I've Been Watching You

by KA Richardson

  Smiling, he wrote the date and venue down. The fifteenth would give him ample time to prepare. It appeared attending the class was a good idea.

  Now he had that information he wouldn’t need to go to any more of the droll lectures. In fact, he could delete the whole persona if he wanted. From now on it would just be a case of monitoring her Facebook page, watching her in her room, and maybe even eventually getting to know her a little. He felt a slight flare of frustration, all that work creating the files at the university and no one had even checked if he was allowed to be in the lecture hall. There hadn’t been a register taken.

  As the lecturer wrapped up and told them to get themselves away for an early finish, he remained seated, watching as she threw her writing pad and pencil case into her bag. Why doesn’t she have a tablet? The world and his dog have a damn tablet nowadays. And she still works on paper?

  Joining the throng, he left the hall, following Clarice and her friends at a distance. He paused as they made their way into the glass fronted library, his falsified student ID card wouldn’t get him past the swipe system and he hadn’t bothered setting up the full student account so there was a chance the library wouldn’t recognise him as a student. Opting not to risk it, he made his way in the opposite direction to ring a taxi.

  He had plenty to be going on with for now.

  Chapter Nine

  Maternity Ward, Sunderland Royal Hospital – 3 June

  Ben quietly knocked at the door labelled with Cass’s name, not wanting to wake her if she was sleeping. It wasn’t early in the morning, but she knew what it was like after that first night in hospital with a tiny baby.

  Alex opened the door, and smiled widely at her, gesturing her inside.

  ‘Don’t let the nurse see – they’re pretty strict in here on only allowing two visitors at a time,’ he whispered conspiratorially with a grin.

  Cass was sitting up in bed. She looked tired, her hair mussed and frizzed, but she looked happy and had that contented glow about her.

  She smiled widely at Ben. ‘Come and meet Isobel Rose McKay.’

  As Ben got to the side of the bed, Cass stretched her hands out, handing her a small bundle wrapped in a soft white blanket.

  She took hold of Isobel gently, smiling down, suddenly filled with emotion. It reminded her of the day Grace had been born. For a second, she let the warmth of the memory envelop her.

  It had been September twelfth, four and a half years earlier. The country had been in uproar about the rising price of fuel and Ben had stockpiled, panicking in case she couldn’t get to the hospital with anticipated strike action on her due date of the third. Grace though, had decided her due date was too soon, and had refused to make an appearance until nine whole days later. The north-east was in the middle of a sudden flash heat wave, and Aoife had driven a sweating Ben to the hospital, as recommended by the midwife.

  She barely remembered the birth itself. The human memory does an amazing job of blocking out the pain in exchange for the gift of the child. She’d looked down on the baby’s perfect features and known that this child was her saving grace – it had been how her daughter had come to the name she had.

  ‘She’s absolutely beautiful,’ said Ben softly, smiling back at Cass. ‘And I love the name Isobel – is that one you guys just decided on? Or does it mean something?’

  ‘Isobel is Alex’s mum, Rose is mine. In fact, the rest of the family are coming down shortly – you’re the first to arrive. Ali just left to go pick them up.’

  ‘Sweetie,’ interrupted Rose Peters, Cass’s mum, ‘I’m gonna go down to the café with Roger to have a bite. Can I bring you something up?’

  ‘No, I’m good thanks, Mum, you guys take your time. Enjoy it.’

  Ben watched as Rose patted her daughter’s arm with a smile of utter pride, then she and her husband left the room.

  Digital Forensics Lab, Sunderland HQ

  ‘Tulley, I’ve had a request from Kevin Lang, one of the forensic supervisors, asking if we can allow one of his CSIs to come over for a two-day attachment. I was thinking of arranging it for later this week. That OK with you?’

