The Watcher Read online

  ‘Oh, I thought something was up. Anyway, must get off.’

  ‘Sorry, Lil, didn’t someone say you used to be a nurse or something?’

  This was exactly what I didn’t want. Chinese whispers travel fast.

  ‘Doctor, actually. Used to be. I… trained. For… a year or so. Then I packed it all in. For my market research… stuff. You could be talking to Dr. Gullick right now. Imagine. Ha.’

  That sounded at least vaguely feasible.

  ‘Would you mind taking a little look? Sorry to bother you.’

  Deeper and deeper.

  ‘Course. Where’s it hurt?’

  He pointed, I nodded. I bent down and put a hand on his thigh. In the open air. I held it tightly. I squeezed. My hand rose a touch. Under his shorts. I breathed in and thought demonstrably, then looked up as if the answer is in the sky somewhere.

  ‘How’s that feel?’ I said. His leg hair against my palm.

  ‘Tight,’ he said, grimacing.

  I hummed to myself in agreement with some phantom theory of my own invention. It’s a big muscle, the thigh one. One of the biggest, maybe. I don’t know. I ran my hand all around it. Front and back. Foraging. I needed to get out of this. Aiden could be watching. I didn’t want him to see me like this. I didn’t want him thinking I’m taking my practice any more seriously. The door to the building was just there.

  I punched the leg softly for no reason. I looked up at him. His pupils shrank a fraction.

  ‘Ice it. Bag of peas. Whatever. Give it a good ice. Ice it up. Gotta dash.’

  I ran off before he could say anything else. I didn’t want to be out there. I had to stop doing that. A bead of sweat dropped from my head as I climbed the stairs. I hadn’t realised I was sweating. I got straight back to my hide and took a deep breath. I examined my paperwork. My research. My findings.

  I have a grid now. There are thirty-seven flats in Waterway, all built with glorious balconies that either look at the reservoir face on or from the side. Nine flats on each of the first four floors and the penthouse on top. From my vantage point – the bedroom window, with my elbows on the carpet and the blind low to stay undetected – not one of them can escape my gaze.

  That is if they don’t have their blinds up. Which many of them have. I’ve been to see the onsite estate agent and figured out that flats three, twenty-two and twenty-five are unoccupied and are for sale. An awkward conversation with the concierge, which involved him slowly staring at me to try to figure out why exactly I needed to know all this, informed me that one, nine, ten, twelve, sixteen and thirty are owned and unoccupied. I will mark them on my grid with the abbreviation ‘Un’. The other abbreviation (‘NS’) refers to No Sighting. As in, their blind is up, I’ve seen into the apartment itself, but I haven’t seen anybody in there. Yet.

  Thinking of ‘getting another one’ was what I came up with ‘and wanted to know more about the demographic of the buildings’. That’s how I squeezed the intel out of the concierge. I mean, as if I could afford another one of these places. Please.

  I put my new information into my spreadsheet. All of this could come to nothing, of course, if the killer has scarpered already. On a plane to foreign climes. But this is all I have at the moment. Everyone needs a project. Me more than most. Terrence licks his lips and puts his head in my lap as I make a grid:

  I’m going to go into more detail at this point, so stay with me and refer back to the grid whenever you need. I do need your thoughts on this so try to pay attention. But. spoiler alert! You don’t need to remember every name. I haven’t narrowed them down yet. Don’t worry. Let it blow over you like a warm breeze. Just stay cool and stay with me. OK, here goes:

  After previous documented sightings in the previous weeks, I can be pretty certain that Joseph, Hannay, Ingrid, David Kentley, Kim, Anthony, Rebecca and Gregory live alone. I had thought that there would be more couples in the buildings, I predicted they would be the predominant demographic, but ‘single working professionals’ I was told by the concierge are ‘quite prevalent’ in the newbuilds and that is well borne out by the findings you see here.

  It is also a demographic that is too young to have any children who would be large enough to fit the criteria of the murderer. Approximately forty-eight is my predicted top age, with the lowest being Anthony, who I believe to be a nineteen-year-old student, with cash in the family. Mr and Mrs Smith are a Japanese postgraduate couple, possibly both in the field of medicine.

