The Watcher (48 page)

‘The idea in itself might not be misguided,’ said John, ‘but the way you describe her to me, she seems unnaturally involved emotionally. It’s almost as if . . .’ He stopped. He would only distract Liza if he started speculating.

‘What do you mean?’ asked Liza.

‘I just wondered why she got so deeply, feverishly involved in your case. I have the impression that her own life experience might have played a role, although of course I have no proof of that yet.’

‘She never talked about herself,’ said Liza. Her melancholy, despairing eyes suddenly looked at him suspiciously. ‘What’s happened? Why are you so interested in Tara Caine?’

‘Why did she rent a flat for you here?’ John replied with a question instead of an answer.

‘Oh, everything happened so quickly,’ said Liza. ‘Mid November, things got worse again, so I pleaded with Tara to help me escape. She was worried about Finley, but we had talked a lot, and she understood that Logan would never attack him. He idolises his son. That’s the only good thing about him.’

‘And yet the way he behaved was irresponsible, horrific,’ John argued. ‘From what I saw, Finley has completely withdrawn to his own world. It’s unimaginable what he has had to endure over the years. Even if he himself was never attacked, his psyche has been damaged.’

‘Tara comes here every few days,’ said Liza. ‘She wants me to press charges. To divorce him. To start a new life with Finley. To no longer hide. I know she’s right, but . . .’ She shook her head. ‘I’m not ready yet. And sometimes I think things are just getting worse. I just want to dig myself deeper into a hole instead of daring to come out and attack him. But Tara won’t give up. Maybe one day she’ll have got me to the point of doing it. Sometimes I think . . . that I’m a project of hers. She wants to achieve something. But at least for now she has brought me somewhere safe.’

Not a bad term for it, thought John. A project. Maybe so. Tara Caine did not want to attack Logan Stanford directly herself, although as a public prosecutor she had many options open to her. She wanted to encourage Liza to do it. To that end, she was investing time and a not inconsiderable amount of money. Were she to be successful, however, she would easily recoup her expenses: as a divorcee, Liza would be wealthy.

However, money was not what drove Tara. John could not put his finger on why he was so sure. He just felt it. It was something bigger, more important, something that meant more.

‘Did you tell Tara about Carla Roberts?’ he asked. ‘And Anne Westley?’

‘Yes, I told her about both of them. Tara wanted to know if anyone else around me had ever noticed anything, and I said no, not that I knew, but that I had confided in two women in the hope that they would do something. But they hadn’t.’

There was something there . . . He could not see it clearly, but it was as if something in his thoughts was picking up momentum, as if he were approaching some realisation that would make everything clear. This was what he had been looking for, and the police: the person who had known all three victims, who for so long had seemed not to be connected in any way. Carla, Anne and Tom. Gillian, who perhaps was the intended victim instead of Tom.

For the first time he had a name: Tara Caine.

She was obviously obsessed by the idea of helping a woman who was unable to help herself. And who had been left in the lurch by everyone she had turned to when she needed help.

There were still gaps. He still needed to join some more dots before he could reach that moment of realisation.

But I’m close. And somehow it’s got to do with Tara Caine. And Gillian is with her!

He took out his mobile. ‘Excuse me, I just need to make a quick call,’ he said.

For the second time that day he selected Gillian’s mobile number. Once again no one picked up his call. Once again the voicemail switched on after a number of rings.

He left another message: ‘Gillian, it’s me, John. Please call me back. It’s important. Please call!’

‘What is it?’ asked Liza, hearing the urgency in his voice.

He waved her question away. ‘That’s a long story. We might have a big problem on our hands.’

John knew that the moment had come for him to talk to Fielder. He had information that he should not withhold and the police had the means to deal with the situation. He would not be able to keep Liza out of it. Perhaps not his former colleague Kate either.

Maybe he should stop worrying.

He stood up. Before he went to the police, he would drive to Tara Caine’s flat. Maybe the two women were still there and Gillian was just not answering the mobile because she could see his name displayed and was afraid he would try to force her into something.

