I Am Watching Page 4

  She remembered Isla saying to her, late one evening, as they returned home together from the pub, solitary figures on desolate streets, that she couldn’t possibly understand. That saying it would not equal living it.

  Isla had waved expansively, had said, “The thing is, the new ones, they treat the moorland as if it were wallpaper, something put there to brighten up the view from their window. They don’t understand. They haven’t learned like the rest of us have. They always underestimate the wildness out there, the danger it can hide.”

  Mina had stopped mid-stride, had squinted at her still new friend. “Wait. What? You run along the wall every damn morning!”

  Isla had grinned. “Aye, well. I’ve always been a fan of danger.”

  Mina watched Victoria shivering, slender arms wrapped tight around herself. “You settling in okay?”

  In most places, eighteen months would have been sufficient, long enough to have left the “new” designation behind. But it was different here. Briganton was a place where people were born, where they stayed, each filling a specially carved niche within the village. Here you earned your place, and both Victoria Prew and Mina were some distance off that yet.

  “It’s okay. It’s hard, you know. Everyone knows everyone here. So . . . it’s fine.”

  That flash one. The one with that stupid glass house. Stuck up. Too fancy for these parts.

  Mina nodded, schooling her face to stillness. It had seemed like such a good idea at the time, when the vacancies were announced—when London had become too much, too noisy, too breathless, too full—to escape north, away from the Met. “The money will go further,” she had said as she rationalized to her parents, “and it’ll be a break.” She hadn’t said that it would be a break from them, although the thought of that had been loud enough. And so she had taken the job, escaping across the North-South divide, thinking that it would be Heartbeat rather than The Wire and that life would become gentler.

  Of course, she had given little consideration to the effects of moving to an eight-hundred-year-old village with a population of a thousand. Ninety-eight percent white. In which merely walking down the street in her Iraqi skin would become an exercise in exhibitionism. No matter that she had lived in London since she was four. No matter that her accent was laced with cockney. The heads turned all the same. It had been explained to her once, a “helpful” elderly neighbor putting into words that which others only thought: “It’s because you’re colored, see, love. I mean, not that I’m racist. But see, people see you and they think of terrorists and things, and, well, you can understand why they’d be a bit funny about things like that. I mean, I don’t think like that, of course. I don’t blame you at all for wanting to get away from all the wars and things, but people, they’re not used to it around here.” It had seemed futile to point out that there were few wars being fought in Blackheath. And Mina had felt smaller and sadder and far more alone than ever.

  She looked out over the garden, thinking that, in spite of their differences in skin color and style, Victoria Prew was another hothouse plant that had been transplanted into the English garden. The one that everyone stopped to look at, comment on. Not quite fitting and, because of that, fascinating to the eye.

  Mina moved slightly farther out onto the patio, so that the rain hit her jacket. Sometimes it was important to find the air, to gain for yourself room to breathe.

  “You’re getting wet.”

  “Yes.” Mina gestured at the outside lights. “Perhaps turning those off might be a good idea. Your garden is acting like a lighthouse.”

  Victoria nodded. “Okay.”

  Mina moved inside, shivers running up and down her arms. “When did you see the man last?”

  Victoria stepped back from the doorway, as if repelled by the thought. “Well . . . yesterday, I suppose. Only, the thing is, I’ve only ever seen a figure. He stands at the end of the garden, looking in. I can’t see his face, only the shape of him.”

  “How many times has this happened?”

  Victoria shrugged, disappearing deeper inside the wool. “Maybe a dozen. In the beginning, I didn’t think it was anything, just kids messing about. Trying to freak me out, you know?”

  “Does it look like a kid?”

  Another shrug. “I don’t know. Not really.”

  “Have you ever approached him?” Mina thought of the baseball bat she kept at the side of her own bed.

  Victoria bit her lip, the vivid red lipstick shocking against the snow white of her teeth. “No. I . . . I didn’t think it was anything, I really didn’t. But then, today happened.”

  “Show me.”

