Watching You, page 24
‘I agree. But I think that imaginary pan just hit me in the head. Those moles are much more important than just helping us identifying him. Can you bring up facial images of all the victims, but I need them all at once?’
Baarda created a new image with the four faces in a square.
‘Now we can see our killer more clearly, it’s so obvious that I can’t believe we missed it.’
‘It was literally staring us in the face,’ Baarda said. ‘I get the connection. Tell me what you know about him now that we didn’t before.’
She rubbed her hands together and gave a tiny bounce on the sofa before she spoke. ‘He’s someone who’s been self-conscious his entire life. Moles anywhere else on your body can be covered up, but facial moles are unusual. They make people stare. Kids especially, who have no filter and often no socially aware conscience, are cruel and fast to create nicknames. I’m guessing the moles were the first thing anyone ever saw when they met him. The first name calling probably started when he was no more than five years old. Lucy Ogunode mentioned it to Christie Salter in relation to Dale Abnay who had eczema, talked about him being bullied by other kids.’
Baarda switched the lights back on in the room and turned his attention to Connie instead of the images. ‘So they all have some form of facial marking. Abnay’s eczema, Divya Singh’s hyperpigmentation which also resembles tiny moles, Archie Bass has a lot of facial scarring from various wounds and exposure over the years and Vic Campbell has excessive tattooing on his face which has also messed with the texture of his skin. But why choose them as victims? Most people develop empathy from bullying, surely, at least towards people with similar issues.’
‘That only works if your psychological set-up allows for empathy. Step into his world for a second. As a baby and a toddler, you’re blissfully unaware that you look a bit different. Maybe you notice it in the mirror but not in a way that sets you apart. It’s just your face, and that’s great. Then you start school and people point at you and talk about it, and make you feel like an outsider. Skip ahead a few years and those kids are a bit older and bigger, and now they’re really laying into him, because nothing makes kids feel powerful like excluding someone who’s a bit different. Those days you come home and look in the mirror and yeah, you hate those kids, but you also hate the moles. After a while you start hating your whole face. And you’re powerless to change it. You can’t do anything about it. It never stops, it never gets better, and maybe there are even new moles appearing. Fuck me, you’re pissed now. You’re enraged. Girls are giggling at you, boys are shitty. It’s hard to make friends, and your parents just tell you to ignore the bullying which is bullshit. How much hate are you feeling now? That’s got to go somewhere, Brodie, because if it just stays inside it’s gonna break you.’
‘He’s killing people whose faces remind him of himself?’ Baarda asked.
‘I think maybe he’s killing a representation of himself. Perhaps he’s someone who’s thought endlessly about suicide but who can’t do that, hence the lack of torture or the lack of a standard pattern in choosing victims – different genders, different races – and in his head he’s killing himself over and over again.’
‘I get it. And I need a drink. You?’ Connie shook her head as Baarda picked up a glass. ‘What’s the link to the hospital?’
‘I don’t know yet. Maybe he’s hanging around the dermatology unit? Possibly it’s just somewhere with a huge amount of people passing through so there’s every chance he’ll identify a victim. It might equally well be something personal to him that we haven’t figured out yet. But it’s the only link between the victims, Brodie, and I can feel it in my bones. This is why they were all chosen.’
He knocked back a whisky and began putting on his shoes.
‘We’d better get back to the station then,’ he said. ‘You ready?’
Connie was already at the door.
Chapter 43
Ten Months Earlier
Driving was both painful and against doctor’s orders, but Beth couldn’t stay home any longer. All she did was wander around finding cupboards to tidy, drawers to sort and things to throw away. The result had been an ever-growing pile of rubbish in her front garden that would never fit in the bin, and that needed taking to the household waste recycling centre.
It had taken a while packing it into her car with the sling on, but it was faster after she’d thrown her sling onto the top of the rubbish stack and used both arms. It had been a little over two weeks, and she was doing all the physiotherapy exercises she’d been set, so there wasn’t much point keeping the sling on anyway. That was bad advice, of course, but she couldn’t stand the restriction for one more day. The sling made her feel vulnerable and old. Worse, it was a reminder of … things she wasn’t prepared to think about.
The recycling centre was quiet, unusually so, but that suited her. It was going to take a few trips from the boot of her car to each different container to get rid of all the bits and pieces, especially with only one good arm, and she didn’t want people staring. She was still worried about being recognised from the damned deep-fake video.
Reversing her car into a bay, she caught a glimpse of a man leaning against a wall and reading a newspaper. He was wearing a cap and the shadow was falling across his face, but there was something so familiar about him. Something that made her shoulder and head ache anew.
In an instant, Beth was falling again. She was back on the endless slope she’d been so certain would finish her. In the front seat of her car, she folded her arms in front of her face to avoid the trees, branches, brambles and rocks she was hurtling towards.
‘Oh fuck. It’s him,’ she muttered. ‘It’s him, it’s him, it’s him.’
She ducked down before he could see her and started her car again, shooting forward then having to slam on the brakes as a van did its best to avoid her. The man was looking up at her now, checking out her car, walking towards her. He’d dropped the newspaper on the ground, no longer walking but striding in her direction as she slammed her right foot to the floor and sped away.
