The Watchful Eye

by Priscilla Masters

  He chose his moment carefully, grabbed her from behind.

  He’d watched how they did it on Crimewatch. They pull their collars up, their hats down. They make their voices gruff and unrecognisable. They fold their arms around their victim’s neck, making them gasp, frightened and compliant. He did all this, now, pulled at her coat, found her breasts, rubbed against her, touched her lips with his fingers and whispered into her ear.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Daniel had felt fidgety that night. He had been too excited at the prospect of his imminent life-change to merely sit at home and either watch TV or surf the Internet for a female he no longer wanted or needed. So he had decided to visit The Eagle for a pint or two of ale and now he was walking home.

  He knew instantly that someone was in trouble. He could hear the gasps, the fright, the panic of the woman and the grunts of the man.

  It wasn’t until he spoke, ‘Hey there. What’s going on?’ and the youth sped off, pulling up his trousers as he ran, leaving the woman crying inconsolably, that he realised it was Claudine Anderton who threw herself into his arms. He held her until she settled, her sobs became more spasmodic and her shaking stopped, then he asked her who it had been.

  ‘I don’t know, Daniel,’ she said. ‘I don’t know, I don’t want to know. Some evil monster. Take me home, Daniel, please, take me home.’

  What could he do but return her to her husband? The town policeman, who the moment he opened the front door to see his wife in such a state – clothes awry, buttons ripped off, crying inconsolably in Gregory’s arms – eyed him with suspicion and loathing.

  It was no use for Daniel to protest. ‘Come on, Brian, do you think I’d…?’

  The policeman glared at him.

  Daniel tried again. ‘Be reasonable.’

  But what he didn’t realise was that Anderton was beyond reason. He saw only what he saw: his wife upset, clinging on to Daniel, her clothes in disarray. That was what he saw. And he remembered the story about Chelsea Emmanuel who had claimed the doctor had molested her. He threw a punch which landed squarely on Daniel’s nose. Daniel gasped and fell back. Then Anderton grabbed Claudine by the arm and slammed the door in Daniel’s face.

  Daniel was left on the doorstep, nursing his bleeding nose and knowing he would do nothing. He was in no position to make an accusation against the town’s policeman.

  He couldn’t afford to.

  Saturday, 5th November

  Remember, remember the fifth of November

  Gunpowder treason and plot.

  I see no reason why the gunpowder treason

  should ever be forgot.

  In times past, to celebrate the foiling of the Catholic plot to blow up the Houses of Parliament people used to burn effigies of the Pope. Tagged on to the end of the original ditty is a second verse which few of us chant these days.

  A penny loaf to feed the Pope

  A farthing o’ cheese to choke him

  A pint of beer to rinse it down

  A faggot of sticks to burn him

  Burn him in a tub of tar

  Burn him like a blazing star

  Burn his body from his head

  Then we’ll say ol’ Pope is dead.

  Guy Malkin simply hated the fifth of November. He’d never liked his name anyway. But when the little brats ran after him shouting ‘Penny for the guy, Guy,’ he could have wrung their scrawny little throats. Something had happened to him since he had met Claudine and hooked up to Vanda. He had changed. But others didn’t know that he wasn’t quite the passive, ordinary little bloke any more. He had a secret. And that secret made him powerful.

  So just let them come. He was ready for them.

  Guy knew the whole of the ditty, both verses, and he liked the words. Particularly the first few lines of the second verse. He enjoyed imagining the Pope choking on beer and cheese. He muttered them to himself as he left work that night. He had plans. He was going to go to the bonfire tonight.

  Saturday evening began murky. Damp enough for people to need petrol to ignite their bonfires, but not wet enough to stop the festivities.

  Eccleston, of course, held its own organised bonfire.

  It being the end of half term, Holly was staying for the weekend and his mother, at the last minute, had announced her intention to visit too. She and Holly seemed to have formed an invisible and powerful bond that surprised him. His mother was changing, becoming less self-absorbed, less pitying, happier. He was surprised at how much he liked her.