  I will also keep a look out for girlfriends, boyfriends and everything else of that type, but it would seem rather gauche to commit a murder when staying over. Not many people feel that at home. It was eight months before I chanced even leaving a toothbrush and slippers at Aiden’s old flat.

  Marnie, you will find, has a plus next to her as she is a recent sighting and I believe there could be a partner, I will give it three more days studying her behaviour before I file this possibility under ‘unlikely’. All of this means I’m close to extinguishing the option of any extras being our culprit.

  Having obtained a good set of floor plans from the local estate agent, again on the pretence that I might be ‘looking to get another one’, I can confirm that the single people are in one-beds, so I’m discounting the possibility of rarely seen room-mates. It’s amazing what information you can easily rustle up if they’re constantly trying to flog these places.

  We are then left with five people who haven’t yet opened their blinds. Five very private people or lucky holidaymakers. I have seen frequent nudity in the other flats, as they are dominated by glass fronts, so a desire for privacy borne of not wanting to literally ‘expose themselves’ to their neighbours is not an impossibility. It’s also recently been the weekend so I don’t discount small sojourns to the coast or abroad.

  Similarly, there are seven ‘no sightings’. I am hoping the holiday situation or the ‘away on business’ scenario resolves itself with the ‘no sightings’ too. I need the last few worm their way out of the woodwork and allow me to fill in the rest of my grid sooner rather than later.

  So why don’t we cut to the chase and start the friendly game of Guess Who killed their elderly neighbour?

  Male, tall, blond hair, scarred hand.

  Extracting the women, who sidestep our first criteria by virtue of avoiding that troublesome Y chromosome, who count for twelve of the twenty-three inhabitants, it leaves us with eleven males.

  Gregory, Tony and Mr Smith are on the short side, standing at five foot nine or below so let’s discount them straight away.

  Remember the kid described him as a big guy. Hannay is the oldest at around fifty (probable divorcee). His age is something that would have, in all likelihood, been commented on by Nathan and his brother, but I understand this point is debatable. While he is blond, he is also slight, so if they meant build by the comment ‘big guy’ then that also counts him out.

  Importantly, and we’re getting down to the nitty-gritty here, Anthony, James, Stewart and Paul could under no reasonable conditions be considered to be fair haired.

  So, that leaves Joseph, David Kentley and Jonny.

  Jonny is a big bloke, he could pick you up and throw you over his shoulder on a night out, despite protestations, with considerable ease. He also stalks around his tiny flat like a wild beast. Slamming his fridge and Skyping with intent. Not that his aggressive Skype technique represents the perfect profile of a murderer, but it is necessary to consider anything that could be helpful at this stage. The problem with him is that he is, technically speaking, ginger rather than blond. But so few people are what I would term ‘1989 Jason Donovan blond’ that I think it is necessary to widen the search as far as ginger to allow for the dark night and the fleeting nature of the encounter.

  David Kentley is fair-haired. He is a touch slight and a tad effeminate but this does not discount the possibility that he is a murderer. Norman Bates, anyone? He is as precise as they come, foodie and solitary. He would prefer an early night with a herbal bev
erage and a new Ottolenghi recipe over anything else. Last night, he also watched a horror film, one of those torpid Hollywood-remake ones, which doesn’t speak much for his taste. A diseased mind, perhaps?

  Then there is Joseph. There have been few sightings of him in his natural habitat. In fact, just a single but very clear one of him doing squats. My first recorded bonafide sighting in fact! He also jogs around the area very frequently and at 6.45 every weekend meticulously cleans his racing bike using water from the fountain. This leads to some contention with the overly officious concierge. But it is always calmly handled with good humour by Joseph, which I think is to be regarded as a feather in his cap in this day and age. When the aggravation of the rush hour seems to be hitting fever pitch. When you bump into stranger on the Piccadilly Line sometimes and they give you a look like they want to tear you limb from limb. We’re an angry breed these days. There really are too many of us in this city.

