Watch Over Me: A psychological thriller with a jaw-dropping twist

by Jane Renshaw

  ‘Gies that trowel Da, aye? And if you’re wanting to make yourself useful you can get Connor that begonia while you’re at it.’

  ‘Aye, fuck off.’

  I’ve had it. ‘Right you.’ I get in Jed’s face. ‘Get your arse back to our bit. There’s a million fucking things to do and you’re pissing about getting in the boys’ road?’

  ‘Oh yes, they’re doing vital work here right enough,’ he goes in what he thinks is his posh voice. He flips a limp wrist at Ryan. ‘Fucking wee poofs.’

  When he’s gone I’m like that: ‘Connor son, get us some cold beers, aye? Should be some wee packets of crisps and that an’ all in the cupboard.’

  Connor gives me evils. He stands up and wipes his hands on his jeans. ‘And take my time about it, aye? Dinnae worry Maw, I’m no wanting to hear it. I’m no fucking wanting to hear it.’

  ‘Is that right?’ Ryan’s got a smile on his face. He’s taking hisself for a wee stroll in Connor’s direction. ‘Is that right, Wee Man?’

  Connor’s backing up.

  ‘You no wanting to hear it?’ Ryan’s all conversational. ‘You no wanting that? Cannae have the Wee Man hearing something he’s no gonnae like, eh? I cannae provide the sand, but there’s some nice earth there, look, if you’re wanting to bury your fucking head in it. You’re happy enough taking a wee road trip to Peebles or St Andrews and sitting round drinking tea and eating fucking crumpets, you’re happy enough on the fucking net getting us shite, long as some other fucker’s doing the dirty work, eh? Long as you dinnae have to hear it?’ Ryan’s in his face. ‘Do me a favour, aye, and spare me the fucking hypocrisy?’

  Connor’s eyeballing me.

  ‘Okay boys, play nice. Get us those beers, son.’

  Connor goes to Ryan, ‘Aye, Mair had it coming right enough, but this guy… There could’ve been some other way, aye?’

  ‘Oh is that right? Like what?’

  Connor’s shaking his head. ‘Could’ve just snatched her.’

  ‘And how long before the polis would be on our tail? Christ! Just as well mastermind here isnae calling the shots, eh Maw?’

  ‘Aye son,’ I goes. ‘Snatching her, that’s straight out your Da’s book of shite.’

  And that’s Connor’s arse out the windae, and Ryan’s patting his cheeks and going ‘Dinnae have a cow, Wee Man,’ and Connor’s heading off inside. ‘We’re cool, aye?’ Ryan goes, and Connor’s like that: ‘Aye Ryan, no worries.’

  I cannae lie, they two are my favourite weans and I’m no happy when they’re butting heads. Ryan takes a seat at the table under the parasol, and I go and join him. ‘He doesnae mean nothing by it.’

  ‘Thinks I’m a fucking psycho like Da?’ Ryan’s rattled so he is.

  ‘Naw son. Naw.’

  ‘It’s no like I was thinking Barry, I’m gonnae top this fucker – it’s no like I got any fucking pleasure out it, eh? No like Da would’ve.’

  ‘Naw son. Naw.’ I push the pay-as-you-go across the table at him. ‘Let’s us make that wee call, eh, then I’m outta here. Wannae do it?’

  Ryan calls 101 and when he’s put through to the right fucker he goes, ‘The woman that got murdered in Haghill, aye? I’m no wanting to leave my name or nothing, I’ve got a wee shop on the street and I’m no wanting involved, I’m no wanting reprisals, get me?… Aye, I’ve got information that’s maybe pertinent. Saw someone acting suspicious right when it must have happened.’

  After we topped Mair, we staked out the entrance to the close in the motor, in the bit where the boys knackered they CCTV cameras. Clocked Flora arriving. Then here she’s coming out ‘disguised’ in a hoodie, the daft bint.

