The Watcher

by Kate Medina

  Tossing back the duvet, he stood, too quickly. His head spun and he fumbled his hand onto the bedside table to steady himself, knocking the bedside light to the floor in the process. Fuck. Feeling dizzy and disorientated, he sat back down on the edge of the bed and dropped his head to his hands, closed his eyes and stared hard into the insides of his eyelids, seeking to find the quiet place that he went to when he was trying to stave off an epileptic fit. His neurologist had referred him to a counsellor.

  Lots of people find it helpful.

  He’d resisted; it wasn’t his thing.

  Just try it. Go once and then decide whether you want to continue.

  So, he had. Once.

  Where are you most happy? she had asked him.

  Making love with my girlfriend. He didn’t say it, reckoned that the birdlike woman, with the pearl-pink lipstick and neat greying-blonde bob would not have appreciated the aside. She had reminded him of his mum – someone’s mum at least.

  Running, up on the Downs, he’d said instead.

  Imagine it. Close your eyes and take yourself there.

  He closed his eyes and felt as if he was coiled in barbed wire and that it was tightening around him with every word the woman said.

  Which part of the run do you like best?

  I have a favourite route I take.

  Describe it to me.

  I run to a place called Foley Hill. There’s a track that cuts through the trees.

  What are the trees like?

  Thick. A mix. It’s autumn now so the leaves are turning.

  Describe the colours to me.

  Look out the window, he retorted, in his mind. Yellow, orange, red, brown, he said.

  Lovely. It sounds lovely. And the path. What’s that like?

  It’s steep. Near the top I almost have to scrabble up using my hands. It’s slippery now as the ground is carpeted with leaves.

  Go on.

  Despite his cynicism, the barbed wire was uncoiling, the tension draining, and he could see Foley Hill in his mind’s eye. More than that – he could feel it, smell the leaf mulch, feel the chill of the autumn air cooling the sweat on his skin.

  Nearer to the top of the hill, the trees thin out and the summit is bare, he volunteered. On a clear day, I can see all the way to the south coast.

  Is there a bench? Can you sit?

  No, I stand. He always stood, panting, his heart beating like a jackhammer, gulping in the cold air.

  Good, that’s good. When you feel an epileptic fit coming on, close your eyes and go up to Foley Hill. Imagine that it’s a stunning autumn day, like the one you describe, sunny but chilly …

  He still wasn’t sure that he believed in all that shit, but he had been so desperate then, a week ago, when his neurologist had told him the news, that he’d have tried anything. He had just wished, at the time, she’d stop talking so that he could fully concentrate on taking himself to Foley Hill, but now that she wasn’t here, that quiet woman who was somebody’s mum, he couldn’t go there at all. Dropping his hands, he opened his eyes. Usually it was stress or tiredness that kicked off his fits. Now, he felt neither, and still he could sense an attack coming on. He slumped back flat on the bed and jammed his eyes shut again, willing his muscles to relax and his mind to transport him to Foley Hill. Maybe he was just lacking in imagination, because all he could feel was the claustrophobic stuffiness of the central heating, and all he could see was the inside of his neurologist’s office. The MRI scan of his brain, sitting on the desk between them like a ticking bomb.

  Your epilepsy is getting worse because the bullet is shifting. It’s causing more trauma, more swelling.

  Why? Why is it shifting?

  A shrug. It hadn’t been the reaction he’d expected. Something more professional would have been good.

  Because you don’t sit still.

  I can’t spend my life sitting still.

  Another shrug. There you go.

  And in response to Callan’s crossed arms, crossed legs – defensive body language Jessie would say, and she’d be right.

  When we agreed not to remove the bullet originally, two years ago, we took a calculated risk. If you were a couch potato that risk would probably have paid off. It had a decent chance of paying off anyway.

  And now?

  His neurologist had spun the MRI scan of his brain around on the desktop. His brain looked like a cauliflower cleaved in two, the bullet a dark grey conical shape above the white glob of his left eye.

  Whenever brain swelling occurs, it increases the intracranial pressure inside the skull. This pressure can prevent blood from flowing to your brain, which deprives it of the oxygen it needs to function. This swelling can also block other fluids from leaving your brain, making the swelling even worse. Damage or death of brain cells may result. The bullet is causing localized swelling and my advice is that it should be removed.

