The Watcher (37 page)

‘If that’s how you see it,’ he said, ‘then yes, it was nothing more than that. But I love you, Gillian.’

It was clear this was all too much for her. ‘John, it’s just not possible. Please understand. When I cheated on Tom with you, I was just acting like a little kid. A kid who was begging for attention, affection and a feeling of security, who thought it couldn’t live without them. And then this terrible tragedy occurred. I can’t just carry on as if it never happened. Do you understand?’

‘Yes. What happened to your husband was horrible. I can understand that you have terrible feelings of guilt. And that you need to analyse the motives that pushed you towards me. Maybe you’re right about them, but . . . I still think we belong together. And I know I love you.’

‘I just can’t—’

‘It’s the first time I’ve said that to a woman,’ he interrupted her. ‘It’s the first time that I’ve felt that for someone. Please, whatever you’re thinking, don’t throw my feelings back in my face.’

They looked at each other.

After a while Gillian said, ‘I don’t want to hurt you. But I’m going to Norwich. To my family. To the rest of my family.’

Shit. Damn it. OK. He was not going to get down on his knees and beg.

Overwhelmed and stunned by the pain that was suddenly welling up inside him, that felt as if it would soon become unbearable, he still dared to ask: ‘Is there anything that would make you mine?’

She turned her eyes away.

‘No,’ she said.

The beautiful weather was almost over already. It had been snowing since early morning. Big, heavy flakes that came down from the sky like an almost impenetrable curtain.

John had gone into his office that morning. At least he had managed to deal with some paperwork that had been waiting for him. He had a headache, although he had taken three aspirins. After visiting Gillian, he had gone to the Halfway House and got completely smashed. He had hoped the alcohol would save him from the thoughts that would not stop going round and round in his head.

What the hell had got into him?

A woman had never hurt him. In particular, breaking up with a woman had never hurt him. Until now, he had always experienced the opposite. He had always got into relationships reluctantly. At some point the woman had demanded more than he had been willing to give – living together, marriage, children – and at that point he had said goodbye. Each time he had had the unpleasant feeling that he was hurting someone who had not done anything to him, and yet had also been relieved that he was escaping a situation that threatened to tie him down and corner him. He liked his freedom and found occasional affairs a nice change. Beyond that, he did as he pleased. He had thought he was incapable of forming lasting ties, for whatever reason. He was not the kind of person who would reflect in depth about his childhood and youth, certainly not with a psychotherapist, to find out the reasons for his character. As he saw it, it did not matter at all whether his father or mother had done something wrong years ago or whether for mysterious reasons things had taken a turn for the worse somewhere in his adolescence. You could not change things now. Things were the way they were.

For the first time he suddenly saw the possibility that things were not just the way they were. That everything could be quite different.

John Burton was faced with a shattering realisation: he had fallen in love with a woman. He was so deeply in love that the thought of losing this woman was almost too much to bear. He had pleaded with her to stay and been rejected out of hand. Shocked, he had to face the fact that his feelings were not reciprocated, or rather, were no longer reciprocated. It looked as though he would not be able to win this woman’s love. As if there would be another break-up in his life, and this time it would not be his choice. This time he would suffer like a dog.

He had no experience of dealing with such a situation, and so his first reaction was to withdraw. He got plastered to take the edge off the thoughts that were torturing him.

Around half past nine he had set off for home. By car, although completely unfit to drive. He knew it was a miracle that he was not stopped by a patrol car, especially as he drove in an aggressive and challengingly careless manner. He had put all the rage he felt for Gillian into his driving. As he later told himself, the fact that he actually arrived safe and sound at his front door was more to do with luck than anything else. He had stumbled up the stairs and collapsed on to his mattress without even getting undressed. He would have slept through half the following day if his alarm had not gone off. Its excruciatingly loud beeping at half past six penetrated his alcohol-soaked dreams and forced him to get up, in spite of his throbbing headache and parched mouth. His clothes and the bed itself stank of the pub, frying fat and alcohol. Disgusted by himself, he had crept into the bathroom and had a long shower. Three cups of coffee later, he was somewhat ready for work. By the time he was sitting in his office, he was feeling quite a lot better. He had never drunk as much alcohol as he had the night before, and he swore he never would again. He might have lost his licence and been taken to court, and all because of Gillian. Because she had rejected him.

