The Watchful Eye

by Priscilla Masters

  It was like a horrid, pagan festival, the roaring fire, the dancing fireworks, the bright explosions – and in the foreground, a furious young woman, held back by her minder, accusing her mother of the murder of her child.

  What made it infinitely worse was that they had all known the child. As they knew Bobby, the helpful nursing assistant, Vanda, the downtrodden teenager, Arnie, the local psycho.

  These were not strangers to the Ecclestonians. They were people they passed in the street day by day. Neighbours, if not friends. Familiars.

  Like everyone else Daniel had been mesmerised by the drama that was playing out in front of his eyes. Feeling he should play an active role he started towards the group but Brian Anderton couldn’t afford to waste the time on this. While resenting the tableau he realised, this was playing right into his hands. A distraction. While everybody was looking the other way it was the perfect opportunity to carry out his plan.

  He touched Daniel’s shoulder. ‘Umm, Doctor.’

  Daniel turned.

  Somewhere, far back in his mind, he had registered that Anderton was carrying a petrol can but he didn’t question it. He followed him towards the edge of the field, where the rim of light met absolute darkness and stumbled behind the policeman.

  All the time he walked across the field he was aware that something was wrong. He hesitated, stringing events together. Surely Anderton should be speaking into a two-way radio; where was the ambulance, the back up? The flashlight?

  He struggled to find normality. ‘Brian,’ he said lightly, ‘I’m not going to be able to do much in the dark.’

  ‘My colleague is with her. We have a light. I think she’s OK but if you would just check?’

  Daniel peered into the darkness and could see nothing.

  Still his mind struggled.

  Anderton had been working with a WPC. Of course. She would have stayed by the old lady’s side, comforting her, while Anderton had crossed the field to fetch the doctor. Then Anderton had been sidetracked by the family drama which had played out in front of their eyes.

  Panic only set in when Daniel recalled seeing the WPC standing behind Roberta Millin as her daughter had pointed the accusing finger at her.

  Daniel hesitated, undecided whether to turn back.

  But our instincts tell us to trust and obey a policeman.

  He suddenly wished Anderton would say something. ‘Hey, Brian,’ he tried.

  But the policeman kept walking.

  He knew when he had reached the right spot.

  But what Brian Anderton had not realised was that Claudine had noticed him leading Daniel towards the edge of the field and had felt the apprehension that had been building up inside her over the past few weeks. She knew that something besides the fireworks would explode tonight on this field.

  ‘Here,’ she said quickly to Bethan, ‘stay with Holly and her grandmother. Don’t stray. I need to have a word with Daddy.’ She placed the little girl’s hand in Daniel’s mother’s, ignoring the inevitable startled look and the, ‘Well, she might at least have asked,’ from Holly’s grandmother, and hurried after Brian.

  Guy Malkin had not taken his eyes off Claudine since he had arrived at the field. He knew that he was in love with her and would be for ever and she had given him signs that she felt exactly the same about him. Why wouldn’t she? He was a man now. It was time they told Anderton that his day was over anyway.

  Daniel turned. ‘So where is she?’ He didn’t know what the policeman’s game was but there was something very odd going on. He wasn’t sure when he had realised that there was no old woman in a state of collapse. That he’d been lured here.

  He faced Anderton, expecting a confrontation.

  That was when he felt the splash. Followed by another splash. Then he was drenched in the stuff and his nostrils were full of the stink of petrol and he could not speak for terror because now he could see right into the policeman’s mind. And it was bonfire night. Sparks were everywhere, filling the night sky like fireflies. Children were brandishing sparklers. He tried to pull at his clothes but his fingers were stiff with panic. Rockets were exploding in the sky, showering golden, brilliant tendrils of fire – any one of which could ignite him. Each one threatening to explode him into pain and death. Then he heard the click of a cigarette lighter. He remembered it now. Clearly and too late. The way Anderton had toyed with the yellow, plastic Bic lighter in his hand, clicking it over and over again.

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘No. Please.’

  We all make this appeal, for mercy, for pity. But we are wrong to do this. Our killers have no pity. So it is useless to appeal to it.

  Yet we do it.

  Daniel watched the flame, saw the hand bring it nearer and nearer.

  That was when Cora Moseby began to scream. But the scream mingled in with the other shouts and screams of Bonfire Night. It melted into the night air.

  Claudine drew in her breath. One word. The wrong word. ‘Brian,’ she breathed. ‘No. No. It’s just Daniel. He doesn’t mean any harm.’

  Brian Anderton gave an almost animal groan. ‘How do you know?’ The cigarette lighter was no more than a foot away from Daniel. Daniel backed away and felt the prickle of a hawthorn hedge against his hand.

  He could sense the heat already and he had nowhere to escape to.

  Anderton clicked the lighter. It didn’t even spark.

  Anderton clicked the lighter again.

  Still it was stubborn.

  No flame.

  He clicked it a third time.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Malkin had misunderstood so much in his short life. He had watched the scene around the bonfire, confused at what was happening. He hadn’t understood what Vanda was talking about, her anger directed at her mother. He’d looked from one to the other and given up.

