I Am Watching Read online

  “Professor Bell. I wasn’t expecting to see you again so soon.” There was self-satisfaction in the way that he drew out the words. “Please, have a seat.”

  He believed that he had drawn her here, that the phone call had been enough to get inside her head. Isla slipped into the opposite seat as Heath leaned backward in the manner of a puppeteer who had pulled all the right strings. Isla thought about the photograph. About the letters. Was it you? Perhaps she had in fact been pulled here. Perhaps what she thought of as free will was merely the effect of walking in the thrall of a psychopath.

  Isla felt the yawning of unease.

  “Oh,” she said, “you didn’t know?” The tone she affected was one of easy surprise.

  A shift, the sense that the puppet had gone rogue. “Know?”

  “Well, the tests. The fMRI scans. We always come back in after they are completed. It’s nothing to worry about, honestly.” Her best reassuring smile. “It’s just a mop-up, a chance to run through what we’ve done. Let you know what we’ve found and see how you’re doing now.” She watched him lean backward, then forward, a dozen calculations flashing across his face at once. “Is that okay?”

  “Ah . . . yeah. Sure.”

  Isla set her briefcase on the desk between her and Heath and popped the clasps. “So, we’ve completed the scans.” She slid the scan photos out, placed them carefully before him. “What we do is we compare the way your brain functions to that of the general population—those who did not score within the psychopath range on the Psychopathy Checklist. We then compare your results with those of the other people we’ve studied who have been identified as showing psychopathy. Now”—she pulled a pen from her case, running the cap of it across the shape of the brain on the top scan—“you see this here? This is the paralimbic system. It covers a number of brain areas that deal with things like emotional processing, our ability to govern our own behaviors and to motivate ourselves, and our ability to control ourselves. Can you see that this is showing up in a different color from the rest of your brain? Yes? Okay, what that tells us is that this whole area is functioning differently than we would usually expect.”

  “Differently?”

  Isla looked up, gave Heath her gentlest smile. “It’s underperforming, meaning that the things this area is supposed to do are much harder for you than they would be for other people.”

  He was leaning over the scans, letting his finger run across the surface of them, the stubby tip of it charting the wash of blue. “So . . . ,” he said slowly, “there is something wrong with me.” He said it as a revelation—“There is something wrong with me.” His shoulders sagged.

  Isla watched him. “You seem relieved, almost.”

  Heath didn’t answer, and Isla wasn’t entirely sure whether he had even heard or whether he was lost now within the map of his own brain. Then he glanced up, and she realized that what he was actually doing was debating—to lie or not to lie.

  She cocked her head. “Why not try the truth? You never know, you may get a taste for it.”

  Heath started, then flung back his head and laughed. “Yeah, fair enough, fair enough. All right, Prof, here it is. Thing is, I’ve always known I’m not like other people. Didn’t take a scan to tell me that. But seeing this here”—he jabbed at the blue with his thumb—“it’s . . . I don’t know. I guess it makes more sense now. What’s different about me, I mean.” He stopped, considered. “Can I ask you something, Prof?”

  “Of course.”

  “Why? Why did this happen to me? All this blue in my brain. Why is it like that?”

  “Well,” said Isla, “that’s what we’re trying to figure out. You know those interviews that Connor has been doing with you? The stuff about your childhood, what it was like growing up. That’s so we can try to figure out what it is that makes someone’s brain develop in this way.” Isla hesitated, balancing. “And we can then try to figure out what makes them kill.”

  Heath looked up at her, his expression shifting to . . . what? “So you can stop people like me, you mean?”

  It was like sitting beneath a microscope. It was like a school assembly where you sat onstage and you had turned up naked.

  “Yes, Heath. So I can stop people from being killed.”

  The temperature had dropped; the air had become thick and tense. Isla heard the guard shift and suddenly realized she had forgotten he was there. Heath had leaned back in his chair, had folded his arms, and was gazing at her from beneath lowered lids.

