Watching from the Dark

by Gytha Lodge

  Felix had swallowed a big gulp of tea before carrying on. She’d seen the brightness of his eyes, and understood that he was trying to swallow down a great deal else besides tea.

  He’d arrived before the squad cars. It had been one of those things that happened sometimes, because he’d only been two streets away. The house had been quiet, but the front door was slightly ajar and moving every time the wind blew.

  “I knew I was too late,” he said. “I got my baton ready and headed in, but there should have been sounds of some kind, or the mother and daughter should have been out at the front waiting for the police.”

  He’d found the daughter clutching at her unresponsive mother. There was a wound in the little girl’s abdomen that had bled profusely as she’d crawled over to her mum.

  “She was four or five,” he said. “A beautiful little blond thing. She was…she was still alive, and she was so frightened of her mummy not moving. When I came over and I pressed my hands over her abdomen to try to stop the bleeding, she asked me if she was going to die.”

  Zoe reached out and took his hand, feeling a lump in her own throat and such sorrow for him.

  “I lied to her,” Felix said. “I said, ‘You’ll be fine. The doctors will be here soon. Can you hear the sirens? That’s them. They’re going to look after you.’ And she said she felt wrong, and her eyes were funny. I had to take a hand off the wound so I could stroke her cheek.”

  There was a long silence, and then he said, “She died a few minutes before the ambulance arrived. That little blond girl who’d tried to help her mummy. And I don’t know quite why…or maybe I do…but it broke me. It broke me in two, and I couldn’t do it anymore,” he said.

  They’d had to remove him by force in the end. He hadn’t been able to let go of her hand.

  “And you left, after that?” she said, squeezing his hand. “You stopped being on the force?”

  Felix gave her a strange look. It was halfway between angry and beseeching.

  “No,” he said in the end. “I lasted a few more months. And then I lost my cool with a suspect, and I beat the living hell out of him. And then there— Well, they looked through my desk and they found this…this little doll of the dead girl’s. I’d taken it from her bedroom. For some reason the only thing that made me feel better was to comfort it. To keep comforting it. I think somewhere in my mind I felt like I was comforting her….”

  It took Zoe a long while to sleep that night. There was a compulsive horror to thinking of that poor girl, and of Felix. And for some reason the most horrifying thought of all was of him cradling a dead child’s doll.

  Jonah returned to the office and shut the meeting-room door. He sat back in his chair, trying to get everything in his mind in order while his team scrolled through hours of CCTV footage to trace Zoe’s movements and discover the origins of the figure in the cap. It was a fact he felt a twinge of guilt about. But as the DCS often liked to remind him, there was no point hiring a cleaner and spending your days scrubbing the bathroom. Which, if nothing else, was a good reminder of the difference between Jonah’s life and the DCS’s.

  Currently he had what was a familiar problem in investigative work. There were big areas with nothing pinned down, and a host of people who seemed to be dodgy. He could only be thankful that they lived in an age when there were so many ways to trace people.

  On top of that, certain elements of procedure needed to be adhered to. He was very much aware that it was time to update the Swardadines on the developments since the press conference.

  Deciding that it might be helpful to talk through Zoe’s drunken Wednesday-night companion with them, he put a call through to the Swardadine home phone.

  Siku answered almost immediately, her “Yes?” sharp.

  “It’s DCI Sheens here,” he said. “I wanted to let you know where we are, and also ask a few questions.”

  She listened in silence while he told her about Zoe being out on Thursday during the early evening. He wasn’t surprised to learn that she knew nothing about it. He went on to the sighting on the Wednesday night.

  “An older man?” Siku asked.

  “Yes,” Jonah confirmed. “Silver-haired and expensively dressed, by the description.”

  “Her landlord,” Siku said immediately. “Felix.”