But he did not really believe that. When they’d last spoken, Gillian had said she was about to leave London. It was now Friday evening. She must have been on the road for hours. Was Tara with her?

He had another idea. ‘Do you have any way of phoning Tara?’ he asked.

The flat did not have a landline, but Liza had a mobile. She scrolled through her contacts and handed the phone to John. ‘Here’s her mobile number. I don’t have another one.’

Almost predictably, no one replied. There was not even a mailbox turned on. John swore quietly to himself.

‘Please stay here, Liza,’ he asked as he walked towards the door. ‘Don’t try to find somewhere new in a hurry, anything like that. Please stay. I might still need you.’

He hoped she would not make him swear that he would not go to the police, but she did not think about that. ‘Where would I go?’ she asked, apathetically. ‘I can’t decide anything without Tara anyway.’

‘I’ll be in touch,’ he promised and went out.

He listened to her close the door and turn the key twice in the lock as he ran down the stairs.

It was hot in the car. Tara must have turned the heating up to full. The thick woollen blanket lying on top of her did the rest. Gillian had the feeling that sweat was pouring down her body. The wool scratched her face too.

The fear of suffocating flooded her in waves of panic. She needed all her mental strength to overcome them. In this heat, with a heavy blanket over her head and body, her mouth gagged shut with masking tape, she could not let herself lose control.

She had begged Tara to leave off the masking tape. ‘Please, please. Please, Tara. Don’t do this to me. I’m afraid. Please!’ She had sworn that she would not make a noise, but Tara was having none of it. ‘You’d promise me anything now. Forget it, Gillian. I’m not going to take a risk, certainly not for you!’

In the garage, sheltered from prying gazes, she had wound the masking tape several times around Gillian’s head. It was stuck fast to her hair and Gillian could imagine how painful it would be to remove it. Although at the moment, that was not her worry. She was not getting enough air, was scared she would suffocate. Scared she would throw up. For that reason alone she had to control her panic. She tended to be sick when she was too worked up.

She had been made to cross her hands behind her back. Then Tara had taped her wrists together too.

‘Where’s the car key?’ she had asked.

Gillian could only make vague sounds, but she had nodded towards Tara’s parked car. Tara understood. She went out and fetched her friend’s handbag and, back inside the garage, rummaged around in it. She found the key, took it out and put Gillian’s handbag back in her car. Gillian remembered her mobile, which someone had tried to call half an hour earlier. She would not have another chance to answer the call.

Tara opened Gillian’s car and ordered her to sit on the passenger seat. Then she locked the car again. Gillian tried desperately to free her wrists from the masking tape, but she did not even manage to loosen them a little. Then she tried to unlock the door with her hands tied up, but that did not work either. She could only sit and wait.

In the rear-view mirror she could see Tara getting into her own car, starting the engine, turning the car around and backing it towards the open garage door. She realised that she was going to be transferred. Of course Tara would have preferred to drive into the garage and do everything behind a carefully closed door, but there was not enough room inside. Tom’s big BMW took up most of the space.

Tara got out and opened up the boot. She pulled Gillian out of her car.

‘Get in,’ she ordered. ‘And no tricks.’

Gillian, helpless and with the gun stuck in her back, climbed into the Jaguar’s boot. There was not much room. She had pull her knees up to her chin in a foetal position.

She was fighting back tears as she felt Tara tying her ankles roughly together. For a short moment she thought about defending herself. Tara had put the pistol down and was standing bent over the open lid of the boot. A well-aimed kick to her groin would immobilise her for a moment. But then? With her hands tied behind her back, would she be able to run outside fast enough? Her former friend would quickly recover and would only need seconds to grab her gun. Gillian was in no doubt that Tara’s threat was serious. A shot in the head. Like Tom.

And then her feet were tied too and it was too late. Her real chance had been earlier, when she had felt it was all wrong and known that she should get rid of Tara. She would have managed it too, if Samson Segal had not had the unfortunate idea of warning her. How on earth did he come to suspect Tara? How had he worked it out? And he had said we. Who was he in cahoots with?