  They turned from the double-height windows. Mina pulled the patio door closed behind her, carefully slid the lock into place. Through the living room, the white tiled floors only adding to the cold in the air. The place was shockingly modern—hideously uncomfortable-looking sofas, floor lamps whose shape seemed to defy both logic and gravity.

  Mina glanced back toward the windows. “You might want to think about investing in some curtains.”

  Up the staircase—floating, naturally—its glass sides leaving you feeling vulnerable, and then to the landing. Mina stopped, looked out across the expanse of the living room, the garden beyond. It would be like a movie to someone standing outside. The house prided itself on style, casting aside privacy as an old-fashioned foible. It was, in essence, a Peeping Tom’s dream.

  “It’s in here.”

  The bedroom was stark: white walls, white bedspread. Like sleeping in a lunatic asylum.

  “I left the house at about seven this morning, got home about five, I guess,” said Victoria. “And as soon as I walked in, I knew. I don’t know what it was, I could just feel it, that someone had been in the house. I mean, at first I thought I must just be being paranoid, that it was all getting to me, making me jumpy, but then I came in here.” She moved to the mirrored chest of drawers, slid open the top one. “See?”

  Mina peered inside. The drawer was neatly subdivided into individual sections, a place for everything. To the left, a lined-up series of jewelry boxes.

  “It’s my locket. It’s gone.” Victoria gestured to a corner of the drawer.

  “I don’t—”

  “It was here. Right here. When I came in, this drawer, it wasn’t closed properly, and I knew I’d closed it this morning. I knew I had. When I checked, the locket was gone. It was shaped like a heart,” Victoria added, her voice small. “My ex-husband bought it for me.”

  Mina nodded. Thinking that if someone came into her own house and took her sofa, it would take her a while to notice, what with the accumulated slurry surrounding it. “Is anything else missing?” she asked.

  Victoria shook her head. “I don’t think so. I just . . . I don’t know how anyone could have got in. I used to keep a hidden key under a rock in the front yard, but once this all started, once this guy started watching me, I moved it. You know, just in case.” She folded her arms tight around her. “Thing is, I was coping okay when it was just some pervert who liked to watch. I just . . . I kind of shrugged it off. But this, I mean, it’s a whole different thing now. The thought that someone has been in my bedroom . . .”

  A tear spilled down her cheek, bringing with it a dark line of mascara. Victoria wiped it away hurriedly.

  Mina studied her. It had been hidden, beneath the make-up and the designer clothes. But she could see it now in this light, the dark circles beneath the eyes, the pull at the corner of the lips, the slenderness that was not slenderness at all, but grief and pain and loneliness.

  Mina nodded slowly. “You’re here alone?”

  “My marriage . . . it broke down last year. Broke down. My husband broke it.” Her fingers were moving against the wool, the coral nails clicking together in a hypnotic rhythm, and she smiled the kind of smile that no one really meant. “It was one of my closest friends. Turned out they’d been shagging for a year or more.” She looked beyond Mina to the window, the rain. “It’s . . . Even no
w I can’t believe that it’s come to this. I used to think we were so happy. He hates me now. He wants to marry her. I’m ruining that, because I won’t bow down, agree to everything he wants.” She shook her head. “Anyway, I moved here after. We didn’t have any kids. It just, I guess, wasn’t meant to be. So, it’s only me.”

  A preternaturally silent house. The feeling that your skin will slough off if someone, anyone, doesn’t touch you soon. The words bubbling up inside, and your mouth opening, because for the briefest of moments, you have forgotten that you are alone.

  “I understand.” Mina chose her words carefully. “Do you think . . . I mean, your ex-husband, could it be him? If you’re having problems, I mean.”

  The woman paled. “No, I . . . no. I don’t think so. No. He wouldn’t do this . . .” She looked at Mina, pleading. “What do I do?”

