The fear roared.
The wall – Mina
The older parts of her brain screamed at her to run. Superintendent Bell stood beside the stones of the tumbledown wall, looking out over the moor. Mina thought of Isla, of the word psychopath, of all that the man before her had done and all that he was capable of. Of the words of Toby Benedict. I saw a man. He was limping. And she wondered what the hell she had just done.
They make themselves look vulnerable. They make themselves look weak.
She watched the superintendent, watched his hands. Were they the hands that had ended all those lives?
Mina took a step backward, reached into her pocket for her phone, in the same moment remembering that she had left it in her bag, that her bag was in the car, two hundred meters away, maybe more. The awareness was like a plunge into icy water.
“You know how you do something,” said Bell, “and it’s the work of a moment, and then it’s done. And you think that life is just going to go back to normal. Only it doesn’t. That thing you did, that one moment, it changes everything.”
She should run. Her body screamed at her, and her feet twisted themselves away, as if they would flee with her or without her. But Mina had spent many years learning to walk forward when her brain screamed at her to run back, and so she did just that, walking nearer to the wall.
She took a deep breath. Plunged. “Is it you?” she asked.
“Is what me?”
“Are you the killer on the wall?”
The superintendent let loose a sound that startled her. He began to laugh. The laugh continued for what seemed to Mina to be an inappropriately long time. Then he looked at her, examined her, as if he had never quite seen her like before. “Sweet Jesus, no. I can be an arsehole, but I’m not that much of an arsehole.” A thoughtful moment, and then the superintendent asked, “Did you really think I was?”
Mina’s heart thudded. “Well,” she said, venturing out onto paper-thin ice, “you framed Heath McGowan.”
Another long moment of silence. Then the superintendent turned away. He let loose a low moan. “Mina,” he said, his voice heavy, “what the hell have I done?”
The no longer great Eric Bell – Eric
To Eric, it seemed that he was walking underwater. There was a dullness to everything, a distance. He was not careful how he placed his feet on the rolling moor, so its unevenness sent shards of pain up through his knee, his hip. The girl walked beside him. No, not beside him. He could hear her footfalls in the darkness, to the side and a little behind. She was keeping him in front of her because, in spite of what he had said, she remained afraid of him. He looked out into the darkness. That was probably reasonable.
The great Eric Bell had a tendency to be a little blind to consequences. It was one of the things that had always vexed Bonnie the most, his tendency to dive into things without any thought as to what might be waiting below the surface. Yet now it seemed he could think of little else. He would be fired. That was inevitable. The girl, Mina, who was sheepdogging him now, being so gentle and so kind, she would testify against him in whatever disciplinary hearing emerged from the mists. That, too, was inevitable.
Eric walked, seeing not the undulating ground before him, but the body of Lucy Tuckwell. Seeing the blood and the brain matter and the arms that curled so instinctively around the mound of her stomach, a futile effort to protect the child that would never be. He felt the world still again, the way it had as he stood there in the doorway of that flat, so small and so neat. And just beyond the body on the living-room floor, an open door, a crib, already made up with a bright yellow duvet, a mobile hanging above it, which twisted in the breeze from the open window. Rabbits carrying umbrellas.
He had stood there for longer than would have seemed possible, had simply stood there and stared at the dead body of Lucy Tuckwell.
Had he felt sadness? Anger at two lives taken so unfairly?
Eric’s foot sank into the loose ground, his heel slipping just enough to get the heart pumping. He wasn’t one for introspection. He did not entirely understand what it was to stand over the dead body of an almost child, someone entirely unknown to him, and weep for her.
No, that wasn’t it.
What he had felt was opportunity.