Tara took the blanket from the boot of Gillian’s car and threw it over her.

‘So you don’t freeze to death,’ she said. ‘Who knows how long we’ll be on the road.’

Gillian was again on the verge of tears, and not just because the thick blanket made it difficult to breathe. A memory of earlier, happier times was also welling up in her: the blanket was originally from the car had Tom owned as a student. The old rust bucket would only start with a lot of coaxing, and foam was spilling out of the torn upholstery. That was why Tom had spread the blanket over the back seats. They had just got to know each other and were so in love that they were walking on air. One day in May, they had driven to the sea and taken a swim. Gillian remembered the ice-cold water and the fresh spring air. She had splashed around for too long. Afterwards she was so cold her teeth chattered, her lips were blue and she shook all over. Tom had fetched the blanket from the car and wrapped her in it, then put his arms around her and tried to give her some of his body warmth. They had sat like that for hours on the isolated beach. Crabs were digging into the sand, seabirds were pacing around and slimy green seaweed lay in glittering streaks over the low rocks. The sky was mirrored in the puddles left by the last high tide. Strangely, the situation seemed astoundingly romantic to Gillian, a pure happiness that she knew she would never forget. When, years later, Tom did not want the old blanket in his smart BMW, Gillian had put it in the boot of her car.

While Tara closed the lid of the boot, moved her car forward a little and then got out and closed the garage door, Gillian thought that, even if she survived this situation, she would never lead a normal life again. These experiences would be too heavy a burden. They would never go away. Just like the memory of Tom and the sea and that cold May day. Now other images were layered on top: Tom murdered and strangely contorted on the chair in the dining room. The evening with Luke Palm, when she thought she had seen someone in her house.

Samson Segal’s voice on her answering machine.

Tara’s dead eyes.

From now on, that would be her reality.

She would have given anything to go back to the normality she had known, to that very world she had found hard to accept. She just wanted to have her life back. Her life as it had been. That was all she wished for.

When the car started up again, Gillian wondered what her chances were. Her conclusions were not rosy. When would she be missed? Her parents and Becky would probably call at some point and wonder, after the second or third try, why she neither picked up the phone or called them back. And then? How were they to find her?

Luke Palm would try to get in touch too, when someone was interested in the house or there were questions about this or that detail. At least he knew that she had moved back to her friend’s flat, although he did not know the name or identity of that friend. But he did know the address – he had dropped her off there. Would he turn to the police because her disappearance seemed strange to him?

And then?

She had told John that she wanted to withdraw to a hotel in the country. If he told the police, they might not even investigate her disappearance. Everyone would assume that she had done as she said and did not want to be disturbed. Exactly what was to be expected from a traumatised woman whose husband had just been murdered. And yet her car was in the garage. But would anyone even check her garage? She could have taken the train, which would make sense given the weather conditions.

There was one ray of hope: Samson Segal, the idiot whom she had to thank for her current precarious situation. For some utterly incomprehensible reason he had come to the spot-on conclusion that Tara Caine was a danger to her. But what would he do with that knowledge?

What was Tara up to? She could easily have shot her right there in the house. Was it a good sign that she had not? Not necessarily, Gillian realised in despair. Tara was not stupid. She had heard the warning on the answering machine. She knew that Luke Palm knew where Gillian had taken refuge that night. Neighbours might also have seen their arrival at the house. If Gillian’s corpse were found there in the following days, Tara would certainly be interrogated thoroughly. The situation could become extremely difficult for her. No, Tara wanted to do just what she had said: find a safe place and then decide what her next step was to be. The chain of events had got out of control. She had mentioned Luke Palm’s name by mistake, and now Samson had called.

Since then she had more or less confessed her guilt to her former friend. The obvious conclusion was that she did not see Gillian as someone who was going to have the chance to tell anyone what she had learnt.