Then, three weeks later, came the next one. The murder of nineteen-year-old Amelia West, a trainee nurse living two streets over from Isla’s own home. And disbelief warped into blind panic. He, whoever he was, was not done. He was hunting.
Isla’s parents began to talk about moving, about leaving the village that was in their blood, their bones. Her father, on the rare occasions she saw him, had grown older, more weighted down, either by the deaths or by his inability to solve them.
Two weeks after that came the murder of Leila Doyle. Twenty-five years old. She had vanished while putting her washing out.
Isla stopped sleeping then, moved into her sister Emilia’s room, where she would lie, staring into the lamp that remained steadfastly on as the night rolled around into morning. Waited each day, each night, for him to come for her.
And then, after six weeks of torment, there came a day on which her father was gone, for a day, a night, another day. She started to wonder if he, too, was dead, if her mother was simply afraid to tell them. Then the phone ringing late in the evening, her mother’s hand shaking as she picked it up, silence and then her face changing transformed back to something that Isla had not seen in six long weeks. He got him. Your father got him. His name is Heath McGowan.
Heath McGowan had been arrested in a pub in Newcastle. He had gone there straight from the flat of his then girlfriend, Lucy Tuckwell. Eighteen years old and six months pregnant with their first child. When police—or, more specifically, her father—had arrived at the flat, they had found Lucy dead on the floor, the final victim of the series.
“Maybe we’ll get a nice fat tumor pressing on the amygdala,” Connor suggested. He sipped his coffee, watching the screen. “Love me a nice fat tumor.”
Isla glanced back at him. Lanky and lean, hair cut short, but not short enough to prevent the ends of it from flicking up into those inexorable curls. It was different for him, she reminded herself. Some days, she felt she had known Connor her entire life, like he was a brother to her. But then she remembered that he had not been here back in the dark days, that he had not survived what they had survived, and so he would forever remain separate, able to know them only as one looking in through a window. They had worked together for six years, knew each other’s rhythms and tastes. And yet, for Connor, what they did remained an adventure, a walk through a jungle on an organized tour, the simulation of danger, where the real threats had been filtered out, packaged away. Perhaps, thought Isla, that was why he always seemed so much younger than she, even though they were the same age. Perhaps it was the excitement in him, the thrill of academic exploration. For him, the horrors that they heard were little more than a scary story shared around a campfire. For her, they were her life and her home.
She shrugged. “You never know. Although, frankly, he’s always been a prick.”
The sounds began, thunderous bangs as the hydrogen atoms were shifted, realigned, shifted again. A rising harmony of beeps, one picture, two, three, four, a thousand. Isla leaned back in her chair, her eyes trained on the hands of the killer on the wall. They lay limp at his sides. Large, the fingers shorter than you would think, stubby. The hands that had wrapped themselves tight across the throats of Kitty Lane and Ben Flowers and Zach.
Isla had waited for this since she was fifteen years old.
They had said that she wouldn’t get him, that Heath McGowan had built himself into a legend, that in twenty years he had not once spoken about the dead bodies he left seated against Hadrian’s Wall. Many had tried. For ten years following McGowan’s arrest, Stephen Doyle, the husband of Leila, had written to him once a week, pleading for a meeting, begging to know what had happened to his wife in those last precious hours of her life, just how her end had come. “I just want to sit across from him,” Stephen had said. “I just want to look into the eyes of the man who took Leila, so I can try to understand.” But Stephen, like the journalists, the police officers, and the academics that followed him, had been met with a hefty wall of silence. McGowan, it seemed, would take his stories with him to the grave.
Isla, however, never afraid to tilt at a windmill, had written to him, pouring into the letter all the charm and the persuasion that she could muster. Had reminded him of their childhood connection, tenuous at best. And had promised to provide him with answers, to delve into the glorious mystery that was the McGowan brain and to lay the results before him.
To the amazement of all but Isla, he had written back.