He had called it in, like any good little detective sergeant would, had waited outside the flat, in that dismal hallway. He had greeted the forensic team, had exchanged some words that meant nothing, then had walked steadily down the stairs, out the front door to his parked car. The box had been tucked under the passenger seat. A random collection of trinkets from the victims. Later he would wonder why he had gathered them, whether he had had a purpose in mind, or if it was some macabre magpie urge that he simply didn’t understand. He suspected the truth: That justice could be a mercurial woman. That sometimes it required good cops, willing to do what others would not, in order to lift the blindfold, help her to see. That the end would justify the means.
He had driven himself, and his little box, to the pub. The grandmother had said, “If he’s not at Lucy’s, he’ll be in that White Star place. Terrible place. But then, you can’t tell them what to do, can you? Not when they’re adults.” He’d found Heath slumped in a booth at the back, his head down, gaze hooked on a two-thirds drunk pint of bitter. Still with the blood of Lucy Tuckwell on his hands.
The boy had put up little resistance. Looked up at Eric in the manner of one who had been waiting, nodded once, drained his pint, stood, and placed his hands behind his back.
“The baby,” Heath had muttered. “Is the baby okay?”
Perhaps that was the point when it would have appeared to onlookers that things had moved beyond his control. Eric had taken hold of Heath’s hair, a straggling handful, had pushed his face down into the table, clamped handcuffs tight around his wrists. Had leaned in close. “The baby is fucking dead. Just like its mother.”
He would later reflect on that moment, on the slip of his hand into Heath McGowan’s pocket. The key chain, the wedding ring. That the smoothness of it, the ease, had made it all seem preordained somehow.
That this time justice would have her eyes open for once.
He remembered the booking in, the custody sergeant taking McGowan’s details, the search, the reveal of the items that inextricably linked him to the deaths of Zachary Aiken, Leila Doyle. The look that had crossed McGowan’s face, so fleetingly, of being bested, of having played and lost. That silent moment of communication that had passed between Eric and McGowan. You win.
And he had. He had caught the killer on the wall. He had become the great Eric Bell.
He should have retired. Years ago. But he’d been chancing his arm, pushing his luck. When you played roulette long enough without losing, you started to fool yourself that you knew the game, that your success was in some way connected to skill. When in fact it was luck all along. And luck always ran out.
They left the moor, boggy ground turning to pavement underfoot. Mina stopping at the car, retrieving her handbag with quick movements, careful always to keep him in her line of sight. Eric smiled. Then they turned, walked down the road toward Eric’s house, he in front, Mina behind. His house didn’t have a back gate that led onto the moor, hadn’t had one for twenty years. Bonnie’s idea, not his. Tonight, with the pain in his hip, he cursed that. But then his house came into view, with its creep of light from the gap in the window, and he remembered the other option and suddenly was glad that Bonnie was protected from the moor by a high wall.
The thing was, he could see consequences if he tried. He could work through repercussions. If, that was, he stopped long enough, if he really thought about it. Didn’t rely on his instincts. Because, Eric would be the first to admit, when he relied on his instincts, he was an arsehole.
They turned into the driveway, Mina still a step or two behind him. Still cautious. They got to the front door as it was swung open from the inside. Bonnie, still in her coat, her eyes wide. “Oh, it’s you. Thank God.”
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A spark of an emotion he couldn’t identify. “The door should have been locked, Bonnie. Why wasn’t it locked?”
She threw her arms up in the air, defiant. “I’m not a bloody caged animal, Eric. You can’t expect me to just sit here behind a locked door, never knowing when you’re coming home.” Then she saw Mina and stopped. “Oh, Mina, love, sorry. Come in. Are you okay?”
Mina slipped into the house behind him and closed the door tight. “I’m okay. I just . . . I bumped into the super and . . . I thought it would be best to make sure he got home okay.”
Eric, however, was studying his wife. “Where have you been? You haven’t been out walking, have you?”
Bonnie pulled a face. “I was at Isla’s. Remember? You were going to stop by? And no, I haven’t been out walking. Your son-in-law was kind enough to bring me home. He was concerned about my safety.” She gave Eric a pointed look. “Your elder daughter had a complete meltdown when she heard that Stephen wasn’t the man they were looking for. Went completely hysterical. Poor Ramsey is having to drive her all the way home, while that useless husband of hers fannies about, doing God knows what. Mina, tea?”
