The Watcher

by Ross Armstrong

  ‘Hey, Lil, bloody hell, let’s get inside. Those little animals,’ Lowell says.

  I’m so pleased to see him. I hug him deeply, pressing my whole body against him. He holds me up and takes me back inside the building.

  The concierge talks about pressing charges and excellent CCTV cameras, but I don’t want that. I may ordinarily. But not at this point. I’m already struggling to lie low as it is. This isn’t the time.

  Inside the hallway Lowell talks to me, measured and calm. Lulling me back to reality with his reliable timbre and stature.

  ‘Honestly, some of them that hang around here they’re really… I hate to say it but they’re like a kind of vermin,’ he says, unusually strident. Bilious.

  Rats… The rats of the air… The rats of the street.

  It would sound offensive coming out of anyone else’s mouth. But his tentativeness reduces everything to a delicate reproach. Besides, I know he’s just trying to make me feel better.

  I feel safe with him as we rise in the lift.

  ‘I hate it when guys say what I’m about to say. Like it’s your fault. But. Take care of yourself out there Lily, won’t you?’ he says as we reach my door.

  ‘Well. You said it anyway,’ I say. He’s a gentle man. And a gentleman.

  But he doesn’t know what he’s talking about. I can take care of myself. I’ve probably taken more risks in the last week than he has in a lifetime.

  ‘Thank you though. I’m all better now,’ I say.

  I touch him on the arm. He does the same to me.

  ‘If you ever need anything, I’m just beyond the partition wall.’

  Who am I kidding? I fancy him rotten. Is that terrible? He’s one of those excellent geeks. Not like a geek geek. Not thick glasses with a plaster in the middle. A new geek. A good one. With strong features, characterful and defined. The kind of face you want to lick and then hit with a hammer. Or maybe that’s just me. I’m reading that back and it makes me sound a bit odd.

  My back’s against my front door now. My home is just behind me.

  ‘Thanks.’

  ‘I’m serious, I know everything’s been a bit… whatever, recently… I know. I know.’

  What does he know? Another strange boy.

  ‘So, I’m just next door. Is what I’m saying,’ he says, dependable. Twenty per cent flirtatious.

  ‘Ahh!’ he yelps, taking a sharp step back. Breaking the moment. Terrence has come to the door and has started licking his hand. It caught him off guard. We laugh. It dies down. Then he stares at me. We keep coming back to this charged little silence. We’re enjoying it. Our blood’s up. It feels like something could happen. Here. Between us.

  ‘Take care then,’ he says.

  I nod at him deliberately. I tap him on the chest, twice. Knock. Knock.

  I turn and head inside.

  Christ. Now it’s my turn to jump. Aiden stands behind the door. We’re all a bit jumpy tonight. He’s right there. He’s been waiting for me.

  ‘Hi. Where’ve you been?’ he asks, innocently.

  But I don’t want to answer that.

  The more apt question is, where has he been? I was so het up by everything I hadn’t stopped to wonder where he was at all. I felt so totally alone. And he was here. All along.

  Did he not hear me shouting? What exactly was he doing in there?

  Part Seven:

  In My Sights

  6 days till it comes. Morning.

  I’m thinking about that bug. The one I got from the specialist shop when I picked up the directional microphone. I forgot to tell you about that. I told Phil that bugging wasn’t an option, and it shouldn’t be. But now it’s on the table and I’ve made some plans. Put wheels in motion.

  I go and rummage around for it in my washbag and then get it out and stare at it for a while. Funny little thing. Not like a creature at all, as the name would suggest – just a box as big as a fifty-pence piece – ‘GSM surveillance microphone’. I stare at number eighteen. Blinds firmly closed. He’s keeping his head down, bobbing around in there no doubt, but staying out of sight and camouflaged, like the Reed Warbler on the banks of the reservoir. My intermediate eyes scan hopelessly for any signs motion. Then I get a text:

  ‘In front of shop. 5 minutes.’

  I text back: ‘OK.’

  When I saw Aiden last night I had it out with him. Properly for once. I put the reverse on him. He wanted to know what all the racket was in the living room while he was trying to work. Wondered where I went and who was outside the door. But I turned it around. Put it all back on him where it belonged. He’s the mysterious one. He’s the one hiding away. I didn’t hold back.

