The Watcher

by Ross Armstrong

  What we know, is that I’m engaging in Suppression. That’s when you have information that you don’t want to share with the other birders. Remember? I know that’s not playing by the rules. But that’s the way it is.

  All day I’ve been thinking about how they did her in. I’m starting with the question of cause of death. Sadly for our killer, I’m guessing the angle of the blow or something about the wound itself told them it was carried out by an attacker, I’m guessing with a blunt instrument, hence the sign asking for witnesses. They wouldn’t be pursuing a break-in otherwise.

  Another thing I do keep thinking about is that statistic about most people knowing their killers. Is it a true stat? Or is it contaminated by some bias? That’s what you have to find out in market research. Where the flaws are in the statistics and what the real story is.

  Does it seem like most victims know their killers because it’s easier to catch the ones that do know the victim? There’s a trail, coherent clues that lead to suspects emotionally related to the subject of the case. Whereas, when the killer doesn’t know his victim as such, their crimes tend to go unsolved. Skewing the statistics somewhat. Creating a bias for solved crimes being committed by killers who know their victims and not stopping to consider that a large percentage of the unsolved crimes could be carried out by virtual strangers, who by their nature are going to be harder to track down. Better to kill someone you don’t know is my conclusion. If I was going to kill anyone, I mean. You’re so much harder to find. Just a tip for you there.

  Jean saw people, but she didn’t really know anyone. Same as me, I guess. And the same as most people in these buildings. Progress has driven us all inside. We’re a world of introverts. Cohabiting strangers, flung together by fate. All with motives, all with mystery, all suspects. That’s why I’ve got to go back over there. To the estate. The nastiest side possible. I’m looking for something, I don’t know what, a clue, information, someone must know something over there. Someone must have been keeping their eyes open. Even if it’s someone you ordinarily wouldn’t want to meet on a dark night. If what Jean said was true, I won’t need to find them. If I hang around long enough, they’ll find me. I’m going to go over there. Soon. I’m going to make some noise and see who appears when I do. Then I’m going to cause some trouble.

  My phone rings.

  I was deep in thought and it startles me. But I manage to keep my cool. Aiden can’t know what I’m up to. He can’t see I’m on edge or it’ll ruin everything. But staying cool is going to be harder now. Because the number that just called me is Jean’s number.

  It cuts out before I can get to it. Just two rings. Damn it! I stare at it wondering how the hell it’s possible. My head is spinning. I feel sick and there’s only one way to cure it. I’m going to have to move my plan forward. Speed things up a little. If someone’s toying with me I need to strike first or I’ll be a sitting duck. I didn’t start this as a victim and I’m certainly not going to end it as one. Better to stay moving, go at them head-on.

  I was going to save my plan for tomorrow night. But we’re losing valuable time. It has to be tonight. I try a return call but it goes straight to her answer machine. She’d recorded a message herself – people don’t tend to do that much I’ve found, not any more. As if offering the world their voice would reveal far too much of themselves.

  ‘If you wanna leave a message, then do that,’ she says, bluntly.

  Hearing her voice again is uncanny. That word academics use to describe something spooky, unusual, almost unreal. A whisper from beyond the grave. So who called? Has she risen from the dead? Or was it the police trying to find out who she last tried to contact? I still don’t much fancy talking to them. They’ll take what I know and give me nothing in return. My hands quiver, so I clench them, steel myself and decide to get moving.

  As I pack my bag, my hand stops over the flick knife. Of course I won’t use it. But better safe than sorry. I put it in my washbag. I feel like I need something. This is stupid. I’ve never done anything like this. You know me. But please know I have to try to find out what happened to her. This is the only way I can think to do that. But don’t tell me that it’s dangerous. I know that.

  Don’t tell me this is the sort of thing my mum would do.

  Don’t you dare.

  When the clock hits 2 a.m., I’m going over there.

  Part Four:

  The Twitch

  15 days till it comes. 2.02 a.m.