Never again. Never again would he let a woman make such a fool out of him.

Around midday he felt uneasy. He had enough work to sit all day at his desk, but he had planned to be outside the William Ellis School at three o’clock in the hope of seeing Finley Stanford’s mother hanging around to secretly catch sight of her son on the way to his sports club. The question was whether he wanted to continue with his plan. His motive had been Gillian. The fact that she was part of these mysterious goings-on and might even be at risk. Seeing the turn events had taken, should he keep on sticking his nose into what did not really concern him, for the sake of Gillian, of all people?

In the end he decided to go anyway. It was not like him, he thought, to feel offended and withdraw.

He called the tennis club and, pleading a terrible cold, cancelled his coaching for today and the whole week. Then he put on his coat, grabbed his car keys and left the office. A flurry of snow almost blinded him.

At three o’clock on the dot, he parked in front of Finley’s school.

And waited. Watched. The heavy snow did not make his task any easier.

At some point, somewhere, Finley’s mother had to appear.

‘Well,’ said Luke Palm. ‘The house is in great condition. Well maintained and with a cosy aspect. I can’t see any real problems arising.’

They were standing in the dining room. Outside it was getting dark. It was snowing. It had not stopped snowing since early in the morning.

Palm had looked at everything and taken some notes. Now he nodded. Satisfied. ‘No problem,’ he said again.

Gillian could feel how tense she was. Palm’s positive remarks had not changed that at all. She had not yet said the most important thing and she was not sure if Palm knew already or not. He had not mentioned it.

‘There’s something else,’ she said hesitantly.

‘Yes?’

‘You asked why I’m selling, and potential buyers will ask too. I told you that my husband had died and that I’m moving to near where my parents live. The truth is – he didn’t just die. He . . .’ She stopped speaking.

Palm nodded. ‘I know. When you called, I didn’t work it out at once, but then I realised why your name sounded familiar. It was in the paper. I know, your husband—’

‘He was murdered. I found him here, in this room.’

Palm looked around uneasily. ‘I see.’

‘It might scare some buyers.’

‘We don’t have to tell them,’ said Palm. ‘If someone finds out on their own and then backs out, that can’t be helped. We certainly shouldn’t bring it up.’

Gillian nodded. ‘Thank you. That’s why I wanted you to deal with the sale. I thought you’d understand best. Because you too have . . . been burnt.’

The two of them were silent, thinking about the absurd connections that could bring a person into your life. Palm thought it rather odd that he was becoming an estate agent who seemed to be specialising in houses that were the scenes of violent crimes. Gillian thought that if anyone had told her a few weeks ago what was going to happen, she would have thought them mad: that she would sell her house and move to East Anglia and that she would find an estate agent to whom she did not need to explain the situation because he himself had found a murder victim and been through the emotional wringer that followed such a discovery.

She accompanied him to the door, they said goodbye and she watched Palm walk away. Even before he had reached the street where his car was parked, he was swallowed up in the driving snow.

Like a curtain she thought, shuddering.

Her gaze fell on the bucket of birdseed. She had completely forgotten to put any out today. She didn’t know whether the birds would come to feed now that it was dark, but she wanted to at least give them the chance to find something. Sighing, she slipped into her boots, put on her coat, picked up the bucket and stomped round the side of the house. It was completely dark now.

It was not easy to make progress. She sank down to her knees in the snow. The boots were almost no help. Her trousers were wet through. She would have to change when she got back inside. And she could see next to nothing. Turning round at the bird table, she could barely recognise her own house. She could just about see a diffuse light from the kitchen.