  Edward Franklin’s voice boomed from the side of Jacob’s desk, almost making him hit enter on the current copy job before he was ready. As big as the man was, his boss had an awful habit of sneaking up without announcement or noise. Jacob firmly believed it had to do with the five teenage daughters the man had. He would need to be stealthy to keep track of all the women in his home.

  Fixing his smile in place, he made eye contact with his boss.

  ‘Sure, no problem, Ed, shall we say Wednesday and Thursday? That gives Lang a few days to let the CSI know and schedule in cover?’

  ‘Sounds good to me. Can you let him know, I’m about to head over to Newcastle to speak with the superintendent over there about where we spend our money. Exciting stuff. How’s this one coming along?’

  Jacob felt Ed lean in to stare over his shoulder.

  ‘Just in the process of creating the acquisition copy to work on. Was just double checking there were no traps or delete codes written in when you came over. I’ll crack on with it now.’

  Jacob glanced up and saw Ed nod his head in satisfaction before he walked off. Ed was easy going; he let his team get on with their work, which suited Jacob down to the ground.

  This case wasn’t a pleasant one – Jacob knew that the files would contain some hard-core material. The computer had been seized from a prolific paedophile. In his opinion, these were the hardest computers to work on. The generic keyword searches and investigations into the slack space provided information and very often images that he would prefer not to see. But the evidence would help Ali’s team build the full case to present to the CPS.

  It took several hours, sometimes even longer, to create the acquisition or exact copy. His plan was to do that this morning before working on a couple of mobile phones relating to a separate incident this afternoon.

  Before he forgot and got himself wrapped up in his world, he typed a short reply to Kevin accepting his CSI for attachment. For a moment, he wondered who it would be, then shrugged his shoulders and turned back to the job at hand.

  O’Byrne Residence, Sunderland

  Feeling like a coward, Aoife listened at the window as Ben started the car and left the driveway. Her niece had taken Grace to school, then returned home and started on some cleaning before deciding it was time to do a food shop. She’d asked Aoife, who normally went with her, but her aunt had declined, feigning a headache. She needed some time alone to think and decide how to tell Ben about the cancer. Once again, fear and doubt sent arguments spinning through her mind.

  You have to tell her. She has a right to know.

  Her conscience prickled at her. Why did this have to be so hard?

  Aoife picked up the phone, and pulled the oncologist’s card from her purse, punching in the number.

  It was time to find out what happened next, how she could fight this.

  Aoife had been sat in the rocking chair beside Grace’s bed since she put her niece down over an hour earlier. The story had suddenly ceased as her voice had faltered a few sentences in, and Grace, with the infinite wisdom of a four-year-old, had clambered out of bed and into Aoife’s arms, wrapping herself around her great aunt and snuggling in, knowing instinctively that she needed comforting. Aoife had arranged for the chair to be transported over from Ben’s childhood home in Ireland when her parents had died and had held Ben in it back then whenever she’d cried over missing her parents. When Grace had been born, Ben had taken to nursing in it, and they both used it to read the bedtime stories that Grace adored.

  Today though, the rocking motion afforded Aoife little comfort.

  She’d struggled not to cry, managing to hold back the tears until Grace dropped off to sleep. And then the silent tears had fallen, wetting her sleeve as her arm held the child in place, using her legs to gently rock back and forth, letting the motion soothe her with each full sweep.
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  She’d cried for almost an hour, thinking about everything, wondering why it had happened to her, what she’d done to deserve it.

  Statistically, she was aware it could happen to anyone, she actually knew a couple of people who had been through it. But you always think you’re invincible, always think it won’t happen to you.

  But it had.

  Realising the time, Aoife moved position, placed the sleeping child into the bed and tucked her in. Leaving the room, she set the bath to fill, adding some bubbles for good measure.

  She would speak to the consultant tomorrow; find out what the next steps were. And once she knew this, she would tell Ben.

  Knowing her time for tears was over, at least for now, Aoife lowered herself into the hot, foam filled bath just as Ben came through the front door.

  ‘Aoife?’