  Daniel had decided that this weekend they would all attend the bonfire. Then, on the Sunday, Holly could have another riding lesson while he would look again at the Welsh pony and see if the school was willing to sell it to him. He liked the animal. It seemed safe and placid. After all – he didn’t want anything too skittish or dangerous for his daughter. Just a nice, sweet-tempered beast for his little girl to trot around the local lanes and bridle paths.

  Guy Fawkes’ night was a nightmare for the two police officers on duty, PC Brian Anderton and WPC Shirley Evans. Shirley was tired. She had an eight-month-old baby who was just cutting her teeth and so was miserable. Her mother-in-law had very reluctantly agreed to have the baby so that Paul, her husband, could take their six-year-old to the local bonfire in Eccleston. She felt grumpy, partly through lack of sleep and partly because she wouldn’t have minded being at the bonfire herself. Not in an official capacity but as a mum.

  As if that wasn’t bad enough, she glanced at her colleague and Brian seemed even more odd tonight. On edge, irritable and downright weird. She heaved a long sigh. She just didn’t want to spend the next eleven hours with a moody guy! Tonight of all nights.

  ‘Penny for the guy, Guy.’ Vanda called out cheekily, linking her arm in his. He felt his face flush bright red. She was always goading him, teasing him. Well, she’d better watch out. She didn’t know, did she? She didn’t know he had a secret side to him. A secret heart. She’d have a shock if she knew what he was capable of. The squad car cruised alongside him, Anderton half leaning out. ‘Off to the bonfire then, Guy? To see the guy burn, Guy?’

  With a loud cackle the squad car slid along the road leaving Guy staring after it.

  Again he flushed. If only they knew!

  Guy continued up the street, Vanda taking two steps to his one long-legged stride.

  On this night everyone took the piss, called him names, chanted those stupid rhymes right in his ear, made daft comments about putting him on the bonfire. Even the policeman.

  Well, sarky officer, he thought, you can mock me if you like. I can’t stop you, but from inside I am mocking you. Because you don’t know the first thing about me, do you? He turned around and stared after the car. I’ve got your wife’s knickers spread out on my bed. Pearl earrings? The ones she’d ‘lost’? I have those too. And plenty more besides. I was nearly inside her the other night. Me. You might think you have control but I can tell you, I am the one for all I look strange, different and odd. I have control because you don’t have the first idea. He took some pleasure from the fact that PC Anderton was in ignorance. He wasn’t so very clever.

  He swaggered off, trying to imitate Johnny Depp’s swaying walk in Pirates of the Caribbean. Vanda struggled to keep up with him. ‘Hey,’ she said, ‘wait for me.’

  He barely acknowledged her.

  Brian continued to cruise up the High Street, scanning the crowds for Daniel Gregory. Plenty of people were walking to the bonfire, he noticed, passing Claudine and Bethan walking purposefully up the hill towards the gate. He pipped his horn at them and they both turned and waved.

  He couldn’t be sure if it was his imagination but it seemed to him that Claudine still looked wary. Even when he eyed her in his nearside wing mirror. Wary or guilty?

  He spotted Gregory and his mother, also walking in the same direction no more than a few yards behind his wife. Gregory’s mother, he noticed, was holding Holly very tightly by the hand. He nodded approvingly. One should always watch children c
arefully in such a noisy, dangerous, confused and dark environment. Everyone from the entire town seemed to be walking in the same direction, towards the same place, the huge stack in the centre of the field, roped off by the local farmer. Brian smiled at himself. He would wait until the bonfire was lit, the flames dancing and the fireworks screaming and cracking. He could easily lure Gregory to the far corner of the field. Only a murderer can appreciate what pleasure it gives to commit the crime over and over again in your mind. You watch your intended victim suffer a thousand times, see him die a hundred times. Premeditated murder is to kill over and over again.

  He had already planned how he would lure Daniel away from the rest of the crowd. This is the nice thing about your target being a doctor. It was so easy. He could make something up. Anything.