He was yelling now, waving his arms at her, shouting at her to stop. She went faster, taking the tiny roads of the recycling centre like a rally circuit.
Karl Smith was fucking alive. She hadn’t killed him. Now he’d come for her again. God only knew how he’d managed to get there ahead of her. She hadn’t noticed any suspicious cars or motorbikes following her. Perhaps he’d simply seen her loading up and gone on ahead.
She raced away, checking her mirror every few seconds to make sure no one was coming after her. A few miles later, she pulled onto the forecourt of a small garage she used for MOTs and repairs, and rushed into the tiny office.
‘I need you to check my car, Bill. It’s urgent.’
‘Not a problem, let me see when we’ve next got a slot,’ the mechanic said.
‘That won’t work. I need help now!’ Beth blurted.
Bill raised his eyebrows and nodded. ‘I see,’ he said slowly and loudly, as if he was talking to someone either very disturbed or a child he needed to humour. ‘And can you tell me what you believe the problem to be?’
‘Yes,’ Beth said, aware that she was almost panting and doing her best to slow her breathing. ‘I know how this will sound, but I think there might be a device on my car that, um, you know, would enable someone to track my movements.’ Her face reddened as she said it, and she found she could no longer meet Bill’s gaze. Still, she held her ground.
‘A tracking device,’ he said. ‘Do you, perhaps, need me to call the police for you?’
‘No!’ She caught the desperation in her response and forced a smile. ‘The police won’t help. Listen,’ she stepped closer to him and lowered her voice, ‘it’s an ex-boyfriend. He hasn’t moved on, and there’s been this car that appears, follows me for a while then turns off. If it’s him, it could be dangerous for me. I know it sounds extreme, but when you’ve been through what I’ve been through …’ She let it hang.
‘Of course, I get it. Let’s get her up on the ramp and I’ll check it out. You’ll be safe here, I promise.’
Beth handed him the keys and sat on a rickety chair pretending to look at a decade-old magazine as he worked. The guilt she might have felt at her lie was diluted by the knowledge that the truth was much scarier. If Karl Smith had been a threat to her before, just what might he be capable of since she’d tried to kill him?
It wasn’t him, her rational voice insisted. It couldn’t have been. You checked his pulse and tipped him into a ditch.
Beth wished she could believe her own brain when it tried to reassure her.
At least you’re not a murderer, she answered herself. And it was him. She’d seen his speckled skin beneath the shade of the cap, and he’d started watching her as soon as she’d driven in. Who stood around a recycling centre reading a newspaper?
But he died. You’re a doctor. No one knows better than you how permanent death is.
Beth stood up, shook her head to silence the duelling voices, and really thought about it. By the time she’d rolled Karl Smith into the ditch it had been pitch black. She’d been exhausted and coping with extreme pain. On top of that, she’d had a serious blow to the head. Then there was the stress, the adrenaline and the panic.
Sometimes, she knew, it was almost impossible to find a pulse. Plenty of doctors had recounted incidents when they’d declared a patient dead only to find them alive an hour later. Pulses were tricky things when patients were unwell. So maybe she’d missed it, or maybe his pulse had temporarily been too weak to find. But she had to accept that it was possible that he hadn’t died at all.
‘No,’ she said. ‘I won’t have it. That can’t have been him. There’s no way he got out of that ditch. He’s dead, he deserved it, and I’ve got too much to lose to be driven insane by this.’
She strode out of the office to the mechanic who was shining a light on the underside of her car.
‘It’s all right now. I think I overreacted. You can stop.’
‘Well, there’s nothing in the way of tracking devices, but I did find an almighty great nail stuck in your rear driver’s side tyre. Lucky you brought it in, to be honest. That could have burst at any time, and if you’d been going fast, who knows how that would have ended up.’
Another nail in another tyre. What were the odds? She did her best to keep her face and voice neutral.
‘Can you change it for me? I have somewhere to be.’
‘I can, but I think you should consider that call to the police. This is a very long nail. Chances of it getting into your tyre from a road or by accident, I’d say are low. If your ex is trying to hurt you, this would have been a clever way of going about it.’ He put the torch down and went to a rack of tyres and began looking for the right one.
‘I’ll bear that in mind,’ Beth said. ‘Thank you. How long?’
‘No more than fifteen minutes. You can use my phone if you need it. The police station’s only down the road. I’ll show them what’s happened if they can spare someone to come down.’
‘Now’s not a great time, to be honest. If you could just change that tyre for me, I’d appreciate it. But if you put the old one in the boot, I’ll call the police when I get home and ask them to take a look.’ She checked her watch. Bill got the message and began fitting the new tyre.
Beth waited, paid and got back in the car. Ten minutes later she was at the recycling centre entrance, paused in a lay-by. She had to be sure. If the man she’d seen wasn’t Karl Smith, then everything was fine. If it was, then she’d have to come up with a plan for how to deal with him.
