The Watcher (4 page)

A little further on, an elderly lady was sweeping the pavement in front of her house. He often passed this lady on his walk. Today she was sweeping up the leaves, the last few leaves, that had sailed over the fence from the tree in her front garden. She would often be sweeping the street even on those days when anyone else would have said that there was absolutely nothing to do. Samson knew she lived on her own. Even a less observant person than him would have seen she had a need to do something that gave her a chance of snatching a quick ‘good morning’ from a passer-by. She never had visitors. Either she had not had children, or if she had, then they were not the kind who cared about her. Nor had he ever seen any friends or acquaintances whom she could visit.

‘Good morning,’ she said, rather out of breath, as soon as she had seen him.

‘Good morning,’ he mumbled. It was his unbending rule that he would have no contact whatsoever with the people he watched. It was important that he did not stand out. But he could not bring himself to pass this woman without greeting her. In any case, if he had not said anything, he would only have made her remember him all the more.
The unfriendly man who walks past every morning
. . . At least this way she would remember him positively.

He had now reached the row of houses opposite a pretty little park. The Ward family lived in one of the houses. Samson knew more about them than about all the other people, because Gavin had called on Thomas Ward’s help to sort out inheritance tax issues after their parents’ deaths. Ward and his wife worked as financial consultants in London. Ward had advised Gavin, who was near to despair over the issue, at a more than reasonable rate. Since then Gavin would not hear a word against him, even though Thomas was exactly the kind of guy neither brother liked normally, what with his big car, his fine suits and his ties that were not showy but obviously expensive . . .

‘You shouldn’t judge someone by their appearance,’ Gavin always said when Ward came up in conversation. ‘Ward is all right. Leave it!’

Samson knew that Gillian Ward did not go to the London office every day. He could not see any pattern in her working hours. Probably there was none. But of course she also had to take care of her twelve-year-old daughter, Becky, who often seemed so withdrawn and difficult. Samson had the impression that Becky could be quite rebellious. No doubt she did not make her mother’s life any easier.

He was surprised to suddenly see Gillian’s car come down the street and then turn into her drive and stop. That was strange. He knew that she shared the school run with the mother of one of Becky’s friends and that this week was the other mum’s turn. He was sure. Maybe she had not taken the children to school. If not, where had she been? At this early hour?

He stopped. Was she planning to go to the office? She always drove to the station, either Thorpe Bay or Southend Central, and then carried on by train to Fenchurch Street station in London. He had followed her on a number of occasions, so he knew her route perfectly.

He watched her go inside. The light in the hall went on. The Wards’ pretty red door had a lozenge-shaped window, so from the street you could look down the hall and into the kitchen behind it. Through this practical window he had on one occasion seen how Gillian had sat back down at the breakfast table after her family had left. She had poured herself another cup of coffee and then drunk it slowly, in little sips. The newspaper lay next to her but she had not been reading it. She had just stared at the opposite wall. That was when he had first thought: she’s not happy!

The thought had pained him, because he had come to like the Wards. They were not the typical kind of people he shadowed. He preferred single women. He had already asked himself why he was shadowing them so doggedly. One summer evening when he had hung around in the streets and stared into the Wards’ garden and watched them laughing and chatting, he had suddenly had his epiphany. They were perfect. That was what attracted him so magically. The absolutely perfect family. The attractive father who earned good money. The beautiful, intelligent mother. The pretty, lively child. The cute black cat. A nice house. A well-kept garden. Two cars. Not rich or flashy, but solidly middle-class. An ordered world.

The world he had always dreamt of.

The world he would never be part of. He had realised that he found some consolation in watching it over a fence.

He went closer to the house, right up to the garden gate, and tried to spy into the kitchen. He could see Gillian bent over the table. Aha, she had poured herself a cup of coffee. She held the thick mug in her hands and took the same small, pensive sips he had seen before.

What did she think about? She often seemed to be deep in thought.