She shovelled several handfuls of seed on to the table and was glad she had made herself come out. All of yesterday’s feed had gone. There was not a single grain left.

Holding the bucket in her numb fingers, she started back towards the house. The wild whirling of the snowflakes made her almost dizzy. She felt her way along the side of the house and breathed a sigh of relief when she reached the door. A welcoming beam shone out, promising a bright, dry, warm home. It was as if she had just been on an Arctic trek, even though it was only her garden. She closed the door, keeping out the snow, the cold and the night that was falling.

In the hallway mirror she could see the full glory of her strange get-up: a woolly hat on her head, her hair soaking wet below the hat, snow on her arms and shoulders, drenched jeans. She peeled her coat off, bent down and pulled off her boots. Everything was wet. When she straightened up again, her gaze alighting fleetingly on the mirror, she thought she saw movement in the background.

In the kitchen.

For a few seconds she stood absolutely still, paralysed. It had looked like a shadow that had flitted by for a fraction of a second. She was not sure whether she had really seen it. It had happened so quickly. Maybe it was her own movement that had made her think she had seen something.

Her heart was suddenly pounding so fast that she was acutely aware of it.

How long had she been outside? It could not have been more than five minutes. The front door had been wide open all that time. If anyone had been hanging around outside, waiting for a suitable opportunity, they had certainly found it. Five minutes was quite enough to slip into a house with an invitingly open door and hide away.

She was suddenly sure that someone was there. She felt it. She was not alone.

Her first impulse was to phone the police, but looking around quickly, she saw that the phone was not on its charging station in the hall. It was probably in the kitchen. If someone was hiding there, she would be crazy to try to reach the kitchen. Should she run to her neighbours?
Hi, excuse me, can I phone the police from your house? I’ve seen a shadow in my kitchen
.

She would look like a real fool if it turned out that no one had been there.

But someone is here! I can hear him breathing!

She could barely suppress a hysterical sob when she realised that it was her own breathing she could hear.

I’m going mad. And for God’s sake, I’m afraid of going into my own kitchen!

She stood stock still, almost paralysed, utterly undecided about what she should do. She had nothing to defend herself with, should she need to.

On no account should she move away from the front door, from her escape route. But was she going to stand here all night? What if the other person had nerves of steel and also waited it out – until she made a mistake?

Maybe I’m just going loopy, she thought.

And in that exact moment, the lights went out. Everywhere. In the whole house. One moment it was light; the next it was pitch black.

Gillian screamed, and now nothing held her back. She threw open the front door and dashed outside, out into the dark and the falling snow, although she was in her socks and not wearing a coat. She would have gone out barefoot. Anything to get away. Away from the deadly trap that her house had become within just a few minutes.

She had almost reached the end of her garden path when a shadow appeared in front of her. It seemed to materialise out of nothing, as if it had been waiting for her. It blocked her way. She banged into it and began to scream, began to hit it with her balled fists. Fear was making her deranged. She could hear her own blood in her ears, could hear herself fighting for breath and screaming. Suddenly her wrist was gripped by an icy hand and pressed downwards.

‘What’s happened, for Christ’s sake?’ It was a man’s voice.

‘Let me go!’ she panted.

‘It’s me. Luke Palm. What’s happened?’

She stopped defending herself.

‘Luke Palm?’ She screamed his name in a high, shrill voice. He seemed to be someone from another time.

‘I think I left my notebook in your house. That’s why I came back. You’re shaking all over!’

Her arms felt as wobbly as jelly. ‘Please let me go.’

Cautiously he released her wrist, waiting to see if she would start to hit him again. But she could not move at all. She needed the last bit of energy she possessed to stop herself from collapsing into the snow and just lying there.

‘Someone is in my house,’ she whispered. She suddenly felt too weak to speak loudly.