Her head was hurting, and she wished she was still wearing the sling because her shoulder was agony too. She closed her eyes for a minute and waited for the pain to pass. When she opened them again, the clock told her it was an hour later. Surely that wasn’t possible. Beth checked the clock against her phone. She had to have fallen asleep. The headache had knocked her out. She had just a few minutes left to double-check and get the rubbish out of her boot.
In she went, slowly this time, trying not to draw attention to herself. She parked up, not rushing, keeping it casual.
All the staff members were wearing high-visibility jackets, so it couldn’t have been one of them. Most of the visitors were wandering from vehicle to container like a train of ants. But of Karl Smith, or the man she’d thought was him, there was no sign.
She emptied the last items from the boot, finally taking the tyre from where she’d propped it against the side of her car and rolling it to where a sign said she could leave it. Beth ran her fingers over the place where the nail had punctured the surface. The hole it had left when the mechanic had removed it was substantial.
‘It’s a coincidence,’ she said. ‘He’s dead. He’s going to stay dead. I’m not doing this again. And tomorrow, I’m going back to work.’
Longing to close her eyes, desperate for sleep, feeling the exhaustion of not just that day, but that month, that year, and every second since Karl Smith had come into their lives, Beth Waterfall headed for home.
Karl Smith watched from behind a tree in her road as she unlocked her front door, didn’t so much as bother turning on a light, and headed straight for bed.
Chapter 44
19 June
‘DS Salter,’ Biddlecombe shouted down the phone line, ‘I’m transferring a call to you. It’s from a woman who claims she knows the man in the CCTV image.’
‘All right, put her through,’ Salter said, flexing her neck and wishing she was in bed. Since the image of the suspect had been released in the morning papers, they’d been overrun with calls from people who claimed to know his identity, so much so that the briefing room had become one huge call centre. They were already following up several calls with more detailed enquiries, but the sheer volume of possible names was proving unhelpful in the short term.
‘Hello, this is—’
‘Karl Smith,’ the woman on the other end of the line said. ‘The man in that photo is Karl Smith. I’m not just guessing, I know.’
‘Okay,’ Salter said, ‘and in what capacity—’
‘I was his father’s carer until just a few days ago. I saw that man five days a week and I’ll tell you something for nothing, he is absolutely fucking terrifying. I only did that job because I needed the hours, and caring is good money because no one wants to wipe old people’s bums for a living. But that house? The agency couldn’t get anyone else to bloody go because the few people who had worked there before me hated it. They had to pay me more than my usual rate to do it, and if I hadn’t been desperate, I’d never have gone there for so long. When he terminated my contract last week, I swear my blood pressure halved immediately.’
‘He terminated the contract this week just gone?’ Salter confirmed, waving another officer over and motioning at the notepad she was writing on.
‘Yes. Something about not being able to afford it, but he had some money from his mother’s death, plus a carer’s allowance, and I know he worked from home too. He was always on his laptop if we were there at the same time.’
‘And your name is?’
‘Mrs Sandra Bissett. The thing you should know is, sometimes I heard him talking to his mother. Like, arguing with her. I don’t think he even knew he was doing it. He’d be on his own upstairs then suddenly he’d yell and I’d think, is he hurt? Has someone broken in? Should I go up and check on him? But there was never anyone else there.’
‘Okay, I’m just taking some notes, Mrs Bissett. You said you found him terrifying. Was there anything specific he did to make you feel that way or was it something you sensed?’
‘Both!’ she blurted. ‘He would stare at me when he thought I couldn’t see him, not directly but using the hallway mirror so he could see into the lounge. I don’t just mean for a few seconds. Sometimes he’d stand out there and watch me for fifteen minutes while I pretended not to notice. A couple of times, he got so angry about stupid little things that he’d almost seemed to be baring his teeth at me, then a second later he’d give me this great big smile as if he’d remembered he was supposed to be acting human.’
‘And was there anything unusual that happened in the last few months?’
Sandra paused to think about it. ‘Only the deliveries, really. We didn’t get many of them before, but recently they started coming. Clothes mainly, for him. But there was something going on, because every now and then his father would have an accident in spite of the adult nappies he wore, and then I’d strip the bed and dump the soiled stuff in the laundry. There were at least three sets of doctor’s or nurse’s clothes in there, the cotton trousers and top, you know? Different colours, and had been worn, for sure. But that man didn’t have a job at any hospital that I was aware of. Gave me the creeps, like he’s got some sort of fetish.’
Salter was on her feet in a heartbeat and banging on the desk.
‘Mrs Bissett, not that I don’t believe any of this, but are you absolutely sure, beyond a shadow of a doubt?’
‘Oh yes,’ she said. ‘I’d bet my life on it.’
‘Please don’t do that,’ Salter said. ‘But could you give me the address?’
Salter was leaving nothing to chance. At Karl Smith’s house, warrant obtained en route, there was a van of armed officers, a crew from MIT and Brodie Baarda.
‘We’re covering front and back?’ Baarda checked.
‘We are. Armed units are going in first to clear the place, then we can enter. There have been no signs of life from inside so far, but his father is supposed to be bedridden and not left alone.’
‘All right,’ Baarda said, motioning to the armed unit leader. ‘Let’s go.’
