The Watcher

by Grace Monroe

  ‘How do you get on the Internet – what’s your password?’

  He didn’t tell me, frightened to give away too much personal information, but he did type it in himself. I Googled an assortment of words – nothing.

  ‘The latest female he abducted was Connie. In what way is she the same as the rest of his victims?’ I asked Bancho. He saw where I was going with this.

  I carried on. ‘She’s a redhead – okay, let’s think how we could classify redheads. Who are the most famous redheads? Where do you get more of us? Why would he dislike us?

  ‘Here’s something – National Geographic is warning that redheads could become extinct as soon as 2060.’ I turned round to catch his eye, He was making the coffee. ‘I hope we catch the fucker before then.’

  ‘Well that’s nothing to do with the Ripper,’ said Bancho. ‘It’s a recessive gene. Less than two per cent of the population have it.’

  ‘True – it was a gene mutation in Northern Europe and Celts are traditionally redheads. Why would he dislike us?’

  ‘Brodie – where would I start?’ Bancho was pushing it but I accepted his coffee. He went on: ‘Maybe his mother, lover, father, significant other was a redhead?’

  ‘My clients’ parents don’t have red hair,’ I pointed out.

  Bancho pointed to his wall: ‘Well, maybe we’re overplaying the red hair. Maybe they were just accessible.’

  I shook my head. ‘No – he doesn’t seem to have any trouble with access. He got into the Thistle Chapel and he made his way into the castle. You’re the expert – you’ve been to Quantico, and for once I’m not knocking you, but what if he is smarter than that?’

  Bancho’s eyes had clouded over.

  ‘The way he’s acting, it’s erratic – there’s no real pattern. The tableau at the castle was complex and entirely different to the other scenes. What if he has no signature?’ Bancho said.

  There was a thought rattling around in my head that I didn’t want to voice yet. The way he was toying with us reminded me of chess – in particular, a move known as ‘the knight’s move’. It’s been around since the seventh century. It’s illogical, and it’s a phrase used to describe schizophrenic thinking. It’s unusual among chess pieces – what if the Ripper was unusual amongst serial killers? If he was, we’d need to catch a lucky break.

  ‘I’ve got something,’ he said. All the while I had been talking and thinking, he had been researching

  ‘Celtic Saint – so we presume she’s a redhead – came to Scotland with nine maidens. Her beauty was unsurpassed. A knight fell in love with her but she rejected him and he accused her of casting a spell on him with her eyes. So he plucked her eyes out and hung them on a thorn bush. In the eleventh century, Edinburgh Castle was known as the castle of the maidens.’

  ‘Well it’s interesting,’ I said. ‘The castle’s centre-stage with him, and removing or brutalizing eyes is part of his signature. But the changing m.o. doesn’t fit.’

  But then Bancho thought he’d found another similarity. ‘A knight fell in love with her? Christ! Don’t tell me the Ripper has developed a crush on you too.’

  I bit my tongue, unsure of what to say. I didn’t like that last link – I didn’t like it at all.

  Chapter Forty-Seven

  Royal Mile, Edinburgh

  Friday 28 December, 10.30 a.m.

  After refusing Bancho’s offer to phone a taxi for me, I had to walk. A warped part of my mind felt that, if I didn’t suffer, some even greater tragedy would occur.

  Connie was still missing. How the hell could it get worse? I knew how. She could be dead.

  As I walked, the girls from the wall kept me company, their empty, dead eyes judging me. Head down against the prevailing wind, step by step, I made my way, reflecting on those previously pretty faces. Screwing my eyes, I endured a few long moments with each one in my head, their plump mouths warped by screaming, silenced forever. Katya Waleski lingered with me. I told her to go away – she didn’t belong with the rest. I was sorry she was dead, but, nevertheless, she had presumably taken the drugs herself, so maybe she could shoulder some of the blame? Her death was misadventure, unfortunate, but shit happens, and I didn’t really care, now that Connie was in danger.

  Down at St Patrick’s Church, the worshippers were arriving for eleven o’clock Mass. I envied them their faith. At the great black wrought-iron gates to the church, I debated whether or not to go in and light a candle. On reflection I decided against it. These girls were young and vibrant; to feel their presence I would need to walk in their steps, not dwell on their deaths. Surely, they were more likely to have partied in the Cowgate than knelt down in St Pat’s. Typically, I ignored the voice that pointed out that the youth of Eastern European descent still attended church, unlike their UK counterparts.

