I Am Watching Read online

  When had it come to this? she wondered. When did receiving letters like these become a normal part of life?

  She told herself that she didn’t think about them, that it was just part of the job, that you couldn’t let it get to you. And yet that wasn’t true, was it? Because there they were, every time the mailbox clattered. You didn’t think of them, and yet there they were, anyway, right beneath your skin.

  Isla let her head rest back against the wall, the bitter taste of bile still fresh in her mouth, and let her gaze spool across the first three piles. They were a reminder that she could handle this. That whatever was to come, she had been there before. She had survived. She would survive again.

  Creaking floorboards, footsteps coming closer, and Isla considered standing up, grabbing the piles of paper, and stuffing them away. But then, she reflected, the time for hiding was at last over.

  “Isl? You okay?”

  Ramsey looked drained, emptied out. He let himself into the room, closed the door tight behind him. “Look, love. If you want to go, do as your dad says, then we’ll go. It’s no problem. All I care about is that you’re okay, so if you want us to leave, we leave.” Isla smiled and reached out a hand for him. “I’m okay. And no. I’m not going anywhere. Let’s stay and see this through.”

  Her husband lowered himself to the floor beside her, studied the piles of paper. “What is this?”

  Isla pulled her knees up. Didn’t look at him. “They’re death threats.”

  “What?”

  “Well,” she corrected, “mostly death threats. Some of them are just offers to fuck me.”

  “Are . . . You’re kidding, right?”

  That guilt again, that she had kept this from him, had buried it—one more in a line of too many secrets. Isla opened her mouth, then closed it again.

  “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “I didn’t want to worry you.” It wasn’t an excuse, and they both knew it.

  “Worry me? Jesus, Isl. See, this is what I’m talking about. You, everyone here, you treat me like I’m made of glass. What happened, happened. And, I might add, I survived, so this whole victim treatment . . . Frankly, it gets really old.”

  Isla placed her hand on his arm. “I know. I’m sorry. If . . . if it makes you feel any better, we all get these, all of us who do what I do. Connor is gutted that I have more than him.”

  “Well,” said Ramsey, looking at the piles. “Have you shown them to your father?”

  Isla snorted. “The great Eric Bell? Are you high?” She sighed heavily. “Look, these first three, they’re just your run-of-the-mill kind of threats. Some are nasty, but it’s just the usual crap. They don’t bother me.”

  “Okay,” said Ramsey. “And this one?” He nudged the fourth pile with his foot.

  Isla rested her chin back on her knee, didn’t answer her husband, the words there but her mouth unwilling to say them. Then, finally, she reached out, pulled the top sheet off the pile, and handed it to him. She looked away. After all, she knew the words by heart now.

  Dear Isla,

  I continue to watch your career with fascination. Your ability to delve into the dark workings of the criminal mind is truly remarkable. I wonder if you would have been able to save me before it was too late. Or do you restrict your talents to those already captured by the law? Perhaps your abilities lie in analysis rather than detection. A shame if that is the case. The latter of those skills would surely be of greater assistance to you in the time that is to come. Nonetheless, I continue to watch you with admiration and affection. To that end, I must mention how beautiful you looked last Friday. Green really is your color.

  I will see you very soon.

  Affectionate regards,

  x

  Ramsey frowned, looked at her. “Last Friday?”

  Isla pulled in a breath. “It was two weeks ago. I was at the prison with Heath McGowan. I was wearing a green blouse.”

  “So . . .” Ramsey looked from the letter to her, then back again. “So McGowan, then?”

  Isla leaned forward, sifted through the pile, and pulled out an envelope. She handed it to Ramsey.

  “Okay?”

  “It was hand delivered, Ramsey. It was hand delivered here. To our home.”

  He stared at her. “What?”

  “Everything else, all the other letters I’ve ever had, they’ve come to the university. The stuff they say, all of it is public knowledge, things anyone with a computer could get online. But this one . . . Whoever this is, they know things. Things that they shouldn’t know. Unless they had been watching me.”

