The Watcher (8 page)

Gillian thought about what Tom would say now.
You see, that’s why you’re always alone! When someone tries to get close, you immediately brush them off.

She pushed her way through the crowded room and breathed a sigh of relief when she was at the cloakroom. The voices in the other room sounded muffled now. Gillian put a hand to her forehead. It felt hot.

It took five minutes for her to find her coat and put it on. Then she stepped out into the dark evening. It was cold, but it was not as windy as it had been in the last few days. Fog was rolling in from the river. It wrapped itself around her head like a damp, cold cloth. She fished out a cigarette, lit it and sucked on it greedily. As always, the nicotine relaxed her immediately, although she also felt guilty at once. Tom hated it when she smoked. All his arguments against it were right. Like every year, her New Year’s resolution would be to stop.

Like every year, she would not manage to.

She massaged her temple gently with her left index finger. There had been no air in the room, she realised that now. There was no way she could go in again.

I’ll stick around out here for half an hour and then tell Becky that we have to go, she decided. Another reason for her to hate me. Perhaps she should not be so surprised that her daughter did not get on with her. Perhaps her strange ways got on Becky’s nerves far more than she realised.

Just as she was stubbing out her cigarette in an empty planter, she saw John Burton step outside. He had put on a black jacket and slung a scarf around his neck. He smiled when he saw her.

‘Doing the same as me?’ he asked. ‘Abusing your lungs?’

She nodded. ‘I’m afraid so. In any case . . .’ She did not finish the sentence because she did not want to hurt his feelings, but he seemed to understand what she wanted to say.

‘In any case, it’s a good excuse to get away from all of that.’ He nodded towards the sports hall. ‘Unbearable.’

‘You think so too?’ she asked in surprise.

He got out a packet of cigarettes and held it out to her. She took one. Sticking a cigarette in the corner of his mouth, he tried to get a steady flame from his lighter, but it kept going out. Burton cursed. Gillian got out her lighter and lit both cigarettes.

‘Thanks,’ he said.

They smoked in silence. In the end he said, ‘I saw you go out. You looked like someone escaping from something.’

‘I’d been hoping no one would notice,’ said Gillian.

‘Apart from me, I doubt anyone did. They don’t notice other people, at least not like that. But I had the feeling the whole time that you didn’t feel comfortable here.’

Gillian swallowed. It was extraordinary what an understanding comment and a tone of sympathy could trigger. She had the feeling that she was on the point of tears, and that was, of course, terrifying. She would have found it awfully embarrassing to bawl her eyes out here on this foggy winter’s evening outside a sports hall next to her daughter’s tennis coach.

‘I was told about all the illnesses someone’s son has,’ she said. ‘Every detail and allergy. The woman just wouldn’t stop. There came a point where my head was hammering. Perhaps that is why I seem a little pained.’

‘Yes, that was Philip’s mum,’ said John. ‘He’s a nice, bright kid. In my opinion, he doesn’t have any allergies. He has his mother and that’s his problem.’

He said this so calmly that Gillian had to laugh. She was surprised at herself. He had not been that funny, after all. But the laughter came from deep inside herself, from her belly, and bubbled up. She laughed freely, without holding anything back, and thought that she had not really laughed properly, from deep inside, for ages. At the same time she realised that something was not right, because she was laughing more than was appropriate for the situation. She was close to hysterics and it seemed to her that John Burton was looking at her in surprise too.

‘But . . . what’s the matter?’ he asked, and put his hand on her arm. Only then did she realise that she was no longer laughing but crying, and that she had not noticed how one had become the other. The tears were pouring down her face. Her skin had already been damp from the fog, and now it was wet and salty too.

‘I don’t know,’ she sighed. ‘I’m sorry . . . I just don’t know.’

To her dismay, she realised she could not stop crying.

‘Oh God,’ she moaned.

Making a quick decision, Burton stubbed out his cigarette, removed Gillian’s cigarette from her hand and put it in the planter too, then took her arm.

‘Come on. Before other people see you out here . . . You don’t want to give them material for a month’s gossip.’