  Now he watched another scene with the same bafflement.

  He’d seen Anderton move towards Daniel with the cigarette lighter. He smelt the petrol but made no connection.

  He saw Claudine launch herself at her husband and that was enough. It was time for him, Guy Malkin, to act the cartoon hero.

  In his mind’s eye he saw himself knock Brian Anderton to the ground and so, yelling and screaming like a Zulu, he did just that.

  Anderton did not have a clue what was happening. His focus was all on Daniel, his quarry. He was in control here. It was dark. Malkin was dressed in black jeans and a hooded top. All Anderton felt was himself being felled. Shocked, he dropped the can. The petrol splashed over him just as the lighter, contrary and fickle to the last, spluttered its flame to ignite him.

  His last conscious thought was a terrible, searing understanding.

  So this had been the meaning of it all.

  He heard screams and more screams and then he tried to run away from the flames.

  But they were faster than him. With him and around him. He was inside them. The flames were him.

  Marie Westbrook was a nurse, well versed in first aid and quick to react.

  Rule one is to prevent further harm and that included to her. She knew the petrol can could blow up at any moment. A bomb waiting to ignite. She kicked it away from Anderton, spilling more of the volatile fluid as it jerked along the grass. She set it upright, ignoring, for the moment, the screams of the human torch, the scene straight up from Hell, Dante’s Inferno, the rim of watching faces demonic and reddened by the fire and the terrible, visible agony of the man, his lips peeled back in agony like an early Christian painting.

  Her next priority was to protect Daniel. ‘Take your clothes off,’ she screamed. ‘All of them.’

  Oblivious to embarrassment he stripped naked and she tossed him her coat to cover up. Her challenge now was to stop Anderton running around, whipping the flames into activity, the watchers shrinking away whenever he neared one. Anderton, driven into insanity, was screaming, while Claudine stood nearby, absolutely still, watching her husband, her hands covering her mouth, her eyes wide open with horror. Par
ents covered their children’s faces. They did not want this picture seared into their tender brains. Finally Daniel caught Anderton’s ankles in a flying rugby tackle of the sort he had been renowned for at school. Marie called to the watchers for coats, blankets – anything to damp down the terrible flames. She worked beside Daniel in shocked silence, the only sound Anderton’s low moans and the mutterings of the crowd. Privately Marie revelled in the fact that they were working together. She and him, how it was always meant to be. Even in the horror, the panic and the darkness she smiled. Happy.

  She recalled the second rule from the lecture on burns: You do not remove the clothes of a burns victim because they form a sterile dressing over the area of damage. Besides, the skin will come away with the clothes, peeling away the flesh down to the sinews and the bones.

  Firemen were running helter-skelter across the field with fire extinguishers and arc lights and the scene was transformed to a sea of slippery foam around which stood a ring of shivering, frightened, pale people, shocked at what they had witnessed. The festival was abandoned; the bonfire left to burn out and fireworks suddenly seemed a threat too terrifying to ignite. Blue lights flashed, sirens wailed. Two ambulances, a ring of police cars, officers slowly taking charge, trying to restore order before taking statements and finding what had happened on this dreadful night.

  Now the initial shock was over, Daniel felt shaky. His thoughts were all on what might have been. He could not rid himself of the image of the evening, which had exploded so suddenly into terrifying chaos, or the picture of a man turning to charcoal in front of his eyes. He looked around at the pale, frightened faces of the familiar families who had gathered to celebrate and enjoy themselves and knew that none of them would ever forget this night. He saw his mother shielding Holly from the scene, the way his daughter clung to her, and was glad she was there. An ambulance man ushered him into the back of his van and he sat for a while as they found a spare pair of trousers and a sweater. He peered around the back door. They were stretchering Anderton into a second ambulance but he knew they were too late. He could not live.

  Brian Anderton died four days later of shock, infection and fluid loss. He had sixty-five per cent burns.

  Had he lived he would have faced a lifetime of surgery and prison.

  Daniel Gregory refused the offer of a ‘check-up’ in hospital and returned home with his mother and his daughter. Marie slipped away, unseen, into the darkness. Claudine and Bethan were ‘cared for by a neighbour’.

  Once home, Daniel bathed and showered and shampooed his hair to get rid of the smell of smoke. Then he sat in his dressing gown, staring in front of him. He could still smell petrol in his nostrils; still see the man in flames, dancing his macabre dance every time he closed his eyes. He turned his head sharply to the side, convinced he could still hear hysterical screams.

  It would take him a long time to forget.

  For months he would see the man flailing. Even to fill up his car with petrol and breathe in its pungent perfume would become a terrifying ordeal. Presented with any naked flame for more than a year, he would shrink away.

  WPC Shirley White had comforted a hysterical Cora Moseby and it was from her that she learnt a fuller story, that she had been stalked, that PC Brian Anderton had promised to protect her and what form that protection had ultimately taken. ‘When David Sankey doused himself in petrol,’ Cora said, her face white and shaken, ‘in front of my bedroom window, it was Brian who set him alight. He set him alight,’ she’d said – again and again. ‘It was he who burnt him. Not Sankey. I think Sankey was just doing it to frighten me but Brian Anderton put the flame to him. He clicked his lighter and Sankey exploded into fire.’ She hid her face. ‘Just like Brian did tonight. He did it’, she turned her face to WPC White, ‘to protect me. I thought he always would. He was,’ she paused, ‘chivalrous.’