  Ben’s quietly raised voice echoed up the stairs.

  ‘Up here, sweetie. Am just in the bath.’

  ‘Cass’s baby is as cute as a button.’ Ben sighed, pushing open the door and sitting on the closed toilet seat.

  Aoife smiled to herself, she’d brought Ben up to be comfortable and at ease at home. When she was a child she used to sit on the loo and chat to her aunt constantly, telling her all about school and what happened in her day. It got so it became normal for whoever wasn’t in the bath to sit and chat to the other. Aoife liked to think of it as family time. Yes, some people would think it was weird, but she’d always thought it important to be approachable all the time with Ben. Having had no children of her own she had nothing to compare it to of course but chatting just felt right.

  ‘I bet she is, what have they called her?’

  ‘Isobel Rose. What a lovely name, huh? Almost makes me broody.’

  ‘Glad it’s only almost. One Grace is enough for your old aunt.’

  Ben snorted with laughter. ‘Old my arse. You act younger than me! Wasn’t it only last week you were begging me to go paintballing with you and some of the girls from your reading group?’

  Aoife smiled. ‘Yeah, I guess you’re right.’

  They fell into a comfortable silence for a moment, and Aoife found herself wanting to tell Ben about the cancer, but the right words wouldn’t come. How on earth did someone tell something like that?

  Did they just sit down and say, ‘I have something to tell you,’ like they did in the movies? And proceed to blurt it out. Or should she be more subtle?

  Aoife sighed. There really should be a manual out there, telling her how to deal with this. Explaining how to tell ‘the-girl-who-was-almost-her-daughter’ that she had breast cancer. And going on to explain how to tell a four-year-old. Imperceptibly, she shook her head.

  She couldn’t do this. Not right now.

  ‘You wanna jump in after me? I’ll go knock us up some omelettes for supper if you like?’

  You, Aoife O’Byrne, are nothing but a coward. She needs to know.

  The thought rang round her head as she clambered out of the bath, dried off, and headed downstairs in her pyjamas to make the promised supper.

  Tunstall, Sunderland City Centre

  He’d spent precious minutes sharpening his knife, grazing the edge up and down the section of stone from base to tip. He placed his finger against the blade, liking how smooth it felt as it cut through the top layer of his skin as if it were thin air.

  It always made him horny, the touch of the blade on his skin, the cold metal causing tingles in places he never even knew existed. It was even more intense when the knife was against someone else’s skin.

  He let the shivers ripple down his spine as memories flooded his mind.

  There had been quite a few now, the more recent blurring into one another, getting confused and making it so he couldn’t see their faces. But he remembered the earlier ones. Especially her.

  She’d been the one he compared all the others to. She’d been perfect. He remembered the glow of her breasts in the moonlight, how they’d called out for him to touch them, to mark them as his. She was the only one he’d ever marked. The first three had been girlfriends, women he’d been seeing, sleeping with even. None of them had suspected the monster that lurked beneath.

  He smiled as he remembered how tentative he’d been at the start; how with each kill his confidence had increased until he’d decided it was time to take someone unfamiliar to him. Over the years, he’d evolved; the interaction with his chosen victims making the whole thing easier in the end. She’d been the only one he hadn’t met first, and it had worked with her, but overall, he preferred the personal touch. He smiled as he registered his thoughts. Touch, I’ll be touching soon enough.

  He half-wished now that he hadn’t killed her though, longed for the feeling he had with her that hadn’t been present during any of the others. If he’d let her live, he could have had that feeling again and again. He could have hidden away somewhere where no one would find her; she would have grown to love him, obey him.

  This time would be different.

  Clarice was younger, she was of a different race. It would make a difference.

  It had to.

  His smile faded as his thoughts strayed back to his father. The horrible man had made a point of giving him regular beatings, forcing him into submission like he’d done with the whores that passed through. He knew he was his father’s son, but he also knew he had more control than his father had ever had. He’d never drown himself in a bottle like his old man.