  An old lady, having struggled up the hill, seized with a crushing pain in her chest. A child who had been burnt by a sparkler, a vain young woman, ill-advisedly wearing high heels into a farmer’s field, twisting her ankle from a careless step into a rabbit hole. Brian could think up dozens of these simple stories. The simpler the better – the more credible. In fact, he would not decide which one he would use until he actually started speaking.

  And then, Doctor Gregory, he thought, I will pay you back for your duplicity, in pretending to be a good, loyal, trustworthy family doctor when all the time you were a monstrous perversion. A sad stalker who stole my wife’s personal belongings so you could drool over them like a sex-starved bloodhound. A sexual predator on an underage woman, a doctor who profits by his mistaken diagnoses, a doctor who watches a tiny child die without lifting a finger to help it. This is who you are.

  Yes, Daniel. Even if you had not stolen my wife’s belongings you would still deserve to die because you have failed the people of this town. You and I both have an important role to protect the citizens of Eccleston. I have carried out my duty faithfully. But you…!

  A doctor who commits so many cardinal sins is surely capable of anything.

  His first smile of the evening came as he watched the nurse from the surgery strolling nonchalantly a few paces behind Gregory. The doctor, he noticed, was unaware that he was about to be ‘bumped into’. WPC Shirley Evans noted the smile and misinterpreted it. She thought that her colleague’s mood had lifted. And then Brian Anderton saw someone else – or he thought he saw someone, a ghostly vision from his past. He watched the woman walk slowly towards the bonfire. Surely. It could not be her?

  Yet he watched, mesmerised.

  She was thinner than he remembered her, but just as insignificant. Almost a shadow, a wraith walking with the crowd but somehow not quite part of it. She had always been like that. There – yet not there. Never quite real.

  Daniel was unaware of the policeman’s presence. He saw Claudine and Bethan from a distance but made no attempt to approach them. The girls smiled and waved shyly at each other but neither asked if she could join her friend.

  The bonfire was finally lit and the air filled with crackling sparks and the whoosh of the flames as they soared heavenwards. It was a clear sky now with a sprinkling of stars but as the fire grew brighter and hotter the stars appeared to fade.

  Everyone’s attention was now on the display of fireworks. The oohs and aahs as starry cobwebs filled the sky, the shock of bangs as staccato and deafening as gunfire, the explosions of stars, gold and red, silver and the brightest magnesium white.

  Holly was at once in awe, entranced and frightened. Daniel’s mother grasped her hand tightly and he suddenly realised how important this role was to her.

  He had made mistakes and one of these had been to think of his mother in that one role when she had another one, much more important to her now. That of grandmother.

  He watched them with a warmth of affection. This, now, was his family.

  And from the back of the field Brian Anderton watched too. He searched for the woman he had noticed earlier but she had vanished. Perhaps she had never been there except in his mind.

  Something, he never knew what, made Daniel turn around. There was activity in the far corner of the field. A large big-bosomed woman was towering over a shrinking girl. He frowned. It was hard to make out exactly what was happening because they were on the very edge of the light from the fire. But it seemed as though the larger woman was holding a sparkler too near the girl’s hand. He started forward. It was so close it must be burning her. So why didn’t the girl pull away? Why did the two women simply stare at each other?

  Perhaps he had always known the reason why.

  Bobby Millin was hurting Vanda. Torturing her own daughter.

  And that was when it all started to fall into place.

  Not Vanda was his first confused, instinctive thought. Of course not Vanda. She had cared for the child in the best way she could. It was Bobby. Life-saving, angel of mercy, Bobby. She had been the one. Oh, that he could have been so blind.

  Daniel’s eyes narrowed. The number of times Bobby had ‘resuscitated’ her tiny, silent granddaughter. And who had been with Anna-Louise the night the little girl had died?

  So who had really pressed the pillow to the toddler’s face until she had finally stopped breathing?

  He knew now.

  Proving it was going to be the problem.