  “We’re looking into that. At the moment he denies any such meeting.” Jonah left a small silence, and then asked, “You don’t think she’d been in touch with anyone else? No…dates? After she broke up with Aidan? I know this man was older, but perhaps, after that relationship…”

  There was a pause, and Siku said, “I don’t think so. She might not have said if she’d gone on a few dates, but…I was trying to encourage her to find someone else, and she was quite resistant to the idea. It was so frustrating. She’d never managed to detach herself from Aidan properly.”

  Jonah agreed, and then, after another pause, said, “There is some news concerning Aidan Poole that I think you need to know. It doesn’t implicate him in the murder in any direct way, but it’s significant.”

  “Has he done something else?” Siku asked swiftly.

  “Well, yes and no. He lied when he said that he and Zoe were back together. They broke up finally in May, and she cut off all contact. He has admitted that he saw her because he was spying on her through her webcam.”

  There was a silence, and then Siku said, “That sneaking bastard!”

  Her voice was painfully raw with emotion, and Jonah had little to offer to console her. There was nothing he could do to alter the facts, and it was only right that they knew first, before it got out in some other way.

  “I’m so sorry,” he said. “But at least it’s caught up with him. He’ll almost certainly be prosecuted.”

  “It must have been him,” Siku said in a low, fierce voice. “He spied on her and he killed her. He was obsessed, wasn’t he?”

  “It’s a possibility,” Jonah said, “among a lot of others. And I’ll let you know as soon as we know anything else.”

  Hanson had clearly been waiting for him to finish the call, as she appeared in his doorway straight afterward.

  “Bit of a CCTV breakthrough, sir,” she said. “We’ve got Victor Varos getting into a cab at eight in the city center and heading out in the rough direction of Zoe’s. I’m going to check other points along the route, but it’s quite possible he was the one waiting at her flat for her.”

  “Good work,” Jonah said with feeling. “Can you send me the footage?”

  He sat at his desk to watch it, wanting to feed it into his thinking rather than have the team’s opinions at present. There wasn’t long to wait before Victor appeared on the screen. He was a dark-clad figure who rolled up to the taxi rank by Holyrood Church. He had a light jacket on, where other figures walking past were muffled up, and his walk was meandering.

  He leaned in to speak to the first taxi driver, and then climbed in. It took him a while to open the door.

  Jonah ended the reel after the cab had driven off northward. Victor had boarded a cab at eight, drunk and headed in the direction of Zoe’s house. He could well have arrived, had no response to buzzing, and waited for her.

  Jonah was working this through in his mind when his phone rang. He didn’t recognize Martin Swardadine’s voice at first. Since the first call he’d had with him, Martin had lost the urbane self-satisfaction. The perfect enunciation and projection. In their place was something flat and cracked and rough.

  “I’m so sorry, Officer,” he said. “I’ve unintentionally wasted your time. There wasn’t another man. The drunk idiot she came to help on Wednesday night was me.”

  * * *

  —

  LISTENING TO MARTIN was not easy. The shame that pervaded his account was uncomfortable to hear, and Jonah instinctively wanted to make Zoe’s father feel better about it all.

/>   Martin told him he had an alcohol problem. It was something he’d been trying to keep from his wife for years. He’d eventually unburdened himself to Zoe.

  “She was so easy to talk to,” he’d said, emotion running through his voice. “I felt terrible leaning on her, but she was so good at making me feel better. She had this faith that I could sort it out, but she never judged me when I didn’t. When I put off going to get help, or when I screwed up and went on a bender, she was always there.”

  “And you were here in Southampton that night,” Jonah said.

  “Yes. I was.” There was an awkward pause before Martin carried on. “I’d stayed the full day, and the meetings hadn’t gone well. I could just tell that they saw through me. Some people do. They…they ask these questions and the way they look at you when you try to give them the usual bullshit…” He cleared his throat loudly down the phone. “I told Siku I’d better take them out for dinner, and instead I went and found the nearest bar. I shouldn’t have called Zoe. She didn’t need that. She had enough of her own to deal with.”