  ‘We’ve been getting hassle with shoplifters and that.’ Ryan’s winking at me. ‘All of us with shops on the street have been getting hassle, so we all try to keep an eye out, eh, coordinate our response? And this woman walking by the windae, she was acting suspicious so she was, so I tells the wife, “Gonnae go and check that bitch out,” and she goes and follows the bitch… Eh? Aye, she was a fat bitch in a hoodie, a grey hoodie, pulled right up over her face and she’s got her head bent over while she’s walking, right, like she’s no wanting seen?… Aye… About average height for a woman. Fat aye, but no massive… About the wife’s size, size sixteen maybe? Think her hair was maybe light brown? She goes round the corner of Quarryfield Lane and she gets in a car – red Ford Ka, wife got the registration number if you’re wanting it?’ He tells them Flora’s number. ‘We didnae think it was relevant, eh, when yous had arrested the neighbour, but now he’s been released without charge we’re like that: Let’s us do our civic duty and call it in… Aye… Naw, have you got cloth ears by the way? I said I’m no giving my fucking name cos they fuckers round here are mental, aye? It gets out I’ve called yous and I’m fucking dead.’ And he ends the call.

  Connor’s back with the beers. ‘Looking good, eh?’ he goes, sitting back admiring the wee border they’ve been planting up.

  ‘Aye, magic,’ goes Ryan. ‘Magic.’

  ‘Just through here, Flora.’ Sue opened the door to a bland, pale blue interview room. ‘The DI will be with us shortly. Can I get you a tea or coffee?’

  ‘Thanks, a coffee would be good. Sue – how long is this going to take? I need to be with Beckie.’

  ‘It shouldn’t take long. There’s just a few things the DI wants to go over with you.’

  That was what Lara, the family liaison officer, had said too. ‘Just a few things.’ But Flora, left alone in the bare little room, wasn’t sure she could do this. Giving her statement yesterday had been hard enough.

  She didn’t seem able to get enough air into her lungs. Was there even any ventilation in here? But she told herself that it didn’t matter that she was breathing as if she’d just run a marathon, that her hands were sweating, that she couldn’t sit still.

  It wasn’t as if they could charge her with ‘looking guilty.’

  Sue came back with the coffee and two men in suits with ID cards round their necks on blue lanyards, who introduced themselves without smiling. DI McLean was a big man with a shaved head. Like Kojak. His suit was well cut and looked expensive, and he was carrying a laptop. DI Murray, in contrast, was a ’70s throwback in a worn suit and beige tie, grey hair straggling over his collar. He slumped down on one of the chairs.

  Two DIs, just to ask her ‘a few things’? Did she need a lawyer?

  But to request one would probably look really suspicious.

  When she was only three years older than Beckie, she had had to sit in an interview room just like this in Peebles police station with Mum and two policemen. Only no one had had a laptop, and the walls there had been grey. And everything anyone said, everything she said, had had to push its way through the scream inside her: I killed Tricia, I killed Tricia, I killed Tricia.

  And she had found herself saying it out loud:

  ‘I killed Tricia!’

  And the grey walls had come in on her, blotting out the policemen’s blank faces, Mum’s mouth open in a huge O, voices receding suddenly until there had been nothing at all but grey.

  She was an adult now, though. An adult with a daughter who was depending on her to get through this. There was no reason to think the police had penetrated her identity as Ruth Innes.

  Their fake identities, hers and Mum’s, had been set up for them by the fraudster father of one of the girls she’d got to know in the Young Offenders’ Institution. For a price. Back then, before electronic records, it had been relatively straightforward. He’d found a family of ‘ghosts’, as he’d called them: the Innes family, who’d died in a house fire in Melrose. He’d chosen them because the mother and daughter were the right ages, and the mother had the same Christian names as Mum – Elizabeth Susan. And he’d somehow been able to discover that the mother had never had a National Insurance Number, as she’d never either been employed or claimed benefits – she’d married her husband straight out of school and had her family very quickly, so she’d spent her s
hort adult life as what had, in those days, been termed a housewife.

  It had been a simple process for Mum, in the name of Elizabeth Susan Innes, to order copies of her marriage certificate and the birth certificates of herself and her daughter Ruth from the National Records of Scotland. Then Mum had used the certificates to apply for a brand new National Insurance Number. The fraudster had supplied them with fake school records which had allowed ‘Ruth Innes’ to attend high school and then university.

  Their new ghost identities were solid enough to allow them to do anything they needed to do, with one exception: it was too risky to apply for passports, so foreign trips and holidays had been out of the question. But that had been a small price to pay to allow them to leave Rachel Clark and what she’d done behind them.

