The Watcher (47 page)

Gillian tried to look calm, but she knew she sounded odd. ‘Of course not, why would you think that? I just want to—’

‘Forget it,’ Tara interrupted her. ‘Don’t try to make a fool out of me! You’re hoping to get away, that’s all. You’re shaking with fear, Gillian. And not only since that idiot,’ here she nodded at the answering machine, ‘was stupid enough to broadcast his warning throughout the house!’

‘That’s not true. I’m—’

‘It happened in the car. But I wasn’t a hundred per cent sure then. It was just a feeling I had. If you’d been a bit cleverer, you might have got away with it. But . . . after this clear warning . . . do you really think I’m going to let you out of my sight for a moment?’

Gillian’s vision flickered and she heard a roaring in her ears, but she pulled herself together. She could not fall apart now. She had to keep her nerve.

‘Why, Tara?’ she asked. ‘What’s happened? Have I ever done anything to you?’

Tara studied her with interest. Gillian looked back at her uneasily. She saw her friend’s familiar face. A face she had known for years. And yet it had changed completely. The expression was one she did not know. And the voice was not Tara’s voice. Normally Tara’s feelings could be heard in her voice: laughter, worries, joy, irritation. None of those could be heard now. It was a strangely soulless, inhuman voice.

‘You’ve not done anything to me personally,’ said Tara. ‘Carla and Anne didn’t do anything to me personally either.’

There was a hatred in her voice that made Gillian jump.

‘Carla and Anne . . .’ she repeated, dumbfounded. ‘You . . . ?’

Tara shrugged. ‘The world’s not a poorer place without them.’

‘And Tom?’

‘Tom wasn’t planned.’

‘Tara, I don’t understand what’s happening,’ said Gillian pleadingly. ‘Please explain what’s going on.’

Tara laughed. It was not a friendly sound. ‘No, darling. I know what you’re planning. You want to get me involved in a long and protracted conversation and hope that someone comes by and helps you out of the mess you’re in. Forget it! We have to think what to do next. Do you know what’s so tragic? I’d decided to let you get away. No idea why. Perhaps because of the time we’ve spent together. Maybe because I failed twice already with you.’

She was the shadow
, thought Gillian with horror.
And that’s how she knew Luke’s name. She tried to kill me twice.

But why? Why?

‘I wanted you far away from me. I can’t bear you any longer, Gillian. Since you were afraid to live here, the idea of you in a hotel would have suited me perfectly. Then you’d have gone to Norwich and hopefully we’d never have met again. But now I can’t let you go. You see why.’

‘Please, Tara! Why?’

Tara reached into the pocket of her winter coat. In the next instant she had a pistol in her hand. She pointed it at Gillian.

‘First we have to go somewhere safe. The guy who just called your landline might call the police next. So it’s high time we left. And then I have to think about what to do with you.’ She pointed to the front door with the gun. ‘Let’s go to the garage. You first. If you make any unexpected movement or try to get away, I’ll shoot you in the head. Got it? I won’t hesitate for an instant.’

Gillian gulped. She felt like she was in a strange, completely unreal play. Surely Tara was about to laugh – not in that strange way, but in the friendly, easy-going way she used to – and, letting her arm drop, say:
Gillian, don’t look so horrified! Just a joke! I just wanted to give you a real fright. For God’s sake, you didn’t take me seriously, I hope?

But she knew that would not happen. None of this was a joke. Tara had never had a predilection for macabre jokes. She was a rather serious person.

She meant what she said.

Gillian moved slowly towards the front door. Tara stepped to the side, to let her past. She grabbed a roll of masking tape that lay on a pile of cardboard boxes by the door.

Once they were standing outside, Gillian said pleadingly: ‘Tara, I don’t know what you have against me. But whatever it is – please think of Becky. She only has me.’

Tara laughed once again. It was the same creepy sound, lacking any emotion.

‘You won’t believe this, Gillian,’ she said, ‘but I am thinking of her. I’ve been thinking of her the whole time. Becky is the reason I’ve done this. You know why? It’s better for some children to grow up without a mother and father. For some children, any other option is better. Believe me, I know what I’m talking about.’

‘But . . .’

