‘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 blonde. 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 Osnabruck 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 of 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 socialising, 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 behaviour 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 apologised. 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 goodbye 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 tyre 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 “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 tyre 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 straight away, 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 down 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 and then to Italy, 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 Milan. 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 goodbye 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.