I Am Watching Read online

  Then, for three merciful weeks, nothing. A stultifying silence, which to some had seemed like the end, the danger over, the monster fled.

  She picked up the next pair of photographs. Amelia, five feet five, a thinness that looked painful. Leila, five feet two, little more than a wisp.

  She set them back down.

  So there was logic, a rational progression of thoughts. Too much, too fast, and so a scaling back, approaching targets of more manageable proportions. And then Lucy. Poor pregnant Lucy Tuckwell. For Heath, the most personal of all the murders. But then, perhaps you could not group Lucy with the rest. The MO this time did not match: not strangulation here, but rather a relentless cascade of fists that had pummeled the girl into bloody oblivion. No display here either. Indicators that, for Heath, Lucy had marked a loss of control, an impulse kill that went beyond what he was prepared to deal with.

  Isla stepped back, studied the original victims. Heard a creak beyond her door, someone else in early, and, in spite of herself, glanced up, checked to see that the door was locked. Another creak, whoever it was trailing off along the corridor. Isla shook her head: the fear was starting to get to her. She slid her gaze across to the two photos that sat separately, Victoria Prew and Maggie Heron. Again, the victims were both women, both thin, and although Victoria had some height to her, Isla could imagine that if you had enough stature and strength, she would pose little challenge.

  And their murders had been conducted out of doors, in the darkness or the failing light, both committed while the women were distracted—Victoria Prew by the rain, the opening of the car door, Maggie Heron by her tendency to deafness, her focus on the missing cat.

  But then . . .

  Isla pulled her chair closer, sank into it. Her elbows on her knees, she stared at the photographs. This wasn’t a case of killing on impulse. In Victoria’s case, he had been watching her, and he had gone into her house at least once that they knew of. Whether he had been in Maggie’s . . . that was a question that her father was still trying to get Ted to answer. His rote response had become, “I don’t know. You’d better ask Maggie.” They were talking about getting social services involved. So, had the killer been in Maggie’s home? No one knew. But, her father had said, what they did know was that he had followed her, had removed the flowers she had left on Kitty’s grave.

  Isla felt cold. So they had both been preselected. He had picked them, had researched them, and then had killed them. She thought of the photograph of her and Ramsey kissing, of the letters dropping through her front door. Was Ramsey right? Was her father right? Had she been preselected too? She was taller than the other women and perhaps slightly stronger, but in real terms, it seemed unlikely that would make too much of a difference. Especially now that he’d gotten a taste for it, built his confidence up.

  The music she had been dimly aware of sputtered out, a woman’s voice taking its place. From the low thrum of words came the one Isla had been waiting for. Briganton. She leaned across to the radio, twisted the dial up.

  “Investigations are still under way into the two murders that have taken place in the village of Briganton. While police say that the case is progressing, there are those in the media who cannot help but draw links with the killer on the wall—Heath McGowan—currently serving time in Winterwell Prison for his crimes. Police Superintendent Eric Bell issued a warning late last night, telling all women within the village of Briganton to be aware that they may be at risk from this predator.” Then a grating jangle of music, the country’s attention now shifting away from the distasteful talk of death.

  Isla’s insides flipped. “Oh God.”

  She pushed herself up from her chair and began to pace futilely, her fingers dancing. That . . . what her father had said. It was a challenge, the throwing down of a gauntlet. Words like that, especially from the great Eric Bell, they would be sufficient to rig the game. It seemed to her like the spiraling of a roulette wheel, the ball heading for one pocket, aiming straight at her, and then a jostle or a shove and suddenly it had moved, heading now in an entirely new direction. Tag, you’re it.

  It would be a man. The next one. It would be a man.

  Isla grabbed for the phone and dialed her father’s number. He had to know. Had to warn the village that his words, they had changed the game. But all she got was an empty ringing, a wary answering machine. She hung up, dumped the phone into its cradle with greater force than she should.

