The Watcher

by Kate Medina

  She tailed off, her gaze tracking around the faces, taking in the changing expressions as they digested the information she had just shared. Though most of them had worked for Surrey and Sussex Major Crimes for a number of years, she doubted many had worked on a case this determinedly gruesome. They had seen the crime-scene video, but most had probably already compartmentalized it, pushed the gory details to the backs of their minds. She could see, from the looks on people’s faces, that her words had forced an uncomfortable clarity.

  ‘Business?’ a voice croaked from the back of the room. ‘Could the personal be related to his business?’

  Jessie nodded. ‘Yes, it could be related to his business, because his business was effectively personal. It affected people’s lives, the roof over their and their families’ heads.’ She glanced at Marilyn to see if he had anything to add.

  ‘His business was basically screwing poor people,’ Marilyn added. ‘He bought up freeholds on cheap properties, mainly blocks of flats and terraced houses in poor areas, and then raised the ground rent by a few thousand per cent. So, where people were previously paying negligible sums for their ground rent, they were suddenly forced to pay hundreds or thousands of pounds a year. If they couldn’t pay, their property was repossessed and they and their families were kicked out.’

  ‘Shouldn’t that be illegal?’ Cara asked.

  Marilyn lifted his coat-hanger shoulders. ‘If everything that was morally repugnant was made illegal we’d all be working 24/7 rather than just 18/7, so count your lucky stars that it isn’t.’

  ‘It may not be to do with his work,’ Jessie cut in. ‘There may be another reason entirely.’

  ‘Like what?’

  She resisted the urge to shrug. God knows. ‘Look into his background. If he screws people professionally … metaphorically professionally,’ she added hurriedly. ‘He could be screwing people all over the place. Metaphorically …’ Think of a different word. But she couldn’t. She felt as if her brain was floating around, untethered, in that swimming pool with Claudine, at the back door with her as she opened it to …

  Scratching.

  Sniffing.

  Edward Scissorhands?

  Freddie Krueger?

  ‘Metaphorically and, uh …’ She spread her hands and smiled. ‘Literally.’

  ‘It was a messy crime scene. Can we assume that the killer is disorganized?’

  ‘No, absolutely not. I’d say exactly the opposite. It was messy because it was vicious, but actually, the murders were well thought out, well planned and well executed. There was one killer, two victims, so he had to plan well to ensure that he overpowered both Hugo and his wife, so that he could then enact the theatre he’d planned – the “show” – for Hugo Fuller.’

  ‘What about the dog?’ Marilyn asked.

  Jessie glanced over to the picture of Lupo, looking pure wolf, pure White Fang, on the board. She had loved White Fang when she’d been a teenager, had wanted to be there, in the Yukon territory, in charge of a dog team. The ultimate in escapism. She had loved any book that had allowed her to escape from the broken edifice of her teenage life, had devoured hundreds in the year she’d been incarcerated in Hartmoor Psychiatric Hospital. She wondered quickly whether Claudine Fuller had wanted to escape as a teenager too, whether she had wanted to escape as an adult, as a wife. ‘He took the dog and tied it to a lamp post in the village deliberately.’

  ‘The dog wasn’t found until one-thirty a.m.,’ Marilyn said. ‘But the pathologist, Dr Ghoshal, estimates that Hugo and his wife were killed between ten p.m. and midnight. Again, he will confirm after the autopsies which are scheduled for tomorrow.’

  ‘The dog is very noticeable and the village is small.’

  ‘Miss Marple, eat your heart out,’ Marilyn muttered, almost under his breath.

  ‘So, it is logical to assume that the murderer took the dog and tied him up somewhere else,’ Jessie continued. ‘Somewhere he wouldn’t be found, perhaps in the woods surrounding the Fullers’ property, and then he moved him to the village after the murders. Otherwise, I think he would have been seen earlier. Again, that shows planning, thought. He brought along a lead to tie Lupo up. It’s not the actions of a disorganized killer.’

  ‘And it’s not the actions of a random nutter,’ Marilyn finished. ‘Even though many of you may have been thinking Langley Green, while viewing that video walkthrough of the crime scene.’

