I Am Watching Read online

  It smelled of coffee and of pancakes. It smelled of life. As if this room had failed to note what was going on around it. Isla closed the door tight behind them.

  “What’s going on?” Emilia’s forehead furrowed. Based on the look of her sister, she was expecting to hear of some marital argument, an issue with work.

  “Something happened this morning, Em. They . . . they found a body on the wall.”

  Her sister’s hand flew out, gripped the corner of the oak table. “A . . .”

  “She was murdered.”

  Tears sprang quickly. Isla had always envied her sister this, the emotions that lay there, right at the surface, not buried down so deep that it would take a mining crew to unearth them.

  “Oh God.”

  “It’s okay, Em . . .”

  “No. The boys. I have to get them home.” Her sister was looking around the kitchen, gaze wild. “We . . . I have to get out of here.”

  Suddenly they were teenagers again, two crushed into one bed, afraid to sleep alone. Long night hours in the glaring light, as if daytime was something you could hang on to, carry with you. For Emilia, the horror had been too much. She had run from the monsters that Isla had turned to hunt.

  “Em, Em . . . it’s okay. It’s not that.”

  “No, Isl. He’s coming back. He’s coming back.” The tears spilled down her cheeks, hands grasping at her sister’s. “I have to go . . .”

  “Em.” Isla cupped her sister’s face in her hands. “No. He’s not coming back. Heath McGowan is in prison. I know. I’ve seen him there. This—it’s something else. Dad will figure it out.”

  “I just . . . my boys . . .”

  “I know, Em.” Isla pulled her sister into a hug. “I know.”

  Briganton below – Ramsey

  He walked. Footsteps thudding against tarmac, blood pounding in his head. I have to get out, Isl. I have to get away. Thick soles hit the pavement in a rhythmic tread, thump, thump, fast enough that it was a run in all but the name of it. His sling bouncing against his chest, awkward, pointless. Breaths coming in quick, hard, steady intervals. Down the hill, onto Beacon Road, police cars in the distance, that damn crowd still there, waiting for . . . what? What could they possibly hope might happen now? Ramsey turned sharply, away from the village, following the road as it wrapped around the outer edges of Briganton, and tried to ignore the cars that slowed down, rubberneckers drinking in the misery. Past the primary school, its windows festooned with pumpkins and witches riding on broomsticks, yard eerie in its silence.

  He walked because it was better than sitting, watching Isla watching him like he was some kind of unexploded bomb, waiting to see what the damage would be. The phone ringing again and again. I just heard. How is Ramsey? Until eventually, it seemed as if the whole of Briganton had encircled him, waiting to see just what he would do.

  How was Ramsey?

  Ramsey shook his head, pushing himself harder along the rain-soaked pavement. How the hell should I know?

  “It’s a domestic. I mean, it has to be. You said she was in the middle of a bad divorce, right? It has to be that. The husband has gone after her and has put her . . . there to throw police off, to get people frightened.” They had sat around the dining table, Isla, Emilia, and the three boys all watching as Ramsey had turned his perfectly portioned squares of pancakes over and over, occasionally raising the fork to his lips, then lowering it again. “I mean, it makes sense, right?”

  “Rams,” Isla had said softly, “the children.”

  The boys had watched him, eyes as big as saucers.

  “It’s all right, Aunt Isl. We know all about the bad man,” offered Noah cheerfully. “Tom from year two said that the bad man nearly killed his nan, only she was lucky and went to bingo that night. He said that his dad said that they should have lit the bastard up like Vegas.”

  “Noah! Language!” said Emilia, looking close to tears.

  “Sorry. But he is a bastard, though. That’s what Tom’s dad said. That he’d have carried on killing people if our granddad hadn’t stopped him.” Then a thoughtful pause. “What’s Vegas?”

  Emilia hadn’t stayed long after that, had offered a limp excuse about shoe shopping for the boys, that Adam would be back from football, even though they all knew that Adam’s Saturday morning football had an unfortunate habit of drifting from morning to afternoon and then right back to morning again. Ramsey had helped her load the kids in the car and had wondered if perhaps he should have left, too, years ago. If life would have been easier had he followed his sister-in-law’s example, got the hell out of Dodge.