  Okay. She paced back toward the window, beyond which a thin sort of rain had begun. So the killer, he’ll be hunting again. A man now. Based on what we’ve seen so far, distraction is his friend. He’ll be looking for someone not paying attention. Maybe playing on a phone, maybe listening to music on headphones.

  But where? Because the thing was, Briganton as a hunting ground had now become far, far harder. The police presence was intense, fanning out and seeming to fill every corner of the small village. So, if it was her, if she was looking for her next kill, she would adapt her approach, would spread her net wider in the hope of catching an unsuspecting victim. She would go somewhere where there were a lot of people, where there remained a sense of safety. Somewhere like the university. Her heart thrummed faster at the notion. But when you thought about it, it made sense. Here the students and staff moved as if they were in a bubble, as if what was going on was a world away rather than a mere twenty miles. Here people were not afraid—not yet, at least. They were still prone to distraction—and wasn’t that his home run swing?

  She stepped close to the window, cardigan tight around her, and for the first time allowed herself to feel the danger, the fear that raced hard on the heels of it. She studied the shapes of the trees, of the waving branches, shadows that danced with the wind. Was he out there now? Her head began to swim the way it had so often lately, and she leaned against the window, her gaze still on those trees.

  Are you coming?

  The sharp trilling of the phone broke into the silence, an electric shock across her skin. Isla felt a wave of nausea and closed her eyes briefly, trying to pull it all back together, telling herself that she was fine, trying to ignore the lie of it. She grabbed the handset.

  “Isla Bell.”

  And there he was again, that voice with the roughened edges, the rolling middle notes. “Hello, Professor. How are you?”

  Isla straightened, stepped back from the window so that she was hidden by the wall, struggling to get her mouth to work, her tongue to obey. “Heath . . .”

  “I’m sorry to disturb you. I thought that perhaps you would be in to see me later, but I couldn’t be sure of it. And, I thought we should talk.”

  Isla pulled her chair up, sat carefully on the edge of it. “Okay?”

  “I just heard your father on the news. The great Eric Bell seems to be losing his touch. Suggesting that your guy is going after just women. That seems . . . silly.”

  Isla worked to balance her voice, to not let the edges in her words seep out. “Silly?”

  “Oh, come on, Prof. You know what this means.”

  “You tell me.”

  A quick laugh. “Fine. I’ll play. Your father has told the world that only women are targets. Serial killers, well, we’re contrary sorts. Not keen on being told what we’re going to do. Yeah? So, the obvious answer? He’s going to knock off a couple of guys. Just to put your father in his place.”

  Isla’s gaze fell on the photos, on the array of people dead because of the man on the other end of the phone. Her fingers slid up, gripped the edge of the desk, and she blew out a slow breath. “Heath,” she said, “tell me how to stop him.”

  Another laugh. “I can’t do that. But I will tell you one thing—and I say this only because I like you. Your father has an uncanny knack for pissing people off. And you, Prof, you’re a very public, very obvious way for someone to make your father pay. I’d watch your back.”

  The truth of it? – Isla

  The prison guard tugged her bag open, a wide, yawning abyss of papers and
detritus. He looked up at Isla and smiled. “You’re here more often than I am these days.”

  She smiled back. “Part of the job,” she lied.

  They had called her full of herself back in the provincial days of comprehensive school, when your value was rated by the lushness of your hair, your ability to sashay and to flirt with boys. They had said that she was odd, with her eternal stream of books, her fierce need for knowledge, that she thought she was better than they. At the time, she had believed them to be wrong. Isla watched the prison guard open the side pocket, the one where she kept pens, her mobile phone, and, for perhaps the first time in her life, admitted that perhaps her schoolmates had in fact been right. Perhaps she did think she was better than anyone else. What other explanation could there be for standing here, for putting herself inside this prison, a place where she had no need to be? It was hubris. The belief that she alone could achieve what others could not. That with her scientific mind, with her understanding of the monsters that dwelled in the dark, she could tease out the answers. That, in spite of his steadfast refusal to speak to the police, Heath McGowan would talk to her.

