The Watcher (29 page)

That time would never return.

‘Will you be able to keep the house?’ John had asked when the two of them were standing in the dining room and looking apprehensively at the scene of the crime and the chair that Tom had fallen on to.

She shrugged. ‘The question is whether I want to live here. Or whether I can.’

‘What’s going to happen to your company?’

‘We’ve got good staff. At the moment, things don’t need much input from me. Of course I’ll have to make a decision soon. I’m the only boss now. But I don’t yet know if I’ll be able to carry on with it all.’

She had collected her things, moving more and more frantically because she suddenly could not stand another moment in the house. Once she was back in the car, she took a deep breath.

‘It was worse than I thought it would be,’ she said.

John helped her to carry the two laundry baskets full of her belongings up the steps to Tara’s flat. Then he said goodbye. When Gillian opened the door to the flat and stepped into the living room, she found herself facing her daughter’s hate-filled eyes.

‘Why send him away? Do you think I’m stupid? I know you were with him again.’

Tara, sitting bent over a pile of folders at the table, looked worried. ‘She looked out of the window. She saw you down there.’

Gillian tried to stroke Becky’s hair, but her daughter ducked away. ‘He’s my
tennis coach
, Mum! Can’t you keep your hands off him? And he you?’

‘Becky, he was just helping me fetch a few things from our house. I didn’t want to go on my own. I was glad he came with me.’

‘Don’t you have anyone else? Tara could have helped!’

‘Someone had to stay with you,’ Tara added.

‘I can stay on my own for a few hours. Anyway, I could have come with you.’

‘No way,’ said Gillian. ‘Becky, you experienced something terrible in that house and it wouldn’t be good if you—’

Becky’s eyes shot daggers. ‘Oh please, Mum! So worried for me. As if you were thinking about me! If you cared about me, you’d stop screwing around with John!’

‘Becky!’ said Gillian, stunned.

‘Now, Becky, you’re making some heavy accusations there,’ said Tara. ‘And you shouldn’t use such vulgar words.’

‘So what should I call what my mum and John are doing? What they are doing is vulgar, Tara. That’s why I don’t need to find a nicer way of putting it.’

‘We don’t do anything,’ said Gillian. ‘He’s a friend, Becky. Nothing else.’

Becky was enraged. ‘Stop treating me like a baby! You still haven’t told me what you were actually doing the night that Dad was murdered. And I know you’re too much of a coward to tell me.’

‘I did tell you. I was in a restaurant. On my own. I wanted to have space to think.’

‘You, in a restaurant!’ spitted Becky. ‘On your own! You never go out on your own. You met John. Probably you went to bed with him while someone came and shot Dad!’ Her voice broke over the last words. In spite of the anger in what she said, she was primarily feeling pain, despair and a terrible stunned shock at what had happened. The fear of death she had endured since the murder was still deep inside her. She was a child. A disturbed, fearful and deeply sad child.

‘Becky, let’s—’ said Gillian, stepping towards her, but Becky turned away and ran out of the room. The bathroom door slammed shut behind her and Gillian heard the key being turned in the lock.

She and Tara looked at each other.

‘Maybe you shouldn’t deny it,’ said Tara. ‘She’s got good instincts and she knows there’s something between the two of you that isn’t simply friendship. Anyone can feel that. By denying it, you are just giving her the feeling that you are lying to her. That’s not good for your relationship.’

‘But if I admit it, she’ll hate me too.’

‘Something terrible has just happened to her. Her father has been murdered and she herself escaped the killer by the skin of her teeth. She has nightmares. Her sheltered world has suddenly collapsed. And her mother . . .’

‘Yes?’ asked Gillian in Tara’s pause. ‘What about her mother?’

‘I think she feels that you let her father down. That he died because of that.’

‘I couldn’t have known—’

‘Of course not. But try to imagine what is plaguing Becky. Her mother is in bed with her good-looking coach while someone else breaks into the house and shoots her dearly loved dad. Who is she going to hate if not you? The unknown, faceless culprit?’

‘I wonder how we are going to survive this whole situation,’ whispered Gillian.

‘It will take time,’ said Tara.

