Watching You (16 page)

M
arnie has a dream of being awake. A man is straddling her body, sitting on her chest. She can’t open her eyes or move her limbs, but she can smell him. His head is directly over hers. Nose to nose, forehead to forehead, he’s breathing into her mouth, but she can’t scream or cry out.

Concentrating hard, she tries to open her eyes.

Wake up. Wake up. Wake up.

Her body rises into the air and she hears a violent rush of wind. Jumping so violently, she expects to bump heads with the figure on top of her, but the weight has gone and she’s staring into the darkness, listening to her own heartbeat.

Is she really awake, or dreaming of being awake? How can she be sure?

She lies still for a minute more, breathing slowly, soaking up the certainty of the room. Staring upwards, she sees stars twinkling above her on the ceiling. They swim before her eyes and disappear in the blink of an eye.

Something crawls over her leg, the last remnant of the dream. She shudders and sits up, looking out the window at the tops of trees and the mansion blocks on the far side of the garden. Tree branches thrash in the wind and raindrops hit the glass like grains of sand.

Sleep has always been Marnie’s retreat from the world, one of life’s few pleasures. But now these dreams make her fear it. She’s frightened of not waking up and being caught in a parallel world that seems so real and physically solid she can actually feel the weight of a man sitting on her chest and smell his breath.

Her own mouth tastes sour and metallic, as though she’s vomited. Going to the bathroom, she splashes water on her face and stands woodenly in front of the mirror, letting droplets fall from her nose and chin.

Sometimes, she has a sensation of breaking loose from herself, as though stepping out of her body. Either that or she senses there is another better version of herself trapped inside or walking in the world. Braver. More deserving. This
other
Marnie is waiting for her to slip up so they can assume control. Professor O’Loughlin has said it could be post-traumatic stress, but he doesn’t know the cause.

When Marnie was a child, after her mother died, she had an imaginary friend. Doctors told her that this friend was another part of her personality, trying to help her cope, but Marnie didn’t believe them. How could somebody else live inside her without her knowing? Surely she’d see the evidence—a marker of this other “self”—a shimmer at the edge of her vision or something half-glimpsed in the shadows of her mind. She had never told anyone—not the professor, or Daniel, or any of her friends—because it embarrassed her and she denied its existence.

Wiping her face with a towel, she goes back to the bedroom and hears a sound near the wall, a tiny muffled sob. Elijah has curled up next to her bed, cuddling a battered rabbit he calls “Bunny.” Marnie scoops him up onto her lap.

“C’mere, baby, what’s wrong?”

Elijah chews on his lower lip and the underside of his chin quivers. “I saw a monster.”

“That’s silly. There aren’t any monsters.”

“He was in the hallway.”

“You saw me. I went to the bathroom.”

Elijah sniffles. “Who were you talking to?”

“Me?”

“You were talking to someone. You were saying, ‘Wake up, wake up.’”

“Was I?”

He nods.

“That was a dream talking.”

“How do dreams talk?”

“They just do sometimes.”

The flat is quiet now, everything amplified by the darkness. Green numbers glow on the digital clock: 3:37.

“You can sleep with me,” says Marnie, tucking him into her bed.

“What if I fall asleep and forget to wake up?” he asks.

“I’ll wake you,” says Marnie, getting into bed beside him, holding him close. “We’ll wake each other.”

“What about Bunny?”

“We’ll wake him too.”

Some time later she hears a scream. Zoe is yelling in the kitchen, bashing a saucepan with a wooden spoon.

“Muuuum!”

“What?”

“I saw the mouse. It’s under the fridge.”

“It’s only a mouse.”

“It’s disgusting.”

Marnie drags herself out of bed. Elijah follows, rubbing sleep from his eyes. He peers under the fridge. Marnie tucks her dressing gown between her thighs. Zoe is still brandishing the saucepan, holding the handle with both hands, ready to swing.

“I’ll buy some mousetraps today,” says Marnie.

“You can’t do that,” says Elijah.

“Why?”

“It could be Stuart Little.”

“It’s
not
Stuart Little,” says Zoe, exasperated.

“How do
you
know?”

“He’s not white and he can’t talk.”

“He could be related,” pouts Elijah. “He could have a family.”