  ‘Oh, you’re a coward. I married a coward,’ I said, staring at him, accusingly.

  ‘What the hell are you talking about?’ he said, the cracks showing.

  ‘Did you not hear the phone? The birds against the window?’

  ‘What? What birds? That phone hasn’t rung since we got here.’

  I stared at him for a second. Role reversal.

  He was fraught. I wondered why. He was just feeling guilty, surely. He must have heard the birds. Must have heard the smack. Smack. Bang. Bang.

  A pause. He ran his hand over his face. His brow furrowed. Then I advanced.

  ‘You hid in the bedroom. Blind down. Out of sight. Didn’t you? While I was in here on my own. I forgot you were even in the flat. I forget you’re around any more. You’re a shut-in. You’re a coward. It’s pathetic.’ It’s all out.

  He took a moment. He tutted. He blew his out his cheeks.

  I waited.

  ‘Look. I’m sorry. I’ll admit I’ve had a lot to do. I’ve got a deadline. I’ve got thousands of words to get down and only a few days left. I switch off. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.’

  He held his head and looked up at me, his eyes reddened.

  We took each other in for a moment. My heart softened. Some of the old him was back. He seemed human. Vulnerable, but in an honest way. He looked at me and I felt his presence again all of a sudden. The presence of the man I love.

  ‘But, Lily, I didn’t hear any birds. I didn’t hear any phone.’

  Whoosh. A plane passed overhead. It’s like they’re getting closer and closer.

  I stared at Aid. I know the common factor in all this strange behaviour is me. But sometimes everyone does just go a bit weird for a while. Don’t they? It can’t all be me. How can he not have heard it?

  ‘Come into the living room. Come on,’ I ordered him.

  But he didn’t want to go. Something was stopping him. He forced a smile. He was reticent. Embarrassed almost.

  ‘I’ve seen the windows. They’re fine. They’re clean. Listen I’ve got to stick my headphones in and do some work.’

  I grabbed his hands. I pulled them in to my chest. We locked eyes. I spoke nice and calmly.

  ‘You haven’t seen the windows. You don’t leave the bedroom any more. Except to go the loo. Do you? Come on,’ I said, pulling him into me.

  ‘Lily, I’ve seen the windows. There’s nothing wrong with them.’

  ‘Come on. I’ll show you. You’ll see.’ I grabbed his wrist.

  ‘What are you doing? I’ve got work to do. Get off,’ he pleaded.

  But I still had him by the wrists. He was coming with me.

  He was not happy. He dug his feet in. He chanced a smile, playing pretend. Like there was not real aggression there, like we were not both clawing at each other to get our way. I dragged him, his socks slipping across the smooth wooden floor.

  ‘Come on. Come on! Come in here and take a look.’

  ‘Lily, no, I…’

  He finally relented and we both fell into the living room. The two of us took a good look. He said nothing, as we took in the window.

  ‘Oh, shit.’

  A pause. Only the sound of our breath. A penny dropped.

  ‘Oh, shit. It wasn’t like this before. How did it get like this?’

  I don’t know whe
ther he was play acting or not, but he seemed shocked. I don’t think he was lying low. I think he genuinely didn’t know what was going on there. The whole time it had been happening to me. His headphones were in. He was none the wiser as I crawled along, chin on the floor. As I reached for the phone. He looked at the feathers.

  ‘The birds. I told you. Some boys from the estate pelted our flat with dead birds. God knows why. Some of them really are fucking animals,’ I mumbled.

  ‘Eughh! Oh, Jesus Christ. Oh, my God.’ Hand to mouth, he bent over and held back a retch. He’s never had a strong stomach.

  Ten minutes later, for the first time in a long, long time, he was outside. Even if it was only on the balcony. He cleaned the blood and disposed of the birds. The blood formed into slime and drifted down the window. I watched him from the other side of the glass. It was like he was bathing in soft claret-coloured blood. Swimming in it.

  Finally, he wiped it to the ground, soaked it up with a sponge and some kitchen roll. Put everything into a black bin liner. And it was as good as new. As if nothing ever happened. He stepped inside. I kissed him. We went into the bedroom. And we were physical with each other for the first time in a long time. It was nice.