  “She came to meet you?”

  “Yes,” he said. “She always would. No matter what she was doing. She’s come to rescue me before in…in London, sometimes. This was worse, I think. I remember being really sick, and I wasn’t in a fit state for much. So she took me to the station in a cab and she bought me water and crisps and chocolate while we waited for the last train, and then she made me eat and drink until it wasn’t so bad. She even asked if I wanted her to come along, but by that point I’d started feeling a bit more together and I told her to go home. And then…and then I fell on my bloody face getting onto the train, and she had to help me up. I wasn’t even hurt, just…pathetic. I felt like such a failure just then. Such a bloody useless failure.”

  Jonah finished making notes, and then said, “It would have been useful to have had this information earlier, Mr. Swardadine.”

  “I know,” he said roughly. “I know. I’m so sorry. When you asked about her, and Siku was there…I was just ashamed. I’ve told Siku now. I’ve told her. Even though it’s the last thing she wants to hear right now.”

  “Well, I appreciate you coming forward,” Jonah finished. “We’ll be in touch soon with any updates.”

  He hung up the call and went out to his team once again.

  “I’m going to ask Victor Varos and our witness from the pub to come in, but, in the meantime, can someone hassle Martin Swardadine’s work until we know for sure about his alibi?”

  * * *

  —

  VICTOR PROVED ELUSIVE. By six, while the CCTV hunt was still ongoing, Jonah had tried his mobile and the coffee shop, and called Maeve and Angeline to ask if they’d seen him. Neither had.

  Their phone-in witness had arrived at five-fifteen, looking fairly uncomfortable about the mix-up between days.

  “I was there both nights,” he said by way of apology. “And I guess I just assumed it was the Thursday because that was the night she’d gone missing.”

  Faced with a range of photographs, he immediately identified Martin Swardadine, despite the photo being a very polished, professional one.

  “That’s him,” he said. “He had a bit more stubble, but it was him.”

  He was on his way out when Lightman received a call back from Martin Swardadine’s work. Jonah saw Lightman’s eyes flit over to him, and waited for him to take the details.

  “He was definitely in London,” the sergeant said, once he’d hung up. “There were two of them at the client dinner, Martin and the CEO. They all got pretty drunk but it was Martin who called a cab for them at eleven-forty. He was there.”

  “Well, that’s one thing cleared up,” Jonah said with a nod. “He couldn’t have reached Zoe within the pathologist’s time of death, and he definitely wasn’t there at our probable time of eleven P.M.” He turned to Hanson. “Did you get anywhere with Felix Solomon’s tenant?”

  Hanson shook her head with a meaningful expression. “He claims he can’t find her details. Having seen how religiously tidy he is, I’d say that’s deliberate obstruction.”

  Jonah nodded, and then said, “I’d be interested to hear what she has to say about him in general. I wonder if the neighbor can help?”

  “The non-pedophile neighbor?” Hanson asked.

  Jonah gave her a grin. “The non-pedophile as far as we know.”

  * * *

  —

  THE HOUSE SEEMED to be shifting and creaking more than it usually did, the sounds cutting through the rain at random intervals. Greta had thought she was past noticing them anymore, but with Aidan gone it was as if the house had gained an unsettled personality and was determined to remind her that she was alone in the early darkness. How much worse would it be later, when she had to sleep alone?

  She had her laptop out, a sign of her determination to get on with work, despite her miserable husband. But predictably she hadn’t written a thing. Instead she had gone over and over the conversation with Aidan. She’d felt the hurt of what he’d done each and every time, and wanted to shout at him all over again.

  She knew she’d been cruel. In some ways, she had probably given him reason to believe he’d done the right thing. She’d been harsh and cold and bloody furious. But at the same time she couldn’t bring herself to regret it. Her one consolation for all the deceit was that she had laid into him. She’d made him feel it.