Marnie looks in the crack between the fridge and the cupboards, contemplating what to do. She won’t call Trevor. She doesn’t like him coming into the flat. Instead she phones Mr. and Mrs. Brummer, her landlords. Mr. Brummer answers the call, sounding bright and chirpy like he’s been awake since VE-Day. He tells Marnie the adjoining building had to be fumigated because of mice. “Now they’ve come to us—seeking refuge,” he says, making it sound like the Jewish diaspora.

“What should I do?” asks Marnie.

“Buy a cat.”

“You don’t allow pets.”

“I will make an exception.”

“I don’t want a cat.”

“Suit yourself.”

R
uiz hammers his fist against the large metal door. It opens and a blast of warm air escapes, wet with steam and dry-cleaning chemicals that hook the back of his throat and squeeze tears from his eyes. A man’s face appears, as grained as a cedar shingle. Flecks of dandruff have settled on his overalls.

“What do you want?”

“I’m looking for Calvin Mosley.”

“He in some sort of trouble?”

“Not from me.”

The door opens further. Ruiz is pointed along a corridor between massive stainless-steel driers that rumble as if they’re washing rocks. Above him sheets, towels, and tablecloths are pinned to hangers that are being pulled along a conveyor belt. Lint and dust are caught in the heated air, sucked into the vortex created by extractor fans.

The commercial laundry is in the East End, just off Brick Lane, where it cleans table linen and bedding for some of London’s finest hotels and restaurants. The majority of the employees are Bangladeshi or Pakistani. Women. Veiled. Wearing saris. Most will never dine on the tablecloths or sleep on the sheets they launder every day.

Ruiz follows directions between the rows of driers. Calvin Mosley is wheeling a trolley and pushing armloads of linen into the machines. He’s wearing overalls and scarred leather boots that remind Ruiz of what his stepfather used to pull on every morning before working on the farm. Perspiration rings are half-mooned beneath his arms.

Ruiz shouts over the driers.

“We need to talk.”

“Who are you?”

“I’m a man seeking information.”

“A copper?”

“Not anymore.”

“I’m working.”

“It’s about Marnie Logan.”

“Not interested.”

Mosley pushes the trolley past him. Ruiz shoots out his hand and grips the handle.

“Tell me something, Calvin,” he says. “Who actually gives a kid a name like that? What were your parents thinking? He’ll be a fashion designer or maybe a cartoon character. Instead they got a drug dealer and an ex-con.”

Anger flares in Mosley’s eyes. He breathes deeply. Deflates. “Don’t tell my boss.”

“You bucking for employee of the month?”

“I need this job.”

“I’m not looking for trouble.”

Mosley glances at a delivery entrance at the rear of the factory. He walks. Ruiz follows. Red vans with the laundry logo are backed up to the ramp, some delivering, others collecting. An open drain runs down the center of the loading dock where water trickles through a metal grate.

Mosley pulls a crushed packet of cigarettes from his pocket, his eyes dull with fatigue, hands shaking. The skin on his face is stretched tightly over his bones creating angles and shadows. Putting a bent Marlborough to his lips, he thumbs a plastic lighter. Smoke curls in wispy threads from his fingers, which are scarred below the knuckles. Homemade tattoos. Prison. Regretted.

“Is she after money?”

“Not unless you’re offering.”

“I don’t owe that bitch the sweat off my balls.”

The words are punctuated with a rasping cough. Mosley covers his mouth, coughs again. “Is Zoe OK?”

“When did you last see her?”

“Years ago.”

“Maybe you should get back in touch.”

“Bit late for that.”

Dragging on his cigarette, he savors the smoke moving across his tongue and into his lungs.

“Did he send you?”

“Who?”

“The new husband.”

“You’ve met Daniel Hyland.”

“He came to see me. Said something about Marnie’s birthday and wanting to do something special for her. He wanted me to film a message to her.”

“What did you do?”

“I told him to run, to go somewhere far away. Change his name. Buy a gun. Get the hell out. Otherwise it’s only a matter of time before she turns on him.”

“Marnie?”

“She won’t just plant the knife, she’ll twist it a few times or use it like a joystick.”

Mosley talks with a warped smile, one side of his mouth higher than the other, as though he’s suffered nerve damage to the left side of his face. Two of the Bangladeshi workers pass, lowering their eyes and wrapping veils across their faces.

