Watching You (32 page)

A
dozen police officers are walking down either side of the railway tracks, searching the crushed stone ballast between the sleepers and the sloping embankments, which are thickly covered with weeds and brambles. The Metro line train has pulled forward to the station platform where passengers are being interviewed. Locals have gathered near the station area to monitor and discuss the incident. Joe grew up in a village not much bigger than this one and remembers how quickly news travels.

Clouds are massing in the west, above an assortment of trees—oaks, poplars, birch, and others that Joe can’t name. The branches shiver as the wind picks up.

Paramedics are treating the woman who had her Land Rover stolen. She’s sitting in the back of an ambulance while they swathe her head in a white bandage. Gennia is with her, asking questions before they take her to hospital for X-rays.

Below, in the station car park, Joe notices a little girl with braided hair leading a woman by the hand, asking questions, excited by the strangeness of the scene. She spies somebody she knows and leaves her mother, running to a man who picks her up and holds her above his shoulders. Joe smiles to himself and thinks of Emma. She’s too old now to be thrown in the air, or maybe he’s grown too physically frail, which makes him feel even sadder.

A bubble of spit forms on his lips because his medication produces excess saliva. As the bubble breaks, he can almost hear a voice inside his head saying, “Of course, of course.”

He remembers the photograph that Thomas Logan pulled from his dressing-gown pocket: Marnie, aged two, sitting between her parents on a wicker sofa; mouths open wide, eyes shining. Joe studied genetics for a semester in his first year at medical school—a part of the course he enjoyed because it didn’t involve cutting up cadavers. They were taught about dominant and recessive genes and what family traits are passed on through each generation.

Already in motion, Joe walks along the platform, down the stairs, searching for Gennia. He finds the DI at the station office.

“Dimples are caused by a dominant gene,” he says. “They’re inherited from one or both parents. Marnie has dimples, but her parents don’t.”

Gennia looks at him as though he’s losing his mind. “So what?”

“Owen Cargill has dimples.”

T
he headlights of the Land Rover sweep over the farmhouse, whitewashing the wall before swinging toward the barn. Pulling up outside the double doors, I get out of the car and lift the metal latch, pushing each side open. I will keep the vehicle out of sight until I dump it tomorrow.

Elijah has stopped whimpering. Zoe stemmed the bleeding with her sweatshirt. Now she’s cradling his head and looking at me sullenly.

“I want Mummy,” says Elijah.

“We’re here now, sport. I just got to park the car.”

Pulling into the barn, I turn off the headlights and kill the engine.

“What are you waiting for—an invitation?” I say, signaling Zoe to get out.

The clouds have closed in and the starless sky is black apart from the horizon, which is faintly etched against the distant glow of Manchester. Occasionally, streaks of lightning flare across the ridge.

There is a torch on the windowsill. Feeling along the dusty wood, my fingers close around the handle. When I press on the switch, it flickers for a moment and glows weakly. The batteries are almost dead. They were used up this morning when I chased Marnie and the boy. Nothing is ever easy.

“Come on.”

“Where’s Mum?”

“In the house.”

“I can’t see where I’m going.”

“Stick close to me.”

“Elijah can’t walk.”

“Then carry him.”

The torch casts a pale glow on the ground in front of us. Something scurries from our footsteps, a fox or a rat perhaps. I glance at the darkened farmhouse, wondering why Marnie has turned the lights off. She won’t have escaped. I know her too well.

I find the gap in the hedge and uncouple the gate. The house is in front of us now, less substantial in the dark, but we don’t need to live in a mansion. Marnie can plant roses under the big window at the gable end and grow herbs in the garden outside the kitchen.

I reach the porch.

“Wait here,” I tell Zoe, before veering away from the door and skirting along the side of the house, navigating my way around the corners, peering into the darkened windows. Marnie has pulled the curtains closed. I press my face to the glass, trying to see inside. I can’t make out anything except my own reflection bouncing back at me in the weak glow of the torch. Standing on tiptoes I try another window. My breath steams up the pane of glass and the torch dies completely.

None of the windows are broken. Both doors are secure. Returning to the porch, I search for the right key.

“I’m hungry,” says Elijah.

“Keep him quiet,” I say.

I push the door open with my foot and reach for the light switch but nothing happens. A fuse has blown or Marnie has found a way of cutting the power.

“Are you there, Marnie?”

Silence answers.

“What are you up to? I know you’re in here.”

The question seems to bounce back off the darkness.

“Don’t play games with me. I have the children.”

As I scan the kitchen, I feel the pressure of things behind me or in front of me, imagining that she’s waiting in the dark. I’ve been here before, steeped in blackness, a little boy with inky fingers and pink translucent ears, hiding in a cupboard while his mother earned her keep.

“You’re being foolish,” I say, aware that I took the knives away from her. “You have to understand, Marnie, I’m used to the dark. I’ve lived in your ceiling.”