  You said, two years ago, that the operation was too risky.

  Then, yes.

  And now?

  It’s no less risky.

  Callan lay on the bed, staring up at Jessie’s bright white ceiling, waiting for the fit to come. Stress, tiredness. Stress. It’s no less risky. His brain was fogging as if the room was filling with smoke, his muscles contracting, limbs twitching, starting to flail. He could feel them – a part of him, but not – beyond his conscious control. He caught his shin on the edge of the bedside table, something crashed to the ground, the lamp, for the second time in two minutes – Jessie would kill him – and that was the last thing he remembered.

  Gradually the fit subsided. He lay still, panting and sweating, feeling chilled right through to the marrow of his bones. His heart was beating the way it did when he sprinted to the top of Foley Hill, clawing his way up the last steep fifty metres with his hands. But he wasn’t at Foley Hill. He was lying on the bedroom floor in a pool of vomit, shivering uncontrollably, feeling like a drug addict coming down off a hit. Curling up into a ball, he cradled his head in his hands. Fuck. His fits were getting worse, more frequent, more violent. It was only a matter of time before one happened at work, or when he was driving, or in front of Jessie. He was lying to everyone, his boss, his colleagues, his mother. Jessie. Himself. He needed to make a decision.

  Ten minutes later, downstairs in a T-shirt and tracksuit bottoms, he felt in his coat pocket for his house keys, found them tucked underneath the letter from his neurologist sent as a follow-up after last week’s appointment, summarizing their discussion, laying out his options. As he held the envelope in his fingers, he thought back to yesterday afternoon, borrowing Jessie’s Mini, leaving the keys mangled with his house keys, in his pocket. Her Mini keys were gone, his house keys remained.

  Flicking open the envelope’s flap, he withdrew the letter. He didn’t need to read it, had read it enough times in the past twenty-four hours to have memorized every word. Had Jessie read it? They had lived together for nearly a year now and he reckoned that she wouldn’t have done, that she had too much integrity, respected privacy, hers and his, too highly. He hoped that he was right. When he had decided which of Dr Bose’s rock-and-a-hard-place, operate-or-leave options to take, he wanted to tell her himself. Ripping the letter in two, he shoved it in the kitchen bin, underneath the food cartons from the take-away curry they’d had after the pub last night.

  Back in the sitting room, he pulled his running shoes off the shoe rack by the front door.

  Because you don’t sit still.

  He looked at the sofa. No – it wasn’t him. He’d have to take his chance with not sitting still.

  Slamming the door behind him, he walked to the end of the path and started running as soon as his feet hit the tarmac. He’d go up to Foley Hill again – go there for real, instead of trying to force his imagination to take him there. He just hoped to God that Jessie hadn’t read that damn letter.

  11

  ‘We think that the woman, the wife, Claudine Fuller, was hit over the head with something heavy, then dragged
into the swimming pool area. Dragged by a foot or a leg.’ Marilyn indicated the thin snail’s trail of dried blood, visible only as a dull line against the glistening black marble floor. ‘We haven’t fished her out of the swimming pool yet, as I wanted you to see her in situ, but you can see that she has blunt instrument trauma to the right temple and another to the back of the head, probably as she turned to run. The man, Hugo Fuller, was incapacitated with a stun gun, then bound to the chair with rope.’

  Jessie and Cara followed Marilyn into a white-tiled changing area, brightly illuminated by scores of tiny, recessed ceiling spots. Through a curved doorway, Jessie saw a thick vertical slice of azure swimming pool, the dark legs of someone – Mrs Fuller, Claudine, doubtless – floating face down on its surface, the lawn and gardens beyond the swimming pool glistening under the cold, bright autumnal sun, the grass diamonds gone now, the woods though, still unpenetrated by light.

  ‘I asked Burrows to leave the crime scene untouched until you’d seen it. It was clear that Claudine Fuller was dead when we arrived. It was clear to the dog teams, an hour before we arrived, that the poor woman was dead.’

  Jessie nodded. ‘Thanks for that, but I think you’re putting a little too much faith in my abilities, Marilyn.’

