The Watcher

by Kate Medina

  Raising his hand, Dr Ghoshal beckoned Marilyn towards the dissecting table. As he stepped forward, an image of Jodie Trigg, of that dreadful autopsy he’d walked out of, rose in his mind. Though they had made scant progress so far on this case, he had scorched the earth in terms of effort and, though he felt a human level of horror looking at the injuries inflicted on Daniel Whitehead, he knew that, as with the Fullers’ autopsy, he could comfortably see this one through. He looked, as dispassionately as he could, where Dr Ghoshal was indicating.

  ‘I would suggest, from the pattern of bruising and contusions around his wrists that extend from the basal carpometacarpal joint of the thumb to halfway up his forearm, that he struggled for an extended period of time before he himself was attacked and that he tried a number of different ways to free himself. That is not the action of someone who is in extreme pain. They will fight against their bonds, but not in a calculated, thoughtful way.’

  ‘So he was twisting and fighting against the bonds, moving them up and down his arms, trying to squeeze them over his thumb in an attempt to escape?’

  ‘Indeed. And apart from the differences, which all come down to timing – the length of time Daniel Whitehead was tied up and the fact that he died after his wife – the modus operandi was very similar in both double murders. The drowning of the wives, the gouging out of the husbands’ eyes whilst they were still alive. Their killing, finally, via multiple stab wounds, through the eyes to the brain.’

  ‘I’d suggest that the order of the husband and wife’s murders is a critical difference—’ Marilyn’s interruption was cut off by a raised finger. Even DCI Janet Backastowe would fail to silence him with the movement of a single digit, any digits actually. Dr Ghoshal, however, was a different kettle of fish entirely. Marilyn found him as condescending to work with as did the other senior detectives at Surrey and Sussex Major Crimes, but for Marilyn, the evidence he gained was worth the humiliation he was forced to endure to secure it.

  ‘It is my job to provide you with the clinical evidence, not to come up with theories. However, if I were to set aside that parameter for a moment, I would concur with Dr Flynn and say that your killer’s motivation – or one of his motivations at least – is to do with watching. The taking out of the eyes while a person is living is a truly heinous thing to do. Unless your killer is Hannibal Lecter, there must be a very strong motivation for him to do that.’

  ‘So why was Eleanor Whitehead killed first and Claudine Fuller second?’

  Dr Ghoshal lifted his shoulders. ‘There is a reason, DI Simmons. A reason that will doubtless prove critical to the case. And I would suggest, when you understand that reason, you understand much more about the killer and you stand a much greater chance of catching him.’

  49

  Fine grey needles of rain swirled from the oily sky and the wind bore a chill that made Jessie dread winter’s approach. The hospital car park had been virtually full when she and Marilyn had arrived and she’d had to drive to the far end, squeeze her Mini into a space between a gargantuan four-by-four and the overgrown hedge that divided the car park from a public footpath. But now the car park was only smattered with cars and she felt a shiver of apprehension as she hurried, head bent, through the soupy wet twilight, the discussion with Sophie Whitehead and the thought of Marilyn at Sophie’s parents’ autopsy goading her imagination into overdrive.

  She had hung out in the coffee shop for a couple of hours after Marilyn left, to telephone a few of her private clinical patients and write up some session notes (she was still balancing her clinical work with her police work – the former paying significantly better). Then she had sat, nursing the cold dregs of her third latte, thinking about Claudine being killed second; she was sure the opposite would be true for the Whiteheads, given the theatre of their deaths – she’d know soon. She’d thought about faceless Charles, in his dark-coloured hatchback, moonlighting as a taxi driver, and about Callan, that shifting time-bomb lodged in his brain. And, finally, about Robbie Parker. She needed to find some time to see him soon, couldn’t continue to consign him to the bottom of her list, however temptingly easy that might be.

  The hospital building cast a stack of repeating pale yellow rectangles onto the tarmac close to the building but, in the recesses of the car park, there was only darkness. She rarely felt apprehensive at night, loved the feeling of solitude and freedom that being outside in darkness brought, and she realized, as her heart pumped and her breath snagged in her throat with each step, how deeply the murders had burrowed under her skin.