  I don’t have a plan. I said I had a plan but when I think about, as I creep from my bed and into my clothes, it’s not really a plan. I think about stuffing some trousers and a shirt full of newspaper and putting them next to him. Like I’m sneaking out of my dorm in a teen movie. But Aiden’s not waking up. I know. I can sense it.

  No, it’s not a plan. It could be the outline of something. But it’s not coloured in yet. It’s a sketch at best. I’m taking it over there to see if someone can fill it in for me.

  I grab my bag and casually walk downstairs, pulling my baseball cap down, throwing my face into shadow. I don’t need to be quiet for any particular reason I don’t think, but I sneak down the stairs anyway. I don’t know who hangs around in the hallways in my building at night, but if they’re there then they’re probably up to no good. I’m going to tread carefully. Keep my eyes open. I’m being paranoid of course, but if it gets late enough every place gets reduced to the status of a haunted house. Even if it’s lit by automated fluorescent lights. Anywhere can spook you when it’s quiet enough. That’s what this place is doing to me as I descend the stairs, silently. Ghost-like.

  As I press the green button and make my way into the clammy summer air I see the moon bounce off the edge of the reservoir. Sometimes this place has a clear enough sky to look like anywhere else than London. There’s a constructed romance about it that shouldn’t be able to exist around a place built in 2012. It could be Hawaii or Monaco. The sculpted gardens, watered every morning by sprinklers that rise silently from the ground, keep the place in a state of abstract perfection. The moon hits the dew on the grass and it shines idyllically. The flowers smell fresh and new.

  They’re always changing things. Pulling up plants that have been there for a matter of weeks in favour of something fresher. To keep the residents happy, to keep that sense of wonder, that ‘out-of-the-box sheen’.

  I think I see another pair of eyes looking at me. Oh, God. I gasp and reach for my backpack. Then I realise it’s my reflection in the spotless glass of Resident’s Tower. The last newbuild before the small road that currently separates the new estate from the old one. Before the project moves over the road and turns everything into the new. Consuming everything that came before. Rendering it dead and obsolete. The middle-class land grab.

  The iron gleam disappears behind me and I head into the bare bones of buildings that stand like scarecrows, bearing down on me with toothless grins.

  I’m trying to stay under the radar, silent, because I don’t want to get set upon before I make it into the bowels of the place. As I walk, I busy myself by thinking of the possible motives anyone would have for murdering Jean:

  1. A mistaken belief that she might have anything worth taking: the missing items could suggest someone was clearing up after a struggle. But you probably wouldn’t have to kill her to take what she had anyway. And she wouldn’t talk if you did rob her. She was savvy. But it has to remain a possibility.

  2. Some sort of revenge attack: maybe one of them took a verbal or physical beating from Jean at some point. She was an imposing woman. She wasn’t the sort to hold her tongue either. Maybe she gave as good as she got and someone got rid of her because of it. Maybe something hot-blooded in the night. Teach the old woman a lesson.

  3. She said she saw everything that went on around here: she said it pointedly like she did little else other than keep her eyes open. Neighbourhood Watch. She could’ve seen something she wasn’t supposed to see and got bumped off because of that.

  4. Moti
veless drug addicts: I find this to be the least compelling but let’s file it at the top of a pile under a subheading that reads OTHER. There are probably motiveless crimes that happen around the city every day and I generally picture them as performed by desperate addicts, the criminally insane or both.

  Who knows whether this holds any truth or is merely a photofit scenario my mind has created, built from news reports and fear mongering. A child’s drawing of villains formed from the myth of an evil and deranged underclass that are coming to get us.

  Motiveless. It’s at least a possibility. And everyone is findable. Everyone should be punished for the bad things they do. Everyone lives somewhere. On this occasion it falls on me to figure out where. And we’re starting right here.

  5. 5… 5.

  I get to my fifth possible motive but get distracted. I’m distracted by the size of Alaska House. It’s the biggest of all of them and it dwarfs me as I look up to it and gasp. I take in the full eighteen floors, feeling unsteady on my feet for a moment, then allow my eyes run down to the fourth, where the hooded eyes spied me before I retreated into the black, two nights ago.

