Set in Stone

by Catherine Dunne

  He pulls the envelope out of his anorak pocket and tapes it carefully to the inside of the Jeep’s wheel arch. It’s inside a Ziploc bag, sealed with insulating tape: Wide Boy had been very precise. It is to be hidden, he insisted, but immediately obvious to anyone checking the tyres. The watcher presses down on the sticky tape with his thumb, making sure that decent contact has been made. He is aware that in this cold, it may not stick for long. But there is not a whole lot he can do about that. Now he moves across the driveway towards the navy-blue BMW convertible, still keeping low. Nice. Front tyres for this baby. Easy peasy. Right, time to go time. He makes his way quickly down the driveway. A final glance over his shoulder shows him the house is still in darkness. He turns right and slows his pace: purposeful, rather than hurried.

  The watcher wonders what these people are like. Wide Boy has told him a bit, but then he would gild the lily, wouldn’t he. He wouldn’t come right out and say whatever it was they were hiding, though, what sins they were guilty of. As Wide Boy told it, these were crimes the law could never punish them for; serious stuff that they had got away with in the past. The watcher understands that frustration, but he doesn’t do detail and the less he knows the better. He’s convinced that everyone is guilty of something. In his experience, even decent folk have something indecent to hide.

  He makes his way back down the street, making sure to keep close to the walls and gardens, away from the street lights. A couple of houses have the curtains open, even at this hour. Shift workers, maybe. He sees the blue flicker of television screens. And shakes his head. He doesn’t like TV; doesn’t believe in it. Particularly what they call Reality TV. Amy, on the other hand, loves it.

  She watches nothing else when Tina visits, the pair of them glued to the screen. She and her sister are peas in a pod, in that regard. Their addiction irritates him. But then, Amy has always believed in what she sees. She has always trusted the evidence of her own eyes. Tina, on the other hand, is that bit more worldly-wise. But not as far as celebrity is concerned. Each of the sisters, one for the sake of the other, is besotted by what they see on screen. Once it’s on TV, then it has to be true, has to be real, has to be believed. Gospel. Hooked, lined and sinkered, the pair of them.

  The watcher’s experience of life has made him different. Given what he has seen of human nature, he knows that all those programmes are one big set-up, designed to sucker in the people who’d sell their grannies for ten minutes of fame. And of course, that’s what the advertisers cash in on, too, leaving people – like Amy, like Tina – with their mouths open, waiting for part two. Thirsting after shiny happy people; bowled over by the glossy photographs in OK! and Hello!.

  The sitting room at home is always littered with magazines like that. And they aren’t cheap. Not that the money worries him, not as such. His Amy spends very little on herself. He often wishes she cared about her appearance a bit more, took care of herself better. But instead, she dives into those bloody magazines and rarely comes up for air.

  Once, in the past week or so, he’s even caught her tying her hair up in the same way as Amy Winehouse. Now that worries him. He has seen, often enough in the past, the way cops identified with the people they were supposed to catch. How they grew to admire the villains, in a strange kind of way, for what they did, what they managed to get away with. Even though it was supposed go against the grain of everything they believed in themselves. Projection, isn’t that what it was called?

  A car approaches from behind. The watcher can hear the hum of the engine in the distance; he sees the beams of the headlights illuminating the slick roadway to his left. He adjusts his hat and hunches forward suddenly, as though lighting a cigarette. The car passes. The watcher memorizes the number plate, slows his pace until the car has made a right turn and disappeared down the hill.

  He’s trying to remember now the psychologist from a long-ago training day. That idea of projection, identification, admiration – whatever it was – has stuck with him, down through the years. It astonishes him that you could long so much to be someone else that you kind of become them. You muddy the waters that separate you; submerge yourself in the other. You start to see everything that they do, everything that they are as a reflection of some unlived part of your self. He wants to understand it, that frame of mind. Maybe, if he can understand it better, he’ll understand Amy better.