  ‘You saved my career, Dr Flynn,’ he muttered, so that only she heard.

  She shrugged off the compliment. Although she would never admit it to Marilyn, she already felt out of her depth with this nasty double murder. His expectation was weighing on her; and Cara’s expectation as a young, keen newbie – Listen and learn, DC Cara – was equally weighty. She had solved the last case that she and Marilyn had worked on together, the high-profile murder of two ten-year-old girls, but she believed she’d been lucky, caught a break and saved him. Luck, not genius.

  ‘Her hands and feet are tied,’ Cara said, unnecessarily, as they stepped through the arched doorway onto the black-tiled surround of the swimming pool, honed thankfully rather than polished. She didn’t fancy skidding on her Tesco’s plastic bag overshoes and ending up in the pool with Mrs F.

  Jessie nodded. ‘She wouldn’t have been able to swim,’ she murmured, equally unnecessarily.

  They regarded Claudine’s floating form in solemn silence for a few moments, Jessie’s eyes finding the bloody mess at the back of her head.

  ‘Seen enough?’ Marilyn asked.

  She nodded.

  Knocking a fist against the glass wall of the swimming pool, he motioned to Burrows who was standing on the patio talking to two of his CSI team. ‘All yours,’ he mouthed, pointing to Mrs Fuller.

  He moved further along the edge of the swimming pool, Jessie and DC Cara tracking dutifully behind.

  ‘Now to the horror show that is Mr Hugo Fuller.’ Stepping sideways, Marilyn extended his arm, as if he was a magician revealing the result of a particularly tricky act. Jessie almost expected him to burst forth with a ‘Ta da’. Her eyes lingered on his extended fingers, saving herself momentarily; they flicked to the supine form of Hugo Fuller.

  Jesus Christ. She gagged, couldn’t help herself. Swallowing back the rush of hot acid bile that coursed up her throat and filled her mouth, she took a couple of heaving breaths. ‘Jesus Christ.’

  Marilyn nodded. ‘My thoughts exactly. Hugo Fuller was stun gunned to subdue him and then tied to the chair.’ His voice was determinedly matter-of-fact as he extended his arm again to indicate two small elliptical burn marks on Fuller’s corpulent chest.

  ‘Does a stun gun render the victim unconscious or paralysed after operation?’ Jessie asked, her tongue working around the acid coating her mouth.

  ‘It depends on the voltage, but basically a stun gun causes complete disruption of the muscular and electrical system of the body for the time that it’s activated, causing total and painful paralysis. Once the cycle is complete the effect of the stun gun ends.’

  ‘But there must be significant after-effects. It must knock the breath from you, mentally, if not actually physically paralyse you for a decent length of time after it is deactivated, particularly if you’re not expecting it.’ She indicated Fuller’s mobile, which was lying in a pool of blood on the floor beneath the lounge chair. ‘If you’re chillaxing by the pool in your towelling robe, chatting on your mobile.’

  ‘Yes, you’re right. It is safe to assume that the after-effect of the stun gun would have disabled Hugo Fuller long enough for the perpetrator to tie him to the lounge chair so that he could then murder him.’ He looked to Cara. ‘As soon as we’re finished here, find out which company Fuller’s mobile is registered with and find out who he was speaking with this evening.’

  ‘Yes, Guv.’

  ‘What was the actual cause of death?’ Jessie asked.

  ‘We’ll need Dr Ghoshal to confirm, but both Burrows and I believe that a penetrative injury through the eye was the most likely cause of death.’

  ‘And the scratches down his face?’

  Marilyn shrugged. ‘To cause pain? Torture him?’

  Jessie gave a non-committal nod. The whole scene – not just the brutal, gut-wrenching horror of it – was bothering her. It didn’t feel right.

  ‘The brain is able to perform critical functions despite serious local damage, whether caused by a penetrating trauma or another trauma,’ she continued. ‘Such as a stroke, or an operation by a neurosurgeon. I remember a case I studied, where a man was doing a bit of DIY at home in the evening, while having a few drinks, and lost control of the nail gun—’

  Cara grimaced and went a shade paler, if that were even possible.

