She heard her son screaming. It was enough to convince her. It would have convinced most people. It would have convinced me.
The barrel of the pistol is all over the place, painting the air. Maureen’s right forefinger is curled around the trigger. Her hands are freezing. Even if she wanted to uncurl her finger she probably couldn’t.
In the periphery of my vision I see dark shapes crouching between the trees and shrubs. The Armed Response Group. They have rifles.
‘Listen to me, Maureen. You can talk to Jackson. Put down the gun and we’ll phone him right now.’ I take out my mobile. ‘I’ll call Bruno. He’ll put Jackson on the line.’
I can feel the change in her. She’s listening. She wants to believe me… to hope. Then just as suddenly, in a half-breath, her eyes widen and she drops the cup of the headphone over her ear.
I yell 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 pull 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, collapsing 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 follows, 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 still 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 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.