Watching from the Dark

by Gytha Lodge

  “Procedure is what ensures we don’t arrest the wrong person,” Jonah replied. “And you need to think about that and listen to me. There is someone out there who wants to make us think it was Aidan Poole. But there are some very, very persuasive reasons to believe that it wasn’t him, and you need to help us find out who actually killed her.” He fixed Victor with his hardest stare. “Have you been to the Pooles’ house before?”

  Victor shook his head. “No.” It was sulky. Unwilling.

  “How did you know where Aidan lived?”

  “I googled him,” Victor said with a slightly defiant air. “I did it months ago. When he first started dating her. I wanted to go and tell him to leave her alone.”

  “And you didn’t?” Jonah insisted. “You didn’t, oh, I don’t know, take something of Aidan’s that you thought might come in useful later?”

  Victor looked at him in what seemed to be genuine confusion. “No. I told you. I hadn’t been before. I never went because…Maeve told me Zoe would never forgive me.”

  Jonah almost laughed. “She might have been right about that.”

  He looked at the rigid tendons standing up on Victor’s arms, and he said, “I think you’ve been angry for a long time, and I also think that some of that anger spilled over toward Zoe on Thursday evening.”

  Victor’s head snapped up. “I didn’t do it!”

  “But you did go and see her,” Jonah pressed. “You took a cab back from town.”

  “But I didn’t take the cab there…” Victor stopped, and Jonah smiled at him.

  “You didn’t take the cab there? No. You went home, but then you started thinking about Zoe, and that she might have started dating someone else. She’d rushed off the night before, and it felt unfair. You’d been waiting for her to get over Aidan.”

  Victor said nothing. His gaze was on his fingers. He was bending and straightening them rhythmically.

  “Did you cycle there?” Jonah asked. “Or did you walk?”

  There was a long pause, and then Victor said, “I walked. I couldn’t find my bike keys.”

  “And did you pass anyone along the way?” Jonah asked. “Anyone you recognized?”

  Victor gave him a strange look. “No. Why, should I have?”

  Jonah watched him for a moment before saying quietly, “But you got all the way over there, and then Zoe said no, didn’t she? She told you she wasn’t interested.” There was a pause, and Jonah went on. “Did it surprise you, the mood you found her in? Was she suddenly not the kind, supportive girl that you loved?”

  “There was something wrong with her,” Victor said. “Something…that he did to her. It wasn’t her. She was…” He paused, and then muttered, “Como um diabo.”

  “She told you, as harshly as she could, that she’d put up with your attempts to control her for long enough,” Jonah said. “And you ended up blazingly angry.”

  There was a silence, and then Victor said, “Yes.”

  “But you decided to go and see her again later.”

  Victor looked at him with the expression of a cornered animal. “No. No, I didn’t kill her.”

  “Tell me what happened,” Jonah said quietly. “You were seen. You were seen on Hill Lane. We know you went back there.”

  There was a long pause while Victor looked toward the counter, moving his jaw as if grinding his teeth. And then he said, “I don’t know what I was thinking. I felt like I couldn’t go anywhere else when I was that angry. It was impossible to sit at home, so I left.”

  “When?”

  “I don’t know. Eleven. Eleven-thirty. I’m not sure.”

  “You went to Zoe’s.”

  “Most of the way,” Victor agreed quietly. “But I was walking and thinking and for some reason I got fixated on it being because of Maeve. It wasn’t…it wasn’t fair. But I just decided that it was all her fault. She’d always been so keen on Aidan and I…I called her.”

  “You called Maeve?”

  “Yes. I shouted at her. I told her she’d ruined everything.”

  Jonah watched Victor’s expression. “Did you wake her up?”

  “No,” Victor said, shaking his head a little defensively. “She was still out.”

  “Still out?” Jonah asked.

  “Yes. She was cycling somewhere. She was out of breath when she answered.”