  Ramsey’s face grew ashen. “Isla . . . the photograph. I . . . I assumed it was about me. That that was what it meant. But it’s not, is it? It’s not me he’s after. It’s you.”

  A cold case – Mina

  Mina stood looking out across Briganton. The village spread beneath her, following the curve of Bowman’s Hill, a chocolate box scene. She could just about make out the primary school from here, could hear the incongruous sounds of children laughing, the odd shriek breaking free of the cacophony. She tucked her coat tighter around herself. Did they sense it, the village’s children? Did they understand what had happened here? Although, Mina allowed, whether they sensed it or not, it would change them in some fundamental way, would alter who they grew up to be. The world swam. She could no longer remember how long it had been since she’d slept, and a pronounced nausea was beginning to build in the back of her throat. She turned slightly, following the rooftops, which seemed to pave the hill beneath her all the way down to the moor, and her gaze snagged on the dark line of Hadrian’s Wall.

  And she found herself wondering who would be next.

  “I got you this.”

  Mina started, pulled from her reverie by the thin paper cup that Owen thrust into her hands.

  “It looks like crap,” he said apologetically, “but better than nothing.”

  She studied the murky gray liquid that smelled vaguely of coffee. “Where the hell did you get this?”

  Owen sipped his own and winced. “Gah. That’s . . . urgh. Oh, some particularly enterprising guy has set up a table outside the church. Trying to cash in on the sudden influx of visitors. Seriously, I won’t be offended if you don’t drink it. It tastes like he washed his pants in it first.”

  Mina glanced up at Owen. How could he look so well put together? So well rested? With an effort, she gave a smile and tried to forget that the little make-up she wore when she began work—whenever the hell that was—had skidded away under the relentless battering of the weather, that she had tugged her hair up into a rough bun and, quite possibly, had left a pen in there somewhere. Then she turned her attention to the cup, and she deliberated whether to dump it, contents and all, into the bin but finally settled for downing it in one gulp. Caffeine was caffeine, after all.

  Owen watched her gag and grinned. “I did warn you.”

  Mina shrugged. “I thought it was probably preferable to speed. Anyway, anything from number three?” She nodded back toward the row of houses.

  “Nothing. They didn’t see anyone unusual. I quote, ‘Thing is, if I saw someone carrying a dead body on his back, I’d’ve called you, wouldn’t I?’ ”

  “One would hope.” Mina stuffed the empty cup into her bag. “Come on. Let’s do it.”

  They walked side by side, rounded the corner onto a street of squat terraced cottages, their facades screaming of age and steadfastness. Mina quickened her pace, ignoring the first house they passed and the second and the third, and finally came to a stop before the fourth. Kitty Lane’s house.

  The terraced house, low and aged, sat alongside a crop of its like. Mina remembered this house from the crime scene photos of the original murders: the cherry tree that stood in its front garden, its blossoms like candy floss on a stick, the winding cobbled path that dipped and dived between roses and freesia, leading up to a door, a rich royal blue. Of course, that was all a very long time ago. Now the cherry blossoms w
ere gone, and the cobbled path had vanished beneath a gravel overlay that formed a hastily assembled driveway. A lonely bay tree stood in a tub beside a doorway that was no longer blue but a sorry white plastic.

  They stood together before the sad gravel drive and looked up at where it had all begun.

  “You know,” said Owen, “I remember her so well. Kitty, I mean. She used to . . . She was kind of bent over by age, so I used to think that she looked like a walking question mark. She was always out. Every time you went outside, you’d see her. Always walking. I remember asking my mother where she could possibly be walking to. My mum, she said that it was because she was lonely. That she walked so she could talk to people.”

  Owen’s voice had become low and distant. “I remember once, when I was a kid, my mum had taken me to the corner shop, and Kitty was in there. She was talking and talking and talking. In the end, Mr. Mullens went into the back room—I’m sure just to get away from her—and so Kitty, quick as a snake, reaches out, steals a handful of sweets, and shoves them in her pocket. I remember being horrified and weirdly impressed that this little old woman could do something so . . . naughty.”

