“Sir, with respect, I disagree. I think we need to start considering that this is a second series—”
A heavy sigh. “Yes, Mina, I am already in the process of expanding my policy to include the possibility of this being a copycat. But, frankly, the search teams have not found anything that would suggest this is anything other than a coincidence.”
She was pushing it, and she knew she was pushing it. And yet still Mina closed her eyes and pushed. “Sir, my question is, what if it isn’t a copycat? What if it is an accomplice? Someone who was involved in the first series of murders, who has returned to start again?”
The silence had a different texture this time.
“Ms. Arian, are you suggesting that I somehow failed to do my job appropriately in the first killer-on-the-wall investigation?”
“No, sir. I’m just saying, Heath McGowan has never been willing to talk about the murders, not to anyone. We always thought that was a power play, but what if it wasn’t? What if he wouldn’t talk, because he was protecting someone? Someone nobody connected with the murders at all?”
“Ms. Arian . . .”
“Sir, I really – – ”
“That will do. How about you let me set policy, while you get on and do your own job? Yes? Right. Now, until we have any information indicating otherwise, this remains a missing person case. Until we have any further information, the original killer-on-the-wall case remains closed, with the solitary murderer involved behind bars. Now, if you don’t mind, I am extremely busy. Thank you.”
Then nothing but silence against the drip, drip, drip of the rain.
Another one? – Mina
Mina held the phone limply in her fingers. The rain had begun to bounce, a thrumming rhythm against the pavement. It soaked the screen, making her fingers feel brittle with the chill of it. She would have thrown the damn phone were it not for the fact that she would then have to pay for a new one. She stared at the swirling blue lights, the sheeting rain smudging the edges of them. She could cry now. The tears would mingle with the raindrops, and no one would ever know. And yet, ironically, tears were the furthest thing from her mind.
A steady heat had begun to build inside her, a rolling anger. The great Eric Bell was not interested in solving this case. The great Eric Bell was interested only in himself and how their findings would reflect upon him.
Mina stood in the bouncing rain and considered. There are moments where life bifurcates, in which the crucial choices that define an existence are made. She could go back inside. Be the good little girl. Do what she had been told to do. Or she could do what needed to be done instead.
With firm steps, Mina opened the front door, the heat shocking against her skin. From inside the living room she could hear Ramsey’s tones, low, reassuring. She walked quietly past the living room door, along the corridor that ran the length of the house, to the rear of it, all the while imagining Maggie’s cautious steps preceding hers, her slippered feet noiseless in the deep-pile carpet.
She had gone out to call the cat.
Mina reached the back door and stopped, slipped a pair of plastic gloves on. Then she carefully pressed down on the handle, and the door slid open without complaint. She stopped, looking about her for footprints, for any sign that Maggie had perhaps not even made it out of her own door before disaster came. But there was nothing. Just a concrete step and an ocean of lawn, made loose by the pouring rain.
Maggie Heron is Kitty Lane’s cousin.
Mina stepped out onto the grass, and the sudden shock of the cold made her shiver. Where would Maggie have stood?
She surveyed the swath of garden, a green lawn that tucked around the house, the rear and right-hand side of it bordered by trees. Took one step, two. Would this be it? Where you would stop to call for an errant cat? It seemed to Mina that she could hear Maggie’s voice. She looked down again, studied the ground, letting her gaze roam about the garden. Her attention snagged on the tree line, on the shape of the trunks toward the rear of the garden, the way they twisted away from one another, almost forming a tunnel. She walked closer, peering through the rain into the kaleidoscope of branches. See, the rest of the garden, you could see that from the road. But here, in this little copse, the trees cradled you, shielding you from view. If you wanted to take someone from this garden, this would be the place.
Mina pulled her flashlight out, ran it across the branches, through to the other side. What was that back there? A road? As she began to pull back, something caught her attention. A twist of material, the edge of a red rose. She stooped down, her heart thumping. This was what she was wearing. Maggie came this way.