“Daniel Hyland is missing,” says Ruiz.

“I hope he’s hiding.”

“The police suspect that he’s dead.”

Mosley hesitates and seems to shake off an unspoken fear. His shoulders are sharp beneath the heavy cotton.

“I’ve been married three times,” says Ruiz, “but I don’t hate my ex-wives.”

“You weren’t married to Marnie.”

“What did she do to you?”

“She fucked me over. She chewed me up and spat me out. She’s like that girl in
The Exorcist
. I’m not talking about her head spinning around and vomiting green shit, but she’s possessed by something evil.” He pauses and lights a second cigarette with the remains of the first. “I know what you’re thinking. How can a man blame a woman for putting his life in the crapper? But she’s not normal.” He waves smoke away from his eyes. “You want to hear the story? I had an affair, OK? I screwed up. I shagged one of our friends. She’d been a bridesmaid at our wedding, but I knew her from before that. We’d always liked each other. Kept in touch. Then one weekend I told Marnie I had a work conference in Brighton, which wasn’t lying. I went with Patrice. Marnie stayed at home. She was still breastfeeding Zoe.”

Mosley leans on a downpipe, flexing his fingers. “I’m not making excuses, but things hadn’t been great between Marnie and me. She hadn’t lost her baby weight and we weren’t doing the conjugal tango very often, if you catch my drift. I don’t know how Marnie found out about Patrice. Someone must have told her.”

“She threw you out.”

“On my arse…and I deserved it. I fucked up, I accept that.”

He wipes his sleeve across his mouth. A gray tube of ash clings to the end of his cigarette.

“We separated. I collected my shit and went to live with Patrice. About six months later, we drove to Austria for the ski season. Patrice got work as a chalet girl and I fitted boots and skis. We were away four months. I sent back money to Marnie when I could, but we aren’t talking about much. I was earning fuck-all.

“Patrice and me didn’t last the season. She ran off with a ski instructor who took her to New Zealand. I drove the van back. Caught the ferry at Calais. Customs pulled me over in Dover. They found fifty grams of heroin in one of my bags. I swear on my Mum’s grave it wasn’t mine. I swear on my daughter’s life. I had no idea.”

The ash falls onto his chest. He brushes it away.

“The police didn’t believe me. I had a few problems when I was at university, small time stuff, you know. I got picked up selling pills at a party and received a suspended sentence. That sort of shit counted against me, but none of it made any sense. If I was going to smuggle heroin, why only bring in fifty grams? That’s not how the prosecution saw it. They said it was probably a test run. My brief told me to plead guilty. Said I might get three or four years. I didn’t
do
anything. I was fucking
innocent.
So I pleaded not guilty and I got seven years. Served five.”

He holds back tears, gazing into space.

“You want to know what’s truly fucking ironic?”

“What’s that?”

“I didn’t have a drug problem until I went to prison.”

He blinks at Ruiz, who recognizes the sallowness of Calvin’s skin and the jaundiced tint to his eyes. A dirty needle. A drop of blood. A slow death sentence.

“How long have you got?”

“Eighteen months, maybe a little longer. My liver is fucked.”

“Are you clean?”

“Wouldn’t make any difference.”

Ruiz catches a whiff of his body odor, a smell of sour milk and yeast. “Why blame Marnie Logan?”

“I didn’t—not for a long while.”

“And then?”

“About a year after I got banged up, I read a story about a British girl being arrested in Bali. It was Patrice. Customs officers found a kilo of cannabis in her suitcase. She’s serving twenty years at Kerobokan Prison.” He takes a ragged breath. “Now I can accept that coincidences can happen, but Patrice says she’s innocent. We were both set up the same way. You want to know what else? She got the same postcard as me.”

“What postcard?”

“It arrived about a month after I started my sentence. No name, no return address, postmarked from London. It said,
Payback is a bitch!
”

Mosley rubs at his bloodshot eyes.

“Did you tell Daniel Hyland all this?”

“Yeah, I told him.”

“What did he say?”

“He tried to defend Marnie, but I know he was having doubts.”

“Why?”

“I think he’d talked to some other people. The scales were falling from his eyes. Marnie Logan comes across as being all sweetness and light, but she’s like an angel of vengeance, believe me. Nobody escapes.”