He is Watching You

by Charlie Gallagher

  ‘Okay . . . we spoke about Major Crime. Like I said, we’re a skipper down. We have been for a while. I think she could do a job for us in—’

  ‘Absolutely not! No way am I putting her anywhere near the high-profile stuff! If she’s already attracting complaints from a welfare officer at a local school, imagine what could happen if I put her in front of someone who actually mattered! No, she’s a long way off Major Crime. She did seem to think that she was coming down here to walk into whatever role she wanted but I’m starting to make things clear. I was thinking more of project-related work, something that keeps her in the damned building until she can understand the culture down here. We’re not the biggest force. That means we have to use and respect our partners. She’ll learn, Harry, one way or another. Look, I’ve got to go. I’ll have Sandra send through some of the meetings. If there’s anything you really can’t make then let me know but I would really appreciate you sitting in for me. And forget about Maddie Ives, she’s my problem to reallocate. I’m sorry I got you involved in that.’

  The line was cut. Maddie was looking out the window. She could feel her cheeks burning. Harry waited a short time before he spoke.

  ‘I’ll talk to him.’

  ‘Don’t,’ Maddie said. It was all she could manage.

  ‘I’ll drop you back. We’ll call it a night. There’s no need to do anything more today.’

  Maddie kept staring out of the window.

  Chapter 34

  They made it back to the yard at Canterbury police station.

  ‘What are you up to now?’ Maddie said. Her voice had a rough edge to it, a combination of the tension in her body and not speaking for a while.

  ‘I’ve got a few bits of paperwork before I can call it a day. Unless we have a definite address for this Andy I think that can wait. If a call was going in, it has already. You should get yourself home, get some rest and make the most of your weekend.’

  ‘I should, yeah.’ Maddie did nothing to hide the sarcasm in her voice. The engine fell silent.

  ‘Monday is a new week, Maddie.’

  ‘It is. A worse one, it would seem.’

  ‘Things will get better.’

  ‘I must have missed that bit.’

  Harry still held the steering wheel. He was just an outline in the poor light. Maddie could tell he was searching for the right words. She appreciated that he was trying. She let him off the hook. ‘Look, I’ll make you a coffee. I know I’m not much good for anything else. I was going to stay for one. At least then I could kid myself that I had a drink with someone this Friday night.’

  ‘A coffee at work . . . that counts, does it?’

  ‘No, it probably doesn’t. But maybe I can pick out a dark enough shadow for me to occupy come Monday. The alternative is going back to the hotel for a proper drink on my own. That worries me a little bit.’

  ‘Well, if it becomes a problem, at least you know how the meetings work!’

  Maddie smiled despite everything. ‘True.’

  Harry had turned towards her, his eyes stood out against the gloom. ‘You really do hate that hotel, don’t you?’

  ‘It’s hotel living I hate. It never used to matter when I loved the job. I need to get my chin up off the floor is all. I can start again.’

  ‘Not tonight, though,’ Harry said.

  ‘Not tonight. Tonight I’m on the hard stuff. Black coffee for you, isn’t it?’

  ‘Fine then. But just the one.’

  They walked through the station and Harry continued past his desk and into the incident room at the back of the Major Crime office. There was a kitchenette in the corner and a fridge for milk. The table in the middle had four large cardboard boxes all marked Op Wooden. On the wall were pictures of what Maddie reckoned was Harry’s hit-and-run investigation. A couple of them were quite grim. She curled her lips at a close-up of the back of a man’s head. It looked flatter and the front seemed to be mingled with the mud-covered bank.

  ‘Ron Beasle?’ she said.

  ‘It was.’

  ‘That’s no way for him to end up is it?’

  ‘It’s not.’

  Maddie took a sideways step. There were photos that took in more of the area surrounding where Ron was lying.

  ‘I thought you said he didn’t brake?’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Your hit-and-run killer. I take it these skid marks are from the incident?’

  ‘That’s the theory.’

  ‘So he did brake?’

