at the keyboard.
‘I’m searching the base stations in the area. If we work backwards from five o’clock, we may find Mrs Wheeler’s mobile.’
He points to the screen. ‘There are three base stations nearby. The closest is on Sion Hill, at the bottom of Queen Victoria Avenue. The tower is on the roof of the Princes’ Building. The next closest is two hundred yards away on the roof of Clifton Library.’
He types Christine Wheeler’s number into the search engine. The screen refreshes.
‘There!’ He points to a triangle on the screen. ‘She was in the area at 3.20 p.m.’
‘Talking to the same caller?’
‘It appears so. The call ends at 3.26.’
Ruiz and I look at each other. ‘How did she get another mobile?’ he asks.
‘Either someone gave it to her or she had it with her. Darcy didn’t mention a second phone.’
Oliver is listening in. He’s slowly being drawn into the search. ‘Why are you so interested in this woman?’
‘She jumped off the Clifton Suspension Bridge.’
He exhales slowly, making his face look even more skull-like.
‘There must be some way of tracing the conversation on the bridge,’ says Ruiz.
‘Not without a number,’ replies Oliver. ‘There were eight thousand calls going through the nearest base stations every fifteen minutes. Unless we can narrow the search down…’
‘What about duration? Christine Wheeler was perched on the edge of the bridge for an hour. She was on the phone the whole time.’
‘Calls aren’t logged by length,’ he explains. ‘It could take me days to separate them.’
I have another idea. ‘How many of the calls ended precisely at 5.07 p.m.?’
‘Why?’
‘That’s when she jumped.’
Oliver turns back to the keyboard, typing in parameters for a new search. The screen becomes a stream of numbers that flash by so quickly they blur into a waterfall of black and white.
‘That’s amazing,’ he says, pointing to the screen. ‘There’s a call that ended at precisely 5.07 p.m. It lasted more than ninety minutes.’
His fingers are tracing the details when they suddenly stop.
‘What’s wrong?’ I ask.
‘That’s strange,’ he replies. ‘Mrs Wheeler was talking to another mobile which was routed through the same base station.’
‘Which means what?’
‘It means whoever was taking to her was either on the bridge or looking at it.’
13
There are girls playing hockey on the field. Blue-pleated skirts swirl and dip against muddy knees, pigtails bounce and sticks clack together. The word budding comes to mind. I have always liked how it sounds. It reminds me of my childhood and the girls I wanted to fuck.
The sports mistress is refereeing, her voice as shrill as a whistle. She yells at them not to bunch up and to pass and to run.
‘Do keep up, Alice. Get involved.’
I know of some of the girls’ names. Louise has the long brown hair, Shelly the sunshine smile and poor Alice hasn’t hit the ball once since the game began.
A group of adolescent boys are watching from beneath a yew tree. They are sizing up the girls and poking fun at them.
Every time I look at the girls I imagine my Chloe. She’s younger. Six now. I missed her last birthday. She’s good at ball games. She could catch by the time she was four.
I built her a basketball hoop. It was lower than regulation height so she could reach. We used to go one-on- one and I always let her win. In the beginning she could hardly sink a basket but as she grew stronger and her aim improved, she landed maybe two shots in every three.
The hockey game is over. The girls are running indoors to change. Shelly with the sunshine smile runs across to flirt with the boys and is shepherded away by the sports mistress.
I squeeze my fingers around a chalky stone and begin scratching letters on the stone capping on the wall. The powder sinks deep into the cracks. I trace the letters again.
CHLOE
I draw a heart around the name, punctured by a cupid’s arrow with a triangular point and a splayed tail. Then I close my eyes and make a wish, willing it to be so.
My eyelids flutter open. I blink twice. The sports mistress is there, holding a hockey stick over her shoulder with the colourful towelling grip squeezed in her fist.
Her lips part: ‘Get lost, creep- or I’ll call the police!’
14
There are moments, I know them well, when Mr Parkinson refuses to lie down and take his medicine like a man. He plays cruel tricks on me and embarrasses me in public.
There are thousands of involuntary processes in the body that we cannot control. We cannot stop our hearts from beating or our skin from sweating or our pupils dilating. Other movements are voluntary and these are abandoning me. My limbs, my jaw, my face, will sometimes tremble or twitch or become fixed. Without warning, my face will lock into a mask, leaving me unable to smile in welcome or to show sadness or concern. What good will I be as a clinical psychologist if I lose my ability to express emotion?
‘You’re giving me the stare again,’ says Ruiz.
‘Sorry.’ I look away.
‘We should go home,’ he says gently.
‘Not yet.’
We’re sitting outside a Starbucks, braving the chill because Ruiz refuses to be seen inside such a place and thinks we should have gone to a pub instead.
‘I want an espresso, not a pint,’ I told him.
To which he countered, ‘Do you try to sound like a hairdresser?’
‘Drink your coffee.’
His hands are buried in the pockets of his overcoat. It’s the same rumpled coat he was wearing when I first met him- five years ago. He interrupted a talk that I was giving to prostitutes in London. I was trying to help them stay safe on the streets. Ruiz was trying to solve a murder.
I liked him. Men who take too much care of themselves and their clothes can appear vain and over-ambitious but Ruiz had long ago stopped caring about what other people thought of him. He was like a big dark vague piece of furniture, smelling of tobacco and wet tweed.
Another thing that struck me was how he could stare into the distance even when sitting in a room. It was as though he could see beyond walls to a place where things were clearer or better or easier on the eye.
‘You know what I can’t understand about this case?’ he says.
‘What’s that?’
‘Why didn’t someone stop her? A naked woman walks out of her house, gets in a car, drives fifteen miles and climbs over a safety rail on a bridge and nobody stops her. Can you explain that?’
‘It’s called the bystander effect.’