  At the mention of Langley Green – the inpatient mental health clinic in Crawley – a couple of the civilian workers sucked in audible breaths. Marilyn didn’t want that, didn’t want them boxing up the killer as a deranged psychopath in reaction to the nature of the crime. He didn’t want people picturing him as a creature with red eyes, horns and a forked tail, someone you’d be able to identify just by catching his eye in a crowded room, immediately recognize the insanity lodged in the brain behind the gaze. He wanted them sensible, focused and, most importantly, open-minded. ‘I will reiterate. Neither Dr Flynn or I believe that these murders were the work of a random nutter, so erase that thought from your minds.’

  A sudden, high-pitched screech from the street outside, a child in pain or terror. Jessie flinched. Another screech. No, not a child. Foxes, either fighting or mating. It was the kind of sound that could scrape fingernails down your soul, particularly after what she’d seen in that house yesterday and after her dream. Outside the grimy windows, a dull autumn day was pushing away the last vestiges of darkness, but she could still see the ghost of her own animated reflection, the faint reflected backs of the heads belonging to the faces in front of her making her look as if she was viewing a phantom theatre performance through opaque glass.

  DS Workman raised her hand, polite as always. ‘Has this person killed before?’

  This time Jessie did shrug. ‘I don’t know, is the honest answer. But I would say that he has definitely fantasized about the killing of Hugo and Claudine Fuller. Visualized it. It’s incredibly—’ she broke off, struggling to put into words what she was thinking. ‘It’s a very “stage-set” killing, very theatrical. And, as I said before, I believe that it’s to do with watching.’

  She sensed Marilyn’s head swivel, his eyes focus on her. ‘Can you elaborate on the watching?’

  She nodded. ‘He made Hugo Fuller watch his wife being killed and then he took Fuller’s eyes out. Deliberately took his eyes out, before he killed him. So, I would say that whatever personal reason drives the killer, watching is key.’

  Silence in the room. The absolute, stilled silence of a stunned audience, a collective holding in of breath. Not even the ambient noise usually associated with a room full of people: the scuff of feet on worn carpet, the crossing and uncrossing of restless legs, the rustle of clothing.

  ‘Is he likely to kill again?’ DC Cara’s voice, breaking the deadening silence, pulling her mind back into the room.

  Though Jessie had dreaded this meeting, she had most dreaded this question, the one question that she felt entirely unqualified to answer. Even less qualified than the others that had come before. She shook her head, a shake that morphed into a half-nod, to stillness.

  ‘I believe that he will only kill again if he has another personal axe to grind. Probably the same axe to grind that he had with Hugo Fuller, whatever that axe is.’

  ‘Motivation,’ Marilyn muttered. ‘The classic – motivation. It always comes down to motivation. We need to find out what the killer’s motivation is. And quickly.’ The arc of his raised arm indicated the mosaic of photographs tacked to the whiteboards. ‘Because I, for one, don’t want to attend another crime scene that looks like this.’ He laid a light hand on Jessie’s shoulder. ‘Thank you, Dr Flynn, for that very thorough briefing.’

  With a fleeting smile and an overwhelming sense of relief, Jessie returned to her seat at the back of the room.

  ‘And now DS Workman will give us a summary of what she learnt from Hugo Fuller’s mother yesterday evening,’ Marilyn said.

  ‘Step
mother,’ Workman corrected, rising to her feet. ‘And it’s not much, I’m afraid.’

  18

  Jessie heard the efficient clack-clack of Detective Sergeant Sarah Workman’s sensible, low-heeled navy courts on lino tiles, closing the gap between them. She was tempted to break into a full-on Usain-Bolt-hundred-metre sprint, put as much distance as she could between herself and whatever task Workman intended to rope her into, but instead, she arranged her expression into a semblance of professionalism, turned and waited for Workman to catch her up.

  ‘Can I have a quick word, Jessie?’

  ‘Sure.’

  ‘Thank you.’ Workman dusted an invisible piece of dirt from the sleeve of her navy suit jacket with fidgety fingers. She seemed uncharacteristically nervous, jittery. Jessie had only ever experienced the professional face of DS Workman, the woman who was Marilyn’s unfailingly supportive crutch, his walking, talking Rolodex, his diary, his details woman, his inexhaustible memory. The steadfast Workman who remained centred even when the walls surrounding them were plastered with images of eviscerated corpses, of the worst examples of what human nature could inflict on others.

  ‘Here or somewhere private?’ Jessie asked, sensing that whatever Workman wanted to talk about didn’t relate to the case.

