I Am Watching Page 18

  “It’s life,” replied Rachel, breaking a muffin apart with her fingers. “You survive. Not too much choice, really. And honestly, I don’t know how things would have been, had he lived, I mean. We were very young. And Ben, he still wasn’t ready, not really, to be a husband, a father. Of course, you couldn’t have told me that at the time, but in hindsight . . . Still, to have that happen. It changes you as a person, you know?”

  “Can you tell us a little about that night?” Asked Mina.

  Rachel didn’t look up, dug her finger into the cake, breaking a blueberry free. “He’d gone out drinking. Ben liked a drink. Not that I’m saying he had a problem or anything, because he didn’t. Just liked socializing, you know? I mean, me, I’m a lot more . . . I like my own space. I’ll be honest, I wasn’t happy with him. He’d been doing it a lot, leaving me to it, you know? Going out with the lads. So, that night . . . I was less than impressed. I went to bed at, I don’t know, ten, but I couldn’t sleep. Never could until I knew he was in, safe and sound. So, you end up clock-watching, waiting for the sound of the key in the door. By about one thirty, I was livid. The waiting and waiting, it wears you down. He’d said he wouldn’t be late, so of course that made it much worse. I got up, threw a coat on over my pajamas, and stormed out, thinking, I don’t know, that I’d drag him out of the damn pub if need be. But when I got there, they all told me he’d left. And . . . well, you know what came next.”

  “Rachel, which way did you walk?” Asked Mina.

  “Up Hill Road.”

  “And you didn’t see anything, anyone?”

  She shook her head slowly. “I saw . . . A car passed me just when I got onto Hill Road, and I remember because it was so late, and I was thinking, God, did they see me in my pajamas? I didn’t see anything but headlights. But other than that, nothing.” She sat for a moment, quiet. “When it all came out in court about where he’d been attacked . . . I have to tell you, I didn’t sleep for weeks. If I’d been a few minutes earlier, I’d have found him. Maybe it wouldn’t have happened. To think that I walked right by the spot from which he’d been taken maybe a minute, two minutes after it happened . . . It’s the worst thing in the world.”

  Mina nodded. Placed a piece of muffin in her mouth. Sweet cake, the pop of sour blueberry.

  A stampede of feet, the kitchen door swinging open, a little boy, four, perhaps five, with a shock of bright blond curls, careening through it, throwing himself onto his mother’s lap.

  “Mummy, Sophia shouted at me.”

  Rachel ran her fingers through the boy’s hair, rolling her eyes at Mina. “Why did she shout at you, Henry? Did you do something to her?”

  “No. I just told her she was a stinky, fat bum, that’s all.”

  Mina suppressed a smile.

  “Jake? Sorry, guys. Just a second. Jake! I don’t know where he . . .”

  The boy was perhaps twenty, tall and handsome enough to make Mina blush. She caught Owen’s eye, and his grin made her blush further.

  “Sorry, Rach. I tried to keep him in the living room, but he got away from me. Come on, trouble. Leave Mummy to talk to these nice people.”

  Rachel watched them leave. “Oh, that’s not my boy toy. My boy toy is a forty-nine-year-old dentist, bless him. I’m sorry you didn’t get to meet Charlie, but he’s up and out early. No, that’s my nephew Jake. He’s at the University of Northumberland. He’s studying engineering. Lovely lad. Stays with us in term time to save a bit of money. Of course, he’s good with the kids, so I’m glad to have him. Look . . .” She leaned closer, lowered her voice. “I need to ask you something. The photograph, did you ever find out where it came from?”

  Mina swallowed hard, glanced at Owen. “The photograph?”

  “Yes, the . . . you know.” Rachel gestured, her fingers moving rapidly. “I just, I never heard back. And I called and called and left so many messages. In the end I think he got sick of me. Maybe that’s why he didn’t reply.”

  “I’m sorry, Rachel.” Owen had leaned in and had lowered his voice to match hers. “What are we talking about?”

  “The photograph.”

  Mina frowned. “What photograph?”