  If only there was somebody he could ask. But there isn’t, not any more. One way or the other, he misses the camaraderie of the job. This, now, is solitary work, with no change of shift, no chance to share a bit of banter with the lads coming to relieve him. Nothing to ease his aching knees, either – and no one to watch his back. This job may be well paid, but apart from the money, it’s unrewarding; nothing for him to take pride in. He can never hold out hope of making an exciting discovery – the secret past, the skeleton in the cupboard, the juicy, hidden misdemeanour.

  He pauses for a moment now, keeping well under the shelter of the trees. He waits for a few minutes, but there is no sign of anything untoward. Still keeping to the shadows, he makes his way up the steep slope towards the garden wall which is becoming all too familiar to him. Sitting still for so long makes him feel restless.

  All this surveillance is insignificant to anyone other than Wide Boy, of course. He’s loving it. Can’t wait to hear the latest. Can’t wait for the watcher to transfer the video files so that he can view them on a laptop. The watcher hands over the memory stick every evening, having edited out the dull stuff. He wonders what happens when Wide Boy gets them home. Although he doesn’t seem to be a sex pervert in any obvious kind of way, this boy. He might be something even creepier. Anyhow, one way or the other, this is the sort of stuff that will never lead to an arrest, or a shipment intercepted, or even a little bit of dirt on a misbehaving politician.

  The watcher crouches into the small hollow he has made for himself behind the stone wall. He scratches the back of his neck where his woollen scarf has begun to get prickly. Amy knitted it for him, one Christmas, a few years ago. It was a short-lived craze of hers, one that followed the flower arranging, the cake decorating, even origami, for Christ’s sake. He’s never liked the scarf, but not to wear it would provoke tears or vision-and-no-sound for days on end and he can’t cope with that, not any more. He glances at his watch. Five-twenty. Time for a coffee.

  He settles himself more firmly into his fleece. For the past two weeks, he has avoided bringing anything with him on these early mornings that might leave a trace. Cigarettes, hot drinks, food. But this morning it’s just below freezing and his knees will seize up if he doesn’t have some sort of heat. He has wrapped a fine woollen blanket around him, too, pulling it from the depths of his rucksack. Amy has given him a Thermos of coffee and he pours himself a cup. She doesn’t ask where he’s going, or who he’s working for. In the past, he used to think it was because she had learned to be discreet. A cop’s wife has to be. Later on, he realized it was because she didn’t care.

  That had hurt, he won’t deny it. He has often wondered why she married him so quickly in the first place; who she was rebounding from. He was free; no baggage. He’d not had a serious relationship since his early twenties when Nadine had left him for somebody else. One of his colleagues, as it happens; one of the graduate boys. He had a lot more drive, she’d said, more ambition. Turns out she was right.

  Amy had definitely been with someone before him. He’d caught her on a few occasions in the early years, her and Tina, in a huddle together over something. Amy’d emerge, red-eyed, trying to smile. But the watcher took the decision not to ask. He was afraid that asking might shatter whatever there was between them. He was aware that it was already fragile. The fact that she seemed to want to stay with him was enough; he could live quite happily with that.

  He’d been no great catch, after all. Big, ungainly – that was his mother’s word – and dull. He knows that’s how other people saw him. How Amy saw him. On the other hand, he offered her stability, reliabi
lity. She didn’t seem to mind that he was fifteen years older than she was. He liked looking after her, felt grown-up and responsible in a way he never had before. He’d set up a joint bank account for the two of them, just as soon as they were married. Whatever he had was hers, too. That’s what his own father had done. It seemed natural for him to do the same. And at first, things like that seemed to keep her happy. That, the occasional holiday, flowers on a Friday. The slow ordinariness of it all.

  He finishes his coffee and replaces the Thermos in his rucksack. Now he shuffles a bit of dirt over where he’s emptied the dregs. Experience makes such attention to detail almost as instinctive as breathing. But it’s so bloody-well-freezin’ up here that he doubts if anybody will ever chance upon his hideout. No reason for anybody to come pokin’ around.