  ‘Good morning, ladies.’

  Is it? ‘Morning,’ Jessie replied, shifting back against the wall to let Arthur Lawford and another man from the incident room meeting, who she hadn’t been introduced to, walk past.

  ‘Private. Do you mind?’ Workman replied, when the men had disappeared through the swing doors at the far end of the corridor.

  ‘No, of course not.’

  ‘I wanted to ask you a favour,’ Workman said, as the door to the ladies’ toilet shut behind them.

  Jessie, backed up against the row of sinks, nodded. ‘Ask away.’

  ‘It’s a big favour and it has nothing to do with work. I know that I shouldn’t ask, given how much you’ve got on with the case, but I can’t think of anyone else to turn to.’

  With the thought of taking more on, Jessie felt a sudden, sharp burst from the electric suit – stress, tension manifesting itself in her old nemesis that she had fought so hard to control. She had no room, in the mess that was the Fullers’ murders, to perform favours, any favours.

  ‘Anything,’ she said, ignoring the suit. ‘Really, anything.’

  Workman smoothed a fidgety hand over her low-maintenance bob. ‘There’s a boy I know. Well, more a young man, really, I suppose. He’s fifteen. I met him at Age UK charity. We both volunteer at a lunch club there on Sundays, serving food to the old folk, washing up, that kind of thing. It’s for people who live alone, to give them company and a decent meal once a week. There’s a minibus that drives around ferrying them back and forth.’

  Jessie nodded encouragingly, though she felt anything but.

  ‘He has a …’ Workman touched her fingertips to her mouth ‘… a severe cleft palate. It was repaired when he was a baby, but he was left with significant facial deformity and a bad lisp. He has been bullied virtually since birth.’ A flickering, nervous smile. ‘Relentlessly bullied.’

  Relentlessly bullied.

  Jessie tightened her grasp on the steadying edge of the sink behind her back as the electric suit hissed, not for him, but for herself, for her past.

  ‘He needs help.’

  ‘What about the NHS?’

  ‘He’s had everything that the NHS will provide. Mental health among teens is at crisis point and the NHS can’t cope. There aren’t the resources.’

  Jessie nodded. She knew about the limits of the NHS mental health provision all too well herself from her own days working as an NHS psychologist before she had left and joined the Defence Psychology Service.

  ‘The bullying continued the whole time that Robbie was being treated by the NHS psychologist. Allan, his father, said that it was as if the help that Robbie was getting was being undone as soon as he’d received it.’ Workman raised a flat hand, above her head, as if measuring the height of an invisible child. ‘That he could never get any traction, never get to a state where he felt positive enough about himself to stand up to the bullies. He hadn’t had any counselling for eighteen months and he’s gone downhill fast since it finished – become hugely more anxious, terrified about going to school, agoraphobic, and his self-esteem is destroyed. And he’s depressed, clinically depressed. Allan feels that Robbie is slipping away from him, slipping somewhere he may never be able to come back from.’

  Jessie nodded, her mind’s eye finding the images of those celluloid corpses papering the walls of the incident room.

  Slipping somewhere he may never come back from.

  They both knew what Workman was talking about; it didn’t need to be said.

  Jamie.

  Suicide.

  The electric suit hissed and snapped, worse than it had been in weeks, thoughts of her little brother Jamie always a bright red cape to her electric suit’s bull.

  ‘Robbie asked you for help?’ she managed.

  ‘Oh, God no, he’s far too proud for that. His father did. He’s a single parent, mother walked out years ago from what I can gather, and he has struggled to bring Robbie up. They can’t afford to move from the area, though the boy has moved schools twice. But with kids linking up on social media, bullied children just can’t get away. It follows them. Robbie’s a fabulous boy – Allan has done a great job – but he can’t do anything about the bullying. He’s a fixer by nature, I think, and he can’t fix this, though he has tried, really tried, for years. He couldn’t stop the bullying and he can’t mend what it has done to his son.’

  ‘How long have you known them?’ Jessie asked.

  ‘I met Allan first. He was arrested for assault, four or five years ago now. He pushed some shitty kid at Robbie’s school, a cocky, sporty kid called Niall Scuffil, and Niall’s mum called the police. Niall had broken Robbie’s arm a couple of months before, jumped on him when he was walking home from school. A few other kids were watching, egging him on. Boys and girls.’ Her voice caught on the word ‘girls’ and she pursed her lips, as if she had a bitter taste in her mouth.