  Brian hadn’t made precise plans. He simply knew that tonight was the night. After all, he had been the one who had planned it so. He knew that tonight would change everything as surely as if he had been blessed with prescience.

  And in a way he was. He could picture Daniel’s startled amazement as he doused him with petrol, watch his surprise turn to terror as the lighter clicked. Only as he was burning and screaming would Brian finally tell him why.

  The fireworks were still exploding, the fire sending sparks high into the night as he started away from the crowd. It was time he fetched the petrol can. ‘Best check on the car,’ he said, adding in response to the WPC’s enquiring look. ‘No need for you to come, Shirley,’ he said kindly. She instantly turned her attention back to a group of youths who were too engrossed in rolling a spliff to notice her. She breathed in deeply, caught the sweet scent of the one they had already lit and sighed. It brought back happy memories of when she had been a student, footloose and fancy-free. No wretched job then. No home to run to, no husband and no baby. She sucked in another deep breath and sighed. She hadn’t appreciated her freedom then.

  Daniel was engrossed in his latest problem when the hand tapped his shoulder. ‘Excuse me, Doctor.’

  Brian Anderton was looking concerned. Strange, anxious and concerned. There was no trace of his previous hostility, which deceived Daniel into believing that this was a professional plea.

  ‘Yeah?’

  ‘There’s an elderly lady over in the corner of the field. She’s been taken ill. I just wondered if you’d have a look at her.’

  Daniel was not suspicious. His doctor’s training came to the fore. All he was thinking about was concern for this unknown woman who had come to the bonfire only to fall ill.

  ‘Yes. Yes. Of course, Brian.’

  He followed the policeman across the field towards the darkest corner without even wondering why an ‘old lady’ who was feeling ill would have chosen the remotest corner of the field to fall in.

  Unseen by either of them, Cora Moseby was standing near enough to hear the policeman’s words. Like an automaton she followed at a distance.

  Guy Malkin was inching around the edge of the field, moving closer to Claudine Anderton, circling her like a hyena moving in for the kill. If he could only get close enough to whisper in her ear, tug at her sleeve, she would know how he felt and she would come to him. There were plenty of dark, quiet corners in this English field.

  Marie Westbrook had planned to ‘bump’ into Daniel at the bonfire so had sidled close to him. When she saw him following the policeman away from the bonfire, she too walked behind at a safe distance.

  Chapter Twenty

  Then everything happened fast, like one of
the fireworks exploding into the arena.

  First Vanda started screaming terrible things to her mother.

  ‘You killed her. You killed my baby. My little Anna-Louise. You hurt her more and more. Every day of her life you hurt her like you hurt me. And when you thought you had hurt her enough you killed her. I know you did it.’ She was facing her mother, her anger and grief making her appear bigger, taller, stronger. Frighteningly powerful.

  Bobby Millin stood perfectly still, her mouth slack, her eyes unfocused, shocked. She opened her mouth to speak but no words came out, only a strangled croak.

  Vanda took a step towards her but her brother restrained her with a hand on her arm. ‘Hey,’ he said. ‘Steady on there, Vand. Mum wouldn’t—’

  Vanda withered him with a look. From somewhere – who knows where – she had found a huge source of strength. ‘You always were the stupid one,’ she said, half turning towards him. ‘You couldn’t see what was under your ruddy nose.’

  Arnie gaped at her. ‘What’s brought this on?’ he began. ‘What is this?’ He looked from his mother to his sister then gave up. He had no words in his entire vocabulary to encompass the situation.

  Bobby Millin’s shoulders crumpled. As her daughter had appeared, physically, to expand, so she had appeared to shrink. She was staring straight out, into the distance, as though desperate to abstract herself from the scene. No one watching could tell whether she was listening to her daughter’s rantings or whether the allegations were so dreadful that she had been struck stone deaf and dumb. She said nothing in her defence and apart from the dropping of her shoulders she did not appear to react. Around the family group was a ring of shocked faces. No one dared speak. It was as though they were all holding their breath, waiting for something more to happen, for someone to make a sound and break the spell of ice that had dropped over the scene.