It was a week ago that Isla Bell had first made the hour-long drive to Winterwell Prison, a fortress that stood alone on the edge of Kielder Forest, had watched as Heath McGowan was led into the room, seated at the desk before her, and had known that she had done what none had done before. She had got in.
“You look different.” Heath McGowan had studied her with that spotlight focus that would have told her, had she not already known, that she was in the company of a psychopath.
“I’m older,” Isla had replied coolly.
“Yeah.” Heath had laughed, head dipping down, coquettish almost. “Aren’t we all? But you . . . Age suits you. What are you? Thirty-four?”
“Thirty-five.” Isla had sat at the desk, had watched Heath opposite her. Had felt her heart thundering. Had told herself that this was simply number thirteen. That she had done this many times before. That this was no different. Of course, all of that was a lie, wasn’t it? Because this time, with this man, it wasn’t about the stories, about victims who were simply names in a crime story. This time it was about the person who had left three dead for her to find. Who had tried to murder Ramsey and had failed. It was a feeling of the wind blowing as you stood on a cliff edge.
“Of course. Four years younger than me. I remember you from school, you know.”
In her memory, Heath was a ghost in a ripped denim jacket, his lip curled into an ever-present snarl. One of them and yet not one of them. His mother a drinker, his father who knew where, he had landed on his grandmother’s doorstep, would stay awhile, long enough to get himself a reputation as trouble, then would leave again each time his mother resolved to do better, to be stronger than her need for the alcohol. Yet weeks or months later, he would always return, each time angrier.
“I’m surprised you were there often enough to remember me,” Isla said wryly. They were old acquaintances chatting about days past. They were neighbors sharing a history. They were a serial killer and the teenage girl who had found his first victims.
Heath gave another laugh. “Aye, well . . . had better things to be doing with my time. Your sister. Emily? Emilia? Now, she was always a looker. How is she?”
He was testing her, a great white nibbling around the edges of a cage to see if it really would protect the diver within. Isla looked at him, her gaze steady. Emilia had moved away from the village as soon as she was able to. She had married her first boyfriend, had three little boys, a detached house on a modern estate in Newcastle, and a rampant anxiety disorder—the last thanks to the man before her.
Isla smiled. “Emilia is fine. So, Heath, shall I tell you a little bit about our study? See if it’s something you’re interested in participating in?”
“Aye.” He watched her, gaze hungry.
“I’m a professor of criminal psychology at the University of Northumberland. I specialize in brain function and its influences on criminal behavior.” She slid into the speech like it was a comfortable pair of shoes. “I’ve worked on this with a number of other people in the past. What I’d like to do with you is have a bit of a chat, talk about some of your experiences, childhood, things like that, get you to take part in a few tests, and then, in a couple of weeks, we’ll arrange for you to go through a functional MRI, magnetic resonance imaging, which will allow us to see how your brain is working, how it responds to stimulation, things like that.”
Heath leaned forward, his forehead knitted in a frown of concentration. “So . . . like, this functional . . . whatsit . . . does it, like, tell you why I do the stuff I d
o? I mean, will you be able to see if there’s something wrong with my brain? If that’s why?”
“It will certainly give us some indication, yes.”
Heath sat up straighter then, and Isla knew. She had him.
A low buzz and Isla’s head snapped around as she was pulled back to the present, the monster in the tube.
“Professor Bell?” The radiographer tapped some keys. “Structural scan is complete.”
“Okay,” said Isla. “Let’s start with the moral decision – making task.” She leaned forward, spoke into the microphone. “Heath? We’ve completed the structural scan. Now we’re entering into the functional phase of the MRI. Keep looking at the screen in front of you. I’m going to present you with a series of choices. Use the button box I gave you to select one. You happy?”
“As a clam, Prof.” His gaze on the monitor was flat, unmoving.
The guard snorted, rolling his eyes at Isla.
She pushed the microphone away, smiled. “Could be worse. The last guy we had in here decided to mark his territory by pissing on the floor.”
“Charming.”