  Maybe you didn’t want to know that, but I thought you might be getting worried.

  Then, in the shower, the next morning, I’m thinking about the bug and how I would get it inside number eighteen. What tricks I’d have to pull. Because that’s the only way now. I have to do something.

  I started to think about who I knew that might be able to break in to a building. It didn’t take me long to narrow it down. I know this is stereotyping, so I did tread carefully. I sent a text to Jean’s number. Now their number.

  ‘Do you know how to pick a lock. By any chance?’ it read.

  Well, I suppose I didn’t tread that carefully.

  Ten seconds later, my phone vibrated. Quick texters these kids.

  ‘Why? What for?’ I took that as an immediate yes.

  ‘To catch the man that did it. Need help. Will pay.’

  ‘How much?’

  A quick barter and we arranged to meet an hour later. I hardly even know the kid. Now he’s on my payroll.

  I dry myself off, put on black trousers, a black shirt, black shoes. I don’t know whether this is going to make me less conspicuous or more. But I’m giving it a shot. Then I put the bug in my washbag, drift over to my window to see the blinds of number eighteen are shut up firmly like a mouth closed stiff, and it’s then that I get his ‘5 minutes’ text.

  I haven’t been in to work for a couple of days. Calling in sick. Using up my duvet days. I am an unreliable member of the workforce. But some things are more important.

  It is 11 a.m. Brenner should be out at work. Everyone should be at this time. All the normal people anyway.

  Going about their lives. Leaving their flats empty. Unoccupied and unguarded.

  6 days till it comes. Afternoon.

  He’s there. We nod. Old pros. Chris is wearing dark colours, too, so I don’t feel my choice of outfit is such a dick move. I give him some cash, which he pockets immediately. He doesn’t seem to have anything with him. Tools. Anything like that.

  When we get to the Waterway entrance we settle on a plan. You’re not supposed to hold the doors open for anyone, emails go around to that effect. Saying that, there hasn’t been a robbery in these flats since they’ve been built and they’d like to keep it that way. Problem is, this translates to the mind as ‘No robberies? Oh, good, I can relax.’ Which means people do tend to hold doors open for each other. They let their guard down. I’ve done it. It’s natural. It’s one thing to say ‘of course, I wouldn’t just let a stranger into my building’ but, in actuality, it’s pretty hard to pointedly slam a door in the face of a woman holding heavy shopping bags. A woman that looks like you.

  The sad fact is that there is no chance anyone would hold the door open for my friend here, but every chance they will for me. That’s how things generally work. In life. You trust faces that look like yours. So say psychologists. So he stays out of sight. And I hover a bit closer, holding a bag of organic fruit and veg from the local shop. It acts as my ID card. I’m just like you. See? I go to the shops, it says. We wait.

  I notice the strange woman I gave the athlete’s foot cream to. She passes by on the other side of the road. I turn my face away and luckily she doesn’t see me. I don’t want to stop and chat. Not now.

  After fifteen minutes of nothing I start to worry I’m going to get spotted, hanging around. Loitering. They don’t like that around here. Everyone sane has somewhere to be.

  The one problem of choosing a time of day when everyone is at work, is that everyone is at work. We just need some work-from-home-techy type. Some student perhaps. I’m not picky. But, nothing doing so far. I wander away, trying to seem casual.

  Then, as if on cue, out comes Alfred, our graduate in his first flat. I switched off just at the wrong time. Sod’s law. I have to hurry, I might have missed my chance, dammit.

  He’s almost through the door and ready to let it fall shut. I power forward at pace, rummaging in my pocket as if I definitely have my key fob somewhere, trying to seem flustered and credible. I think I’m too far away to catch his attention.

  But Alfred is well trained. A good public schoolboy, I should imagine. He sees me coming with my bags. Half smiles, nothing too personable, but holds the door open and let’s me through. It’s a good job no one knows their neighbours any more. Not in buildings like these anyway. No one except me.