‘Just shut up and carry on walking,’ Tara ordered her. She pressed the pistol deep into the folds of Gillian’s winter coat. If anyone had walked past, they would not have seen it. Not that there was anyone else about. In the encroaching twilight, the street looked dead. ‘We’ll have time to talk later.’ Tara nodded towards the garage.

Gillian walked slowly along the garden path.

‘I knew you’d come back,’ said Liza Stanford wearily. She had not immediately opened the door when John rang the bell. He had spent some time pacing up and down the paved square in front of the block of flats, hoping she would look out of her window and see that it was only him, not her husband or the police, or whoever else she feared. Then he had rung the bell again and finally had heard the buzz that meant she had unlocked the entrance door. Upstairs, she had been waiting inside the door to her flat, which was open just a crack.

‘Would you like a cup of tea?’ she asked.

‘No, thank you. Liza – do you know a Tara Caine?’ He observed her closely as he asked the question.

She jumped. Her pupils widened. ‘Tara Caine. Yes, I know her.’

‘I asked you to tell me everything yesterday,’ John said.

‘You didn’t ask about her,’ Liza replied in a quiet voice. She went into the living room and collapsed on to a chair at the dining table. John followed her and stood in the middle of the room.

‘Your car is registered in her name. And I expect she rented this flat?’

Liza nodded.

‘She’s giving you money too? Because your husband must have blocked his accounts, I’m guessing from what I know of him.’

‘She set up an account in my name and gave me a debit card. I take out money when I need it.’

‘Generous of her. She pays your rent, pays your living costs. That’s not something that happens every day, is it?’

‘I’ll pay her back. We’ve got an agreement.’

‘Aha. And when will that be? And how?’

‘I don’t know yet. Everything had to be done so quickly . . . We couldn’t plan things through to the end.’

‘What needed to be done so quickly?’

‘I had to get away. I had to go into hiding!’ She had been staring at the tabletop all this time. Now she looked up at him. John saw tears in her eyes, and anger. ‘You can’t imagine what it’s like. No one can, if they haven’t experienced it. I’ve lived in fear of my life for years. I’ve lived with despair, humiliation, physical pain and mental torture. I knew that he’d kill me one day. I just knew it.’

‘He wouldn’t have done that,’ said John. ‘Your husband is, putting it bluntly, a piece of shit, but he’s not stupid. He wouldn’t have risked getting thrown in prison.’

‘It wouldn’t have led to prison, believe me. He would have made the whole thing look like an accident. He’d have found a loophole, wriggled his way out of it somehow. That’s what he’s like. I know him well enough.’

There it was again: the omnipotence that Liza always ascribed to her husband. To her, he was above all laws, untouchable whatever he did. Perhaps, thought John, the worst thing men like Logan Stanford did to their wives was to grind them into the dust and raise themselves up to the height of the heavens; worse than the physical violence was the mental violence they inflicted. Liza was an intelligent person. Nevertheless, Stanford had managed to bring her to believe that she was nothing. And that he was God. There was no point in her fighting him, because she had already lost before she even started to think about resisting.

John shook his head. It was not the right time for psychology. He did not know why, but he couldn’t escape the feeling that time was short. That there was a danger in dragging his feet.

‘Whatever you say,’ he said. For the moment, he wouldn’t be able to make Liza believe that her husband could go to jail like anyone else. ‘How do you know Tara Caine?’

‘I’ve known her since October last year,’ said Liza. ‘The thirty-first of October.’

‘So not that long?’

‘No. About two and a half months.’

He went over to the table and sat down opposite Liza. He was buzzing, wanted to get all the information as quickly as possible, but he controlled himself. Acting aggressively towards Liza could well make her clam up completely.

‘How did you meet her?’

Liza laughed. ‘Coincidence. My husband and I had been invited to the seventy-fifth birthday party of one of my husband’s colleagues. There was a big party in the Kensington Hotel. My husband insisted that I go, although I didn’t feel at all well. My nerves were all frayed and I had another lovely shiner. On my left eye. The swelling had gone down, but it was still blue around the edges. You don’t feel too confident mingling with people when you look like that.’

‘Of course,’ said John. ‘But your husband seemed unconcerned about the risk that people might gossip about you, and perhaps him too?’