  She reached her Mini and hunched in the shelter of the four-by-four next to it, rain melting into her hair and dripping down her neck as she unzipped her puffa jacket and fished in her inside pocket for her car key. A car swished past the main road beyond the public footpath, its headlights momentarily blinding her. Where the hell is my key? She was sure she’d put it in her inside pocket so that she wouldn’t need to fumble around her handbag, but she’d been in a rush to meet Marilyn and her slippery, chilled fingers groped in a pocket that she realized was empty.

  As she swung her handbag from her shoulder, she sensed, rather than heard – what? Another car? A bike? No, neither, the road was deserted. Resisting the psychosomatic nerves that she knew were just that – psychosomatic nerves – encouraging her to twist and manically scan the dark car park, she glanced quickly over her left shoulder, her right. Breathing out slowly, she ducked her gaze to her handbag, fingers closing around her wallet, lipstick, front door keys, then the familiar, circular fat rubber fob of her car key.

  ‘Dr Flynn.’

  ‘Jesus.’ Her handbag hit the tarmac and she spun around.

  The man – hooded, his face partially obscured, she didn’t recognize him – backed away, raised hands held in front of him in a gesture clearly meant to be soothing. His face was damp and shiny with sweat.

  ‘I’m sorry.’ A familiar, soft-focus voice as irritatingly pacifying as those raised hands. ‘I didn’t mean to startle you.’

  Jessie scooped up her handbag. ‘You didn’t startle me, Mr Parker. You bloody terrified me.’

  ‘I’m so sorry. Really, I just …’ He flapped a pale hand towards the road. ‘I was just running past and I saw you. I can’t apologize enough for scaring you. It really wasn’t my intention—’

  ‘It’s fine. I was joking,’ she lied. Anything to stop him apologizing. ‘It’s a miserable evening to be out running.’

  Levering his long fingers into the elastic of his pale grey hood, he slid it back from his face. ‘I’m training for a marathon in a month’s time, so I have to put the miles in whatever the weather. I usually run in the hills, but it’s blowy up there this evening, so I’m pounding around town instead.’

  Jessie forced a smile, though her heart wasn’t in it. The last thing she felt like doing was standing in the pissing rain exchanging pleasantries with a man she’d met once. She wished he hadn’t noticed her; that even if he had, he hadn’t stopped. She wouldn’t have done.

  ‘A marathon must require some commitment.’

  ‘It does, but it’s nice to have a focus, that isn’t …’ His wiry legs, tightly clad in pale grey running tights, jittered as he scuffed his trainers against the tarmac. ‘That isn’t Robbie.’

  Jessie nodded. She wished he would just stand still. He was radiating nerves; getting on her nerves.

  ‘I’m sure.’

  ‘You, uh, you got on well with Robbie?’

  ‘I did. He’s a great kid,’ she said simply, trying to be polite, without fully engaging.

  His gaze swung away from hers; she noticed a muscle below his eye twitch. ‘I often joke that when he’s an adult the bullies will still be taking his lunch money, but as he loves the burgers they’re serving in McDonald’s he’ll be happy to hand it over.’ He barked a sudden, harsh laugh as forced and unpractised as his smile. ‘Did he do all right in your session?’

  I wasn’t assessing him. ‘He did great.’

  His eyes
travelled back and forward across her face as if he was working something around in his head. ‘So what do you, uh, what do you think?’

  ‘I don’t know what you’re asking.’ She knew perfectly well what he was asking, but she had guaranteed Robbie confidentiality and Parker had agreed.

  ‘Do you think he’ll get over it? Move on?’

  I’m not a painter-decorator, she was tempted to say. Much as she would have loved to be able to unfurl a roll of glossy, embossed wallpaper and paper over the canyon-sized fissures in Robbie’s psyche, make him whole again. Humpty Dumpty.

  ‘He’s a smart kid,’ Parker continued. ‘I don’t want this stupid bullying to define his future.’

  As much as it has defined his past. Neither of them voiced the thought.

  ‘He deserves more. And I don’t want them to win.’

  Jessie nodded. It shouldn’t be about winning and losing, but they both knew that it was. Continuing to be a victim was letting the bullies win. And fuck them. Why should they win?

  ‘I don’t want them to win,’ he said again.

  Jessie nodded. She thought of what she had told Robbie. You’re not that child who needs to take this shit any more. Fight back. ‘I understand that, Mr Parker.’