  He keeps a close watch on the house on the right. The routine there has been like clockwork. Plenty of time yet; everything is still in darkness. Things begin to happen around six o’clock every morning. Curtains are drawn, lights flare outwards and upwards, and the woman comes out onto the deck, hail, rain or shine. Takes the same few minutes every day to look around, then disappears back inside again.

  For the life of him, the watcher has no idea what keeps on bringing her – Lynda her name is, with a ‘y’, not an ‘i’ – outside. A few rocks strewn here and there, a bit of a pond, some low trees and shrubs. Not what he thinks of as a garden at all, not really. No proper flowers, no colour – although there wouldn’t be in winter, would there. But she seems to like what she sees. Sometimes, she picks up the junk that blows in from the street, stuff that has snaked its way through the bars of the gate that guards the side entrance. Up from the gutter, around the corner, making its way in without permission. A bit like him, really. The thought makes him want to laugh. The garden fills with the sort of skinny bits and pieces of rubbish that the wind catches and dumps whenever it stops to take a breath.

  On those mornings, he can see annoyance written all over her movements as she takes careful steps off the deck and onto the gravel. She picks up the papers and sticks as though they have no right to be there. That amused him, the first time he saw it. The rich are all alike, in his opinion. They think they don’t have to – shouldn’t have to – put up with the same shit in their lives as other people do.

  Hang on – the downstairs light has just been switched on. He checks his watch. That’s almost half an hour earlier than normal. Suddenly, the curtains are drawn back, but nobody appears on the deck. The watcher lifts the camcorder. He can see two figures moving about the kitchen. One of them, Mrs Lynda, looks agitated. Her movements are jerky – not her normal serene self. And she’s dressed, too, which is unusual: in some sort of a puffy jacket. Shit – maybe they’ve already discovered his morning’s work. Jesus, it was a close-run thing, if that’s the case. Can’t have been more than ten minutes since he left the front driveway.

  Right, that’s it. Time to go. Too dangerous to be hanging around here this morning. The watcher shifts a bit first, getting his feet planted solidly underneath him. Then he hauls himself up to standing. At least today’s letter has already been delivered and he doesn’t need to do his usual sneaking around to the front door. That is the only bit that makes him nervous. He feels exposed at the front of the house, particularly in this cold, clear weather. There is nowhere to hide should anybody suddenly open a door or a window.

  Of course, he has his cover: a postman’s sack full of charity flyers, begging for clothes and bric-a-brac in aid of the third world. He grunts. Third world, me arse. Most of the boys collectin’ this stuff put the proceeds straight into their own pockets. But people in nice houses fall for it over and over again. Helps to ease their consciences, probably. Besides, it gets rid of their junk, and no questions asked.

  He reaches the level ground, changes his shoes, dusts himself off.

  Wide Boy has paid him two grand as a deposit, another three due when the job is done. Maybe he’ll buy himself a boat when it’s all over. One of those little ones he’d seen on Lough Conn when he went fly-fishin’ with Jimmy, five maybe six years back. They still kept in touch, the two of them. Jimmy had hated the tranquillity. All that silence made him nervous. But he’d loved it. Funny, for an inner-city man like himself. Or maybe not so funny. Maybe that’s why . . .

  He checks his watch, shoves the rucksack into his Postman Pat bag and settles the lot comfortably on his shoulder. Then he heads for home. He’ll have a cooked breakfast in The Pantry in Talbot Street, first. Then, his morning paper, a bit of a snooze on the sofa and a couple of games of pool before he meets Wide Boy tonight.

  He suspects that they are going to have quite a few things to talk about.

  3

  FIVE O’CLOCK. Lynda was waking earlier than ever these days. It had begun to exasperate her, the way this thin sleep had suddenly begun to unravel any time after three. Her eyes were hot and sandy when she woke. She felt restless, alert in ways she couldn’t explain.

  She eased herself out to the edge of the bed now and searched the floor for her slippers. Might as well get up. Anything was better than just lying there. The last few mornings had taught her that. She made her way downstairs, shivering a little in the cold. The weather had been bitter for what felt like weeks now. She had hardly left the house.

