The Watcher (32 page)

‘And she was in touch with two women who have been murdered, one right after the other. However Fielder sees it, it can’t be a coincidence,’ said John thoughtfully.

He played with his wine glass, then drew back his hands as the waiter stepped up to the table and laid a large steaming plate of pasta in front of each of them. For a few minutes they ate in silence, which suited John fine. It let him follow his thoughts.

He could not judge whether Stanford could be taken at his word. He would have to talk to him himself to know that. Yet the story was certainly odd.

If I want to carry on with this, then I’ll have to talk to him.

As if she could read his thoughts, Kate looked up from her spaghetti and asked, ‘John, I know it’s none of my business really, but . . . why? Why do you want to know all of this? Why don’t you just let Fielder do his job? Why do you want to make your own investigations?’

He had said at the start that he knew Gillian Ward, whose husband had been murdered, and had given that as the reason for his interest. He had left unmentioned the fact that he was having a relationship with her – or had had one. He did not know quite where they stood now. He had just told her that he had coached Gillian’s daughter at tennis. His instinct told him that Kate would have closed up like an oyster if he had said more. She was just talking because she had her own hopes.

‘It’s fun,’ he said. To his astonishment, he realised as he said it that this was the absolute truth. Apart from everything else, it really was just fun. His connection to Gillian had been the initial trigger, but now his hunter’s instinct had been awoken. He was trained to do what he was doing now and he felt how much he had missed this work. Not the office hierarchies and intrigues, the waiting for promotion. But the work itself.

‘And you know what,’ he added. ‘I know the Ward family. I like the daughter a lot. The girl’s been traumatised. Maybe that’s what’s made me mad with whoever did all this.’

He could see that he had convinced Kate.

‘Two more things I didn’t mention,’ Kate said. ‘They’ve also been withheld from the media for now. We know that Carla Roberts felt threatened in the weeks before her death in a vague way. She told her daughter. She lived on the top floor of a tower block and she had noticed that the lift kept coming right to the top but that no one got out. That scared her.’

‘I suppose the lift was investigated? It couldn’t have been a purely technical fault?’

‘No, it couldn’t. And now Fielder has the idea that Anne Westley might have felt threatened too. Why else would she suddenly want to sell her house and move to the city just before Christmas? After she had put up with living out there for years.’

‘In what way does Fielder think she was threatened?’

‘Well, he found a picture in her house. Anne Westley had a studio in her attic. Painting was her hobby. Watercolours. Her favourite motifs were flowers and trees, sunny landscapes. Positive, colourful pictures. But there was one that didn’t fit in at all.’

‘In what way?’

‘I haven’t seen it myself, but Fielder described it. Pitch-black night. Two glowing points in the darkness. He interpreted them as a car’s headlights. He wondered if she had seen them in the time before her murder. The lights of a car appearing out there near her lonely house. Again and again. Without anyone appearing. Just the car, coming and going. Like the lift in Carla Roberts’s block.’

‘Not a bad link,’ said John. He had to admit it was a pretty creative connection for Fielder, who was not the most imaginative guy. ‘Both women were terrorised in a planned way. With Carla Roberts, it’s clear when that started. If it was about two weeks before her death, then—’

‘Then that fits in pretty much exactly with the time when Liza Stanford disappeared.’ Kate completed his sentence.

The mysterious invisible woman. But another name leapt to mind involuntarily for John: Samson Segal. Who had spied on a variety of people. Had he gone up to the top of the block in the lift? Had he haunted the empty woods around the old lady’s house?

‘So both women were harassed it seems,’ he said. ‘But you said there were two things you hadn’t mentioned yet.’

She smiled, suddenly coy. ‘Later,’ she said.

After two forkfuls of spaghetti she said, ‘Fielder hasn’t said this directly, at least not in our group meetings, but things leak out. You know that he’s also toying with the thought that you . . . might be somehow mixed up in this?’

‘I know. But that’s absurd. And in my opinion, he won’t have anything to hook that idea on. I know the Wards. But not the two dead women. However he turns it around, he won’t find a motive,’ said John.

‘I’m taking quite a risk here,’ said Kate.