She tagged the evidence, then played the beam of light across the trees and the ground beneath them.
Then Mina quickly turned, ran back the way she had come, her footing slick on the sodden grass. There was no care this time, just speed. She hurried out through the front door, hooked a sharp left onto the pavement, and followed the tree line. She passed Owen, watching her with a frown, but did not stop, following the arc of the trees until the street behind her had vanished from view. And there behind the house was a lane. It was narrow, unpaved, but wide enough, just about, to get a car through. She let the flashlight dance across the ground, all stones and ruts and mud, until she reached the copse and that almost hidden tunnel that had formed itself within it.
Mina stopped and crouched down, gaze hooked on the ground.
A tire track.
“I need CSI here,” Mina bellowed.
The sound of footsteps behind her, but she didn’t look up, all her attention stuck on what was before her. The sinking knowledge that Maggie Heron would not be coming back.
“What is it?” Owen sounded out of breath.
“Call CSI. I have a piece of Maggie’s sweater on a branch on the other side of these trees, and I have a tire track.”
Owen stood beside her, silently surveying the scene. “Oh God.”
“Yeah.”
“I’ll call – – ”
But before he could call anyone, his radio sparked to life, a musical tone breaking into the quiet, and Owen pulled the Airwave radio from his belt, slid the volume up.
“We’ve found her.”
It took some moments for Mina to process it, to pick the words from their tinny background and piece them together into something that made sense.
It took even more time for the tone of them to register, the meaning of them to take its fullest shape.
“She has been left at the wall, half a mile east of Briganton. Forensic teams to attend, please.”
It was a dream. That could be the only logical explanation. The dipping of Owen’s head, the way the ground shimmied beneath her feet, all of that made it clear that this could not possibly be the way her life was meant to go. The lifetime of moments standing there in the rain, cold gone now, washed away when the world flipped itself on its head. Then turning her back on Owen, being pulled by something beyond herself, forcing her reluctant feet to move, lifting one and then the other in an ungainly robotic dance. The heat of the house was jarring, so that she felt she could not breathe. Staring at a picture hanging in the hallway, of Maggie and Ted, seventy years and a murder ago. Forcing her feet to move, her hand to push at the living-room door, and then the voices, first Ramsey’s, then Ted’s, and then, as they saw her, the expectant, terrible silence. Framing the words and still not framing them, for it seemed that they had been there the whole time, simply waiting for her to say them. They’ve found her. I’m sorry, Ted.
Ramsey covering his face, his one good hand flying to Ted’s shoulder, and waiting for the tears, for Ted to fold himself to the floor, for his heart to stop, and for him to drop dead in front of them. But instead, the old man sitting there, staring at her, his lips moving with words that would not break free. Crouching on the floor before him, her hand upon his knee, and being able to see only those damn socks with their gaping Homer Simpson, who stared at her and stared at her. Do you understand, Ted? I’m s
orry, but Maggie is dead. Shaping it into inevitability, so that there would be no room for him to bargain or to deal or to pretend that what was happening wasn’t. She’s dead.
And still Ted sitting, shaking his head, and saying, “But she only went out to look for Mitzy. That’s all.”
The family liaison officer arriving, the call to the daughter. The wailing screech of tears magnified by the phone line. Ramsey taking the phone from her, telling Ted’s daughter, Ellie, that it would be okay, that he was here, that he would stay with her father until she came. Tears rolling down his cheeks and landing with a splash on the table below.
Then out into the breathless air, the rain hammering, and willing it to wash everything away. Knocking on door after door after door, seeking answers that did not come.
There was no doubt about it now, if there had ever been at all. Superintendent Bell was wrong. Whatever had happened in that investigation twenty years ago, something had been missed, a vital piece. And now that loose end was flying free.
