Watching You (27 page)

T
he nursing home worker has prominent teeth and a sharp widow’s peak that looks painted onto her forehead. She’s wearing a tunic dress and chunky shoes that squeak on the floor tiles as she leads Joe and Ruiz along the corridor, past kitchens and a dining room.

“I haven’t talked to Thomas today. I don’t know if he’s having a good one,” she says.

“How long has he been here?” asks Ruiz.

“Four years and eight months.”

“Why so certain?”

“The police asked me that.” She waves to a colleague behind a desk. “Have they found his daughter and grandson?”

“Not yet.”

She nods sadly and notices Ruiz’s missing ring finger. “What happened?”

“It’s an old gypsy tradition,” he replies. “When you’ve been divorced three times, they cut it off.”

Her eyes widen ever so slightly and then narrow just as quickly.

They have arrived in a cluttered lounge with a large bay window overlooking the garden. The room smells like an old railway carriage and has brown lumps of furniture, sofas with knobbed legs and sprawling armchairs. A second door opens and a man enters, dressed in plaid pajamas and a dressing gown. He has comb marks in his hair and has cut himself shaving. A torn piece of bloody toilet paper is sticking to the cleft of his chin.

His eyes brighten at the sight of Joe and Ruiz. He comes forward quickly and holds out his hand, smiling, surprised to have visitors.

“It’s been ages,” he says, shaking their hands. “Far too long.”

“Too long for what?” Ruiz asks.

Thomas frowns, realizing his mistake. He doesn’t know if he’s met them before, but his coping mechanism for his dementia is to smile and assume some prior contact, hoping not to cause offense.

“These gentlemen have come to ask about Marnie,” says the nurse, separating her words, as though speaking to a child.

“Is she coming?”

“She and your grandson are missing.”

“They normally come on a Wednesday. What day is today?”

The nurse turns to Joe. “His long-term memory is better.”

Thomas has taken a seat opposite Joe. Ruiz is more comfortable standing at the window because nursing homes make him nervous.

“When did you last see Marnie?” Joe asks.

“It would have been…” He pauses and searches for the memory. “I can’t remember. She normally comes on a Wednesday.”

“How did she seem?”

“Fine. She brought Elijah. Such a good boy.”

“Did she ever talk about somebody following her?” asks Joe. “An old boyfriend, maybe, or someone from her past who might be infatuated with her.”

Thomas shakes his head. His fingers are toying with the bow of his pajama bottoms.

“What about Malcolm?”

Thomas’s mouth opens slowly and he hesitates like an actor stranded mid-monologue, gaping at the audience, having forgotten his lines.

“I’ve talked to Dr. Sterne,” says Joe. “He told me about what happened to Marnie.”

“Then you know the story.”

“Did you ever meet Malcolm?”

“I heard the tapes. Didn’t sound much like Marnie.”

“But you accept that he existed—this other personality?”

“You trust the doctors, don’t you? They’re the experts.”

“According to Dr. Sterne, Marnie’s problems dated from her mother’s death.”

Thomas seems to sink further into the lumpy sofa. In the silence that follows, Joe recognizes a man who remembers too much rather than too little. His mind is abandoning him, leaving by degrees, yet he’s condemned to relive the tragedies while forgetting what he had for breakfast this morning.

“I was working on the rigs, commuting out of Aberdeen,” says Thomas, blinking at them sadly. “Away two weeks, home two weeks. I was planning to quit and get a job closer, but then my wife fell pregnant. We’d been trying for a baby for years—a brother or sister for Marnie.”

“How old was she then?” asks Joe.

“Just turned four. I signed on for another year on the rigs. We needed the money. That’s why I was away when it happened. My wife went into premature labor. She tried to drive herself to hospital. Crashed. Miscarried. Marnie was in the car. Somehow she managed to get out.” He looks at his hands, dizzy for a second. “It was a boy…the baby.
My
boy. We had his name picked out: Malcolm.”

Ruiz turns from the window. “You were going to call the baby Malcolm?”

“After my grandfather,” says Thomas.

“Did Marnie know that?”

“We didn’t keep it a secret.” Thomas closes his eyes and his breathing grows long and shallow. For a moment Joe thinks the old man might have fallen asleep, but he stirs suddenly and clears his throat. He describes getting the news and being airlifted from the rig to Aberdeen and then traveling south to collect the body of his dead wife and dead son and to console his traumatized daughter.

“They say that life can turn on the length of an eyelash and that’s what happened to us, Marnie and me. But we started again. We had no choice. I remarried. A good woman. Caring. Patient. We fostered kids, dozens of them.”

“Did any of these foster children get close to Marnie or develop a special bond with her?”