“No, I – – ”
“Bonnie, I’ve done something.” The words were out before he understood what it was he was going to say. He watched his wife’s face, recognized the way she steeled herself, and had a sudden flash of awareness of just how many times he had seen his wife do that before.
“I should . . .” Mina began to inch toward the door.
“I planted evidence on Heath McGowan. I thought I had him. I thought there was no way the killer on the wall could be anyone else. So I . . . I made sure that they’d convict him. Only it wasn’t him. The force knows about it. I think I’m going to get sacked. I may be prosecuted.”
He ran out of words and air, felt a hollow silence settling all around him. Mina looked from him to his wife, who was suddenly paralyzed.
“Oh, Eric,” Bonnie said quietly. “You really are an idiot.”
“I did what I thought was right,” he said.
“But that’s the thing, isn’t it? It’s always about you. What you think is right. You never stop to consider that other people might have a view, that maybe your view isn’t always the right one.” Bonnie folded her arms across her chest and shook her head wearily. “Eric . . . I don’t know what to say to you.”
He should stop talking. That would be sensible. Unfortunately, his mouth did not agree. “Are you going to leave me?”
He saw Mina Arian, saw her head dip farther, as if she could make herself disappear into the parquet flooring.
Bonnie snorted. “Eric, love, you being a foolish man is not news to me. You’ve always been the same. So if I was going to leave you, I probably would have done it years ago, when I still had time to find myself a nice rich man to take care of me into my dotage. I’m pretty sure no one is going to be queuing up for that job now.”
He looked at her, strangely uncertain.
“Eric . . . ,” she said, enunciating carefully, “I’m not going to leave you. You’re a fool, but unfortunately, you’re my fool, so . . . I don’t know, we’ll figure it out.” She sighed heavily, then pulled her coat off. “Well, I don’t know about you, but I’m going to crack open that Baileys in the kitchen. Mina, you sure I can’t tempt you?”
Mina, with a half smile, edged closer to the door. “No. I’d better head back to work. Super, is it okay if I take the car?”
“Yes. Right. Yes.”
Bonnie nodded, waving Eric toward her. “Best walk her out, Eric. Make sure she gets there safe.”
“Yes, sure.” He patted his pockets, pulled out the car keys.
“There’s no need.”
“Aye, girl. Best do what she says. She’s clearly in no mood to hear no.”
They walked back out of the house and onto the drive. Eric pulled the door tight behind him and then stopped, breathing in the icy air. It tasted like snow. He followed close behind Mina, thinking of the next day. When he would wake up, get out of bed, and have nowhere to go. The great Eric Bell was no more. What would he be after this? What would be left? He stood on the driveway, looking at the plunging shadows from the hedges, listening as the wind tugged at the leaves and created a sound that reminded him of breathing. Someone else would have to find the killer on the wall now.
He raised the key fob to unlock Bonnie’s car, then stopped. Mina had ducked down, was crouching near the hedge.
“What the hell are you doing?”
At first she didn’t answer. Then she said a word which he thought sounded like vulnerability.
Eric frowned and moved closer. There, stuck on a twig toward the bottom of the hedge, was a flash of white. He frowned and, with care, reached down, then held it up so that the dim curtained glow from the house illuminated it. “What is that?”
A musical tone shattered the darkness, and Mina’s hand flew to her handbag. She answered the phone with a “Yes.”
She sounded different, thought Eric. She sounded like him.
“You got it? Okay. And the match . . .” Mina’s voice faded away as she crouched there, phone held to her ear for absurdly long moments. Then she hung up without saying goodbye.
“Everything okay?” asked Eric.
Mina stood up abruptly. “That was Zoe from forensics. They got a fingerprint from the broom at Victoria Prew’s.”