Monday, October 24
Bringing in an expert – Isla
They stood as if at a funeral, fluorescent jackets harsh against the rain-filled sky, the bleakness of the moor. One of the police officers recognized Isla, afforded her the silent nod, which was all he could muster right now. She stood at the cordon, her hood pulled up so that the world appeared to be coming down a long tunnel, and felt the rain and the lack of sleep marry together to bludgeon her.
“Isla.” Her father’s voice was hoarse with tiredness; his face slick with rain. “Come through.” He lifted the police tape, ignoring the pair of officers that guarded it, and waited while she ducked under. “It’s a little bit of a walk.” He turned, not waiting for her, his Wellington boots pulling at the sodden ground.
Isla tucked her hands into her pockets, feeling her own boots being sucked downward into the remorseless mud. “Where are we going, Dad?”
But her father hadn’t heard her or, if he had, was choosing to ignore her. She kept her head down, driving into the rain across the uneven ground, and felt the fear wrap itself tight around her. She wanted to trot forward, grip hold of her father’s hand, a little girl again, but she wasn’t a little girl, was she? So she pushed the fear back and trod onward as the moor rose, watching the wall snake up it toward the shimmering gray sky. And then she saw it. White shapes sharp against the gray. They stood beside the wall, moving in an uncoordinated dance, and a memory trickled back to her of the time before.
“This is where Leila Doyle was left.”
Her father kept walking, just a grunt of agreement to show that he had heard. Isla hurried to catch up, a seed of suspicion sprouting in her insides. They followed the course of the wall as it began to climb, the white shapes coalescing into the forensic team and, just beyond them, a slumped figure.
“Oh God.” Isla stopped, her hand to her mouth.
Maggie Heron looked narrower in death, her face slack, eyes open and empty. Nausea rose in Isla again, and she pushed it back, wanting nothing more than to sink into the sodden grass. “I . . . oh my God . . .” She could feel the heat racing to her cheeks, the world lurching treacherously.
Her father stood some distance off, his gaze hooked on the dead woman.
Isla wanted to reach for him, the child in her seeking comfort. But then, comfort had rarely been her father’s strong suit. No. Steady. She breathed in through thin lips, the scent of death lingering on the air. Courage. She forced herself to take small, steady breaths. This is work. This is not real. This is work. This is not real.
“See,” said her father, finally. “I was afraid of this right from the start. When that Victoria Prew was killed. I thought, This doesn’t feel right. Doesn’t make sense that this would be a domestic.”
I’m telling you, it’s the ex that did it.
Isla glanced at her father, then away. Her hands were shaking. She stuffed them into her pockets again.
Her father turned away from the body, nodding toward the emptiness of the moor beyond. “Let’s take a walk.”
After one last look at the forlorn shape of Maggie Heron, she turned and followed her father. A sense of unreality hung across the moor. That they could be here again. Had she expected this? She had said it, that he would kill again, had offered the words up to her father like the answer to some Mensa puzzle. And yet the essence of it, the whole thing beginning again—that had felt far removed from her, a psychological exercise rather than the truth of her existence. She felt her left foot sinking into the mud and pulled it upward, throwing her balance off, and her arms flailed as she tried to correct it. But it didn’t matter, did it? What she had said. What she had calculated. None of it made any difference now, with two bodies left on the wall.
The truth of it settled on her, heavy and inevitable. It had begun again.
“Ramsey okay?” Her father’s voice seemed to come from far away, and she picked up her pace, matching his long stride.
“He’s still at Maggie and Ted’s.” Except it wasn’t now, was it? Now it was merely Ted’s. “Says he’s going to stay there until their daughter arrives.”
“He’s a good lad.”
“Yes. Yes, he is.”