  “Yeah,” he said slowly, “what’s going on in Briganton . . . nasty stuff.” It was a challenge, a game.

  Isla simply sat.

  “You know,” said Heath, “I’ve got a theory.”

  “I’d love to hear it.”

  “This one, you know, who’s killing these people . . . I reckon he’s doing it because he wants to be like me. You know, famous.”

  She could hear it in his tone. The low-level thrill. Isla watched him, thinking of her father, of his confidence that McGowan was involved. Was fueling the latest tragedy to befall them. Then what? Isla had thought. How? Say he is. Say Heath is knowingly serving as a murder mentor. How would that work? Would it be someone he has served time with, someone around him long enough to become enchanted by the legend of the killer on the wall, who has decided that he wants his own shot at infamy? There would be plenty of options, certainly. So someone who has served with him has now been released to carry on the good work. Would he maintain contact? Would he need to? Or has he, whoever he is, gone dark?

  Or then there’s the other option—that this is nothing to do with Heath at all.

  “Perhaps,” said Isla carefully.

  Heath shook his head. “I’m telling you, Prof,” he said, “you better catch this guy quick. He’s not going to stop unless you stop him.”

  Careful.

  “And how do you know that, Heath?”

  He dipped his head, the faintest trace of a smile; it had gone when he looked back up. “Call it experience.” He shook his head. “Funny, though, don’t you think?”

  “What is?”

  “Funny that he’s decided to do this now.”

  “I’m not following.”

  “Come on, Prof. All these years, the killer on the wall has been in prison. All these years when Briganton has been safe. Then you come to see me, you start your little experiments, and now . . . well, you’d almost wonder if the two were related.”

  Isla felt her pulse quicken, the nibbling edges of fear. “Are you saying that this is happening because of the research I’m doing with you?”

  Heath shrugged expansively. “Hey, I’m just a common criminal, me. I don’t know. Look, all I’m saying is, why now? Maybe you should be asking yourself that.”

  Isla attempted to catch her thoughts as they skittered off in a myriad of directions.

  “You know,” she said, “that’s a really interesting point. I mean, this is the thing we have that no one else does—your experience. I think you’re right. I think this guy is trying to be you. So we have a huge advantage here, because no one knows what happened back then, twenty years ago, better than you do. Heath . . . you could crack this.”

  But Heath simply smiled. “Oh no,” he said, “not yet. I’m having far too much fun.”

  An opportunity – Mina

  Mina stood alone in the empty street, the cold night air pricking at her fingers, her face. The cloud cover was complete now; the threat of rain sitting just beyond the horizon. It felt as if she was wrapped in cotton wool, clouds pressing down on her from above. Down the hill and in the near distance, the moor was lost to a heavy mist.

  She looked at the front door of her tiny terraced cottage. Her skin felt sticky with exhaustion; the need to take a shower, to climb into a freshly made bed was almost palpable. And yet still she stood there. It was, Mina was prepared to admit, perhaps not the wisest of moves, given the current climate.

  She turned and began walking slowly away from the safety of her o
wn front door and the small comfort of simply being able to stop. She couldn’t stop. It wasn’t over.

  She walked past the church, took a left, around the florist’s, down the hill past the now empty primary school, with its dark stone, high turreted towers, down and down until the mist that sat on the moor seemed to reach out to her, filling her lungs. She took a right along a narrow side street containing terraced houses larger than hers and yet small for all that.

  She walked and walked, number twelve, number thirteen. Number fourteen. There Mina stopped.

  The Aiken house. Or what had been the Aiken house, at least.

  The house nestled within a row of like-minded houses. They had been added to the ancient village maybe forty or so years ago, when it had finally become apparent to Briganton that expansion was the only path to survival. Three bedrooms, according to the files, hardly sufficient room to house three growing boys, and yet house them it had. At least until one of them had been murdered, another escaping by the skin of his teeth. From there it had been a steep slope of decay. The mother dead within two years, the father resolved seemingly to drink himself into oblivion. Cain and Ramsey moving out, away, and then, as all things seemed to do in Briganton, ricocheting back again to settle, seemingly pulled by a past that would not let them go.