  The boys said the attack was just a couple of weeks ago and that they cut him quite deeply so the task now is to have a good look at their hands. Something by no means impossible with these binoculars and at this distance. In fact, unfortunately, I have already examined David Kentley’s hands while he made a salad. And they are very much pristine. Which I think concludes our need for him in our investigations.

  Joseph and Jonny, however, have proved more elusive and I will be staying here this evening with the express purpose of filling in the other gaps in this grid and to get a better look at the hands on these guys.

  Terrence stirs and goes for a wander around the house. I call to Aiden. ‘Can you put out his food, Aid?’ but nothing doing. I’ll do it myself.

  I walk to the kitchen and feed him the same dry stuff I saw in Jean’s cupboards, which you can get from the little shop next to the café. I stare him in his stupid, lovely, little face:

  ‘What happened to your mummy, eh? What happened to her?’

  He snorts and runs back to the bedroom.

  My phone vibrates, a text. I sigh. I want to be left alone. It’s from Phil. As if your messages weren’t enough, threatening to come over uninvited. Now I have another nuisance caller. I shouldn’t have given him my number, he actually uses it. Sends me funny messages, as if we’re proper mates. With emojis and everything. But it’s not from him. It’s from Jean.

  I flinch. I seemed to have developed a nervous disposition. But it’s no real shock at this point. The old ladies telecoms activities have really gone up since her death. Impressive. Here she comes again. She just won’t go away.

  Part Five:

  Birding

  13 days till it comes. 8.30 a.m.

  I shouldn’t have let them keep the damn phone but I didn’t want it. Neither of us fancied handing it in to the police and getting tangled up with them. I didn’t want to have to destroy it either. That would be the sort of thing a guilty person would do. Someone with something to hide. I don’t want to start looking like that.

  There were few clues that could be gleaned from Jean’s Nokia 8210. When punching in my number I’d already noted I was only the fourth entry in her phone. The other three read:

  GAS

  ELECTRIC

  BASTARDS (COUNCIL)

  I wonder how her family got in touch with her, or if they ever did. She only had calls from those three numbers in her call history, and she was the sort of woman that thought texting was the devil’s work.

  She had one single, unopened text from the gas company. I opened it. I’m nosey I guess. They were asking her to set up an ‘online billing system’. It was from 2013. They were barking up the wrong tree. I don’t think Jean bothered joining the Internet Age. I found all this out in a matter of seconds without her ever knowing, but that’s just the way I am. I’ve always been like that. I look at things and see a lot. We all do really, we make a thousand snap judgements about a person as soon as we meet them. Some we’re not even aware of.

  A neuroscientist recently found that we’re only consciously aware of about two per cent of the information our unconscious body and brain uses to react to new scenarios. A million little ways to survive we’ll never even know about. I don’t want to blow my own trumpet but I bet I’m more conscious than most. I was known for it at school. ‘Stats’, the other kids called me, because if people mentioned something in class I could recall it exactly. By date, even. I could tell you exactly how many times Mr Baker used the words ‘Anderson Shelter’ in the first History lesson of term many months later. Fourteen, I think it was.

  I am a catalogue of useless information. A hard drive of statistics and old nonsense that won’t go in the trash can. I guess that’s why I like birds. And people – at least from a distance. I see their distinguishing marks and in an instant I take it all in and I don’t forget it. Then they’re mine, in a way. Beautiful things, committed to memory, mine to keep for ever. So don’t give me your phone even for a moment, who knows what secrets I’ll discover.

  They’ve got my number. That was stupid, I’ve left myself open, I don’t know these kids. If they’re dangerous or what. Now they’re calling the tune. I don’t want to be dragged around by their whims. I’ve got work to do. I suppose it’s good that what’s left of Jean’s pay-as-you-go texts are being put to good use. But there’s something eerie that hits me every time I see her number. That little, mysterious electronic envelope icon stares at me threateningly. Even though I know it’s them. I open the message and take a look.

  ‘Tomorrow. The Z Café. 8.30. Thompson,’ it read.