  The charcoal sky and imposing purple clouds paint a gothic picture. If it were on a canvas it would look like an asylum. These morbid images aren’t helpful but they’re the only ones I have. I hate to generalise, but it looks terrifying in there.

  If the rumours are right, these buildings that surround me are partly inhabited by people that shouldn’t be there. I turn, a polythene bag shoots past on the wind. The smell of piss floats by too and makes me gag a bit. These homes were once reserved for families of good people, they’ve been stripped to their skeletons and what remains is pretty unsavoury.

  A crash of glass and metal against the ground. I turn, readying myself to confront whoever has come to meet me. It’s a fox, tearing apart a bin bag he has brought with him from God knows where. I gather myself and look past where he is dragging the bag and see that a doorway has been created by someone wrenching a metal slat from the concrete it was bolted into. There’s a few like that in each building. That would take a lot of strength or some decent equipment.

  I look up to the building above. Some of the slats have similarly been torn off higher up, revealing blackness behind them. I’m getting closer to the makeshift doorway. I’d rather not venture in. I’d rather something came out and met me here, in the air. It doesn’t feel safe in the open, far from it, but at least it’s easy enough to run in one direction and see how far I can get if things go that way.

  I poke my key torch into the crack and it sprays light into a concrete hallway. Inside, graffiti leads up the stairs. Spray-painted pictures crudely adorn walls. Some are the figures of men.

  One shows a child with a gun to his head. Another shows a man stabbing another man in the eyes with one pair of scissors and cutting at his throat with another. The last shows a man strangling a woman. At least I think that’s what it is. Maybe they’re like a Rorschach test. Do you know what a Rorschach test is? They show you scrambled images and you tell them what you see. Sometimes you see what you want to see. Do you understand me? Sometimes you see what you want to see. It stinks in here. It’s damp. It smells of shit. There’s something growing in there.

  I’m not going in there. So I take a shot at drawing someone out. Someone I can talk to. I suddenly yelp, a huge pishing call that echoes off the buildings.

  ‘Caroo! Caroo!’

  It’s a huge, violent sound, drawn from within me. It stings the back of my throat to make it. I hear it echo back maybe for a second and a half. It sounds like the noise of a mad man. I’m scaring myself. But I do it again.

  ‘Caroo! Caroo!’

  Nothing. I do it again. I wait fifteen seconds. Another ten. I breathe in through my nose. I breathe out through my mouth. Nothing.

  I wait, desperate for a sight of something. Quite quickly, without me realising it, things have slipped to a strange, uncanny place. I stand here, begging someone to arrive with a knife or implement to bludgeon me with. A street kid with a lust for blood that we read so much about. A huge Eastern European who wants to smash me to pieces for no reason at all. They may not be here. They may not exist.

  Come out. Come out. Wherever you are. I want to talk. I want to know the things you know. The things you’ve seen.

  The things normal people sit and worry may come and break down their door I fantasise about here. I beg them to come and find me. But it looks like I’m going to have to make them come out.

  ‘Hello! I’m here!’ I shout, at full volume.

  But the dark says nothing. The estate shrugs. I look at the crack in the doorway, choose to leave my flick knife in my bag. I don’t want to accelerate anything that may happen in there. Then I lift myself inside. This is not how it was supposed to go.

  The air feels damp in here. The torch lights my way past the graffiti, which looks like arrows, beckoning me to climb higher. I feel like shouting. But I want to wait a bit longer. Before I let them know I’m here. I don’t try to muffle my footsteps or tread carefully though, that kind of thinking is long gone. I tread firmly and honestly. I am what I am. Come out and see me.

  I feel like a sacrificial lamb. Walking into the arms of its killers. I grip my bag hard and unzip it. I root around for my flick knife while struggling to keep the torch straight. I stumble, using my hands to break my fall. I need to sleep. I’ve kept such strange hours these last few weeks. I hope they won’t be the death of me. I run my hands along the wall. The sound feels like it’s being amplified. Maybe it will rustle up something nasty. If Jean’s place had it’s own Arctic microclimate, this is the opposite. Heat has clung to the walls. Like we’re in Morocco all of a sudden. I breathe in the heat. I’m sweating, it really is hot in here, how is it so hot?