She could not say anything. She just shook her head. Without any will of her own, she let him lead her across the car park and got into a car whose door he held open for her. She registered that he got in the other side and sat down next to her. She was still crying but she did at least manage to open her handbag and rummage around for a tissue.

‘I’m so sorry,’ she sobbed.

Burton shook his head. ‘Stop apologising. I was watching you this evening and saw how unhappy you were – and you know what I thought?’

‘No.’

‘I thought: she’s going to start crying sooner or later. And I hoped it wouldn’t happen to you in there. I’m glad it happened here in my car instead.’

She finally found a tissue and gave her nose a good blow. Tears were still falling but the wild burst of despair had passed.

‘Frankly, I prefer that too,’ she said. ‘Thank you.’

‘Feeling a bit better now?’

‘A little. But I can’t go in yet.’

Burton thought for a minute. ‘There’s a pub near here. If you like, we can go for a quick drink of something strong. That sometimes helps.’

‘Good idea. I hope I’m not being too much bother.’

He turned on the engine and steered the car out of its bay. ‘Do you think I’m excited about the company back in there?’

‘Hard to imagine.’

‘Exactly.’

A few minutes later they reached the Halfway House. It was on Eastern Esplanade, right by the beach and with a direct view of the river, although you could only guess at it now with the fog and darkness. The windows were brightly lit and music was pouring out into the night.

‘Not the best pub in town,’ said Burton as they got out. ‘But it’s nearby. And you probably won’t meet anyone here who knows you.’

A hubbub of voices and loud laughter met them as they went in. Gillian saw that the pub with its many tables and chairs was full of people. There were no pictures on the plastered walls, nor plants on the window ledges. The place could hardly have been more spartan, although that did not seem to make it any less popular. A variety of age groups mingled. Gillian realised that John was right: it was not the kind of place Tom would frequent. Nor anyone from her circle of acquaintances.

Burton spied a free table with two chairs and opened a path through the crowd. ‘What would you like?’

‘Any shot is good. A double would be better.’

He nodded and pushed his way towards the bar, while Gillian took off her coat, hung it over the back of the chair and sat down. It felt good to be here. To have bawled her eyes out. She took her compact mirror out of her handbag and appraised the damage. It was clear she had been crying. Her skin was blotchy and her eyelids were swollen. Her nose was red. Well done. Typical of her. She had managed to end up in a pub with a desirable man and she looked like a tearful schoolgirl. In fact, it would be a step up if she had looked like a schoolgirl.

I look at least ten years older than I am, she thought wearily. Now I really look like a woman you could take pity on.

She glanced around the room in the hope of seeing the door to the toilets. Perhaps splashing her face with a little cold water would help. Because of all the groups of people standing in the room, it was hard to make out where things were. Suddenly her eye was caught by a man who looked familiar. He was younger than she was, in his mid thirties at the most. He was sitting and drinking beer with another man. He was staring at her. Then she remembered. He lived in the same street as she did, just at the opposite end. He lived there with his brother and sister-in-law. Tom had helped his brother once to sort out an inheritance. Afterwards he had said that they were rather strange people. She smiled at him uncertainly. Oh great! So much for not meeting anyone she knew. How wrong you could be. Her face was tear-stained, she was sharing a table in a pub on a Friday night with a man who was not her husband, and she had immediately met one of the neighbours. Sometimes nothing went right.

The young man smiled back at her shyly. He seemed surprised. You could not really blame him.

John Burton returned to the table armed with two full glasses. ‘I was as quick as I could be,’ he said apologetically, sitting opposite her. ‘Have you acclimatised?’

‘Yes thanks. And realised that I look terrible. I’m really sorry.’

‘We had agreed that you were not going to say sorry any more.’ He raised his glass. ‘Cheers!’

She took a long sip. And then another. The whisky burnt her throat, sending waves of heat through her stomach. It was probably wrong to drink it, especially this much of it. It was not a double. It must be at least a quadruple. And she had not eaten much all day. Afterwards she would pick her daughter up and drive home, pretty tipsy. She brushed aside her misgivings and took the next sip. For the moment she only wanted the relaxation that alcohol brought her. Distance from everything. From her worries and fears and her sadness.