  I walk in past the gleaming glass doors and then stop, playing with my bag as if I’m checking I’ve got everything. The washbag and bug are beneath my prop shopping. Concealed below quinoa and butternut squash. Then I count to ten and, when I turn, Chris is at the doors. I press the green release button, he nods, opens the door and we are in.

  Going up the stairs, I take a look around. The decor in the hallways is different. Brown carpet, green walls, fascinating choice of colours. Against which, I suddenly realise, we stand out like a sore thumb. Like we’ve come as robbers to a fancy dress party. Or we’re doing silver service. Or we’re puppeteers.

  A concierge, in his grey uniform with blue trim, with his lime green clip on tie, bundles past us. We step back out of his way. I put my arm against Chris. I’m trying to connect the two of us. Suggest he’s my stepson perhaps. Not a kid I barely know, who I’ve employed to break in to a flat for me.

  ‘Sorry,’ the concierge murmurs. On his way to some sort of parking-based emergency.

  Chris looks at me. Stares at my hand, which still touches him on the small of his back. I take it away. I smile. He doesn’t. But I think somewhere in there he’s pretty amused. Flat eighteen, first floor, isn’t hard to find.

  As I stand guard at the top of the stairs, I glance back to see how Chris is doing. He takes two long pieces of metal out of his pocket, one bent at the end. That’s all it takes. I thought it might be more technical. He slides one into the lower part of the lock, and forces the other gently into the top of it, and artfully moves the bottom one around, manipulating the inner mechanics of the lock itself.

  I did a research project for a lock manufacturer once. Locksmiths used to be people who created singular locks. They were inventors, rather than craftsmen who merely fitted a mass manufactured product with subtle variations. Throughout the nineteenth century people like James Sargent, Linus Yale, Sr, and Jeremiah Chubb were artisans who brought the art forward. Each lock was seen as a tiny puzzle to be solved. They would make new locks and guarantee that they could not be broken into, then their competitors would attempt to pick them, and if they succeeded in doing so they would unveil their new locking mechanism as the new industry leader.

  There were national locksmithing competitions. I think somewhere they still exist. But, as time went by, the arms race between lock and key became dominated by the key. Or rather the explosive, the picklock, the gun. Locksmiths became reticent to offer gua
rantees on their products without them being tailormade, which of course meant great expense. So now we have arrived at an honour system again. Where once we could be sure we were safe in our homes, tucked up in bed with our valuables, the modern world works on kind of an ‘please don’t’ system. If anyone wants to, has the apparatus, the time and inclination, they can get in anywhere. The lock is a barrier that slows you down and asks the question, ‘Are you really going to do this? Because once you have there’s no going back, you’re a criminal.’ As I’m thinking these things, I hear the turn of a handle. No going back.

  Chris beckons me over and we step inside Mr Brenner’s home. I won’t lie to you. At this point I am very excited. Nervous too, quaking. But you can be that much more determined when you know that what you’re doing is right. Maybe she’s in here right now. Alive or dead. I take a look. Inside the bedroom first. I tread carefully but swiftly. He has two mid-century French bedside tables. I run my hand over one of them as I put my other hand to the sliding wardrobe.

  I waver. And gulp. I’m not sure what I will find. Not sure I’m ready to see a body. A face grimacing in pain. Dead or alive. Wrists bound together. Bruises all over the body. I’m not sure I want to see any more.

  ‘Oi! What you doing?’

  I jump, just resisting the urge to scream. It’s Chris. In a whispered shout, he continues: ‘Look, gonna leave you to it. Getting out of here. See you around.’ He goes to leave.

  ‘No, don’t leave me. We need to lock it back up after, right?’

  ‘You didn’t pay for that. If I get caught here I’m fucked.’ He’s gone.

  My hand is still on the wardrobe. I brace myself. I close my eyes. I slide it open. The horrors that lie in front of me could change everything. I wet my lips. Then open my eyes.

  Tennis balls. Underwear. What looks like ten years of tax returns. Shirts. Nice shirts. I touch them. I’m not sure why. Then my eyes roll downwards and I see a green chest. It has a combination lock. I crouch down to see if it will pull open, but it doesn’t. I hear a noise in the hallway. Footsteps and voices. Chris pulled the door closed but I can definitely hear someone moving around out there. I don’t want to get caught here.