He hurried on. He could not afford to linger too long in one place, certainly not out on the street like that. He was dying to know what Gillian was worried about, and he knew why: he hoped that finding out would calm him down. It had to be something temporary. Nothing, please nothing, to do with her marriage or her family. Perhaps her mother or her father was ill and she was worried. Something like that.

He walked down Thorpe Hall Avenue, past Thorpe Bay Gardens, the long stretch of lawns and tennis courts along the seafront, and crossed Thorpe Esplanade to reach the beach. The hectic early-morning traffic was only slowly easing off. The beach lay there cold, abandoned and wintry. Not a living soul in sight.

He took a deep breath.

He felt as exhausted as others did after a long, hard day at work. He knew why: because he had seen Gillian. Because he had almost bumped into her. This situation, which he had not been prepared for, had caused him such emotional stress that – as he now realised with hindsight – he had marched double-quick to the beach. Anything to get away. To a more peaceful place where he could calm down.

He watched so many people. He memorised their daily routines and habits. He tried to fathom how they lived. He would not have been able to explain to anyone what it was that fascinated him so much, but he could not help himself. It was impossible to stop once you had started. He had heard of geeks who built up a parallel life for themselves online in
Second Life
. That seemed close to what he did. Living a second life as well as your own real life. Dreaming your way into other people’s fates. Roles you could slip into. Sometimes he was Thomas Ward, the successful man with the lovely house and expensive car. Sometimes he was a cool guy who did not stutter or blush, who asked the pretty woman with the dog out on a date – and was of course not refused. It brought light and joy into his days, and if it was dangerous or disturbing (he had the feeling that a psychologist would have expressed a number of serious doubts about his hobby), it was the only chance he had to avoid the sadness that enveloped him.

But gradually something was changing, and that made him uneasy.

He went a little further down the beach. It was more windy here than up in the streets. He was quickly frozen to the bone. He had forgotten his gloves and kept blowing into his hands to warm them up. Naturally that was not reason to deviate from his clearly defined walking schedule. He had even started a file in his computer on the objects of his attention. His sense of duty did not allow him to forget to note down each evening everything that he had seen and experienced. But he no longer did it with the same enthusiasm as he once had. And he knew why that was so: it was down to the Wards, especially Gillian. They had become more and more important to him. They had become his family. His daydreams were full of them. There was nothing that he did not know about them, that he did not want to experience with them.

It was probably an inevitable development that his interest in the other people who had fascinated him so deeply was now waning. He had the vague feeling that it was not a good thing. He understood now why right from the start he had chosen to watch and keep a written record of a large number of people. He had not wanted any individual to become too important. He would take part in lives without being swallowed up by them.

With Gillian there was a risk he would be.

The wind blowing from the north-east was really cold. Not a day to spend at the beach. Over the summer it had been fun to stroll through the streets from morning to night, avoiding the heavy atmosphere at home. Now, in winter, it naturally felt different. The only advantage was that it got dark early and that from five, at the latest, he could look into the brightly lit houses. To do so, thought, he was at risk of freezing off various parts of his anatomy.

He lifted his head in the wind, sniffing like an animal. He thought the air smelt like snow. Not that they often had snow here, but he would have bet on a white Christmas this year. Although of course a lot could change before then.

Definitely too cold, he decided, to walk any further along here.

He left the beach, pausing when he came across a kiosk on the promenade. Unfortunately he had had to give greedy Millie almost all his money, but after lengthy searches of his pockets he managed to come up with two pounds. That was enough for a hot cup of coffee.

He drank it standing up, protected from the wind by the kiosk wall. He enjoyed the tickle of heat in his hands as he held the cup. There was a newspaper stand just in front of his nose. He read the headlines and his attention snagged on a particularly sensational
Daily Mail
front page:
Grisly Murder in London!