‘Would you . . . would you like to talk about what’s upsetting you?’ asked John after a while.

Why not?

‘To put it simply, my daughter rejects me because she feels I make all her decisions for her and don’t give her enough freedom. And my husband no longer notices me. So just the usual, I suppose.’ She gave a forced little laugh.

John Burton did not join in. He looked at her thoughtfully. ‘I can’t say anything about your husband. But I know your daughter quite well. I like Becky. She’s sporty, ambitious, she’s a team player. She has a strong and independent nature. Yes, she’s also pig-headed and difficult sometimes. But she might just be going through a difficult phase and hurting the people who are closest to her. Don’t worry too much: it will all work out in the end.’

Surprised by the clarity of his pronouncement, she said, ‘You’re sure?’

He nodded. ‘I’d bet on it.’

‘Thank you,’ she said. She was amazed that in a few words he had managed to give her a feeling of relief. It was not that all her problems were solved immediately, but she did feel better. He had taken her seriously and also tried to provide her with some comfort. Unlike Tom, who normally just said that she was imagining it. Unlike Tara, who immediately created such complex psychological scenarios that she felt quite dizzy. Unlike Diana, who whenever Gillian complained, only insisted on how happy she was with her own low-maintenance daughters.

For the first time, Gillian had the impression that someone had really helped her.

‘You understand a lot about children,’ she said.

‘I understand something about sport. And you find out a lot about people when you watch them playing a team sport. Whether they are children, young people or adults. They basically all act just like they would in real life.’

She looked at him with curiosity. ‘Is it actually true that you used to be in Scotland Yard?’

His features hardened. ‘Yes.’

It was obvious that he did not want to talk about his former career and, above all, about the circumstances that had led to his leaving it. So Gillian turned the conversation in another direction.

‘What do you think about the terrible murder of that old woman in Hackney?’

‘There’s not much I can say. I know no more than what’s in the papers.’

‘But you used to be involved with things like that.’

‘Yes, but in this case I can’t tell much. The police are keeping quiet about how the victim was killed. It seems it was done in some unusual way that they are not revealing now, that could help them convict the culprit later. I just read that she was neither robbed nor raped. So it wasn’t for money or for sex; at least not the main motive.’

‘Main motive?’

‘If she was killed in a particularly sadistic way, then sexual motives may have played a role.’

‘Do you think it will happen again? That there will be another victim?’

‘Possibly. Perhaps there was a personal issue between the murderer and the victim, but even then, someone who is capable of such a crime is a ticking time bomb. It’s certainly not the usual way to sort out quarrels or disagreements.’

‘It’s scary,’ said Gillian. ‘Whenever I read such things, I think that just getting through life halfway unharmed is a miracle.’

‘It will all be sorted out. Most crimes are in the end.’

‘But not all of them.’

‘Not all of them,’ he admitted.

She risked touching on his past again. ‘Is that why you left? The police, I mean? Because it was unbearable to be confronted with terrible violence and not always be able to see that justice was done?’

Again his face hardened. ‘There were many reasons,’ he said evasively. He emptied his glass and looked at his watch. ‘I’m afraid we’d better be getting back to the club. Not that I’m keen to go, but if they realise both of us are missing, they might get silly ideas in their heads.’

She realised she was staring at him. Not just looking at him in the way you normally look at the person you are talking to, but completely fixed on him. All the people and the sounds around them had retreated into the background. They were there but it was as if there was a thin wall between Gillian and John and the rest of the world.

It must be the whisky, she thought. I knew it was too much.

‘And what ideas would they be?’ she asked, surprising herself with the challenging tone of her voice. It was not like her to flirt. It was not what she did; she never had. She thought it was too easy to look stupid when you did.

‘I think you know,’ said John and stood up. He had not responded to her tone and she was sure he was angry with her. Or at least annoyed. Maybe he thought she was too obvious. Maybe she had been too nosy when she asked about his previous work. In any case, the wall that had isolated the two of them for a short time was no longer there. Once again they were part of the overcrowded pub, along with all the people standing elbow to elbow and the innumerable voices. They were part of the laughter, the clinking of glasses, the smell of alcohol, sweat and damp coats.