  Ruth had, though, made a terrible mistake. When she’d registered Mum’s death, she had given her real maiden name of Hertz. She’d been in shock, she supposed, and not thinking straight. But the discrepancy wasn’t something that anyone was going to pick up, surely? And if they did, they’d just assume – and rightly so – that Ruth had made a mistake under stress.

  She laced her hands together on the table in front of her and made eye contact with Kojak.

  ‘It was the Johnsons,’ she said. ‘It must have been the Johnsons. They must have killed him.’

  He looked away to the screen of his laptop and, as if she hadn’t spoken, said, ‘How were things at home, between you and your husband?’

  ‘They were fine!’

  That had sounded so forced. So unconvincing.

  ‘This business with the Johnsons. I understand that, two years ago, after a mistake by Social Services led to the Johnson family learning your names and address, you changed your names, your husband found a new job, and you moved here. But they found you again. Cautions were issued to Jed, Ryan and Travis Johnson concerning breach of the court order in respect of the closed adoption. They were harassing you. That must all have been extremely stressful for both you and Neil.’

  Flora nodded. ‘It was. But we were coping.’

  ‘Your husband was charged with assaulting Carly Johnson. A pregnant woman. How did you feel about that?’

  Flora took a breath. ‘I’m sorry, but I don’t see the relevance… I thought I was here to talk about… about what happened yesterday?’

  Alec is dead.

  He was actually dead. Gone.

  Forever.

  All he would be from now on was a list of nevers. The papers he’d never write, the students he’d never inspire. The wife and daughter he’d never see, never speak to, never hold in his arms again.

  Never never never never.

  Alec.

  ‘We’ll get to that, don’t worry. How did you feel about Neil’s assault on Carly Johnson?’

  ‘Neil… He’d just gone round there to their house to talk to them, and this girl stood at the gate blocking his way, and he just sort of tried to push past… It wasn’t an assault.’

  ‘Did you have a difference of opinion as to how to deal with the Johnsons?’

  Who had they been speaking to? Ailish? What might Ailish have heard, over the garden wall?

  ‘Neil was always inclined to give people the benefit of the doubt. I was… I suppose I’m more of a cynic. I didn’t trust them.’ Her voice broke. ‘But I’m not exactly ecstatic to have been proved right.’

  ‘So you argued about it?’

  ‘Yes, we disagreed, and we did argue about it when the Johnsons were hassling us. But they haven’t been near us for months. There was no reason for us –’ And she stopped, realising the huge mistake she’d just made.

  ‘The Johnsons hadn’t been near you for months. Okay. Now, do you have anything to add to the statement you made yesterday?’

  ‘No… No, I don’t think so.’

  ‘You’ve told us everything that happened, from when you got home from the beach to when the paramedics arrived?’

  ‘Yes. I think so. Everything I can remember. I was – some of it’s a bit hazy, as I think I said yesterday. I suppose I was in shock.’

  He gave her a long look. ‘Okay then, Mrs Parry, thank you. I do have some more questions, but first I’m going to hand over to DI Murray. All right?’

  Flora nodded.

  And it was DI Murray’s turn to lean forward in his chair and make eye contact. He was saying he was from Haghill in Glasgow. And he was talking about Saskia.

  Not Neil.

  Saskia.

  ‘A witness, a shopkeeper, saw a woman matching your description on the day in question, walking along Renfrew Road in a westerly direction at the relevant time, turning into Quarryfield Lane and getting into a red Ford Ka. The witness has also been able to give us the registration number.’

  All Flora could do was stare at him.

  ‘Mrs Parry?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Were you that woman?’

  And before she could do anything about it, the silence had stretched on too long for a denial.

  ‘Yes. I – I’d gone to see Saskia, to ask her some questions about the Johnsons. I tried the buzzer, I tried all the buzzers, but I couldn’t get a response. So… I just came home.’

  ‘I see. And why didn’t you come forward with this information?’

  She swallowed. ‘Because I didn’t see anything. There was no point. And – to be honest, I didn’t want the hassle. We had enough to deal with, so…’

  ‘You weren’t at any time in Saskia Mair’s flat?’

  ‘No. Well, I was before. Neil and I went to see her after we found out she’d been suspended, and why.’

