. “Where are their graves?”
“Their bodies were never recovered. The currents are so strong in that part of the Aegean. One of the navy divers found Chloe. Her life vest had snagged on the metal rungs of a ladder near the stern of the ferry. He cut the vest from her but the current ripped her away. He didn’t have enough air left in his tanks to swim after her.”
“And he was sure?”
“She still had a cast on her arm. It was Chloe.”
The phone rings. The old lawyer glances at his watch. Time is measured in fifteen-minute intervals—billable hours. I wonder how much he’s going to charge his “old friend” for this consultation.
I thank Mr. Chambers for his time and rise slowly from my chair. The depressions left behind in the leather slowly begin to fill.
“You know I’ve thought about killing him,” says Bryan Chambers. Julian Spencer tries to stop him talking but is waved away. “I asked Skipper what it would take. Who would I have to pay? I mean, you read about stuff like that all the time.”
“I’m sure Skipper has friends,” says Ruiz.
“Yes,” nods Chambers. “I don’t know whether I’d trust any of them. They’d probably wipe out half a building.”
He looks at Julian Spencer. “Don’t worry. It’s just talk. Claudia would never let me do it. She has a God she has to answer to.” He closes his eyes for a moment and opens them, hoping the world might have changed.
“Do you have children, Professor?”
“Two of them.”
He looks at Ruiz, who holds up two fingers.
“You never stop worrying,” says Chambers. “You worry through the pregnancy, the birth, the first year and every year that follows. You worry about them catching the bus, crossing the road, riding a bike, climbing a tree… You read stories in newspapers about terrible things happening to children. It makes you frightened. It never goes away.”
“I know.”
“And then you think how they grow up so quickly and suddenly you don’t have a say anymore. You want them to find the perfect boyfriend and the perfect husband. You want them to get their dream job. You want to save them from every disappointment, every broken heart, but you can’t. You never stop being a parent. You never stop worrying. If you’re lucky, you’re going to be around to pick up the pieces.”
He turns away but I can see his misery reflected in the window.
“Do you have a photograph of Tyler?” I ask.
“Maybe at home. He didn’t like cameras—even at the wedding.”
“How about a photograph of Helen? I haven’t seen a proper one. The newspapers had a snapshot of her in Greece taken before the sinking.”
“It’s the most recent one we had,” he explains.
“Do you have any others?”
He hesitates and glances at Julian Spencer. Then he opens his wallet and pulls out a passport-sized print.
“When was it taken?” I ask.
“A few months ago. Helen sent it from Greece. We had to organize a new passport for her—in her maiden name.”
“Would you mind if I borrowed this?”
“Why?”
“Sometimes it helps me to understand a crime if I have a photograph of the victim.”
“Is that what you think she is?”
“Yes. She was the first.”
Ruiz hasn’t said anything since we left the lawyer’s office. I’m sure he has an opinion but he won’t share it until he’s ready. Maybe it’s a legacy of his former career but there’s an aura of no-place and no-time about him that releases him from the normal rules of conversation. Saying that, he’s noticeably mellowed since he retired. The forces within him have found equilibrium and he’s made peace with whatever patron saint looks after atheists. There’s a patron saint for everything else, so why not for nonbelievers?
Everything about this case has shimmered and shifted with emotion and grief. It’s been hard to focus on particular details because I’ve spent so much time dealing with immediate concerns such as Darcy, worrying what’s going to happen to her. Now I want to take a step back in the hope I can see things in some sort of context, but it’s not easy to let go from the face of a mountain.
I can understand why Bryan and Claudia Chambers were so angry and inhospitable when we visited their estate. Gideon Tyler has stalked them. He has followed their cars, opened their mail and left obscene souvenirs.
The police couldn’t stop the harassment, so the Chamberses gave up cooperating and took their own security measures, organizing round-the-clock protection with alarms, motion sensors, intercepts and bodyguards. I can understand their reasoning, but not Gideon’s. Why is he still looking for Helen and Chloe, if that’s what he’s doing?
There is nothing artless and spur-of-the-moment about Gideon. He is a bully, a sadist and a control freak who has carefully and systematically set out to destroy his wife’s family and to kill each of her friends.
It wasn’t purely for pleasure—not in the beginning. He was looking for Helen and Chloe. Now it’s different. My mind goes back to Christine Wheeler’s mobile phone. Why did Gideon keep it? Why not dispose of her mobile or leave it in Christine’s car? Instead he took it back to Patrick Fuller’s flat, where Patrick’s sister unwittingly used the mobile to order a pizza. It almost brought his plans unstuck.
Gideon bought a charger. Police found the receipt. He charged the battery so he could look at the phone’s memory. He thought it might lead him to Helen and Chloe. It’s the same reason he broke into Christine Wheeler’s house during her funeral and opened the condolence cards. He must have hoped that Helen would turn up to the funeral or at the very least send a card.
What does Gideon know that we don’t? Is he delusional or in denial or does he have some insight or information that has escaped everyone else? What good is a secret if no one else knows of its existence?
Ruiz has parked the Merc in a multistory behind the law courts. He unlocks the door and sits behind the wheel, staring over the rooftops where gulls wheel in spirals like sheets of newspaper caught in an updraft.
“Tyler thinks his wife is still alive. Any chance he’s right?”
“Next to none,” he answers. “There was a coronial inquest and a maritime board of inquiry.”
“You got any contacts in the Greek police?”
“None.”
Ruiz is still motionless behind the wheel, his eyes closed as if listening to the slow beat of his own blood. We both know what has to be done. We need to look at the ferry sinking. There must be witness statements, a passenger manifest and photographs… Someone must have talked to Helen and Chloe.
“You don’t believe Chambers.”
“It was one half of a sad story.”
“Who has the other half?”
“Gideon Tyler.”