Zoe’s voice is close behind me. “What have you done to her?”

I grab Zoe’s arm. “Call to her.”

“Mum?”

“Tell her to come.”

“Mum, are you there?”

We listen to a dripping tap and a cooling water heater. Before Zoe can back away, I push her ahead of me. She bumps into a chair that is lying in the middle of the floor. All of the chairs have been overturned, creating an obstacle course. I kick them aside. They slide across the linoleum and crash into the cupboard doors.

I keep another torch in the kitchen, along with candles and matches in case of a power cut. Opening the drawers, I feel for them. Gone. Clever, Marnie, clever. You’ve taken away the light, but I don’t mind. I’m a connoisseur of the darkness. I don’t need to see you to find you.

“This isn’t funny,” I yell. “Elijah is scared. He cut his leg. It could need stitches.”

We’ve reached the hallway. The drawing room is on the right, bedrooms ahead, a bathroom at the far end. Another light switch doesn’t work.

“We’ll wait outside,” says Zoe.

“No, I want you close. Call out to her again.”

“Mum, it’s me…are you OK?”

I twist Zoe’s arm. She cries out. No answer from Marnie.

Glass shatters in a muffled whop and tinkles like laughter. It came from down the hallway. She’s in the bathroom. I push Zoe aside and run, tripping over something on the floor—a wire at shin-height stretched between opposite doorframes. I land heavily on something that shatters under my chest and forearms. Light bulbs. I can feel the shards embedded in my skin. That’s what she’s done, the clever bitch, unscrewed the light bulbs. The pain arrives: a thousand cuts. Bleeding.

I hear another sound, a gleeful, guttural chuckle. She’s making fun of me.

On my feet, I grind the shattered glass into the floorboards. Turning. Calling for Zoe.

“Come here.”

She’s backing away from me.

“Do as you’re told.”

I can see her silhouette. She’s holding Elijah on her hip.

“We’ll wait outside.”

“No!”

I hear the laugh again. It doesn’t sound like Marnie. She can’t be with someone else. I wait, listening. A shadow moves across a doorway. Perhaps my eyes are playing tricks on me. I’m in the bathroom. Marnie must have shattered the mirror. The light switch is a hanging cord.
I hear a dull click when I tug upon the cord. Nothing. I try again. This time something swings into the side of my head and sends me crashing into the opposite wall, my brain rattling, legs wobbling, dazed. Fury balloons inside me.

“This isn’t a joke, Marnie. I’m going to hurt Zoe and Elijah. Come out now.”

Lightning flashes. For an instant the windows and corridor are lit up. I see the blood on the front of my shirt. I see the broken mirror. Thunder arrives, shaking the pictures on the walls and the plates in the kitchen. The door to one of the bedrooms is ajar. I imagine someone standing behind it. With one finger I push it open and step in sideways, staying close to the wall.

Lightning flashes again. In the moment before I’m blind again, I see a stark figure, more animal than human, crouched in the corner. The darkness returns like a dustsheet thrown over everything. The room had looked empty. She must have moved the bed. I stay close to the wall, hoping for another flash of lightning.

I hear the same rumbling laugh.

“Are you with someone, Marnie? You’ll have to introduce me.”

I want to run forward, but stop myself. Instead I close the door. My hands are slick with my own blood and I need both hands to turn the handle.

“It’s over, Marnie. You can come out now.”

She’s no longer in the corner. My head swings ponderously from side to side, searching for her. I can see the barest outline of a person kneeling between the window and where the bed used to be. Trying to hide.

“This used to be your room, Marnie. Do you remember?”

She doesn’t answer.

“I won’t keep secrets from you anymore. We’re family. That’s why I watched over you. That’s what a father is supposed to do. Do you understand what I’m saying? You’re my daughter! Elijah and Zoe are my grandchildren.”

Silence.

“I thought we could live here. We could be like a proper family. We have everything we need.”

My body is trembling, but not from the cold. How calm she is. I expected more. Tears. Denial. Outrage.

“I have never desired anything more than this—to have what I’ve never had. Your mother kept you from me. She tried to pretend that I didn’t exist. I can tell you the whole story.” My eyes are stinging. My limbs are leaden. “Say something, Marnie. Please?” I kneel on the floor next to her. “No more games.”

She makes a noise deep in her throat. Toneless. Mournful. It may be acceptance. For a moment I feel pleasure flood through me. She’s going to forgive me. She’s going to be mine. Not scared. Not frightened. Mine.

T
he rain starts falling around nine, a drizzle at first, mingling with the dirt on the windscreen and bleeding down to the wipers. Gennia parks at the entrance to the farm track. The windows are fogging up. He cracks one of them and rubs a viewing porthole in the condensation.