Connor pulled out a chair beside her, lowered himself into it, one hand carefully grasping a cupcake. “Yeah, he was a beaut. Cupcake?”
Isla shook her head. “How the hell do you eat so much but stay so skinny?”
He grinned. “Good genes.” He lowered his voice. “How’s Ramsey doing?” Nodded toward the scanner. “He, ah, he got any issues with this?”
“Why has McGowan agreed to do this?” Ramsey had asked. Her husband had put the pan on the stove harder than was strictly necessary, had lit a blue flame beneath it, had poured in a glug of oil.
Isla had kept her gaze averted, her full concentration directed to checking the tomatoes for inadequacies. “Ramsey, he’s been in prison for twenty years. He’s probably bored. The chance to have a nice day trip, even if it’s just to an MRI scanner, probably seems like a pretty sweet deal.” She had pushed closed the door to the fridge, expression effortfully light. Because it had seemed somehow crucial that she kept it hidden, how much this mattered to her, how great her own need was to sit across from the killer on the wall.
Ramsey nodded, the back of his blond head dipping up and down, just once. Swept the onions into the pan. Were his hands shaking?
“I just . . . I don’t trust that guy.” The rest was left unsaid. Because he tried to murder me. Because he murdered my brother, five others besides.
Isla turned, watched her husband’s wide shoulders, the arch of his arms, quiet muscles beneath a plaid shirt. He still had nightmares that kept her awake into the small hours of the morning, her husband twisting and pulling at the sheets, his hands grasping at the pillow, at her, as in his dreams he attempted to save himself. To save his brother. And she would cradle him to her, mother to a small child.
It had become a rhythm in their marriage, calm waters shaken by something and by nothing, the swell of a wave, a crest, and then, from nowhere, calmness again. There would be long periods in which Ramsey slept peacefully, and then a change—restless nights leading into sallow mornings, quietness becoming a dense silence. His features gaining a sad slackness, a jumpiness, as if her husband had moved into a perpetual state of waiting, ready to leap at the closing of a door or the unexpected fall of a foot. The counselor had said that it would be like this, that there would be periods of peace laid alongside periods of unrest. Post-traumatic stress disorder coupled with relapsing/remitting depression. A diagnosis that Isla could have made herself. This period, these past five years, this had been the most peace they had known. Isla had begun to wonder if the storm had finally passed. If life could in fact be different. Then those words—“I’m going into the prison. I’m going to meet with Heath McGowan.”
“If he’s agreed to be a part of the study,” Ramsey said, stirring the onions, the oil spitting, sizzling, “maybe it’s because he knows who you are. You know what these guys are like, with their grandstanding. Wouldn’t it just be the perfect twist of the knife to get to you? Your father’s daughter. My wife?”
Isla dug the point of the knife into the tomato, and its “ripe to the point of bursting” skin ruptured beneath the pressure. She sliced with a fast sweep. Tried very hard not to feel that flush of anger. That she was by definition to be explained only by her relationship to someone else. To the men in her life. That she had got to Heath, had squeezed her way inside—had met with this success—only because of her father, the man who’d arrested Heath; and her husband, the man he had attempted to kill.
She let her knife race through the tomatoes, her heart beating fast. The trouble was, she wasn’t at all sure he wasn’t right.
Isla took a deep breath, her tread careful. This was, after all, her husband’s story more than it was hers. She could bow out. Get Connor to do it. He was more than capable. And yet . . . Isla thought of that moment every single night, when, her hand on the light switch, she felt the fear race from her abdomen up to her mouth at the thought of the darkness about to come. She was not good with fear. Ramsey had caught her once, had come home late on a night when darkness had plummeted early, brought about by wild weather, had found her walking the blackened house, bare feet, wearing nothing but a camisole and absurdly short shorts. Had looked at her like she was insane. And she had never said it, had never explained to him that she had been pushing herself to the point of her greatest terror. With the darkness and the vulnerability of near nakedness, it had been like a private dare. I bet you can’t . . . Isla had always been a sucker for dares.