  Jonah nodded, trying not to let his expression tell Victor what he was thinking: that Maeve had claimed to have gone straight home after her ladies’ supper and to have stayed there.

  * * *

  —

  FOR THE FIRST time in days it had turned sunny. A breeze seemed to have come in and carried all the clouds off with it, leaving a suddenly blue, brilliant sky. Hanson grinned up at it, thinking that she’d timed this interview well.

  The wind was still coming in off the sea, however, and it came straight up the road and cut through her suit jacket as she hurried along the road from her car. She shut the door to the coffee shop behind her as quickly as she could, and made her way to the counter as she looked for her interviewee. She doubted that a faith leader would have a dog collar or anything, and wondered how she’d recognize him. But a lanky man occupying an armchair in the window looked up at her and waved, removing the need for guessing.

  The guy already had a drink, but she decided it was worth keeping him waiting to order something hot. She asked for an Americano and left it black, grateful for the heat in the mug as she carried it over. She dropped into the free armchair, which was a lot more comfortable than its shabby appearance had led her to believe.

  “This is good. Thanks for suggesting it,” she said.

  “No problem,” he said. “Luke Searle.”

  “Juliette,” she said, and shook his proffered hand. It was large, and a lot warmer than hers. “Thanks so much for calling.”

  “I’m just keen to help. There are a few things you should know,” he said. And then he gave a slight, thoughtful sigh. “It’s difficult with Maeve. She’s a good person, she really is. She does a huge amount for everyone around her, and there’s nobody I would trust more when it came to aiding someone.”

  She waited for him to start in on the “buts,” feeling a thrill of anticipation. It didn’t take all that long.

  “But I think…I think it’s fair to say that she gets a bit carried away with people.”

  “How so?”

  “Well, there was…there was a pastor at the church who ended up leaving, in part because of her.” He pulled a doubtful face. “I don’t think it was her fault. It was just a misreading. She thought he was interested in her. And I mean, by that, interested in her as a woman and not spiritually. She got a little obsessed with him….”

  “She did what?” she asked. “Harassed him?”

  “Basically, yes.” Luke gave a sigh. “But she didn’t think she was. She wasn’t trying to. It was just a misunderstanding. He was kind to her, and she got the wrong end of the stick. Maybe she was going through a fragile time. I don’t know. Anyway, it was a particular problem because he has a wife and kids. And then when he stopped communicating with her entirely, she poured her heart out to me and another leader at the church, telling us she couldn’t be at the church anymore.”

  “So…how did he end up being the one to leave?” Hanson asked.

  “Well, we gradually started realizing that it was all in her head,” Luke said. “And we talked to him quietly, too. He was desperate to sort it out, and also really unwilling to hurt her. He actually decided to go in the end. He’d been offered another ministry in Cardiff, close to his parents’ home. And just to say, Maeve felt awful about it. She said that wasn’t what she’d wanted. She hadn’t meant to force him out. And I’m positive she didn’t. It was all just a bit of a mess.”

  Hanson didn’t find it hard to imagine Maeve Silver as an obsessive other
woman. She gave off intense vibes, and her determined support of everyone only made Hanson suspect that she was stamping down on her emotions. Or perhaps that she was playing the part of the good Christian girl without ever really feeling it.

  “Could you give me more detail on the harassment?” she asked Luke. “What did that consist of?”

  “She called him and messaged him constantly,” the faith leader said. “At first it was about scripture and her faith, and then later it was about how much she loved him and needed him.” He sighed, and then added, “I think he was a little guilty of not telling her bluntly enough to stop. Because he’s a kind person and was thinking of her as a poor soul. A bit of pragmatism might have helped.”

  “Was there any stalking?”

  “Well…” He made a frustrated noise. “I don’t think it should be labeled stalking. I think she wanted to see what he was like with his family at one point, and she followed them to a park. After a while he realized she was sitting on a bench, watching them, and he took his wife and kids back home. She never tried to approach or say anything. She just watched them.”