  Mina glanced around the bedroom, back down at the drawer. It was just a locket. Or was it even a locket? Victoria could be wrong. There was, after all, little evidence that anyone had been in here. It was entirely possible that her own fears had created a drama where none existed. That she had simply lost the necklace. Then she looked at the woman, her hands tumbling together inside one another, a pool of tears waiting to spill over. Mina looked back out through the window toward the wild moor beyond, the memory of the wall standing just beyond the light. Better perhaps to be safe than sorry.

  “Okay,” said Mina. “What I’m going to do is get one of our forensic guys to come in and sweep for fingerprints. Given that there has been a hidden key left outside, even for a short time, it wouldn’t be a bad idea for you to get the locks changed, just to be on the safe side. The other thing that I think would be sensible is to install some discreetly placed CCTV cameras. Let’s see if we can catch this Peeping Tom in the act and get him dealt with. I can give you some information about a guy I know who can install them. He’ll make you a priority. The other thing—curtains. Get nice thick curtains, and make sure that when you are in the house and you have the lights on, you have the curtains closed. I’m going to go talk to some of your neighbors, find out if anyone else has seen anything suspicious, anyone hanging around.”

  Mina let her gaze rove across the bedroom as she spoke, and then, beneath the chest of drawers, something caught her eye, a shadow of dark against the bright white of the carpet. She sank down to the bedroom floor. What was that?

  Then she saw it. A shoe print.

  “Victoria? Have you seen this before?”

  The woman crouched down beside her, let out a small noise that sounded like a kitten crying. “No.”

  “Okay. Okay, not to worry.” Mina’s heart was beating faster, and there was a ringing in her ears. “We’ll get forensics to have a look at this.” She glanced up at Victoria with a falsely bright smile. “It’s fine. That’s good. It gives us something to work with.”

  Victoria was still crouching, had curled herself up into the smallest of spaces. Now she looked up at her, her eyes wide. “What do I do?” Her voice quiet, little more than a whisper.

  “Until we have the new security measures in place, do you have somewhere else you can stay?” asked Mina.

  “My mother, she’s just across the way in Eely.”

  Mina nodded, looking about the room. The woman was right. Someone had been in here; someone had touched her bed and her clothes. Her stomach tightened. “I think,” she said quietly, “that might be for the best. Just for a couple of days.” She looked at Victoria, gave her a reassuring smile. “Go on. I’ll wait while you get some stuff together. Don’t worry, Victoria. We’ll find him. Everything is going to be just fine.”

  Inside a killer – Isla

  Isla watched the trees, the Sitka spruce and larch that ringed the campus, bending and swaying with the wind, the rain a steady drumbeat, and thought of forests and wolves and horrors that hid in the dark. The day had tumbled toward its end—8:45 p.m., a hard nighttime already fallen. Beyond the large office window, she could see only the whispers of branches, shadows dancing, the occasional light of a plane on its way out of the airport. In the daytime, this room was a sanctuary, warm and quiet. Her office was on the ground floor, larger than most, and sought after, with its view, not of students and cars and chaos, but of the trees and the countryside. In the winter, she could look through the skeleton tree trunks, down all the way to the lights of Carlisle. In the summer, she was ringed by a lush greenness.

  Isla took a breath, telling herself that the feeling in the pit of her stomach, the knot of uneasiness, was simply excess adrenaline, the hangover from a stressful day.

  She had waited for this day for twenty years. All that she had done before, she had done in order to bring herself to this point, this day, when she could place Heath McGowan into a scanner, reach inside his head, and finally attempt to answer the question that had pricked at her sleep each night for two decades. Why?

  However, considering all that, the day had unfolded smoothly, unremarkably, even. Heath had completed the tasks required of him, had been polite and cordial, had caused no trouble, so that, in the end, she had had to remind herself who he was, what he had done. He had allowed himself to be taken from the scanner, to be led back into the control room, had held out his hands for the guard to cuff him, as docile as a lamb.

  It should have been more dramatic than this, Isla thought. It should have been harder.