  And now, several hours later, she desperately wanted to talk about it with someone. It was impossible to keep it all in. But the urge to pour it all out fought with a feeling of total humiliation. He’d slept with a student, and all the passion and strength and love she’d poured into her marriage had meant nothing. Neither had every care to keep herself thin and fit and beautiful.

  “Fuck you, Aidan,” she said to herself, for what must have been at least the fiftieth time. “Fuck you for making me feel this.”

  And the thing that was worse than that, that she didn’t want to admit to herself as she blocked and then unblocked him from her contacts, was that part of her wasn’t strong or cold or angry. Part of her just wanted him to walk back in and tell her it had been a huge mistake that he would never, ever repeat. Part of her ached to believe that he hadn’t loved someone else, and that she really did mean everything to him.

  She needed a bloody drink. It didn’t matter how many times she’d told herself that she was strong enough to cope without it; it was still the only thing she wanted to do.

  There was a trembling in her legs as she headed for the kitchen and took out one of the big half-bottle wineglasses they’d been given for their anniversary. She filled it and put the bottle away. And then she took it back out again and carried it back into the sitting room. She waited for the first few gulps to start to make her feel better, and when they didn’t, she downed the rest of the glass steadily, then filled it again.

  God, she hated him. She hated him more than she’d ever hated anyone in her life.

  The first buzz of disconnected warmth had arrived by the time she looked up and saw a face staring in at her from outside the window. For a moment she thought it might be Aidan. But she knew his face too well. Knew the shape of him in silhouette. This was another man, someone she’d never seen before, and he was standing a few meters from the window.

  The jolt of it did something horrible to her chest. Her eyes locked with his as she stared back, and then he was turning away, flitting out of sight.

  Greta’s heart was hammering. She felt sick with fear. Where had he gone? What had he wanted?

  She ran to the front door and put the chain on with shaking hands, and then she thought of the back door and the French windows. She skittered over to each of them in turn and clicked the locks. And then she picked up her phone and ran to the bathroom. She locked herself in and sat on the edge of the bath in darkness, every part of her shaking.

 
She thought of the police, and then she thought of the sergeant who had made her tea earlier. About how strong and capable and calming he had been.

  She’d already saved his number into her phone, which was a good thing, as her hands were vibrating so much with fear that it was hard to press the buttons.

  * * *

  —

  HANSON’S HEAD WAS pounding, a wave of pain radiating out from her eyes. The pain had kicked in forty minutes after she’d started scrolling through the CCTV footage, and it had only gotten worse, despite a couple of Tylenol washed down with cold tea.

  The initial elation of having found Victor Varos had been followed swiftly by disappointment. She couldn’t seem to find him closer to Zoe’s flat at the right time, or, in fact, anywhere that she was expecting him to appear.

  Fifteen more minutes, she told herself. And in those fifteen minutes, you’ll find him.

  She was glad of the interruption when Lightman’s phone rang. It gave her an excuse to look away from her screen, blink a few times, and rub at her head again.

  She watched him as he said, “DS Lightman.” And then, “Does he seem to be there now? Yes, OK. I’m going to send some uniformed police round and I’ll be there as soon as I can.”

  He hung up just as the DCI emerged once again, and Hanson gave him a quizzical look.

  “Greta Poole just called,” he said. “She says someone was staring at her through the window, and she’s not sure if they’re still there.”

  Hanson punched her hand in the air triumphantly. “Told you! Lightman’s fangirls never disappoint.”

  * * *

  —

  JONAH LEFT FOR home at half seven. Lightman had confirmed that he was at Greta Poole’s, and the situation seemed to be non-threatening.

  There was still no sign of Victor Varos, and although his absence was beginning to concern Jonah, there was little he could do by staying on at the station. It was possible he was simply ignoring their calls, or turning up to bother Greta Poole, but it was also possible that he had absconded. And that he had done so because he had something to hide.