  Mina glanced up at him, curious. “Did you tell your mother?”

  “No,” he said, thoughtful. “I think Kitty kind of expected me to. She knew I’d seen. But I just stood there. And as she was leaving, she patted me on the head—her hands were all twisted up from arthritis, I remember—and slipped me a penny sweet.”

  Mina laughed. “She bought your silence, you mean?”

  Owen grinned. “I’m telling you, I’ve got a dark edge.”

  “I can tell.” Mina studied the house. “Come on, then.” Her feet crunched across the gravel, and she knocked on the door, quick and loud.

  “Sure, but we haven’t done the first houses yet,” protested Owen.

  “Uh-huh.” Mina didn’t look at him, her focus on the door before her, and on the murky opaque shape that was drifting into view. Footsteps on a linoleum floor, then the door swinging inward, a young woman—midtwenties, perhaps—a baby on her hip.

  “I’m DC Arian,” Mina said, smiling. “We’re making enquiries about the murder of Maggie Heron.”

  She watched the baby watching her. A single bubble of yellow snot protruded from its left nostril, growing and shrinking with its breath.

  “Oh,” said the woman. “Okay, sure. I mean, I don’t know anything, but . . .”

  “Can we come in?” asked Mina brightly. “Thanks.” She surged inside the house without waiting for a reply.

  The door opened onto a living room, or the memory of one. Now it was only a box, with off-white walls, biscuit trim, a fireplace surrounded by empty space. A large baby bouncer spilled awkwardly outward from a corner, making the room feel smaller still.

  Mina stood, useless. A feeling of being catapulted back to a time in which she had never been. She thought of the crime scene photos again, could feel the weight of them in her bag, and she turned, looked about the room, and saw it as it had once been: The carpet a conflagration of color, pinks and purples and mauves battling it out against the orange of the wall. A different fireplace, its tiles chipped and stained with cigarette smoke, wrapped round a coal fire.

  At the time of the original murders, investigators found Kitty’s living room undisturbed. When officers attended the scene, scant minutes after the body of Kitty Lane had been found, they discovered the television on, the back door wide open. Maggie reported to police that her cousin was relatively well off, and that she made it a habit to keep cash in a tin on the mantelpiece. When police found the tin, it was empty.

  “Is everything okay?” The young woman shifted the baby on her hip, looking nervously from Mina to Owen. “I mean, you could sit – – ”

  “Can I see the kitchen?” The words tumbled from Mina before she could stop them, and as she felt Owen’s gaze lock on her, a flush rose in her cheeks at being found out. “If that’s okay, I mean.”

  “I . . .” The woman frowned. “I guess . . . but . . .”

  And then fate intervened, and the baby, under whose gaze Mina had started to feel uncomfortable, gave a small hiccup, a look of surprise, and then vomited copiously, coating itself, its mother, and a good portion of the floor. The child let out a searing wail.

  “Oh, I don’t believe it. Did she get you? No? Okay, look . . . I . . . I’m really sorry, but I’m going to have to go and change her.” The mother looked down at her blue sweater, now richly adorned with what presumably had once been carrots. “And me,” she added. “Do you mind?”

  Mina smiled brightly. “Of course not. Take your time.”

  She stepped back quietly, closer now to the kitchen, watched as the pair hurried up the narrow staircase and out of sight, the baby’s wails diminishing and finally sputtering out.

  “Okay, what was that?” asked Owen.

  “What was what?” Mina asked innocently. She turned and slipped into the kitchen. A small room that smelled of fresh paint, the cramped space breathlessly full of cheap units and rough-edged counters. She stood for a moment, then pulled the crime scene photos from her bag, flipped through to the photograph of the kitchen, and studied it.

  The back door stood full open. A chair lay on its side, and on the tiled floor, a narrow swipe of blood.

  “Are those . . . Where did you get those? We’re not supposed to be doing this! Superintendent Bell – – ”

  “Superintendent Bell is wrong,” returned Mina shortly. “Look, the quicker we do this, the quicker we can get the hell out of here.” She held out the photograph to him. “It was here. It was here that she was attacked. You see the blood?”