Gillian sat down in an armchair and buried her head in her hands. ‘I’ve never dived head over heels into an affair. Really, I haven’t. Never done it just for the hell of it. Over the last few years, Tom and I drifted pretty far apart. I felt very lonely in my marriage.’

‘Unfortunately John is not exactly the most likeable man. Maybe I’m being unfair – I’ve only met him briefly – but to me he seems too attractive, too sure of himself, as if this is all routine for him. The eternal seducer who never really commits to anyone. I hope you won’t one day feel more lonely with him than you did with Tom.’

‘I don’t know where we’re going,’ replied Gillian defensively, but Tara’s comment had got to her. Her friend had articulated just what Gillian herself sometimes found unsettling and hard to understand: John’s strange life. His abandoned career. The fact that he had never been able or wanted to have a long relationship. His almost unfurnished flat, as if he was afraid of setting down roots.

Suddenly she had the need to talk about it. Tara was a lawyer. But also her best friend.

‘By the way, he wasn’t always the head of a private security firm,’ she dropped in, apparently casually. ‘He worked for Scotland Yard before that. He was a detective inspector.’

‘Really? And why did he leave the police?’

Gillian hesitated, looking at the floor. ‘There was a stupid incident. He had an affair with an intern. And the young woman reported him when he wanted to end the affair. For sexual harassment.’

She looked up when she realised that Tara had not replied. Tara was looking at her in amazement.

‘There was an investigation, but the prosecutor didn’t press charges. Several reports found no evidence against John. The young woman kept contradicting herself. John was completely innocent.’

‘Oh, of course. Naturally she reported him without any reason!’

‘She got hysterical because John wouldn’t help her when she failed an exam. She lost it completely. So he decided to end the relationship. That just made her more angry. And then . . . well, she got her own back on him.’

‘Gillian, I know about such cases. If the case was investigated and the whole thing landed on the prosecutor’s desk, then there must have been at least circumstantial evidence against John, supporting what the young woman said.’

Gillian regretted having mentioned it. She had hoped Tara would be supportive, but it was clear that she would only feed Gillian’s fears and doubts. Because she had always suspected as much, she had not brought up the story until now. If only she had kept quiet.

‘When John wanted to break up, they had sex again but—’

‘Let me guess,’ said Tara. ‘All he wanted to do was end the relationship, but this young bit was so incredibly attractive that he jumped into bed with her again. With her consent, of course, because although he wants to leave her, she can’t think of anything better than a quickie with him. Afterwards she is annoyed that he still decides to end it, so she runs – the evil, vengeful little monster that she is – right to the police. At least he’ll end up in jail and lose his job! That’s how he told it to you, isn’t it?’

Gillian rubbed her forehead. ‘Not those exact words, but that was the gist of it, yes.’

‘That is always the gist of it,’ said Tara. ‘At least in the culprit’s statement. You can’t imagine how often I’ve heard that story, Gillian. If it were to be believed, the crime of
rape
doesn’t exist. It’s just something that a few particularly nasty women have thought up to get at men who cross them.’

‘She injured herself. Several reports confirmed that. Tara, you can’t claim there was a conspiracy hatched by all the report writers to clear John’s name of a terrible crime!’

‘In cases like these, there is rarely real evidence,’ replied Tara. ‘Neither for one side nor the other.’

‘I believe him,’ said Gillian. ‘He acted like an idiot. He knows that. But he didn’t force anyone to do anything.’

‘And you know that for sure? You know him so well?’

‘I can’t imagine anything else,’ said Gillian, realising immediately how lame that sounded.

Why have I got drawn into this conversation? Why is the whole day so crazy? Why is first my daughter and now my best friend having a go at me?

‘What do you want, Tara?’ she asked.

Tara took a deep breath. ‘I’m sorry. I got carried away. I don’t want anything, Gillian. I’m just surprised that you . . .’

‘Yes?’

‘I couldn’t start a relationship with someone who has that suspicion hanging over him. It would just seem too risky to me.’

‘So you’re saying that even if John is innocent, he’ll never have the chance of living normally again!’

‘There’s no need for you of all people to give him that chance . . .’

‘Why not me?’

‘Aren’t you at all afraid?’

Gillian shook her head. ‘No.’