  He had stood, unthinkably shorter than she by an inch, two perhaps, shuffling from foot to foot, seeming wrong somehow in the clean lines of the control room, and Isla had found herself feeling almost sorry for him, looking so uncomfortable and out of place. Then a wave of nausea had overtaken her, and she had returned to a bright summer morning on a limitless moor, to three dead bodies lined up in a row. Had taken a long swig of ice-cold coffee, the taste of it preferable to the memories. She had watched Heath watching the radiographer and Connor work, as if watching man prepare to land on the moon. But then, she had admitted, it probably felt like that after twenty years inside prison walls. She had watched him as he turned and his gaze snagged on the image of his own brain, brightly lit upon the screen. Heath had studied it with the intensity of a man examining a map of a distant planet.

  “Is that me?”

  What had that been in his voice? Wonder? Fear?

  “It is,” Isla said.

  He shuffled closer, the prison guard watching his movements intently, eyeing Heath’s distance from the equipment, which he could destroy, the utensils, which he could steal. But Heath McGowan simply stood there, attention focused on the image of his brain.

  Then, in a voice approaching awe, “What does it mean?”

  Isla paused, weighing her answers. What did it mean? That in structure, in appearance, Heath McGowan was no different from anyone else. That wherever his need to kill came from, it wasn’t obvious simply by looking at the surface of him.

  “It means that your brain looks perfectly healthy. All the structures of your brain are where they should be. There’s nothing there that shouldn’t be.”

  He hadn’t taken his eyes from it yet. “Does it . . . does it tell you, you know, why?”

  “Why?”

  His gaze dipped down to his hands, the bright metal cuffs that locked them tight together. “Why . . . it happened?”

  She watched him. Why it happened. Not why I did it. As if the murders were merely something that had happened to him, like catching the flu.

  “No.” She kept her voice gentle. “This looks only at the physiology of the brain. The functional MRI data will take a little time to process. We’re going to run some analyses, compare your brain function with that of other people we’ve studied. Hopefully, once that’s done, it should give us a better insight into how each area of your brain is working, whether some areas are underactive, others overactive.” She nodded to the monitor, the image of the mysterious brain of Heath McGowan. “It will help us to understand why . . . why it happened.”

  “And when will that be?”

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sp; “Ah . . . tomorrow for the raw data? Maybe the day after. It will take a while to sort through, though. We did a lot of tests in there.”

  Heath nodded, shifted his gaze to her. He looked older, sadder. “Will you . . . When you find out . . . when you get your answers, will you tell me? Please?”

  She found herself staring at him, taken aback by the question, the pleading in his voice. Again, the uncomfortable sensation of pity. “Yes,” she said. “Yes, I’ll tell you.”

  Isla rose to her feet now, studying the darkness beyond her office window. There was nothing out there. It was only her imagination. And, after all, it was the way of things after days like these. Sometimes, Isla thought, there were consequences of spending time in the presence of evil; even after you were free of it, its shadow remained. She turned her back on the window, her movements deliberate, and walked calmly away from the glass, the night outside, and tried to ignore the prickle up her spine.

  Nestled between the spreading array of bookcases and the wall sat a circular mahogany table ringed with four narrow armchairs. They were not university issue. Isla had found them in a secondhand shop, had had them re-covered with a deep red fabric. She flung herself down into one, pulled her socked feet up onto the mahogany tabletop, and stared at the darkness, could see herself reflected in it. She was thirty-five but looked closer to twenty-five, the little make-up she wore serving only to make her look younger still. Isla gazed at her reflection, Little Red Riding Hood looking out at the forest. It was both a gift and a curse, this youthfulness. The men, the killers, they would look at her as a starving man would look at a steak, would misunderstand the innocence of her face for naïveté. Would tell her what they shouldn’t, in the hope that it would impress, in the hope that she would fall to them, fall under their spell. They couldn’t see beneath the surface of her. They couldn’t see the iron fist within the silk glove. Had it always been this way? She studied her reflection. Little Red Riding Hood. Perhaps instead she was the wolf.