  Mina studied the house. It had been tarted up, a double extension added to the back of it, a new gravel driveway laid at the front. Simply looking at it, you would never know what had happened there, would never sense the tragedy that had unfolded.

  That was the front door. That was the path down which they had walked.

  Mina looked at her feet, puddled in the orange glow of a streetlamp. They would have stood here, not knowing what was to come. Then they would have walked along this road, Zach delivering papers to house after house, then a left, then a right.

  Mina turned and began to walk, the first whispers of rain pricking at her skin.

  The mist was denser here, the moor just a house width away. Mina’s breath sounded loud to her. If it happened here, if there was a sudden rush of footsteps, hands raised in attack, would she hear it in time? Would she be able to defend herself? Strange to walk on, that thought in mind, and not to really care.

  Mina walked until she reached Dray Lane.

  She stopped.

  It was like a tunnel into a tomb, a narrow channel of semi-light looking on to the pitch black of the moor. The wall was somewhere down there, the memory of too many bodies. And here, on this narrow inlet, was where it had happened. Where Ramsey and Zach were taken.

  Mina stuffed her hands in her pockets and shivered as the lane tugged the wind toward her, thin raindrops spiraling into her face. How did McGowan do it? She looked about her. The moor was close, it was true. It would have been a fairly quick trip to drag the bodies to their dumping ground. Yet still. Kitty Lane was one thing. Small, bird boned. But two teenage boys, one a man in all but name? If you were going to do it, what would you do? How would you control them?

  She thought of the statements made twenty years ago, sitting now in the trunk of her car. McGowan had attacked Ramsey first, had rushed him from behind, beaten him about the head with an object, never identified. And that made sense, when you thought about it. Take out the older boy. The greater threat.

  But then . . .

  Mina turned on the spot, considered the scene. McGowan would have had to leave one of them here. He was strong, but even the strongest of people would not have been able to drag two bodies at once out to the wall. Which meant one of them must have been left behind in Dray Lane, a matter of meters from the road and houses, in the early morning of a burgeoning day. Anyone could have come across him. Anyone could have seen.

  Unless . . .

  Mina looked down the long tunnel to the moor beyond. Unless McGowan wasn’t alone. Unless there were two.

  A shiver raced along her spine, up into her hairline, and in spite of herself, she turned, checked behind her, just in case. But there was nothing, only the rapidly plunging night and the wind. She should go home. It was almost ten, and work would begin early tomorrow. And . . .

  Mina wrapped her hand around her ASP. Just in case. Began the slow walk back home.

  She had only just left Dray Lane, however, when the beam of headlights broke through the darkness, grew brighter, brighter, and a car skidded to a hard stop beside her. Mina whipped about, raising her ASP slightly from the side of her body, a certain sense of inevitability settling on her.

  “Mina, what the hell are you doing out here on a night like this?” Isla had wound the passenger window down, was leaning across the seat and frowning. “Dear God, are you trying to get yourself killed?”

  Mina grinned, ducking her head down level with the opening. “I’m trying to tempt him out of hiding. It’s not going well.”

  “Get in.” Isla rolled her eyes. “I’ll take you home.”

  Mina slid into the car, the reminder of what warmth felt like making her suddenly cold. She shivered. “You just now finishing work?”

  Isla steered the car back out into the road. “Yeah. I was out at the prison. Bloody accident on the road, so it’s taken me a good two hours to get back.”

  “McGowan?”

  Isla pulled a face. “Yeah. For all the good it did me.”

  Mina sat, feeling the heat begin to filter through her. “Can I ask you something, Isl? As a psychologist? The wall. Why there? Why move the bodies at all? If it’s the kill he’s after, why bother with that?”