  ‘Only after. They’re ten metres further on.’

  ‘Ten metres? And you’re sure they’re from the same incident?’

  ‘Well, we can’t be sure. They were fresh enough at the time for traffic to include them in the report.’

  ‘So what . . . our driver hits Ron and doesn’t realise until he sees something kick out from under the car in his rear-view mirror, then he panics and pulls up?’

  ‘The crash team said you couldn’t not know. Even if the driver was looking away when the truck hit, he would’ve felt the impact.’

  ‘So what’s your theory?’

  Harry shrugged. ‘He hit Ron because he meant to. He dragged him as far as he would go and when he fell out the bottom he got a sudden need to check he had done the job right. He stood on the brakes and made sure Ron was dead.’

  ‘That would explain the marks.’

  ‘It would.’

  ‘I can see why you’re thinking murder.’

  ‘I’ve never thought anything else.’

  ‘We just can’t explain the reason someone would want Ron Beasle dead, can we?’ Maddie said.

  ‘Not yet. And therein lies the key to finding who it was that stood over him and watched him die.’

  ‘The life of a Major Crime guv’nor, hey? You get to deal with people at their worst.’

  ‘It keeps us in a job.’

  ‘Us? I got spotty kids who can’t be arsed to go to school keeping me in a job. I’m hardly changing the world here, am I?’ Maddie pulled herself away from the pictures. She found some mugs on the draining board and busied herself with making the drinks.

  ‘Are you always this hard on yourself?’

  Maddie stopped what she was doing. Harry must have been using another silence on her. She’d missed it this time.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘You’ve been down here, what? A week? They may have brought you down here to look after spotty kids or whatever but you’re looking for a girl in trouble, sticking your nose into a murder investigation and generally upsetting senior management. All that in five working days! You’ll be where you should be soon enough, trust me on that. People like you get to where they should be and people like DCI Lowe don’t want the hassle. He’ll relent and then you get to show him he was wrong all along. And you will. I’ve never seen someone so driven.’

  Maddie sighed. ‘Thanks. I’ve done all that though.’ She dropped a drink onto the table in front of Harry. He picked it up and stood up at the same time. He flashed angry.

  ‘So you keep saying! Maybe it’s time to forget about who you were, what you did, what you think of yourself even. You’ve turned up with this attitude that you’ve got nothing to prove — well, maybe you have. No one knows who you are down here and quite frankly no one cares. You’re very capable of showing people what you’re worth so just get on with it.’ Harry walked to the door. Maddie watched him until he turned at the door and walked out of sight. She was stunned into silence.

  She slumped into a seat at the table. She nursed her coffee. Her eyes lifted to the boxes in front of her. She pulled the lid off the closest one. She checked Harry was out of sight. She stood back up to be able to see inside — her curiosity getting the better of her. Inside were folders stacked neatly beside one another. Their spines were facing up and they were variously labelled Case Notes, Scenes, Third-Party Material, Unused, Witness Statements — it went on. She pulled out the folder marked Scenes. She sat back down with it and it fell open around the m
iddle. There was a glossy photograph of a murder scene. The body was still in situ. It was a woman’s body. She was turned on her side but face down, the photo was from the head down but too far away to make out many details. Her hip looked unnaturally prominent as it pointed up towards the sky. She was lying on a patch of crumbling concrete. Blocks of the stone looked to have come loose and were lying all around her — weeds, too. They pushed through the cracks at varying lengths. In the background was a smudge of a building. It was out of focus but it looked industrial — two different sized squares resting against each other — like a factory, perhaps.

  Maddie concluded that she was looking at pictures from the Sussex murder of which she had briefly been made aware in the video conference. This would be the first girl. She remembered the second was found inside. She turned the page over. The back of the photograph had handwritten notes: Unit 4, Dryden Estate, Dryden Road, Hastings, Sussex (CR/4). From her knowledge of investigations she knew it to be the location where the photo had been taken and the initials of the officer exhibiting it.