“Well, I’m sure it will be fine. All the authorization is in place, so I don’t really have much choice in the matter now,” Isla lied. “Just . . . Look, these guys, they want something to fill their days in there. A study like this, it gets them interested. And they get to brag. You know, tell someone how clever they were, how they almost got away with it. I’m sure McGowan has no clue who I am.”
Now Isla sipped her coffee, black, the bitterness of it making her wince. “Ramsey’s fine. He gets that this is important. You finished up all the childhood stuff, right?”
They were two halves of a coin, she and Connor. He: developmental and environmental influences. She: cognition, genetic factors. Taken together, they could tell a story—how a serial killer became a serial killer. Because if you could tell that story, then maybe, just maybe, you could change it.
“Yeah. It’s . . . not great. I mean, it’s not as bad as some I’ve heard. Pavel Devreaux still gets to keep his ‘worst childhood imaginable’ crown.”
Pavel Devreaux had killed eleven men, mostly homeless, helpless, in and around Calais in the late nineties. He had then eaten their internal organs.
“Heath’s mother was an alcoholic, father erratic, but around just long enough to sexually abuse Heath from the ages of four to seven. Pretty vile stuff. The mother alternated between affection and fury, and it looks like little Heath had no way of predicting which way she would go. The most consistent presence seems to have been the grandmother. From what he says, she tried her best, but sounds like she was pretty overwhelmed by the whole thing. Heavily critical, not much in the way of affection. Would routinely tell him that he had been taken over by Satan.”
“Well, she was right about that much,” muttered the prison guard, keeping his stare on the unmoving feet of Heath McGowan.
Isla nodded, watching the screen where Heath’s selections were flashing by. The test was coming to its conclusion. The attentional focusing one would begin shortly. She pulled a file closer, flipped the cover open. “I finished going through the PCL-R.”
The Psychopathy Checklist—a measure of badness.
“And?”
She looked at him, her gaze flat. “Thirty-seven.”
Thirty points would have indicated that he was a psychopath. Forty was the most extreme level of psychopath it was possible to measure.
Connor nodded. “Well, that’s pretty definitive.”
“Yes. Yes, it is.”
Of course, thought Isla, sometimes you just knew. Even without a test. There was a certain feeling that occasionally came from sitting with a psychopath, that notion that your senses had been supplanted, that what you thought now, what you felt, came from him, this man in front of you, rather than from all that you knew to be true. It was like being bewitched and horrified at the same time, the watching of yourself from a great distance as you were led willingly into danger. Isla often thought of psychopaths as the anglerfish of the human race.
“I liked Briganton,” Heath had said on that day, a week ago. He had leaned forward across the desk, his expression earnest, hands hooked together like those of a child at prayer. “I mean, my nan, she was all right. Lived there all her life. Course, you say that name now and all anyone ever thinks of is . . . you know.”
You. The killer on the wall. There were coach tours now, organized excursions for the dark of mind, the opportunity for misery tourists to visit the famous murder sites in the North. Briganton was stop number three. Isla had stopped telling people where she was from, had grown weary of that look of almost recollection, of the dawning realization and, far too often, of excitement.
Then Heath had looked at her with the air of one who had recalled something. “How is your dad? I heard he became a superintendent. Superintendent Eric Bell. Has a nice ring to it. I always liked him. Gave me a hard time when I was pissing around as a kid, but he was all right. Course, I went off on him a bit when he arrested me.” Something glimmered in his eyes. Amusement? “I heard that he became quite the celebrity. The great Eric Bell, the detective who brought down the killer on the wall. You know, he never even said thank you. I mean, that big old career of his, I did make it, after all.” He had studied her critically. “You look just like him, you know?”
Isla had wondered faintly what it was that Heath was expecting. Did he expect her to cry? To rush from the room, a little girl pulled to pieces by the big bad wolf before her? Perhaps he did not yet understand just what he had done to her at the age of fifteen, how much he had changed her, and just how many wolves she had tamed since then.
I Am Watching Page 2