  In truth, I was searching for Connie. I wouldn’t be closer to her in a church. Increasing my pace I marched to a landmark she loved. The mechanical cow’s backside attached to the front of the Rowan Tree pub made her hoot with laughter. It lifts its tail and shoots out smoke at passers-by. Along with the one o’clock gun, the farting bovine helps the good citizens of Edinburgh keep track of time. The smile quickly left my face as I walked under South Bridge. It was once a fashionable place just outside the city gates; now it’s a cheerless underpass into the Grassmarket.

  Tourists are bringing the area up. The Edinburgh Vaults are a popular haunt; in fact I’d found out that Thomas Foster worked there. I was surprised. I didn’t think sons of billionaires worked, but apparently his parents had seen what too much excess could do and they’d insisted on a touch of reality in his life. A laudable sentiment, especially if it didn’t matter a toss what kind of degree he got, given that he wouldn’t have to work a day in his life. My footsteps echoed off the moss-covered walls. Water dripped incessantly and I was uncomfortably aware that the vaults were beneath the pavement. Foster worked there as a storyteller, explaining that the caverns were hewn from the rock, describing the businesses that existed in the nooks, the ghosts and the characters.

  Where would the girls haunt, I asked myself? At the moment they were haunting me. A shadow crossed my path. I had heard that spirits could follow people – right now they were inside my head.

  My mobile rang. The one I keep for important clients and friends. I was pleased to be disturbed, sure that it would be Joe. But the face of the phone showed ‘caller unknown’. As the tremors began again, I stopped where I was. Turning away from the wind, looking back at the Rowan Tree, the cow’s backside emitted a blast of dry ice ‘smoke’. I forced myself to answer.

  ‘Brodie.’

  I just kept breathing – that was hard enough.

  ‘Brodie. You look scared. You should be scared, Brodie. I thought you knew? What’s good for me is good for you – and good for Connie.’

  He didn’t try to disguise his voice as much this time – accentless, educated – but the tone was guttural and throaty. There was no mistaking the aggression. Shrugging my shoulders, I searched for the right pitch – soft and low, a pretence at friendship. ‘I did as I was told,’ I said, copying Kailash’s cajoling tones. Obviously, I wasn’t an impersonator, because he barked straight back at me.

  ‘Listen to me! What’s the matter with you? Don’t you want her back?’

  Fighting the urge to swear, I opened my free palm and beseeched him. ‘Please, let me speak to her.’ I wouldn’t be ashamed to beg if I had to. His answer wasn’t exactly unexpected. A grunt. He was posturing, threatening. I had lost nothing, but then he surprised me.

  Her voice came.

  It was a recording – maybe I deluded myself but I’d swear it was Connie.

  ‘Look, it says Lucas Baroc has recovered from the metatarsal injury. Club doctors have declared him fit to play on New Year’s Day! I WILL get to meet him.’

  Connie was so excited. Baroc had been out for six weeks through injury, and Connie had suffered agonies over the tiny bone in his left foot. She’d been torn between
wanting to meet him and hoping injury would keep him on the bench at the New Year’s Day match. A businessman walked towards me, a Scotsman clutched under his arm. He looked astonished as I mumbled something about borrowing his paper and snatched it, turning to the sports pages.

  There it was, today’s lead story about Baroc’s recovery. I thrust the paper back at him and felt myself knocked against the wall by the force of emotion. I whispered into the phone: ‘She’s alive.’

  ‘Of course she’s alive – but she won’t be for much longer. You’ve been stupid, Brodie. You released Thomas Foster and that was a very naughty thing to do.’

  ‘What the fuck are you talking about?’ I gasped.

  The line went dead. And my heart stopped. I didn’t get the chance to tell him I hadn’t released Thomas Foster. Some bastard had gone over my head.

  Hunkered over a gutter in the Grassmarket, the sour taste burned the back of my throat. Wiping the snot and acid from my nose, I kept going until there was nothing left in my stomach to vomit. Bancho’s text came in towards the end.

  Qk wk on Foster

  Quick work? Bancho hadn’t released my client – so who had?

  Chapter Forty-Eight

  Kailash’s home, Ravelston Dykes, Edinburgh

  Friday 28 December, 12.15 p.m.