  Rachel looked down at her fingers. “It was a photo of Ben, sitting up against Hadrian’s Wall.” Her voice dipped. “He was dead. You could see that clearly. I gave it to Eric Bell. He promised he was going to look into it. That he’d let me know what he found out. Only I never heard from him again.”

  Was it in the file? Had they missed it? Mina glanced at Owen, who shrugged in return. “I . . . I’m sorry, Rachel. We must have missed it in the file. So this was . . . what? Just after Ben’s death?”

  Rachel knotted her fingers together tight, her lips compressing. “No. It came in the post. About a year after Heath McGowan went to prison.”

  Loose lips sink ships – Mina

  It was a little after three by the time they returned to the office. The room itself met her with a wall of sound, of voices and the clacking of keys and ringing phones. She stood there for a moment, allowing the tide of it to wash over her, drowning her thoughts. The sky beyond the window had turned a steely gray; a sheet of hard rain had turned the world opaque.

  Mina slipped into her seat with a vague attempt at keeping her expression nonchalant, as if she had been only where she was supposed to be, nowhere else. She logged in to her computer and all the while thought of Rachel Flowers, with her smooth scalp, her vivid smile.

  How did you do that? How did you survive when your husband was murdered by a serial killer? It seemed . . . wrong, almost. Then a second voice chimed in, criticizing the choice of words. How could it be wrong? What was the woman supposed to do? Lie down and die along with her husband?

  Mina watched the computer flicker into life. And yet the question was how. How was it possible that Rachel Flowers had battled through, battled on, begun again, in spite of all that had gone before? Imagine the courage in that, the resilience that would lead you to keep showing up in life, day after day, even knowing what the worst of it could bring. Then, thought Mina, there was her. She was thirty-one years old and had never had a boyfriend of more than a fortnight. And she could call it bad luck, poor destiny, fate, whatever the hell she liked, but the truth, when she plucked up the courage to look at it, was that it felt safer that way. Because it seemed that all of life was a battle to be who she was, a fight against the people who loved her most to stand her ground, and that she simply did not have the energy to fight one more person. That it was safer to be alone and at least that way to live, rather than risk opening her life up to one more person who would try to build a prison around her.

  So there she was, alone and lonely, frightened and running. And there was Rachel Flowers, with her house with the climbing ivy, and her husband and her two children and her nephew, the triumvirate of voices high and excitable, surrounded by so much life that the thought of it was suffocating almost. Mina’s anger shifted, grew. Because who the hell was she to give up the way she had when this woman, this widow, had continued to fight on?

  “Ah, good of you to come in, Mina.”

  She had, it seemed, slipped into some kind of reverie akin to sleep. Mina set her hands flat on the desk, attempting to ground herself, and looked up. Superintendent Bell stood in the periphery of her vision, his face hard, arms folded.

  “Sir, I . . .”

  I what? I have been chasing leads, trying to prove your investigation wrong? The words disintegrated in Mina’s mouth, and instead of speaking, she merely sat there, her mouth agape.

  The superintendent frowned at her. “I need you to chase up forensics on that photograph sent to Professor Bell.”

  It took Mina a moment to figure out who he was talking about. Because Professor Bell was Isla, with her quick wit, her long stride, and her steady gaze. Then it took her another minute to add in the photograph, to separate it out from the one that had been sent to Rachel Flowers. The words floated up to the roof of her mouth that it was ironic that he was
chasing one photograph, yet when Rachel had begged and begged him, he had refused to chase another.

  Of course, she said none of this. “Of course.”

  “Quickly, please.”

  The superintendent turned and walked away, his progress interrupted only by the limp, which he worked so hard to control. An old rugby injury, that was what Isla had said, something that flared up when the weather was bad or life was particularly tough. Mina sat watching him for a moment. He didn’t like her. That much was pretty clear. Was it that she was a woman, perhaps? Or was it merely that she was—as her mother would say—difficult?

  But then, reflected Mina, had she not been difficult, she would still be living in London, three doors down from her mother, married to some nice man who made her want to stab herself in the eye with a fork, and with two kids, on her way to three. Difficult could be an advantage sometimes.

  She picked up the handset and dialed. The phone began to ring.