He bent his neck right over to try to read the story below the headline. An elderly woman had been murdered in a tower block in Hackney. The act had been one of extreme brutality. It was estimated that the woman had been lying dead in her flat for ten days before her daughter found her. There were no clues to the killer’s possible motives.

‘Ugly thing, that,’ said the kiosk owner, who had seen what Samson was looking at. ‘I mean, especially the thing about ten days. That someone can be dead so long before someone realises. What’s become of our society?’

Samson murmured agreement.

‘The world gets worse every day,’ the other man said.

‘That’s right,’ said Samson. He finished his coffee. The change he had was just enough for a
Daily Mail
.

He bought the paper and walked on pensively.

At least she had finally stopped shaking.

Detective Inspector Peter Fielder from the Metropolitan Police was not even sure that she was ready for questioning, but he knew that time was of the essence. Carla Roberts had been lying dead in her flat for over a week before her daughter discovered her. This had given her murderer a massive head start. They needed to act quickly, but they could get nowhere with this young woman, who was holding her baby tight, threatening to burst into tears when a policewoman suggested she hold the child for a moment. A patrol car had driven her to the hospital the evening before. She had stayed the night under heavy sedation. This morning she had been driven home to Bracknell.

The officers accompanying her had called Fielding’s mobile to tell him that Keira Jones seemed to be doing better. That was why he was now sitting in her nicely decorated, warm living room, drinking mineral water, with Keira opposite him, as white as chalk but much calmer than the day before. Her husband, Greg Jones, was home. When Fielder arrived, Greg had just fed the baby, changed its nappy and put it to bed. Now he was standing at the window, his arms folded across his chest. The posture expressed not a defensiveness but a need to offer protection. He was clearly devastated by events, but he was trying to stay somewhat calm and collected.

‘Mrs Jones,’ said Fielder cautiously, ‘I know it’s not easy for you to talk to me right now. I’m sorry to insist like this, but we really are running out of time. The coroner’s provisional judgement is that your mother has been dead for about ten days. In other words, it took a long time for you to find her . . .’

Keira closed her eyes for a moment and nodded.

‘We have a little boy who demands a lot of attention at the moment, Inspector,’ said her husband. ‘For the past few months my wife has been completely overstretched. I work all day and can’t help her much. My mother-in-law felt a bit neglected by her but—’

‘Greg!’ said Keira in a quiet, but tortured voice. ‘She didn’t
feel
neglected. I
did
neglect her.’

‘For goodness’ sake, Keira. I work hard. We’ve got a little kid. You couldn’t be driving to Hackney all the time to hold your mum’s hand!’

‘I should have at least called her more often.’

‘When was the last time you did call her?’ asked Fielder. ‘Or rather: when was the last time you had any contact with your mother?’

Keira thought for a moment. ‘That was . . . it was last Sunday. So, over a week ago. She called me quite late at night. About ten at night.’

‘You didn’t talk to her again after that?’

‘No.’

Fielder made a mental calculation. ‘So that was the twenty-second of November. Today is the second of December. Everything would suggest that soon after she called you, she . . . was attacked.’

‘Was killed.’

He nodded. ‘Yes. Was killed.’

‘It’s dreadful,’ said Greg Jones. ‘Just dreadful. Who could have guessed something like that would happen?’

Fielder looked out of the window. In the well-kept front garden there was a swing, a sandpit and a slide in bright, cheerful colours. No doubt the proud father himself had put them up a little prematurely for his boy. The Joneses seemed like a happy family. Neither Keira nor Greg appeared cold-hearted or selfish. A lot of factors had come together: Greg’s stress at work, Keira’s stress with their baby, and the trip to Hackney was long and awkward, especially with a little one in tow. The grandmother living on her own had simply slipped out of sight by accident. Probably Carla had been on her daughter’s conscience but Keira had not found a way to make her part of her life.

The same as in so many families.

‘Was your mother divorced?’ asked Fielder. Keira had already told them this fact, during the first short questioning the day before, but Fielder wanted to hear more about it.