The Watcher (9 page)

As they pushed their way towards the exit, they passed close by the table where the man from her street was sitting. Now she remembered his name: Segal. Samson Segal.

‘Goodbye,’ she said.

He nodded at her, gazing at her. Just as he had when she had first seen him.

She wondered uneasily whether he had been staring at her like that the whole time.

It was Saturday, but the investigation had to go on.

Detective Inspector Fielder had promised to go into town with his wife to do some Christmas shopping, but then he had been called to the scene of the brutal murder of Carla Roberts once again. It was clear to him that he would have to disappoint his wife. Every minute counted now. His wife’s pursed lips as he asked her to bear with him suggested a difficult weekend to come. There would be at least one serious talk about their relationship. There was no way round it.

His colleagues had gone over Carla Roberts’s block with a fine-tooth comb. They had talked to the other residents, had left phone numbers in case anyone remembered something. It had all turned up very little. In fact, nothing at all. No one had known Carla personally. The people who did remember her described her as a quiet woman who lived very much on her own. She was rarely seen in the stairwell. She always said hello in a friendly manner but was obviously too shy to befriend anyone.

‘I don’t think she often left her flat,’ said a man on the sixth floor. ‘She was too self-conscious and full of inhibitions. Completely isolated, if you ask me. No one gave a toss about her.’

Fielder wondered if that was just what had made her a victim. Perhaps it was her isolation, which had not only made it easy for the culprit to murder her but also allowed him a head start before the police investigation got under way. Anyone who knew a little about Carla Roberts’s circumstance could have worked out that her body would not be found too quickly and that it could take a while for anyone to miss her. That was invaluable for the perpetrator of a crime. Every day that went by before the police got into gear was a day’s advantage for the criminal – and a disadvantage for the police.

He had the same thought that he had had the previous Wednesday at Keira Jones’s house: this criminal has nothing against Carla Roberts personally. He just has a problem with women. And he chooses the ones who are easy prey.

And this possibility was in some ways the worst. For if there was no personal connection whatsoever between Carla and her murderer, no matter how far back in the past, then the search for him would be blind guesswork.

There was just one clue. She had obviously let him into her flat herself. That was a gleam of hope. It was the only indication that she might have known him, however fleetingly.

Detective Sergeant Christy McMarrow walked over to Fielder once he had finally found a parking space and got out of his car. Fielder liked Christy because she was dedicated. She gave her job a high priority in her life. Christy was available day and night. She was ambitious. And passionate about her work.

He also found her incredibly attractive, but he knew that he should not be thinking that.

‘The caretaker called us,’ she said. ‘I think you should take a look.’

The caretaker was a small, stocky man with an unhealthy red flush to his face. He was standing outside the door to the block and was almost hyperventilating. Fielder already knew him. Right after his chat with Keira Jones, he had asked the caretaker about the lift. Apparently it was not possible for the lift to go to a floor without it having been sent there. If Carla Roberts heard the lift unnaturally often on her floor, then someone must have sent it up there.

Or gone up in it. Without getting out. Fielder did find that very strange.

‘I found out that something isn’t right about the door, Inspector,’ said the caretaker as soon as he caught sight of Fielder. He pointed to the glass door to the block. ‘I can’t understand how I didn’t notice it before now. Somehow . . . well, it could just be pushed open the whole time. Once or twice I thought that people were careless, not closing it properly, but today I realised . . . that it wasn’t carelessness. And so I called your colleague.’

‘That was the right thing to do,’ assured Fielder. He examined the door. He thought about what Keira Jones had said. The door to the street had been open when she came to visit her mother.

‘Why was it today that you realised it couldn’t just be carelessness?’ he asked.

The caretaker looked embarrassed. ‘Because I started to think . . . I mean . . . after the terrible incident, you can’t help wondering . . . Well, suddenly I thought it shouldn’t have been like that. With the door. It has a spring, so once you’ve opened it, it closes behind you and locks. Every time. You have to be really careful to stop it happening. You know what I mean? I realised how stupid I’d been. The door was never locked, as if everyone who’d gone through had just gently rested it on the lock. And why should people do that? That would be crazy!’