  If Workman was expecting girls to be above bullying, she would be – clearly had been – sorely disappointed. Jessie knew that well enough from her own teenage experiences that girls could be vile and, from what she heard, many girls now were worse. Tougher, over-sexualized, grown up too soon with all the internal psychological tensions that created.

  ‘I was the arresting officer. I went around to speak to Niall’s mother, gave her a piece of my mind. She withdrew the charges, but with very poor grace.’

  ‘And nothing happened to Niall?’

  ‘It was Robbie’s word against eight others. Though Allan said that Robbie was so ground down by then, he didn’t even complain. He just took it.’

  ‘Dragging himself through the days probably takes all his energy,’ Jessie said. ‘Just surviving.’ She knew that well enough herself from her own teenage experiences and hers hadn’t been nearly as bad as Robbie’s, from the little Workman had told her.

  She grasped the edge of the sink behind her, relishing the feel of the cold porcelain against her skin. She felt nauseous – sick and intensely hot. The tiredness, she reasoned, her sleepwalking episode of last night disrupting what little shut-eye she’d had. Nothing to do with the electric suit scorching her skin, brand-hot with the memories.

  ‘I can see him later today. After the Fullers’ autopsy.’ The words rushed out of her before her logical mind could intercept them.

  ‘Are you sure?’ Workman tilted her head, gaze searching Jessie’s face.

  ‘Yes, I’m sure,’ she said, forcing a smile that she hoped didn’t look as fake as it felt. If she didn’t do it today, tomorrow might easily become ‘tomorrow never comes’ and, from what Workman told her, never wasn’t an option for Robbie Parker.

  19

  ‘Remind me again why you want me to attend the Full
ers’ autopsy,’ Jessie asked Marilyn, as they walked side by side down the basement corridor that led to Dr Ghoshal’s autopsy suite.

  Jessie didn’t know if it was the product of the disturbed sleep or her imagination, overactive in anticipation of what was to come, but the neon-white strip-lit corridor felt freezing cold, as if they were advancing along a horizontal ice shaft. She rubbed at the goosebumps on her forearms.

  ‘I asked you to attend because this is the first case you will have worked on from beginning to end with Major Crimes and I want you to experience every aspect of a murder investigation,’ Marilyn said, glancing across at her. He raised an eyebrow. ‘And because you might make a useful contribution.’

  ‘What, like filling Dr Ghoshal’s spotless stainless-steel sink with half-digested bacon sandwich, perhaps?’

  Marilyn smiled. ‘You’re making me feel hungry.’

  ‘Oh God, yuk.’

  ‘My fridge was empty, so I only managed a couple of well-past-their-sell-by-date Weetabix.’ He clapped a hand on her shoulder. ‘You will thank me for this afterwards.’

  ‘How did you arrive at that dubious conclusion?’

  ‘Because I know that you’re the kind of woman who likes a challenge.’

  Jessie rolled her eyes. ‘Don’t you dare try to dress this one up as doing me good.’

  ‘You’ll see.’ Marilyn opened the door they had reached and they entered a small room with metal lockers on one side, a fitted bench on the other. A changing room? Or an unprepossessing antechamber into hell, Jessie caught herself thinking.

  ‘Ready?’

  ‘You can’t possibly expect an affirmative to that question.’

  Suppressing a smile, Marilyn rapped his knuckles twice on the door opposite the one through which they had entered and pushed it open without waiting for an answer. Taking a steadying breath, Jessie followed, stepping into a low-ceilinged white-tiled room, beige vinyl covering the floor and running a quarter metre up the walls, ubiquitous in hospitals and clearly morgues. There were interrogation-chamber-bright lights, a row of metal doors that looked like the entrances to industrial-sized fridges (and probably were) set into the far wall, and three people dressed in green scrubs and clinical face masks occupying the space. Jessie had watched as many crime box-sets as most people, flicking channels late at night and ending up on Silent Witness for want of anything better to watch (though to be fair it did make for great late-night viewing) and the autopsy suite she had stepped into was nothing like the high-tech room that the cast operated in, with its plate-glass viewing gallery and space-age decor.