  I don’t know whether they’re trying to help or if they need something, but maybe I owe it to them to turn up and meet them at least. It’s public too. Should they try anything funny. The only thing I know about those kids is that Jean said to be wary of anyone hiding out in those buildings. But I’m curious, to a fault. So, at 8.30, I rush downstairs and past the fountain to the café and shop, and I head inside.

  They’re nowhere to be seen so I order a latte from the nice Greek guy who owns the place and take a seat at the back. The Polish waitress with the constantly perplexed expression slams my drink and its accompanying tiny biscuit down in front of me. Around the corner, a group of kids can be heard playing distorted hip hop from their smart phones. One of them has a ‘Hoverboard’. It’s not the sort of ‘Hoverboard’ I was promised would exist one day. It dribbles along as dynamically as a faulty Stannah Stairlift. But he seems proud enough to dick around on it in a crowded café, to the delight of the rest of his gang. The perplexed waitress has asked them to turn it down many times but the last time they told her in no uncertain terms to ‘fuck off’. These are not like the boys I met in the squat. These are bad kids.

  I say kids, they’re probably in their early twenties but God knows what they do with themselves. They don’t look like they’re part of the workforce. There is not a management consultant or postman between them. Their grey tracksuits, like Babygros, seem to have granted them eternal youth. Boom boom boom da boom. Their phones blare away.

  There are three other patrons in the main body of the restaurant as I wait anxiously, uncomfortably. It’s the figure I’ve cut most frequently since this all started. A trendy type, sips at a fruit juice and surveys his laptop so intensely, as if he would climb inside and swim around inside if that were possible and permissible. A couple eat breakfast in silence, perfectly content, their minds a thousand miles away on some Far Eastern beach, yoga types.

  The last is an older guy who leans in to me, kindly allowing me to sample his stale breath. His face stays there; it would be menacing if he wasn’t so frail. Despite his age he is fashionably dressed, however it’s unclear whether this is by fortune or design. Maybe he has accidentally come into fashion recently, his angular face peering in at me, his blue-striped jacket hoisted to the elbows.

  ‘Yes?’ I offer.

  ‘Are you the lady that’s looking around?’

  ‘Who wants to know?’ Immediately giving myself away, which wasn’t my intention.

  �
��Right. I was having a word with the boys. Round at Alaska House. They said you were following a few things up after Jean popped off.’

  ‘OK. Let’s say that’s me then. What do you want?’

  ‘Just to pass on some information, love, thought maybe I could help out. I was speaking to them. Last night. Asked them to put us in touch when I heard you was… looking around,’ he rasped, in hushed lullaby tones.

  ‘And why… why is that necessary Mr… Thompson?’ The name from the text.

  ‘That’s right.’ He smiled, trying to look as legit as he could.

  We size each other up. The other patrons in their own worlds.

  ‘You see, lovely, I’m the guy that lives right above Jean. Right there. Bang.’

  He points to number fifty-one. I don’t know how much to trust him but I decide to listen. What harm can that do? He goes on.

  ‘I was checking on all the racket you made with the boys that night. I realise it was me you were looking for.’

  A cold shiver runs down my body. I’m unprepared to meet her killer. I punch out some sounds, remembering I’m in a public place.

  ‘So you…’ The words ‘killed her’ catch in my mouth and refuse to come out.

  ‘Ah, no. No, no. Sorry about that, love. No, I didn’t do her over. Ha. No, no,’ he says, artlessly. He sniffs, still sniggering. That seemed to really tickle him. Then he finally gets on with it. ‘But I saw someone what did. Would you like to know more?’

  ‘Yes. Yes, all right, what do you want, money?’

  ‘No, love, nothing like that. Doing my civic duty, ain’t I?’

  I’m all ears. I’d been starting to think the thing was a wild fantasy. I dived in head first and at moments of weakness I thought I was doing something unfounded, unasked for, reckless. I’d like someone to tell me I’m not so ridiculous.

  ‘It was who the kids thought it was, I reckon. The bloke. Er… bigish. That’s the same bloke I saw coming out of her flat.’