‘It certainly would,’ said Fielder. ‘So the spring mechanism is broken?’

The caretaker nodded. ‘Yes. The door closes so slowly now that it doesn’t lock any more.’

‘Since when? Or rather: when did you first notice it?’

‘Not long ago. Maybe . . . four weeks ago?’

Fielder turned to Christy.

‘We’ll need to check what caused the defect. Whether it was just wear and tear or helped along by someone.’

‘Right.’

‘Let’s suppose someone did it. From then on they can get in and out without any problem, can observe Carla Roberts, torture her psychologically by getting the lift to go up to her floor now and then. Then one day they go to her door, ring the bell, and she lets them in . . . Would she have done that? All alone up there?’

‘Maybe she had met her murderer once or twice in the block,’ said Christy. ‘Without knowing that it was just someone who crept in and hung around sometimes. She might have thought the person was one of the other tenants. You’d open the door to someone from your own block, wouldn’t you? Although in a block where people barely know each other, there’s no guarantee of anything.’

Fielder nodded distractedly. There were too many open questions. They still had not managed to find Carla Roberts’s ex-husband. And if he really had disappeared abroad years ago, possibly to the other side of the world, then the search was not going to be easy. Of course, in that case he was probably not involved in his ex-wife’s death.

The investigations concerning his former lover had also proven fruitless so far. Her identity was now known, but she had not lived at her last known address for years. Fielder speculated that she had gone abroad with her lover.

He rubbed his cheek tiredly. ‘We have to try to find out about Carla Roberts’s private life. It’s impossible that there was absolutely no one she talked to or went to the cinema with. Have you got any leads?’

‘Not yet,’ admitted Christy. ‘The daughter knows so little about her mother’s life that she can’t help us at all. I’ve got the dead woman’s address book. There are a few names in it that I’ll go through. According to the daughter, the names are mainly staff at the chemist’s where her mother used to work. That might help a little.’

‘Have a go,’ said Fielder.

For some reason he did not hold out much hope. Carla’s colleagues at a workplace that she had left years ago – what help could that be?

But he did not express his doubts.

He could not afford to make the case even more complicated by demotivating his most capable colleague.

‘Have you ever really tried to talk to Becky properly?’ asked Tara. ‘I mean, in a way that shows that you take her seriously. She obviously feels you’re boxing her in – and so she rebels against that. It’ll only get worse in the next few years. So you two should find a way to avoid letting every day become a battle of wills.’

‘Tara, maybe I do treat her like a child, but she
is
a child. She’s twelve! I know that she thinks she’s grown up, but I’m afraid she’s wrong.’

‘Twelve-year-old girls today are more mature than we were when we were that age. Not that I’m saying you should just let her do what she wants all the time. Just that you shouldn’t pooh-pooh the issues she brings up.’

‘I don’t. And by trying to explain my point of view to her, I’m attempting to engage with her,’ explained Gillian. ‘Unfortunately, she doesn’t show the least willingness to see things from my point of view. That’s where we always get stuck.’

‘And could you do that when you were twelve?’ asked Tara. ‘Put yourself in your mother’s shoes – understand what she felt, what her worries and needs were?’

They were sitting in Gillian’s kitchen. It was late on Monday afternoon. Becky had gone to Darcy’s house straight from school. Gillian had worked until early afternoon. She had had to deal with a particularly unpleasant and unhappy client. Then she had driven to the supermarket. She had just got back and flung her shopping bags full of food, cat food and cat litter on the kitchen table when Tara called. Tara had been to see a witness living in Shoeburyness who was vital to the case on her desk right now, and as her journey back went right by Gillian’s house, she asked if she could come in for a cuppa.

Not long afterwards, she was standing in the doorway. As ever, she looked stressed but also fresh and elegant in a dark blue trouser suit with leather boots and a matching coat. Gillian hurried to unpack her groceries and feed Chuck, who was already acting vexed. Jittery as she was, she once again felt inadequate beside her friend.