His lips make a popping sound. “Marnie didn’t like them. She preferred her own company. I used to hear her arguing with herself of an evening behind her bedroom door, having conversations, trying not to be heard, as if she’d done something shameful.

“That’s when the trouble started. Marnie must have been seven or eight. She began telling lies and making up stories, blaming the other kids. We took her to see a shrink, the first of many. Initially, they said that Marnie was acting out her frustration because she lost her mum. The next therapist claimed she was reliving her traumatic experiences. Others said she had schizophrenia or was bipolar, or suffering from post-traumatic stress. Then Malcolm showed up. I had my own theory. I think she invented Malcolm because she was pining for the brother she never had.”

Joe takes Daniel’s notebook from his jacket pocket and opens a page at the list of names.

“Do you know anyone called Francis Moffatt?”

“He used to place foster kids with us.”

“He’s a social worker?”

“Yeah.”

“Did he spend a lot of time around Marnie?”

“Depends what you mean by a lot. He came to the house every few weeks.”

“Do you still have any contact details?”

Thomas shakes his head and seems to remember something else. Reaching into the pocket of his dressing gown, he pulls out a photograph that is worn with age and handling. It’s a picture of Marnie aged about two, squeezed between her parents on a wicker sofa. It looks like a posed family portrait, but something has made them all laugh exuberantly with mouths open and eyes shining.

“Doesn’t she look like her mother?” says Thomas.

Joe notices the oval faces and cupid-bow lips. Marnie has a narrower nose and dimples on her cheeks that look like thumb prints.

“She was her mother’s daughter, never mine,” says Thomas. “That’s why I wanted a boy.” He looks at Ruiz. “What day is it today?”

“Friday.”

“Marnie won’t come until Wednesday.”

T
he car pulls into the entrance of a muddy farm track. Owen gets out to open the gate, which swings inwards on stiff hinges. The rutted track, dotted with puddles and cowpats, is overgrown at the edges with blackberry bushes. Crouching near the gate, Owen checks for fresh tire tracks. Satisfied, he gets back behind the wheel and follows the track, wrestling hard with the wheel as the car bucks and rocks over the potholes. Marnie can’t stop herself being thrown left and right. Elijah laughs.

The car crosses a small stream where rocks have been arranged to form a solid base beneath the water. The foundations of a washed-out bridge are fifty meters downstream. They pass through a grove of blighted trees and then begin climbing toward a farmhouse surrounded by orchards that look overgrown and diseased. The wooden dwelling has shuttered windows and a water tank squatting to one side. A lone oak tree is shading the front garden, etched so starkly against the sky it could have been cut out of black cardboard and pasted onto the scene. Behind the house, nestled into the ridge, a barn seems to be leaning against the wind, the worn timber planks turning gray with age.

Marnie snatches a breath, feeling woozy. This is where she used to live. The barn, the house, the windmill, and the oak tree are all relics of her childhood. When she was a little girl her father would hold her wrists and spin her round and round until her feet left the ground and she seemed to be flying. When she stopped and tried to stand, she’d lurch and stagger. She loved the feeling of flying, but hated when the world seemed to shift and buckle beneath her like an invisible earthquake. That’s how she feels now, as though she’s been spinning in circles and suddenly come to a stop.

“Look, Mummy, cows,” says Elijah.

“Yes.”

“Can I go see the moo-cows?”

Owen nods. Elijah pushes open the door and runs across the grass to a fence.

Getting out of the car, Owen stretches. Yawns. He surveys the overgrown fields as if he knows every inch of this place. Walking up the front steps, he crosses the front veranda and reaches up into a hanging basket to retrieve a key. The air in the house is musty and stale. He opens the shutters. Throws back the curtains. From the outside the house had looked almost derelict, but inside it is freshly painted and newly furnished. There are large comfortable sofas, side tables, a TV, and woolen rugs on the floorboards.

Marnie sits in an armchair, swamped by memories from long ago. There used to be a bureau next to the window and a painting of a Tuscan villa. They would put the Christmas tree in that corner and hang stockings over the fireplace. There were shelves full of books and her stepmother had a sewing table. Her father was away for weeks at a time, working on the rigs; coming home with sweets and chocolate.

“Why did you bring us here?”

“You always liked this farm.”

Marnie walks from room to room. When she closes her eyes, she can hear her father and stepmother shouting at each other. Impossible love. Coolness. Arguments. Apologies. Regrets. What can a child do? What can a child know? She sees images of foster children. Shared rooms. Beds. She has a familiar feeling of not being good enough.

“Who owns this place?” she asks.

“We do.”

“What does that mean?”

