The DI has summoned Oliver Rabb, wanting him to trace the call. He arrives in the incident room in the same baggy trousers and bow tie as yesterday, complemented by a muffler to keep his neck warm. He stops suddenly, frowning and patting his pockets as though he’s lost something on his way upstairs.
‘I had an office yesterday. I seem to have misplaced it.’
‘End of the corridor,’ answers Veronica Cray. ‘You have a new partner. Don’t let him boss you around.’
Lieutenant William Greene is already at work behind panes of glass in a booth-like office alongside the radio room.
‘I’m not very good at working with people,’ says Oliver glumly.
‘Sure you are. Ask nicely and the lieutenant will let you play with his military satellites.’
Oliver bucks up and straightens his glasses before heading off down the corridor.
I want to talk to Veronica Cray before Julianne arrives. She closes her office door and sips a coffee, grimacing as though nursing a toothache. Outside I can see gulls wheeling above the distant docks and a chink of light opening on the horizon. Helen and Chloe Chambers are alive, I tell her. They’re home.
The information washes over the DI seemingly without effect.
She puts two tubes of sugar in her coffee, hesitates and adds a third. Then she picks up the cup and looks at me over the steaming lip, regarding me with a level stare.
‘What do you want me to do? I can’t arrest them.’
‘They’ve conspired to fake two deaths.’
‘Right now I’m more interested in finding your daughter, Professor. One case at a time.’
‘It’s the same case. That’s why Tyler is doing this. We can use Helen and Chloe to negotiate with him.’
‘We’re not swapping your daughter for his.’
‘I know that, but we can use her to draw him out into the open.’
She strikes a match and lights a cigarette. ‘Worry about your own daughter, Professor, she’s been missing since lunchtime yesterday.’ A coil of smoke curls from her fist. ‘I can’t force Helen Chambers to co-operate but I’ll send someone to the house to talk to her.’
She walks to the door of her office. Opens it. Her voice booms across the incident room: ‘Full briefing at 7.00 a.m. I want answers, people.’
Julianne will be here soon. What am I going to say to her? There are no words she wants to hear unless they come from Charlie’s mouth, whispered in her ear, with her arms embracing her.
I find an empty office and sit in the dark. The sun is beginning to show, putting drops of colour into the water of the world. Until a few days ago, I had never heard of Gideon Tyler, but now I feel as though he has been watching me for years, standing in the darkness, staring down at my sleeping family, blood dripping from his fingers to the floor.
Although not physically powerful, not a bodybuilder or a strong man, Gideon’s strength lies in his intellect and his planning and his willingness to do what others cannot comprehend.
He is an observer, a cataloguer of human characteristics; a collector of clues that can tell him about a person. The way they walk and stand and talk. What car they drive. What clothes they wear. Do they make eye contact when they talk? Are they open, trusting, flirtatious or more enclosed and introspective? I do the same- observe people- but in Tyler’s case it’s a prelude to harm.
Any sign of weakness is preyed upon. He can recognise a flagging heart, distinguish inner strength from a charade and find the fault lines in a psyche. We’re not so different, he and I, but we aspire to different ends. He tears minds apart. I try to repair them.
Oliver and Lieutenant William Greene are at work in their goldfish bowl-like office, leaning over laptops and comparing data. They make an odd couple. The lieutenant reminds of one of those wind-up toy soldiers with a stiff legged gait and a fixed look on his face. The only thing missing is a large key rotating between his shoulder blades.
A large map takes up the entire wall, dotted with coloured pins and crisscrossed with lines that join them, forming series of overlapping triangles. The last call from Gideon Tyler originated from Temple Circus in the centre of Bristol. Police are studying CCTV footage from four cameras to see if it can link the call to a vehicle.
The mobile phone hidden in Charlie’s bedroom went missing from a boating supply shop in Princes Wharf on Friday. The handset Gideon used to make the call has been traced to a phone shop in Chiswick, London. The name and address of the buyer were those of a student living in a shared house in Bristol. A gas bill and credit card receipt (both stolen) were used as proof of identity.
I study the map, trying to acquire the nomenclature to read the red, green and black pins. It’s like learning a new alphabet.
‘It’s not complete,’ says the lieutenant, ‘but we’ve managed to trace most of the calls.’
He explains that the coloured pins represent phone calls made by Gideon Tyler and the nearest transmitting tower to each signal. The duration of each call has been logged, along with the time and signal strengths. Gideon hasn’t used the same handset more than half a dozen times and he never calls from the same location. In almost every case the handset was turned on only moments before he made the call and turned off immediately afterwards.
Oliver talks me through the chronology, starting with Christine Wheeler’s disappearance. The signals can place Gideon Tyler in Leigh Woods and near the Clifton Suspension Bridge when she jumped. He was also within a hundred metres of Sylvia Furness when her body was handcuffed to the tree and in Victoria Park in Bath when Maureen Bracken aimed a pistol at my chest.
I study the map again, feeling the landscape rise up from the paper, becoming solid. Amid the predominantly red, green and blue pins, a lone white pin stands out.
‘What does that one mean?’ I ask.
‘It’s an anomaly,’ explains Oliver.
‘What sort of anomaly?’
‘It wasn’t a phone call. The handset pinged for a tower and then went dead.’
‘Why?’
‘Perhaps he turned the phone on and then changed his mind.’
‘Or it could be a mistake,’ suggests the lieutenant.
Oliver looks at him irritably. ‘In my experience mistakes happen for a reason.’
My fingertips brush the pinheads as reading a document in Braille. They come to rest on the white pin.
‘How long was the phone turned on for?’
‘No more than fourteen seconds,’ says Oliver. ‘The digital signal is transmitted every seven seconds. It was picked up twice by the tower we’ve marked. The white pin is the location of the nearest tower.’
Errors and anomalies are the bane of behavioural scientists and cognitive psychologists. We look for patterns in the data to support our theories, which is why anomalies are so damaging and why, if we’re very lucky, a theory will hold together just long enough for a better one to come along.
Gideon has been so careful about not leaving footprints, digital or otherwise. He has made precious few mistakes that we know of. Patrick’s sister ordered a pizza with Christine Wheeler’s mobilethat’s the only mistake I can remember. Perhaps this was another one.
‘Can you trace it?’ I ask.
Oliver has pushed his glasses up his nose again and tilted his head back to bring my whole face into focus.
‘I suppose the signal may have been picked up by other towers.’
The lieutenant looks at him incredulously. ‘The phone was only turned on for fourteen seconds. That’s like trying to find a fart in a windstorm.’
Oliver raises his eyebrows. ‘What a colourful analogy! Am I to assume that the army isn’t up to the job?’
Lieutenant Greene knows that he’s being challenged, which he finds vaguely insulting because he clearly thinks Oliver is a chin-less, pale, limp-wristed boffin who couldn’t find his arse with both hands.
I take some of the tension out of the moment. ‘Explain to me what’s going to happen when Tyler calls again.’
Oliver explains the technology and the benefit of satellite tracking. The lieutenant seems uncomfortable discussing the subject, as though military secrets are being revealed.
‘How quickly can you trace Tyler’s call?’