  Isla slowed as she passed the primary school, drummed her fingers against the steering wheel. “That’s a hard question to answer. Mostly because we don’t really know which ‘he’ we’re talking about. This one, the one who killed Victoria Prew, Maggie Heron, he’s following on from where Heath left off. So the wall, that’s pretty much integral to the process. Otherwise he’s just some guy killing people. That’s not what he wants. He wants to be the killer on the wall.”

  “Okay then,” said Mina, “what about McGowan? Why did he do it?”

  Isla blew out a breath. “There’s been a lot of debate about that. Of course, Heath entirely refuses to comment, thus ensuring that the debate continues. There are a number of things we can take from it.” She signaled right into Mina’s street, slowed to navigate the narrow byway. “They were fully clothed. All of them. That suggests it’s not about sex for him. It’s something different. The fact that they were all left in a more or less natural position, so sitting up . . . some people think that indicates a level of remorse on the part of the killer. That he’s somehow trying to undo what he’s done.”

  “Really?” asked Mina, frowning.

  Isla shrugged, pulling the car to a stop beside Mina’s cottage. “It’s certainly an option. But the wall, the fact that he left them there, where it was inevitable they would be found and in reasonably short order . . . Hadrian’s Wall is Briganton. It makes this place what it is. A child of Briganton is a child of the wall. By placing them there, Heath was essentially flipping the bird to the entire village. It is about fear. It is about using your kills to create the maximum level of impact. In Heath’s case, his target audience was all of Briganton.”

  Mina sat for a moment, thinking about Dray Lane, the darkness, the whipping wind coming off the moor, and suddenly, here in the safety of Isla’s car, she felt afraid. “This is . . . shit,” she said quietly.

  “Yes.” Isla leaned back in the driver’s seat, closed her eyes. “Yes, it is.”

  “You okay?”

  Isla opened her eyes, peered at the dashboard. “Well, it’s nine fifty-six p.m., and I’m still alive. So we’re going to call this a good day.”

  Mina snorted. “Tell me about it.” The rain had begun to work itself up now, hitting the windscreen in large drops. “I’ll let you get off. Thanks for the lift.”

  “Yeah, well, don’t do that again, eh?” said Isla. “My nerves can’t take another one.”

  Mina grinned. “Yes, Professor.” Then, with her hand on
the handle, Mina stopped. “Hey, just one more thing. From what you said, whoever’s doing it this time will have to move the bodies. That’s a critical part of being the killer on the wall.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Well,” said Mina, “I’m just thinking . . . Is there any way we can use that?”

  Isla frowned. “Well . . . I mean, it’s an extra process. He’s placing himself with the bodies for longer than he needs to be. He has to somehow transport them and position them.” She shrugged. “I mean, think about it. He strikes quickly, apparently from nowhere. But then he has this whole length of time in which he has to be near to the body. I would say that what you have there is a vulnerability for him. And, maybe, an opportunity for you.”

  Tuesday, October 25

  The journey of the dead – Mina

  A fog lay across the city, most of Carlisle still enjoying the privilege of sleep. Mina shivered, staring out the office window into the opaque dawn. It seemed that shapes were coalescing there, forming, falling, re-forming. It felt like a hangover, this level of tiredness. She raised the mug, downed another slug of bitter black coffee, and prayed for it to take effect. She had finally reached home a little after midnight, had stripped off her clothes, leaving them in a puddle on the floor, then had climbed into bed naked, not caring about the chill in the air, safe in the knowledge that from this much exhaustion would come sleep. And it had, in a fashion. A clumsy, ineffectual sleep, littered with wakings and fallings, with the feel of rain on her skin, with dead bodies lined up, one after the other, along the wall. And Ted, cradling the cat, saying that he couldn’t understand it, that Maggie had gone out only to find Mitzy, after all.

  Mina felt eyes on her and glanced sideways at Owen, one of the few others who had made it in at this early hour. The room itself seemed to be holding its breath, as if it, too, knew that in a matter of minutes, the door would open and detective after detective would flood in, settle into seats, prepare for the next briefing with various degrees of enthusiasm.