  He took a sharp right, a narrow footpath that climbed precipitously skyward, feeling the strain in his lower back. It didn’t matter. All that mattered were the overhanging branches, the trees that encircled him, so that it seemed he was climbing through the center of an artery. The crack of twigs beneath his feet. His own breath, in, out, proof positive that he was alive.

  That’s it. Just concentrate on that. On the breaths and the footsteps. Don’t think of anything else. That’s enough.

  Only it could never be enough, could it?

  That insidious mind of his. Thinking of Isla’s face and Emilia’s fear and the phone ringing and ringing. They had put his photo on the news. The only known survivor. One of the initial victims. How could he be here again? Twenty years of trying so hard to be something different, someone else, and yet still catapulted back in time, right back to the beginning of it all.

  Victoria Prew. The name was circling, had become like birdsong. He could taste the bitterness of it and so pushed harder, until his thighs screamed, traction becoming slick on the leaf-covered incline.

  An editor had called. A major London newspaper. Hey, Rams. Long time no see. Hey, fancy doing a bit more freelancing for us? This murder thing, up there in Briganton. Fancy writing a piece on it for us? I mean, you have a unique perspective on the whole thing. It would be a kind of “Is this the next victim of the killer on the wall?” thing.

  He should have hung the phone up on him.

  But he hadn’t, had he? He had breathed deeply and smiled politely and said yes. He was, after all, a journalist. That was what he was supposed to do.

  The tunnel became narrower and narrower, the spindly trees pressing down on him until it seemed that they would crush him alive. And then, a reprieve. He broke through, the dark of the sky replacing the dark of the trees, tarmac turning to scrubby grass beneath his feet. Bowman’s Hill curved ahead of him, dull green meeting dull gray. He walked on, until he ran out of ground, and stopped at the peak of the hill. He looked up at the sky, at the heavy clouds that sat overhead, unshed raindrops prickling at his skin.

  Breathe. Just breathe.

  Hands on his hips, Ramsey paced, circling the top of the hill. Looking at the sky, at his feet, and yet there it remained. Briganton spread beneath him.

  He closed his eyes, opened them again.

  The village sat in an ocean of cloud, Brigadoon appearing from the mists. The edges of it ill defined, as though someone had spilled water across a painting of it, smearing the lines. Ramsey stood and stared. He could just about make out his street. Where Isla would be. Waiting. We should have moved away. We should have done it a long time ago. Isla not saying anything, because what was there to say? That their entire lives had become an exercise in waiting—waiting to move, promising themselves that they would, that one day they would break free, but somehow never quite getting that momentum. Waiting for children, because it wasn’t quite the time yet, because things weren’t quite perfect. Waiting for the deaths to begin again.

  Ramsey moved his gaze, following their street down to the crossroads, taking a right, a right again. Camberwell Street. Three houses from the end. That was where Amelia West had lived. The last but one victim.

  They had found her key in the front door, still jammed in the lock outside. Had found her handbag on the pavement. “The thing with Amelia, she was stubborn,” her mother had said. “We to
ld her it was dangerous, that someone was out there hurting people, but she just pooh-poohed it. ‘It’ll never happen to me.’” She had been found the following morning, sitting at the wall. Strangled.

  Ramsey moved, returning to his pacing. His eyes on the church now, its spire lost in cloud.

  That was where they had had Leila’s funeral. A bright Indian summer day. A shining mahogany coffin. Stephen folding himself up on the doorstep of the church, wailing a cry that should have woken the dead.

  It didn’t.

  Down beyond the church, lost to the cloud, was the wall. Ramsey crouched down, could feel the long grass graze his bare legs, rested his good elbow on his knees, head in his hands. Look away, because then you won’t think about it. Look away, because then it won’t be there.

  It was always there.

