It takes me a moment to realise the phone is ringing. I glance at Oliver Rabb. He wants me to let it ring four times.
I pick up.
‘Hello.’
‘Where the fuck is Chloe?’
‘Why did you hang up on her?’
Gideon explodes: ‘I didn’t hang up. The line went dead. If this is some fucking stunt…’
‘Chloe said you hung up on her.’
‘There’s no signal, arsehole. Look at your mobile.’
‘Hey, yeah.’
‘Put Chloe on the phone.’
‘I’ll send someone to get her.’
‘Where is she?’
‘Next door.’
‘Get her.’
‘I’ll put the call through to her.’
‘I know what you’re doing. Get her on the line now!’
I glance at Oliver and William Greene. They’re still trying to trace the call. It’s taking too long. My left side is trembling. If I keep my leg on the ground, I can stop it shaking.
Ruiz ushers Chloe into the room. I cover the phone.
‘You OK?’
She nods.
‘I’m going to be listening. If you get frightened, I want you to cover the phone and tell me.’
She nods and picks up the second phone.
‘Hello, Daddy, it’s me.’
‘Hi, how are you?’
‘Good.’
‘I’m sorry we got cut off, baby. I can’t talk long.’
‘I lost a tooth.’
‘Did you?’
‘The tooth fairy gave me two bits of money. I left the tooth fairy a note. Mummy helped me write it.’
Chloe is a natural at this. Without even trying, she’s holding his attention completely, keeping him on the line.
‘Is your mum there?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Is she listening?’
‘No.’
Beyond the glass, Oliver turns and raises both thumbs. They’ve traced the call. Chloe has run out of things to say. Gideon is asking her questions. Sometimes she nods rather than answers.
‘Are you in trouble?’ she asks him.
‘Don’t worry about me.’
‘Did you do something wrong?’
In the background I hear the wail of approaching sirens. Gideon has heard them too. I take the handset from Chloe.
‘It’s over,’ I say. ‘Where are Charlie and Julianne?’
Gideon screams down the phone. ‘You cocksucker! You scumbag! I’m going to rip you a new arsehole! You’re dead! No, your wife’s dead! You’re never going to see her alive.’
There are more sirens, along with screeching brakes and car doors opening. Glass breaks and a gunshot echoes through the handset. Please, God, don’t shoot him.
There are cheers from the incident room. Fists punch the air. ‘We’ve got the bastard,’ someone declares.
Chloe looks at me, bewildered, terrified. I’m still pressing the phone to my ear, listening to the sound of at least twenty weapons being cocked. Someone is yelling at Gideon to lie on the ground, to put his hands on his head. More voices. Heavy boots.
‘Hello? Is anyone there? Hello?’
Nobody is listening.
‘Can someone hear me? Pick up!’ I scream down the line. ‘Tell me what’s happened.’
Suddenly, there’s a voice on the end of the line. It’s Veronica Cray.
‘We got him.’
‘What about Charlie and Julianne?’
‘They’re not with him.’
68
Gideon Tyler looks different. Fitter. Leaner. He is no longer a stuttering confabulator and constructor of deceits. There are no invisible mousetraps on the floor. It’s almost as though he can physically transform himself by taking on a new persona, his real one.
Some things are the same. His thin blond hair hangs limply over his ears and his pale grey eyes blink at the world from behind a pair of small rectangular glasses with metal frames. His hands are cuffed and placed palm-down on the surface of the table. The only signs of stress are the circles of perspiration beneath the arms of his shirt.
Strip-searched and examined by a doctor, his belt and shoelaces have been confiscated along with his watch and personal effects. Since then he’s been alone in the interview suite, staring at his hands as if willing the metal cuffs to break and the door to open and the guards to dissolve.
I am watching him through an observation window- a one-way mirror into the interview room. Although he can’t see me, I sense that he knows I’m here. Occasionally, he looks up and stares into the mirrornot examining his own features as much as looking beyond it, imagining my face.
Veronica Cray is meeting upstairs with a brace of military lawyers and the Chief Constable. The army is demanding the right to interrogate Gideon, claiming it has national security concerns. DI Cray isn’t likely to cede ground. I don’t care who asks the questions. Someone should be in there now, demanding answers, finding my wife and daughter.
A door opens behind me. Ruiz steps from the darkness of the corridor into the darkness of the observation room. There are no lights. Any luminosity could leak through the mirror and reveal the hidden room.
‘So that’s him.’
‘That’s him. Can’t we do something?’
‘Like what?’
‘Make him talk. I mean, if this were the movies you’d go in there and beat the crap out of him.’
‘Perhaps in the old days,’ says Ruiz, sounding genuinely nostalgic.
‘They still arguing?’
Ruiz nods.
‘The military are sending a chopper. They want to take him to an army base. They’re scared he might tell us something. Like the truth.’
Surely, there’s no way Veronica Cray will surrender jurisdiction. She’ll take it to the Home Secretary or the Lord Chamberlain. She has two murders, a shooting and two kidnappings on her patch, on her watch. The arguments and legal manoeuvrings are taking up too much time. Meanwhile, Gideon sits twelve feet away, humming to himself and staring into the mirror.
He doesn’t look like a man who’s going to spend the rest of his life in prison. He looks like a man without a care in the world.
DI Cray enters the interview suite. Monk is sitting second chair. A third person, a military lawyer, takes up a position behind them, standing ready to intervene at any moment. Microphones have been removed from the room. There are no pads or pencils. The interview isn’t being recorded. I doubt if there’s a record any longer of Gideon’s arrest or his fingerprinting. Somebody is determined to remove all trace of him.
Veronica Cray pours water from a plastic bottle into a plastic cup. Leaning her head back, she takes a long deep draught. Tyler seems to look at her throat with interest.
‘As you can probably tell, this isn’t a formal interview,’ she says. ‘Nothing you say is being taken down. It can’t be used against you. You only have to answer one question. Tell us the whereabouts of Julianne and Charlotte O’Loughlin.’
Gideon presses his back against the chair and pushes his arms forward, fingers splayed on the table. Then slowly he raises his head, his eyes disappearing in the wash of fluorescence reflecting from his glasses.
‘I will not talk to you,’ he whispers.
‘You have to talk to me.’
His head moves from side to side.
Gideon stares at the mirror, through it.
‘Where are Charlie and Julianne O’Loughlin?’
He sits to attention. ‘My name is Major Gideon Tyler. Born October six, 1969. I am a soldier in Her Majesty’s First Military Intelligence Brigade.’
He is following the Conduct Under Capture rules- name, age and rank.
‘Don’t give me this bullshit,’ says Veronica Cray.
Gideon fixes her with a milky grey stare, searching her eyes. ‘It must be hard being a dyke in the police force, liking the black triangle, being a member of the tongue and groove club. Must get a lot of snide remarks. What do they call you behind your back?’
‘Answer the question.’
‘You answer mine. Do you get much? I often wonder about dykes and if you get much sex. You’re as ugly as a hat full of arse-holes so I shouldn’t think so.’
Veronica Cray’s voice remains smooth but the back of her neck is blazing. ‘I’ll hear your fantasies another time,’ she says.