  ‘She’s alive!’

  They all stared at me. My eyes were locked with those of my mother. The clock on the fireplace mantel ticked loudly. Kailash cleared her throat but couldn’t speak.

  ‘I knew it … I knew if anything really bad had happened to her I’d be able to tell.’ Malcolm collapsed against the cushions on the sofa, patting his heart.

  ‘Connie’s been gone over thirty-six hours – statistically she should be dead—’ I stopped mid-sentence, afraid to say the words and afraid they would hurt Kailash even more if I did. Kailash was frightened to have faith like Malcolm, too many bad things had happened to her in the past.

  ‘But,’ I continued, ‘I heard her voice… She sounded …’ Tongue-tied, I struggled to find the right words, ‘… alive and happy.’ They were the best I could come up with.

  ‘What do we do now? Did you consider she might just have been forced to repeat something after she was kidnapped?’ Kailash eyed me doubtfully.

  ‘I don’t think she knew she was being taped,’ I said. ‘She was reading from today’s newspaper. If it was a put-up job, then the Ripper’s made her feel very relaxed; she was chattering on and on about Lucas Baroc’s foot, the sort of nonsense she spouts at Joe and Eddie.’

  ‘Did you think she sounded drugged?’ Kailash asked, her voice cracked with nerves.

  The possibility had crossed my mind. I knew it was more likely than not.

  ‘I couldn’t say,’ I replied.

  Kailash ran her fingers through her own hair, pulling at it until Malcolm laid his hand on hers. ‘You’ll have none left if you keep that up – it won’t do Connie any good. What are we going to do, Brodie?’ he asked me. They’d all gathered at Four Winds as I made my way there. As soon as I’d spoken to Kailash I’d phoned Bancho, and after several minutes he’d calmed down enough to listen.

  Bancho had been labouring under the misapprehension that I already knew that Thomas Foster had been released. He didn’t take the news well and was sulking, accusing me of attacking him behind his back, trying to make him look bad in front of the press because he’d believed that Thomas was the killer. I’d gone back to St Leonards and he’d rushed to meet me – ostensibly to drive me to Kailash’s, but his initial reaction was to get his hands round my throat while screaming something about undermining police authority. He spewed expletives at me. The vomit stains on my jacket went some way to convincing him that I was telling the truth, and he was almost nice to me as he drove me to my mother’s – if niceness could be measured by shutting the fuck up.

  He was in the kitchen at Kailash’s trying to find out who had authorized Thomas Foster’s release – now was not the time to point out that neither of us had a legitimate complaint against the decision to release him from Saughton. Indeed, it could be argued we were both failing in our duties for not having done so earlier. For my part I found it disturbing that neither Thomas nor Adie had contacted me about Thomas’s sudden release. I was certain they weren’t leaving me alone out of concern for my family turmoil. If it hadn’t been for Connie, I might even have given a damn.

  Derek arrived with lunch, using Malcolm’s hostess trolley. We all ignored it, except Bancho, who had followed Derek; grabbing five of the salmon sandwiches he stuffed them into his mouth. Coughing, he thumped his chest in an effort to force the sandwiches down his gullet into his stomach. Bancho’s eyes watered until Joe relented and thumped him on the back.

  ‘Thanks,’ he rasped, pouring a cup of milk from the jug.

  ‘You’re standing there stuffing your face as if we’ve got all the time in the world – wait much longer and Connie could be dead,’ I said.

  ‘I wasn’t aware the police were waiting,’ Kailash said anxiously. ‘What are they waiting for? What’s happening with Foster? Is he behind this?’

  ‘There’s not much to tell, Kailash,’ said Bancho, shaking his head and already regretting what he was about to say. ‘I’m being forced to agree with Brodie about the Masonic connection. Chief Constable Nadler might be a Mason, and so is Adie Foster. What else would explain Nadler’s interference in this case?’

  ‘The chief constable should have been offering Adie Foster hush money for wrongful accusation,’ I interjected. ‘We’ve been over this so many times – there’s no evidence against Thomas Foster.’

  Bancho ignored me and spoke to everyone else. ‘We’re still waiting on the DNA.’ Tightening his jaw he failed to speak calmly. ‘The chief constable negotiated directly with the Crown Office without telling me.’