  That day, twenty years ago, had begun with the sound of the front door closing. Eighteen-year-old Ramsey had lain in his bed, watching the first chinks of light work their way around the curtains. Five a.m. or thereabout. Had listened to his brother’s step past the bedroom window. How long had he lain there considering sleep? It couldn’t have been long, because by the time Zach came back past the house, this time loaded with a thick strapped bag, sentinel rows of newspapers, he was already up and dressed and waiting for his brother. Come on. I’m awake. I’ll give you a hand. How many times had they done that? Too many to count. Ramsey remembered his own fifteen-year-old days, his own paper route, and twelve-year-old Zachary, up and dressed at the arse end of dawn. I’m coming with you. ’Kay?

  Ramsey dug his fists into his eyes, willing away the image. Zach’s dark curls, which came up to Ramsey’s shoulders. The leanness of the boy, like someone had taken all his limbs and stretched them out. The sprinkle of acne across his cheeks, the adolescent unfinishedness of him. His gentleness. His laugh.

  And then, that morning, the sun just beginning to break across the horizon. The streets deathly quiet. The kind of cold that hinted of a heat to come. The whisper of newspapers against the bag. Zach telling him a story about . . . what? It seemed now that there were no words to it, only overlarge teenage gestures and the trill of a laugh.

  Then a rush of footsteps. Zach’s scream. A sharp pain in the back of his head. The blackness.

  Ramsey felt his body sob, pushed it back down.

  That feeling of floating, of being carried. The voices and the sirens. After forcing his eyes to open onto the painfully bright day, he had looked up at the sky. Don’t worry. You’re going to be okay.

  Then more footsteps and knowing these ones without ever seeing the stepper. His mother breaking through the crowd and shoving paramedics away and saying, “That’s my boy. That’s Ramsey. Oh my God, oh my God. Is he okay? Are you? What happened . . . ?” Then seeing . . . what? Something that tugged at her, that made her realize there was more. “Where’s Zach?” A rising panic, her voice getting shrill with fear. “Ramsey. Where is he? Where’s your brother?”

  Did they tell her? For the life of him, Ramsey couldn’t remember. Or maybe she had just known, mother’s intuition. She had sunk to the pavement beside the stretcher, one hand holding tight to her middle son, the other hand waving wildly, as if to catch hold of the one that she had lost. Screaming his brother’s name, as though that way she could bring him back, as if through sheer force of will, she could make him return to her. A flock of birds bursting from the trees, spiraling skyward.

  Ramsey let himself sink to the sodden ground. The hospital, the whole world watching him like he was a species of thing they’d never seen before. His mother in that damn chair, not eating, not sleeping, just sitting there, guarding her precious surviving child. And then, after days that felt like weeks, being released and returning home to a home that was no more. His father lost inside a prison of his own making. His older brother, Cain, hovering over them all, trying to repair the irreparable. And his mother smiling a painful smile and kissing him and retiring to a bed that she remained in. She died two years later, the effort of surviving her youngest child finally becoming too much to bear. The doctors said it was her heart. That she had been killed by a massive myocardial infarction. To Ramsey that seemed like an extremely complicated way of describing a broken heart.

  He stood up, stretching his legs until they hurt. Specks of rain began to peck at his skin, and he turned his face toward them. Thought of Victoria Prew slumped dead against the wall. Below, a police car drove a slow, winding path through the center of Briganton. Ramsey wiped the rain from his eyes and watched its steady trail, a feeling settling like a boulder in his stomach. It wasn’t over. It had only just begun.

  The price of fear – Mina

  Mina could hear the voices, a flock of starlings startled by a sheepdog. She heard bags being dropped onto tables, the melody of computers being turned on. Moving day. The major incident room was filling with people, as they all prepared to begin. They sounded like children returning from a long summer holiday, a feigned weariness, the thrill poking at the edges of the words. It wasn’t surprising, Mina supposed. The killer on the wall. A bedtime story for sleepovers and nightmares, one that you told your friends to thrill them, or so you pretended, but really you said it so that the words would no longer circle, lost and alone in your own mind, as if reducing it to cheap gaudiness would make it less terrifying when you were alone at night.

  “So what, then?” Detective Superintendent Eric Bell leaned back in his chair, his arms folded across the bulge of his belly, straining at the buttons of the striped shirt, dark hairs escaping through the gaps. He studied her, as though she was a particularly fascinating breed of insect.