  It hadn’t been easy for him as a child. He had been beaten into submission on more than one occasion, and though now he understood that kind of discipline was necessary, he hadn’t really got it as a child.

  His eyes grew darker as he recalled why he preferred open spaces. His father had been drunk, the latest floozy crying in the corner after refusing to accommodate his father. It had been her fault, the useless bitch. If she hadn’t argued when his father had pushed her towards the stairs, then he wouldn’t have even been noticed. He had just got in from school and was in the process of taking his coat off, already knowing from the weeping that he needed to keep out of the way.

  The woman had clawed at his father’s face as he pushed her up the stairs, enraging him.

  He had watched from behind the safety of the coats hanging on the wall as his father had raised his fist and beaten her, dragging her by the hair back to the base of the stairs then hitting her again. In desperation, she’d grabbed his leg, begged him to help get his father off her.

  He hadn’t even seen his father’s fist until it had collided with his face, knocking his head into the wall. He’d watched, dazed, as she scrambled away from them, leaving him to his fate with a father who was now blinded by uncontrollable rage, kicking and punching his son as if everything wrong in life was his fault, before dragging him by one foot to the cupboard under the stairs.

  Without hesitation, his old man had flung him inside, locked the door, and left him there crying in the dark until he’d eventually fallen silent. He’d heard screaming outside later in the day and had stayed quiet, praying that his dad would let him out. Then later still, when there was no noise at all, he’d started crying again. His fingers still showed the small scars from scratching at the door as the day had turned to night. Thirst had caused his tongue to swell in his mouth and he’d believed he would never be let out.

  His father had released him the next afternoon, throwing a dirty rag at him and telling him to clean the crusted blood from his face, then nonchalantly told him his brother was dead. The one person who he’d always been able to count on to understand was dead.

  He’d gone through years of his father blaming him every time the latest bit of skirt had left him, hitting out at him when anything went wrong, or even when he was just majorly pissed off. And with each beating he’d grown more resilient, tougher. Until one day he’d had enough. He’d just turned sixteen and the only thing he’d received in recognition of his coming of age had been a beating that broke two ribs and a collar bone.

 
Lacing his father’s whisky bottle with the crushed-up remnants of every pill he’d found in the house had been easy. He’d hidden in the hallway, watching as his father drank the last of the bottle and eventually fallen asleep. He didn’t move as vomit appeared at the sides of his father’s mouth, a lengthy seizure caused him to bite his tongue, and blood dripped down his chin. He watched as his father’s eyes finally turned glass like and his heart pumped for the last time.

  Only once his dad was dead did he stir, gathering his meagre belongings together, taking the small amount of cash from his father’s wallet, and leaving the home he grew up in.

  His father was a mean drunk who lost control of the things that should have been important to him. He’d deserved everything he’d got.

  Not him though. He liked control.

  And getting the feeling back when he killed Clarice, the feeling he had felt with her, would restore the balance and put him back in control. He just knew that when he found it again, he would be able to stop, finally rest, and start to live.

  Chapter Ten

  Newstead Residential Home, Sunderland – 4 June

  Something was wrong.

  John had pulled up outside the care home, Matthew was sitting in the back seat of the car playing on his PSP; there was an ambulance and a police car outside the home.

  If she’s gone and fallen out of her chair again, then she deserves whatever pain she’s going to be in. Damned stupid woman. Never did listen when I said sit up straight.

  He jumped from the car and made his way to the door, fake concern evident on his face. He wished Eve was still at home.

  Smirking to himself, John acknowledged if she was still at home, she wouldn’t be alive. He would have killed her; the failed attempt six years ago would have become a reality. It was that attempt that had brought her to this home and had been the cause of her illness.

  Complications in her brain from a head injury meant she couldn’t walk unaided. It had caused irreparable damage to her front cortex, so he’d been told anyway, which had affected her capacity for speech, movement, and memory.