  DI Murray leant back in his chair. ‘Okay, here’s our problem with that. The witness who saw you getting into your car says you were wearing a grey hoodie. And there’s a grey hoodie, according to Mr Mair, missing from Saskia Mair’s wardrobe.’

  Silence.

  Flora looked from him to Sue, sitting alongside him taking notes on another laptop.

  ‘I found her!’ she blurted. ‘Okay, yes, I was in the flat, I found Saskia... I found her dead! I’m a nurse – I used to be a nurse, I knew she was dead, I knew there was no point calling an ambulance…’

  DI Murray nodded at her, a little smile of satisfaction tweaking at his mouth. ‘But surely that would have been the normal thing to do? Call 999? Ask for the police, if not an ambulance?’

  ‘I couldn’t! The Johnsons – the Johnsons were obviously trying to set me up! Why would I kill Saskia?’

  ‘Saskia Mair hurt your daughter.’

  ‘Yes, but only so she could get her away from them! If she hadn’t, Beckie would still be with those monsters! It’s the Johnsons who hated Saskia. It’s the Johnsons who had a motive for killing her, just like they’ve killed Neil – surely you can see that? The Johnsons must have killed both him and Saskia. They’re – they’re criminals.’ Not like me. ‘They’re psychopaths! They’re trying to set me up for Saskia’s murder and for Neil’s!’

  DI Murray raised an eyebrow.

  30

  ‘You’ve been ages,’ Beckie accused when Flora walked into Caroline’s living room. She jumped up from the sofa, where she’d been sitting with Caroline watching TV, and clamped her arms around Flora’s waist.

  Flora stroked her hair. ‘I know, darling. I’m sorry.’

  ‘Why were you so long?’

  ‘Well, there was a bit of waiting around. And then the police had some more questions.’ She kissed Beckie’s hair. ‘They’re being very thorough, trying to find out… well. What happened.’

  ‘Do they know it was the Johnsons?’

  ‘No darling, no one knows yet exactly what happened. We have to just let the police deal with that now, and concentrate on trying to… trying to do what Dad would have wanted us to, don’t you think? Of course we’re very sad and we miss him so terribly much – but that doesn’t mean we can’t still do normal things. He wouldn’t want us to be miserable the whole time, would he?’

  Beckie said nothing.
/>
  ‘What do you think Dad would have said?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘I think he’d have given you a big hug… like this… And he’d have told you how much he loved you, and that he wanted you to be happy again just as soon as you could be. And you know what he was like – he’d probably have asked you something about food after that. Maybe: have you had lunch, and what did you have?’

  ‘Lara made tomato pasta but I could hardly eat it. It was all funny in my mouth.’

  ‘Oh, darling, I know. It’s what happens when you’re really sad – you don’t feel like eating and any food you do eat tastes funny. But we have to eat to keep our strength up, don’t we?’

  ‘Do you think Dad would have said that?’

  ‘Definitely.’ She looked over Beckie’s head at Caroline. ‘Where is Lara?’

  ‘In the kitchen,’ said Caroline, getting up and taking Beckie gently by the shoulders. ‘Why don’t you go and help her wash up, Beckie, after she was so kind making us that pasta?’

  ‘Okay.’

  When Beckie had left the room, Caroline opened her arms and Flora walked into them.

  When she could speak: ‘They think I killed him. And Saskia. They know about Saskia, they know I was in her flat right at the time she was killed, I just blurted it out like an idiot… And they kept asking things like Were you rowing about the Johnsons? and of course I had to say yes, I had to tell the truth because they’d find out, wouldn’t they –’

  Caroline eased her down onto the sofa. ‘That’s hardly a motive for murder. And where’s your motive for killing Saskia? There’s no good reason why you would kill either Saskia or Neil.’

  ‘But the way they were looking at me… It’s usually the spouse, isn’t it?’

  ‘Aye, when it’s the man’s killed the woman. Other way round’s surely pretty rare. Would you even have the strength to strangle him? They’re just fishing. You stuck to the story, yeah?’ She rubbed Flora’s arm.

  ‘I tried, but… It was going on and on and on… They kept asking me the same things again and again, in different ways… I must have been in there for hours. They took my fingerprints and everything, they said they needed to eliminate them for the forensics in the house… They need you to go in and give yours too this afternoon, and Beckie…’