  It was an epitaph of sorts.

  ‘When I found out where he’d moved to I followed him to Eccleston because I knew I would be safe here. He would always protect me.’

  WPC White had found the woman pathetic, sad and damaged. She’d put her arm around her and tried to quiet the terrified sobs.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Five months later

  It was the warmest day so far this year, the middle of April, a perfect day in a perfect spring that seemed to be full of golden daffodils, scarlet tulips and bright, clean sunshine. Daniel had been waiting for this moment. In his hand he held the key to Applegate Cottage. The building work was finished, his belongings packed in a van, waiting for them to move in. As he opened the wicket gate he could see the field beyond, the chestnut pony grazing, pale-pink apple blossom making the orchard dazzlingly bright and filling the air with heavy scent. The first of the bees were starting to buzz around the temptation. The key was old-fashioned, heavy iron and huge in his hand.

  He inserted it into the arched door and stepped inside.

  It was perfect. The builders had cleaned up and moved out a month ago and his cleaner and the gardener had spent most of their time up here, preparing the house. The Yellow House was sold subject to contract and Holly had been living with him since Christmas. Elaine was expecting her first child of the new marriage so was less possessive over Holly than she might otherwise have been. He was aware that all their lives had moved in a different direction, taken a different course than he had anticipated a year ago. He stepped inside. In spite of his cleaner’s efforts, the cottage still smelt of damp plaster and brick dust, but as he moved from room to room he seemed to see his life unfolding before him. He and Holly, his mother nearby, in this happy cottage, away from his patients. It would be a private life, a privileged life and a happy life, he had no doubt. His heart gave a little skip as he recalled the bright, intelligent eyes, the wisdom that had shone from Maud Allen’s face. Her influence would live on, a woman who was not afraid to make brave choices.

  Claudine and Bethan had moved back to France. She had spent an evening with him just before Christmas to explain while the two girls had behaved shyly and awkwardly towards each other. Too much had happened for them to resume an innocent, childish friendship.

  ‘England has bad memories for me, Daniel,’ Claudine had said, ‘and this pretty town has the worst memories of all. I shall live in the countryside in my own land, speaking my own language. I am not sure I understand English.’

  He knew she meant the English.

  Her smile had been sad and tinged with regret but he knew she was right. She had to leave. ‘I can’t stay here, Daniel, you must understand. I can’t possibly stay here. I am seen as that foreign woman who sent her husband mad, who incited such terrible events that led to his death, who teased a young man, who flirted with the doctor. It will all come out in the court case. Everything will be blamed on the fact that I am a foreigner who led my husband a merry dance until he lost his reason. Yes. That is the plea his solicitor would have entered had he lived: that Brian was sent mad by me.’

  She looked at him then and he caught the sadness in her face. ‘He was not really a bad man,’ she said, ‘but something happened to him, Daniel, long ago, that planted a small, bad seed in his brain. When those things happened again and somebody stole my personal clothes…’ She coloured slightly. It amused him to think that underneath Claudine was a bit of a prude.

  ‘When that happened, because by then we were making friends, he believed it was you and that I was enticing you, inviting you by dangling things on the washing line. Leaving secret messages, waving, like semaphore. Hah.’ She gave a mirthless laugh. ‘For goodness’ sake. How sick was he?’

  It was the best way to think of it.

  ‘Keep in touch, Claudine,’ he urged, but she shook her head sadly.

  ‘It’s best not to. Too much damage has been inflicted. Apart from Bethan, I must close the door on this country and on this part of my life.’ She cast her eyes up the High Street. ‘For all that this little town is so pretty it does not have happy memories for me. I shall not
return. I go next week, Daniel, back to France. I shall not return to England. Ever.’

  She gave a tiny shudder. ‘I close the door,’ she said. And then she was gone.

  His mother, with typical alacrity and efficiency, had sold her house and bought one of the flats in Tanner’s Row. She was moving down next week, full of plans and excitement. He knew that she was excited at the thought of living nearer to them.

  Correction. What she was excited about was being invited to live near them. And Holly was equally excited at the thought of having her grandmother so close by. She also loved the small, exclusive complex, the swimming pool that belonged to the flat-owners, the access to the river and the gymnasium.

  In a small town it is impossible not to bump into people. Guy Malkin pushing the pushchair along the pavement, Vanda clinging onto his arm, Arnie walking purposefully two steps behind them, as though he was a minder for the entire family.

  Bobby Millin had been charged with the murder of Anna-Louise, but WPC Shirley White had confided in him. ‘Our case is weak,’ she’d said, ‘even with Vanda’s evidence we can’t prove that Anna-Louise was smothered. She can testify that her mother abused her, but she wasn’t actually in the room when Anna-Louise died. And of course,’ she said as an afterthought, ‘the child can’t speak for herself.’