Isla hadn’t known. As she walked along behind her father, she cast her mind back. She had stayed in the office late, far later than she should, she reflected. She’d sat at her desk as the dim light fell and night overtook day, as the wind picked up and the branches of a lone tree scraped against the window, setting her nerves on edge. She hadn’t called home, had intended to, but had gotten lost in an internal physiological control analysis, poring over Heath’s results, comparing them to those of the control subjects, the ones with no signs of psychopathy. Why hadn’t she called? Was it simply that she had been too busy? Or was it something darker, her own fear perhaps? It was, undeniably, safer living in her own head, the harsh reality of the world kept at bay by the sheen of brain tissue analysis. Or perhaps she had been afraid of what she would hear in her husband’s voice, that sense of despair, the distance that spoke of a boat slipping its moorings, as he drifted off to where she could not follow.
Isla set off from the university late, a little after eleven, the results still rotating in her mind, so much so that at first, she didn’t notice the police lights. Then, of course, once she did, it seemed that she had known all along that they would be there, that this was why she had delayed and delayed until homecoming was unavoidable. Two streets from their home, half a dozen police cars. Those were numbers no one wanted to see.
She stopped the car, jumped out. Her eyes searched the crowd for a familiar face. But it seemed that their tiny village had become a cosmopolitan hub, littered with hard-faced strangers. Then, through the crowd, a small figure swathed in an overlarge coat.
“Mina.”
At first Mina didn’t hear her, stood and swayed, looking like she was about to cry. Then she turned. Their gazes locked, and a look of something flitted across Mina’s features.
Relief?
“It’s bad, Isla. It’s so bad.”
“Who?”
Didn’t she know then that the victim could be anyone? That it could be her mother, her father, her sister. Her husband.
“Who, Mina?”
Mina looked down at her feet and said, her voice bubbling in that way that spoke of unshed tears, “Maggie Heron.”
Maggie, who had been the lollipop woman, who had kept candy in her pockets to distribute to her favorite children or to those that had done well in school or those that just really looked like they could use a treat. Maggie, who never could seem to remember whether she was Isla or whether she was Emilia, and who always told her the story about that time when they were both little and climbed her apple tree and got stuck, so that Ted had to go up after them, coax them down with chocolate drops and licorice.
Her first thought after that was that she had been right—Victoria Prew had not been a one-off. Her second, that she had never hated being right more. Her third,
that she had to go home, that she had to break it to Ramsey.
Then Mina, wiping her eyes, said, “Ramsey is inside. He’s looking after Ted.”
Later Isla would reflect that she shouldn’t have been surprised. That was, after all, what Rams did. He cared for people. He looked after them. When someone fell, he caught them.
The house was stiflingly warm; the bars of the electric fire were orange. Ted was sitting in the window, peering out into the darkened night, body stretched tall in anticipation. He was, Isla realized, waiting for Maggie to return. Ramsey stood up as soon as he saw her, wrapped her in an embrace that might have been for her but in truth seemed to be mostly for him. He clung to her, breathing in the scent of her, his body shaken by one single intake of breath that, had he allowed it to, could have become a sob. Isla gripped his broad back, his wide arms, closed her eyes and breathed thanks that it wasn’t him, that she wasn’t Ted—that she wasn’t sitting at a window, waiting for her dead husband to return.
And so the night unfolded, the two of them sitting side by side on that terrible flower-ridden sofa, while Ted sat. Waiting. Ramsey eventually fell into an uneven sleep sometime around four, his cheeks pressed against a knitted throw, his forehead creasing, fingers flickering as his dreams chased around inside his head. And Isla, she simply sat, watching Ted, watching her husband, and trying to puncture the dizzying sense of disbelief that had taken hold of her.
“Dad?” Their steps had now fallen into sync on the uneven ground, and Isla glanced across at her father, his face half buried within his hood. “Why did you ask me to come here?”
His stride shortened. “I thought you could help.”
“Help?”
He coughed, a rattle that made Isla wince. “Say it is a copycat. What’s that about, then?”
“How do you mean?”
“Well, are they nuts, or what?”
Isla grinned in spite of herself. “That’s not the technical term for it, no.”
I Am Watching Page 11