  Owen scowled at her, then peered closely at the photograph. “Kitty’s?”

  She nodded. “Yes. And on the door, here, just above the handle, they found McGowan’s prints.”

  Mina turned in a circle in the narrow space, then opened the back door, slipped outside into the cold.

  “The file says that they think he got Kitty’s body out this way,” she said, Owen inches behind her. “See the back gate? It opens onto a lane. It’s quiet, but wide enough to get a car down.” Mina looked about the garden: no sign here now of what had gone before. “The mud was disturbed right there inside the back gate. The team concluded it was due to her body being dragged. There should be a picture . . .” Mina flicked through the photographs. There it was, the back gate, a flower bed beside it, grass flattened down, a drag mark that sliced through the earth like a scar. Déjà vu circled her. She wasn’t at Kitty Lane’s, but at Maggie Heron’s. The narrow lane conveniently placed behind the house. A car waiting. “If that was it, if he had a car there, then it’s the same MO. Same as with Maggie.”

  “So, whoever’s doing this, he’s doing his damnedest to replicate what happened last time.”

  Mina didn’t answer, had ducked her head. After raising the photograph closer, she studied the earth, the drag mark.

  “Is that a footprint?” asked Owen, peering over her shoulder at the photograph. “Look, there. Right by the gate.”

  Mina studied the notes. “Yeah, hang on . . . Oh, here it is. They took impressions of it but could never match it to anyone.” She looked up at him. “Including Heath. Wrong size. They ultimately concluded that it must not have been related to the murder.”

  Owen was watching her. “Mina, why are you doing this? Going all Nancy Drew, I mean. If Bell finds out . . .”

  Mina looked back down at the photograph, although she wasn’t really seeing it. “I . . . I don’t know. I just can’t shake the feeling that if the original investigation . . . if it had been done properly, then this wouldn’t be happening. We have so many resources deployed, looking at what’s happening right now, but maybe the answer isn’t there at all. Maybe it’s right here, in what happened twenty years ago.”

  Owen looked along the length of the garden, now nothing but an overgrown lawn. “What about witnesses? It was a warm night. People would have had windows open. Did no one hear a
nything?”

  Mina shook her head. “According to this, the neighbors next door were having a barbecue. They were in the garden throughout the afternoon and into the evening, then moved into the kitchen as it got later. Reported they had the door open the entire time, didn’t close it until maybe midnight.”

  “And the pathologist said she was killed . . .”

  “Sometime between five p.m. and nine p.m.” Mina shrugged. “Neighbors said they didn’t hear a thing.”

  “Can we talk to them?”

  “They both died ten years ago.”

  “The Billingses, of course they did. Bugger.” Owen folded his arms, looked at the high fence, let his gaze swing over toward the back gate. “So, we have early evening, a warm night, a party right on the other side of the fence, but no one hears a thing.” He shook his head. “Well, he may have been indiscreet when it came to prints, but I’ll give him one thing—he was fast. To have got into the garden, to have overpowered her before she could make a sound.”

  Mina looked back down at the crime scene photo, at the flower bed and the faint outline of a shoe. “Unless . . .”

  “What?”

  “The shoe,” she said, flicking through the notes. “It was . . . it was a man’s size eleven.” She stopped, a cold prickle running down her spine. “Owen, that’s the same size as the shoe print I found in Victoria Prew’s house.”

  “I . . .” He shrugged. “Okay?”

  Mina stared down the path toward the back gate. “Owen, the shoe print, the one they found here . . . What if it was related to the case?”

  Owen frowned. “How do you mean?”

  “I mean, what if the original crime series didn’t have just one killer? What if there were two?”

  Those with experience – Isla

  Heath was waiting for her, his hands folded neatly on the desk before him, his features calm. Had he been told she was coming? As the guard closed the door behind her, Isla stepped aside and studied him. Yes. His features were carefully composed. His gaze settled on her, seeming to punch straight through to the heart of her. Just the vaguest hint of a smile. Yes, he knew.