‘I know.’

‘Still, I’m glad to!’

He flashed her a reserved smile. He could not afford to give her too much reason for hope. By now it was crystal clear to him that she had come by train for one reason only. She wanted to get into his car. And, if possible, his flat.

‘Some people would think that what I’m doing here is stupid,’ Kate continued.

‘I don’t think it’s stupid,’ John reassured her. ‘And you can trust me completely. No one will ever find out about our meetings and chats.’

He steered the conversation skilfully to a neutral topic. He could see Kate’s strategy. By stressing how far she was sticking her neck out for him, she hoped to gain his admiration and recognition. At least his thanks. He was supposed to feel obliged to her and she was going to try to take advantage of that feeling.

He told her about the company he had built up, the places they guarded: building sites, supermarkets, petrol stations, sometimes private homes too.

‘And four of my staff are bodyguards. They are in such high demand that I really need to expand in that area, but I’m not sure yet.’

‘Why not?’ asked Kate.

‘I don’t like to tie myself down,’ John said. ‘When I founded the company, it was a temporary solution. That I could give up at any time. The bigger it grows, the less mobile I feel I am.’

‘Is that why you’re still alone? I mean, why you don’t have a wife and kids? Because you don’t want to tie yourself down there either?’

‘Maybe,’ he said vaguely. He took a sly look at his watch. Kate must not miss that last train.

‘I’d like that. A family,’ Kate said dreamily.

‘Not the easiest thing in your line of business.’

She shrugged. ‘Other people manage it.’

‘True.’ Somehow they had got on to treacherous ground. He motioned to the waiter, mimed that he wanted to pay. He felt his throat constrict, seeing Kate’s desiring gaze on him. She had not given him all this information without expecting something back, but thankfully they had not agreed on its price. If she didn’t get what she had hoped for, that was not his fault.

When he had paid and the two of them were standing in the dark street, he said, ‘I’ll walk you to the station.’

‘Thank you.’ She sounded frustrated.

They walked silently along. In the end she said in desperation, ‘I don’t absolutely need to get home, John.’

He stopped. ‘Kate . . .’

‘Tomorrow is Sunday. I’m not on duty. We could have breakfast together . . .’

‘I’m sorry, Kate. That’s not possible.’

‘Why not? Is there . . . do you have a girlfriend?’

‘No. But at the moment there’s no space for a woman in my life.’

‘I don’t want to tie you down, John. We can see what develops. And if nothing develops . . . well, that’s just the way it is.’

Empty words, he thought. If he were to put his money on just one thing, it would be that he would never shake off a woman like Kate if he gave her an inch. Let alone spent a night with her. She was the kind of woman who would start stalking him if she was rejected.

‘It just won’t work, Kate. It’s nothing to do with you. Just with me.’

‘I thought . . .’

‘What?’

‘Oh, nothing.’ What could she say? That she had thought his interest in her was more than a simple need to obtain secret information? He could see just how she felt in that moment: like an idiot.

Yet he still risked a question. ‘You said you had something else for me?’

She looked at him blankly. Thought about it. In the end she realised that she would look even more ridiculous if she now sulked because she had been rejected. That would show with completely transparency what she had been after and how disappointed she was.

‘Yes. There was one more thing. With regard to the murder of the two women, one vital detail wasn’t made public. The way they were killed.’

‘So they weren’t shot?’ He had always suspected as much, because there had been talk of particularly gruesome crimes.

‘In Westley’s case the culprit shot the lock off a door to get into a room. But apart from that, the gun was just to make them do what he wanted. There are no signs to suggest that they struggled when the murderer tied their hands and feet with masking tape.’

‘And then?’

‘He stuffed a tea towel in their mouths. Rammed it right down their throats. That made Carla Roberts retch. She died on her own vomit.’

‘And Anne Westley?’

‘He had to give her a helping hand. She didn’t die easily. In the end he closed off her nostrils with masking tape and she suffocated.’

‘Oh God,’ said John.

Hate, he thought, an unbelievable, mad hatred. It was not just a matter of killing the women. It was about making them die a painful death.

