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.
‘We had a private service,’ he murmurs.
‘Where?’
‘In Greece.’
‘Why Greece?’
‘That’s where we lost them. It’s where they were happy. We built a memorial on a rocky headland overlooking a bay where Chloe used to go swimming.’
‘A memorial,’ says Ruiz. ‘Where are their graves?’
‘Their bodies were never recovered. The currents are so strong in that part of the Aegean. One of the navy divers found Chloe. Her life vest had snagged on the metal rungs of a ladder near the stern of the ferry. He cut the vest from her but the current ripped her away. He didn’t have enough air left in his tanks to swim after her.’
‘And he was sure?’
‘She still had a cast on her arm. It was Chloe.’
The phone rings. The old lawyer glances at his watch. Time is measured in fifteen minute intervals- billable hours. I wonder how much he’s going to charge his ‘old friend’ for this consultation.
I thank Mr Chambers for his time and rise slowly from my chair. The depressions left behind in the leather slowly begin to fill.
‘You know I’ve thought about killing him,’ says Bryan Chambers. Julian Spencer tries to stop him talking but is waved away. ‘I asked Skipper what it would take. Who would I have to pay? I mean, you read about stuff like that all the time.’
‘I’m sure Skipper has friends,’ says Ruiz.
‘Yes,’ nods Chambers. ‘I don’t know whether I’d trust any of them. They’d probably wipe out half a building.’
He looks at Julian Spencer. ‘Don’t worry. It’s just talk. Claudia would never let me do it. She has a God she has to answer to.’ He closes his eyes for a moment and opens them, hoping the world might have changed.
‘Do you have children, Professor?’
‘Two of them.’
He looks at Ruiz, who holds up two fingers.
‘You never stop worrying,’ says Chambers. ‘You worry through the pregnancy, the birth, the first year and every year that follows. You worry about them catching the bus, crossing the road, riding a bike, climbing a tree… You read stories in newspapers about terrible things happening to children. It makes you frightened. It never goes away.’
‘I know.’
‘And then you think how they grow up so quickly and suddenly you don’t have a say any more. You want them to find the perfect boyfriend and the perfect husband. You want them to get their dream job. You want to save them from every disappointment, every broken heart, but you can’t. You never stop being a parent. You never stop worrying. If you’re lucky, you’re going to be around to pick up the pieces.’
He turns away but I can see his misery reflected in the window.
‘Do you have a photograph of Tyler?’ I ask.
‘Maybe at home. He didn’t like cameras- even at the wedding.’
‘How about a photograph of Helen? I haven’t seen a proper one. The newspapers had a snapshot of her in Greece taken before the sinking.’
‘It’s the most recent one we had,’ he explains.
‘Do you have any others?’
He hesitates and glances at Julian Spencer. Then he opens his wallet and pulls out a passport-sized print.