  Hanson thought, with a slight chill, about the transcript of Victor Varos’s interview. Of how Maeve had watched Aidan and Zoe, and how he’d thought it was because she wasn’t getting any.

  She was now wondering whether the truth was a little different. Perhaps she’d been watching them because she hated anyone who stood between her and Aidan, just as she’d hated the woman who stood between her and her pastor. Perhaps she’d been thinking about what it would feel like to kill Zoe Swardadine.

  Aidan woke to find himself fully dressed and lying in a room he didn’t recognize. The Premier Inn, he realized. He’d made his way there as soon as the police had let him go. He didn’t remember deciding to lie down.

  He sat up, and felt as though he was waking from a dream that had lasted for days. A dream in which he’d only had to think about his own pain and loss. Why hadn’t he been thinking about Zoe’s killer? Why hadn’t the fact of her murder mattered most of all?

  He looked back at everything he’d done since Thursday and didn’t recognize himself in any of his actions. He supposed it was the effect of grief, but it was also stupid. If the police had been less sharp, he’d have been charged with her murder by now.

  Well, it was time to wake up. Not just to wake up but to do something. Not just for himself but for Zoe.

  * * *

  —

  THE CALL LIGHTMAN had been half waiting for and half dreading all morning came as his cab was approaching the station once again. He breathed out and then answered.

  “Hi, Mum,” he said. “How’s it going?”

  “Oh, Ben,” she said. And he didn’t need to ask her anything more.

  “It’s OK, Mum,” he said. “It’s OK.”

  He could hear her near-silent crying down the line, and wondered what he could possibly say to comfort her.

  * * *

  —

  “CHIEF,” O’MALLEY SAID, leaning in at his door. “I’ve found Zoe Swardadine on camera during the time she was missing. I’ve picked her up at five twenty-eight, heading down toward town.”

  Jonah glanced up at him, lost somewhere in thoughts about Maeve Silver’s lie about being at home on Thursday night and about Felix Solomon’s key. He nodded slowly.

  “Just toward town? Can you trace her farther?” Jonah asked.

  “Probably,” O’Malley replied, “but what’s interesting is that the woman in glasses is still in front of her.”

  Jonah frowned and levered himself out of his chair to take a look. O’Malley loaded a video and played it, and Jonah had a side view of the woman this time as she strode toward town. Her spiky hair was easily recognizable, as were the grungy jacket, boots, and jeans. It was definitely, as O’Malley said, the same woman. And there, shortly after her, came Zoe, still hurrying.

  “What do you think?” O’Malley asked. “That looks like pursuit to me.”

  “It does,” Jonah agreed. “But why? Why would she pursue an unidentified woman? Unless she’s another art student? She’d had work vandalized, but that seems a bit tenuous.”

  “I’ll keep looking, so,” O’Malley said. “Now we’ve got her farther on, it should be easier to track her through the city-center cameras.”

  “Thank you,” Jonah said. He gave a short sigh. “You haven’t seen Maeve Silver at any point, have you? On a bike, maybe?”

  “Not yet, no,” O’Malley said, and then asked, “Why so?”

  “Victor Varos tells me that he called her late, at what must be a while after eleven, and caught her cycling.” He shook his head. “Which, if true, tells us that Maeve wasn’t at home on Thursday night as she claimed.”

  “Want me to bring her in?” O’Malley asked.

  “Yes,” Jonah replied with a slow nod. “But do it casually. Say there’s something Lightman forgot to ask her.”

  He returned to his desk and heard the quiet ping of an email. Annette Lock had been as good as her word. The photograph of Zoe’s missing painting had arrived in his in-box.

  He loaded it up and absorbed the pale, fragile figure wrapped in shadow. The arched back as if in pain or ecstasy. The way the shadowy form coiled round her. But the real focus of the painting was the figure at the back, its head thrown back to the sky, and its eyes missing or…or sealed up somehow. A lurid flash of red in its abdomen interrupted the stormy blues and grays and whites of the rest of it, and it was hard to look away from the livid gash.