  She watched the guard, thought of Heath’s phone call. I’d watch your back. She could get to him. With the right leverage, the pressure in the right place. She could get him to tell her what he knew about these new murders.

  “You’re going to need to leave your phone,” said the guard apologetically.

  “Of course.” Isla slid it out of the bag and tried not to see the five missed calls from her husband. She passed it across the table, pushing back the jab of guilt.

  She could make this work. She had tools no one else had. She had experience that was lacking in others. She could get him to talk.

  “Right, then. You want to follow me?”

  Isla hitched her bag onto her shoulder and smoothed down her blouse. She followed the guard, working through the numbers in her mind. A score of thirty-seven on the PCL-R—highly psychopathic. An IQ score of eighty-one—intelligence on the low side of moderate. There was no easy formula. Nothing one could tap into when talking to a psychopath. There were so many gradations, so many variations. But the constant was that to them, this would all be a game. Move. Countermove. You have to know your opponent. Heath McGowan, aged thirty-nine. Murdered five people using manual strangulation. Risked exposure by transporting their bodies to a display position. Reckless. Was captured when he murdered his girlfriend during the course of an argument. So, prone to impulsiveness, a tendency to use violence, not just for the thrill of it, but also as a response to frustration.

  The guard tugged open a door, waited as Isla followed him through, pulled it tightly closed behind them. But that wasn’t it, was it? That wasn’t how she reached him. That was the route tried by detectives, and it had been met with nothing but a smile and empty air.

  The door clanged, sealing them into the cocoon of the prison. Isla thought about Heath, the boy. About that lurking, doubtful character who hung around on the playground, who always had a story to tell, of bold moves, daring escapes. Thought of his mother, turning up every now and again, heroin thin, her gaze unfocused and unnatural, seeming to skitter right across her son. She thought of how Heath would move, how he would position himself time and again, make a desperate effort to catch his unreliable mother’s gaze, then the anger in him when he failed. She thought of his grandmother, a dictator in miniature, her forehead knotted in a permanent line of tension. Remembered the sound of their front door banging, Heath stalking away, tight with anger, his grandmother’s words flying loose into the Briganton air: You’re a waste of space. The battery of tests that Isla herself had put him through, the way he watched her face, searching for micro-expressions: Is that right? Did I do it okay?

  “He’s waiting for you,” said the guard, pointing her toward an interview room. “I’ll come in and keep watch.”

  “Thank you.” That was the way in. That was the path. All those years of looking for approval, only to be met by stony silence. Heath was a man starving, his need to be the one others looked up to gone unmet for so long.

  Heath was sitting beside a table. Was looking at his hands. Didn’t look up when she walked in. Isla’s stomach contracted, and another wave of nausea threatened to fell her. Heath’s guard was up. She could see it in the set of his shoulders, in the slight smirk that raised the edges of his mouth.

  She affixed a smile to her face, slid into the seat opposite him. “Hello, Heath.”

  He didn’t look at her right away. One beat. Two. Long enough to establish that he was in charge. Then his eyes moved upward. “Professor Bell. Couldn’t stay away, I see.”

  “How are you, Heath?” Her voice was molten chocolate.

  “Popular, so it would seem.”

  Isla shuffled through her options. There was play ignorant, pretend she didn’t know about the police visits, three so far. All resolutely unsuccessful. That strategy would have the advantage of creating some distance between Isla and the law. But Heath was watching her now, searching her features, waiting for the lie. “I heard the police have been to see you.”

  Heath smiled slowly. “They send you in? See if you can do any better?”

  “No.”

  The smile broadened, stretching out to the ends of the earth. The triumph of one who believed he had caught a lie. Heath leaned back, head cocked to one side and a shutter sliding down over his features, as it all started to slip away before it had even begun.