‘He knew I’d hide the bruise somehow. It wasn’t the first time we’d been in that situation. I’ve got make-up that’s extremely good at disguising anything. The most important thing an abused woman can have, you know. I could hide the problem, really.’

‘So you went to the party . . .’

She nodded. ‘There were lots of people there. Especially law people. Barristers. Public prosecutors. Judges. My husband was always the centre of things, making speeches. Showing off about his charity work. He had organised a tennis competition that summer to raise money for AIDS orphans in Africa. It had been a massive success and so now he was bathing in the adulation. Everyone was clapping him on the back and saying what a wonderful chap he was . . . and I . . . standing beside him, I could have puked. Really. I wanted to puke right there, in the middle of all these snazzily got-up people who were so sure they were doing good and who in truth were just celebrating themselves and did not realise that someone there was feeling terrible.’

He could guess what was coming next. ‘Caine was one of the guests. And unlike the others, she noticed something?’

‘I really wasn’t feeling good that evening,’ said Liza. ‘I found it unbearably hot in the room, and I suddenly had the feeling that I was sweating profusely. I was afraid my make-up would run. Crazy, right? Actually it should have been embarrassing for my husband if everyone had suddenly seen my black eye. But I just saw it as something
I
should be ashamed of.’

‘From what I know, that’s the way a lot of women in your situation feel,’ said John.

‘I ran off to the loo. Luckily it was empty when I got there. While I was trying to fix my make-up in front of the mirror, I suddenly started to cry. It was a real crying fit. I was completely horrified. My make-up was running, my eyes were all blotchy . . . and I knew I’d have to go back to the party. But I couldn’t stop. I just couldn’t stop.’

It was clear from her expression that she was reliving the moment – the moment that had obviously led to a big change in her life.

‘Then the door suddenly opened, scaring me half to death,’ she continued. ‘It was Tara. I didn’t know her yet, but I assumed that she was one of the party guests. I didn’t manage to slip into one of the cubicles in time. I faffed about with a pile of tissues, trying to pretend that I just had a cold or an allergy or something . . . But then Tara was standing behind me, asking me if she could help. I put the tissues down. I cried. We looked at each other in the mirror. By now, almost all my make-up had come off. The skin around my eyes was gleaming in all its many colours. Neither of us said anything for a minute, and then Tara said,
Your husband?
It was both a question and a statement. And for the first time I didn’t try to make excuses. Didn’t talk about falling down the stairs, about a clumsy collision with a tennis racquet. I just didn’t have the strength to try. So I just nodded. And then Tara asked:
You’re Logan Stanford’s wife, aren’t you?
And I nodded again.’

‘And that’s when the plan was hatched to go into hiding?’ asked John.

‘Not quite,’ said Liza. ‘I told her that there was no way I could go back to the party. Tara helped me. She whisked me out of the hotel unseen, called a cab and took me home. She paid the woman who was looking after Finley and showed her out while I was still waiting in the car. She made me a hot cup of tea. And I was crying the whole time.’

‘Then you told her everything?’

‘Yes. Absolutely everything. It just all came pouring out.’

‘She’s a public prosecutor. She should have instituted proceedings, whether or not you agreed.’

‘She told me that. I pleaded with her not to. In the end, she promised she wouldn’t. But before she went, she looked at me and said:
Liza, I’m not going to give up until you go to the police yourself and press charges. You have to take that step. It’s important – for your life and for your self-respect. Make him pay!
That’s what she said.’

‘And then she kept on at you?’

‘Yes. She called me almost every day. She pressured me. She encouraged me. Sometimes I was happy to hear her voice. Sometimes I felt cornered. Overall . . . it was a comfort to finally find someone who was worried about my future. Even though it sometimes felt too intense.’

‘Tara got carried away?’

‘Yes,’ said Liza. ‘I was amazed at how strong her emotions were. Sometimes it seemed to me that she almost hated Logan more than I did. It must have been terribly hard for her not to go after him in court immediately. But she needed my cooperation. There were no witnesses to our conversation in the toilet, and all the time I was unsure whether or not I could give evidence against him, the case had no firm foundation. It seemed immensely important to her that I took the decisive step. She was always saying that I had to defend myself. Hit back. Destroy him. I was not to be left with the feeling that she or the police had saved me. I was to save myself.
That’s really, really important for afterwards, Liza
, she would always say.’