  When she reached the bottom stair, she suddenly remembered. It was Tuesday. Bin day. It had been sleeting last night when she’d thought about it, and besides, she’d been feeling lazy. She’d decided to leave that job until this morning. She opened the cupboard in the hallway and switched the heating on. She kicked off her slippers and shoved her feet into the pair of old Wellingtons that she kept there for gardening. Then she pulled on Robert’s parka, and wriggled her fingers into the woollen gloves that she found balled up in one of the pockets. She walked through the dimly lit kitchen to the back door, unlocked it and stepped outside.

  The cold took her breath away. The side entrance was icy and underfoot was glazed with danger. Lynda took small steps, keeping one hand on the wall of the house. Then she pulled the wheelie-bin behind her as she made her way towards the front garden.

  She pulled the side gate open, its hinges whining. The metal was freezing; she could feel its steely cold, even through the gloves. She began to manoeuvre the bulky green bin between her car and the Jeep, wondering why it was suddenly so difficult to see where she was going this morning. Then she realized. The outside light hadn’t come on.

  Puzzled, she walked over to the porch and stood underneath the sensor, waving her arms. But nothing happened. Bulb must be gone. She’d get Robert to pick one up on his way home. As she turned, something about her car struck Lynda as strange. It looked collapsed, somehow, as though the body had suddenly lost its shape.

  Then she saw the cause. The left-hand front tyre was flat. ‘Oh, bloody hell,’ she said aloud. Time her car breakdown people earned their money: there was no way she was dealing with that. Not in this weather. She’d put in a call as soon as she got back inside the house. Lynda was just about to reach for the bin when she looked down again and saw that her right-hand tyre was flat, too. Alarmed now, she walked around the convertible. Rear tyres looked fine. And the front tyres of the Jeep looked fine, but there was something odd about the back.

  As she walked around the Jeep, she saw that both of the back tyres were flat, the boot sagging. She looked at it in disbelief. It took several seconds to process what her eyes were seeing. From surely not, to what on earth? to this must be deliberate. It had to be. This couldn’t all be coincidence, could it? But why would anyone want to do a thing like that?

  Quickly, Lynda left the bin outside the gate and went back into the house. She’d have to call Robert. He had an early meeting in Wicklow this morning . . .

  ‘Little bastards,’ said Robert. He looked dishevelled, angry in the sudden light.

  Lynda looked up. ‘The sensor,’ she said. ‘It’s working again.’

  ‘What do you mean, “again”?’ Rober
t sounded impatient.

  ‘When I came out here earlier with the bin, the light wasn’t working. But it is now.’

  Robert glanced at the fitting above the porch. ‘Some kind of intermittent fault, maybe,’ he said. ‘I’ll take a look at it later.’ He shook his head. ‘Meanwhile, I’ll have to call the roadside assist number. There’s no way we can handle four flat tyres. Although Christ knows how long they’ll take to get here in this weather.’ He sighed. ‘I’d like to wring their necks.’

  ‘Whose?’ asked Lynda, slowly.

  Robert gestured towards the cars. ‘Whatever little fuckers did this,’ he said, glaring at her. ‘Whose do you think?’

  But Lynda didn’t want to say what she was thinking. That no vandals were likely to have been abroad in sub-zero temperatures last night, letting the air out of hapless neighbours’ tyres. That no other car on the street seemed to have been touched. That for some reason, they had been targeted. Robert would call her paranoid; he’d blame her overactive imagination. And in fairness, he might be right.

  Or maybe this was part of a new culture of envy, something they would just have to get used to for the future. Perhaps that’s why it had happened to them, and not to any of their neighbours. In an already upmarket street, theirs was easily the biggest house, extended, gardens landscaped, with two fancy cars in the driveway. Maybe someone saw them as just too rich and too lucky.

  Lynda shivered. Nothing like this had ever visited them before, in all the years they had lived here. She felt violated. And to her, the attack began to feel like a personal one, rather than the random nastiness that Robert seemed to think it was.

  ‘Come on,’ he said, taking her arm. ‘Let’s go back inside. No point in standing around here. It’s freezing.’