  ‘And … so.’

  His tongue moved nervously around inside his mouth as he waited for her to answer. But she wasn’t sure how to answer.

  They won’t.

  It wasn’t an answer she could give.

  I hope not.

  Better.

  I pray not.

  More realistic.

  ‘I don’t have an answer for you, Mr Parker, not yet.’

  Why had he stopped? To be polite? To fish? Find out whether she had been able to peer, keen-eyed, straight into that hard-to-read brain of his son’s? But she didn’t want to talk about Robbie, couldn’t. In fact, she didn’t want to stand here, in the pissing rain, talking at all.

  ‘I’m late to meet my boyfriend for dinner, Mr Parker. Is there anything you wanted?’

  He tilted towards her. ‘Can you see Robbie now? He’s home. I’ll be running for another hour and a half. You’ll have the place to yourself.’

  ‘I’m sorry, but I’m meeting my boyfriend for dinner,’ she repeated.

  He shuffled closer. ‘Ten, fifteen minutes.’

  Jessie leant back, felt the four-by-four’s wing mirror dig into her spine. ‘It’s not a ten- or fifteen-minute job, Mr Parker.’

  ‘Just to show him that you’re interested. That you care.’

  A low, cheap shot. Her hackles rose. ‘I am interested and I do care, or I wouldn’t have agreed to help him. But dashing in for ten minutes will be more destructive than not seeing him at all and I’m already late for dinner.’

  ‘It would mean a lot.’ He laid a hand on her arm. ‘To him and to me.’

  Jessie nodded, chewing her lip. Her insides were screaming. She stepped sideways and back, forcing his hand to fall from her arm without physically wrenching it away, tempting though that was.

  ‘I’ll see him again soon, I promise. I’m sorry about this evening, but I can’t. And, to be honest, I need to be on good form when I see Robbie. Even if I had longer than ten or fifteen minutes tonight, which I don’t, it’s not helpful if I turn up exhausted, with only half my mind on him.’

  She couldn’t get a handle on Allan Parker. When she’d met him at his home, he had seemed timid, submissive, cloyingly grateful, but now he was wired and aggressively on edge. He was only a few centimetres taller than her five foot six, but he was lean and fit, those pale grey running tights clinging to well-muscled legs. People who felt mentally vulnerable often worked on their physicality, drawing comfort from the feeling of strength, even if they didn’t have the mental attitude to use it.

  ‘In the next day or so then?’

  ‘Hopefully, yes, but I’m working on a murder case, Mr Parker, so I can’t be precise.’

  ‘Of course. I’m sorry to push, but Robbie’s everything to me. Everything.’

  ‘I understand that and I promise that I will make time, soon. Please tell Robbie that I’ll text him when I have a better idea of what I’m up to.’

  Turning away pointedly, goosebumps rising on the back of her neck, she opened the driver’s door. When she glanced back to say goodbye, Parker was halfway across the car park, jogging backwards on those silent trainers of his.

  He raised a hand. ‘Soon,’ he shouted.

  Jessie raised a hand in return, didn’t reply.

  50

  Callan’s red Golf was parked snug against the pub’s low flintstone front wall. There were huge, muddy paw-prints peppering the front passenger seat, Jessie noticed when she peered through the window – left to his own devices, in his own domain, Callan was as messy as always. He’d bagged a prime space, had obviously been here for a while.

  Though neither she or Callan were creatures of habit, this whitewashed country inn, with its scarlet front door and matching window frames, baskets of hot-red geraniums and white lobelia hanging from the eaves of the porch, had become ‘their’ pub. They’d first met for dinner here last November, to discuss the Sami Scott case. It wasn’t best suited to Callan, who virtually had to shuffle on his knees to a table, to avoid clunking his head on the gnarled black beams that held up the three-hundred-year-old sagging ceiling. Though Jessie was only five foot six, even she had to duck to step through the front door without risking scalping herself.

  The long wooden bar, studded with taps dispensing local beers and bitters – Surrey Hills, Ranmore Ale, Baldy, Sussex Best Bitter – usually equally well studded with locals chatting on bar stools, was empty, only an elderly couple having drinks to her right and Callan and Lupo to her left, occupying a table for two by the log fire. ‘Their’ table. At the sound of the door, Callan glanced over and raised a hand. He was wearing navy-blue suit trousers and a white shirt, the top button undone, and he looked so damn hot. Lupo’s head swivelled, his pale gaze fixing on Jessie as she approached, but apart from that single movement, his body remained rigid.