‘How does Becky get on with Tom?’ asked Tara.

‘With Tom? Great,’ said Gillian. ‘But that’s no surprise. He’s barely around, and the little time he does spend with her, of course he can be the dream daddy who lets her do what she wants and plays along with every idiocy. I have all the day-to-day routines to deal with, and they are full of traps.’

Tara looked at her carefully. ‘And how are things between the two of you? Between you and Tom, I mean.’

Gillian took a deep breath. ‘Not great. But not bad, either. It’s not like we fight. Actually, we don’t talk much to each other. As I said, he’s hardly ever here. He lives for our company and for the tennis club. That doesn’t leave a lot of time.’

‘So he’s still as crazy as ever about sport?’

‘It’s getting worse. He comes home, changes and off he goes. Other men drink after work to wind down. He has to work it off. Honestly, I’d rather he had a few beers at home. But it’s not just sport. Naturally he has to network too. There are committee meetings and other meetings and preparations for competitions. They meet up socially every Tuesday night. If I were in my death throes, I don’t believe he’d miss his Tuesday meetings. I don’t even know if he really likes going, but it’s just part of being a member. Apparently people raise their eyebrows if someone doesn’t turn up one week.’

‘You could always go with him.’

‘I could. But I don’t play tennis and they only talk about tennis. Anyway, I don’t like to leave Becky on her own. At least not in the evenings.’

Tara smiled. ‘You fuss like a mother hen.’ It sounded affectionate. Gillian smiled back at her.

Tara and Gillian had met five years earlier in London at a French course that the two of them had taken. Gillian had wanted to polish up her schoolgirl French. Tara, who had worked as a lawyer in Manchester for many years, had recently applied to a London chambers and been taken on. In her very first case there, her lack of French was a problem. Typically for her, this experience had immediately driven her to taking a French course. The two women had sat next to each other and had taken an instant liking to one another. They had remained friends ever since.

‘Surely Tom – now, don’t be annoyed if I ask . . . Surely he’s not having an affair, is he?’

‘Tom? Never,’ replied Gillian in horror. At that moment two things happened at the same time: the telephone rang and the Christmas fairy lights, which were strung up in the kitchen window and connected to a timer, came on.

‘Oh good lord,’ said Tara with a grin. She found Christmas pretty ghastly.

‘Excuse me,’ said Gillian and walked over to the phone in the hall. ‘Gillian Ward,’ she said.

‘Hi, it’s John Burton. Am I disturbing you?’

She wondered why the tone of his voice gave her a funny feeling in her stomach. Something inside her knotted up in a way she had not experienced for a long time. Out of the blue she remembered what the woman at the Christmas party had said:
I have to stop myself having indecent thoughts whenever I see him.
Why had that come to mind right now? wondered Gillian.

‘No,’ she said. ‘You’re not disturbing me at all.’

‘I just wanted to ask if you got home all right on Friday night.’

‘Oh yes, thanks. Yes, here I am.’ She waited. It seemed to her as if her voice had an unnatural sound to it. And she knew that Tara was listening carefully.

‘And then,’ Burton continued, ‘I wanted to say that I’ll be in the Halfway House this Wednesday. If you’d like to meet again, I’d like that.’

She was surprised. On Friday she had drunk too much and made an embarrassing attempt to flirt with him. She had thought she had annoyed him, but over the weekend she had come to the reassuring conclusion that she would need never to be in close contact with him again, even though he was Becky’s coach. Until now she had avoided chatting to him when she dropped off or picked up her daughter. It was never difficult, in fact, as Burton was so completely surrounded by other mothers that she could hardly have got near him. And that was what it would be like in future. Friday had been a one-off mistake. It would soon be forgotten. She had bawled her eyes out, she had drunk too much, she had flirted with him. It all went together. Burton would see it for what it was. And if not, that was his problem.

‘This Wednesday,’ she repeated.

‘Yes, I’ll be there around seven. After coaching the young people’s group.’

Becky was still, just barely, in the children’s group. She would not be there on Wednesday.