  “Okay . . . yes. Okay, thanks. No, I will.” Said Owen.

  Mina twisted in her chair, watched Owen hang up his phone, scrub his palms across his face. “What?” she said.

  He sighed loudly, leaned back in his chair, his legs out in front of him in one long catlike stretch. “I need a beer. That was Winterwell Prison. The super”—he glanced around, lowered his voice—“he’s got this idea that McGowan could be coaching his copycat.”

  Mina rolled her eyes, transferring the phone from one ear to the other. “Which is obviously the simplest explanation.”

  “Indeed,” said Owen. “Anyway, I had them look into Heath’s contacts over the past couple of years. I mean, if he’s involved in these killings, he had to have been in touch with his guy on the outside. Wouldn’t you think?”

  “Okay?”

  “So, they went back through their records.” He took a deep breath, ready for the grand finale. “Turns out McGowan hasn’t had a single visitor since his grandmother died eight years ago. Well, apart from the superintendent’s daughter. Professor Isla Bell, her colleague Connor Leary, they’ve so far visited him five times as a part of their research. Other than that, nothing.”

  Mina pursed her lips. The sound of the phone ringing in her ear faded now into the drumbeat of the room. “What about calls?”

  Owen grinned. “Nope. McGowan hasn’t made any calls in about two years—and the ones before that were sporadic and brief. Mostly to his mother. Once they stopped . . . Oh, he called Professor Bell a couple of days ago, but that’s it.” He shook his head. “Of course, there’s always the possibility of contraband mobiles. I mean, they’re rife in there. Or if it was someone who’d served time with him . . . If that’s the case, then whoever the killer is, he’s gone dark.”

  Mina shifted the phone, smiling. “Gone dark? Okay, Mr. Bond.”

  Owen gave a little laugh, which petered out as he appeared to consider something. He opened his mouth.

  “Hello? CSI, Zoe Miller,” said a female voice.

  Mina started, had forgotten about the phone she held, about the long, long ringing tone. “Oh, hi. Yes, DC Mina Arian from – – ”

  “Dear God, are you psychic or what?”

  “Am I . . . ?”

  “I was just about to ring up with what we’ve got. You ready?”

  “I . . . sure.”

  “Righto, team going through Victoria Prew’s house got something. It looks like someone jimmied the window in the downstairs laundry room, broke the lock, so that it looks like it’s shut up tight, but all you’d have to do is lift the window and you’d be in.” Zoe’s words tumbled out quickly, an edge of thrill to them. “I mean, she thought she had the house all safe. Turns out he could have gone in and out whenever the hell he felt like it. No wonder she was freaking out.” There was a pause. “Thing is, I don’t get it. Why he didn’t kill her in the house, I mean. Why do it outside, where anyone could see?”

  Mina had twisted in her seat, was staring at the clouds, thinking of Victoria Prew standing in her bedroom. How many times had he been in there? Had he been there while she was home? While she was asleep? “Maybe watching was enough. For a while at least. Maybe the thrill of being there, of being near her, without her knowing . . . maybe it was enough.”

  “Until . . .”

  “Until it wasn’t,” Mina said quietly.

  “Well,” said Zoe, “while he was using that window as his own personal cat flap, he made a mistake.”

  Mina’s mouth fell open. “What?”

  “They found fibers, trapped in the latch.”

  “Okay.” Mina nodded slowly. “So . . . when we find him, we have something to connect back to him. Good, yes, that’s good . . .”

  “There’s more,” said Zoe in the manner of one who was enjoying drawing out a reveal. “They also found a hair, trapped in the frame of the window. And it had a root. Which means . . .”

  “Which means DNA,” finished Mina.

  “Yes, DC Arian. Yes, it does.”

  “How long?” Mina’s pulse sounded in her ears. Her entire body tingled.

  “The lab knows to rush it. They’re starting on it right now. As soon as they’ve developed a profile, we’ll be able to run it through the system. You’ll pass all this on to the super, yeah?”

  Was her voice coming from far away, or did it just seem like that to Mina? “Yes, of course. Yes.”