  I eyed Bancho up and down, mulling everything over. ‘And before you start considering my position, Brodie, what about your own? Adie Foster cut you out of the loop as well.’

  ‘I know. Why?’ I asked. ‘Why would Adie Foster do that – he’s not a stupid man?’

  ‘Sometimes I think I must be very stupid,’ Kailash said quietly. ‘I don’t care about any of this conspiracy shit … Find Connie.’

  ‘Thomas Foster is important to the Ripper for some reason,’ Joe said. ‘He’s the fall guy I reckon.’

  ‘I think he is,’ I agreed. ‘Thomas Foster was only charged with the murder of Katya Waleski because of a tip-off and a photograph that showed him with Katya on the battlements.’

  I licked my dry lips, all too aware that what I was about to say would lead to accusations that I was just trying to get my client off. I’d soon turn into the Girl Who Sets the Guilty Free.

  ‘What if the Ripper called in the information?’

  ‘Why would he want to stitch up Thomas Foster? The guy’s a psycho – his thing is mutilating redheads.’ Bancho reached for another fistful of sandwiches and we all stared at him. ‘What?’ he whined defensively. ‘All this stress gives me an appetite.’

  Shaking my head I continued, trying not to watch the nauseating sight of Bancho cramming more food into his mouth. ‘Let’s assume that the Ripper did set Thomas up – do they know one another? Does it matter? The next question that needs answered is why did Adie Foster cut me out of the loop – he must be hiding something.’

  Lavender grabbed a mug and poured stewed tea into it. Clicking three sweeteners into it, she then took the largest scone. Eyeing us defiantly, she said: ‘I’ll need all the energy I can get. I’m going to nail that bastard Adie Foster even if I have to hack into the FBI itself. I’m a bit rusty, but—’

  ‘How can she? How could she do that?’ Bancho lifted his hand in Lavender’s direction as she walked out of the room, noticing the shifty glances that passed between the rest of us. There was no way we could initiate Bancho into Lavender’s secret. Lavender Ironside wasn’t even her true name – she’d found it on a gravestone in Alvie, a churchyard in the Highlands.
She needed a new identity and the real Lavender Ironside wasn’t using hers any more. I’d known Lavender for more than five years, yet I didn’t know her real name. All she told me was she was on the run from the police, over some mistake regarding the Bank of England. Lavender had learned to be a computer hacker to keep an eye on her boyfriend at the time. She found she loved hacking computers more than she loved him and she was good at it – too good.

  ‘I have to take this at face value. If Thomas Foster isn’t the Ripper, he might know who is. It’s worth chasing up; he needs to be interviewed.’ Bancho wrote it down in his book as I sighed.

  ‘Christ, Bancho – tell me that you can remember a straightforward detail like that?’ I snapped. He raised his eyebrow and continued with his jotting, before meticulously folding his book and putting it in his pocket.

  I hit on the only real plan I could think of. ‘He’s out there. The Ripper is still out there. He has Connie. People know him; they’ve looked into his eyes, eaten with him. We’re having no luck with the photograph. Maybe it’s a disguise. Whatever… he has a mask of sanity, otherwise he wouldn’t be able to get close to his victims. But that one girl escaped from him. We have to find her. It’s Connie’s only chance.’

  Chapter Forty-Nine

  Kailash’s home, Ravelston Dykes, Edinburgh

  Friday 28 December, 4 p.m.

  Arms folded across his chest, he looked at Four Winds and cursed. He had been smug, overconfident, and now he was praying he wouldn’t be asked to pay for his mistake.

  Could he justify why he had let her believe Connie was alive? Weak. Weak. Did he expect her gratitude? The answer was ‘yes’. Pity made him behave in such a foolish manner; stunned by her sunken eyes, her pale, drawn complexion. He had knocked the fight out of her. That carcass was not the Brodie he knew and prized – the final confrontation would be no good if she didn’t fight back.

  Thirty-eight hours had passed – thirty-eight long hours in which he had practised patience. It had been difficult. He sighed, taking a moment to congratulate himself on his fortitude but also recognizing how hard it had been. The Watcher was doing everything in his power to make his plan work – nobody would get in his way. To the left of his foot, the snow was still stained red, a reminder to him of a time in the recent past when he had not shown such patience. He smiled and fingered his serrated blade: such a useful tool.