‘But Thomas Ward was actually shot?’ he asked, just to make sure. Although he was sure that Gillian, who found her husband, would have told him if it had been any different.

‘Yes. And that supports Fielder’s theory that Ward wasn’t the intended victim. The murderer was expecting a woman. Suddenly he was face to face with a man. And not just any man. Thomas Ward was tall. Sporty. In shape. He would no doubt have been able to defend himself better than the two elderly ladies, if he hadn’t been shot immediately.’

‘And in both of the women’s cases it was just tea towels?’

‘Yes.’

‘Did they belong to the victims? In other words, were they just what was nearest at hand for the murderer? Or did he bring them with him?’

‘They belonged to the victims. In Carla Roberts’s case, her daughter identified the towel. In Anne Westley’s case, identical towels were found in a drawer. The murderer seems to have taken advantage of what he found there.’

They arrived at Charing Cross station just as her train drew in.

‘Well then,’ Kate said. Her complexion looked even paler than usual.

‘Safe journey,’ said John. ‘And – thank you!’

She was hurt and did not turn around before getting into her train. She chose a seat where he could not see her.

He guessed that she was probably crying.

For the first time since Tom had been murdered, she had entered the house on her own. John had accompanied her the last time. This time, no one stood at her side.

The place was smelling worse and worse. A lot of food needed to be thrown out urgently.

Gillian took her suitcase up to the bedroom. It looked just as it had when she’d left on the afternoon of 29 December. The bedspread arranged tidily on the bed. A book, a thriller she had started to read, lying open and spine up on her bedside table next to the crumpled pages of
The Times
. Several sports magazines on Tom’s side. One of his jumpers on a chair in the corner and a tie on the wardrobe door.

All his things, thought Gillian. There’s probably little point in holding on to them.

She decided to unpack her own suitcase later. For now she just opened the side pocket and, fishing out her toiletries bag, took it to the bathroom. She put her toothbrush in the cup for toothbrushes and placed her comb on the shelf in front of the mirror. She tried to filter out the view of Tom’s things. His shaver, aftershave, mouthwash, cleaning solution for his contact lenses. A couple of his black socks were hanging off the large woven laundry basket. Although she had tried to prepare herself for this, Gillian felt the same bewilderment she had felt on her last short visit at seeing this unaltered normality. A Sunday morning in January. Snow and low clouds outside. Inside, dirty laundry and abandoned books and magazines that looked like they were just waiting to be read again come evening. Everyday objects all around. It did not look like the scene of a bloody crime. It looked like a normal house.

Gillian felt that she had two possibilities open to her. She could sit and stare at the walls, letting the invisible horror work on her until she started to scream. Or she could dive into the activities that the house was crying out for after her long absence.

She decided on the second option.

She spent the next four hours bringing order to the house. She washed mountains of laundry, putting it in the dryer and hanging it up in the boiler room. She went through the fridge, throwing out most of what she found. She put two bags of rubbish in the bin outside. She took the decorations off the Christmas tree and carried the needle-shedding monster outside on to the terrace. She took the fairy lights down from the windows, putting them away in their cardboard boxes and then storing them in the attic. She got rid of Chuck’s cat litter, because he had gone to Norwich on Friday with Becky and wouldn’t return for a few weeks. She cleaned the bathrooms and kitchen, vacuumed and aired the entire house and put fresh sheets on the beds. Lastly, she got a fire going, brewed up a large pot of coffee and sat down with a sigh in a comfy armchair. The house smelt good, it was warm, the crackling logs gave the place a cosy feeling. The coffee was hot and strong.

Three o’clock.

What should she do for the rest of the day?

She lit a cigarette but then thought better of smoking in the living room and stubbed it out.

She knew it was dangerous to just sit around. She had cried in John’s arms, but she had not really broken down after finding Tom murdered in the dining room. Her instinct told her that she would. The breakdown was lurking out there, just waiting for a suitable opportunity. Until now she had been able to keep it at arm’s length, especially because she had barely been alone for a moment. Tara and Becky had been there, only disappearing for the odd hour or two at most, for Tara to take Becky’s mind off things. On those occasions she had often had John near her. In addition, there had been all the conversations with the police.