  There were more photos. Some captured the buildings in better focus. She had been right: it looked like a factory that had fallen into disrepair. She moved past the photos to the documentation. There were a number of legalistic items headed Sussex County Council. The crux of the matter seemed to be that the land was condemned as the result of some sort of pollution and there were numerous references to hazardous materials. There were figures too — they looked like costs attributed to the council clearing the site. The figures looked ridiculous — astronomical — as if someone had added extra zeros to them as a joke. She flicked through and her eyes rested on a letter to an agent. It became clear that the land was up for sale. This document was dated 2014, almost four years earlier.

  She closed the folder, went back to the box and pulled out Third-Party Material and flicked through it. She didn’t really know what she was looking for and flicked past lists of vehicle registration numbers from fixed cameras, then a list of CCTV locations. She stopped at the printout of a webpage showing pictures streamed from a webcam. It had specifications and prices. It was being marketed as a security solution. It was designed to run from a phone app and a key feature was listed as being ideal for remote locations.

  He liked to watch them rot!

  Maddie stood up, scooped up both folders and walked out onto the floor with them behind her back. Harry was bent over his desk, his silver pen twitching under a desk lamp. The rest of the office was dark.

  ‘Do you have that list of locations McCall’s were going to send?’

  ‘What?’ Harry didn’t look up. His pen didn’t stop moving either.

  ‘McCall’s. They were going to send you a list of places they’ve registered an interest in.’

  ‘They were.’

  ‘Did they?’

  ‘I saw something on my email from them. One of my jobs before I can go home was to have a look at it. That’s if I ever get the chance.’ His frustration was obvious as he sat back and let his pen drop with a thwack on the pad. Maddie ignored the dig.

  ‘Was there a place in Hastings?’

  ‘Hastings? No idea. Why?’

  ‘Can you have a look?’

  Harry sniffed.

  ‘Look, Harry, just humour me, please. This could be important.’

  Harry woke his screen with his mouse. It was big and bright and he squinted at it. She watched him open an email and a spreadsheet that was attached.

  ‘You get anything more than Hastings?’

  ‘Dryden Industrial Estate,’ she said.

  Harry typed. ‘Dryden Industrial Estate, yeah.’

  ‘Unit 4.’

  ‘Unit 4,’ Harry confirmed. ‘So what?’

  Maddie brought the folders around and laid them out on the table. She found the photo with the body in the foreground. She put it down on the desk.

  ‘What the hell are you doing going through that, Maddie? It’s all in order.’

  ‘The killer of these women. He watched them rot, you said?’ She scrabbled with the second folder. She found the page with the webcam.

  ‘I said that, yeah.’

  ‘Yes, you did . . .’ she huffed her frustration. She stomped back to the incident room, back to photos of Ron Beasle’s final resting place, pinned to the wall. She ripped down the one showing the skid marks and stomped back to Harry. She put that down on his desk too. ‘Something else you said, Harry. About this hit and run. You said the killer stopped. You said he stood over him and watched him die. What if he wasn’t making sure? What if he was watching because that’s what he does?’

  ‘Wait, you think he’s the same man? Those killings are very different. In every way,’ Harry said.

  ‘Maybe not. The first victim in Sussex . . .’ Maddie pushed the photo of the woman lying on her side towards him. ‘McCall’s are at the table to buy these grounds. There’s documentation about some toxic sludge or similar on the site. It’s going to cost squillions to make that site useable. I bet it will be years before it’s resolved. I bet every other interested party has backed away from a deal. But not McCall’s. Ron Beasle is looking after a site that’s in an identical situation. What if Ron wasn’t delaying McCall’s? What if he got in the way? Or he discovered something he shouldn’t have.’

  ‘Like someone dumping a body,’ Harry said. He got to his feet and pored over the documents Maddie had laid out.

  ‘Nothing else has made sense,’ Maddie said. ‘But someone linked to McCall’s, who used their position to discover sites that they knew would sit empty for years on end? It’s perfect if you wanted to dump a body there and watch it rot. That makes sense.’

