The Watcher (13 page)

Anne had spent the night in the living room. Wrapped up in a warm blanket, she had drunk hot milk in little sips and tried to calm her tattered nerves. She had gone to bed the night before at half past ten, had read for half an hour and then quickly fallen asleep, but then in the night she had been startled out of her sleep and for a split second had seen the beam of a headlight slip across her bedroom wall and heard the purr of an engine. Then the engine cut out and the light disappeared.

Somewhere out there in the cold winter’s night was a car, with someone in it and . . . and what exactly? Why was someone sitting in this clearing far from any village, watching a single house in the middle of nowhere surrounded by an orchard of bare fruit trees? Why?

She lay in bed, her heart racing, and hoped that she had just dreamt it, but she knew it was no dream. Nor her imagination. It had happened too often recently. She had to start to take it seriously, although she did not have the slightest idea what the
it
was.

The luminous numbers on her bedside radio clock had shown her that it was almost half past midnight.

In the end she had pulled herself together and stepped over to the window. The first-floor windows had shutters too, but she did not close them. She moved about carefully so that she would not be seen and peered out. Pale moonlight from behind the clouds. She could not recognise anything – not a car or a person. But she knew someone was there, breathing, waiting.

For a moment she had considered calling the police.
I live in a wood, in what used to be a hunter’s lodge. Maybe ten minutes by car from Tunbridge Wells. There’s a car outside. I think someone is watching my house. It’s been going on for weeks. I see the beam of the headlights when the car approaches over a rough dirt road. That’s all there is here. Then the light goes out. The car must be there somewhere. And I don’t know what the driver wants. What he wants from me
.

Her hand had reached out twice to the telephone. Twice it had twitched back. She thought it all sounded like the mad ramblings of a batty old crone. She could imagine the impression she would give: an elderly woman, almost seventy, strange enough to live in a godforsaken place far from everyone else, an unsociable widow, a painter of wild and colourful pictures. And now she sees lights and hears car engine noises.

Finally she pulled on a pair of tracksuit bottoms and went downstairs. On the ground floor, all the shutters were firmly closed. In the past Anne had normally left them open, but she did not dare to do so any more, since these odd things started happening.

At least no one outside could see her. She turned on all the lights and the television. For its voices, to listen to someone, to reassure herself that she was not alone in the world.

She heated up the milk. Surprised that she was so bitterly cold, she wrapped herself in a woollen blanket. She would not be able to sleep any more this night, she realised that. Awake, she alternated between looking at the wall and the television, while someone else sat outside, no doubt staring at her house. She knew that lines of light shone out through the chinks in the shutters. Whoever the mysterious stranger was, he could see that she was awake. Although she could not say whether that fact had any meaning for him.

In the morning, the nightmare lost its sharp edges. Anne planned to drive into town and take a few Christmas parcels for friends to the post office. She knew that by then, everyday normality would have put the fears of the night to flight, making them seem almost unreal. She was happy that she had not called the police and made a laughing stock of herself. And she was even grateful for the long night she had just had, because it had helped her make a decision: she would move back to London, where she had spent most of her life. And where people lived whom she knew from earlier times.

She had gone back and forth over it in the hours that had not seemed as though they would ever pass. She had experienced again all the pain she had felt after Sean’s death. And the determination with which she had put a lid on her feelings of loneliness and fear. Above all, she had thought about the promise she had made to herself and to him in the first moments after he had fallen asleep forever in the hospital.
I’ll carry on with your dream. With the house you loved so much. With the fruit trees and the balmy summer evenings on the balcony and the silent winter nights, when the whole wood is covered in hoarfrost. I’ll live all of that for you
.

That morning she gave herself permission to retract her promise.

Not just because some madman was wandering around the wood and could possibly become a danger to her. Whoever it was, and whatever the person’s motivation, was just the trigger for her decision.