  “I . . .” Mina righted herself, attempting to keep her gaze steady. “I saw Ms. Prew to her car. I made sure that the front door was locked behind her.” She looked down, her voice petering away under the force of that gaze. “I . . . I made sure that she was safe.”

  Victoria Prew walking, three feet in front of her, her head ducked from the rain. The sound of her quick footsteps on the graveled drive. A suitcase, tugged along behind her. A walk like she was on a catwalk, in spite of it all. Mina had her hood pulled up so that she was looking at the world through a tunnel, but still the raindrops worked their way into her eyes, turned her hair lank. Watching Victoria, the dark hedges, the suffocating skies. Victoria sliding the suitcase into the waiting trunk, the trunk closing, swallowing it whole. Climbing into the car. Closing the door. Smiling at Mina as the window slid down. Thank you for everything.

  Superintendent Bell nodded slowly, thoughtfully. His lips pursed.

  But she wasn’t safe, was she?

  He didn’t say it, didn’t shape the words, and yet there they were, nonetheless. Victoria Prew wasn’t safe.

  Mina’s vision shifted, warping now from the superintendent, with his cold stare, to Victoria sitting propped against Hadrian’s Wall, fingerprints ringing her lily-white throat, long red hair hanging down in a curtain.

  Mina chewed at the fingernail of her index finger, the edges of it grating at her tongue. “I don’t . . . I don’t know why she went back there. I really don’t, sir. She was afraid. I told her to go to her mother’s, until we had the house secure. I don’t know why she went back.” Her voice was climbing, an edge of panic to it, and Mina dipped her head, cursing herself.

  “Her mother said that she spoke to her,” said the superintendent quietly. “That she’d forgotten some work files. Said she was just popping back to pick them up.” He bounced a pen in the palm of his hand. “What did you do after she left?”

  Was there an edge to his voice? Was she hearing that, or was she simply imposing judgment where there was none? Mina shifted on her seat, an attempt to sit at attention.

  “I searched the immediate area, sir. I wanted to make doubly sure there was no one in the vicinity.”

  The Land Rover Discovery pulled out of the drive, its wheels gobbling up the gravel. Then Mina, alone in the puddled darkness, feeling something run up and down her spine: the sense of being s
tared at. Turning sharply, her hood flying backward, so that the rain battered against her face and she had to squint to make out the shapes beyond it. The hedges leering over her, dense with shadows. Running her flashlight across them, the white circle of light bouncing as a gust of wind pulled at it. She’d thought it was nothing, just the darkness and the wind that made her feel uneasy, like prey. Then a sound. A crack, like a foot pressed onto a twig. Her heartbeat climbing, the flashlight beam becoming less steady, and her mind screaming at her to step back, to run. But she didn’t run. Instead, she stepped forward, closer to the hedge and the shadows, one hand reaching for her ASP, the extendable baton cold in her fingers.

  And then . . .

  A movement pressed against her thigh, making her insides leap and her ASP swing wildly. The slow unfurling realization that it was the ringing of her phone, set to vibrate. Her breath steadying, the sound of her heartbeat deafening in her ears. Swinging the flashlight across the hedge again, stepping closer, she felt the phone stop its vibrations. Reaching her hand out, pushing the branches aside, crouching so that she could see through the leafy tunnel of them, peering inside, the nightmares in her head, expecting to see eyes staring back. But there was nothing, only the wind and the rain.

  Then her mobile, the ringing starting up again.

  Mina pulling it from her pocket, gaze still tight on the hedge and the shadows. “Yeah?”

  “Where are you?” The words making little sense to her at first, the meaning of them drowned out by the anger that flavored them.

  “I . . .” Darting the flashlight beam across the shadows . . . Was that another crack? Or was it simply the movement of the leaves in the wind, her own vivid imagination. “I’m working, Mum.”

  “I’ve been calling and calling, and you haven’t answered.”

  A quick memory of her coat slung across a chair in the immaculately styled living room of Victoria Prew. A wash of relief at her own carelessness, quickly followed by its regular companion, guilt. “I’m sorry, Mum. I – – ”