  I continue my ascent, getting closer, closer. But to what? The pressure gets to me and I shout again. I want it over now. Whatever it is. My terrible squawk leaves my body, as I do it I take out the flick knife and I drop the torch. Footsteps. I hear them loud and clear. I grab for my knife again but I can’t find it. I’m losing my cool. In fact, I think I lost it some time ago. Someone appears to squawk back. Fuck. Fucking hell.

  I search for the torch. My hands grapple through moss. Through glass. Through piss. I can’t find it. All I have is blackness. As the footsteps get closer. I think I’m bleeding. If I was back home in my hallway and the lights were out I’d be close to hot tears with frustration but there’s no time for that. My hands scramble artlessly along the stairs behind me as the noise is almost upon me. The footsteps get closer.

  There it is. I find my knife and flick it open. Here I am. Come and get me. I lie low, still no light, my hand not calling off the search just yet, it rustles around. But if they want to attack in the dark then so be it, I have my weapon, it’s a fair fight. I’m not scared.

  But that feeling has just kicked in, the instinct to bolt, but I cannot retreat even if I want to. It’s too late anyway. The footsteps get closer. I hold firm, grit my teeth and make a promise to myself that I’ll get out of here alive.

  15 days till it comes. 2.32 a.m.

  Boom. Rattle. Rattle.

  I lie low, one hand still scrambling, the other ready to attack as the noise of feet comes closer. I plan to attack at shin level, dig the knife firmly into the flesh and through to the bone. If possible I’ll rip around the back too, straight through the Achilles’ tendon. I have no idea if this will work and couldn’t care less at this point if it’s necessary. How quickly we all become Rambo when the stakes are high enough.

  Boom. Rattle. Rattle.

  My right hand still searches, my left tightens its grip on the knife.

  Boom. Rattle. Squeak.

  What the hell is this thing heading towards me?

  Rattle. Scrape. Rattle.

  It is so dark, I shake glass off of my hand and feel blood and piss drip from it.

  Bang. Squeak. Boom.

  It’s on me. I quickly change hands, remembering
I’m better off using my right if I’m actually going to attack. My left hand brushes the floor and I feel the jagged teeth of my keys, I grab them, turn on the light and stab tentatively into the dark all at the same time. A squeal.

  The tiny light flashes clean up the stairs and I see I have narrowly missed. A living, breathing thing. A huge rat. As large as the one I saw near Jean’s flat. They scuttle past me, echoing so loud against the walls that they could’ve been an army. My hand shakes as I put my knife away again. All I made contact with was the floor. But I still scared myself.

  I’ve never liked rats. I’ve always been afraid of them. But my mind is in a different place now. I could’ve killed an actual, living thing. Its heart could’ve stopped beating and it would’ve been my fault. The floor would have splashed with red, its tender puny heart would’ve stopped. Its life would’ve ended and mine would have gone on just as normal.

  Don’t judge me. The dark plays tricks and I’m so scared. I stare at the blade for a moment. It’s no toy. The knife is as sharp as the salesman promised. It’s a self-defence blade, handmade to guard against car jackings, the salesman boasted. ‘You could take a full-grown man’s leg off with it.’ But he also conceded people mostly bought them for the craft.

  I merely thought the handle looked nice. I’m putting it to better use than I could’ve imagined. But I hope I don’t have to actually use it. It stinks so bad in here. I’m nauseous. I blow out and wave my hand in front of my face. I want to repel the moisture and smells away from me. But I carry on still. Up the stairs. Here I come. Sticking to my task. Sticking to my promise. Graffiti arrows pointing the way all the while.

  At the top of the fourth floor I see something. Slats had been pulled away from doorways up until now but this one has been completely wrenched from its hinges. I wonder who did that. It sits bent and flung aside on the ground, a neat-looking red rug lies at the entrance to the hallway. My torch only goes so far, as it stalks down the hallway. They’ll be ready for me by now. I’ve caused enough of a racket on my way up to let them know I’m coming.