  She slid the phone into its cradle and stood, felt the floor bucking beneath her feet. They were almost there. It was almost over. They could stop this before it got any worse. Two deaths, they were bad enough, but any more—that was just unthinkable. Here, they could finish it here. She walked, her legs feeling as if they no longer belonged to her, to the superintendent’s office, raised her hand to tap on the already ajar door.

  “Joyce, how are you?” His voice rolled from inside, a barely contained thunder.

  Mina took a step forward, one back, her hand hanging uselessly in midair. She peered through the gap, could make out the super sitting at his desk. He looked up, frowned, but waved her in, anyway, one finger to his lips.

  “Eric.” A woman’s voice floated from the speakerphone. “I’m bloody soaking. How the devil are you?”

  “I’m good, thanks. Not the day to be outside, is it? Joyce, you know that Chief Inspector Hale is handling the media on this.”

  Joyce Beale. Reporter with the Northern Standard. Mina bit her lip.

  “Jesus, Eric. He’s a child. I keep wanting to ask if his mother knows he’s out.”

  “Well, what are you going to do? They’re all children these days.”

  Mina wondered briefly if the super had forgotten she was there. She shifted in place and was rewarded with a heavy scowl.

  “Isn’t that the truth? Honestly, Eric, don’t make me jump through hoops, there’s a good lad. You just tell me what I need to know, and I can go sit down and have a nice G&T.”

  “Well”—Eric Bell leaned his head back in his chair—“you know, Joyce, we’re getting there. We really are. My officers are working extremely hard and are chasing down all possible leads. We have every confidence that this will be solved quickly.”

  Did they give you a course on this? Mina wondered. When you become a super, do you have lessons on how to bullshit the media? Or is it simply that Eric Bell is very good at bullshit?

  “Okay, yes, but of course, each day that this case continues unsolved, there is a very real danger to the residents of Briganton. Is that not the case?”

  “Well, you know, Joyce, you’re right. It is currently a dangerous time. And I would advise people within the locale, most especially female residents, to take care, be aware of going outside alone, of putting yourself in a position in which you are isolated or vulnerable.”

  There was a long silence, then, “Especially female, Eric? Is this you being a misogynistic dinosaur?”

  Mina felt herself moving forward, her feet dragging her against her will, one hand going up, as if with it, she could stop the train that had just slipped its b
rakes. And yet it wasn’t enough, was never going to be enough, and the train plowed on regardless.

  “Well, Joyce,” said the superintendent, “based on what we’ve seen so far, it would certainly appear that whoever is responsible for these killings is targeting females.”

  Wednesday, October 26

  Through the eyes of the victims – Isla

  Isla laid the photographs out across her desk. Not brain images this time, not murderers either. Victims. She laid out the A4 color copies she had printed out, one beside the other, so that when she was done, she was looking down at Kitty and Ben and Zach and Amelia and Leila and Victoria and Maggie. And, of course, Ramsey.

  She looked down at the array. The radio hummed softly in the background, some jaunty tune entirely at odds with the early hour and the dark, dark day. She felt her breathing steady, her back straighten. Because the rest, it was all bullshit really, when you came down to it. This was the why, the people before her. And if it took her surviving some nasty little love letters to figure it out, then so be it.

  It was early; the university was empty save for her. Isla glanced up at the ring of trees that surrounded her and spared a quick thought for what could be hidden in the early morning gloom, then turned her back on the broad window, focused once again on the dead.

  Help me.

  She picked up the first photo in the line, that of Kitty Lane. Eighty-two years old, twisted with arthritis, her entire frame seeming to wrap about itself. The evidence suggested that Kitty was the first to die. A small, narrow woman who lived alone—an easy first target, a gentle start to the game.

  She placed Kitty down, picked up the next picture along.

  But then, what about Ben? Ben was a large man, strong, capable. So not vulnerable, although at the time it had been suggested he was drinking. Nonetheless, the leap from Kitty to Ben seemed akin to climbing Bowman’s Hill and believing yourself ready to ascend Everest. And from there to Zach and to Ramsey. Two at once, the ultimate test.

  Isla ran her finger along the next image, tracing her husband’s jawline. Was that why he survived? Because Heath had simply bitten off more than he could chew?