Thunder rumbles overhead before fading like a passing freight train. For the past half-hour lightning has been painting the landscape in brilliant flashes, turning the trees to skeletons and buildings into charcoal sketches.

“This is the place,” he says, peering through his binoculars.

Joe glances at the farm track. The stolen Land Rover had a GPS/GSM signal locator hidden on the chassis. The owner’s husband had it fitted after he had a previous car stolen.

Gennia takes a stick of gum from his pocket.

“What are we waiting for?” asks Joe.

“Maps. A property search. Back-up.”

Every so often a fork of lightning detonates on the hillsides to the north of them, getting closer. Joe counts down the seconds until the thunder. He can’t remember the equation—how many seconds between the two—which estimates how far away they are from the lightning.

The detective tilts his head toward the track. “So what’s his body count?”

“Pardon?”

“If this is our guy, how many people do you think he’s killed?”

“I don’t know.”

“If we trace back through Marnie Logan’s life, are we going to find more bodies? Some poor guy sideswipes her car and next thing his life is ruined. Some hairdresser gives her a bad haircut. She gets bad service at a restaurant. Where does it end?”

He rubs the stubble under his chin and stares out the window for another full minute.

“We found Marnie Logan’s DNA in Hennessy’s apartment.”

“Cargill could have planted it there.”

“Why?”

“He wanted to have leverage over her.”

“All because he wanted a family.”

“It’s something he’s never had.”

“Christ, he could have taken mine. I haven’t talked to my sister in ten years and my two nieces think all police are pigs who pick on blacks and Asians and Moslems and take bribes from journalists.” Gennia leans back against the headrest for a moment, cracking his neck and stretching his back muscles.

The radio squawks. He picks up the handset. A tracking company has confirmed the location of the car—a quarter of a mile to the east. The farm is owned by a company registered in the Isle of Man with a post office box belonging to a firm of solicitors. Prior to the sale it was rented for nearly thirty years to various tenants, including Thomas Logan.

Gennia glances at Joe. “That’s good enough for me.”

Three more police cars have joined them. The DI gets out and opens the car boot. He puts on a heavy black vest and a rain jacket. Other officers check firearms and don helmets.

“Do you want me to stay here?” asks Joe.

“We might need you,” says Gennia. “I want to avoid a hostage situation.” He tosses Joe a vest. “Put this on and stay well back.”

The detective briefs his team, seemingly more relaxed to have reached this point and to be dealing with a different sort of uncertainty. “We don’t know if he’s armed, but we do know he’s dangerous. Check your radios. No heroics. There are children with him.”

The officers begin moving, three abreast down the track. Torches dance over the ground ahead of them. Joe stays well back, trying not to look directly at the lights. A luminous mist rises from the fields, blurring the ridge above them. Gennia crouches and shines his torch at the edge of a puddle. “Two different vehicles and a motorbike. Fresh.”

The track follows the contours of the land, finding the path of least resistance. They wade across a stream and begin to climb. Occasional forks of lightning mark out the horizon and leave white spots dancing on Joe’s retina. One such strike reveals a farmhouse and a ruined barn clinging to the hillside. Both are in darkness.

Gennia looks at his watch. Ten-fifteen. They could be sleeping. He sends two officers to the barn, telling them to check for the Land Rover. The others are to surround the house.

“We’re going to give this guy a chance to leave the house peacefully,” he says. “But I don’t want him slipping away like a thief in the night.”

He summons Joe. “How is this Owen Cargill likely to react if we come bursting through the doors?”

“He’s a former soldier.”

“That’s what I thought. You stay here.”

Gennia moves off along the track. Soon he’s lost in the darkness. Joe can see the barest of shadows as the officers surround the farmhouse, crouching and running between cover. The minutes pass slowly.

A gull’s cry seems to bounce off the ridge. Harsh. Beseeching. It takes a moment before Joe realizes how out of place it sounds, this far from the sea. It can’t have been a gull. The wind has died with the rain.

Somebody is coming toward him. A detective. Two children. Zoe carries Elijah, stumbling under his weight, but she won’t let go. She falls to her knees and Joe cradles both of them in his arms.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have run away,” she sobs. “I thought it was Daniel.”

“Where’s your mum?”

“I didn’t see her.”

“Is she in the house?”

“I don’t know. He went inside. I decided to run.” Her hair falls over her eyes. “It’s the man from the library.”

“What man?”

“He called himself Ruben. I met him there. He gave me a laptop. He said he didn’t need it anymore. It’s him, isn’t it? He’s been watching us.”

“Ruben is his middle name,” says Joe, removing the bandage from Elijah’s ankle. He looks for any other injuries.

Gennia has joined them. He addresses Zoe. “Does he have any weapons?”

“I don’t know.”

“You didn’t see any guns, or knives, or anything explosive?”

She shakes her head.