‘All right!’ Tara said, raising her hands in defeat. ‘It’s just . . . Probably my imagination is running away with me, but John . . . I mean, I’ve only seen him two or three times, when he’s been to pick you up, but there’s something aggressive about him. He takes what he wants. At least, that’s what I see in him. Gillian, I’m sorry. I can’t stand him. And what you’ve just told me only strengthens what I felt about him right from the start. I don’t trust him. I’m surprised that you do. But everyone’s entitled to their own opinion. And no doubt my job has made me more suspicious than I should be.’

‘You don’t think . . . he might have something to do with Tom?’ asked Gillian after a silence in which she tried to digest what she had just heard.

‘No,’ said Tara. ‘I don’t. I just think he’s not good for you. I think he’s brutal. That he is emotionally stunted. And that worries me.’

Now the two of them were silent, exhausted by their argument.

In the end, Gillian stood up. ‘I’ll see how Becky is.’ As her daughter was not going to let her into the bathroom any time soon and she knew that, she realised she was just looking for an excuse to get away.

She just wondered if it was Tara she was getting away from.

Or herself.

Detective Inspector Fielder was surprised when the caller was put through to him by the switchboard. It was Keira Jones. Carla Roberts’s daughter.

‘Mrs Jones!’ he said. ‘It’s good to hear from you!’

Keira’s voice sounded tiny and shy. ‘Good evening. I hope I’m not disturbing you?’

‘Not at all. How are you?’

‘Not great, if I’m honest,’ said Keira. ‘My mother’s flat was opened up again. I’ve started to sort things out. I had to do it sometime. And . . . it’s very difficult. So many memories return.’

She was silent.

‘I can well imagine,’ said Fielder. ‘It’s a difficult time for you. A murder is different to a natural death. The violence is against the family members too.’

‘I’ve been in so little contact with my mother these last few years,’ said Keira quietly. ‘And today, when I went through her things, I was suddenly so close to her. I was a child again. She was my mummy, the person who was always there for me . . .’ She stopped, swallowed.

‘I understand,’ murmured Fielder, empathising.

Controlling her emotions, she said, ‘The reason I’m calling is that I found a letter in my mother’s letter box. It obviously just arrived today. I didn’t know the name of the person who sent it – a woman from Hastings. I read it. The woman didn’t seem to know that my mother is dead, but I suppose the murder wasn’t given the blanket coverage in papers down there in Sussex that it had here. I’m not sure, but the letter may contain something important.’

‘What does it say?’

‘Nothing that is obviously a clue. But you were looking for people who were in touch with my mother, and it seems there was a group . . . that I had no idea about.’

‘What kind of group?’

‘If I read the letter right, then until about nine months ago, my mother had been going to a kind of self-help group once a week. For women who live on their own. Either divorcees or widows. They met to talk about their lives, to meet people in a similar situation. She never told me about it.’

Fielder thought for a moment. It was a lead. It might not help. Carla Roberts’s murder might have nothing at all to do with that self-help group, but at least it offered the chance to talk to people who had known her. People other than her old colleagues from the chemist.

Perhaps it would reveal a new line of enquiry. Fielder just had to be careful he did not start to expect too much. He had already understood that there was no free lunch going in this case.

‘It’s clear from the letter that your mother left the group nine months ago?’ he asked.

Keira hesitated. ‘If I’ve understood it right, the woman who wrote the letter was the group’s initiator. It appears she left London for Hastings for personal reasons last April, and that the group fell apart as a result. She writes that she’s sorry they didn’t manage to keep going without her. She asks how my mother is doing. She’s been worried about her. She just wanted to hear from her.’

‘I see. It’s good that you called. We’ve found it hard to find people she was in touch with. I’ll have the letter collected from your house. Could you please give me the sender’s name and address?’

‘Of course. The woman is Ellen Curran.’ She dictated the address. Then she added, ‘You’ll tell me how things develop?’

‘Of course,’ Fielder assured her.

After saying goodbye to Keira, he immediately asked Directory Enquiries for Ellen Curran’s number. Why not try her now? It was half past six in the evening. It might be a good time to reach her.

Mrs Curran picked up the phone on the seventh ring. She was completely out of breath. ‘I’ve just got in,’ she said by way of apology after Fielder had introduced himself. She added in alarm, ‘Scotland Yard? Has something happened?’