  ‘It does.’ Harry scowled. ‘Except the delay. If Ron had seen a body he would have called us straight away. He had a phone on him, we know that.’

  Maddie’s heart was beating so fast she felt like it might jump out of her chest. ‘Maybe he was just in the way, then. Or getting too close. Maybe his death wasn’t even necessary. But this fella likes it, doesn’t he? He likes the killing part.’

  ‘I think he does. And then he stops the McCall’s truck he was driving to watch. Which means we think we know who, don’t we?’

  ‘Andy McCall,’ Maddie said.

  ‘Andy McCall.’ Harry moved back to his computer screen. Still on his feet, he opened another document — another spreadsheet. He clicked through it. ‘He’s not listed on here.’

  ‘What is that?’

  ‘The list. It’s supposed to be the complete list of employees. Anyone with access to those vehicles. It was on the same email and refers to the boxes of employee details.’

  ‘Who sent it?’

  ‘James McCall himself.’

  ‘So why would he miss off his brother?’

  ‘He needs to be asked that question. And I need to know where his brother is.’ Harry stepped back from his machine and picked up his car keys.

  ‘Great — let’s go!’ Maddie said.

  Harry turned to her, hesitating.

  ‘What?’

  ‘The boss. You know he doesn’t want you working this, Maddie. If we go out and get this fella in, it will be a lot of work for the arresting officers. You know what it’s like. There’ll be a forensic plan for custody, he’ll probably be on constant for hours and that’s before I start planning interviews, arranging searches and writing statements.’

  ‘I’m not afraid of an all-nighter Harry, you should know that about me—’

  ‘It’s not that, Maddie!’ Harry snapped. Maddie was shocked into silence. Harry continued in a softer tone. ‘It would tuck you up for days if I took you out. The boss, he was clear where he wants you.’

  ‘All the more reason to take me, though, right? If I’m tucked up in this he can’t send me somewhere that doesn’t matter.’

  ‘No. He can’t. And I know how he’ll take that.’

  ‘Shit Harry! You’re with him, aren’t you? You think I should just go and sit in my dark corner like a good little girl
?’

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous. I’d have you working this in an instant, but we have to handle this right. I’ll take uniform tonight.’

  ‘This is my chance! This is it! When Lowe comes in on Monday and we’ve got a cold-blooded murder suspect who likes to watch women decompose he won’t care that I’m in among the investigation — especially when you vouch for me, when you tell him how we got here.’ Harry stared at her, using one of his silences. Maddie waited him out. He broke first with a measured reply.

  ‘I will vouch for you, Maddie. This is how you get to where you want to be. He will know what you’ve done.’

  ‘What I’ve done! I assume by that you mean I am done? I tell you what then, Harry . . . I’ll run along now, shall I? Back to my hotel? Let the real detectives sort this out from here?’

  ‘That isn’t wh—’

  ‘Don’t bother, Harry. Loud and clear.’

  Maddie was already walking away. She cast one last look back into the incident room, her eyes flickered across the photos hanging on the wall. She snapped them away before making for the door. She didn’t look back again.

  Chapter 35

  Lisa Simpkiss woke up confused. Something felt wrong as she sat up. Her bedroom curtains glowed weakly around the edges. She cast an eye at her alarm clock: 4:30 a.m., Saturday morning. A thump on the door! It was loud and sounded impatient, as if it was a second knock. The first must have been what had woken her.

  She spun her legs to the floor and stood up. She was in a long t-shirt and knickers. Her mind filled with terrible possibilities straight away. Her mother’s bedroom was next to hers and she stuck her head in. The bed sheets were pulled back — but she wasn’t in there!

  Lisa’s pulse quickened. She sucked in a breath and made for the stairs. She took them two at a time and hit the hall where her socks slipped on the wooden flooring and she almost skidded into the door. She pushed the light on and tore open the long curtain that covered the frosted front door. She made out a tall figure on the other side, dressed in black and wearing a hat. The unmistakeable outline of a police officer.