  “I just . . .” Isla began to flounder. A sudden thought—I shouldn’t be here. And then, whether by accident or design, she didn’t know, a tear slid down her cheek.

  It was like an explosion contained in a small room. The guard standing at the door shuffled his feet, one step forward, one step back, as he raced desperately to figure out what he should do next. Heath’s brow furrowed; he sat up straighter, leaned closer. Trying to read her, trying to understand.

  “I’m going to be honest with you, Heath.” Her voice was quiet, on the verge of inaudible. “I shouldn’t be here. If my father knew . . .” The great Eric Bell. His daughter breaking rank, turning to Heath in defiance of his orders. “I know that you have enough on your plate, being here, dealing with all this.” Isla waved about the room. “But the thing is, what you said, about me being in danger. I think you’re right. Whoever is doing this, I think he’s coming after me. There have been letters through my front door. He knows where I live. He’s watching me, waiting. And my dad, he’s trying, of course, but really, there’s just nothing he can do. He can’t protect me.”

  He watched her, intent. “What is it you think I can do? Stuck in here?”

  It was a test, a challenge thrown down. One wrong move in either direction and she was done.

  “I . . .” Isla looked down, took a deep breath. “Look, I’m going to tell you what I think is happening. I think that these killings, that they’re being done by someone who was inspired by you. I think that this person, whoever he is, he looks at your fame and what a well-known figure you have become, and I think he wants to be like you.” Too much? Had she overdone it? But then she saw it, that almost infinitesimal straightening of his posture, that slight elevation of his chin. That’s it. “I don’t know who else to turn to for advice. I think that he’s going after people who were in some way connected with the original killings. But there doesn’t seem to be any way to get out in front of him. But you, you know more about that original series than anyone else does. Maybe, with your knowledge, you could help me.”

  She sat, waiting, telling herself she was a victim, that only the man before her could help her. Because there, right beneath those thoughts, sat the truth, and if she allowed that in, if a micro-expression of that should cross her face, then all of this would be over. He was watching her, his eyes flitting across her face, plumbing it for information. Isla’s heart beat faster still as she balanced on the edge of the knife.

  Then he leaned back again, folding his arms across his chest.

 
; Shit.

  Breathe. Just breathe. She looked down into her lap, allowed the tears to build up in her eyes. There was one more piece. One more card. But if she played it . . . Isla thought of Ramsey. There was little doubt that it would be a betrayal, to have held this in so close and so long and then to finally release it here, to this man. And then, in the periphery of her vision, she saw him give a slight shake of his head, and the decision slotted into place. Because she was here, and she was so close, and she had to solve this, so that it was solved and they were all safe.

  “The thing is, Heath, I’m pregnant.”

  His gaze snapped back to her, became laser focused. She heard the guard’s quick intake of breath and his attempt to disguise it as a cough. Heath had never shown any remorse for his actions, had sat through an entire trial, listening to evidence on the murder of six people, without once reacting. And yet, her father had said, when they showed the scan photo of his unborn child, he had put his hands over his face and cried.

  “Are you really?” There was something strange in his voice, sounding like hope almost, and Isla’s stomach flipped again at the thought of what she had done.

  “I am. I’m eight weeks along.” The words felt unwieldy, as if they simply didn’t belong, coming from her mouth. And yet there seemed to be a lightening, as if her spine was unfurling with the release of them. Yes, thought Isla. I, Isla Bell, am eight weeks pregnant. I, Isla Bell, am going to be a mother.

  “Ah, Professor Bell . . .” The guard had ceased his dance and now stepped forward, the look on his face one of frank alarm.

  Isla looked up at him and smiled. “It’s okay. I don’t mind Heath knowing.” She wanted to telegraph a message, I know what I’m doing, but still Heath was watching her, always watching, so instead she looked back at him, gave a little laugh. “You know you’re the first person I’ve told?”