The detective seems satisfied. “I’ve called an ambulance.” He turns back toward the farmhouse, jogging with a spring in his step, driven by whatever strange cocktail of adrenalin and desire makes a person want to risk their life to protect others. Joe has felt it before. It’s not something you expect, it just happens. You react instinctively: you fight or flee or stand your ground.

“Police! Open up!”

The bellowed warning echoes from the ridge, amplified by the contours of the valley.

“Owen Cargill, we know you’re in there. Come out with your hands in the air.”

There is another long silence.

“Nobody has to get hurt, Owen.”

Glass breaks. Wood splinters. Heavy boots are inside the house. Torches swing from room to room, glowing behind the curtains.

Zoe’s breathing has slowed. Joe has checked Elijah’s ankle. He’s fallen asleep resting his head on Zoe’s thigh.

“Professor!”

Joe glances up sharply. A younger detective is stumbling toward him, the torch bouncing over the ground.

“The boss wants you,” he says, out of breath. “I’ll stay here.”

He hands over the torch.

Getting to his feet, Joe pauses for a moment, willing his legs to move in the right direction. The turf looks almost white in the disc of light. The first thing that strikes him on the walk to the farmhouse is the quietness. He can picture himself as a little boy running through fields on the edge of Snowdonia pretending to be a superhero who was going to save the world.

Gennia is waiting on the veranda. His stare seems to pass right through Joe, as though he’s gazing from the depths of history or some dark place that he can’t escape. Another detective is leaning over the railing, vomiting into the flowerbed.

Joe maneuvers his way through the fallen chairs in the kitchen and follows his own torchlight down the hall, grinding glass into the floorboards with his shoes. He swings the beam upwards onto a bathroom mirror. Cracks radiate outwards from the point of impact like a child’s drawing of the sun. He can see himself reflected in a dozen different ways. Tall. Short. Fat. Severed.

He hears the sound of running water. Marnie is kneeling in the bathtub, washing her hands beneath the tap. She rubs them over and over, splashing water up her wrists, cleaning between her fingers, scrubbing at her nails, muttering to herself. Rasping and deep, her voice makes little crowing sounds of delight that seem to be coming from the pipes through some trick of ventriloquism.

“Marnie?”

She lifts her face. “Don’t use that bitch’s name to me. I told her what would happen. I told her, but she wouldn’t listen.”

“We haven’t met before, Malcolm. I’m Professor Joe O’Loughlin.”

She blinks at him through a fringe of matted hair.

“Can I come in?” He moves inside the door and takes a towel from the shelf, putting it around Marnie’s shoulders. He notices her split lip and a blue pulsing knot above her left eyelid.

“Are you hurt?”

She doesn’t answer.

“Why did you come back, Malcolm?”

“Why do you think?”

“I want to speak to Marnie.”

“That useless bitch is never here when you need her. It’s always me—doing her dirty work.”

“Can I speak to her?”

She doesn’t answer.

“I want to make sure she’s OK?”

The bitter laugh makes the hair on Joe’s neck stand on end. His own voice betrays him.

“We have something in common, Malcolm, we both care about Marnie and we both want to help her.”

“I’m sick of helping that bitch.”

“But you need her, Malcolm.”

“That’s where you’re wrong. I don’t need anyone.”

“Let me talk to her. Marnie, can you hear me? I’ve just seen Zoe and Elijah. They’re OK. They’re worried about you. If you come back to me, I’ll take you to them.”

She spins around and lunges toward Joe, spitting the words. “Why don’t you just fuck off! She’s not listening. She only listens to me.”

“You can’t even say her name, can you?”

No answer.

“Say her name for me.”

“No.”

“Marnie doesn’t need you, Malcolm. She didn’t need Owen and she didn’t need Daniel. She’s survived on her own.”

Hatred curls in the corner of her lips. “I can crush her.”

“She’s stronger than you think. She’s learned to live without you once and she’ll do it again.”

“She’s pathetic.”

“If you’re so strong and she’s so weak, let me talk to her.”

“No.”

“What are frightened of?”

“I’m not frightened of anything.”

“I think you are. I think you’re frightened of Marnie. I think you know she’s stronger than you are. She pushed you out once—she’ll do it again. You’re nothing without her. You’re a fucked-up teenage thug with a potty mouth.”

Marnie is on her feet, hurling herself toward him, her face twisted with hatred and loathing, trying to scratch out his eyes. Joe grabs her arms, pulling her from the tub. He forces his body onto hers, using his weight to press her to the floor. His mouth is near the shell of her ear.

“Don’t fight me, Marnie, fight him!”

She twists and squirms, trying to burst out of his arms, but the effort exhausts her and energy leaks from her lungs like a spent breath. She curls into Joe’s chest, no longer struggling, withdrawing into herself.

“He won’t be watching me again,” she whispers. “He’ll never watch me again.”