“It’s ours.” Owen turns in a circle, holding out his hands. “I did it for us. You should have seen this place when I found it. Rats in the ceiling. Rain leaking through the roof.” He motions Marnie to follow him. She glances behind her at the open door.

“Elijah will be fine.”

Along a narrow hallway there are doors on either side. Bedrooms. The first is a large room with a queen-sized bed and a chest of drawers. For a brief moment Marnie feels as though she’s back in the flat. The furnishings are identical to her bedroom, the duvet cover, cushions, and curtains. The dressing table has her make-up and moisturizing cream—the brands she could afford to buy before Daniel took redundancy.

Owen opens the wardrobe. “I couldn’t get everything,” he says, apologetically, yet pleased with his efforts. “Some pieces weren’t available so I had to approximate. The sizes are right.”

Marnie recognizes blazers, skirts, blouses, and silk scarves; a dress that Daniel bought her, her favorite boots (she bought them in the post-Christmas sales two years ago)

“They’re all new,” she whispers.

“Of course.”

“How?”

“When you bought them, I bought them.”

Marnie backs toward the door, feeling her throat tighten.

“There’s more,” he says, brushing past her. She flinches, holding up her hands. Owen ignores her and walks along the hallway, pointing to another bedroom.

“This is for Elijah.”

The single bed has a Thomas the Tank Engine duvet, along with 3D posters and wall art and a toy box shaped like a train engine. There are dozens of books, toys, and a painting easel cum blackboard.

“It’s not exactly the same,” he says. “I thought Elijah would like some new toys.”

“Why did you do this?”

“For us.”

“But why?”

“We’re a family now.”

Marnie feels her stomach cramp and vomit rising, scalding her esophagus. She swallows hard but can still taste it in her mouth.

“You can’t expect us to stay here. People are looking for us.”

Owen touches her forearm. “You want to hope they don’t find you, Marnie.”

She doesn’t understand.

“They think you killed Trevor and Patrick Hennessy and Quinn.”

“Trevor?”

Owen nods. “Your kitchen knife was used to kill Quinn. Your fingerprints are on a glass in Hennessy’s apartment. They’re going to find Trevor’s semen on your clothes.”

Marnie’s mouth opens, but no sound emerges. She tries again.

“Why?”

“This way I can protect you. Leave here and you’ll go to prison. Stay, and I can look after you.”

“I can’t stay.”

“You have no choice.”

Elijah comes running into the house and along the hallway. He stops suddenly outside his bedroom.

“Wow!”

He looks at Marnie.

“I never want to go home.”

G
ennia is eating and talking to Ruiz on the phone. Each time he takes a mouthful, he catches a whiff of his shirt, which stinks of failure and yesterday. He hasn’t been home. He hasn’t slept. The sandwich is his first food in sixteen hours. He brushes crumbs from his paperwork.

“The flat was rented by Martha Cargill, aged seventy-five. She died of lung cancer two weeks ago. She’d been bedridden for months. People rarely saw her. She took over the flat six years ago. Neighbors say there was a younger man living with her. He told people he was a carer from the local authority, but social services have no record.”

“Do we have a name?”

“Called himself Owen.”

“What about the old woman’s pension?”

“Somebody collected it every month. Scrawled a signature. The GP who signed the death certificate is on holiday in Benidorm. We’re trying to reach him now.”

Gennia takes another mouthful and chews slowly.

“How did she pay the rent?”

“Cash, up-front, a year in advance, lodged in a Barclays account. The utilities are paid the same way, cash again at various Post Office branches, never the same one twice in a row.”

“It must have been the carer. What do the neighbors say about him?”

“Late forties, early fifties, he kept to himself. He normally used the rear door. The old lady had a lock-up and a car. He may be driving it. We’re going over footage from CCTV cameras in the area.

“We’re also canvassing the other crime scenes and talking to neighbors to see if any of them can link this guy to Quinn, Hennessy, or the caretaker. All the principal suspects are being re-interviewed, including her ex-husband, who hasn’t been co-operating.”

“Calvin isn’t a fan of the UK police,” says Ruiz. “The professor wants you to check another name—a social worker called Francis Moffatt. Could be retired. He used to work for Social Services in Manchester—the Child Protection Team.”

“What’s the connection?”

“Marnie’s parents were foster carers. Francis Moffatt organized the placements. He was in and out of their house. Maybe Moffatt developed an unhealthy interest in Marnie, or one of the foster kids became fixated on her.”

Gennia scrawls a note. “Has Zoe remembered anything else?”

Ruiz glances at the teenager, who is sitting cross-legged on his sofa with her laptop resting on her thighs. She’s listening to something on earbuds, watching TV, and typing. Multi-tasking in the modern age.

“I’ll need to talk to her again,” says Gennia.

“I can bring her in.”