  “O’Malley,” he called. “Do you know much about art?”

  “Next to nothing,” his sergeant called back. “But I’m willing to venture an opinion. No answer from Maeve Silver’s phone,” he added.

  The sergeant came in and stood at his shoulder, and the two of them looked at the image for a few seconds. Then O’Malley let out a huff of air. “It’s good, isn’t it?”

  There was a tap on the door again. Hanson stood there, ruddy-cheeked and bright-eyed. “Sir, useful info on Maeve Silver.”

  “What’s that?” Jonah said without looking up. He knew he wasn’t giving her his full attention, but the painting was talking to him somehow.

  “She hounded her former pastor out of the church,” Hanson said from the doorway. “She stalked him, and his family, to the point where he had to move cities.”

  Jonah looked up at her slowly. “When was this?”

  “Eight months ago,” Hanson said.

  “So she might conceivably have moved on to Aidan Poole,” he said.

  “That was my thinking.”

  He found his eyes returning to the painting.

  “What are you two looking at?” Hanson asked.

  “Sorry. It’s Zoe’s missing painting,” he said. “We’ve got the photo. Actually, I’d quite like your thoughts.”

  He turned the screen toward her, and watched her as she scrutinized it.

  “Oh,” she said. “Well, that’s sort of conclusive.”

  Jonah looked at her in genuine confusion. “Conclusive how?”

  “About why they took it. Well, it probably is.” Hanson turned the screen back round toward him and O’Malley. “You felt it strange that someone would take something from someone they hated, and I said it might show something about the killer. But actually what it really does is justify the killing.”

  Jonah looked again at the painting. “Talk me through that,” he said.

  “The two figures in the front are Zoe and Aidan,” Hanson said.

  “But that one’s Angeline Judd,” O’Malley argued.

  “Yes, Angeline is the model,” Hanson explained, “but it’s actually a self-portrait. She’s painting Angeline, who looks damaged, to represent herself.” At O’Malley’s doubtful expression, she grinned. “Look. Annette Lock said she’d only started putting that shadowy figure in
recently—since she started dating Aidan, yes? Before that, the central figure was always alone.”

  “So, Zoe and Aidan are engaged in their lovemaking,” Jonah said, “and now there’s this third figure, and she and Aidan are hurting her.”

  “Exactly,” Hanson said, standing back with a brilliant smile. “She’s acknowledging that their relationship is harming someone else.”

  “Right…” Jonah said, looking again at that blinded face, and the bright, gory wound in her stomach.

  “So I think they took it to prove Zoe knew exactly what she was doing with Aidan Poole.” Hanson’s gaze was piercing as she turned back to Jonah. “She knew they were hurting someone, and that means killing her was justified. That’s what it looks like to me, anyway. And if you ask me, it’s ninety percent likely to be a woman who did it, too, given that the figure in the painting is female.”

  Jonah’s eyes found the blinded woman again, and he began to see what Hanson meant.

  * * *

  —

  LIGHTMAN LOWERED HIS phone with a long breath out, and saw that there was a message waiting for him. It must have come in while he’d been on the phone.

  Can you come and meet me at my house? I’ve got a few things I really need to say.

  He frowned at his phone, and sent a quick message back asking who it was. And then he realized, before he’d even had a reply. He sighed, supposing this was one of the downsides of being approachable.

  “Sorry,” he said to the cabdriver. “Can you take me somewhere else?”

  * * *

  —

  JONAH WAS AWARE that O’Malley was waiting for him to talk, but he couldn’t spare any thought for speech. A great many things had suddenly started to make sense.

  Of course it was a woman. It was a woman who had made it her business to procure a key for Zoe’s flat. It was a woman who had the best possible opportunity of getting Aidan Poole’s prints all over that door lock. And it was a woman who had planned all of this coldly, out of revenge…and just possibly out of a warped desire to win the affections of the man she loved.