  Callan half-stood, as much as he could in the low-ceilinged room, and gave her a warm, lingering kiss. If Jessie hadn’t known that the barman was eyeballing them, no one else to look at, she would have wrapped her arms around his neck and snogged him for an hour.

  ‘Sit down and I’ll get you wine.’

  ‘A bucketful, please.’

  ‘That bad?’

  ‘I just had an impromptu and somewhat creepy encounter with Allan Parker.’

  ‘Who the hell is Allan Parker?’

  ‘Robbie Parker’s dad.’

  Callan looked blank.

  ‘The bullied boy. I told you about him.’

  He nodded. ‘I remember now.’

  He was usually exceptionally switched-on, remembered everyone’s names after the first telling – names, faces, heights, attire, accents, dates, times. It was required for his job as a Redcap, a military policeman, a job he loved and was made for. Jessie thought again of the letter from Frimley Park Hospital that she’d found in his coat pocket, wished that she’d read it. Integrity was overrated.

  ‘Are you OK, Callan? You seem a bit—’

  ‘I’m fine.’ He stepped past her to the bar, returning with a pint of beer the same amber colour as his eyes and a large glass of Sauvignon. Sliding onto the bench seat next to her, he pulled her in for another kiss.

  ‘I’m fine,’ he said again.

  Jessie leant back, disengaging. ‘Only fine?’

  ‘Much more than fine. I’m always more than fine when I’m with you.’

  He made to kiss her again; she pulled back again.

  ‘Not here, Callan.’

  Hurt flashed in his eyes. ‘Why not? Because Lupo’s too young to witness overt displays of affection?’

  ‘Because those people over there are too old to witness overt displays of affection.’

  ‘It might inspire them.’

  ‘Either that or they’ll be telling us to
get a room.’

  Callan smiled. ‘I intend to, later.’

  Jessie rolled her eyes, playing along, though his banter felt forced, his mind elsewhere. ‘You’d better be nice to me then. All night.’

  ‘I’m always nice to you.’ He reached for his pint. ‘And I did fit those two security cameras in Paws for Thought and spend an hour of my life that I will never get back explaining to a technologically challenged mad dog woman how to work them.’

  Jessie grinned. ‘I can imagine it was a very painful hour.’

  ‘You cannot begin to imagine how painful.’ He took a swig of beer. ‘So, tell me about Adam.’

  ‘Allan.’

  ‘Allan. Tell me about him.’

  ‘He accosted me in St Richard’s Hospital car park.’

  Callan frowned. ‘Accosted you?’

  ‘Well, not actually accosted, but he did just suddenly appear out of nowhere like some creepy pale ghoul-like thing. He said he’d been running past and had seen me. He asked me to go and see Robbie again this evening.’ She stifled a yawn with the back of her hand. The few sips of wine she’d had had gone straight to her head.

  ‘And miss dinner with me and Lupo?’

  Jessie smiled, genuinely for the first time all day. ‘That’s what I told him. That I couldn’t possibly miss dinner with my lover and his dog.’

  ‘Our dog.’

  ‘Your dog. He doesn’t engage with me at all.’

  ‘He’s the strong silent type.’

  ‘Like his new owner,’ Jessie said pointedly, thinking of the letter.

  Callan shrugged. ‘So what happened with Allan?’

  ‘He was uncomfortably insistent that I see Robbie tonight, would hardly take no for an answer. He has a kind of submissive neediness combined with an aggressive demandingness that I found … find a bit disturbing.’

  ‘When are you seeing Robbie next?’

  ‘Tomorrow probably, as long as no one else gets murdered in the meantime. I need time to help him properly. I can’t just dash in and dash out, which is what I explained to his father. He needs to be the sole focus of my attention for a minimum of an hour at a time and I also need to be mentally switched-on to see him.’ Dropping her hand to Callan’s leg, she traced her fingers up his thigh, almost absentmindedly. ‘I can’t be counselling him with eight hours’ sleep over the past eighty and while my mind is on murder cases …’ She smiled. ‘And on meeting you.’