She had understood something this night. She really was living Sean’s dream. But it had nothing to do with her wishes, desires, longings and ideas. As a couple, life here had had its charms. For a single person it could become a nightmare.

She was tired, but also electrified. Joyful. Relieved.

She went into the kitchen, turned the coffee machine on, boiled an egg and cut two slices of bread. She hummed quietly to herself. After going to the post office, she would look for an estate agent. Perhaps one could look at the property in the next few days and tell her what kind of a selling price to expect. And then she would dive into her own house-hunting. For example, for a pretty two-bedroom flat with a large balcony for plants. In a building with other people who might become her friends. In the evening, the lights of the city would be around her. She realised she was almost crying as she imagined it. How difficult it had become to bear this isolation. Now that she was aware of it for the first time, she understood how unhappy she had been. How much she had been living in opposition to her own dreams.

She hummed away to herself.

The most beautiful thing was that she was sure that Sean was nodding at her in encouragement.

‘And?’ asked Peter Fielder when Christy stepped into his office. It was still early in the morning and not much was happening yet in the offices and corridors of the Met. Peter liked to get to Scotland Yard at the break of day, when he would not be approached constantly and disturbed. He could get a lot done then, before the day’s usual hustle and bustle took over and colleagues rushed in and out, phones rang all the time and unplanned conference calls popped up.

Christy McMarrow felt the same, and it was probably this match in the way they worked, thought Peter, that made them such a well-oiled team.

His ‘And?’ referred to his certainty that Christy was bringing him new information. She never just came by for a coffee or a friendly chat.

And yet she did not look exactly happy. Whatever she had found out, it did not seem to have brought them closer to a breakthrough.

‘I talked to two of Carla Roberts’s former workmates yesterday, from the chemist’s,’ said Christy. ‘Both of them described Carla as a nice, friendly, but very reserved woman. Apparently she was quite hard to get close to, although always ready to help and warmhearted. Both of them exclude the possibility that she could have had enemies at work. Of course, I’ll still talk to the shop manager, but my instinct says that this isn’t a hot lead.’

‘Hmm,’ said Peter. ‘Anything else?’

‘I’ve gone through her address book, but there are almost no entries in it apart from her colleagues from the chemist’s. After she retired, it doesn’t look like she’s added anyone else. Either she made no new acquaintances, or she just didn’t write them down. I’ve managed to find one other person she used to know, from when she was still married. Eleanor Sullivan. She was a casual acquaintance of the Robertses. I went and visited her.’

‘And what did your instinct tell you there?’ Peter was not being sarcastic. He had learnt to trust Christy’s instincts a lot in the last few years. It may have had something to do with his admiration for her as a woman.

‘Nothing to get excited about,’ Christy had to admit reluctantly. ‘Nothing at all, really. It doesn’t look to me like Carla’s murderer is someone she used to know – unless there are some dark secrets no one is aware of. Mrs Sullivan remembers Carla well and describes her just like the others did: shy, reserved, but very friendly. She says that to her knowledge Carla never got into problems with other people. Apparently she was an extremely unassuming person who avoided conflicts and rarely provoked anyone.’

‘Hmm,’ said Peter again. ‘It makes you despair! She didn’t even have a computer. There are no email contacts, no chat forums, no website visits to give us a clue. We’re completely in the dark here!’

What had made Carla Roberts’s life difficult, her shyness and plainness, was now also an obstacle that hindered them in ascertaining the motive for her violent death. She was a woman with no rough corners, who had never had a run-in with anyone. And yet who had then died in a gruesome way. This harmless nature must have triggered some horrific aggression in someone.

‘There must be something in her life,’ he said, ‘something that drove the culprit to this brutal crime. It’s one thing to shoot someone down from a distance. It’s a completely different thing to tie them up and stuff a cloth so far down their throat that they are sick. And then to ram it further down and wait until the victim chokes horrifically to death on her own vomit. There was a lot of hate behind that. Why did Carla Roberts trigger that? She just slipped through her days like a shadow you’d barely notice, and she had a friendly face too.’