Eric stared at her. “Who? And what the hell is that?”
The girl looked as though she would cry. “It’s a sling,” she said. “It’s Ramsey’s sling.”
The killer on the wall
He stood where he had stood before. Twenty years ago and then today and so many times in between. He stood at the wall. Beyond lay nothing but empty moor. Above, pinpricks of starlight had broken through. A vivid cold wind tore at him. He didn’t feel cold, though. Instead, that too-familiar sensation of having left his body for parts unknown. He watched his body from the outside, the movements that were so familiar now, a train on tracks. He watched as his hands moved as they were always meant to move. Because that was the thing, wasn’t it? It was no more a choice for him than was the pumping of his heart, the inhaling, exhaling of his lungs. It was who he was always meant to be.
The body felt unspeakably heavy hung across his shoulder. But it was a good heaviness, familiar and whole. And, over the years, he had built up his skill with this part, with all parts. To do what he did, strength was necessary in so many different ways. He lowered the body to the ground, careful, careful, watched the chest rise and fall, rise and fall. Blood had begun to pool around the collarbone, and he felt in his pocket for a rag. He’d have to wipe that away before the finish. Because it always had to finish the same: with the pressure of his fingers. He could not have told you why, could not have explained what it was about this that made him feel whole again, only that it did.
But the thing was, he had fought against it. For so long he had lived a lie, trying to pretend that he was human, that he was normal. Only he wasn’t.
It was coming to an end. He could feel it, as a book that had only a few pages left. He had hoped . . . what? That he could ride off into the sunset? That this need would suddenly disappear, leaving him exactly what he appeared to be? But it was too late for that. Time was almost up.
He sank to the grass, and the damp of it leached through his jeans onto his skin. In the past he would have taken more care. In the past he would have worried more about what he was picking up, what he was leaving behind. But it really didn’t seem important now. Because in minutes or hours, they would begin to unpick his lies, and then they would come.
He looked back toward the lights of Briganton and felt something that was probably a distant relation of sadness. If only things could have been different. Then he saw something else, flashing blue lights in the distance, and he felt a spark of adrenaline, a spurt of fear.
And hadn’t it been about the fear all along? To be in among it, that which you have created. It wa
s like a scent, an unwashed bodily odor of terror. To walk among it, to see it reflected in the downturned mouths, in the darting eyes. It was engrossing and addictive and so, so very dangerous.
He watched the blue lights, trying to place where they were, and to determine if they were coming for him. But, he found, he didn’t really care anymore. His time was up, and he was tired of running.
He watched the shallow breaths, the chest rising and falling.
Then Ramsey stretched his fingers out, traced the outline of Emilia’s jaw with tender care, and for a moment felt a wash of . . . what? He would call it grief, and yet he understood that the color of grief for him was probably very different from that seen by others. He thought of Isla, as he always did. She would be so sad. And yet he had never wanted to make Isla sad. She was home. She was the harbor to which he returned following each and every storm. She had given him the sliver of a chance to find something normal. The blue lights were coming closer now, and a sound broke into the silence of the moor: the wail of sirens. And here, at the end, Ramsey thought of Isla as he slipped his fingers around her sister’s neck.
The man beside me – Isla
Isla ran. She was dimly aware of the sound of footsteps behind her, all but drowned out by the thundering of her heart. The fMRI scan was missing. Ramsey had told her he had gone for it, had complained about how long it had taken, about the noise of the MRI, and all the while he had been lying. He had looked in her face, had lied to her. She ran past the school, her legs screaming, and off in the distance could hear sirens. She pulled hard left, plunged down the hill. She knew where he would be.
Connor had looked at her like she had lost her mind as she tore the pile of scans apart, searching for the missing one. “It must be there,” she had screamed. “You ran it. Remember? I was away at that conference in Dublin? You said you were going to put Ramsey through the scanner, the PCL-R.”
I Am Watching Page 27