  ‘A six-inch nail went straight through his left eye and penetrated his frontal lobe.’ Jessie gave Cara what she hoped was a reassuring smile. ‘He was fine.’

  She looked over and met Marilyn’s gaze, knew what they were both thinking. And Callan. A Taliban bullet lodged in his temporal lobe and still operating as normal. But for how long?

  ‘Yuh … uh …’ She fought to regain her train of thought, an image of that envelope from Callan’s neurologist rising in her mind. ‘To kill via the brain requires causing a significant enough injury to cause widespread swelling or major intracranial bleeding, which depending on the exact kind of bleeding can cause compression of the brain, spasm of the arteries, or both, leading to tissue death and ultimately brain death. A single knife, nail or stick of wood in the eye that penetrates the brain, provided that it doesn’t hit a major artery, and isn’t waved around, would probably not kill a healthy person outright. Though obviously, given the range of outcomes, it’s not the most sensible idea—’

  She sensed Marilyn looking hard at her. ‘If I’m not mistaken, you’re chattering, Dr Flynn.’

  Lifting her shoulders, she flashed him an apologetic smile. Why was she so nervous? The scene, obviously, the grotesque, abattoir horror of it. But Callan, more, she realized. Contemplating Hugo Fuller’s injuries had taken her right back to Callan, to this morning, to that letter.

  ‘Sorry, you’re right, I’ll stop.’ A pause. ‘Rambling, that is.’

  ‘And – so,’ Marilyn asked.

  ‘Cause of death?’

  He nodded.

  ‘The eyes – both, I’d say. But then there must be some significance to that. It’s a grim way to kill someone, even for the killer.’ She flapped a hand in Hugo Fuller’s direction. ‘It would have been so much easier just to stab him through the heart, particularly as his chest was exposed.’ She looked from Fuller – reclining in that lounge chair, his eye sockets caves of blood, blood and aqueous fluid streaked down his face and chest, those wild animal gouges to his face – to his wife, Mrs Fuller, Claudine. Dead, yes, but in a more humane way, if murder could ever be termed humane. ‘I know that you’re a betting man, Marilyn.’

  ‘Not any more.’

  ‘Huh?’

  ‘I’m giving clean living a go.’

  Jessie rolled her eyes. ‘Is that a blink-and-you’d-miss-it kind of a go?’ She caught his gaze and realized, from his look, that he was entirely seri
ous. ‘Oh, I’ll put a lid on the facetious comments then.’

  ‘You do that, Dr Flynn. And the bet?’

  ‘That she was alive and sentient when she was put into the pool. He might have knocked her unconscious, stunned her or whatever, at the back door to incapacitate her while he dealt with the husband, but I’d bet that he then waited until she came around before he dropped her in the pool.’

  ‘Because it’s unnecessary?’ Marilyn murmured.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘What?’ Cara cut in. ‘What’s unnecessary?’

  Jessie broke eye contact with Marilyn and swung her gaze to meet Cara’s questioning look. ‘Tying Hugo Fuller up. If he wanted to kill them both by the most expedient method, he would have done the wife in the hallway, once she’d let him in, and then come in here and stun gunned and killed the husband. Or just killed the husband. Hit him over the head with something, or stabbed him in the heart. Unless … unless the perpetrator wanted him to watch his wife dying.’

  She looked back to Hugo Fuller, chillaxing, trying to suppress the heave in her stomach at the sight of him, the sharp taste of bile bubbling up her throat. He looked like a medieval torture victim. Her gaze moved from Fuller to Cara who, despite his natural skin colour, looked paler than she did midwinter. Apparition pale. Ghoul pale. She knew exactly how he felt.

  ‘I’m struggling with it too,’ she said in a voice pitched low enough that Marilyn wouldn’t hear. ‘Though I presume that it gets easier with experience.’ She flashed him a quick smile. Presume … hope … pray. The Fullers, the azure water sparkling with its dozens of submerged lights, the tropical heat of the pool house, was making her feel as if she was a castaway on a midsummer’s ocean, two of her ship-mates dead, rotting beside her.

  ‘I think you may find that whatever was used to take out Fuller’s eyes didn’t reach his brain,’ she continued, refocusing back on Marilyn. ‘Deliberately, didn’t reach his brain, or not at first anyway.’