‘Unless the murder had nothing to do with her as a person,’ said Christy. ‘But just with the fact that she, being all alone, was a suitable victim. For a man who has some basic problem with women. After all, that was the first thought that went through our heads when we saw what had been done to her.’

‘Still, we have to stick to her life, because we don’t have any other clues.’ He suppressed a yawn. He was so tired. ‘Did this Mrs Sullivan say anything about the Robertses’ marriage?’

‘Yes. It was all pretty normal. No major highs or lows. Her husband worked hard, was always at the office. Carla was devastated when she heard of the financial disaster and of the fact that he had been cheating on her for years. What was most distressing for her was the fact that she never guessed at any of it. Mrs Sullivan phoned her at the time, and apparently the only thing Carla said was that old cliché
Why didn’t I see it? Why didn’t I see it?
She could not get over that.’

‘Was her husband ever violent towards her?’

‘No. In a boring, unspectacular way it really was a happy marriage. In general he was seen as a calm and rather staid fellow. According to Eleanor Sullivan, the divorce went smoothly. She did not take him to the cleaner’s financially – there was no money to fight over. And anyway, he disappeared pretty quickly, never to return.’

Regarding his work, Fielder would not have thought in terms of his own instincts, but he did have the distinct feeling that they would be wasting their time tracking down her ex-husband.

He changed the topic. ‘What about the door to the block? Any news there?’

Here Christy did have some results to share.

‘Yes. Forensics say that it was clearly tampered with. The spring that ensures that the door closes automatically must have been pulled out with a pair of pliers. So anyone could go in and out whenever they wanted, without a key.’

‘Could have been the murderer.’

‘Yes. But not necessarily. The caretaker says they have a lot of vandalism. Hackney is not exactly the most genteel part of town. A youth could have been having some fun and our murderer took advantage of that.’

Fielder rubbed his eyes. He needed something now. A thread to follow in the fog of this opaque case. A trace of a lead. Something to give him an adrenalin rush and chase away his tiredness. But there was nothing. Nothing but the feeling of creeping through a rolling mist and not really taking a single step forward.

Christy noticed that he was deflated. ‘Hey, boss, chin up! It’s almost Christmas!’

He did not even make the effort to smile.

‘Yes. And there’s a madman running around out there. Christmas won’t change that.’

‘Do you think he’ll do it again?’

‘Possibly. He might have a problem that won’t have been solved with Carla’s murder.’

‘A guy who hates women? And just looks out for good opportunities to act on his hate? That would support the idea of Carla being a chance victim.’

‘To some extent. Nothing is
only
chance. Somewhere Carla Roberts’s life intersected with her murderer’s. It might have been at such a tiny and apparently insignificant point that we’ll have great difficulty discovering it. But I don’t think someone would just have taken the lift to the top of a block of flats and rung a bell at random and then murdered the woman who lived there alone, without having first heard about her and known that she lived there.’

Fielder stood up. He was determined not to let himself be defeated by his depressed mood or his exhaustion. ‘No, I think the murderer knew Carla Roberts. Knew a lot about her. And that’s why we have to examine her life. Down to its tiniest details. We have to look at things that are not immediately of interest. And we have to realise that we don’t have much time.’

Christy did not say anything.

She knew he was thinking of the next victim.

The Halfway House was not as full as it had been the previous Friday. There was nonetheless an excited babble of voices from the cluster of people at the bar. The floor was wet and dirty. Everyone had brought some of the miserable damp weather in with them. Somewhere in the background Christmas music was warbling from a radio.

From the doorway Gillian made sure that the man from her road, Samson Segal, was not here this time. If he had been, she would have turned around on the spot. There was no need for him to see her having a second tête-à-tête with a stranger. It did not look like he was there, as far as she could tell at first glance. She could not keep looking, as complaints were already being directed her way.